Serendipity: Imbolc & Incantations

by Poppy Flynn

  Except last night, a little voice whispered in the depths of her subconscious. You definitely saw a more passionate side to him then. And suddenly Seren knew exactly why he was there.

  “Never, in my entire life, have I ever been so vilely molested,” Siarl thundered, his voice loud enough to rattle the ancient panes of glass in her mullioned windows.

  His hand came up to encircle her neck and Seren felt her mouth drop open at the slur, but for just a fraction of a moment she was too shocked to speak.

  “I… I beg your pardon?” she stuttered almost helplessly, her face flaming and then draining of colour in quick succession as the swift accusation made her knees want to buckle. For a moment, he held her immobile simply by the grip which tightened, ever-so-slightly around her throat. Then he seemed to realise what he was doing, and dropped his arm like she’d burned him.

  Seren staggered backwards and collapsed onto her corner couch, tears brimming in her eyes at the injustice of it all.

  And maybe it was her own uncharacteristic reaction that had Siarl suddenly halt his ominous prowl towards her and shake off the shocking lack of discipline that had come over him.

  Siarl sucked in a deep breath and did his best to regain his shattered equilibrium. What in the oracle's name was he doing? Dragging his fingers through his hair, he straightened and tugged the jacket of his usually pristine suit back into place. The mundane action of brushing out the creases allowed him to claim back control. Or at least the appearance of it.

  Closing his eyes, he waited for the unexpected spike of temper to recede, drawing in practiced, even breaths until he was sure he was back in command of himself before opening them.

  He almost slammed them shut again when he finally looked at Seren and found her cowering on her large sofa, looking at him with a wide, tear-glazed stare that bordered on frightened.

  It wasn’t a look he was used to seeing on the bratty, audacious young witch, and certainly not one he had meant to put on her face. Fingers of shame poked at his conscience. She certainly didn’t have the look of a woman who had deliberately seduced him with a siren’s call in the depths of the night. Maybe he needed to take a step back and look at things with a better perspective. The oracle knew he hadn’t been in a balanced state of mind since he first woke this morning, in a tumbled bed, reaching for the deeply sensual illusion of a woman that his body remembered but his mind rejected.

  Chapter Six

  Siarl fisted both hands in his hair, then turned on his heel and paced away from the sight that was Seren. He was equal parts furious at what he considered her duplicity and tormented at the sensual awareness which now filled his head. Neither put him in a very gracious mood. In fact, he wasn’t sure he had ever felt quite this defiled and angry in his entire life.

  “What in the name of the sorceress were you thinking, Seren?” he finally bit out when he decided he could speak civilly.

  “What do you mean, what was I thinking? What the heck are you talking about?” Seren retorted, and he was oddly pleased to hear more of her normal argumentative tone in her voice. But the words still riled him.

  “Oh please, don’t play the innocent with me, Seren,” he said as he turned back to her. “There were legitimate reasons why I said an intimate relationship between us couldn’t go anywhere.”

  “Well, innocent or not, you’re going to have to spell it out to me because I have no idea what you’re getting at.”

  He might almost have believed her. Almost. Except there was the tiniest kernel of knowledge that wasn’t quite hidden from her gaze. But if she wanted him to spell it out… “I’m talking about you, coming into my room last night and seducing me,” he said with a scowl, his entire expression daring her to disagree. “You deliberately attempted to corrupt my moral compass, but I’m telling you now, it won’t work. I will stand firm by my decision.”

  At his words she jumped up out of her seat and stood belligerently, hands on hips, all remnants of vulnerability gone and the fight clearly back in both her countenance and her stance.

  “I most certainly did not come to your room last night,” she blustered, and as far as performance went, he had to admit she was convincing. If he didn’t know better, he might have believed her. But he did know better.

  Seren, it seemed, wasn’t done though. “If I was planning to seduce you, you’d damn well know about it and it would be 100% consensual.”

