Page 114 of Ascendant King

Cade gasped, jerking back and bumping into me. I wrapped an arm around his chest, keeping him steady, and my palm rested over his heart, feeling the flutter of it in his chest.

“There you are, Prince Bartlett,” the head on the ground said. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

Howard’s body stood, leaning down to grab his own head by the hair. He held it in his hands, and the mouth moved, the eyes finding us. “Have you thought about my offer? I’m afraid I must insist on an answer. The throne is yours for the taking.”

With his body off the throne, I could see that a long blade extended from the back directly at neck level. With a creaking sound, it retracted, leaving long drips of red blood running down the back of the throne. Whoever sat on that throne was going to have their head chopped off.

“Can you hear me, Howard?” Cade asked, his voice calm, even though I could feel his heart racing under my hand.

“There you are, Prince Bartlett,” Howard repeated. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

I dragged Cade with me, running through the hall until we reached where the front door should have been. Instead of a door, there was more of the iridescent rock, and as soon as I reached toward it, Basil hissed at me.

Don’t touch it. I thought you liked your hand.

I drew back. Looking at Cade, I forced myself to keep calm. Every muscle in my body was tense, but I was an alpha—I had to stay calm so that no one else panicked, even when we were in a situation like this.

“How do we get out?” I asked.

Cade dragged in a shaky breath. His lips were pale white, and he swallowed, meeting my eyes. I had always found them calming, like dipping myself in chilly waters. Now, he searched my face, the desperation clear.

Okay. I could be calm for both of us.

“We can’t get out from down here. The back door disappeared, the front door doesn’t exist. The windows are paintings.” I looked around, searching for any clue as to where we were supposed to go next. “I don’t think this is a trap the waywe were thinking. If it was, any of these dioramas would have attacked us.”

“Unless they’re just waiting for us to become like them.” Cade threw his shoulders back, his face becoming placid, although I could see the terror underneath. “There’s only one direction to go.”

I looked toward the stairs. I had come to the same conclusion, but I hoped that Cade had seen something I didn’t.

Nodding, I said, “Do you think I should shift?”

So far, everything we had seen had been grotesque, horrifying. But none of them had attacked us. I kept circling that, unable to think of anything else.

“No.” Cade’s fingers tightened on mine, his breathing carefully controlled.

When I looked at him, his face was expressionless, but his eyes were slightly wider. He didn’t want to be left alone in this place, and when I was a wolf, that was how he felt.

“Okay.” We approached the stairway slowly, our loud footsteps making any attempt at subterfuge impossible.

As we climbed the stairs, they seemed to extend, going on endlessly until, abruptly, we were on the second floor. It appeared out of nothing; one moment, we were climbing, the next, we faced a series of bedrooms and another long hall.

Cade and I both froze, and then he moved, walking smoothly down the carpeted hallway. Our treads were muffled, and between our footsteps and the beating of my heart echoing in my ears, I couldn’t hear anything else.

As we passed the first bedroom, the door slammed open, cracking against the interior wall. Inside, I saw men in masks stabbing at a tree, laughing as they hacked it to pieces. The tree screamed in pain.

The men laughed again, and then honey-colored sap slithered out of the trunk, coating their arms and legs, pullingthem to the floor. It sizzled against their skin, melting them down to their bones. They didn’t even have time to scream.

Cade and I both looked at each other.

“The poison?” I looked at the sap, but I liked my life too much to approach it any closer.

“Let’s keep going.” A small furrow appeared between Cade’s brows, and as we passed to the next room, the door opened again, revealing a similar scene. Two women drank from the body of a dying dryad. When all the life had left it, the poison seeped from the dryad’s pores, killing the women.

“It’s defensive,” I said, working out the meaning behind the scenes.

“The poison comesafterthe offense,” Cade agreed.

By the time we reached the next doorway, I could already tell the gist of what was about to happen. Children stomped on a hive of fairies, laughing as they crushed them beneath their feet. When the hive had been destroyed, poison seeped out. I pulled Cade away before we had to watch it kill them.