Cade swallowed. “It was the only thing I could think of. There is no other way off the property for them.”
It sounded almost as though Cade was asking for forgiveness, as though he was apologizing. I blinked but bit down on the growl that wanted to come out, the anger churning in my chest.
Children I had taken under my protection as alpha were being sold.
“Are we safe to talk freely?” I repeated.
Cade looked at me, his eyes wide, his forehead still creased. He waved his hand, and I felt the painful experience of his teleportation magic before we landed in his room.
“What?” he asked.
“The poisoned magic,” I started.
Cade tried to wave me off. “Yes, Leon told me what the dryads said—”
“Is that what’s poisoning your magic?” I demanded.
Cade blinked, the wrinkles on his forehead relaxing, his eyes opening wide with surprise. “What?”
“Your magic. It’s painful when no one else’s is. You lose control of it quickly. It turns your eyes black. In the past couple of days, you’ve been… not right.” I looked him over, the waxy complexion, the strain. “You look sick. Youlooklike you’re being poisoned.”
Cade’s entire face went slack, and then he began to laugh, tilting his head back and covering his eyes with the palms of his hands. His shoulders trembled, and when he finally regained control, he shook his head at me.
Without speaking, he walked over to the wall, opening the panel that hid Basil’s cage. Next to it was a small box filled with live mice. He plucked out one and handed it over to me.
It was the size of my thumbprint, blind, and nearly hairless. Clearly, it had just been born. It opened and closed its lips, searching for food.
Cade closed the panel.
“Come with me,” he commanded. Raising his hands, he drew a circle in the air. Dark lines of tattoo in a language I didn’t read flowed from his fingertips, creating two interlocking circles that moved in opposite directions.
Cade stepped through and seemed to shrink, as though he was walking away so quickly that he had to be drawn in perspective.
He turned and looked over his shoulder, raising an eyebrow.
“Excuse me for not wanting to walk into a Salvador Dali painting,” I muttered.
“You make fun of museums, but you know aboutSalvador Dali?” Cade snapped. “Follow me.”
I stepped into the circles. The world turned into streaks of color around us, and in the distance, I saw darkness that grew larger the closer we walked.
When we stepped out, we were in a cave. I smelled the moisture that collected on the walls, the moss growing in the darkness. A river flowed underneath our feet, the sound a distant roar, like listening to a waterfall miles away. A single ray of light lit the cavern in front of us from a large hole in the ceiling.
There were stone seats carved into the walls, and a cracked round table that had been worn down with age and damp. A statue of an ancient King was slowly crumbling next to one of the seats.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“When my ancestors took over this land, they stole it from the native population. In the natural course of things,anyonewho lives here would have a right to the magic that flows under the ground.” Cade gestured through the air, as though the magic was a tangible thing he could touch. “But the Bartletts intertwined their own magic with the ley lines so only people of our line would have the power of this land. This was where they did the magic. And this is still where we teach the children of our house the cost of magic.”
He walked to the center of the cavern, and I saw an enormous maze carved in the stone ground. Each of the maze walls was only three inches high, and it looked more like a marble maze than anything else. Holding out his hand, he gestured for the mouse I still cradled.
It had curled up into a small ball in the center of my palm, whimpering and mewling for its mother.
Uncertainly, I handed it to Cade. He closed his hand around it and walked to the very edge of the maze. Swirling his fingers in the air, he used his magic to drift the mouse to the center.
The thing cried out at the sudden change in temperature. It whimpered, but it didn’t have the leg strength to move very far, lifting its body only to plop down in the same spot.
“Be grateful,” Cade said. “The only people who have ever been here are mages of House Bartlett when they learn the price of their power. If anyone knew I brought you here, I would be killed.”
