Page 107 of Contested Crown

“He does seem to have it out for us,” Cade said. “Although, I would prefer you not invoke him if possible.”

Standing, I offered over my hand, and Cade took it, pulling himself up.

“You think the poison is what’s affecting the magical creatures?” I pulled my hood up on the sweatshirt, and Cade finished his coffee, tossing the cup into the garbage and hunching his shoulders, digging his hands into his pockets.

“It has to be. But I want to see whatever they saw. I need to know what’s going on,” Cade said.

“How do you do that?” I asked.

“The basement of the two buildings will be like the sacred cave in the forest,” Cade said. “We should be able to see the ley line’s magic from there.”

“More breaking and entering.” I smirked at him. “My specialty. It’s almost like you want me to show off.”

“Oh, yes, seduce me with your ability to break into buildings that I own.” Cade’s lips quirked in a soft smile that dropped off his face almost immediately, his eyes going distant.

“Cade?” I asked quietly. We weren’t walking in any direction specifically, but I knew we needed to change clothes soon, and I needed to stake out the building for at least a couple of hours before deciding the best way in.

“Why didn’t he just ask me?” Cade’s voice was quiet. “I could have told him what the magic was. That it wasn’t poison, that it was something that only hurtme.”

“Would you have?” I asked. “Because you didn’t tell me about it until it practically killed me that one night.”

We walked in silence for a while, and I tried not to stare at everyone on the sidewalk who gave us an odd look. They were probably just worrying we were going to mug them, but I was too worried they’d recognize me, that one of them would tell Declan I was back.

“Yes,” Cade said, startling me out of staring at an Acura on the other side of the street, half-convinced it was one of Declan’s guys.

“You’d have told Isaac that you’d taken in your father’s magic and you were so close to the edge you could taste it?” I stared at him for a long beat until he turned away.

“I would have told him I wasn’t poisoning House Bartlett,” Cade said.

“I don’t think that would have been enough.I’m not the bad guyis something that most bad guys say while executing their evil plan,” I said. Now that we were talking, I found myself curious about something Isaac had mentioned. “What did he mean that you got stronger when everyone else got weaker?”

“As I’ve said, I was extremely powerful for my generation. For a while now, mages in House Bartlett have been born with less and less innate magic, even when they’re exposed to the ley lines early. They just don’t have the power that Leon and Petrona do.” Cade looked at me. “Maybe that’s how it should have been with me too, but because I took my parents’ power, I had more than anyone else. Even Sonja.”

“Wait, you said that some mages never increase their power, but others increase over time. Are you saying that mages are born with less andnever get moreor they’re born with a small amount and it increases over time?” I tried to understand the problem.

“Both, but mostly the former. Leon was, apparently, born with a significant amount of magic, and his powers only grew until by the time he was a teenager, he was one of the most powerful mages in the house.” Cade paused, wetting his lips and swallowing before continuing. “That would be unthinkable now. Most mages are born with such a small amount of power… even I was born with only a trickle of power.”

I thought about his story of trying to heal his parents and the scars of magic he’d left behind in the closet. That had been no trickle of power. Even if he’d been born with a small amount, by the time his parents had died, he’d already had more.

Raising both eyebrows, I said, “You took your parents’ magic, giving you a lot at once, but your magic was still growing. And it didn’t overwhelm you for eleven years. You probably would have been that powerful anyway.”

“Probably,” Cade admitted. “But without my parents’ magic, not for a great many years.”

“Okay, but still, how does the amount of magic you have link you to what was poisoning House Bartlett?” I remembered the rotten tree, the sap dripping down its roots until it seeped into the ground.

“It sounds like Isaac thought that because I had more magic, I was draining the ley lines, taking more than I should. It would cause a strain on the local magic, and it might affect it.”

“Overdrawing a well dries it up. It doesn’t poison the water,” I pointed out.

“But magic is different. It reacts differently.” Cade shook his head. “There has to be another reason he thought it was me.”

“Maybe they knew how dangerous your magic was,” I said. “If they thought that when you’d overdrawn the magic, it had turned into those shadows that could kill… maybe they thought that got back into the ley line.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Cade said. “Because I’m not going to see them again.”

“I’m not sure we can avoid them,” I pointed out. “They’re looking into the same poison we are.”

And the wolves that had escaped out of House Bartlett called to me. I wanted to know that they were safe. I’d led them as an alpha; I couldn’t justabandonthem.