A Storm of Flames and Deceit

Prologue

Nephele was the daughter of Hybern's most distinguished and only remaining generals. He was incredibly powerful, the ability to bring storms to the island with ease.
The same lightning flowed through her veins, though it struck brighter. Her storms rumbled louder. She didn't make it rain.
She made it pour.
It had taken until her first blood for her father to notice this. He, power hungry and unaccepting, was struck with jealousy. His daughter was less than he wanted from his heir the minute she was a born female, but it was her impulsive, reckless nature that made him truly hate her. He hated how Nephele refused to fit into his place for her, how she rejected tradition.
Nephele enjoyed very unladylike activities and hobbies. Nephele expressed interest in both men and women sexually. Nephele wasn't concerned in the slightest with modesty. Nephele had horrendous table manners. Nephele spoke her mind no matter how many times her mother and father hit her.
So she was locked away in a cellar. A cellar painted in faebane. She was confined to manacles lined in the teeth of ancient, power sucking creatures. All she was fed were twice daily doses of faebane injected into her veins. She survived off her immortality alone. And it made her weak.
Power subversion, her mother had called it. She had completed the same practice, meant to stifle a maiden's power so that it will be stronger when she conceives.
Only her mother hadn't been locked away for two centuries like Nephele.
Nephele knew that if she ever got out, it'd only be to marry.
If she ever got out.
The wind whispered of Hybern losing the ear again, and Nephele was caught between hoping her father was alive enough to set her free or hoping he had met a just death.
Until one day he had appeared in the chamber alongside a healer to nourish her enough to where she wasn't useless.
As her father unlocked her manacles, a rueful grin fell to her lips. "It's about damn time," she whispered before knocking out cold.