Quain gasped. Before he could warn Peter, he was jerked back into hisbody.
Damn, he didn’t even get to saygoodbye.
Still acclimating from returning to reality, Quain took a few gulping breaths, trying to calm his body from the shock of consciousness. There was always a bit of displacement when he returned to the physical world. He screamed out all the oxygen in his lungs when his tormenter stabbed a sharp-nailed finger into one of the open wounds in hisside.
“Tell me what you saw,” hedemanded.
Quain blinked back tears. He refused to appear weak or let them think they had the upper hand. His heart fluttered, and shock cooled his skin. Part of him wished to remain with Peter even if only in his mind. After swallowing a few times to make sure his miniscule lunch stayed down, he focused his attention on historturer.
“What?” He refused to be nice to people who abused him. He didn’t care if it resulted in further punishment. Eventually, they would give up and either kill him, sell him for ransom, or let him go as too much trouble. He had a morbid fascination in seeing which it would come downto.
“What was your vision? Tellme.”
“No.” Quain closed his eyes as reality reassembled itself in his temporarily fractured psyche. After all this time trapped in a cage and struggling to hold onto his sanity, he wouldn’t break during a moment of dissonance. His interrogator must have studied psychics. Only someone familiar with the process would know the fragility of a seer shifting from a vision to reality. More than one psychic had let a prophecy escape while in the state of in between. Not Quain, though. The Ilves were one of the few with more than one seer in their family tree and had strong protections in place over those with foresight. During his kidnapping, Quain had blessed every one of his ancestors for the writings they had handed down. The training he had cursed in his youth had become his main survival tool. If he got out of this, he would apologize to every mentor that had ever had to deal with his teenage angst and fractious temper. Maybe buy them houses inapology.
“You will tell me what you saw, or I will make you.” The man had moved from persuasion to pain within the first week, while still not giving Quain his name. Apparently their torture sessions didn’t make them best friends. Luckily, he hadn’t experienced many visions during his captivity and the others had learned torture didn’t make him talk. That didn’t stop the more sadistic members from doing it anyway for their own amusement. Those people didn’t return, and Quain never asked what happened to them. He didn’tcare.
“There are ways to make you talk,” his interrogatordrawled.
“And they will fail too. Unless you are part of my prophecy, I can’t share.” He kept his eyes closed so he didn’t see the punch. His head snapped back from the impact. The crunch of his nose breaking didn’t earn his tormentor more than a watery glare. Quain swiped at his face. His hand came away brightred.
“Keep in mind that if you don’t have any value, you will be tossed away. We have no use for a seer who won’t share hisvisions.”
Quain refused to cry from the pulsating pain in hisface.
“I’ll be back. You should reconsider yourposition.”
He remained still and quiet as the wizard marched away. He wished Peter could save him. Never before had he been in the position of needing to be rescued. He tugged at the tight bracelet around his wrist. If they hadn’t placed a magical object on him, blocking his ability to shift, he would have already been out of there. Bastards. They had attached the jewelry while Quain was unconscious, and nothing he did loosened its magical hold. The one time he’d tried to transform, his bones had crackled like shattered glass. It had taken two days before he dared move again. Luckily, they had cast some sort of spell to empty his bowels if they got too full. It was one of the few courtesies they’doffered.
He hoped it would be a while before anyone returned, even if it meant he had to go without eating. He would rather starve than be beaten. Each time they hurt him, it took a little longer to heal. Soon they would learn he couldn’t tell them anything even if he had the best psychic ability in theworld.
Even under torture, he couldn’t reveal his visions if they didn’t pertain to the person asking. He closed his eyes, wishing to be anywhere else. He still didn’t know what they had done to his driver, Craig, but he worried they had killed him during Quain’s capture. A tear dripped down his cheek as memories of Craig flashed through his head. The older man had been a kind soul and had taken care of Quain since histeens.
He bit back a sob, not wanting anyone to see him cry. The bastards didn’t deserve his tears. No one had remained in the room where his cage was, but cameras were trained on him from multiple points. His captives weren’t the most trusting of people. Some of the cameras, he suspected, were to spy on the other wizards, to make sure none of them killed him before they were ready. Quain had no confidence he would leave therealive.
