Page 112 of Ascendant King

My lungs began to burn from lack of oxygen, and I joined him, kicking hard until we broke the surface.

I had to release him to tread water, my arms working and legs kicking. We were surrounded by vast nothingness, just waves and an endless horizon.

“There,” Cade gasped. I turned, treading water, and saw a house in the distance. With a gasp, he began to swim toward it.

I followed behind.

Chapter

Thirty-Seven

Iwasn’t sure how long we swam. There was no sun in the sky, no way to measure time except by the increasing exhaustion of my muscles. They jumped and trembled, but I didn’t dare stop swimming because I knew as soon as I did, I would sink beneath the waves. I wasn’t sure what would happen if I fell.

Would I be able to drink the water again? Would I be able to breathe it like air?

The house floated on the water, waves splashing against the white railings of the deck. No land supported it; nothing seemed to be holding it up. It lacked the curved shape of a boat. It was just a house. In the middle of the ocean.

Cade dragged himself onto the back deck. As soon as he was out of the way, I followed behind, flopping onto the wooden deck and turning onto my back.

The water had been lukewarm, not quite hot enough to be pleasant but not cold enough that I had been worried about the chill. The air here was the same. It was completely neutral, almost body temperature. Not hot enough to dry our clothes but not cold enough that we were going to get frostbite.

When I turned my head, Cade was on his stomach, gasping for air, each breath spreading water across the wooden deck. He coughed, and water came up out of his lungs, enough of it that I turned, shoving onto my knees, and got an arm underneath him, slapping his back until he coughed up more.

When he went still, his heart beating as fast as a hummingbird’s underneath my hand, I drew him close, and we sat chest to chest for a long moment. I wanted to close my eyes, collapse onto the hard deck, and just sleep.

But we had two good days of sleep under our belts, and we needed to know where we were. When I pushed up, some of the paint cracked under my hands. Frowning, I picked at the peeling white. Looking over the deck, I saw every other inch of it was pristine, perfectly well maintained, the paint glossy and undisturbed. But where Cade and I had been lying, it was cracking, weathered like it had been exposed to years and years of sun and rain.

“Where are we?” I used my fingernail to peel off a chip of paint, holding it up, but it looked normal. It smelled normal. When I scratched at the exposed wood, it gave under my fingernail, fibers of it coming loose as though it was rotting.

“I don’t know.” Cade looked around at the endless expanse of water.

“This is obviously magic, right?” I asked.

Cade shot me a look, both of his eyebrows raised. “Maybe. But whose? Phelan’s? How? I’ve never heard of a place like this.”

The more I scratched, the deeper the hole got until my finger met something hard and solid. I widened the hole, and it revealed a shimmering rock. The thing sparkled, glittering with gold dust and iridescent patterns.

When I touched it, it shocked me, and I leapt back, away from it. Cade was still staring out at the water, squinting. He leaned his head to the side as though the angle would change thetruth of the problem. Finally, he shook his head, turning back to the house.

It looked familiar, like House Morrison, but different. House Morrison had appeared to be two stories but had actually been three—four with Summer’s attic room. This stretched up and up, growing taller the longer I looked at it, until the roof was so far above us that I couldn’t see it anymore.

“Miles.” Cade stood, reaching to tug my hand. His long fingers brushed over mine, and I shivered.

Last night, his fingers had been buried in my hair as I swallowed him down and made him come apart with just my mouth, without even touching him.

“Come on.” He walked toward the door, and I pulled up short.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” I asked.

He shook his head. “No, but I don’t have enough magic to break us free, and this is the only place for us to go.”

“You know, it would make it even easier for whoever kidnapped us if we wore bells and reflective clothing as we walked into the clearly marked trap,” I muttered.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Cade said. “We should be wearing those yellow safety vests so they know exactly where to aim.”

I snorted but raised my eyebrow at him, silently asking the question.

He nodded. We didn’t have a choice. We were in the middle of nowhere, trapped in some unknown location. There was nothing on the horizon other than vast emptiness.