The Last Tail Of The Fallen Luna

LUNA OF NOTHING

CHAPTER EIGHT: LUNA OF NOTHING

Seraphina’s POV

I prepared myself for the questions I had been anticipating ever since I awoke in Varkos territory.

Who was I?

Where did I come from?

Why was I sold at an underground auction?

Why did I have enough power in my tails to make men want to buy me like property?

But above all those questions, the one that had been following me since my departure from Lucan weighed the heaviest.

How could a Luna lose her seven children and still consider herself a Luna?

I heard it being said by various people in the council.

By healers.

By servants who believed I wouldn’t hear them.

Even by my own thoughts.

Ronan was standing before me.

And for once, I was not sure whether I wanted him to ask.

One part of me wanted to tell him everything just to get it off my chest.

But another part wanted to keep it buried under the floor.

Because once I give someone my secret, I give them the weapon to use against me.

And I have learned that the hard way.

But he doesn’t ask.

He just waits.

There is no impatience in his eyes.

No curiosity pretending to be concern.

He does not force me to explain myself.

He gives me a chance that I did not even realize I needed.

A choice.

Tell him everything.

Or tell him nothing.

For a few seconds, I stare at the floor.

And then I realize that I will never be able to move on if I keep running away from what happened to me.

I take a deep breath.

“There are things you need to know.”

Ronan nods.

“I'll listen.”

Just two words.

But they are almost breaking me.

“Seven.”

The word comes out quiet.

Ronan doesn’t interrupt me.

“Seven children,” I continue. “Seven losses.”

My fingers clench each other in my lap.

“I thought that next time I will be lucky and give birth to my baby.”

My throat clenches.

“But I lose them.”

I swallow.

“And the last one takes a tail with it.”

But I don’t tell him that it hasn’t been the first one.

By the seventh loss, I had lost six out of my nine tails.

Each disappearance was another part of me dying.

At one point, I had thought that having my tails gave me power.

By the end, they were a ticking time bomb of sorts.

One loss.

One tail.

Another reason for everyone to look at me with disappointment.

Ronan’s expression was unreadable.

But I pressed on before I could lose my courage.

“There were papers waiting beside my bed before I’d even stopped bleeding.”

Even now, just saying it out loud stirred up bitter feelings inside me.

“Abdication papers.”

I remembered the hospital room.

The white sheets.

The smell of medicines.

The blood.

Magnus sitting beside me with the papers neatly folded on his knee.

And Kael’s signature.

“My husband didn’t say a word to stop them.”

I lowered my gaze to my hands.

“He agreed with the council.”

They sounded different now that I was telling them to someone who had not been there.

Maybe because I was not defending Kael anymore.

Maybe because I was not trying to defend myself.

“He told me he loved me.”

There was a humorless laugh escaping me.

“And then he told me love was not enough.”

Ronan’s jaw tightened slightly.

But he did not interrupt me.

“I signed.”

My voice had gone even softer.

“And I left the palace.”

I remembered the hallways.

The servants avoiding eye contact.

The open gates.

The long road before me.

“I went to the forest after that,” I told him. “I had no plan. No destination.”

I took a breath.

“I thought it would be the last thing I ever did.”

For the first time since I started talking, something about Ronan’s expression changed.

Only by a little bit.

But I caught it.

There was something hardening in his eyes.

And I looked away.

“I did not care if I lived or died.”

That was how I believed the story was going to end.

Luna lost forever and wandered through the wild until her grief overwhelmed the rest of her.

Except that I had found the rogues.

And then the auction house.

And him.

I couldn’t tell if that made me lucky.

Or just alive long enough to go through another trial.

I waited for Ronan to say something.

He didn’t.

He didn’t tell me how tragic my story was.

He didn’t apologize.

He didn’t treat me like I was something delicate that needed to be treated with care.

He simply listened.

Every word mattered.

The seven children.

The seven deaths.

The tails.

The council.

Kael.

The forest.

The auction.

He didn’t try to interject his own interpretation of my story.

What surprised me more than anything else.

Because I had lived with people who were always eager to tell me what my suffering meant.

It meant that I wasn’t fit to be Luna, according to the council.

It meant my body wasn’t working properly, according to the healers.

It meant that the kingdom needed an heir, according to Kael.

Eventually, I stopped questioning them and began to believe everything they said.

Ronan didn’t try to interpret my story and tell me what my pain meant.

He let it mean whatever it meant.

Finally, I raised my gaze.

"Why don't you look at me differently?"

Ronan frowned slightly.

"Differently?"

"After hearing the truth of what I am."

My tone was sharper than I intended.

