Free Merlin's Children (The Children and the Blood) by Skye Malone, Megan Joel Peterson Page A

the rest of the lobby. Chips and scars still marred the gray marble walls where debris had hit them, though the security cameras near the ceiling had obviously been repaired. In unison, they turned to the door as he stepped inside.
    Cole hesitated. It wasn’t quite the reception he’d been expecting. It wasn’t quite anything.
    “Hello?”
    His voice bounced off the walls, sounding small in the cavernous room. Somewhere in the distance, the air conditioners kicked on, almost perversely deadening his call with their white noise hum.
    And nothing else happened.
    Letting out a breath, he glanced to the cameras. Someone was here, anyway. Or else they’d left behind a perfectly good security system for no reason.
    Still eyeing the cameras obliquely, he started across the lobby.
    Marble squeaked beneath his shoes, accompanied by the whisper of the fabric of his jeans. The hum of the air conditioners pressed on his ears, impossible to ignore for being the only other sound.
    His steps slowed as he neared the opposite side of the lobby. An island of elevators waited ahead, with a hall leading between them, but he barely glanced to the gleaming doors. At the end of the corridor, a black abyss gaped beyond the remnants of a decimated wall. Above the broken hinges of the missing doors, a few lonely brass letters dangled from shredded plaster, and in the darkness, the air-conditioned breeze sent small bits of something skittering down.
    The ding of the elevator nearly made him jump out of his skin.
    An elevator door rolled to the side. Magic spiked a migraine straight through the back of his skull.
    “Hello, Cole.”
    Wincing, he retreated, but he wasn’t fast enough. Three wizards rushed out and encircled him, leaving behind a monster who approached as if he had all the time in the world. Scars and melted flesh distorted half the man’s face, though they did nothing for the glow emanating from his skin or the cold distrust in his one normal eye.
    “Isn’t this a surprise?”
    The man could have been commenting on the weather.
    Drawing a rough breath, Cole tried to keep all the wizards in sight at once, despite the fact it was impossible. Surrounding him on all sides, the men circled, cutting off any escape.
    “Are you alone?”
    Cole looked back at the giant who could’ve given Nathaniel a run for largest wizard he’d yet seen. “Where’s my father?”
    Humor twitched the man’s lip. “Alright,” he acquiesced. He stepped to one side, clearing a path to the elevator. “After you.”
    Cole hesitated, his gaze darting between the wizards and the distant street baking in the summer sun.
    It was too late to back out now.
    He walked inside the elevator.
     
    *****
     
    “He is not a threat to me, Mason.”
    Brogan glanced to Jamison. The man didn’t turn from the one-way window taking up the majority of the wall.
    “You know that’s not the point, sir.”
    “It’s been six hours.”
    “The Merlin would not have just let him leave. They must have an agenda.”
    Jamison exhaled. On the other side of the glass, the boy seated at the metal table in the center of the bare room shifted uncomfortably on his folding chair.
    “Perhaps. But for the moment, I do not care. He is my son. He belongs with me. And I have been kept waiting long enough.”
    Without another word, Jamison headed for the door.
    Brogan’s mouth tightened as the door closed, but he made no move to follow. There was only so much arguing he would allow himself since, security issues aside, he couldn’t help but understand the king’s point of view.
    He let his gaze slide to the boy in the other room. The boy who both Jamison and the rest of the Blood had assumed was dead. The boy who had somehow escaped a portal, and then dozens of wizards, only to arrive on their doorstep. They had no explanation. Cole hadn’t said a word since they brought him up here, except to ask after Jamison. Any other question was met with silence and an expression that, whether