The Afterlife series Box Set (Books 1-3)

by Willow Rose

  Maybe it was just cold feet. That’s pretty normal before a wedding, to doubt if this is really what I want, I told myself. We had only done this one day; maybe it would get better along the way. I had to admit I hadn’t given him much chance. Plus I loved him, I really did. Just thinking of being close to his body and maybe … one day … made me smile and all warm inside. We had agreed to wait till after the wedding, and that made me want him even more. I was looking forward to that part of being married.

  I put my head back on the pillow and felt calmer on the inside. No relationships were without problems. It was just cold feet. That was all it was.

  Even then, I didn’t sleep well, tossing and turning in my dreams, waking often. In my dream it was dark, and what little light there was seemed to come from Mick’s radiant eyes. In my dream, everywhere I looked in the blackness he was there, and I couldn’t escape him no matter how fast I ran. If I turned from him, his eyes would be in front of me again, staring at me.

  Troubled by the sinister dream, I opened my eyes and stared into the dormitory. I felt my heart racing again. There he was, right beside my bed, by my feet, standing next to me. Mick’s radiant blue eyes stared at me in the darkness. The light from the moon outside reflected in them. He didn’t seem to notice I was awake. So I closed my eyes again, hoping that I had only been dreaming again. My breathing was heavy as I dozed off. It wasn’t until the early hours that I sank into a deep dreamless sleep.

  When I woke up the next morning Mick wasn’t there. My eyes searched for him for a couple of seconds, and then I finally decided that it had all been a dream. When I got out of bed, I was tired and edgy. As I went through the door, Mick was waiting for me outside. He leaned against the wall looking at me casually with those blue eyes. They made me feel that feeling from the dream again. I didn’t know what to do—kiss him or run away.

  “Sleep well?” he asked as he bowed down to kiss me.

  “Not really,” I replied while letting him do it.

  At breakfast I had some cereal while Mick had eggs. As usual, Mick was the center of attention and lots of people came to talk during the meal. Even Rahmiel came to our table this morning. She looked at Mick and then at me. Mick got up and bowed in front of her. Then he took her big hand and kissed it. I, on the other hand, barely had the energy to lift my head and smile at her. I kept my head bowed over my bowl, while they spoke. Needless to say I wasn’t the chatty type in the morning and especially not that day.

  “So how are things with the two of you?” Rahmiel said with her singing voice. She was the Angel of love and mercy and had the ability to make spirits feel calm and loved in her presence. I felt it now, but tried to fight it. I was in a lousy mood and felt like staying there for awhile. I wanted to throw myself a little pity party today. There was nothing wrong with that every once in awhile. I was about to make a big and difficult decision; no wonder I had nightmares and doubts.

  “We are doing very well, my lady,” Mick said while he sat down at the table again.

  He always called her that. It made him so old, I thought to myself. It was cute too. Maybe it’s just me, I thought as I saw how everybody greeted Mick and waved at him to say good morning. He was the popular one. Was that bothering me? Was I the only one who didn’t know how to appreciate him as he deserved? Suddenly I got a feeling of great condemnation and guilt. After all, he was only trying to protect me. It wasn’t his fault that I didn’t want his protection.

  “It is good to hear,” sang Rahmiel with a huge smile matching her huge body. “Any news on a date yet?”

  I froze as she spoke. My spoon landed in the bowl and splashed the leftover milk. Mick looked at me and then back at Rahmiel. I awaited his response with ears wide open. What was he going to answer to that? Mick shook his head with clenched lips.

  “Not yet, I am afraid.” Then he paused and looked at me. “Meghan is taking her time.”

  Rahmiel smiled at me. “Well there is nothing wrong with that,” she said.

  “I know. We are not in a hurry here. I mean we have all of eternity to figure it out, don’t we?” Mick gestured wildly with his arms. I detected a hint of bitterness in his voice that made my inside freeze. He didn’t even seem to try to hide it. Rahmiel noticed it right away as well.

  “Patience can be tough, but it is necessary in a marriage,” she said while smiling at me. I smiled and blushed.

  “I am just …” I said, but Mick interrupted me.

  “It will come. She will come around soon,” he said with a forced soft voice. Then he looked at me and touched my cheek.

  “Very well,” Rahmiel said. “I will leave you two alone. Just let me know in time so I can make the arrangements and make sure that everybody can be there. It is not every day two spirits gets married here in our school. I want it to be more than perfect.”

  “We will, my lady,” Mick said and grabbed my hand. “You will be the first to know.”

  “I didn’t appreciate that,” I said when she was gone. I pulled my hand out of his.

  “Appreciate what?” Mick asked.

  “That you spoke about me as if I wasn’t here.”

  The expression on his face told me he didn’t understand. “What are you talking about?”

  “You interrupted me when I tried to explain myself and talked about me like I was just a child.”

  Mick shook his head. “I really don’t understand you these days. It is like I can’t do anything right. I try my best and this is what I get from you. I don’t know what to do anymore.” He paused and looked around the hall. Then he leaned over the table and said with a low voice: “If you don’t want to be treated like a child, you should stop acting like one.”

