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Prologue
As a young girl, I was insolent, proud, and ungovernable. When I turned six and my father commanded I be sent off to a boarding school, I had no doubts it was to ensure his protection from my ever-changing tempers. When I was then informed he had asked my mother to find a suitable pseudonym for me in my ventures, I promptly decided I was being exiled from the family and churlishly selected a new name for myself: Reietto, Italian for “outcast.”
Looking back, I realize that my father’s actions had nothing to do with my behavior, intractable as it might have been. His reasons were faultless, and when my younger brother and sister reached my age, they too were sent away. But I knew nothing of that at the time; having chosen the name Reietto, I held on to it obstinately. My parents chastised, wheedled, bribed, punished – but nothing was to be done. If I were to be sent off and given a new name, I reasoned, was Reietto not appropriate? I replied to nothing else. In time, Reietto was shortened to Rei – and today I remain Rei, the outcast.
The boarding school I was situated at was known as “Harklan Academy.” It is a respectable place with competent teachers and well-equipped facilities. But my first memories of the place bring to mind a prison with gray floors, gray walls, and tall black gates everywhere I looked. If I had any doubts as to my exile, they were promptly eliminated.
I lived in a dorm room with three other girls. I don’t remember my earlier roommates, for I perceived them as unsociable, homely creatures unworthy of my attention. Supremely confident in my superiority, I attended classes, completed assignments, and spent the rest of my time reading or drawing alone. The few that were bold enough to ask for my friendship were thrown off carelessly.
I make no excuses for my actions and do not attempt to water down my arrogance or callowness so as to appear more likable. But it is a fact that, at six, I was precocious. I enjoyed learning and learned quickly. Having already familiarized myself with concepts such as gravity and charge and self-studied Algebra, how could I not look upon my mud-caked classmates chasing each other in the playground with contempt? I had no such generosity.
My first seven years in the boarding school passed in this way. I kept to myself, studied, and dreamed of leaving the black gates that kept me so trapped, so restricted. My younger brother, given the pseudonym of Conner, entered the school in my second year, but disgusted me so much with his frequent interactions with his classmates – and worse, his enjoyment of their company – that I rarely spoke with him. My sister, re-named Lilly, joined us in my sixth year, but she was so impossibly simple and unintelligent that, on the whole, conversations with her depressed me.
In my eighth year, however, I noticed something strange happening. At first, I wrote off the strange changes to my body – a shift in the color of my eyes, an elongation of my fingers, and a strengthening in my muscles – as rare side effects to puberty, but within time it became clear that they were the beginning of something else entirely. In my ninth year, the physical changes stopped, but I was subject to a series of violent mood swings that sent me from hot anger to complacency to a most frustrating giddiness. In my strongest moments of frustration and anger, I began to notice unexplainable things happening around me – a change in the weather or the slight movement of an object sitting by me.
In my isolated world, I had not heard of the Fuerzas or the Aleatoires or the Wyverns (words so familiar now) or the Great Battle that sent them all – us all – into hiding. I had not heard of the laws that threatened the life of anyone who dared mention the existence of Anomalies – which was, you see, the name they had given us. But I researched and I probed and I questioned – and in the end, I understood quite clearly who I was. Or perhaps, what I was.
On my sixteenth birthday, my father arrived at the school with the intention of surprising me with the secret of our family ancestry and preparing me for physical and emotional changes that might arise upon me in the next few years. Instead, it was he who was surprised when he saw me – calm, collected, and well into transformation. By then, I had developed a certain degree of control over my powers, and I displayed them for him with a certain vengeful triumph. I had been left completely alone in a vulnerable stage of my life – and alone, I had succeeded.
Later, I learned that my transformations had begun three years early. The physical changes, the first step, should not have begun until after my father’s visit. I should have received guidance and support along the way. Instead, I had been thrown headfirst over the railing and forced to make my own wings, be my own support. Never had I felt more isolated – and never had I cared less.
But in my sixteenth year, two new people came into my life – both of whom, in different ways, threatened my pride and my independence. The first was a visitor to the family: a male Fuerza a couple years older than I. The rest of the world saw him as an incredibly powerful, intelligent, and respected young man with great potential. I saw him as a sneaky charmer who was too good looking to be of any worth.
And the second – the second was Erik. A transfer to my school, he was also a couple years older than I. His dark eyes both mesmerized and mocked me – they seemed to sneer, “I know you think you’re better than me. I also know you’re not.” Erik was the first person I have ever wished to impress – and perhaps, the first one I could not.
