The Cursed Luna

Saved

Cara

Two weeks later.

"Wake up."

Chaos wracks my skull as I fight to open my eyes, to respond to the insistent tapping on my shoulder.

"Wake up!" The voice insists more urgently.

My eyelids slowly peel open. The sky is a hard grey – it has to be a little past midnight. The lower part of my body feels like it is filled with a bag of rocks. I swallow, my saliva sour, my lips cracked, and my entire body on fire. A middle-aged woman with striking white hair and haunting purple eyes stands next to me, looking over her shoulders every second frantically, as though someone might spring up on us any moment now.

"We have to leave here. Quickly," she says absentmindedly, not even looking at me. I can't concentrate on what she's saying. On anything at all except the obvious truth that I'm a failure. I lost Ronan. I lost my mate. I lost everything, including my sisters.

Everything Mother prepared me for... I failed her. I failed Hana and Leora. I failed my pack.

I failed my mate.

Trying my best to sit up, I moan in agony as my stomach quivers, my ribcage injured from the impact of my body on the rocks. Crying, I sit still for a moment, trying to process it all. I remember being Markus being angry. I remember the pack coming for me, and Markus throwing me off the cliff. Every part of my body aches, and I pat my body for any other injury apart from my hurting ribcage.

The middle-aged woman crouches to snarl at me. "Do you have a death wish? We could get killed out here. Get up!"

I recoil as a few drops of her saliva lands on my face. "What...who are you?"

She ignores me. Dramatically, she swivels around in her heels and begins to make her way into the forest. I haul myself to my feet, gasping at the sight of my fingers as I stumble after her. "At...at least tell me your name."

"I don't answer stupid girls," she says scathingly. "If you want the zombies or rogues to have you for dinner, then by all means, stay back."

I stay quiet as we trudge down a long, winding path, my eyes trained on her dry, white matted hair. I look at my fingers again. They were dark blue, like I'd plunged them into ink. But I know it's magic. The kind of violent magic which I'd used to defend myself from Ronan. And I remember the bright burst of light I'd created as my body hit the rocks at the foot of the clip. Magic is the only reason I survived that fall.

Magic is the only reason I now bear the mark of a Ruined. The inked fingers symbolize my curse.

We come to the end of the path, where an old cottage loom close to a lake. I follow the strange lady inside. The interior reminds me a lot of my family's cottage back in the Red Moon Pack. The only difference is that this cottage has a lot of shelves where a good number of bizarre-looking artifacts and runes are kept on. At the back of the cottage, a space has been cleared, where chairs and tables are arranged as though it was a bar shop.

The strange woman picked my hands up, inspecting them closely. "These will never come off. You'll need gloves to cover them up. Give me a second."

She retreats into a small room, and while I wait, I recall that Mom also had three black fingers also singed from her magic backfiring. She always covered them with gloves. Just like me, she had no control over her magic either, which is why she told me never to use mine.

I'll never forgive myself if you get hurt. The magic in every Ruined is unstable and unpredictable. It can hurt and kill you as easily as it does others. You have to be careful. Resist every urge to use it, even when the circumstances are dire. It must be your last resort.

"Here," the strange woman returns, holding up black gloves. "These will help. You can call me Magda."

"Thank you," I take the gloves and put them on, grateful, "...but why did you save me?"

"Let's just say it might just something I'd come to regret someday," she laughs. "It's not every day you see a girl unconscious in the woods. Most of the time, I come across dead bodies. You're the first unconscious girl I've come across in the last seven years."

The wind picks up outside, and lightning flashes across the gray sky. "It's going to rain soon," Magda murmurs wistfully. "Go lie down now. I'll come check on your injury in a minute."

She goes outside, leaving me alone in the cottage. I make my way over to the lone bed at a corner of the room, and plop down. My mind is elsewhere. A battleground of longing, hurt, anger, and most of all...fear.

Once I'm healed, I need to find Hana and Leora. No matter what it takes, I have to find my sisters.

They're my whole world.