Chapter 6: "A trip down memory lane"
962 Words
The room was quiet, but her mind wasn’t.
Liora sat curled by the small window, knees drawn to her chest, fingers tangled in the hem of her tattered shawl. Moonlight slanted across the floorboards, pale and cold, like the silence of the cottage itself. The witches had always kept this room neat, but sparse no mirrors, no sharp edges, and certainly no open doors.
Tonight, it felt smaller than ever.
Her body still tingled from where Kael had touched her. Her skin remembered the moment both the warmth and the sear. Her heart had raced in rhythm with his, a beat that had felt terrifyingly right... until pain tore through the bond.
Her wolf, Lyra, growled softly in the back of her mind.
He’s ours. You felt it too
Liora swallowed. "But it hurt."
> It only hurts because of what they did to us.
What they made us believe.
She shook her head and leaned it against the wall, but the memories came anyway unwelcome and unstoppable, like smoke under a door.
**********************
A Memory from Long Ago
She was small, maybe six, dressed in pale linen and barefoot as she padded down a stone corridor inside the witches’ haven. At the end of the hall was a wooden door barred by vines. The only door that led outside.
The first time she reached for it, it recoiled.
As if the forest itself refused her presence.
"Why can’t I go out?" she had asked, voice trembling.
The witches didn’t answer.
Only Mother Mareth knelt beside her, folding long dark robes beneath her knees as she took Liora's hands into her own. Mareth had always been gentler than the others. Her eyes were clouded with age but kind. She had streaks of silver in her hair and wore charms carved from bones and stones.
“You were born under a blood moon, child,” Mareth said. “The sky wept for your mother, and the earth drank her last breath.”
Liora frowned, too young to understand grief. “She gave me to you.”
“Yes. With her last words. She begged us to keep you safe.”
“Safe from what?”
Mareth had hesitated, just a heartbeat too long.
“From the world,” she said. “And from yourself.”
******************
The memory shifted, blurred around the edges like melting frost, then sharpened again.
*****************************
Another Memory – Older Now
She was twelve. Older. Smarter. Restless.
She sat by the fire while the witches chanted their evening rites, her fingers tracing the lines in an old book she'd never been allowed to read fully. Her heart itched with something she didn’t have a name for yet.
“Why can’t I love?” she asked aloud.
The chanting stopped.
The air in the room turned brittle.
One of the witches Tamsin with silver-painted eyes and a crown of feathers strode forward. Her voice cut like a blade.
“Because whoever you love,” Tamsin said, “will be just as cursed as you, child.”
Liora flinched.
“Love, for you, is a noose,” Tamsin continued. “A promise made in blood and paid in fire. Your mother loved once. It cost her everything.”
Liora's lips parted, trembling. “But… doesn’t everyone deserve love?”
The answer came not in words, but in silence. A silence so sharp it pierced her chest.
Later that night, it was Mother Mareth who came to her room.
Liora sat on the edge of her bed, clutching a wool blanket, her face streaked with quiet tears.
“She wasn’t wrong,” Mareth had said gently, “but she wasn’t right, either.”
Liora looked up, hopeful. “Then I can love?”
Mareth sat beside her. “You can try. But it will never be simple. The Moon watches you more closely than others. She remembers what your line defied.”
Liora didn’t understand then.
But now, curled in her tiny room with Kael’s scent still clinging to her skin, she did.
*********************************
Back to the Present
She pressed her palms to her eyes, forcing the memories away. They were like thorns be embedded, impossible to ignore. Her mother’s last breath. The witches’ fearful eyes. The locked doors. The words that had caged her more than walls ever could.
You are cursed.
You are danger.
You will bring ruin.
Yet… his eyes.
Kael’s eyes had seen her. Even in pain, even in confusion, they had burned with something she hadn’t known she needed: recognition.
> You’re mine.
Lyra stirred within her, pacing like a caged beast.
> He will come back for us.
And we will not run next time.
Liora clenched her fists. “But what if I burn him again?”
> Then we find a way to stop the burning.
We were never meant to rot in this room. We were meant to run.
To fight. To love.
Tears slid down her cheeks, hot and silent.
She didn’t feel strong. She didn’t feel like someone with a destiny.
She felt broken stitched together from fear and superstition. Raised by those who only saw her as a burden to be contained.
But Lyra wasn’t afraid.
And neither, somewhere deep beneath all that sorrow, was Liora.
She rose from the floor, standing in the shaft of moonlight. It painted her in silver, and for the first time, she let it touch her fully—arms outstretched, eyes closed, face tilted upward.
If this was the light that had cursed her…
Let it see her now.
Let it see the girl who still ached to lo
ve.
And the wolf who would not be denied her mate.
Somewhere beyond the forest, Kael still searched.
And the Moon watched them both.
Waiting.
- Writer
