Chapter 1

I never expected Heaven to be this way. It was my own personal utopia, with rivers of the clearest water, and fields of green surrounded by beautiful mountains. Every tree bore plump fruit and I was able to lay in the soft grass and listen to the song being sung by the river. I never wanted to leave; there was so much light and joy in Heaven. I couldn’t imagine going back to where I had just left, because here I felt no pain.

So if I were dead, why did I feel as if I were burning from the inside out? Gasping, I clutched my stomach in agony and looked around in horror. My beautiful garden was turning black.  The soft grass I was lying on turned to sharp pieces of glass. The once gorgeous trees turned to ash and blew away in the wind. NO! NO! I don’t want to go back.

I tried to sit up to stop garden from disappearing and sliced my hands on the grass that had turned razor sharp. The clear river rippled red like blood and the skies turned dark as night. I cried out again as the burning pain in my stomach increased. Glancing down I watched as the blood, my red blood, poured from the gashes on my hands only to change before my eyes to black. Another stab of pain in my stomach and I gasped and coughed and felt my body get sucked out of my dying garden as if I were traveling down a narrow tunnel backwards to collide with a thud on a cold steel table.

I had died I knew it. I had tasted heaven but my soul wasn’t ready to give up the fight and now I was back in hell. Only once again, I couldn’t move, I was paralyzed from the drugs they gave me, strapped once again to the table. I couldn’t open my eyes, my lids felt like lead weights, but I could listen and overheard Raven and Crow discuss me.

“What makes you think she’s strong enough to survive when the others didn’t?” Crow asked.

“Because this one’s not like the others. Her blood makes her stronger, more immune. She’s the only one of her kind.” It was Raven, the leader of the Septori. My hands itched to move against him, to try and fight.

“I hope you’re right because I’m tired of hauling out the failed ones. When will you know?” Crow whined.

“Not for a while. It’s going to take weeks of careful injections of the siren serum, plus more sessions on the machine to activate it in her bloodstream. Then we wait. It will slowly change her from the inside out. These things take time,” Raven spoke as if to a dimwitted child.

I could imagine the Raven even with my eyes closed, wearing his red hooded robe and his silver mask. He always wore the mask, unlike the rest of his followers, the Septori.

“What about the others?”

I felt the cramping of my stomach as my body tried to fight off the newest experiment.

“We will keep trying the portensi serum on the rest of them. I’m hoping one of them will survive the process,” Raven explained.

“None have yet,” Crow whined again.

The pain was too much. It’s what had reminded my body that I was still alive and brought my soul back. Only now I was burning alive and I couldn’t stop it, my body uncontrollably twitched from the pain.

“Wait. Raven, she’s coming back.”

“I told you this one could survive,” the Raven spoke up triumphantly as he walked over to my prone form, silver glinting off his mask. My eyes flew open at the touch of his cold skin on my wrist. He pulled a dagger from his robe and brought my wrist up.  There were already numerous half-moon puncture wounds along my arms from the machine, but the Raven took the knife and cut along my arm.

I couldn’t move, all I could do was blink in pain, but I had to know, I had to see. My eyes followed the Raven’s as he and I both looked at my wrist to see what color blood would flow from my wrist.  It was black.

Gasping, I woke up. My hair was drenched in sweat. It was a dream… or was it. Each of my dreams had a semblance of truth to them. I pulled up the sleeve of my shirt to look at my arms. The small silver half-moon scars shone in the moonlight, barely discernible, the reminders of my months in prison and the torture machine I called the iron butterfly.

I couldn’t wait; I had to know. Reaching under my bedroll, I grabbed my knife and very gently pricked my finger and watched as a beautiful red drop of blood formed on the tip. Sighing in relief, I placed the knife back under my bed. I shivered as I recalled what Raven had said in my dream; that the experiment would change me from the inside out. I saw that the fire had died down to a bare glow and scanned the camp. I saw Hemi’s back as he leaned over and added more wood. Quickly, I lay back down and pretended to sleep.

The nightmares were getting worse.  We had only been on the road two days, but the closer we came to the Ioden Valley, the more frequent they became. I would wake in the middle of the night drenched in sweat. Too scared to sleep I would lie in my bedroll until the sky lightened.  For the most part I had been able to hide the nightmares from my traveling companions, but they were becoming suspicious. There was nothing I could do to hide the dark circles under my eyes.

But there was one individual I couldn’t hide the nightmares from. My horse, Faraway, was my closest friend and companion. His voice and encouragement kept me sane during these long sleepless nights but even he couldn’t keep the dreams and visions away. No one could. The worst part was that they were real and they were after me.

The Septori, led by their leader called Raven, were the ones who had kidnapped and imprisoned me, and erased my memories. I was one of only two surviving test subjects. Kael was the other survivor, and he had single handedly orchestrated our escape.

Joss and his godfather Darren Hamden had found me floating, almost dead in a river after my escape from the experimental prison. Joss healed me and took me to the Citadel, which was a school for young Denai. There I worked as a servant until Raven’s experiments began to reveal themselves within me. My unholy gift began to surface and I was forced to pose as a student to learn to control my unnatural abilities.

I was different; I could strip another student of their gifts and use it against them. I had accidentally done it to a young girl who bullied me. Since then I’ve learned control and to pull power from myself and my Guardian, who was a horse. Until Bearen, my father, had come to the Citadel to find me and bring me back to my clan.

There was some joking and laughter but the men stayed quiet, as if they were always listening for danger. Someone handed me a roasted leg of rabbit and I ate it slowly, studying my clansmen.

Bearen was the largest of the men, with blue eyes that matched mine, and a hawk nose protruding from the black beard. He was the obvious leader of the group. All of the men deferred to him and even served him the first portions of the meat cooking over the fire. Most of the men here wore short sleeve leather vests that reached to their thighs with hoods attached. Their upper arms were bare except for intricately designed armbands, in varying gold, silver and bronze. Around the shoulders each man wore a distinct pattern or color of various furs and leather arm bracers. Each warrior had an array of two-handed swords, axes or mallets.

When I had finished eating, I waited until I saw Bearen finish and made first eye contact. He nodded at me to come over, so I threw my bones from dinner into the fire and silently sat next to him. I had been avoiding talking about the Septori and the Denai for the last few days, because the men still felt like strangers. There was no waiting anymore; I needed to confront my father.