Cursed by Desire

Chapter 3: Blame and Bruises

“LEILA!” My name being screamed jolts me out of whatever self-indulgent fantasy I’d been indulging in, but I’m surprised to not be able to see anything. Had I gone blind? If so, when? Since I was sure that even after Axal’s beating, I’d been able to see. In fact, I know I did, since I'd seen when he’d proudly shown off the window he’d thrown me out of. “LEILA!” The same voice as before shouts for me and I think about moving before the pain takes over.

“LEILA!” I’d just been about to black out again when a new voice joins the first. However, I find I can easily place the identity of this second voice - the sound of my twin’s voice is undeniable. “LEI!? WHERE ARE YOU?”

“LEILA BRIAR!” The third voice that joins my twin’s, and the first mystery person, holds within it the undeniable power of an Alpha, so I find I know who they are as well, since our pack has only one alpha-in-training. My brother Ascelin. “LEILA!” Fear is strong in my brother’s voice and I want to reassure him, but every time I even think about moving, a fiery lash of pain strikes me and I have to double over, moaning in pain. “LEILA!” Ascelin’s voice sounds nearer me, but I still can’t find it in me to answer him, the pain of my injuries rendering me mute.

“Lei?” A pair of warm hands shake me and I shiver in response, their touch as searing as that of an open flame. “Lelia, what happened?” Fear is also prominent in this person’s voice, but I find it to be distinctly feminine. Lux. She tries to shake me again but when I don’t move she inhales in shock. “Leila? LEILA!” More shaking, and I find my grip on consciousness is precarious, something not helped by her constant shaking of me. “ASCELIN! CORBIN! I FOUND HER!” My friend’s voice rings out clearly, but it hurts my sensitive hearing that’s already sore from the fall and trying to hear if anyone is coming. Sinking back towards unconsciousness as if into the arms of a lover, I feel Lux shake me again. “Lei? Can you hear me? Move if you can hear me, please,” My best friend’s voice cracks, and I think again about moving, just to stop scaring her.

But then the pain hits, and I hear Luna let out a mournful howl inside my head, the noise battling to be heard amongst the rushing of blood in my ears and throbbing pain that seems so intense that I can hear my heartbeat inside the echoes it leaves behind. I can’t. We can’t. Luna’s voice is broken up in my head and I know my wolf isn’t faring any better than me. Something that scares me.

“Lux?” I sense my twin’s scent of evergreen and bay leaf before his voice reaches me. “Lux, what happ- LEILA!” His agonized scream comes next before I’m enfolded in the comforting scent of evergreen trees and bay leaves. A scent I know as intimately as my own. “Lux, what happened to her? Why is she like this? And why is she soaking wet and freezing cold?” As Corbin’s words register with me, I feel myself shiver once, internally, as if just now recognizing the freezing late-autumn water I’m drenched in. “Lux, what happened to her?” Corbin sounds distressed and his hand on my bare skin offers mild comfort - though the feeling is tempered by the fact that to my frozen skin his touch feels like that of an open flame.

“I-I don’t know,” My best friend sounds just as upset, and it tears at me to hear them both sounding so distraught, but I can’t move. I can’t, the pain’s too great. “I was just walking looking for her - the same as you and Ascelin were - and I found her curled up like this unconscious.” My friend’s hand skims my hair where it’s straggling slightly out of the carefully meticulous braids from before and I relax slightly in my mind knowing that I was safe. “Corbi, what happened to her? Why is she like this?”

My twin sighs, “I wish I knew,” He holds me closer, and I breathe in his familiar scent, using it to calm my still racing heart when I hear a new set of footsteps approach the clearing with the river. Instantly my heart rate, which I had almost controlled, picked up again, and I tense without realizing. “Careful,” I can hear Corbin’s words, but it’s as if I’m being held underwater, the words muffled. Indistinct from one another. “She’s been hurt pretty badly and seems nervous. Just be careful.”

