Page 101 of Contested Crown

Cade grabbed hold of my arm, pulling back, and soon, the fairies had disappeared with a flicker of light, taking their dead sisters with them.

I blinked at the sudden darkness, turning to Cade. “Ley lines. What do you think they meant that something was going on with the ley lines?”

“I don’t know.” Cade’s lips tightened, and he shook his head. Then he pointed at the building. “House Bartlett maintains two buildings in Los Santos.”

I raised both of my eyebrows. “And this is one.”

“Yes.” Cade looked up, but we were looking at the back of the building, so all we saw was fire escapes and reflected light.

“Well then, we should go check out the second one and see if it’s the same.” I squinted at Cade. “Can you feel any difference in the ley lines?”

“I don’t know.” Cade shook his head. “Mages aren’t like the magical creatures that consume ley line magic. It’s different for us. We absorb it.”

“You wouldn’t know if something was wrong?”

Cade shook his head again. He looked troubled, his frown tight on his brows. “It happens so slowly, if something was wrong, I wouldn’t notice it until it was too late.”

I inhaled, ready to say something else, but lost my nerve. Cade was back to looking lost, the expression I had thought was gone after the past few days. I couldn’t let him fall back into the abyss he had been swimming in after we left House Bartlett.

“Let’s go check out the second building first.” I started down the alleyway, but Cade caught my hand.

He tugged, and I turned toward him, so quickly I was afraid it showed desperation. I needed him to be strong again—I thirsted for it, yearning for someone to match me, someone to tellmeit was going to be all right.

Cade searched my face. “You told them you were the Emperor Wolf.”

For a moment, I wasn’t sure what to say but settled on, “You lied. You told them I was too.”

“I said Irecognizedyou as the Emperor Wolf,” Cade said, the technicality making it almost more terrible. He recognizedme, the son of the woman who’d killed his father, as the emperor, a role even my mother hadn’t quite reached.

“Thank you,” I said.

“It’s what you want, right?” Cade said. “You want the power?”

“I want to protect my people.” I looked down at the ring I was still wearing. “And no one else seems to be able to do that.”

“You’re safe,” Cade murmured, and I had a feeling he was telling me more than asking. When I looked up, he was staring at something in the distance. “Come on, the other building is this way.”

We walked through the quiet streets, crossing touristy areas as we headed toward the water.

“I thought you said that House Bartlett doesn’t maintain any property in Los Santos anymore,” I said. “Wasn’t that the point of your real estate deals?”

“The two buildings we maintain… We technically own them, but the leases have all been sold for decades. They are ours in name only.” Cade looked around at the buildings. “At one time, this whole city was ours. Now, we don’t even have an office here.”

“No, just the very expensive rents you guys collect as income.” I raised my eyebrows at him.

Nodding without looking at me, he led us through a small park, barely large enough for a play structure and a circle of benches for parents to sit, and then paused at the edge of the curb.

Compared to the last building, this one looked dated, shorter than its neighbors by a good ten floors, the architecture screaming mid-century. A few signs were pushed against the windows, advertising the businesses inside.

“Should we go see if there’s any more dead fairies?” I started to pull him across the street but froze, then spun, hustling him back into the park, pushing us both behind a single tree.

Jay snuck out from the alleyway next to the building. He looked both ways, frowning at where we had been standing on the sidewalk before he turned and loped down the street.

ChapterThirty-Three

Cade was breathing fast, and I felt his shoulders trembling before he steadied them. “Come on,” I said sharply. “We need to follow him.”

“All right.” Cade’s voice was low. Whether he was anxious, scared, or simply furious, I couldn’t read it from his tone, and his face was turned away from me as he stared down the street where Jay had gone.