Chapter 40 · The Living Safe

"Put the shard down, Sylvia." Cassian's voice hit the inside of her skull a second before the ceiling came down.

She threw herself across the stone table.

The falling beam smashed into the spot where her head had been. Dust burst across the room. A guard screamed behind her, and the metal case in his hands clattered open.

Inside it, a black glass shard pulsed once.

Cassian felt it too. His breath caught inside her chest.

"You felt that," he said.

"I felt the ceiling." Sylvia rolled under the table and came up with a scalpel in her fist. "Try lying to me again. I dare you."

"I am not lying. The shard is three feet from your left hand."

"And the child is dying three feet from my right."

A boy lay strapped to a narrow examination bench beside the far wall. He couldn't have been more than ten. His skin had gone gray around the mouth, and thin silver lines crawled from his collar toward his jaw. Every few seconds, his fingers jerked against the leather restraints.

Two soldiers stood between Sylvia and the boy.

One of them raised a crossbow.

"Step away from the case," he ordered.