by Larissa Ladd
Devan grabbed my hand and squeezed it. I looked up at him for a moment, and the look on his face broke my heart. I looked away and tears ran over my cheeks.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and then I pulled my hand from his and fled the room.
Chapter 9: Cherry - Wedding Preparations
We left at the break of dawn. I was in the car with Mason. A truck would be sent for my stuff later; for now, I would stay with him, and we would be introduced into the coven. Then, once the ceremony was done in a week’s time, we would move into a new house and take over the coven completely from Dana.
I looked at the golden rays that started showing on the horizon. My heart ached, it felt like a part of me had been ripped out and I was left to bleed. Devan’s face had been haunting me every day since the day I told him it was over.
He’d made arrangements to leave the same day. He still hadn’t been nearly healthy enough, but his mother had come to pick him up, and had promised me to take good care of him. Devan had looked at me with a why-do-you-even-care look when I’d asked, and even that had hurt.
Couldn’t he see that this was the only way I would be able to hold onto him? The witches wouldn’t rest until they found him, not even now when I wasn’t in the picture, but I wasn’t worried that he could hold his own against my coven. Marlena would be the new high priestess, the role she had always wanted, and he was definitely stronger than she was.
If we had been together, it would have been so much worse. They all would have come after us, both of us, my coven and the coven from the Valley, and they wouldn’t have rested until we were dead. And if other witches caught wind of it, they would have joined them too. No, this was the only way we could have done it. He didn’t understand how I could leave him if I loved him, but the fact was that because I loved him I had to let him go.
We arrived in the Valley, and Mason showed me a spare bedroom in his apartment. I was relieved that he didn’t expect us to share a room. I knew that I would have to be married to him, but it was too soon for me to commit to being so serious with someone straight away.
A ceremony that night introduced me to the witches. It was strange being away from everyone and everything that I knew. I felt lost and awkward, and it felt like they were looking at me with disgust, like they liked me just as little as I liked being there.
The rest of the week consisted of wedding preparations.
It was on the third day that it felt like things weren’t going the way I thought they should have. Mason started ordering me around more and more, telling me to do things that I didn’t think were my place to do. If I was to be the high priestess of this coven, the woman who ruled with him, then I deserved some form of respect. But he ordered me around like I was his maid, his possession, and I had less and less free will.
I had to ask permission to go out. At first, he said it was because he wanted to know where I was so that I wouldn’t get lost. Later he just forbade me to go.
One afternoon, during a meeting, there was question that was raised about the upcoming ceremonies. When I answered, Mason looked at me, his eyes furious, but nothing happened until afterwards.
“Don’t you dare override my authority like that again,” he sneered at me.
“I thought we were ruling together,” I said, not understanding where this hostility came from.
“You’re here as my wife, not my equal. You’re here to serve me.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, sarcastically, “I didn’t realize I was your slave. I thought I was to be your partner.”
He looked at me, his face in a vicious scowl. Then he struck me with the palm of his hand across the face. The blow was so severe that I fell to the side, my cheek burning where his skin had connected with mine and a dull headache thumping all over my head.
“Never again; do you hear me?” he said, and then left the room.
Chapter 10: Devan - The Bride
I lay staring at the ceiling of the room I had grown up in. My parents were in the living room watching television, but I didn’t feel like joining them. I didn’t feel like doing anything anymore. I felt like every single purpose had gone out of my life, and there was nothing left for me to do but wait until the will to do anything at all came back.
I had been up and about, gaining more strength every day, but being strong seemed just as useless as being sick now. She was gone, she’d left me for him, and my life would never be the same. I sighed.
It was four days of this, me just moping around, until one day my mother came into my room.
“Are you going to do something about it?” she asked and I blinked at her.
“You know you can’t just lie here doing nothing for the rest of your life,” she spoke again when I didn’t answer.
“What am I supposed to do?” I asked, “She’s made her choice, and it wasn’t me.” Just speaking those words made my chest ache all over again, a reminder that my heart had been ripped out.