The footsteps keep approaching, but I can tell they’ve slowed down. Still feeling tense and alert, I keep my mental vigilance as they - whoever they are - come closer until their scent reaches me. Scents of hemlock and royal empress trees surround me and I feel the last of my vigilance fade away when I realize who it is. My older brother’s scent wraps around me like a comforting blanket and I feel one of his hands take mine, a sigh escaping me as I feel more grounded. “Leila?”

On my other side, I can smell sweet almonds and night-blooming jasmine, Lux’s scent. The three together manage to stabilize me enough that I blink a few times, opening my eyes eventually to see all three of them share a look of relief. “Hey,” I croak, wincing when I hear how weak my voice sounds. “What happened? Why am I wet?” I shiver, feeling the autumnal winds blowing down on the trees and licking against my skin. When I look between the three of them, I can see fear, shock and pain reflected in their eyes. “What?” I ask, somewhat defensively. “What happened?”

“You mean you don’t remember?” My twin’s voice startles me and I look up into his mirror blue eyes to see horror and pain shining in their sky-blue depths. “Lei, do you realize how scared we were when we found you like this?” His worry is tangible, but I can’t find the rationale for it. What did he mean by like this? What had happened to me that I couldn’t remember? Trying to sit up, a fiery lash of pain spreads down my body and I have to bite back a moan. “Careful,” Corbin helps me sit up when it becomes apparent that I won’t stay where I was. “You need to be careful.”

I’m about to ask why when I catch sight of my reflection. The girl looking back at me can’t possibly be me, can she? I think to myself, not recognizing myself in the reflection of the battered, bruised and - despite the time since the incident - bleeding stranger with pained eyes. Testing my theory, I raise a shaky hand and cry out when I see the reflection in the river’s reflective surface mimic my actions. Tears course down my cheeks, the same ones I couldn’t shed earlier, and I feel like the world’s closing in. Not that I was vain, never that, but more that I looked like someone who should be dead.

Even the rosy flush that usually lit my perpetually fair skin had faded, and I now looked lifeless, my skin matching the dead, hollow expression in my eyes. “What happened?” I hear someone ask, the voice muffled to my ears, but I don’t answer. I can’t. Instead, I look down at the mirror image of me in the water, captivated by the blue, purple and green bruises that cover me both from the fall and Axal’s.. lesson. Cuts dot my body as well, some deeper than others. All are remnants of what happened hours ago, unless.. “LEILA?!” Someone else shouts my name and I snap out of the daze I’d been in, staring transfixed at the mirror image of myself beamed up for all to see by the water.

“What.. time is it?” I ask slowly, my words feeling thick and clumsy in my mouth. Waiting, and expecting to hear the worst, I look up at the three faces near me. “What time is it? I have to get to college.” Bad memories of what happened the last time I was tardy and missed lessons flood through me, and I’m about to struggle to stand when someone stops me. Ascelin.

“What time do you think it is, Leila?” He uses my full name, something rare for my older brother, and it instantly makes me nervous. My mind jumps for an answer, but I just draw up one huge blank. “Lei?” The more familiar nickname comes next, and I scrunch my brow, trying to think, but nothing comes. Until a glimmer of a memory.

“9:30?” I think, already chiding myself for passing out when I had to get to college. Shocked and wary looks pass between the three of them, and it worries me more. More than if they’d just looked outright shocked. “10?” I try again, the same response. “Eleven?” Silence. “Midday?”

“It’s gone six in the evening, Leila.” Ascelin’s tone is off, and I can see how scared he is underneath the calm composure he’s somehow managing to keep. After six?! What happened? Why can’t I remember what I’ve done all day? “What’s the last thing you remember?” My brother looks at me where I’m still sitting half-supported against Corbin, who’s watching me with a similar expression. “Leila, who did this to you?”

