Forged of Flesh

Kyra could understand the hatred, the lust for their deaths. Kyra, her twin sister Lyra, brothers Austin, Bendix and Sloan had aided Dorn in his mad quest for power. They five had stood beside his gore soaked throne and struck down any who spoke against him. They had reveled in death and destruction, in terror and brutality beyond imagination. The number of people to fall before them could never be marked in full. In the years Dorn sought for dominion over the realm, wherever he went mountains of bodies appeared. Yes, Kyra could well understand why they wished her and her siblings dead.

That they had done none of this of their own free wills did not matter. They had been the first he lured to him and sealed to his desires by the power of the Demon's Heart. Dorn had enslaved their minds to his purpose just as he had all who followed him in his war against the King. Nor was it their fault that they were of his blood. Could anyone truly hold them guilty simply because their great-grandsire and Dorn's was the same man?

Yes, Kyra understood the reason for their hatred. However the fact that in the last battle at Shadow Falls she had broken free of him should count for something. If Kyra had not turned from Dorn it was very likely that not even the power of the King could have kept Dorn from ruling these lands. Though the King and his advisers were mighty sorcerers, against the power of Dorn's Demon's Heart gem they could not prevail. Had it not been for her all would have lost and been forever under Dorn's domination.

Thinking of that day drew Kyra's thoughts back to Jarret. In all truth it had been Jarret who was responsible for her turning from Dorn. With the ease true love grants Kyra recalled the day she first set eyes upon him. Then Jarret had been nothing but another captured warrior, someone to be broken and enslaved to Dorn's desire. At first he had been nothing to her, just one of the hundreds Dorn ordered she convert to his service. However Jarret would not turn, no matter how potent her spelling, Kyra could not break his mind to her will. This was not the only time it happened, there were others whose minds were too strong for her magic to distort. But unlike those others Kyra did not ordered Jarret's throat cut. Rather for some reason Kyra kept Jarret alive.