Page 96 of Ascendant King

By the time I reached the end, Cade had walked over to the notebooks. Jesaiah obediently moved to the side, staring at a blank stretch of wall.

“How long was he doing this?” I asked Jesaiah.

The other alpha said nothing, continuing to stare.

“We know it was over eleven years. Did youknowthen?” I got between Jesaiah and the wall, trying to catch his eyes, but the blank nothingness stared through me, as though I were invisible. He couldn’t see me or hear the pain in my voice when I asked, “How could you align yourself with someone doing this to your ownkind?”

The question was unanswerable. Whatever had made Jesaiah himself was gone. This was just a phantom going through the motions he had in real life. He was an echo of the alpha I’d known.

If there was any part of Jesaiah left, it had brought us here so that we would see who Leon was, what he’d done. So we would know who he had hurt.

“It started twenty years ago,” Cade said.

I turned to him. He had opened the notebooks and spread them over the table. When he held it out to me, it trembled.

Crossing the room, I skimmed the page.

“My father caused all of this.” Cade clenched his jaw, and I took the notebook from him before he dropped it.

The date indicated that Cade was right, and the first experiments had been on Jesaiah.

—I see it most in the forest, in the areas where Alexander has forced his magic back into the ley lines. He’s convinced this will make the House stronger and says it causes him no pain, unlike slicing off his own magic. I strenuously disagree, but he refuses to see reason on this issue.

When I point out the areas of blighted land, he insists it is nothing more than natural decay, perhaps even the dryads acting against us subtly.

I have begun experimenting on these blighted areas. The resulting liquid is somewhat confusing. When I imbibe it, it strengthens me. When Jesaiah does, it weakens him significantly, costing me greatly to buttress his strength. —

Cade had picked up another notebook, frowning. Slowly, he said, “It took him years to realize that it could also drain other supernatural creatures. Five years later, he begins speaking about using it on fairies that inhabited the forest. He wiped out their entire hive.”

In the room’s white light, Cade’s skin looked pale. He passed the notebook he’d been reading to me, his fingers icy cold where they brushed mine.

As I read the passages he had, he grabbed another book, skimming a few pages before tossing it aside and grabbing another. His throat worked, eyes blinking rapidly.

Leon was meticulous in his notes, calculating exactly how many fairies needed to be drained before he gained enough magic to form another line of tattoo. His experiments on Jesaiah were excruciating to read.

I paled when I realized he had been draining his own consort over and over again, leaving him near death before bringing him back. His plans changed when he realized how easy it was to control the creatures he had drained to near death.

First, it had been the fairies. He had found it easy to change the behavior of one but more difficult to manage an entire hive.When he found a gargoyle in the city and brought it back to House Bartlett, he had spent months working on the best way to control it. After mastering that, the first werewolf he received from Ghost Pack had been easy.

The journal I was reading ended before my parents arrived, and I felt relief, like being caught by a parachute. I knew I would have to read what he’d written about my parents eventually, but the dread of it was swallowing a stone and trying not to choke on it.

With a frustrated growl, Cade threw one of the notebooks on the table, sending it flying off the edge. “The other houses knew.”

I blinked rapidly, yanking myself back to the present, rewinding what he’d said. “What?”

“The other housesknew.” Cade pointed at the notebook on the ground. “He tried to encourage them to do research with him, to send some of their best minds, and they refused, saying that as the poison was internal to House Bartlett, it should be handled by House Bartlett. But they knew what he was doing. They knew where it would lead.”

I felt a twinge in my neck as I tried to decipher the politics Cade glossed over. “Where it would lead?”

“He talks about how my father refused to acknowledge it, refused to study it. He talks about how my father caused it.” Cade wiped at his cheeks. “They knew there was a House Bartlett civil war brewing, and they did nothing. He calls them cowards for not wanting to join him. But they were cowards because they didn’ttellmy father.”

Slowly, I approached Cade, wrapping my hands around his elbows.

“If they had done something, then maybe our parents wouldn’t be dead.” Cade reached up, wiping his cheeks with the heel of his hand. He refused to meet my eyes. “Maybe…”

Shaking his head, he pulled away, gathering all the notebooks carefully. He circled the table, picking up the one on the ground.

“We can have someone else read them,” I said.