Page 41 of Ascendant King
The dining room was still destroyed, and by the time my head cleared, Elizabeth was gone again.
With a frustrated roar, I shifted, sprinting through the house, following my nose. Now that I knew who I was looking for, she couldn’t hide from me. I caught her in the foyer, sliding on the tile and grabbing her with my teeth. She had just enough time to put up a wave of blue power but not enough time to stop me.
Her tattoos spilled helplessly on the floor, immediately pulled back to her skin. My teeth caught hold of her sleeve, tearing it loose. Her arm was completely bare.
She had been using a lot of magic. It had cost her to get into our house undetected. It had cost her more to take us to this halfway place, then again to the blue-and-white world.
Her eyes were flinty and sharp when she pressed a hand against my muzzle, blue magic wrapping around my nose, pressing into my eyes.
Something slithered up my body.
You had better appreciate this, Basil snapped.
Suddenly, I could breathe, the magic gone, smoking chars of ink on the ground, Elizabeth screaming.
I stumbled to my feet, ready to attack again, but Cade was there, his black magic lifting her up by the throat. She struggled, clawing at it, but she wasn’t me. She couldn’t touch his magic with her bare hands, only with her magic. And she was out of ink.
Screaming in frustration, she let loose the last of her power, her skin going pale, sweat dripping down her face. She was going to run out of magic. I had seen Cade do it enough times that I knew the outcome wasn’t going to be good.
When I shifted back into human form, my legs trembled. It might not tire me out the same way that losing magic exhausted mages, but I had been fighting an advanced mage and all her magic. On top of that, I hadn’t slept much the night before, between searching the dealer’s house and waking early enough to meet with my fledgling counsel.
“Elizabeth. We have you. Whatever Morrison has planned, they can’t accomplish it. We won.” I kept my words calm, implacable.
There was a change in the air around us, and reality shifted again, the wolves of my pack coming into view as Elizabeth’s magic slithered back onto her. It hid underneath what was left of her shirt, but I could see how pale it was, almost invisible against her white skin.
She was going into shock.
“Do you understand? If we put you down, are you going to continue fighting us?” I waited. Metal clanged as someonedropped it on the wooden floor before picking it up again. Joel and Evelyn came down the hallway, carrying our entire supply of iron chains. Nia circled around Elizabeth, teeth bared, her eyes turning wolfish, her fangs growing.
I looked at Cade significantly, and he nodded. He was still holding on to her tight, but I didn’t want his magic anywhere on her when Evelyn and Joel put on the chains.
When they were close enough, he pulled away his magic, Elizabeth landing on the floor with a hard thump, her legs giving out. She tried to stand, but Evelyn was faster, wrapping the chain around her throat, binding her wrists in one fluid movement.
I turned to Cade. I wouldn’t embarrass him by asking if he was all right, but I raised an eyebrow.
For a long, drawn out second, I thought he was going to snarl at me or ignore the implied question entirely. Instead, he shook his head once, bending to pick Basil up off the floor. The snake crawled up his arm, disappearing under the cuff of his shirt before reappearing, his head stretched on Cade’s neck between his shoulder and ear.
Elizabeth had lost all of her fight, sitting on her knees, hands braced on the floor in front of her, shoulders rising and falling, eyes glassy. I looked at Gabe.
“Get her some juice. She’s in shock. Anything we have left from breakfast too.”
Nia was still partially shifted, and she turned to me, her sneer worse because of the long fangs it revealed. She pointed at Elizabeth, eyes narrowed, and I knew exactly what she was implying.
“No, normally, we don’t feed the people who try to kill us. But she’s not trying to kill us anymore.” When Nia still glared at me, I glared right back. “We can’t get information on House Morrison unless she’s alive and coherent.”
Nia’s nostrils flared, but she shifted back into human form. Gesturing at Heather, she signed she wanted two patrols. One around the entire property line, the other around the house.
Gabe returned, juice in one hand, a plate with sausage and toast in the other. With a sharp glance, I dispersed the rest of the wolves who weren’t on patrol. It left only my inner circle in the foyer.
Coral and Lily stumbled down the stairs, pulling up short when they saw the iron chains.
“What happened?” Lily asked Cade. “I felt… something.”
“She pulled us into some sort of alternate magical reality. I’ve never seen one in practice, but it allowed her to see the house without people in it. Then, we went into her transportation space.” Lily gaped, but Cade seemed to be puzzling through our magical tour, as though trying to reverse engineer what had happened. Finally, Cade shook his head, meeting Lily’s eyes. “She’s House Morrison’s head of security. She’s probably one of their most powerful mages.”
“But she’s not stupid,” I said. I knelt in front of her, nudging the glass of orange juice toward her.
She glared at me, her sneer sharp enough to be a wolf’s. Shaking my head, I picked up the glass of orange juice and took a sip. Then, carefully, I placed it back in front of her, the glass making a click in the silent room.