Author's Note: I know this is a long time coming, and unfortunately, this is really just a teaser...I still haven't finished the book, so I'm not going to be posting very regularly. It's been a CRAZY few months. If I have a third child, I am SO planning the delivery for sometime in the summer, because winter babies, apparently, are sick all the time. Anyway, Mae was an interesting character for me. I wasn't really sure how to approach her at first, which I think is part of the reason why I've had so much trouble finishing the dang book. I think I have a pretty good handle on her now, though. Hopefully, this one will live up to the rest of the series. And now it's late, so I'm going to go catch maybe an hour of sleep before the baby wakes up...Ah, the joys of motherhood. :-)

Prologue

She was broken.

When Mae, at the age of eight, made the decision to trade her innocence for her brother’s life, she never anticipated that her master would choose to take the time to personally turn her into her mother. Mae had loved her mother very much, but there’d always been something lacking in her…a distance that couldn’t be breached. Before her brother’s father rescued them, her mother had been a broken slave. Trained to do whatever her master wanted, to never question her master…all slaves were taught such things, but not all slaves obeyed – one hundred percent of the time.

What made Mae’s mother different, she remembered hearing her brother’s father say once, was that even though she was broken, she knew she was broken. It was the worst sort of hell, he’d said, to be constantly compelled to obey when you didn’t want to. Broken slaves were not only trained to always obey their masters, but also to enjoy doing it. That was what made them so obedient. Because Mae’s mother had somehow evaded the enjoyment part of being broken, however, her brother’s father had felt the need to rescue her, and because he’d apparently recognized the same spirit in her daughter, he’d purchased Mae as well.

She didn’t remember. She’d only been two when her brother Kas’s father brought them home.

Though the experts said that once a slave was broken, she could never be free again, Kas’s father had proven that theory wrong. Just before tragedy struck and tore their fairy-tale family apart, she remembered hearing her mother laugh for the first time. It was such a magical sound, and it stayed with her, even in the years after her mother’s death. A constant reminder that anything was possible.

The night her mother died was also forever branded in Mae’s memories as the night that destroyed her family. She’d been asleep when it happened, but in the aftermath, it had been a simple matter to tell what had happened, especially since her little brother had witnessed much of the attack. The Director himself had shown up in their secluded home and taken their father away. When their mother tried to stop him, the Director killed her. Judging by her unnatural pallor and the stiffness of her corpse, she’d been injected with some sort of poison. Typical method of murder in Xesomel, especially for the Director.

The months following the death of Kas’s father were spent running. Perhaps she’d only been eight, but children tended to grow up quickly in Xesomel, even ones raised in atypically close-knit families. As soon as she realized that their second source of aid after Kas’s father – his oldest son, Ruy – had also mysteriously disappeared, she knew that it had become her responsibility to take care of her little brother. There was nowhere in Xesomel they could hide but the streets, constantly moving from one alley to the next, and it was no way for two children to live. Especially not one who was barely five years old.

After a few months of starving in dank, oft-neglected alleyways and living in fear that someone might see her brother while she was off selling flowers, that she might return to whatever alley they called home to find him slaughtered, she made the most monumental decision of her life.

He’d told her he wanted her to be his servant, the ideal position for a woman in Xesomel. He’d said he would take care of her.

His eyes had said something completely different.

It hadn’t been much of a decision, really. What was innocence worth, anyway, in a land that seemed to value depravity above all else? When that innocence could save her brother’s life? He was the only family she had left, after all.

She’d known, when she agreed to become the property of the man named Jax, that he would turn her into a slave. When he almost immediately took her to his bedroom and stripped her of her virginity, she hadn’t been the least bit surprised. When, the very next day, he started the process of breaking her…well, that had shocked her.

At the end of six months, nothing shocked her anymore. Before she was even nine years old, she’d become the perfect slave. The master’s favorite, actually, which was typically a very coveted position. But in spite of her ‘elevated’ status in Jax’s household, Kas’s father had been right about her, about what would happen if she was broken. It was like a living hell, wanting to say no but being unable to even think the word, let alone speak it. Her situation was difficult to describe when she could not even put it into words herself. The resistance inside of her was more of a feeling, a sense that what she was doing was wrong even as she willingly did whatever he asked of her.

