“Kidnapping. It was all the same. We needed Denai.” He shrugged his shoulders and gazed at the ground. “What the machine actually did was slowly strip a person’s power and convert it into a liquid serum. Ultimate power in a bottle. Sometimes the Denai lived through it and sometimes…” Xiven shivered. “All that was left was a hollowed shell of a being.”
“Why? Why would you do something so horrible?”
Xiven stood up, his eyes blazing in indignation. “I didn’t know any better. I felt trapped. I stayed until I learned all I could. I pretended to go along with everything, translating the books, writing up plans, and then I watched what they did and I felt sick to my stomach. When I saw with my own eyes how powerful you were, I realized the Raven wasn’t going to stop with just you. There were hints, things said, that lead to a much larger plan. And since the secret of the Sirens was out, I had to act. In Skyfell, in that moment of chaos when I thought I’d killed you. It was my only chance.”
“You left me to die!” I screamed at him. “If it wasn’t for Hemi and Fanny, I wouldn’t even be here.”
“I know. It was wrong of me. But I did it. And I fled to Sinnendor. I had learned enough to follow the Siren bloodline and went to the source.”
Prince Sevril leaned forward and scratched the back of his head. “He admitted freely what he had done and we began to talk. We believe we can alter the machine to help with our Siren curse.”
“By breaking the seal on your power?” I asked.
Xiven shook his head no. “We don’t want to make Sevril stronger by injecting him with Denai gifts. Instead, we’ve chosen a safer alternative. We’ve just decided to strip every essence of Siren blood from him. We do it in small steps, not as painful. And much easier to monitor.”
“You can’t be serious,” I said. The horror of their building another machine made me cringe.
“Even I know what my future holds. Madness, pain, and darkness. I’m willing to go through all that to stop the curse from passing on to another generation. Do you really think I want to have children like Tomac? Who are happy and beautiful one day and the next terribly insane? I would give it all up to be free of my generational curse.”
“But you heard Xiven. Half of the experiments failed. They ended in death.”
“And the others ended up empty shells. Both are preferable to my current destiny. Right now, even death seems like a quiet and peaceful alternative.” Sevril cried out, jumping up from his spot and pacing the room He fidgeted with his shirt sleeve.
“Thalia,” Xiven said. “We are not asking you for anything. We aren’t asking for your permission. We’ve already begun the process. You may not know it because you haven’t been here that long, but Sevril’s already changed.”
“What? You mean you’ve already started?” I turned and glared at Sevril, feeling like he was a bigger traitor than Xiven. That he would willingly trust and accept the help of someone who admitted to lying, kidnapping, and torturing innocents.
Sevril worried the inside of his cheek, let out a long sigh, and then pulled up his sleeves to show me the black bloodied bandages that ran up the inside of his arms. No wonder his arms were uncomfortable. “I doubt you would ever believe me, but the episode Tomac had was tame compared to how mine were even few short weeks ago.”
I couldn’t tear my eyes away from Sevril’s arms. He willingly went under the machine, knowing he could die, just to be free of his curse. A curse only now beginning to plague my body.
“It’s not the same as what was done to you, Thalia.” Xiven tried to make an excuse to ease the horrified look I plastered Sevril with. “The Raven figured out what you were when the experiments started to work.”