by Larissa Ladd
“What’s wrong?” he asked and rushed towards me, kneeling on the floor so that his face was the same height as mine.
I looked at him, feeling like I had just woken up from a nightmare and it was still haunting me, hoping that reality would sink and it would all feel better again. But it wouldn’t. This wasn’t a nightmare, this was my life, and kneeling in front of me was the man who I had promised my heart to, and now I would have to break his.
“Oh, it’s nothing you need to be concerned about. It’s just about meeting,” I said, my voice sounding strange to myself.
“What happened?” he asked. The worry on his face betrayed that he suspected there was more. I didn’t usually look like this when the meetings weren’t great. That happened often enough.
I shook my head, not wanting to betray more than I had to, not wanting to let him know that nothing could be worse than it felt to me right then. But he looked into my eyes, his brown liquid eyes full of concern, and before I knew what was happening, I felt tears well up in my eyes and spill over my cheeks.
It was like a dam had burst, and I couldn’t help myself. I cried. I cried it all out: the fear, the anger, the uncertainty, the unfairness of it all. And not just the fact that they wanted me to marry a guy who looked like a white rat from the Valley, but the fact that they had never wanted me to be happy, had never wanted me to be who I wanted to be, never allowed me to be free. It wasn’t my fault I was who I was, but now there had to be some sort of responsibility that came with it, like it was a choice I had made.
Devan pulled me closer and wrapped his arms around me, not asking questions and not saying anything. I had never been this emotional in front of someone before, but his wordless comfort made me feel like it was alright. I had always felt safe in his arms, and now it was even more so than ever as the sobs shook my body and his shoulder caught every one of my tears.
It felt like hours before my body finally calmed down, before I felt like my breathing could become regular again, like I could try and speak without sounding hysterical. I felt like I had been crying for days, my insides were empty and wrung out.
He leaned back, looked at me with so much love and gentle care that it made my heart constrict, and then he got up and sat next to me on the couch.
“Tell me what happened,” he said, and it seemed wrong not to, after what he was to me, after how he proved that he was there for me even when things weren’t alright.
“They’re here from the Valley, the witches from the coven there, the high priestess and a man, both of whom I haven’t seen before, although we all know that the Valley witches are our allies.”
“What are they doing here?”
I swallowed hard, took a deep breath and released it, feeling it escape with a shudder that shook my whole body.
“They have chosen him for my partner, a match for me being the high priestess.”
He nodded slowly, looking at his hands where his fingers were interlinked in front of him, his elbows resting on his knees.
“So, it’s like some sort of business partnership?” he asked, and I shook my head, looking at my hands now too. I couldn’t bear to look him in the eyes.
“No. He’s here to be my husband.”
The apartment went quiet, and it was as if time stood still as the words that I had just spoken hung between us. I could feel Devan’s confusion, twisting and turning as he fought with what I said, and then it shifted into a mixture of sorrow and anger, the saddest mixture I had ever felt, when he finally realized what those words meant.
“But, Cherry… I don’t understand how this works. You’re just going to let them dictate your life for you?” his voice was controlled, but I could feel that he was making an effort to keep calm.
“It’s the rules, Devan,” I said, my voice almost a whisper, “that’s part of what being a high priestess means, that your partner is chosen for you, you’re matched according to strength and what you can give back to the witches of the world.”
“And you didn’t think about this when you agreed to do it?” his voice was getting louder; I could feel the anger inside him growing and threatening to escape through his words.
“I was single, we’d just broken up, and I thought I’d lost you… There wasn’t anything else left for me. That’s what they’d been going on about anyway,” I tried to keep my voice reasonable, but I could feel my voice buckle as the tears pushed up again, I heard how it was starting to sound like a plea.
Devan got up and started pacing the room, linking his fingers behind his head and breathing out loudly, billowing his cheeks as he did so. I didn’t know what to say; the atmosphere just became so unbearable that I had to do something.
“Please, Devan, it’s not something I chose. It’s been like this since anyone can remember. We grew up that way.”
“I just don’t understand; you told me you wanted to be with me forever. We said that despite how hard things should be with us, being what we are, you’re willing to fight. But now that there’s some guy from another coven claiming that he should be your husband, you’re just going to accept it? That doesn’t sound like a fight to me at all.”
“I don’t know what to do, okay? It’s not just about them not agreeing with me. You know what happened the last time I tried fighting them.” His face paled when I reminded him of the time I ended up in hospital. My coven had attacked me because I wouldn’t become high priestess like they wanted me to. “If I refuse this, it will be worse. It’s not just my coven now; it’s all the witches of the world. Do you know how many there are?” He shook his head. “More than you can even imagine. And besides that, it will be breaking an allegiance with a coven we have been allies with for centuries. And they might do more than just hurt me, or kill me. They might come after you.”
