Page 128 of Ascendant King
“Pablo, take two of yours and go back to the vehicles. Wait for reinforcements, if they’re coming. When they arrive, you can lead them through here to the riverbed where we think Leon is.” I gestured, and he took two lower-ranked members of the pack with him. I looked around at who we had left. “Samuel, Heather. I want two groups of scouts up ahead. Theo, Jack, I want you to go with one of the groups.”
Nia shifted, and I saw in her expression that she wanted to go with the other group, but I shook my head sharply. I needed her here in case something went wrong.
“The scouts are going to move ahead, giving us an idea what we’re walking into. Mages, I need you to ready any protective magic you have. I don’t know what Leon’s planning, but this”—I gestured to the trees around us—“this tells me it’s big. I want our main group to split in half. We’ll keep an ear out, but that way, we aren’t walking straight into something without an ace up our sleeves.”
Nia glared at me but quickly divided our main force in half. The scouts started off, creeping through the woods. I wanted one group to be wolf only. Despite making life partners of wolves, none of the mages were any good at subtlety, especially the quiet necessary to sneak through a forest without being seen.
At least this way, we had one scout group that wasn’t tromping through the woods like they were on their way to a summer picnic.
After we gave the scouts enough time to sneak in, I took the main group ahead, the second group behind and slightly to the side of us. Despite my implied direction, Nia stuck with me, handing off control of the second group to Evelyn and Gabe.
Rhys was still fluttering around her, a tropical butterfly alarmed and unable to rest. “If you’ll just let me?—”
Nia shot them a sharp look, and they crossed their arms, shiny bracelet clanking on their wrist.
“Don’t youdaretake thattonewith me.” Rhys raised their eyebrows until Nia looked away, inching over to bump shoulders affectionately.
We moved slowly, and as soon as we got out of the clearing, I saw glimmers of fairies in the trees. The slightest shine that was gone when I turned my head to get a good look. The trees themselves looked like a forest you would find around House Bartlett, except for the dryads every few feet.
Some were injured, cleaved in half, or burned until they were nearly unrecognizable. Others blinked awake when they saw us, their expressions going pleased.
“Emperor,” one whispered. “You are close.”
“How many does he have?” I asked, my voice breaking the silence of our group.
“Six,” the dryad started to fade, skin flattening, becoming tree bark. She blinked open her eyes, sharpening. “But they fight like more. They fight like no mages we’ve ever seen.”
We continued on, scouts periodically coming back. It was slow going; by the time we got to the riverbed, I could feel the tension in our group, the heightened senses. We were dogs on the edge of our leashes, ready for a fight.
“The riverbed looks… strange.” Gabe looked to the side. He was a Los Santos native, like most of Declan’s boys were. He knew what the riverbed should look like, but I couldn’t quite figure out what he was trying to tell me.
“Leon is using magic to distort reality. I can’t understand it. But he’s creating pockets of different realities.” Jack seemed troubled and reached out to touch Theo, almost subconsciously, his eyes still fixed on me and Cade.
“Is there the same tree coverage we have here?” I asked Gabe.
He shrugged. “It’s changing so quickly that I don’t know what’s there now.”
“Okay.” I glanced at Cade, then Nia. My gaze strayed back to Cade’s blue eyes, and I realized I was speaking almost directly to him. “We have to do a frontal assault, then. We outnumber them; the trouble is the magic. Phelan was almost able to take out everyone we had. I’m not willing to risk the entire pack.”
“What if you don’t risk the whole pack?” Evelyn asked, amending, “Uh, with all respect, boss.”
“What do you mean?” But I could already see a few pictures in my head.
“We send out a lot of people, but then some of them sneak around behind. We need to wait until we get to the other side of the riverbed, but there’s a bridge a couple miles up.” As she spoke, her shoulders went back, confidence creeping in.
“That’s a good idea.” I turned to Cade, belatedly including Jack and Lily, who were standing with us. “But we could go even simpler. What if we have some people creep in using an invisibility spell like the one you used to hide us when we took the stash house? Or we travel in that in-between space?”
“I don’t know that anyone has that much magic right now…” Cade trailed off, glancing at Lily and Jack, then turning to count the mages left with us. “But if several of us work together, we could hide a number of wolves.”
“Get started. Let me know how many you could actually hide.” I turned back to Gabe. “Describe to me what you saw—I know it will look different—but it will give me an idea.”
As I worked out the logistics of taking forty people up against mages drunk on magic directly from the ley lines and other houses, Cade worked with the mages left, planning how to get us in unseen.
“Hopefully they give in as soon as we have Leon. If they don’t, we might need to take out each mage one at a time.”
I didn’t like our odds, and we’d used most of the iron chains we had on Phelan. I had been hoping we would have reinforcements at this point, bearing thick iron chains that would turn the tide of the fight. But we hadn’t heard any news, so I was already turning options in my head.
Unfortunately, most of them were bloody.