Cursed by Desire

Chapter 4: Protectiveness

Ash’s POV:

“What’s wrong with you today?”

Blinking out of my daze, I look up from where I’d been staring blankly to see Rosa shooting me a puzzled frown. Dressed simply in jeans and an off the shoulder deep purple jumper, she looks like any normal girl her age - a deceptive trick given her role in keeping this realm in order. “Huh?” I say, my words lost in the surprise I am no doubt showing on my face. “What happened?”

She gives a low laugh and rolls her eyes at me, twisting her seemingly endless dark hair up into a messy bun with a few strands teased out to hang around her face. “I was asking you where you were since Hunter was looking for you earlier,” She focuses on my face with an even more quizzical expression and I have to force myself to think about what she’s saying. “You don’t remember, do you?” She laughs again, her eyes alight with joy. “Ash? Did you hear anything I just said?” She gives me a look, but I find I can’t stop myself from grinning at her, something I know earns her ire.

“Some of it?” I supply helpfully, hearing her groan and seeing her put her head in her hands. “Sorry?” I try again, hearing another sound from her that sounds half like a moan and half a groan. “What was it I needed to know or do?”

This time she groans audibly, her head shaking before she looks at me with a strange grin on her face. “You are incorrigible, you know that?” Her groans earn another low laugh from me and I can see her narrow her eyes at me for a second, flashing the dangerous colors of amber and black. Something I should probably avoid if I want to keep her from destroying something, intentionally or otherwise. “He said you were supposed to see him earlier,” I know that when Rosa says 'him' she means my brother.

I also can’t pass on a perfectly good opportunity to ridicule her. “So, he sent you to look for me, did he? Like some sort of errand girl?” As predicted, Rosa scowls, but it also doesn’t escape my notice when she tries to hide the grin on her face. “See, I knew I was right, he did send you, didn’t he?” I keep teasing her as I stand and follow her out of the room, hearing her string of expletives behind me. “Language, Mallory.”

“It’s Mallory-Nadir you,” She grumbles, but I can hear the laughter in her voice. Something I hope she manages to keep for a long time given how tough the past few years have been for both her and Hunter. “And I’ll have you know he didn’t send me. I came looking for you because I wanted to see you. Not because I’m his ‘errand girl’, thank you very much.” Rosa air quotes the two words and I find myself having to suppress my laughter. “What’s so funny?”

I choke back another laugh that threatens to come out and focus on trying to keep a neutral face. But I don’t do it very well considering how she keeps looking at me with an expectant expression. “You,” I eventually managed to choke out between fits of laughter, relieved when she joined in. “You’re making me laugh, no one and nothing else. Just you.”

“Glad one of us finds this amusing,” She grumbles good-naturedly before something slams into me. Again and again. The feeling of someone - or something - hitting me reverberates through my body and I struggle to breathe the longer it goes on. “Ash?” Rosa sounds worried, and I want to reassure her, but I can’t. Not when the pain is so fierce. Realizing I can’t speak, she leads us down a mostly disused corridor and watches me, concern in her eyes. “What's wrong?”

I’m about to open my mouth to answer her when another feeling slams into me, harder than before. On and on. The pain keeps increasing until I feel like I’ll pass out. Running a shaky hand over my body, I reach some areas that feel tender to the touch in my mind, but I don’t see any bruises. So, why am I feeling like this?

Closing my eyes against the onslaught of pain, I can see a tall individual with dark golden-brown hair hitting a smaller girl with knee-length chestnut hair tied in two braids. She keeps trying to fend off his attacks, but I can see the futility in her actions given the size difference. Holding my breath as if by instinct, I see the figure dragging the girl by her hair out of the corridor and into a smaller room. I watch them closely, seeing how the girl cowers away from her tormentor. Though I wasn’t expecting this sudden feeling of protectiveness washing over me - something I hadn’t felt since rescuing Rosa and even then I still thought of her as a sister. So who was this girl, and why does she make me feel this way?

But that wasn’t even the biggest shock. That came from when the male figure took the girl by her hair and threw her. Out of the window. He. Threw. Her. Out. Of. The. f*****g. Window. She crashed down the ten-story-plus drop onto the ground with a loud thud. When she lands, pain radiates across my body and I am unable to suppress the groan of pain any longer.

