me every time I’ve tried to tell you about what happened. But you can’t ignore it. Not anymore, especially when it was Rayneld that had a hand in my kidnapping. It was your brother that sold me to the Septori to be used as an experiment. It’s his entire fault that this happened to me.”
Siobhan, who had only a few days ago betrayed me and handed me over to my Uncle and cousin to be killed, stilled at my words. I don’t believe she would have done it if they hadn’t beaten her into submission. She had redeemed herself in my eyes when she rushed to the waterfall, sword in hand, and tried to save me from her brother. I glanced at her quickly to see if I offended her by bringing up her father’s involvement. But she seemed unaffected by my words and went on changing the bandages on Bearen’s almost healed wounds. It was as if, in her grief of losing her father and brother, she had sought comfort in caring for her uncle.
“You will listen because it involves your family,” I spat out. Bearen’s eyes widened in shock. “Your brother was trying to kill you at the pass. He was the one who hired those mercenaries to ambush us so he could become clan leader. Bvork was the one who, months ago, drugged my drink and led me outside where your brother handed me over to the Septori.”
My anger started to get the best of me and I could feel myself grasping for Faraway’s energy, something I tended to do when I got mad. But I quickly gained control of myself and released it. “Do you even know what they did to me?”
“Thalia, I told you that we would never speak of this, and you agreed to the Kragh Aru so you could find a strong lifemate and become clan leader.” Bearen was sounding desperate from hearing the words. As if, by my speaking them, he could ignore what happened. And I could still be the clan leader, still be a perfect example of a Sinnendor vassal, still be his little girl.
“No, father!” I interrupted him. “You agreed that I would never speak of this, not me. And I let my love for you keep me from speaking, but no longer.” I walked to the shuttered windows and threw it open, knowing that I would need the cool wind to blow on my face to remind me that I was free and no longer a prisoner.
“They took me to an underground prison where I and other children, human and Denai alike, were kept to be used as test subjects. They were cruel. They starved and beat us if we disobeyed or spoke. The overdose of serum that Bvork gave me erased my memories and every night I prayed that my family would find me.” I turned from the window to watch my father’s reaction. His eyes had closed and his face had turned pale; the only movement was the bobbing of his adam’s apple as he turned his head away so he wouldn’t hear what I said next. But even though he was my father I knew it was time he heard it; he couldn’t ignore it, and because I loved my father I would have to hurt him with the truth.
“I prayed that you would find me.” My anger started to disappear when I looked at my father’s stricken face. I knew he had searched desperately for me. “But no one came for any of us. Each night I would be hauled away to the Raven’s experimental lab and tortured, pricked, probed and subjected to a terrible machine. The Septori used their power and this machine to change me. I didn’t know what they were trying to do. I had no clue it had worked until after I escaped. Father, I’m no more a Denai than you are, but I’m definitely not human anymore. I can do things similar to a Denai, but the way I do it is wrong, twisted, inhuman. I steal where the Denai borrow. So if you think the Denai are inhuman beasts then I can only speculate at what you think I must be.” The tears that I had been holding back, started to burn at the corner of my eyes and run down my face.
“I had no idea,” Bearen whispered, his voice breaking and choking on the words. “I’m ashamed of myself and my clan for not being able to