Cursed By | Moon

1 | Roan

Roan's tears had already dried but the trembling of his fist did not stop, even after he rubbed circles against his bruised knuckles with his thumb. He ignored the way his dark curls fell into his eyes knowing they helped hide his expression as the shadows of his face deepened.

The assembly hall was built long before the invention of artificial lights and was usually lit by wax candles, however, it was still the early hours of the morning so they had to rely on natural light that left the place dimly lit around ivory pillars.

Even still, Roan unclenched his fist and flipped over his left hand, realising that he'd drawn blood after digging his nails in too deep. He bit down on his molars but the stinging of his palm brought him some comfort. He was alive and still very much sane, two things many of his cousins could not claim.

He'd have to bandage it later but Roan closed his palm and busied himself with silently observing his peers who were standing to leave the assembly hall, as if what they had just seen did not occur. Granted, it was over almost as quickly as it had begun, but the Elves simply appeared unfazed, even when for most this was their first public execution.

Overt demonstrations of sympathy might have an elf mistakenly considered a Sympathiser but it was not specifically prohibited by any laws to do so, just simply frowned upon, leaving him wondering why it was not considered a quality that they should all share.

Of course, that belief was solely attributed to the fact that he was one of them, a Draven, which would mean he would directly benefit when his time eventually came.

Even if he had been suppressing his transformations for the past eleven years, he knew better than anyone that they were always found out eventually, and he lacked the optimism to consider himself any different from those who came before.

Either he would make a mistake, or the madness would take him first.

"We should go. The Amalgam are starting to clear people out." Heather whispered into his ear, already on her feet and sideying the soldiers in black gear that kept their faces hidden.

"They're the ones who summoned us all here," He replied, looking up from the floor where he was still seated on his own legs. "Where do you think they'll take us now?"

"The courtyard I suppose." She replied, her blue eyes scanning the hall whilst the crowd of beige robes shuffled across white marble floors. What she was looking for he had no idea but with her it could be anything. "Shall we?"

Roan followed suit and climbed to his feet but as they followed the crowd out, he glanced over his shoulder at the gigantic oval hole carved out of the wall to let in enough light to bathe Harmonia's statue in a shower of sun rays and then at the stone steps beneath her feet where the body lay in her shadow. Eventually he lost sight of both when the crowd tightened up so that neighbours were bumping shoulders with one another after each step.

He let himself get lost in watching his own feet, fading into the background of the quiet murmur of marching feet and soft voices until Heather suddenly turned to him with a question.

"Do you believe what they say? That the Draven...well that they invite chaos to transform into dragons?"

"You think if it were a choice, that any Elf would want to be a Draven, knowing that they will be hunted and killed by the rest of their kind?" He inquired.

"No," She said after a moment of quiet consideration. "I suppose not."

"Neither do I." He said, hoping she wouldn't notice the edge in his tone. "It would be...illogical."

She went awfully quiet after that until she shook her beautiful blonde head of hair that had two attendants take care of every morning. "But there has to be a solution to them, right?"