Page 94 of Ascendant King

“Jesaiah,” I said. “Can you hear me?”

He gave a soft moan from his chest that never quite became words. His head stayed fixed, staring forward at an empty stretch of wall.

“Jesaiah.” I spoke more forcefully, stepping forward in front of him. When I realized I was tugging Cade with me, I released his hand.

Jesaiah’s face was blank, the lines showing his age carved deep in his slack cheeks. He moaned again, turning his whole body and beginning to shuffle down the hallway.

As he moved, his leather collar shifted, exposing raw, blistered skin. It leaked pus, staining the collar of his shirt yellow.

“What is he?” I demanded, turning to Cade.

Cade’s eyes were wide, the blue almost entirely gone as his pupils expanded. He shook his head violently, back and forth.

“I don’t know. This isn’t magic I know.” He swallowed. “I don’t know what he is. All I sense is the magic in him, but…”

He frowned again, and when I turned away, he reached for my hand, gripping it tightly. At a corner ahead, Jesaiah waited, making that same moaning sound. Focusing, I realized it was just the sound of him forcing air from his lungs, as though it was a struggle to remember to breathe.

As we walked down the hall, we passed a sitting room, every surface clean of dust, everything in its place. The books on the shelves had all the same binding, the same leather, the same gold embossing, all there for appearance rather than functional use.

When we caught up to him, one of Jesaiah’s arms moved. He raised it slightly, the motion jerky. His hand hung limply off his wrist.

It took me a moment to realize what he was trying to do. He was pointing us down another hall to a closed door at the end.

“What is it?” I asked him.

For the first time since we’d seen him, he seemed to hear the question. His head turned toward me, his neck making a tremendous cracking sound. When he opened his mouth, oneof his teeth fell out, dropping on the floor. No blood followed, almost as if the tissue was already dead.

His mouth moved, opening and closing, but he only made the same moaning sound, no coherent words that I could understand. His shoulders slumped, head lolling. When he looked up, his eyes were blank again, and he shuffled forward, stumbling on a carpet, barely righting himself by bumping his shoulder against the wall before he fell.

“This shouldn’t be possible,” Cade murmured. “It is impossible to bring someone back from the dead.”

He spoke with ferocity, and I remembered his story about trying to save his dead parents, how their skin had healed over destroyed faces, how he would have done anything to bring them back. Was he imagining his dead mother? His dead father?

If Cade had known this spellwork when his parents had died, was this what he would have turned them into?

As though he was reading my mind, Cade said, “This can’t be safe magic. Whatever this is, it isn’t natural. I’ve never found anything similar to this in any text I’ve read. And Ilookedafter my parents died.”

I squeezed his hand, and then we were at the door. I turned to Jesaiah, waiting to see if he was going to open it the way he had the front door, but instead, he stared at it blankly, gasping in that horrible breath again, dragging air through his vocal cords.

“You want us to open it?” I asked.

Jesaiah said nothing. Glancing at Cade, I didn’t even ask if he could scout ahead for us. Between his pale face and destroyed expression, I wasn’t sure he had the energy for it, even if he hadn’t just spent most of his magic.

Reaching out, I paused before touching the doorknob. When I turned it, pushing forward, the door was locked. Frowning, I tried again, but it was still locked.

I didn’t see a keyhole or any evidence of how we were supposed to get in. Stepping back, I glanced at the door again. It looked identical to the rest of the doors in the hall—the ones that led to the kitchen and the guest bathroom, one to an office.

“How do we get in?” I turned, asking Cade and Jesaiah both.

Cade frowned, closing his eyes, a line forming between his brows. “I don’t know. It isn’t sealed magically.” He sighed. “At least not that I can tell.”

Jesaiah continued to breathe but said nothing.

Let me try.Basil slithered down Cade’s arm, twisting off his fingers before wrapping himself around the doorknob.This magic is like me. That is why you can’t sense it.

“It’s sentient?” I asked sharply. “Or it has a bad attitude and wants to eat us?”

Both, Basil hissed.Perhaps you should go through first if you don’t believe me. I will happily take the leftovers for dinner.