Daughter of the Devil

Chapter 1

"Audrey!"

I pivoted as I heard my name, turning back to the house that I had left moments before. I saw my mother in an apron, her small stature bent against the wind, calling my name in her soft voice.

Inwardly I cringed. I didn't want to go where there were people, noise, expectations to be given and met, rules to be followed, and procedures to take place.

You're getting married. You need to know how to keep a household, I thought before feeling a stab of guilt. I should be excited.

I lived in a small town in Ridland, just outside of the capital city, Bellinor, though most people call it The City of Light. My fiance, Will, lived in that same small town.

We were the same age, more or less. At the time I was seventeen, he was eighteen. He was, people whispered, too young to get married. Just entering the military, he was not ready to be a husband. They said that I was being wasted. I was at the perfect age for marriage, my womb open and inviting, ready to bear male children. It was time for me to leave my father's possession and be claimed by a husband. It was, for all intents and purposes, the time that I should have been most excited.

It wasn't that I didn't like Will. He would have been the best husband I could have asked for. We had, after all, grown up together; playing, laughing, chasing each other around in the woods, returning home late for dinner, filthy. It wasn't as if I was marrying someone I had never met or seen. I should be grateful.

As I crossed the threshold into my house, I instinctively looked at the symbol hung right above the door. A circle divided into four parts, nestled comfortably in a square. All households in Ridland were required to have it, just as we were required to go to church every Sunday. Punishment ranged from five years in jail to execution.

Looking back, it wasn't that I didn't believe in God. It was that it was too good to be true. A Great Plan? Predestination? Rules we had to follow to get into heaven? It was all too straightforward, too easy. Real life, I believed, was more complicated than that. But to be anything but the most devout of believers could mean treason, so I pretended, wishing, hoping, praying that one day, I would truly believe; that I would truly get into heaven, that I would truly be saved. Needless to say, that day never came.

To not believe had other consequences, too. It made you easy prey for the Devil and his demons.

Ridland had been at war for four hundred years. At war with the forces of evil, at war with a godless country, at war with the Devil himself. Ridland had been at war with Onia for four hundred years.

Onia was the only country that allowed them in the military. It was the only one that welcomed them at all.

They are called Selten. And they are demons. There are five different types: Airtwister, Waterbringer, Earthshaker, Firehandler, and Mindbender. Airtwisters can create and manipulate wind, as well as increasing or decreasing the air pressure and being able to sense the wind currents around them. Waterbringers can change the phase of water, turning ice into liquid or gas, or the other way around. They, too, can sense water, are able to find freshwater springs or rivers without a problem. They are infamous for summoning walls of ice so thick it can stop a bullet, and for being able to drown men on dry land by filling their lungs with water. Earthshakers specialize in plants. They can sense the plants around them, even seeds underneath the ground. They can make them grow and turn at will, along with being able to create cracks in the ground so deep men fall and die immediately. Firehandlers can summon fire with only their mind, sending fireballs flying at our soldiers. Their bodies are virtually heatproof, so that their fire cannot burn them. My father, Birsha, says that he once saw one pick up a white-hot iron with his bare hands, just to prove that he could. There was no damage.