The Last Tail Of The Fallen Luna

OLD MAGIC

CHAPTER NINE: OLD MAGIC

Seraphina’s POV

I stared at the book held by Doran as if it might attack me.

Its cover was old.

Older than any cover I'd ever seen inside the Lucan palace library.

The leather was cracked, darkened from age, and marked with symbols that seemed to have been burnt on its surface.

I couldn't really explain why but looking at it sent shivers up my spine.

Doran had gone pale.

Ronan stood next to me, focusing on the book.

They both didn't speak for several seconds.

Finally, I broke the silence.

"What does it say?"

Doran looked at me.

It wasn't the look on a face of a researcher discovering something interesting.

No, it was the look of a researcher discovering something dangerous.

Doran slowly opened the book.

His fingers were shaking a little as he turned several pages that sounded like paper torn off.

"A tail doesn't just disappear," he breathed out.

I felt my heart pounding.

He looked at me.

"Not truly."

For some reason, I immediately turned my head to the back of my body.

Only one tail left now.

One.

Out of nine.

I'd watched each tail disappearing one after another.

Each disappearance was explained to me.

Weakness.

Pregnancy.

Misfortune.

A body that couldn't carry what it was supposed to carry.

I'd believed in that because I hadn't known what else to believe in.

Doran gulped.

"Not if it's taken."

Suddenly, the room felt much colder.

"Taken how?"

I asked the question but some part of me already knew how to answer it.

Doran looked at Ronan before turning to me.

"Under some circumstances power can be separated from the physical form."

My stomach squeezed in.

"What circumstances?"

He hesitated.

Even the hesitation scared me.

I had years of listening to the explanations of healers who couldn't explain the reasons behind illnesses.

Now, I had to listen to something completely different.

This wasn't the explanation of medicine.

This was something more.

And this was something forbidden.

"Bound," Doran finally said.

I frowned.

"Bound?"

He nodded.

"There is an old ritual. A forbidden one."

He showed the book to us.

The drawing displayed strange symbols around the nine-tailed wolf.

The text below the drawing was written in an old version of our language I only managed to recognize as it was.

"Generations ago, some wolves found a way to make sure supernatural power didn't drain out of a separated vessel."

Ronan’s face got grim.

"How?"

Doran’s gaze shifted to the pages of the book.

"The ritual involved draining the power from one wolf and transferring it into another vessel."

I couldn't breathe anymore.

"Another wolf?"

"Sometimes."

"Sometimes?"

"Another vessel. It could belong to a person. It could be an object. In rare cases, another supernatural being."

I felt like I was going to throw up.

All those tails which I had lost weren’t just gone.

It was possible that someone had taken away what belonged to me.

Doran kept talking.

"But the ritual was outlawed because the draining process didn't just rob the other of their power."

He curled his fingers around the edges of the page.

"The draining process hurt the original wolf."

I thought about the weakness which had overwhelmed me.

The exhaustion.

The miscarriages.

The pain.

I suddenly felt like my own body was a stranger to me.

All those miscarriages the healers claimed bad luck.

First pregnancy.

First tail.

Second.

Third.

Seven pregnancies.

Seven dead babies.

Six tails.

For years I had been blaming myself.

But what if I hadn’t?

What if there was someone robbing me of my powers each time I lost a baby?

I felt my stomach turning cold.

Each healer after a miscarriage.

His hands.

His calm voice.

His confidence.

Telling me what happened to me.

Telling me what went wrong.

Each time I believed him.

Why wouldn't I?

After all, he was the royal healer.

He treated generations of the royal family.

He was trusted by the king.

By the council.

And by me.

A frightening idea came into my head.

Could the man telling me I was losing my power have been the one who was robbing me of it?

Ronan interrupted my thoughts.

"Who knows anything about such practices?"

Doran was silent for a minute.

"Doran."

"Don’t lie to me."

"I don’t."

It wasn’t convincing.

Ronan approached Doran.

"You do."

Doran looked down at the book.

Then he nodded.

"There is very little information left."

"Who?"

Doran’s fingers clenched the ancient pages.

"All people who practiced it were hunted down after the rite was outlawed."

"So who could possibly know it?"

Doran paused again.

This time, I already knew what he was going to say.

“Royal healer.”

My heart stopped beating.

Doran went on cautiously.

“The one who examined you every time you experienced a loss.”

The air in the room froze.

I just looked at him.

“No.”

The word flew out before I could catch it.

Doran didn’t refute me.

He only looked at me.

“No,” I said again.

I was hoping for him to come up with some other theory.

He had to.

This healer was always nice to me.

He would hold my hand when I cried.