  Now it was her turn to stalk towards him, and Siarl gritted his teeth at the unbidden shudder of sexual awareness that skittered down his spine and caused his cock to harden. Now was not the time!

  “How dare you come barging in here and throwing around such accusations.” Her eyes flashed green fire and her heated, angry gaze scorched him. She was magnificent. And she also wasn’t done.

  “You really think I’m so damn desperate for a few measly crumbs of your affection that I’d stoop as low as coercion?” She was so close he could feel her body heat, see the angry rise and fall of her chest.

  “Well guess what, buster, you’re wrong. Because I’m worth more than that and I’m certainly never going to allow myself to become so pathetic that I resort to anything as pitiful as enticement.”

  Siarl scowled at her very real moral outrage. Could it be that she really was telling the truth? She certainly wasn’t letting it go any time soon.

  “If I’m with a man, it’s because he wants me. Because he sees me for who I am and appreciates me. I’d rather become a bloody vestal immaculate than force myself on someone who doesn’t want me and doesn’t care about me.” Her voice hitched a little on that last pronouncement, and Siarl frowned at the unexpected vulnerability he saw there. But just as quickly she blinked, and it was gone as she continued her diatribe.

  “And as for me ‘corrupting your moral compass’, don’t be such a pompous fricking ass. Who the actual fuck do you think you are?” She barely paused. “In fact, don’t even answer that, just get out of my turret.”

  She pointed the way towards the door and stood there scowling at him like a little spitfire. He might have gone, but there was just something that wasn’t adding up with this entire scenario, so instead he turned towards her bedroom and stormed through her personal space, determined to find the evidence that would justify his argument.

  He spotted the gauzy pile of white and pounced on it, grabbing it and waving it in front of her face. “Oh yeah? And what’s this then?” he demanded, recognising the offending article.

  Seren coloured and snatched it away, suddenly refusing to look him in the eye. He knew it. He was vindicated!

  “It’s Imbolc you muppet. That’s the bratach brid garment I left outside my door for Brigid to bless.”

  Did she really just call him a muppet?

  “Then why is it dumped on your bedroom floor?” He called her bluff, if indeed it was one, because, damn it, she was hiding something.

  She hugged it to her and frowned. For a moment Siarl thought she was going to admit to everything, but then Seren sucked in a sharp breath, flung the offending garment onto her bed and stomped across the room.

  Her hair flew about her head as she spun around. “I am categorically telling you I did not, at any time last night, deliberately dress in that gown, or leave this room. I swear on the memory of my parents that I most certainly did not consciously try to enter your room or to seduce you.”

  She didn’t look at him throughout the entire spiel, but Siarl listened carefully to her words and how she phrased things.

  “I am also extremely offended that you think I’d do such a thing.”

  She did look at him then, and the integrity of her words rang true. He believed her… in so far as her own conviction went. She would never swear on her parents’ lives if she wasn’t absolutely convinced by what she was saying. He knew that much.

  He was also excruciatingly aware that she had chosen her words mindfully. Used expressions like deliberately and consciously.

  He said nothing, his gaze boring into her unt
il she faltered and looked away, absently picking at the hem of her sweater.

  “But you know something,” he finally replied extremely softly, determined to alter his approach.

  Seren shook her head, but her brows were beetled together, and her expression was troubled.

  “I had a dream…”

  Siarl’s eyes narrowed, but he bit back the denial on the tip of his tongue and considered her words.

  A dream. Could it be?

  This time, it seemed, his silence prompted her to talk where his accusations had not.

  “I swear, Siarl, I did not put on that robe, I did not leave this room, and I did not seduce you.” She made a little derogatory sound in her throat after that last remark. “But I did have a dream…” she coloured again, the flush in her face making her freckles pop and clash with the colour of her hair. “… a rather vivid, explicit dream.”

  He had to strain to hear those last few words they were uttered so faintly.

  “A dirty dream,” he surmised, almost wanting to laugh at the comical look of indignation on her face.