“So, now you’re just going to lie here, pretend like you’re not getting better, and let her slip away from you?”
I didn’t even know if they were married yet. There were things I couldn’t tell my mom, things that she wouldn’t understand. Nothing was as simple as it seemed to her.
“I’m just an old woman with old-fashioned ideas,” she said as if reading my mind, “but in my days, if you loved someone, you went after them. Yes, sometimes bad things happened, and sometimes people made mistakes. She made a mistake by choosing someone else over you. But now you’re making a mistake by not fighting for her.”
“Thanks, Mom,” I said, feeling more down than ever. It really wasn’t that easy. I did fight for her, didn’t I? I tried to stand up against that monster for her, and look what that had gotten me.
When night came, I couldn’t bear it anymore. I had to do something. I got up, grabbed my jacket, and walked out the front door. In passing my parents, I saw my mom smile at my dad.
I got in the car, and headed south. I knew that there was a place called The Valley there, and that was about as much as I knew. I also knew that going to fight him again with his strength would probably be the end of me, but the fact of it was that without her, I might just as well be dead, so it didn’t matter either way. I just had to try.
I drove for a full day before I started seeing signs that I was getting closer. By the time I drove into the village, it was dark.
I drove around aimlessly, looking for something, anything that would point me in the right direction. There was nothing.
Then out of the corner of my eye I caught movement. I turned my head, but there was nothing. I squinted into the darkness, and then I saw a figure cloaked in black making his way through the trees. I parked my car and got out, following the cloaked figure from a distance. The black cloak was the only thing I had to go by.
The figure wound through the trees, walking for what felt like an hour. I was starting to think that I had been a fool. I was following someone just because they were wearing a black cloak, and I was following them through the pitch black of night through woods that seemed all the more haunted the further we went.
Just when I started to wonder if I would get lost if I tried to turn back, we broke into a clearing. I stopped just before stepping out of the trees and looked.
There were hundreds of dark-robed figures, standing in clusters, talking. I knew that I was outnumbered, if any one of them got so much as a hint that I was there, it would be the end of me. I would never be able to stand up against so many.
Then they started to file into rows, and within a few minutes, the whole group had ordered themselves neatly, forming a square with a parting down the middle, like an aisle.
The moon was bright and my eyes had grown accustomed to the dark, letting me see more and more.
A dark figure stood at the front facing the group, and a moment later another walked down the aisle in the middle and joined them. It was Mason. His white hair was unmistakable between all the black cloaks, standing out li
ke a beacon. He looked scary even from afar. I shivered, remembering what it felt like to face him.
There were a few words spoken that I couldn’t make out, and the crowd mumbled in agreement, the hum of their voices rippling through the group. Then everyone fell quiet, and a figure clad in white appeared at the back of the aisle. It was Cherry.
She was the only one not wearing her black cloak. Instead, she was wearing a white dress, tight around her body, coming out from her waist and a veil on her head. The white was spectacular against her red hair, and her skin was milky white and smooth. She looked very serious, more serious than I had ever seen her. There was nothing of the life I loved in her, and it was like she was marching a death march when she slowly put one foot in front of the other, making her way to the front.
This was going to be her wedding.
When she reached the front, Mason leaned over to kiss her cheek. Instead of accepting him she leaned away. I could almost see his anger ignite. He grabbed her wrist and yanked her forward. She made a small yelping sound that traveled far through the night air. He forced the kiss onto her cheek, and then they both turned to face the officiate who was going to start the ceremony.
I didn’t pay attention to anything else. His rough handling of her had made me angrier than I had ever been before, my hands on fire in a heartbeat and the tension in my chest so sudden that I felt like I could explode immediately. But I had to hold it, wait until it was stronger, wait until I was close enough to make it count, if I wanted to make it out of there alive.
I didn’t care what she chose, Cherry was not marrying this monster.