"Former Luna."

I gestured towards myself half-heartedly.

"A woman who failed to give her kingdom an heir."

My hand moved involuntarily towards my tails.

"I’m hardly even a woman anymore."

I scrutinized his expression.

"Why aren't you looking at me like everyone else does?"

In that moment, I almost wanted him to give me an answer.

That I was different.

That I was broken.

That I was unlucky.

Anything other than kindness would've been easier.

Because kindness left me vulnerable.

Ronan leaned against the edge of the table.

"A title never tells me anything important about worth."

I stared at him.

And he went on.

“You were a Luna before I knew your name.”

His tone was steady.

“And you were still a person after you lost the title.”

There was something else about this sentence that affected me in ways it shouldn’t have.

He hadn’t said I was valuable for the fact that I had once been powerful.

He hadn’t said I deserved respect because I had been married to a king.

What he had said was even simpler.

That I mattered because I was me.

Not because of my title.

Not because of my tails.

Not because of my ability to produce an heir.

Not because I held political power for him.

But simply myself.

I didn’t know what to think of it.

Something in my chest eased.

A little bit.

But I could feel it.

For all these years, there had been the idea that I had to prove that I was worth existence.

To have children.

To be strong.

To be beautiful.

To be useful.

To be Luna.

And when I couldn’t be any of it anymore, they had declared me to be worthless.

But Ronan had taken away my title and somehow made me feel more human than I had ever felt in years.

I looked at my hands.

It was the first time since leaving Lucan that I didn’t feel ashamed of them.

I wasn’t ready to forgive Kael.

I wasn’t ready to forget everything that happened.

I wasn’t even sure I wanted to go back to the person I used to be.

Maybe I didn’t need to.

Maybe I could be somebody else now.

I took a deep breath.

“Besides, there is something else.”

Ronan looked at me.

“My tails.”

His features tightened.

“They always said in Lucan that my losses were connected to my miscarriages.”

I slowly shook my head.

“I don’t think that’s true anymore.”

I recalled the weird vision I had at the palace.

My hands turning into claws.

The feeling of something moving under my skin.

How my tails were vanishing after every loss.

And those words from the auction house.

Valuable.

It didn't make sense how everything fell into place.

But I knew something was off.

"Help me figure out why they lied about my tails and what their purpose was," I said.

Ronan was staring at me without any change in expression.

I thought he was going to ask me what I meant by that.

But instead, his face turned serious.

"Why do you think anyone lied?"

"Because I can remember the number of tails I had."

I touched the remaining tails cautiously.

"And I can remember how each of them vanished."

I paused and my voice lowered even further.

"But something about the treatment at the auction house made me think that there was something they knew about my tails that I didn't."

I looked straight into his eyes.

"I need to figure out where my power went."

Ronan didn't say anything for a few seconds.

But then he nodded.

"You're already considering the ways of finding out."

I blinked.

"You are?"

"Yes."

He moved to the bookshelf where several old records were stored.

"If there is any forbidden magic, old bloodline or some kind of stolen power involved, ordinary healers won't be enough."

The word forbidden sounded alarming.

"Why do you think it's magic?"

"I don't."

He looked back at me.

"Yet."

This answer should have scared me.

But for the first time, I felt relieved.

For the first time, someone wasn't saying I was hallucinating.

Somebody was going to help me investigate.

Ronan told me that he would have his people check out old records, healer journals, and historical accounts of wolves with several tails.

He was also going to look into the auction house and those men who had been looking for me.

I felt an unfamiliar feeling.

Purpose.

Not revenge.

Not yet.

Just the need to understand what happened to me.

Before any of us could say another word, the door burst open with a crash.

I jumped.

Doran stood there, ashen.

The aged scholar panted, his clothing disarrayed as if he had run halfway across the land just to get to us.

An ancient tome clung to his chest.

Ronan instantly stood up.

"What happened?"

Doran looked at him.

At me.

He studied the remnant of my tail.

There was something in his look that caused my sense of safety to evaporate.

"I found something," he said.

My stomach cramped up.

"What?"

Doran put the ancient tome on the table.

Dust flitted across its cover.

Its yellowed pages held strange writing and symbols across its leather-bound spine.

His voice grew lower.

"Something about magic that should not exist."

I looked at the book.

One of the symbols seemed very familiar.

I had seen it before.

Not in a book.

Not in the palace.

But elsewhere.

Elsewhere, I couldn’t quite remember where.

Doran opened the book.

His finger hovered above an illustration.

It was of a woman with nine tails.

My breath hitched.

Ronan looked from the book to me.

And Doran said,

"And I think it has something to do with you."