Smoke and Mirrors

Sapphire Ragna Nightborne

All those years of hearing that we had to respect the Moon Goddess, the drilling we received, I threw them all away the second our eyes met. The wind bit at my face as I charged towards her, claws raised, so what if she had created my kind, I did not owe her anything, in fact, she owed me for the wonderful life I was given.

I prepared to pounce on her and tear her to bits when an invisible force knocked me to the side causing me to hit the hard ground, rocks scraped against my skin as I slide and they succeeded in tearing my skin coating several blades of grass red. I keeled over and coughed as I brought a hand to my side, great, there goes a rib.

“Sapphire, you should calm down and…”

I did not let her finish what she wanted to say before charging at her again causing her to sigh as she waved her hand knocking me to the ground yet again. I ignored the sting coming from various parts of my body as I stood right back up ready to charge at her again, so what if I got hurt, I already had my bones broken numerous times so what were a few more. I lunged forward only to feel tight bindings snaking around my middle, pinning my arms to my side, holding me where I was and was pulled so taut that it bit into my skin, making it so that I could not even move an inch.

My lips curled to reveal my bared teeth as she walked up to me, she took no heed to my open warning of hostility as she just gave me a soft smile before reaching a hand to my bicep, I tried to shirk away as I under no circumstances wanted her hands on me but unfortunately the bindings did not really give me a choice.

She left her hand on the scrapes for a few seconds, I snarled even louder as my skin felt like it was burning but she just shushed me and continued to leave her hand on my wounds. After an awkward five minutes, she finally lifted her hand to show that only smooth skin remained, there was not even a faint mark. I glared at her as she scanned my body from head to toe, it was a quiet affair till she let out a sigh as her eyes reached my blood stained hands.

“You almost killed him.”

It was not a question but a statement, a rather nice one if I had to be honest. The evident disapproval and disappointment dripping from her voice made the barely contained anger in me surge even more, what had been a heated furnace was now a blazing inferno.

How dare she chides me about killing when she allowed so many to needlessly die, how dare she preach to me about the value of life when she just stood by and watched her children as they were brutally slaughtered. My facial expression must have betrayed what I was feeling as she approached me with caution and raised hands.

“I am going to let you go now, Sapphire, but you have to promise me that you would not try to lunge at me or try in any form to attack me again. I am only here to talk so please let me have my say as I am sure that what I have to say is something that you would be very interested to hear. However, if you try to lunge or attack me again, I will be forced to put you in these bindings again and leave you there as I talk to you because whether you like it or not, you will hear and listen to what I have to say.”

I wanted to reply to her with some choice words from my favourite and now frequently used list of expletives but decided to just nod my head, she sounded so desperate to talk to me so maybe what she had to say was worth listening to.

I rolled my shoulder and sighed in relief as the bindings that bound me slackened, another sigh involuntarily left my lips as I felt the satisfying crack that came with rotating my stiff limbs. My posture might have been relaxed but my eyes never left hers as I continued to glare at her with as much intensity as I could muster, if I could not hurt her physically then I would do it mentally in my head.

“Say your piece fast. I have important things to do.”

I could not wait to go back and finish what I had started,

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I was once again in tight bindings as I struggled to break free so that I could lunge forward and claw her eyes or better yet her heart out. I had just been informed that there was a problem in this game they had set for us, they had miscalculated the hero’s lineage and had ‘accidentally’ swapped the villain with the hero causing our poor female lead to suffer for no apparent reason.

“Sapphire, please listen to me! The harder you struggle the tighter the bindings will become! Please calm down and let me explain!”

Tears brimmed in her eyes as she continuously tried to soothe me to try and get me to calm down but what she did not seem to understand was that her voice only increased the anger I already felt inside me, that blazing inferno was not the fires of Hell. I had been trapped with that monster for months and it was only now that she deemed something was wrong and so decided that it was time to review the scheme of things.

What angered me the most was that it was only because of what I was about to do that caught her attention. Did she think something was wrong when he killed my entire pack, every man, woman, and child? No. Did she think something was wrong when he mercilessly tortured me in every way possible, destroying the last thing I had of my mother? No. Did she think something was obviously wrong when my beloved mate showed me the severed heads of my family? No. She only deemed something was wrong when I tried to kill him, it had been my ‘unreasonable’ and brutal actions which caused her to think that there was something just not right with our relationship, everything that Damien did to me was all part of a healthy relationship.

“I am so sorry, Sapphire.”

She looked so heartbroken and ashamed that if I didn’t know better I would have actually believed that she truly cared about my well-being.

“Sorry? You’re sorry! After all, you have done to me, why in the world would you think that I would actually believe you are sorry! Moreover, after everything that you caused, your measly sorry does not even begin to cover anything!”

My throat hurt as I shouted at her, my voice turning hoarse as I hurled all of my emotions right at her. I had never felt so many different emotions bubbling inside me, rage, sadness, disappointment and many more, it was such a build-up that I just wanted to shout to let everything out, to pour up all the things that I have kept pent up inside me.

“Sapphire, my sister and I…”

The mention of her sister caused my anger to spark yet again, it was her who was responsible for the chaos my life is right now. I let out a small short laugh as I thought about her and the role she played.