I looked around quickly and noticed that the trees were very close to where they were standing. I moved, weaving my way in and out of the trees, making sure to stay away from the clearing. When I was close enough, I crouched. I was so close now, I could see her face. Her eyes were dead, and she looked like she had cried for days even though there were no tears on her cheeks. My heart went out to her.
Mason stood next to her, a smug look of satisfaction on his face. The ceremony master was saying a lot of things to which he nodded. Cherry just stood very still next to him, her lips pursed.
The tension in my chest turned to fire, and I knew that it was time now. With a cry I burst out of the trees. Mason and Cherry both looked at me with surprise, then Cherry’s face crumpled into tears and Mason looked livid. Before he could do anything, I ran up to Cherry and grabbed her arm, pulling her behind me.
“Stay there,” I ordered as I squinted and focused my eyes, aiming as well as I could before I flung my arms open and let it all go.
The power of the explosion was bigger than I had ever done before. The force was so strong that I knocked Mason back into the first line of onlookers. The officiate fell to the side, and half the group that was watching fell backwards as they tumbled into each other. When I looked over my shoulder for Cherry, I found she was also lying on the ground, but she was alright, already scrambling onto her feet.
“We have to get out of here now,” she said, knowing the danger just as well as I did. She grabbed my hand and together we ran for the trees. It took a while for the chaos we left behind to clear up, but it wouldn’t be long before they came to find us.
We ran, Cherry concentrating hard. I tried to tell her that I loved her, but she shushed me and told me she was feeling where they were, so I left her to it and just didn’t let go of her hand. I was getting out of breath quickly, my strength still not what it should be, and after a minute or two of running I was all out.
Cherry looked at me, and then behind us.
“We’ll never get out of here,” she said. “They’re too close.”
She thought for a moment and then looked at me. “Are you ready to leave everything behind?”
“If it means I will have you, yes,” I said, not even thinking about it twice.
“I’m going to try teleporting, but I don’t know where we’ll end up.”
“We’ll be fine as long as we’re together.”
I had never meant what I’d said more than at that moment.
She closed her eyes and held onto me tightly. At first, I felt nothing, but then, it felt like the air was being pushed out of my lungs. My head started spinning, and I couldn’t breathe anymore. It felt like every part of me was being torn apart. Cherry, next to me, let out something between a cry and a moan.
Then it was all over.
When we opened our eyes, we were in a town that I didn’t know. We stood in the street in what seemed to be a suburb, and the windows of every home were dark. I felt like I was going to faint. When I looked at Cherry, she appeared just as woozy.
“What was that?” I asked as she gasped, laughing through her gulping for air.
“I wasn’t supposed to be able to do that,” she said, out of breath. “That’s not a talent I was born with. But it was a matter of now or never.” She looked around. “That also means that I have no idea where we are.”
“All I care about is that I have you and we’re safe,” I said.
We laughed a relieved kind of laugh, leaning on our knees with our hands. I couldn’t believe it was all over. My body was aching and I felt like I had been run over by a bus, but Cherry was with me. Her wedding dress was dirty where it had dragged across the ground, and where she had hit the ground when I’d blown all the witches away, but she was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. I pulled her close to me.
“Don’t ever do that again,” I said. “I’ll come after you if I have to, but it will just be easier if you stay put.”
I pressed my mouth against hers and we giggled through our kisses. We were in a place that we didn’t know, we had absolutely nothing, and we didn’t know where we were going, but we were together, and we could take anything that came at us as long as we stayed that way.
I took her hand, and together we walked down the street, on our way to finding our future.
About the Author
Larissa Ladd is a dreamer with insights fresh as the frost newly formed on the twig whose snap echoes through the moonlit forest. Since as a child she discovered the storybook world of ghouls and goblins, she's been a devotee of the eerie, the supernatural, and all that raises the hairs on the back of the neck. Her spine still shivers with delight when she huddles fearfully in a darkling corner, enthralled in suspenseful tales from her favorite authors Dean Koontz, Stephen King, and John Saul. Feast your eyes on the scintillating flashes of garish color dabbed forth from her pen.
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