Page 67 of Contested Crown

Blind, acidic terror permeated the air around what looked like a blank stretch of wall. Coming close, I smelled again. It wasn’t just one person. There were multiple layered scents of fear.

Normally, I knew my wolf would react. Coming close to the fore at the sign of weakness. But there was still nothing. Not an inability to come out, but just… blankness. Emptiness where my wolf should be scrabbling and howling at my skin.

I stepped back and gestured toward the wall, sketching a rectangle with my hand. I had seen enough magic to know that even though this looked like a blank piece of wall, there was a door here somewhere, and I couldn’t access it.

Cade stepped forward, frowning. He didn’t even look winded from transporting us earlier, and something loosened in my chest. When he had been so low on magic, I had been living in a constant state of anxiety. What would I do if I needed to save us and he still didn’t have the magic?

He pressed his palm to the wall, closing his eyes. Magic peeled off his skin, three narrow blades that extended out until they formed a rectangle.

There was a crunching sound, and I saw the blades slice through the drywall, wrenching open a door. When it slid aside, Cade’s magic coming back to him, it revealed a set of narrow stairs, leading down into the darkness.

Cade started down, but I put out my hand. No way was I letting him walk into whatever was down there first. I stepped forward, taking each step cautiously.

Cade followed behind me. I felt his body close, the heat of it making me hyperaware of his proximity, and then his hand brushed my back. Straining my ears, I heard talking, voices layered on top of each other, someone sobbing softly, muffled, like they were crying into their own hands.

The stairwell was lit with mage lights every few feet, but I could see darkness at the end. When we reached it, it wasn’t shadow but instead a thick layer of magic, a thousand different colors mixed together until it was no color at all.

I glanced back at Cade, and he craned his neck to see. Frowning, he reached over my shoulder, his tattoos extending from his fingertips. The wall of magic in front of us faded, parting like a beaded curtain.

I stepped through, and Cade grabbed hold of the back of my shirt, coming with me.

Inside, bright fluorescent lights lit a long white hallway. I winced away from the sudden brightness, blinking until my eyes adjusted. Everything was white—the walls, the light fixtures, the long hallway full of doors.

The closest was only four feet away, and I walked over, squinting into the window set in the center of the door. There was no glass, just a thin shimmer of pale yellow magic.

On the other side, a woman paced back and forth, mumbling to herself. The walls of her cell were covered with tattoos, and I saw more peel off her skin, flying to the white walls and sticking. She paused in the center of the room, trembling and jerking, shaking her head violently.

Then she screamed, the sound muffled. Magic flew from her skin, lines of tattoo slamming into the walls of her cell. When it was done, the expression on her face was pure bliss, and her shoulders slumped, hands going slack.

She stumbled over to a cot in the corner of the room and lay down, falling instantly to sleep.

Cade nudged me, and I moved back, letting him see inside. I felt his body tense, and he leaned forward until he was almost touching the spellwork that made up the window. I pulled him back before he could make contact.

“The walls,” he murmured. “The walls are absorbing the magic. They’re keeping it contained.”

“What?” I had noticed it too. Her magic stuck to the walls; it didn’t return to her flesh. “How?”

Cade shook his head. “Maybe they’re made of the same material that older generations made their clothing out of, something that would help contain their spellwork, contain their magic before they went…”

He didn’t need to say it. It was obvious that the woman in the cell was unwell.

We continued walking, and at each doorway, the person inside had cell walls completely covered with magic.

For a moment, I remembered when I had seen the closet Cade had been trapped in while his parents were killed. His magic had been permanently embedded in the walls, burned there as he tried to escape, tried to help them.

That had been the desperation of a child. This was something else entirely.

All of the people in these cells only had one color of magic. Their walls were uniformly painted by the same color tattoos, although the forms were different. Some were graceful circles. Others, complicated wavelike patterns. Plants and birds.

At the end of the hall were a set of double doors. I put my arm back, herding Cade against the wall.

“Someone is watching these people,” I murmured.

“You think they’re on the other side of the doors?” Cade asked. “They might just be using magic to monitor the people trapped here.”

“If they were using magic, why aren’t they already here, busting us for playing the Scooby Gang?” I raised my eyebrows.

“I don’t know.” Cade’s brows drew together, and he crossed his arms over his chest. “They can’t have just abandoned these people down here without anyone taking care of them.”