"Lizzie?" the group called after her in surprise. She spun around and yelled at them. "Don't follow us! Since you're so unhappy with who I brought, you can get lost! Go find that Liv and see if she gives a damn about you!"
They regretted it immediately. They scrambled to catch up, but the ceremonial items in their arms slowed them down.
Lizzie and I shared the load and ran forward together. Apologies and shouts chased us on the wind. I couldn't help laughing out loud, feeling as if I'd rediscovered the pure joy of running across a meadow as a child.
Finally, we stopped in front of the small cabin in the forest where ceremonial items were stored.
Lizzie pulled out a key and opened the door. We went inside and set everything down. I looked at her young face, still clouded with worry, and shook my head.
"Lizzie." I handed her a folded piece of paper. "This has all the ceremony procedures and the exact placement of every item. I wrote it all down. Take it to them."
"Luna..." Lizzie hadn't expected this. She was almost speechless. "Why would you still help them? After the way they treated you..."
"You're part of their group. If the preparations go wrong, you'll be punished too," I said. "I don't want that to happen to you. Besides, I wrote this down in advance. I knew exactly how they'd treat me."
But I had come anyway, just to repay this foolish girl who had treated me with genuine kindness.
Lizzie's eyes glistened. I turned to organize the supplies, pretending not to notice her losing composure. "Go on. I'll finish organizing these and then leave."
"Yes, Luna…"
I arranged everything neatly and prepared to leave. Just as I was about to turn around, the cabin door burst open.
"Well, look who it is. You got kicked out of the pack, yet you’d rather do grunt work just to force your way into the ceremony lineup." An unwelcome voice rang out. Liv stood in the doorway, smirking triumphantly at me.
Her platinum hair was braided beautifully down her back. She wore the flowing white gown reserved only for the ceremony's leader, its layered skirts swaying like a flower about to bloom.
"Serenity, you'd better leave immediately. This isn't a place you should be." She lifted her chin and looked down at me withdisdain. "You're not leading the ceremony. You have no right to touch these sacred items."
I frowned. This was my first time facing Liv directly since her return. It felt strange.
Elias said she'd lost her memory, yet she still harbored the same inexplicable hostility toward me as before. That familiar sense of being targeted made me suspicious. I decided to test her.
"I was just helping out." I turned to face her directly. "This shouldn't be my job. But Liv, if you had done anything, would they have needed to ask for my help?"
A flash of irritation crossed Liv's face. "You have no right to lecture me, Serenity! You're nothing now. No status, no power. Even Elias doesn't want you!"
I looked at her expressionlessly. I felt nothing.
She thought she could hurt me this way. But I wasn't afraid of her anymore.
"And what about you, Liv?" I took a step toward her. "You're always showing off in front of me, but what do you have besides Elias? No—you don't even have him. So what if you staged that fall off the cliff? Even if I'm just a traitor in his mind, after six months, he's still my mate. The real loser is you."
My attitude infuriated her. "Shut up! If you hadn't butted in back then, I would have been Elias's Luna long ago! He's always belonged to me?—"
She cut herself off abruptly, realizing what she had said. And so did I.
"You didn't lose your memory," I said with absolute certainty.
Liv looked panicked and uneasy for a moment, but she quickly recovered her forced sneer. "So what if you figured it out? Are you going to tell Elias? Who do you think he'd believe—you or me?"
I stayed silent. Because she was right. Between us, Elias would always believe her.
But I refused to show weakness. I lifted my chin. "How will I know unless I try? You know how much Elias hates being deceived. You're pretending to have amnesia when you remember everything perfectly. Who knows what you're really after? Liv, I don't believe you can keep up this perfect act in front of him forever without slipping up."
I headed for the door. As I passed her, she suddenly grabbed my arm. "You're not going anywhere!"
Her unexpected yank nearly knocked me off balance. I looked up at her angrily, ready to snap at her, when I saw her face—twisted with something deeply wrong.