  I stared him in the eyes for a long time, feeling the tears piling up inside. Tears of frustration, tears of anger. Who did he think he was? I got up from the table.

  “You know what? I don’t need this right now,” I said.

  I left him sitting at alone the table while I went to my Art of Healing class.

  The Archangel Raphael had already started when I arrived. He stopped talking as I entered a little confused and with the feeling of a waterfall of tears stuck in my throat. Raphael gave me a look.

  “I don’t want to hear it,” I said with a harsh voice as I passed him and floated toward my seat. I didn’t want to hear anything about me being late, so I left no room for him to get angry.

  “It’s all right, I guess,” Raphael said a little perplexed as well. He went to his desk and turned a couple of pages in the textbook.

  I stared at the door as Raphael resumed. I expected Mick to enter any moment, but he didn’t. I felt so frustrated and angry.

  “This year we have a new task for you. In order to earn your degree, you have to do a project. It is a special assignment that will last through your final year,” Raphael said.

  He paused and looked at all of us before he continued. I thought I heard a voice and turned to look at the door again, but no one entered through it. Maybe it had just been someone in the corridor outside. This was crazy. Now all of a sudden I wanted Mick to come and be in my class. I didn’t like that he was mad at me. This whole marriage thing was about to destroy us.

  “So you are all going to have an individual assignment handed out by Salathiel tomorrow at a small ceremony. Each task will be different and you cannot compare yours with other students’ assignments. They will suit you and are specially designed for you. No one else can solve them for you; it is something you have to do on your own.”

  As usual Nigel had his hand in the air. “What if we can’t solve them on our own?” He asked. “Can we ask for help?”

  “You can discuss them with your classmates and ask for guidance, but it might not mean the same to them as it does to you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “These are personalized assignments; therefore they have to do with something you need, an area you need to work on, something you need to learn.”

  For a long time, a
great silence filled the classroom. Everyone wondered what their task might be.

  “I can tell you are confused. But I can tell you that it will all be clearer to you when you receive your assignment. Then my advice to you will be to have patience. It might take awhile before it is completely clear to you why you have gotten exactly this assignment. But you will see. It will suddenly occur to you.”

  I didn’t pay as much attention to what Raphael said as I would have liked to, so when I finally decided to listen I got really confused. As we left his class, everybody was talking about it. How they were afraid of failing; how they didn’t know where they would find the time for it. They were just concerned because it was something new, something we had never done before. I was glad we had gotten this. Maybe it wasn’t so bad after all. A big project could take my mind of Mick and me.

  I didn’t see him again until lunch break. At that time I felt really sorry and all the anger from earlier was gone. He left a note for me on my plate to meet him in the Butterfly Garden. “Bring the food,” it said. The plate was empty but next to it was a big picnic basket. I grabbed it with a smile and hurried out into the garden where Mick waited for me, lying on the grass.

  “I am so so sorry,” I said as I sat down next to him.

  He lifted his head and looked at me. Then he sat up. “No, I am the one who is sorry. I hate when we argue. I can’t stand it. It tears me apart on the inside.” He touched his chest to show me how much it hurt. Then he paused before he grabbed my face between his hands. I heard his heavy breathing as he pressed his lips very softly against mine. His kiss shifted between desperation and passion as he pressed me into the grass, holding me by both my shoulders. Then he climbed on top of me and started kissing my throat, then breathing into my ears as he gave in to his lust in a brief moment of weakness. It was like he was trying to devour me, make me one with him. He was like an animal marking his territory, telling the world that I was his, that no one was to come near to me but him. He wanted to own me, to possess me. And I let him. For a moment I breathed him, I tasted his skin and smelled his scent.

  Then I felt him turn to stone. He pulled his body away from mine with great force. I saw his guarded expression. His eyes were wild, his jaw clenched with restraint.

  “Not now,” he whispered. “Not like this.”

  I sat up and looked him in the eyes.

  “Don’t be mad at me anymore,” he whispered as he laid his head in my hands. “Please?” His eyes were big and puppy-like. I couldn’t help but smile.

  “I’m not mad at you,” I said. Then I paused. “But I do think that this marriage thing has come between us.”

  He nodded pensively. “I agree. What do you suggest we do?”

  “Take it a little slower.”

  “Or …” He looked at me with a playful smirk, holding my gaze. “Or we could just set a date right now.”

  I sighed. His puppy-eyes were still staring at me. I couldn’t get mad at him. Then I made a decision I knew I would regret. I was tired of this ongoing discussion, so I decided to finally close it.

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s do it.”

  Mick sat up, looking very surprised. He had not expected that answer from me. I liked being unpredictable.

  “Really? Are you serious?”

  I started unpacking the picnic basket and took a bite of a sandwich while I felt his eyes studying my every move. I laughed to myself. Butterflies flickered over our heads, like they knew what was going on. “Sure.”

  “Okay,” he said with a big smile. “What about this Saturday?” His voice filled with huge expectation.

  I swallowed the bite of the sandwich hard. It was a little sooner than I had expected. I was more thinking like in six months or maybe right before graduation, in the spring when everything was so beautiful. I couldn’t help but wondering why he was in such a hurry. Was he just eager to marry me or was there something else causing him to press on like this? I couldn’t see why he would have an ulterior motive, so I just swallowed my pride along with the ham sandwich.

