Chapter 1
It was in a small city in the middle of the Arctic which wasn't the Arctic then but rather a place called Valence. It was a beautiful place with trees that went so high that no one could ever touch them. The clouds were beautiful and the sea...it was so clean and fresh! We could fish for days and always catch some kind of fish. Not that we needed to catch fish to survive the Arctic was a lavish country with every type of environment known to man, before it moved of course. I was only a child when news of horrific events came to take place. Slaves were being amassed by the Argons for their potential power and news of that went across the entire coast. I can remember my mother being especially scared because of her heritage. She was one of the selenium, the metal dancers of the world at that time. I had been born of the same heritage so I was taught at a young age how to handle knives. I was about to begin sword play when they came.
The Argons left nothing behind when they hit us. My mother tried to stop them and I saw for the first time the fury and pain a selenium could inflict on a person. It was beautiful and monstrous at the same time. Her tattoos came out with a blinding flash and they seemed to dance as she killed Argon after Argon. I didn't know what to do when huge hands gripped my arms and held them to my sides. I tried to call out for my mother but I saw her fall before I was able to. I tried my hardest to get away from them but they put me on their ship after hitting me with such a blow that I wasn't able to keep my awareness. I woke up to the wind in my face and shackles on my hands and feet. I was a slave at the age of ten.
The captain of the ship wanted to keep me for the money I would bring. He was a greedy man with little in his mind except for the cash I could give him. He did know to keep any sharp objects away from me though and that frustrated me to no end. I wasn't kept with the other slaves for fear that they would give me a sharp object and I would get loose and then slaughter them all, which was something that I would have likely done if I had gotten the chance. I didn't and arrived in the slave auction primed and ready for a fight. With weeks of not being able to move more than three feet from where I sat, I didn't want to waste this opportunity. So I tried to escape after getting a fork from my dinner plate...they caught me again. The worst days of my life followed after that. Not only did they beat me but it seemed that rape and psychological punishment weren't out of the boundaries for them. During that time, I had to drift into another state altogether in case I was damaged by them. So by the time I actually got to the auction block, I was bruised, battered, sore, and tired. I wasn't in any shape to fight so when a very low voice called out a low price everyone started berating him before he pulled back his cloak.
He was the fiercest teenage boy I had ever met. He looked daringly at all of them with his red eyes and pushed his albino hair back unhappily.
"Are you saying that you won't give your prince the right to choose his own slaves?" I heard him say and I glared at him from my standing point. A whip fell on my back in retaliation and I couldn't even cry out in pain. It was unbearable, the humiliation and hatred I felt at that moment was horrible and for the first time, I just stopped resisting. I was truly broken. When the whip stopped falling, I felt arms pick me up and shove me towards the adolescent boy.
"Take good care of her, she's a feisty one," one of the slave masters had told him and hands picked me up again and put me on my stomach on a bed of straw. It was a few minutes before my new master decided to speak.
"Heven! Do you have any ointment with you?" I heard that dreadful voice call out and I felt something touch my wounds. It hurt but I didn't cry out. It would've been pointless at that moment.
"Aiden, why would you give ointment to a slave?" Heven asked curiously and the hands that touched my wounds disappeared. The relief of the stabbing pain being lifted off made me sigh and I heard him gasp.
"What did they do to you?" he said and I felt something fall on my back. It felt like water and I slowly picked myself up. Without the grace and lightness that my training suggested, I looked at my master. He was crying. I was confused by this. Why was he crying? Was he hurt somewhere? Would he hurt me if I asked? Deciding to risk it, I carefully gathered my breath into my broken rib cage.
"Are you hurt?" I managed to choke out and he just started crying harder.
"Only in his heart it seems," Heven replied for him and I turned to him. His disapproving gaze didn't do anything to me. I was used to that glare.
"You should fix him," I advised and he snorted.
"I don't think a boy like that can be fixed," he grumbled but his glare softened. He examined me for a long moment and shook his head.
"A fine waste of two gold that was," he mumbled and checked on the driver. I turned back to the unfixable boy. He was still crying like crazy. His face was all blotchy and wet from tears.
"Men shouldn't cry," I said to him and reached out to gently wipe his face. A tearing sensation entered my thought process and I was greeted with a whole other world of pain. Gasping for my breath, I clung on consciousness as long as I could and looked into the boy's face.
"Don't cry. Pain only lasts for a...little while," I reminded him and slipped away into the cold, unfeeling darkness.
The days after were a blur. I can only remember waking up and watching as the crying boy slept at the edge of my bed before I lost consciousness again. I woke up to different scenes of the day. Fights over what should be done with me and then the madness of trying to get me to stay still while they unwrapped and cleaned my wounds. It was a difficult few days but I was always allowed to sleep after that. Heven was usually with my master when he was in his room and I often saw him studying me with a curiosity that seemed more blunt than hostile. When I faded back into the darkness, I often dreamed of the tortures the slavers put me through. It was almost as worse as the real thing but then waking up with Aiden holding my hand was like a bucket of cold water that got me to realize I wasn't there, only to plunge me back in when I fell asleep from being too exhausted.
I did finally wake up completely and I laid there in bed for a long time listening to my master's breathing before I heard almost silent footsteps behind him. I saw a flash f silver and before I knew it, I was out of bed and had blocked the sword from coming down on my master's head. Instead, I pulled it out of the surprised assassin's grasp and plunged it into his head. I was not about to have my master killed on my watch, not while he was so good to me. Climbing back into bed, I gently grasped his hand again and watched as his ruby eyes fluttered open. He looked exhausted but elated that I was awake.
"You're awake!" He cried and jumped up only to stumble over the dead body.