If he somehow managed to escape, maybe Peter would give him a place to stay. He loved his family but couldn’t live with them, even temporarily. Everyone did better if they lived apart. He could handle his mother smothering him from a distance, but in some ways, she was worse than his father. Between his father’s critical analysis of his life and his mother’s fluttering, Quain had to live apart from them to have some breathing room. Granted, it resulted in him tumbling down the stairs a few times when a vision took him unexpectedly, but someone living with him would not have saved him either unless they followed him from room to room, and that would’ve been even worse than living athome.
A loud pop echoed in the cavernous room as the last light bulb went out and plunged the room into total darkness. Luckily, his cat vision kicked in, or he might have become hysterical from the lack of visual feedback. He might not be able to fully transform, but he could shift his eyes and, in one instance when a wizard became too grabby, produce a claw on the tip of his index finger. Unfortunately, he hadn’t been able to do that trick again. The torture had taken away a lot of his strength to shift and focus. He suspected that was why they did it. Nevertheless, it had yet to result in him sharing anyinformation.
Quain rubbed his forehead to ease the tension. Visions always hurt. That much pressure on the brain did a bit of damage with each episode. One of his great aunts had hypothesized that their shifter magic prevented their brains from permanent damage. Human seers weren’t so lucky. Many of them went insane, damaging the reputation of true visionarieseverywhere.
The bracelet on his wrist chafed his skin raw, causing a teeth-clenching itch. He focused his attention on the irritation rather than on his bigger issues. Apathy was his enemy. As soon as he gave up all hope, his lynx half would pull him into depression. Seeing Peter renewed his eagerness toescape.
He waited a minute, then a minute more. After no other guards appeared, he banged his bracelet against the metal headboard of his cot. Breaking the hinge or clasp was his only hope of getting free. The runes and magic on the jewelry prevented Quain from fully reaching his lynx half and possibly harming his captives. As a person, his petite stature didn’t intimidate anyone. As a lynx, his claws and teeth could do a lot of damage. A grim smile curved Quain’s lips. He would get free, and when he did, they would all pay for theiractions.
He continued banging the bracelet with no success but great determination. If he got the damned thing off, he could at least shift and be warmer. He only stopped when he’d hit his arm one too many times. Bruises bloomed up and down his skin, adding to his discomfort. Eventually, despair would take over and he would be nothing but a faded shadow. Peter couldn’t save him if he didn’t at least try to save himself. He refused to be a weak damsel in need ofrescue.
Memories of a warm bed and enough food to fill his belly wafted through his thoughts, like mirages in his mind to tempt him into thinking he was back home. He could almost taste the homemade waffles he had foolishly pushed aside before his capture. Damn, if he got out of there, he’d never turn down foodagain.
His stomach growled like the snarls of an angry beast. It had been a few days since he’d last eaten, or it could have been a few weeks. His mind had grown fuzzy. His foolish kidnappers thought he would break down if deprived of food and basic comforts. They had no idea Quain had inherited his mother’s stubbornness and his father’s temper, a bad combination under any circumstance. If he never left this cage, he would die with the happy knowledge that he’d given themnothing.
He took great delight in keeping his visions from them, refusing to give them any advantage. From what he could tell they thought he was defective and prone to fits. He had done nothing to dissuade them from that viewpoint. Although he worried they might decide to kill him, giving them his visions didn’t guarantee safety only furtherimprisonment.
A sudden pressure in his chest had his heart galloping out of control. Gasping for air, he tried to catch his breath. Spots sparkled before his eyes like little black bugs, chasing across his vision. What was happening? A darkness tunneled his sight, swallowing his ability to see the room around him far more effectively than any absence of external light. He barely had time to snatch another lungful of air before the cage, the cot, and everything around him vanished. This wasn’t normal. His long-held control shattered withoutwarning.
A vision punched through Quain’s inner eye with the destruction of a burning meteor, in bright full color and without any of the usual misty preview. A handsome man crouched among the trees, watching a white mansion. It took a second to recognize him. Peter. Where was he? Had Peter found him? It should’ve taken longer unless Peter had already planned to come for another reason. How far into the future was heseeing?
If he had been able to feel his fingers, he would’ve crossed them, hoping the building Peter watched had Quain’s cage inside. Since he’d entered the place unconscious and woken up trapped, he had no idea of his true location. The mansion Peter stood outside of could be anyplace.