  “What about we say the Saturday after that?” I said. “We have a lot of planning to do.”

  Mick shook his head. “No, no. I have everything ready.”

  “What? But I need a dress and we need to find …”

  Mick put a finger over my lips to silence me. “It is all taken care of.”

  I looked at Mick. I felt overtaken. This was my wedding too, and I wanted to have some say in it. At this moment I wanted to speak up. I wanted to let him know that this wasn’t okay. But as I looked into his eyes, I couldn’t. I didn’t want to fight anymore about stuff like this. Inside of me a little voice was whispering, Maybe, just maybe … He is really trying to be nice to you. It wouldn’t be the first time that he went overboard to try to make you happy. On top of it all Mick seemed so extremely proud. Like he had been waiting an eternity to tell me about this. At this moment I was sure this was the exact case. Mick had really prepared everything and had just been waiting for me to say when. I couldn’t figure out if he had done this to make it go faster for some reason or if it was really to make it all easier on me.

  “Okay … I guess …” I mumbled.

  Mick looked at me. Then he leaned toward me and whispered: “All you have to do is show up and say I do at the right moment.”

  I smiled. It felt good to have finally made the decision, to set the date. I wanted this. I had said yes to marry Mick and it was time to follow through with my promise. As we ate the rest of the food together in the garden, I enjoyed listening to Mick as he explained just how he had planned for the wedding. I discovered that I felt a new feeling. For the first time I was looking forward to becoming his wife. I didn’t even think about the spectacle that I would have to star in soon.

  Chapter 6

  At the dinner table in Hornam Hall that same night, I realized just how big a show this was going to be. We had barely finished the main course before Headmaster Salathiel got up and silenced everyone by lifting his glass high, something he would normally only do when we welcomed new students at the school.

  “Today we are celebrating the love between two students at The Academy,” he said with a big smile while looking in my direction. Oh no, I thought while my stomach turned to knots. Not this, anything but this. I felt my whole face blush and I shrank in size while trying to avoid the eyes of everybody in the hall, the happy and anticipating faces. “Today Mick and Meghan have decided on a date for their wedding.”

  Salathiel had barely finished the sentence before the crowd burst into a loud cheer, which made me shrink even more. I don’t know what I had imagined, maybe a quiet little ceremony for us and our friends, but as people clapped and cheered out our names, I realized that this was not how this was going to be. This was, in fact, going to involve the whole school.

  “The wedding will be held this Saturday,” Salathiel finally said. “It will take place in the Phoenix Garden.”

  I stared at Mick. “Is this true?” He nodded with a secretive smile. I was impressed. Normally the Phoenix Garden was closed to students. No one I knew had ever been in there. I had heard stories about it, about how the phoenixes lived there and how their colors were like something we had never seen. The phoenixes supposedly were like huge eagles with feathers of pure gold. They could live for more than a thousand years before they would turn to ashes from which a new young baby phoenix would arise. They needed peace and quiet and therefore no students were allowed in there. Not until now, that was. How Mick had pulled this off, I had no idea, but I was really impressed. Slowly I let go of all my concerns. Maybe it wasn’t that bad after all to have the whole school at my wedding. It was going to be beautiful beyond what I could ever dream of. If only Jason could be there, I caught myself thinking. I looked anxiously at Mick as if he could somehow hear my thoughts. Then I shook my head slowly as if I could somehow shake the thought out of me and make it go away.

  “I miss you already …”

  “Me too.”<
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  “I could stay …” Mick said with a smile. We were standing outside of my dormitory. It was late. Dinner had lasted for hours since everybody wanted to congratulate us and Mick had treated the whole school with delicacies and champagne until we were stuffed. In the end a few had even started dancing. That was when we left.

  “Mmm …” I held him close to me, and was just enjoying the moment. I wanted it to last forever. I was happy and in love.

  We were both quiet for a long time. Just the sound of my heart hammering, the broken rhythm of our breathing close to one another. The whispering lips when we kissed. When our lips melted together and became one. The shiver when the fluid of our bodies touched.

  “I have to go,” Mick finally said and pushed his body free of mine. He was restraining himself again, I could tell.

  “Always the gentleman,” I said while smiling.

  He bowed elegantly. I laughed. Then he grabbed my hand and kissed it. I tilted my head and grabbed his hand as he tried to let go of mine. Then I pulled him close and kissed him. Intensely, passionately.

  “Saturday,” he whispered as I let him go. He started flying backward down the corridor. “Look what you do to me,” he yelled with laughter. “I can’t even fly straight. I am completely woozy from your wonderful kiss.”

  I laughed too. “Better get used to it.”

  He stopped and gave me a look and a let out a sigh filled with relief and pride. Then he smiled and bowed before he oozed through the brick wall.

  The ceremony for handing out our healing assignments took place in the library of the castle. All the third-year students were present, as were our teachers and both Salathiel and Rahmiel. Trumpets sounded as we entered and our names were announced. I approached the podium as I heard my name called out and smiled at Salathiel when he handed me a folder.