But attack did not come.
Maybe I’d genuinely unsettled him with my fake fortune? Maybe he was in his office somewhere, head in his hands as he contemplated my dark prediction.
All I knew is I had to capitalize on the opportunity I had.
Warily, with one hand constantly locked on the wall, I shifted forward.
It didn’t take much longer to find a door. This one seemed real. It honestly felt like an actual door. Every other door I’d past had been imbued with the same surreal quality as the rest of the twisting corridors and growing staircases.
This door, with its thick red painted wood, carved architraves, and brass door handle, looked as if it would lead to somewhere more tangible than a bad dream.
I clenched my teeth, pressed a breath through them, and hesitated one more single second before pushing a hand out. I collapsed it over the cool, smooth brass and turned the handle.
Fortunately, it wasn’t locked. Just as fortunately, it wasn’t magically booby-trapped and didn’t suddenly squish me into a pancake. Instead, the door opened with a creak, and I entered a room.
The light wasn’t on, and the illumination from the corridor couldn’t push past the doorway.
Groping a hand across the wall, I found a light switch. With a flick, I switched it on.
With a click and a buzz, the light turned on. And it illuminated one of the strangest rooms I’d ever seen.
It looked like an observatory and had a large domed window for a ceiling. Except, unlike an observatory, it didn’t show the sky above. Instead, it revealed a series of spinning, turning brass and silver cogs.
It should have taken my breath away, but I held onto it as I warily pressed further into the room.
A richly patterned red and blue rug sat in the middle of the room with a stately looking leather chair on top of it.
There was a small desk with an array of books. Though I was only several meters away, I was relatively sure there was no more than five or so books arranged on the top of the table. But the closer I came, the more books revealed themselves. Every step, the count doubled, until there was a sea of books. In fact, somehow, though it defied the very laws of physics, arranged atop the small meter-squared table was an entire library. It consisted of the strangest looking books I’d ever seen. From beautiful old leather-bound tomes with gold lettering, to books that looked as though they were made out of chains. There was no doubting at all that they were magical.
Maybe I should have hesitated, maybe I should have checked for those aforementioned magical booby-traps. But maybe I didn’t have time.
I couldn’t forget that Jim was still trapped in a cage, and I had to look for some means to break him out. Perhaps I’d be able to find some way of contacting the coven. Then again, I really doubted there’d be a handy unlocked cell phone sitting around. Even if there was, I was relatively certain the warped space of this mansion would prevent it from connecting to a cell tower.
It didn’t take long until I unearthed a peculiar book. Which was saying something, considering every single book that sat on this table was stranger than the next. What was truly odd about this book was the undeniable reaction I had to it. As my fingers trailed along the spine, an absolute charge of magic powered through them, sinking into my wrists and eating up high into my shoulders. I had to clench my teeth against the powerful sensation lest they fall out.
“What the hell is this?” I questioned through a tight, stiff, rattling breath.
The book, of course, couldn’t answer. And yet, it took me too long to gather the gumption to open it.
It rested heavily in my hands. Far more heavily than it should. Granted, the tome was large and weighty, yet hefting it felt as if I were holding a brick. No, not a brick – a man. I had to rest it back on the table before my wrists broke.
The pages didn’t clunk as I opened them one-by-one, and yet they felt like they should. It felt as if the power and the weight of centuries were woven into every fiber of the parchment.
It took me a long time to realize that I hadn’t taken a breath in half a minute, and I gasped as I finally came to a page I could read. The rest of the book had been mostly filled with gobbledygook – strange symbols that shifted before my very eyes. Now? Now it was written in English, plain and simple, though it seemed archaic in its use of punctuation and its wordiness.
Sorcerer king.
The book was about sorcerer kings.
My hand had been pinning one of the pages open, and now it shook.
I leaned all the way over the book, as far as I could go. I had to ignore the sensation in my stomach that told me it would consume me.
I knew precious little about sorcerer kings – just the facts I’d heard from Jim, Bridgette, and Max.
“The cost can never be quenched,” I read. “And it grows. With every second of every day, it grows. The more the sorcerer king seeks power, the more his happiness is exacted from his heart. For that is the true cost of infinite force – an empty soul.”
I whispered the words under my breath, and I suddenly gasped. The language was archaic, and the thoughts circuitous, but I still understood what it was saying. The cost of being a sorcerer king was losing everything your heart desired.
Everything.
Though I wanted to stand there and try to comprehend that thought,