This day was just like any other. She sat in the slaves’ quarters, watching the other girls convene in the center and talk and laugh. Though she appeared entirely content on the outside to sit and watch and not participate, she felt like an outsider. She felt like she should not be there. Anywhere but there.

And then the man arrived. Though there was nothing familiar about the brown hair, the gray eyes, or even the smooth face, she felt like she knew him. Somewhere, deep down in her marrow, she knew this man.

A good slave would have raised the alarm. Men were not supposed to be in this room without the master’s permission. But even though Mae’s mouth opened to cry out, no sound emerged. The others were too stunned to react, at least until the stranger spoke.

“I am looking for Mae.”

One of the slaves, a younger girl who did not like Mae’s preferred status with the master, immediately pointed towards the outer edge of the carpet.

The man’s eyes landed on her. He cursed.

“Broken,” he muttered. “Damn it.” He walked over to her and knelt in front of her. “Look at me,” he ordered.

Though she was not required to obey any order not given by her master, she could not help but look at this man who seemed to mean so much to her. She might not understand it, but she’d come to trust in feelings these tortuous years since she’d separated from her brother. Even when her mouth and her actions betrayed her, her feelings would always remain true.

“Do you want to leave this place? Come with me?”

“No,” she immediately replied. She could not go with this man unless her master ordered it, no matter how much she yearned to. Yet even though she denied him, the man seemed to see something in her eyes, for he relaxed marginally and nodded his head.

“Just like your mother,” he muttered. “All right, then. Let’s go.”

And without even asking for it, she was rescued.

“She doesn’t recognize me.”

Ruy leaned back in his chair and glanced across the small room at his brother. Kas was looking despairingly at his half-sister, and it was easy to tell that he’d already given up hope. Then again, the life Kas had led these past fifteen or so years had been far different from that of his older half-brother. He’d existed in a realm of abuse without any real purpose, perpetually playing the victim. Ruy had chosen a different route for himself. He’d always had a purpose, even if it had been the wrong one for nearly all of those fifteen years…until he’d found Kas and realized he’d been chasing a ghost when the person he really wanted revenge against had been right in front of his face the whole time.

“I told you. She’s broken,” he said, flipping up the gem on the ring he wore on his left hand so he could inhale some lav. The itch that flowed through his veins had been getting more defined of late, and it was taking more and more of the drug to keep his body under control.

“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” his brother said disapprovingly, having heard the loud sniff.

Good old Kas. He didn’t even remember that Ruy was his brother, that he’d once worshiped the ground his big brother walked on, and yet he still felt the urge to chastise him for doing something he felt was wrong.

“I wish I didn’t have to,” Ruy replied honestly. It was difficult for his brother to understand; aside from his regrettable physical flaws, Kas had inherited all of the benefits of what had become known as the Pax gene with none of the nasty side effects. That was the tricky thing about the Pax gene – it never transferred in the same way. The offspring of a carrier tended to have very diverse talents, from incredible speed to an increased rate of regeneration to outstanding foresight…or sometimes, instead of talents, there were defects, like the grifs. Though Ruy had never personally seen other physical abnormalities resulting from the Pax gene – and likely never would, as he and Kas were the only two affected individuals left that he knew of – the Director had claimed that the reason he secretly ordered the execution of anyone carrying the Pax gene had to do with the alarming rate of infants being born with noticeable defects – and not just grifs – to those who carried the gene.

It had nothing to do, of course, with the incredible talents that many of them possessed and the fact that the Director had felt threatened.

“Why’s she crying?” Kas demanded to know. “She hasn’t stopped since I showed up.”

“She hasn’t stopped since I took her,” Ruy admitted. “Look, maybe we should talk in the other room? She might look like she doesn’t understand us, but she does. She understands far more than she should, actually.”

After taking a quick glance around to make sure there wasn’t anything Mae could harm herself with, Ruy led the way out of the small guest room and into his living space. When they were both seated on the silver, plush couch he kept in his west Xesomel residence, which was little more than a tiny apartment on the very top floor of the tallest building of the city of Hed, he tried to explain to his brother what he’d gleaned about Mae’s condition.