He was quiet for a moment. He looked at me, the expression in his eyes deep and intense, and I didn’t know what it meant. He didn’t say anything, just looked at me like I had just ripped his whole world out from under him.
“Please, say something,” I said when the silence became unbearable. It wasn’t really the silence; it was the atmosphere, but the silence enhanced it, made it worse.
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” he said, his voice subdued. He looked down at his hands. “I was willing to fight for you, willing to fight despite the fact that my parents’ lives were threatened, willing to fight even though I should really want to fight against you instead of for you. But now, at the first sign of hardship, you’re giving up. I just thought…” He sighed. “I just thought we were more than that.”
He turned and headed for the door.
“Don’t go,” I pleaded, but he didn’t stop. I hated it when he walked away. He didn’t do confrontation, but this wasn’t what it was to me, and I needed him more now than ever, now that it felt like they were here to claim my life. “Please don’t just walk out on me, not now—” But before my sentence was finished, he was out the door, and it closed behind him with a click.
I sat alone in the empty room, and it felt like all the life had been sucked right out of me, like I was an empty shell, and like the last ray of hope had left with him when he’d walked out the door.
Chapter 3: Cherry - Warm Ball of Fury
I didn’t sleep a lot that night. I lay in bed until the early hours of the morning, tossing and turning, thinking about it all. What Devan had said had been true. I didn’t like admitting it, but he was right. It did seem like I was giving up at the first sign of trouble when he had done so much to be with me.
But he couldn’t have forgotten about my coven attacking me and his father. What was that then? I fought with the conflicting emotions: the fear that I would have to leave him because I had no choice, and the relief that I would have to stop fighting against everyone and everything once it was over. Then there was my anger about Mason coming onto the picture so soon, and the thrill of meeting someone who was the same level as me and who would understanding what I was about. Lastly, there was t
he fear that it really was over now between Devan and I. There were just so many of them.
I loved Devan, loved him more than I knew I could love anyone. It was just so hard to be with him, so many fights all the time, so many secrets. And I feared for his life all the time. I knew that things were supposed to be relaxed now because no one knew about him, and with me being the high priestess there wasn’t much that could be done about what I decided, not generally. But I was always petrified of them finding out. I was always looking over my shoulder, and I had found that I could never spend time with him without worrying that somehow we would be discovered.
My stomach was permanently gripped by an iron fist of nervousness and fear, something I had almost come to accept as part of me, because it didn’t go away anymore. Was that really what I needed in a relationship? We loved each other, yes, but was love really enough, enough to balance out the struggle to be together?
By the time the first rays of dawn slowly hinted that the morning had come, I got up. It was pointless trying to sleep anyway. I had to get out of here, out of these four walls. It felt like I was suffocating.
I pulled on a thick sweater and went out, stepping into the chill of the new morning. The cold nipped at my nose and I pulled the sleeves over my hands to keep warm.
I didn’t pay attention to where I was going, I just let my feet take me where they wanted to, and before I knew it, I was on the path that would eventually take me to the cave. The only time I ever walked this path was to get to a meeting; for me, it didn’t lead anywhere else.
Great, I thought, even on the days I want to escape everything my life is, I end up going to where the coven meets. It got me thinking that maybe I was trying in vain to get away from who I was. Maybe I was fighting too hard, maybe it had been a losing battle from the start?
The wind chased over the fields. I had never walked here so early, and everything was still colored with the silver-grey of the night, waiting for the sun before the earth could burst into color. There were no birds yet, and the sky was a hazy grey, with the sun still just under the horizon.
I walked until I was close to the cave, and I’d left every bit of civilization behind me. Out here, I felt like I could breathe again, like I was in a place removed from everything that my life had become. Here Devan didn’t exist; he had stayed behind in the places that held the memories of him. He’d never been here, and there was nothing around me that could remind me of him. It was easier to push him out of my mind here, to let the night before go, and to just be without all of the drama for a while.
In the distance, to the left of the cluster of rocks and the hill that contained the cave, I saw bright flashes. It didn’t look like lightning, or any kind of man-made thing I had ever seen. In fact, there was only one thing I had learned in my life that it could be.
I walked around the hill, following the overgrown path. There, almost waist-deep in grass that grew in the wild field, was Mason. His white hair was striking against the grey backdrop, and the grass around him were shades of pale green and beige, making it all seem very much like a fairytale.
But it wasn’t the surroundings that caught my attention so much as what he was doing.
His hands were moving around him in intricate patterns. He was making sounds, but it wasn’t mumbling the way our coven did it, it was more like humming. Every now and then, when he had completed a pattern, a white light formed around his hands, and followed his motion for a while, drawing patterns in the air before it slowly faded away.
I had only seen light like that a few times before. My mother had done it once when I was very little, but that was just before she died. I had also seen it once at one of the meetings, but generally that didn’t happen. And then, of course, the day I had challenged Devan when I found out he was a fae. I had been so angry then, and that had somehow channeled itself into something greater than I thought I possessed. I had heard that under extreme emotion or duress, a witch could draw upon powers she did not normally possess.
