In front of little Jevan and the orange haired boy stood about five strong men. Little Jevan tried to run back into the Eighth District, but one of them grabbed his arm tightly. Jevan bit the man's hand until he screamed in pain, seizing the moment to try and escape.

But the others had already surrounded him.

One of them struck him on the head, the light vanished from his eyes and he collapsed unconscious. They did the same to the orange haired boy, who screamed and kicked before collapsing to the ground.

Jevan floated beside them, watching the scene with a grim expression.

…

Little Jevan opened his eyes. His head felt unbearably heavy. He found himself inside a narrow iron cage in an abandoned warehouse. The smell of mold and rust filled the air.

He recognized the place immediately.

He had been here before.

A huge man with a scarred face approached. He had a natural right hand and foot, but the other leg was mechanical, letting out a sharp creak with each movement.

He came up to the cage, and when he saw that Jevan had woken, he grinned wickedly, revealing his uneven teeth.

"At last I've caught you, you little bastard."

Little Jevan backed up until his back pressed against the bars. He tried to act calm, but his eyes betrayed the alertness and fear inside him.

The man laughed when he saw the reaction.

"Don't worry. I'm not going to spoil good merchandise. The doctor will make you curse the night you ran away. You should never have escaped last time. At least you would have ended up as a slave to some noble family."

He threw a filthy old cloth over the cage and left. After he was gone, little Jevan sat on the iron floor and lifted the cloth a little with his hand.

Last time the place had been almost unguarded. Only one guard outside, asleep. Now there were more than six guards inside, and probably just as many outside.

He clutched the pendant hanging from his neck tightly. Then he looked around for Jevan but couldn't see him, and panic returned to his eyes. He was on the verge of tears again. Then a familiar head poked through the bars.

"Why do you look like you're about to cry?"

Little Jevan's shoulders slumped at once.

"Can't you see where I am?"

"I can, but you don't look scared enough."

"I've been here before."

Jevan gestured at his hand.

"I know, I heard what that man with the mechanical arm said."

"Then why ask?"

"I wasn't asking, I was thinking out loud. Anyway, if you escaped before, how did they catch you again?"

"Maybe they asked around until they found me."

Before he could finish, a nervous voice came from the next cage.

"Hey, you!"

The voice belonged to the orange haired boy. Little Jevan ignored him, but the boy persisted.

"I know you're there, I heard you talking to yourself."

Little Jevan sighed and pushed the cloth aside to look. He saw the orange haired boy curled up in his cage.

"What do you want?"

"Do you know where we are? And who those men are? I'm… I'm scared."

"We're in a warehouse and we're going to be sold. Those men are just guards."

The boy gasped and rubbed his temples with his hand.

"I knew it, I knew those bastards would come after me."

Little Jevan didn't bother correcting his misunderstanding. He let him drown in his own illusions. In truth, no one was after him. He had just been unlucky, walking next to Jevan at the wrong time.

The orange haired boy went on excitedly:

"You know? I've always believed I'm the lost son of a nobleman and now it's confirmed! Do you want to know how?"

Jevan replied, turning his face away.

"No."

"Look, everything happening now is a play! These are just my family's enemies who were searching for me. This human trafficking is just a cover. I always said someone was watching me from afar, but Valera insisted I was imagining it. And now it's proven! My father sent me here secretly to protect me from the family's enemies."

He shook his head with regret.

"I'm sorry I dragged you into all this."

Little Jevan and Jevan exchanged looks, each more shocked than the other by the boy's wild imagination.

Little Jevan continued ignoring the boy, who kept babbling without pause, while his eyes kept scanning the place.

…

Darkness filled the warehouse, the torches carried by the guards casting their shadows on the walls. The neighboring cages were empty, unlike the last time little Jevan had been held here, when the place was so packed with people he almost suffocated among them. This time the man with the mechanical arm clearly wanted special treatment for him.

Jevan wandered through the warehouse. He found only two occupied cages, little Jevan's and the orange haired boy's. The rest were empty. He stepped outside for a moment and saw no guard watching. Then he went back to examine the interior carefully. As he roamed, he noticed a narrow gap in the wall behind the orange haired boy's cage, barely wide enough for a cat, let alone a tenl year old child.

He returned to little Jevan's cage and poked his head through the bars to start planning with him.

…

Night fell. The warehouse was drowned in darkness. Jevan approached little Jevan's cage and whispered, "I wish the cage would open."

And it did. The lock clicked open. Immediately he moved to the orange-haired boy's cage and repeated the same wish, and that cage opened too. Little Jevan opened the door and slipped out, then went to the other boy's cage to find him fast asleep.

He sighed and slapped him hard across the cheek. The slap woke him instantly. Before he could say anything, little Jevan put a finger to his lips, and the boy shut his mouth and got up to follow.

Little Jevan carefully closed both cages and threw the sticky cloth back over them. Then he led the boy behind the stack of cages where the hole was.

Jevan muttered as he floated beside them, "I wish the gap was wide enough for them to pass."

The gap slowly widened until it was a little larger than the boys' bodies. The orange-haired boy's eyes widened in amazement, and he whispered:

"Magic…! Real magic!"

Little Jevan didn't reply, just pushed him forward.

The two of them slipped through the gap to the outside. But before they could even savor their freedom, the man with the mechanical arm was standing in front of them.

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