“Your accursed sister, the wonderful puppet master of this Roman tragedy. I bet my bottom dollar that she probably thought that she could use her power to force us together again right? Well tell her for me that I am not the love-sick saps that she is used to dealing with, I am not the type of girl who clings on to the idea of love, I am not like my sister. Tell she can go to Hell for all I care! And you! The Great Mother of Wolves, where were you when my family laid there dying? Where were you when I was tortured for no reason other than existing? For someone who calls themselves the Great Mother, you sure do suck at being one.”

I did not care if I sounded childish or immature, I just wanted to throw something at her, anything that would hurt her. She just stood there and took my verbal abuse with a sad smile on her face which made me even angrier, I wanted her to scream at me, to try and hit me, anything that would give me the right to lash out at her, to see that my words made her feel the guilt she deserved to suffer. However, the fire that burned within my very soul started to quell as a thought entered my head.

My family, my poor family. They had died for no reason, they did not die because they valiantly tried to protect our pack, they did not die with such honour, they had died because of a single miscalculation.

My poor nephew, I could not even begin to think of how he suffered at the hands of Damien’s men, the fear he must have felt as he was all alone to fend for himself, he had never been one to fight and he probably felt so abandoned. Can you imagine? The last thing you feel before you die is abandonment.

My poor sister, she died the day she found out she was carrying her first child after years of trying for one, she bounded into my room glowing as she gushed about the future that was stolen from her.

The only person I feel no guilt or anger for is Ryder, the only good to come from this miscalculation was that I finally knew his true colours and the true face that lied behind the mask he showed to us for years, I could not even fathom what my sister suffered under his hands, how she managed to live with him and let him touch her. He deserved what he received.

Before I realised it, the tears that I had become familiar with started to flow down my cheeks as thought about how everything in my life was truly a lie, even the fairy tale I was told was my life was a lie. I could think of nothing except the things I lost, the possible future I could have had, the possible future that any of those who died would have had. It seemed almost laughable that the lives and futures of so many hopeful individuals could just be taken just because of a miscalculation by two overconfident Goddesses who decided that we lower beings were nothing but their personal dolls and that they were the ones who could decide our story, our fate.

I felt the bonds that held me tight start to slacken but before I could even lunge at the Moon Goddess, her arms enveloped me in a hug, my arms pinned stiff to my side as she buried her face in the crook of my neck. I felt her body shake and tremble as her tears formed a trail down the curve of my neck before staining my top.

“I am so sorry, Sapphire. I should have stopped my sister, I should have helped you sooner, I am so sorry.”

I could barely make out the words she was saying as the sobs wracked through her body, her voice trembling with each word she said. My arms remained stiff at my side but I felt a lump form in my throat the more she sobbed and soon my lips began to tremble as tears of my own flowed down my face and down the curve of my neck, mixing with hers as they darkened my clothes. The pain in my chest resonated through my entire body, the wound in my heart that was left after my family passed slowly mended after the news of my ‘past’ as it gave me the slight closure I needed to move on and accept reality but right now, it felt as though someone had ripped open the wound, stitch by stitch.

The first stitch was ripped after I was told that my family need not have died. The second stitch was ripped after I was told that the torture I had suffered through at the hands of that monster was all for nothing, I thought my silence at his torture would at least give my family some vengeance. Every other stitch that was left was ripped out with every possibly happy future I could have had. It seemed ironic now to think about how the bindings that I wanted to escape so badly were the only things holding me together, the only things keeping me from falling apart.

I should have felt the anger course through my veins as it did earlier but in actual fact, I felt nothing except for the ache in my chest. My grief had surpassed even the levels of raging and screaming that there was nothing left inside me, even my tears stopped their flow as there was simply no more tears left for me to shed and nothing for me to shed them for anymore. What else had I had to lose? I had no more family, no mate, no future, everything that I had and held close had been taken from me.

Even as a child I did not coddle myself and make finding my perfect mate the main focus in my life, I had always hoped that one day I would find the right man who would be proud of my achievements, not disgusted like most of the men in my pack were, who would proudly boast about my title and not be jealous of it, who would simply love me for me, flaws and all.

Children. I had always wanted children, I had always been adamant that I wanted two, one boy and one girl. I had envisioned that they would share my copper skin, I always imagined one of them inheriting my curls and I would soon face the terror that my sister and father did of trying to tame it, I imagined how training them would be, I would not have minded if they did not want to take my position in the future but I imagined training them so no one would ever call them weak, like they called me.

I took deep breaths as I calmed myself, what was lost was lost, no amount of raging or crying would bring them back. I had to move one no matter how hard it would be, I have to move on, I had always wanted to create my own fate and now was the time to put my words into action.

“Let me go.”

This time I did not shout at her, I did not hurl expletives at her, I just spoke. My voice sounded tired because I was, I, after all, had just hit with a trainload of information. The Moon Goddess let out one last sob before taking a step backwards, refusing to look at my eyes.

“Pull yourself together and tell me how I can fix things or at least change them. You owe me that at the very least.”

The Moon Goddess gave me a small smile before extending her hand, a small vial sat in the palm of it. I quirked an eyebrow at her as I saw that it was empty. Her smile widened as she spoke again.

“Before I give you the contents of what is supposed to fill this vial, I want you to be absolutely sure of the decision you are going to make right now as once you consume the contents of this vial your bond with Damien will be shattered forever, you will not even feel an inkling of longing towards him although I cannot say the same for him. This will help you regain the power you lost to him, but it is possible that remnants of your power would still remain in him.”

Without a doubt in my mind I nodded my head, I had never been so sure of a decision in my life, I wanted to be free of him forever and I wanted back the power he stole.