A Court of Secrets and Moonlight

46: First Glimpse

Leuruna

30 years after the lie

No healer could figure out why my back hurt so bad.

It was a constant tightness, pulling on my shoulder blades, deep within my body. It was frustrating, always nagging on me, as if I was always holding something back.

The constant training didn't help.

Day in and day out, I trained. I had all but mastered my light, even learning how to form it into a beam so bright it disintegrated whatever it touched. But more than that, Cylos brought in soldiers from all across the territory to train me in battle techniques. From all around the globe, I was trained in various types of warfare and battle strategies. Apparently, I had a natural talent for it.

It wasn't rewarding. It felt like I was being used.

When I wasn't fighting, I was reading or doing research. Anything I could get my hands on, any map I could find, just praying that something would ring a bell. Types of magic, history of the territories, spells, healing magic for the mind, anything I could think of to restore what was lost. I was certain that something would pull me in a direction, something would spark a memory.

Nothing ever did.

I had to have come from somewhere. Someone had to be looking for me. I imagined it sometimes, when I lay awake at night staring up at the night sky. I imagined what it would be like to have a family, to have people who knew me, loved me. I imagined what it would feel like to belong somewhere, to have a home. To know that someone cared, that I wasn't just some weapon being honed or a ghost floating through this endlessly gold palace.

Sometimes I thought maybe I had never had that. If the scars on my body were anything to go by, something bad had happened to me. And maybe the truth was that nobody had cared enough to stop it. Maybe I had been abandoned, and nobody had even noticed I was gone. Maybe I had been hated by my peers, or committed a crime.

It was on one of these nights, where I couldn't stop the way tears filled my eyes at the thought of having nobody and nothing to return to, that the dreams started.

It was a simple dream, The sight of my hand being held as I walked down a cobblestone pathway. I was young, much shorter than the male whose hand I held. Though, I had the vague sense that he wasn't much older than me. I was maybe ten or eleven, and he was in his early teens. I couldn't see his face, or couldn't remember when I woke up. But I knew that he had dark black hair, wavy like mine but missing the violet tone. Atop his calloused hand sat a glowing red stone, one that I could not stop staring at. He was talking to me, but it was as if I could not hear the words he was saying, only the sound of his voice.

There was an overwhelming sense of pride going through me. Pride and joy, and something that felt like I belonged. Something that told me I would never truly be alone, that whoever this boy was would always be at my side. He'd always know, he'd always care.

And maybe I had been so desperate for that feeling that I had invented it. Perhaps it was just a figment of my imagination, a false memory created by my own longing. That's what I told myself.

Until I had the next dream.

A melodic voice singing a lullaby, soft and sweet. A brush running through my hair, combing it smooth before the waves sprang back into place. I was wearing a soft lavender nightgown, warm as I sat by a crackling fire. I knew that the rain was turning into sleet outside, knew that it was freezing cold. I was young, maybe only six or seven, and there was a purple mist around me. So light it was almost grey, nearly invisible, drifting around me, sticking to the shadows created by the glowing fire.