Page 109 of Ascendant King

“Parlay?” Phelan asked. “Terms?”

“King Bartlett requests to meet you and one other person in the park near the House Morrison building.” Sonja waited, and her gaze was as stony as mine, as though she was getting used to letting someone else question themselves.

“That is acceptable,” Phelan said. “When?”

Sonja glanced at us, but she couldn’t hesitate. “Tomorrow. 9:00 a.m.”

“I will be there.” The call ended, her phone screen going dark.

“Are you sure this is a good decision?” Sonja put away her phone, jerking her head to glance at the open door when there was another cough.

“We need to know what he knows. And we’ll go with backup.” My eyes found Cade’s. We hadn’t discussed it, but there was no way I was letting us walk into a trap.

“Backup will break the parlay,” Sonja said sharply. Her gaze fixed on me. “If you break the parlay, you can’t guarantee peace.”

“If Phelan recognizes Leon as the legitimate king of House Bartlett, he’ll have backup, too, because he won’t recognize Cade as the king. Don’t worry, we’ll be careful.” I knew I wasn’t reassuring her, but it was the best I could do. “As long as Phelan doesn’t attack first, he won’t even know we brought anyone else.”

Sonja started to say something else but closed her lips, nodding at both of us. “Anything else?”

“We’ll see if Rhys can come up and take a look at Tyson.” Cade’s words were cool, as disinterested as though he was talking about a sport he didn’t play. Then, something sharpened in his gaze. “Enough of your magic will return to you to make him your consort. When we clear the ley lines of poison, your magic will start flowing again.”

If it was an attempt at consolation, it didn’t work. Sonja’s eyes dropped, but not before I saw a sharp spark of anger in them. She bowed her head.

We went back down the stairs. “Will we be ready by tomorrow?”

My wolves would be fine. Despite my exhaustion,Iwas fine. But the last I had seen, Cade’s magic was still pale gray.

He nodded. Then, to my surprise, he reached out and touched me, putting a hand on my forearm. He squeezed tight before releasing me.

“Come on. If we wait any longer, breakfast will become lunch.” He headed back into the dining room.

Chapter

Thirty-Six

Calling the area we’d chosen for parlay a “park” was the sort of hopeful verbiage most advertising companies relied on. It was a small green space set between two tall buildings with a few trees and scattered benches for office workers taking their lunch. The fountain in the center was so small that it looked more like a toy than decoration.

The new graffiti artist had left their mark on this park too. The fountain was tagged with decorative waves around the bottom, small people trapped in the water again. However, just like the rooftops visually connected, the graffiti extended to benches, which were covered in the complicated blue. It moved, or at least appeared to, and before I could get trapped in it again, I looked away, focusing on Cade.

When we had planned the meetup the day before, it had seemed like every wolf on the property, and several who would have had to drive in, wanted to come.

My betas had disagreed with the plan altogether, and Nia had shot me a frustrated look that said she was annoyed but would back me as my second-in-command. In her defense, she did, sharply commanding the betas to positions far enough away thatthey wouldn’t be seen but close enough that they could arrive in time if it became a fight.

“This is a bad plan. Who came up with this?” Elizabeth asked, rattling her chains.

“Don’t do that too much, or they’ll fall off,” I muttered.

After a great deal of discussion, we had decided to bring the only mage left who was at nearly full power. It had taken some convincing, but eventually, Elizabeth came around to seeing our side. She would help us find out about Leon, and we would give her every resource we had to find Summer.

“That’s why this is a bad plan.” Elizabeth sneered, raising her wrists as though to let the chains fall off completely, but stilled when all three of us heard sharp pops.

Phelan stepped through his transportation spell, his smile sharp enough to cut my hand on. He looked the same as the last time we’d seen him: tall, sandy-brown hair, cool eyes. There was something to the narrowness of his nose, the purse of his lips that made me expect to see fangs. This was a man who killed his own king.

“Alpha Castillo.” Phelan bowed his head, then turned to Cade, the mocking in his voice audible. “‘King’ Bartlett. And you brought a guest. I thought only two of you would be coming.”

I scanned around him, but Phelan stood by himself. He hadn’t brought a second person. At Nia’s suggestion, three layers of wolves surrounded us at a distance. We had our initial backup a block away, and then wolves watching them three blocks out, and a third layer a few blocks beyond them that was supposed to retreat to the house and protect everyone if things went south.

Had Phelan dropped off his people somewhere else with the same idea?