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When it spoke to her, it always said the same thing: I have been searching for you, but now it is you who must find me. She resisted at first, they punished her for it, and finally she gave in.

They would make her do what they wanted, and she would not be able to refuse. Now they were coming, their heavy footsteps plodding against the stone. She never told them about the voice in her head. She had insisted they were wrong about her from the beginning of her captivity. Let me go— she had implored the first time she had been brought to this place—Im not what you think I am. What the commander and the doctors believed she was. She did not want to be what the voice said she was. The reason she was imprisoned, the reason they wanted her to do as she was told. Her clear tiger eyes—hazel-green with golden pupils—told the world she carried a mark on her skin, one that she kept hidden, one that was shaped like a flame and hurt like a burn, right above her heart.

The voice in her head was the reason her eyes were not brown or gray. The fire that would destroy and consume her if she let it.

When it spoke, she saw a beast through the inferno, carrying her aloft on black wings through dark skies as it rained fire upon its enemies. The voice that she heard in her dreams, whose words echoed like thunder, thunder and ash, smoke and flame. I warned you about waiting, rumbled the voice in her head. She had forgotten how many days, how many months, she had been left here, alone with only her thoughts for company. For days upon days she had been left in the room, alone, in total silence, with little food and water, the weight of solitude becoming ever more oppressive, the silence a heaviness that she could not shake, punishment for refusing to do as she was told, punishment for being what she was. She could hear their heavy footsteps echoing in the concrete hallway.