Mason was standing here, open for all to see, creating patterns and spells that were laced with white light. After a while, his humming grew louder, and a fierce wind picked up, swirling around the whole area. The swishing sound of it drowned out his humming, but before long, his lips started moving and even though I couldn’t hear it, I could see he was mumbling now.
Then the winds started turning and swirling only around him. His short white hair moved and his clothes rippled and tugged against him. When it had all built up to a strength that I had never seen in nature before, Mason started lifting off the ground.
In a lot of fairy tales they portray witches as creatures who fly on brooms. That, of course, is nonsense. We can’t fly on a broom any more than a person can walk on water. But what I was seeing here was Mason, using spells to summon the elements, and the wind was literally lifting him up, holding him above the ground.
His eyes were closed, his focus intense, and I stared just as intently at him, watching him in action.
Suddenly, his eyes shot open, and the winds died down. It happened so quickly that it was almost an audible sound as the wind got sucked away. Mason dropped the couple of feet to the ground, his legs giving way under him, causing him to sprawl awkwardly on the ground. Then he got up, and looked straight at me.
“Oh, it’s you,” he said, and relief flashed across his features for a second.
“I’m sorry; am I intruding?” I asked, feeling suddenly like I had witnessed something personal.
“No, no. I just sensed there was someone here watching, and it broke my concentration. It could have been a human and then I would have had to act.”
“What would you have done?” I wanted to know if he was the type who would kill someone because they had seen something they shouldn’t.
“I would have hunted them down and wiped their memories,” he said matter-of-factly.
I’d heard about that; some witches had the ability to tamper with people’s short-term memories. It was easier than having to take them out, safer all round. Unexplained deaths always raised questions and there weren’t a lot of explanations that would be available.
“You’re out in the open,” I said.
“People don’t usually come here at this time; there’s no reason to.”
“But you don’t know that they won’t.”
“I do, I swept the area and the mindsets of all the people close by to see if they would.”
He was one of those. There were witches who could read minds outright.
With mind reading, summoning elements, and ability to erase memories, I was beginning to feel very small next to Mason. It was obvious his powers were a lot more developed than mine.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, and his voice was soft, his pale blue eyes only curious, not angry.
“I needed to clear my head,” I said, feeling suddenly on guard. I didn’t want him to prod around in my thoughts, there were too many things he would find. But no matter how hard I focused, I couldn’t feel the slim tendrils of mind reading and control slip through the barriers of my mind, and I started to relax when I realized he wasn’t trying. Still, it would be better if I just left.
“I’m going to get going,” I said quickly and then lifted my hand in salute before I turned and walked away.
When I was far enough from him, far enough to know that he wouldn’t want to try and read me, I finally dropped the barriers around my mind.
I hadn’t ever seen the kind of power he’d displayed in that field. If it came down to it, I didn’t know if he was someone I could beat, and that doubt was something I’d never felt in my life. As long as I could remember, I’d been the strongest, and I never had to fight someone to get what or where I wanted. But now, it seemed things were different. I understood what it meant for me to have to marry him after that display. He wasn’t chosen to complement me, to add to what I already was. It was the other way around, I was the one who would add to his power.
As soon as I r
ealized that, it made me angry. It started as a warm ball of fury in my chest, and slowly spread through my body as I walked and thought. Who was Nema to force me to be the high priestess because of my powers, only to make me the add-on to someone else? She’d messed up my life, making me think it was for the greater good, when after all, it was just for someone else’s benefit.
No, this would not do. I clenched my hands into fists around the bottoms of my sleeves, and breathed out loudly. I wouldn’t play her game then; I wouldn’t give them what they wanted. I had been scared about the consequences, about what they would do to Devan, and about what they would do to me. But this wasn’t about that anymore. This was about my pride, and if they thought they could use me, they had another thing coming.
I would refuse to marry Mason. I would be with Devan, the way I was now, and they couldn’t do anything about it because, when all was said and done, it was my choice.
I pursed my lips resolutely, and wished I felt as confident about this choice as I needed to be in order to pull it all off.
Chapter 4: Devan - Questions and Doubt
I woke up to the buzzer in my apartment going off repeatedly. I groaned and rolled, looking at the clock through squinted eyes. It was only eight in the morning.
The buzzer went off again.
“Coming,” I said, even though whoever it was wouldn’t be able to hear me. Alex lay in front of my bed his ears pricked at the familiar sound of visitors, but his head was still down.
“Too early for you too, hey?” I said, and then pushed the button just outside my room door.
“Who is it?” I asked.
“It’s me.” Cherry’s voice was clear over the speaker. I sighed. I didn’t know how I felt about anything anymore. It wasn’t that I had planned on ignoring her, but drama first thing this early in the morning was the last thing I needed.
