Page 78 of The Broken Elf King
FOURTEEN
We slipped through the open unguarded gate of the industrial machine park and then approached the building. The windows at street level were frosted with an acid wash on the lower half to give privacy, but the upper half of the window was crystal clear. There were two windows with the lights on, and one of them was cracked open for fresh air. If we could just climb on top of something and peek over the frosted bit, we could get a better view of what the Hades was going on.
The screaming had stopped and that worried me. Did they kill her? Who was she and what had she done to deserve such treatment?
“Here,” Raife whispered, and I peered over to see him lifting a big wooden crate that once held one of the queen’s machines. Scurrying over to help him, I hooked my fingers into the slats and carried it over to the base of the window that was closed so there was less chance we would be seen.
If we held absolutely still, we could hear the voices inside.
“Is she dead?” a man said.
“No, just passed out,” another male said.
Once the large crate was firmly in place, Raife and I both scrambled quietly on top of it and then looked at each other.
It was as if we were waiting for the other to say this was a horrible idea and we shouldn’t look.We should run to the garden and get back to Archmere and forget we ever heard those screams. But then, as if we shared one mind, we both slowly raised ourselves up to peer into the clear part of the window. It took a moment for my mind to process what I was seeing. There was a large machine the size and appearance of a giant fan with a hole in the center. In that hole was a glass box the shape of a coffin. In the box was a girl, limp but breathing slowly. The tips of her ears indicated she was either elf or fae. I couldn’t tell from here but I felt Raife go rigid beside me, which made me wonder if she was an elf. There were four guards, one at each corner of the room; they held various weapons that would overwhelm the small dagger I had brought.
“Will her ears shrink once the treatment is done?” a bald man wearing a white lab coat asked another male with long reddish hair that was tied back into a bun at his nape.
“No. I already told Queen Zaphira I could build her a machine that strips a magical creature of their power so theyappearhuman, but it will not make them one genetically.”
Dizziness washed over me at his words. They just… did they somehow strip that girl of her magic? That was possible? Bile rose in my throat, and Raife ever so quietly pulled out his bow. I reached out and stopped his hand, giving him a pleading look. If he sounded the alarm now, we would never get out of here with my aunt.
I could not only see the rage boiling in Raife’s expression, I could feel it, his and then mine. I was angry too. I wanted to light this entire place on fire and burn it all to the ground, but I also wanted to live to fight another day. The queen was the brains of all of these inventions. So long as she lived they would still be popping up long after we destroyed one scientist or one machine. She had blueprints of all the machines in her safe, and dozens of engineers and scientists. These people were expendable. I hoped to convey that to Raife with a look.
“She’s waking,” the redhead said, and both of our heads snapped back in their direction. The girl whimpered as she looked up at the two men.
“Display your power,” one of them commanded her.
She lay there shaking like a leaf, sweating, and ignored him.
“Display your magic now or I turn the machine back on!” he snapped, and she flinched, holding up her hand. She held her fingers out like claws and stared at them in shock.
What happened next was too much for me to watch. A gut-wrenching wail ripped through the room and her sorrow slammed into me as if I were right in front of her. I fell backwards, scrambling off the box at the realization that she’d lost her magic, what made her who she was.
“Welcome to Nightfall. You are now human.” The man’s voice filtered through the window and reached me just as I threw up on the rocks. Her sobs were soul crushing, filtering out into the night. I couldn’t imagine what it must be like to be her to find out her magic had been stripped from her. She felt half empty, and my empathic gift was soaking it all up, even from out here. It was too much for me.
I turned, wondering why Raife wasn’t behind me, when I saw him standing in front of the now cracked-open window, arrow nocked in his bow.
I wanted to scream for him to stop but it was too late. Before I reached him he’d already loosed three arrows. I’d never seen someone move that fast. His arm was a blur, the arrows hitting their marks, because I could hear grunts of pain and shouts of surprise inside, before bodies thudded to the ground. By the time I reached the window to peer through, every man in that room was on the ground bleeding out. Arrow in neck, in chest, in stomach. It was insane, and I now knew why Raife commanded the army of Bow Men. He was the fastest, most accurate marksmen I’d ever seen.
The girl in the glass coffin sat bolt upright then and stared at Raife.
He pulled his hood back and she wept. “My lord.”
I didn’t know if he knew her personally or just as any elf would know her king, but she leapt out of the glass case and then sprinted across the room in record time. The feelings coming from Raife were similar to what he felt for me, an intense need to guard this woman and bring her to safety. She was one of his. Jealousy surged up inside of me but I pushed it down. It wasn’t right to feel that way. He didn’t feel romantically towards her, at least not any feelings that I felt, but still, I couldn’t help the envy. Just another sign how far I’d fallen in this one-way marriage.
Raife pushed the window wide open and told her to jump as he held out his arms. She looked to be in her early twenties, and was wearing a thin white medical gown. Without hesitation, she leapt and Raife caught her, setting her to her feet.
“Can you run?” he asked.
She nodded, her eyes bloodshot, lip quivering. She seemed to notice me for the first time and burst into a sob. “My queen…” She reached for me as if she needed a fellow female companion, and even though I knew it was going to be awful, I grasped her hands.
Absolute desolation and darkness enveloped me then and the girl gasped. “Empath,” she whispered, looking relieved.
There was no time for this, so I pushed her emotions deep down inside of me so that I could still function, and then dragged her along as Raife directed us to run.
Tears leaked from my eyes and muffled sobs escaped me as I processed the realization that she would never again heal anyone, nor be considered an elf among her own kind. Raife was nervously casting side glances at me as we ran down the road, coming to the edge of the palace before needing to cut back into the neighborhood and avoid the tavern. My aunt would be waiting at the gardens. Probably worried sick by now.
