Page 55 of Ascendant King

My mate came up beside me, picking up the clothes I’d left behind. His scent took over, but I forced my attention back. When I caught the scent trail, I followed it deeper into the forest.

Around me, the forest seemed to come alive. I could hear individual leaves flutter in the breeze, the crack of dried twigs under Cade’s boots. The trees called to me like ancient voices caught in amber.

Cade stayed close, and when we reached a clearing, I pulled up short, the scent of rot and death tickling my nose until I sneezed. In wolf form, it was overwhelming, so I shifted back, trying to make sure that what I was seeing was real.

In a half dozen cages made of carved rock, dryads were dying.

Chapter

Eighteen

From her position in front of one of the cages, the elder turned to stare at us. She didn’t look surprised, but she wouldn’t. Likely, she had felt our feet on the ground, our path through the forest. I could still sense the leaves on the trees, the call of birds in their branches.

“Elder,” Cade said. His tone turned it into a question.

“Prince Bartlett,” the elder said. She dragged her fingers over the bars of the cage in front of her.

Inside, Oak looked away, turning his body toward the back, away from her. As he moved, I caught sight of his face. It had cracked in two, sap dripping down his chin onto his shoulder.

“The poison is killing your people.” I stepped closer to the cages, where dryads decomposed. All that was left of one was a head and torso. Her two hands held tightly to the bars of her cage. Her mouth was open in a silent scream, but instead of a voice, sap dripped down her chin.

“Yes.” The elder nodded, looking away from Oak, turning back to Cade and me. She crossed the small clearing, her face growing increasingly smooth as she ignored the silent screams of the dryads.

“The same poison that affected the trees at House Bartlett?” I pressed.

“The same. We do not believe treating the trees is what infected our people. The first infections came from dryads who had gone into their deep slumber.” At my confused look, she tilted her head. “You know that our people take the form of trees and will sleep deeply for years, sometimes decades. The eldest of us was infected first. She had been asleep for two hundred years, and when we stopped feeling the pulse of her in the soil, we went to check on her.”

The elder shook her head, her face twisted and gnarled like a knot in the trunk of a tree.

“Everything that had been her was eaten from the inside out. All that was left was the poison.” She pressed her lips together, her hands twined like two branches growing around each other.

“What is it?” Cade asked. “Last time, the only thing you could tell us was that it was old.”

The elder shook her head. Her eyes traced over one of the dryads, who was standing still in the middle of a cage, their body as straight as a sapling. Cracks had formed all over her skin, the poison dripping from them, pooling on the rock floor of her cage.

“That is still all we know. I have contacted all of the elders. No one has seen this poison before, but it is like looking at the most ancient tree in the forest. I may not know it, but I understand it is old.” She looked uncertain, her brow creasing. “There are tales.”

“Tales about what?” I wanted to be angry at her, rage that she had locked away her sick, but when I approached the cages, the dryads weren’t sick. They were dead. They were shells, barely breathing, barely moving. One of the dryads turned their gaze to me, but that was the only part of their body that moved.

“Tales about a poison similar to this.” The elder hesitated. “In legend, a poison that resembled the sap of a tree, spread throughan entire community of dryads, wiping out a forest of them within weeks.”

“And then what happened?” I asked.

“And the dryads from surrounding territories gathered and burned the forest. They sacrificed every tree and plant to rid the world of the poison before it could contaminate their own groves.” The elder dryad shook her head. “But that legend is older than the oldest living dryad. It cannot possibly be the same poison. That was wiped from the earth, along with the dryads it took.”

“Has it been spreading that quickly in your community?” Cade asked.

“No.” The elder shook her head. “Luckily, we have had more time than that. The first that was infected was discovered months ago, and a second was not seen for several weeks. We quarantined the first, setting up layers of fungus around her, and we thought perhaps her roots had just grown too deep, touched some of the infected trees in the House Bartlett forest.”

“But then there was a second infection,” I said.

The elder turned to one of the cages. “Mulberry.”

Her gaze lingered sadly on a dryad who had collapsed on the stone floor, her body completely still, most of it crumbling into shards of wood glued together by the poisonous sap.

“She got ill slowly, but as soon as the cause was discovered, we built the first of these.” The elder looked down, tilting her head to examine what was left of the dryad. “Most have come by choice. They know the risk is too great if they infect the rest of us. Dryads are a dying species, our forests destroyed as humans cut down more and more of our homes. Our community must be protected.”

“The dryad in the city said that your kind rely on the ley lines.” Cade was frowning, and he brushed his thumb over theknuckles of his other hand, a line of tattoo moving under his touch.