“I spoke with a man, an expert in psychiatric conditions and someone who actually helped to develop the current methods for breaking slaves, and got some advice,” he told Kas. “According to him, no slave that’s been broken has ever been unbroken. It just isn’t something anyone’s ever tried to accomplish.” Except, maybe, for their father, but Kas wouldn’t remember that. “He thought I was just being paranoid, but he told me everything. Everything that would need to happen for a slave to potentially be unbroken. To reassure me that it could never happen, of course.”

“Of course.” Kas relaxed a little, rolling his eyes at Ruy’s underhanded tactics. His little brother was more of a direct sort of person, really. Kill first, ask questions later. While the winged man didn’t like to play games or do things indirectly, it never failed to amuse him whenever Ruy did just that.

“This wasn’t something he told me, just something I happen to know, but the first thing I’ll need to do is get Jax to renounce her. To transfer ownership to me,” he began. “That’s why she’s crying. Whether she wants to or not, she misses her master.”

“And how do you plan on getting that bastard to renounce her?”

“No idea. I’ll think of something, though. Even if I have to cut off his balls.” He hadn’t meant to sound so fierce. Kas wouldn’t understand, because he didn’t remember. He didn’t recall how close they had all been once, the three of them. Out of all of their father’s children, they’d been the most different. The outsiders. Ruy’s condition might have been more hidden than Kas’s, and Mae might have only been an outsider because she had a different father from all of them, but even those minute differences had somehow managed to connect them all.

He owed them. Both of them. His own poor judgment after their father’s death had led him to abandon them after he’d promised to protect them both. And because of his abandonment, they’d both suffered terribly. If helping Mae might ease some of his guilt…well, it was the least he could do.

“Once I can get her to accept me as her master, she’ll regain a little bit of her sanity. Right now…well, she doesn’t know what to do with herself. I keep catching her trying to open the windows, and I’ve got this sinking suspicion that she means to jump.”

“That would be suicide.”

“A broken slave would prefer death over separation from her master.”

“I see.”

“After I convince Jax to give her up, there’s any number of things I could do to start her on the road to freedom. According to the psychiatrist I spoke with, I would need to first start with a jolt of some sort. Something to startle her out of the fog her training placed on her mind,” he continued to explain. Speaking with the psychiatrist had caused everything to make so much more sense to him. Mae’s mother had been broken, after all, but there towards the end…well, she certainly hadn’t acted like a broken slave. Ruy suspected that her jolt had been Kas. Having a child in Xesomel was never anything monumental, but having a child like Kas, one who was so wonderfully different but would need constant protection...

Ruy could try to get Mae pregnant, but the odds of him siring a grif, while far more likely than the odds of someone else doing so, were not great enough. He could spend the rest of his life trying to give her the right sort of child to be considered a “jolt.”

He did have another idea, however. A far more dramatic one.

“Following that, I would need to do my best to never issue her direct orders. If I do, she will be compelled to obey them. Instead, I should try to foster in her a sense of freedom by encouraging her to speak her mind and do as she wishes. And then, should she ever reach a point that I feel she could survive without me, I can release her.”

“Why don’t you just get Jax to release her?” Kas demanded to know. “Skip all those other damned steps. It sounds like a big waste of time.”

“The mind’s a fragile thing, Kas. Release her too soon, and I might break it for good. She’d have to be ready. According to the psychiatrist, it could take years…or it could never happen. But I sort of got the feeling that I’d know if the time was right.”

Kas leaned back on the couch and blew out a long, depressed breath. “Sounds like a lot of work. Maybe I should just take her away from here. To Kittyana or something. You can transfer ownership to me.”

He’d considered it. And rejected that idea almost immediately. “I’ll do it,” he insisted. “It’ll be easier if I do. Too damned difficult to have your own sister as a slave.”

“Yeah. I didn’t think about that,” Kas muttered. “All right, then, so what’s the plan?”

“Well, you see…I know this very talented surgeon…”