“I believe you can,” a gruff voice answered the child. “Get him up. Strap him in.”
Hopeless whimpers made my jaw clench. Nothing stood between the tractor and the guards. The moment Tyrin and I emerged from cover, we would be spotted.
“Do you smell that?” one guard asked.
The breeze had shifted, and we were too close. Threat of discovery drove me to action. Signaling that I would attack the guard on the right, I inhaled a deep breath, gripped Silentium, and raced around the tractor. The guard spotted me, and the first note of alarm burst from his throat before I froze the air in his lungs, strangling the sound. In the next heartbeat, I drove the hilt of my sword into his temple. He crumpled to the ground, out cold.
Tyrin dispatched his own guard with brutal efficiency before looking to me for orders.
“Hold him still,” someone snapped from the outbuilding.
“No, please—” The child’s voice cracked.
“Shut up and channel.”
Hastening my steps with a snarl, I sent a burst of magic to the second outbuilding, freezing the door shut to keep the newlyarrived soldiers and any others trapped inside. Then I strode to the second outbuilding and tried the door, finding it unlocked. Tyrin stepped up beside me, holding his axe at the ready. I turned the knob and pushed the door open.
Two bright, magical lanterns illuminated the cramped space, casting harsh shadows across walls covered in peeling paint and rust stains, despite the building's obvious newness. An iron cage dominated the room, its bars thick as my wrists and blackened with scorch marks.
Inside the cage, next to a shabby sleeping cot piled with threadbare blankets, two guards gripped the arms of a brown-haired boy. The child couldn’t have been over fourteen or fifteen, scrawny but scrappy in build, dressed in rags that hung off his skeletal frame. The guards wore protective aprons and gripped him with thick rubber mittens, pressing him against a machine that pulsed with sickly green power.
From where I stood, I could see a whip in the hand of the hulking brute. Fresh welts crisscrossed the boy’s back, visible and bleeding through the shreds of his shirt.
“Channel,” the brute demanded.
The boy’s entire body shook. “I can’t. Please.”
The whip cracked across his shoulders, and the child screamed, jerking in the guards’ grip. A flash of lightning erupted from his hands, arcing into the machine. The device flared brighter, humming with absorbed energy before the boy collapsed against the hold of the guards, gasping for breath.
“Again.”
“No more,” the child sobbed. “Please. I’m too tired.”
My vision tunneled. The stench of ozone mixed with blood and fear flooded my senses and ignited my fury.
The man raised his whip again.
Ice exploded from my palm, freezing the whip mid-swing and coating the bastard’s arm up to his elbow. He bellowed and spun toward me.
“Who the hell?—”
Tyrin’s axe bit into his chest before he finished.
The guards released the boy, fumbling for the weapons at their belts. I froze their feet to the floor and drove Silentium’s pommel into the first guard’s face. Bone crunched, and he toppled over at an odd angle, blood gushing from his nose. Still enraged at the torture he had inflicted on a child, I brought my blade down and separated his head from his shoulders.
The second guard slashed out at Tyrin with three-inch claws, but my húskarl ducked and swept his legs out from under him. The guard stumbled, but before he could regain his balance, Tyrin spun and, with one deadly strike, finished the male off.
The boy eyed us, his hands out and ready for an attack. Burns covered his palms where electricity had channeled through his skin. His brown eyes tracked our movement with animalistic wariness.
“We mean you no harm,” I said, keeping my voice low.
The child’s laugh turned into a wet cough. “Heard that one before.”
I sheathed my sword, and he relaxed slightly, hastily scanning the space but finding nothing of interest, save the machine. “Is that the second chance?” I asked.
He gave me a blank look. “The machine?” At my nod, he shrugged. “Never heard it called that before.”
If it was the subject of Clymene’s vision, I knew not what to do with it. Made of metal, cemented to the floor, and connected by pipes and cords that shot through the wall, it appeared nearly impossible to remove.