Rosa’s worried presence flares up next to me and I feel her hand on my arm, though the touch sears me like an open flame one minute and feels normal the next. f**k, what’s happening to me? I think, as if someone has an answer. I can feel my wolf’s presence, but Storm remains silent. Strange. “What’s wrong? ASH!” I can feel her shaking me, but I’m so trapped in the vision inside my head that I can’t answer her.

The vision changes to the girl watching a group of people - one of whom was her tormentor - up at a small attic window that I can tell feels like home to her. Underneath, about three floors down, I can see the open window that I know with sickening clarity is the one she was just thrown out of. She then looks away, and shivers in fear, their words hurting her to hear, though I can’t work out exactly what they are saying. Then the other voices vanish and I feel her relax before she stands on shaky legs and a low whine escapes Storm.

She’s beaten. And badly too. Suddenly the pain in my body makes some sense - it’s hers - though why I’ve felt it too I still don't understand. I’m forced to watch as she stumbles down a narrow, dirt-tracked pathway until she's near a secluded river in a clearing.

The water’s clear and the vision’s so accurate that I can hear the birds singing and smell the fragrance around her. The branches of the trees shelter her from the sun, but nothing can save her from having to look at her reflection in the river’s water. She has sky-blue eyes. I think to myself without meaning to, the words surprising me. She has sky-blue eyes and chestnut brown hair. The words keep coming, but why? How do I know this about someone who I’ve never met and have only seen the back of? Though she does seem to have chestnut brown hair.

But what about the eyes?

She stumbles towards the river, ending up on her hands and knees with her face directly above the water in a patch illuminated by the sun in such a way that the water is completely reflective. Like a mirror. Sky-blue eyes. That’s what I see. She looks at me from the water with an expression that looks at least twenty times pained than Rosa’s ever did, and I wonder idly what had caused her such hardship that her eyes were flat and devoid of emotion. As I do so, another fierce pang of protectiveness washes over me, and I’m left reeling by the feeling as it wraps around me. What was happening? Both to the girl in my head and me?

And why did it feel linked somehow?

I’m dimly aware that Rosa’s still shaking me, but I can’t find it in me to speak to her or reassure her, though not for lack of trying. Instead, the phantom pain that seems to envelop me stops me from speaking. Like it’s closed up my throat, or I’m afraid to make a sound. The second seems more accurate given how I can feel an unrelenting sense of soul-deep trepidation mixed with self-loathing simmering under the surface, but they’re not my emotions. Are they hers? For some reason, I direct the question at my absent wolf, Storm, but he remains as stoic and impassive as he has for the duration of this experience. More fear slams into me then, but differently from the last one. This one doesn’t feel like someone's hitting me with something but rather like a vine squeezing around a rose. Or a snake around its prey before it swallows it whole.

Struggling to breathe, I try to focus on the image in my head, Rosa’s presence next to me almost forgotten in the midst of whatever’s going on inside my head that’s linked me to this mystery girl who I can see. What is going on, I’d love to know. I think sarcastically, the anger in my tone is tempered by the fear and protectiveness I feel towards the girl with chestnut brown hair and absent blue eyes who’s just apparently thrown herself into the river.

Raw fear like I’ve never known before grips me and I want to cry out. Half convinced I have, and that she can hear me, I watch as she sinks like a stone. Her eyes are closed, and I can vaguely see the panic in them, but it looks like it’s self-inflicted. But why? Is it just to do with whatever has made her eyes so vacant, so lifeless? Part of me is afraid to know, but the other feels this undeniable urge to dig deeper, to figure out whatever makes her unhappy and fix it.

Instead, I’m trapped as a passive spectator as someone steps out of the sky and pulls her to shore. The woman I can see has dark hair like the hunter’s moon, but it seems to contain threads of exceedingly pale blonde like that of stars that make her look timeless. When she turns to face me, as if she can see me, her eyes look like two moonstones set into a fair complexion that shocks me. Her dress is of the silver of stars and I feel some primal, unknown part of me recognizes her as Lunae, the Moon Goddess of Werewolves.

I want to ask her something but Lunae just smiles and the vision fades from my mind, leaving me all too aware of Rosa’s hands shaking me. “What happened? Are you hurt? What did you see?” When I open my eyes, I can see the fear in her gaze and try to form a logically coherent sentence. Was I hurt? Yeah, kinda. Did I know why? Nope. Can I explain it? Hell no. As for what had happened... “I have no idea what just happened,” I whispered to her, silence following my words. A silence that neither of us breaks for a long time.

And then the world went dark, and I finally passed out.