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.
“You’re safe now,” he stated.
“I was safe before at the Citadel,” I hinted.
“Bah!” He spat into the fire. “You can’t be safe with that kind, you can’t trust them. What they can do is unnatural, they are inbred heathens.”
“Is that why you won’t participate in the council sessions?” I asked.
“Thalia, you know the reasons why.” He looked at me questioningly. “You were my biggest supporter for not going!”
I looked at my feet. He cleared his throat. “They said something had happened to you.”