I want to resist answering him, not wanting to complicate life any more than I already do, but I can’t. Can’t because under the pleading tone I can hear the commanding tone of an alpha-in-training and I can’t resist it. “Axal,” The name slips out of me with a pained moan as I slowly become more and more aware of the bruises, cuts and injuries covering me. “H-He beat me and then threw me out of a window.” I hiccup over the words, using the Pack Link to show him the memories of what happened that morning. “I guess I managed to make it out here before passing out, though I don’t remember falling into the river,” I admit, snuggling closer to Corbi when he holds me tightly. “I’m sorry,”

Now Ascelin looks confused. “What for, Lei?” His tone is gentle and the compelling power that had undercut his words before had gone. Looking up at him, I can see how haunted his eyes look, and I know he saw all my memories from when Axal hurt me to when they’d found me. “Why should you be? You haven’t done anything.” I sigh sadly and look down, avoiding his eyes as I always do when I lie - or think he’s mistaken. “Leila? What is it?” Again, I can feel the coercive power underneath his words and try to hold in my words for as long as possible, knowing it won’t change anything. “Lelia?”

“Don’t you blame me for what happened to the others?” I expel the words in a rush, a hot flush of shame coming over my cheeks and making them burn red in the cold. Peering out of the corner of my eye, I can see Ascelin looks confused, so I elaborate, my tone heavy. “Mum? Dad? Griff and Ris? Astrophel?” Listing all of my missing family members - our missing family members - cuts the wound a little deeper, but I have no choice. Not when he’s forced it out of me like this. “Don’t you blame me?” I ask again when I receive no response. “You do, don’t you?”

Silence follows me and I can’t shake the feeling that somewhere, deep down, perhaps they do blame me. The thought stings, but since it’s been my companion for the last six years, I’m used to its presence in the back of my mind. Tears threaten, but I manage to school my features into a mask of impassivity to try and keep myself from crying. Again. But when my statement does eventually get a response it shocks me. “Of course I don’t, Lei, why would you think that?” Ascelin sounds heartbroken at my comment and I shrug once, not really sure how to explain it. “Can you try?” He asks, following my train of thought since I hadn’t closed the Link between us. I sigh again, this time in resignation.

“I guess I expected you both to because I did.” My admission is met with another long, heavy silence and I look towards the ground then, tracing the dusk-brought shadows with my eyes. The silence continued until I realized it’s because they expected me to continue. “I had a bad feeling when Ris tried to get me to go out, but I ignored it. I ignored it at the cost of their lives.” I sigh again, my eyes misting over with tears, “I guess I just assumed you would because I blame myself.”

Ascelin gives a low laugh, “That’s where you're wrong little sister,” The little comment stings, but I know he means it as an endearment, so try to ignore the feelings it stirs up inside me. “I would never blame you, and neither would Corbin because we both know you blame yourself too much for something you couldn’t control.” Some of the tension inside my chest releases and I look up to see him looking at me with an honest half-smile. An expression that pulls a rare smile out of me in return.

“It’s true,” Corbi says from where I was still leaning against his side and I tip my head up to see my twin’s expression similar to Ascelin’s. The similarity makes me smile, despite everything that’s going on. “I know what you’re going to say about the bad feeling, and it is unusual for you not to listen to your instincts.”

“As in never,” I cut in, glowering as best I can at the disfigured girl in the water who returns the grimace in an almost comical fashion. “I had never listened to them before, but the one time Ris happened to show up when I was revising chemistry,” I shudder as I remember the feeling of being torn the night she’d led me out. “But even with that I still thought you would have blamed me, at least in part.” I look between them, trying to discern if what they said was true, but they just both give me tentative half-smiles before Corbin finishes what he had been saying.

“I know that - we both do - which was why we were surprised.” I inhale then and he laughs. “Yeah, shocked and surprised, sure, but angry? Never, Lei, because when it came down to it, you didn’t know what was out there that night, so you had no way of preparing for it. Whatever it was.” He frowns, and I feel something inside me shiver as I remember that day and whatever had attacked us. Whatever it was. The phrase haunts me as, even now, six years later, I still have no idea what it was. I have no idea what attacked us and murdered every member of my family who tried to help except me.