Importantly, he isn’t holding any weapons. No hammer. No medallions.
He’s dangerous enough without them.
He leans forward to push the door wide open, letting sunlight stream inside. I squint, unable to focus beyond the opening to see what lies beyond it.
“Tamra told me to wait,” he says. “But time isn’t on my side.”
I approach him cautiously, pausing a few paces before I reach the door. I can now make out sounds from outside. Murmuring voices. Running water. But also clinking and tapping that I can’t quite identify…
“Step back,” I say to Thaden.
He complies, letting the door slowly shut again.
I grab it at the last moment, pull it open, and step through it, remaining aware of his location as he continues to move back, giving me space.
Suddenly, he isn’t the center of my attention.
My jaw drops. “What is this place?”
Chapter 32
Istruggle to take it all in at once.
Immediately in front of me is a large courtyard with a fountain in its center. All around it are circular rows of plants that teem with all sorts of fruits and vegetables.
People are quietly tending to the plants. Pumping water from the fountain. Pruning. Picking food. But not all of them are working.
A group of children sits off the right, circled around a woman who’s reading to them from a book.
None of them gives me anything more than a casual glance, although an older woman pruning what looks like a tomato bush arches her eyebrows at me in a way I can’t interpret.
But it isn’t the idyllic scene that has caused me to catch my breath.
Every person has a metallic limb.
The little boy who runs up to Thaden has a metal foot that clacks on the cobbled stone. The older woman who arched her eyebrows at me has a metal hand. The man pumping water from the fountain has a metallic arm. The woman reading from the book has a metallic knee—startling, given that much of the restof her leg is flesh and blood and I can’t imagine how everything was knitted together in a functional way.
Each limb is an intricate series of cogs and pieces that are so complex and detailed that I can’t possibly identify them all—or understand how they fit together to function like living limbs.
“Welcome toMyrkur Fjall.” Tamra’s voice sounds from behind me where she leans up against the wall of the cottage beside the door I stepped through. “A sanctuary in the shadows.”
I’m speechless. If I weren’t seeing it, I wouldn’t believe it. “What…? How…?”
I turn to Thaden, my focus dropping to the young boy with the metal foot who ran up to him. He tugs on Thaden’s hand, and Thaden leans down to him, listening to his whispered speech for a moment.
“I hope so,” is all Thaden says before the boy runs back to the group of children.
He doesn’t elaborate on what the child said, and I don’t ask. If the boy had wanted me to know, he wouldn’t have whispered.
“What happened to these people?” I ask.
Thaden keeps his distance from me as he replies. “Life happened,” he says. “Accidents. Attacks. War.”
“They heard about what Thaden can do, and they came here for help,” Tamra says. “Or their families brought them if they couldn’t bring themselves. Many of them ended up staying—mostly because it isn’t safe out there for them.”
I struggle with my competing feelings of suspicion and wonder. “So they came to you, Thaden, and you created…”
Arms. Hands. Legs. Feet. Joints. All perfectly fitted to the person and completely functional.