He would reassure me I shouldn’t feel guilty.

He had always examined all my pregnancies.

All miscarriages.

All tails that disappeared.

He had been there.

Each and every single time.

And now Doran was suggesting to me that this very person who had always been close to me each time I had suffered from losses knew how to take back what I had lost.

I started shaking.

His hands.

Always so gentle.

Always so calm.

Always right where they should be.

The warm touch of his fingers pressing against my wrist while checking my pulse.

The soft voice when I was terrified.

How he told me it was my body that could not keep pregnancies.

How he explained the disappearance of each of my tails as if it was something natural.

I had believed in him.

Why wouldn’t I?

This man was the royal healer.

He swore an oath.

Each time I looked at him, I saw a man who tried to help me.

Now, it seemed, those memories changed their meaning.

The hands that had comforted me might have taken away parts of me.

I put my palm on my stomach.

An awful feeling occurred.

“What about my children?”

Doran looked grim.

“I don’t know yet.”

Those few words scared me more than anything.

Ronan moved instantly.

“We will question him.”

His tone did not leave any room for discussion.

“We will send a message into the Lucan Kingdom.”

I glanced up at him.

The very idea of sending a message to any Lucanian terrified me, but if the healer was responsible for my miscarriages and missing tails, I had to know that for sure.

I had to know whether my children had passed away naturally.

I had to know where my tails went.

And I had to know whether somebody had been manipulating me without my knowledge.

Ronan ordered Doran to gather all of the information about the ritual and then turned to me.

“We will not accuse him until we have enough evidence.”

I nodded.

But I already knew that I would never be able to look at that healer the same way ever again.

“I’ll send a letter to Mira.”

The words just left my mouth before I even had time to think.

Ronan gazed at me.

“She knows how to contact him without raising any suspicion.”

Mira had been my closest friend, she had been there during my pregnancies, during the miscarriages, during nights when I cried myself to sleep.

If anybody could get the information inside Lucan quietly, it was Mira.

I needed Mira now.

I headed towards the writing desk.

My hands shook, while I was preparing the letter.

I didn’t say everything.

Not yet.

I just wanted to know whether the royal healer still worked in the castle.

And if not, then where he had gone to.

I sealed the letter.

A courier was called.

It was the first time since my leaving Lucan, I deliberately reached out to my past.

I was not returning to it.

I was digging into it.

There was a difference.

The reply did not come from Mira.

It came much sooner than I expected.

Not even an hour later, a courier arrived with messages from unrelated kingdoms.

Ronan received his usual reports from surrounding territories.

Trade.

Movements.

Kingdom news.

Nothing had to do with me.

At least, that was my assumption.

I happened to be nearby when the courier nonchalantly spoke about the news regarding Lucan.

He gave a list of names.

Then came the royal healer.

Every cell in my body froze.

"Wait."

The courier turned his gaze to me.

I asked for the same name to be repeated.

He did.

Then I asked for the current whereabouts of the healer.

The courier's face showed that he was uncomfortable.

Ronan noted this.

"What?"

The courier swallowed.

He informed us that the healer was no longer employed in the palace.

My heart beat faster.

"When did he leave?"

The courier looked at the report in his hand.

"Two nights after you left the palace."

The world tilted.

Two nights.

After.

I had left Lucan thinking that I was going to sever all connections with everyone there.

But one person vanished right away.

One person who could have known what had happened to me.

I forced myself to breathe.

"What happened to him?"

The courier seemed hesitant.

"His heart, they told everyone."

My stomach dropped.

"His heart?"

"Yes."

The courier spoke in a cautious manner.

"They said that it happened suddenly."

I stared at him.

The royal healer was one of the healthiest wolves that I knew.

He worked hard.

He treated patients without seeming tired.

He examined me just days ago.

"And no one suspected anything?"

The courier shook his head.

“Not publicly.”

A cold breeze brushed through me.

“Why?”

He stared at me.

“Because the healer died two nights after you left the palace. He died of heart attack,” he said.

He stopped.

“It’s sudden, especially for such a healthy man.”

Silence enveloped us.

I glanced at Ronan.

He already thought the same thing that I was thinking.

If the healer was the one who took away my tails, then someone must have taken him out of the way so he would not spill anything that happened to me.

And if it was the case, the question was no longer about who had stolen my powers?

No.

The question was now:

Who is afraid of what the healer knows?

I gazed at the old book.

The symbol on it appeared even more ominous than before.

For the very first time, I started wondering if my seven losses were all connected to something even bigger than I could imagine.

The only man who knows what happened to my tails is dead and the suddenness of his death means that there was someone who did not want people to know.