  “It was not!” she exclaimed with a huff, crossing her arms defensively across her chest, probably to hide the straining nipples he had seen hardening beneath the fabric at the memory.

  “Don’t be so tawdry.” If it was possible for her to turn an even deeper shade of red, then she did so in that moment and Siarl had to stifle a sudden chuckle. It eased the tension inside him, if nothing else.

  Walking back into her living area, Siarl collapsed onto her sofa with a sigh. The fact that he wasn’t sure whether it was one of relief or disappointment didn’t sit well with him. But there was still one more mystery.

  While he was convinced that Seren truly believed everything she’d said, there were still more things in the magic realm which had no rhyme nor reason. Things which happened as mysteriously as the magic each of them possessed.

  “Okay,” he conceded. “I accept you believe it was a dream.”

  “It was a dream,” Seren interjected with certainty.

  Siarl loosened his tie and started unbuttoning his shirt as he continued. “Well, if it was a dream, then how did this happen?”

  Chapter Seven

  Seren’s eyes widened in surprise as Siarl stripped off his tie and she was about to admonish him when the words died in her throat.

  He pulled his half-unbuttoned shirt to one side and brandished the golden tattoo which was inked on his chest right above his heart.

  “No!” Seren whispered in complete and utter shock. “That’s not possible.”

  She sucked a harsh breath into her suddenly dry throat, and she collapsed onto the other side of the sofa as her knees buckled.

  Her eyes were glued to the easily identified dragonfly emblazoned on his tanned skin. The image of her own familiar, Cami. Unusually Seren had two; Carrot the small orange fox who was akin to a regular familiar, but also Cami. Seren sometimes referred to the dragonfly as Carrot’s familiar. She didn’t exist in the same physical way that Carrot did. That was why she was special. There were places where a witch’s familiar could not follow, but since Cami was embellished on Seren’s skin in the form of a tattoo, it meant that wherever Seren went, Cami was with her. If she invoked Cami’s physical form, then the dragonfly left her skin and came to life. Wherever Cami was, Carrot also appeared, like the dragonfly was some kind of conduit. Seren had lived with the phenomenon for years, but she still wasn’t completely sure how it worked. It was an anomaly, even within the magic realm.

  “I don’t understand,” Seren said weakly. “How can this be?”

  She looked at Siarl beseechingly. Surely, he had to believe her. But why would he when there was proof to the contrary right there on his skin? “I didn’t… I swear I didn’t…” Seren trailed off. How could she defend herself when she was starting to second guess everything that she had believed to be the truth?

  Then another thought occurred to her, and she dived forward and pushed Siarl’s shirt off of his opposite shoulder, looking for the scarab tattoo she knew should be there; the symbol of his own shape-shifting familiar.

  “No!” she exclaimed when she couldn’t find it.

  Seren’s blood chilled as she tried to get her head around the implications. If Siarl had Cami and Midnight was gone, then…

  “Noooo...” she wailed for a third time, stripping off her sweater unthinkingly as she ran to find a mirror. She twisted and turned but she couldn’t get a decent view of the back of her shoulder; the place where Cami usually sat.

  She was still trying to see when Siarl walked quietly up behind her. “Refractus,” he said quietly, and a shimmering illusion of another mirror appeared, reflecting the length of her back so she could see it in the mirror in front of her.

  She almost didn’t want to look, but it didn’t really matter. She already knew it was there. Already knew what she was going to see. She stared at Siarl instead, and she could read the truth in his expression.

  Slowly she allowed her gaze to track across the swathe of glass until her eyes saw for themselves the hard evidence of Siarl’s familiar on her own shoulder.

  For long moments Seren just stood and stared, not daring to say a word. Trying to take it all in and make sense of the impossible.

  In a detached corner of her brain, she saw Siarl relent and place his strong, tanned hands on the pale skin of her shoulders, treacherously close to where the stark proof of… something inconceivable lay. But the rest of her mind was stuck. One side of it was shouting and screaming; clamouring with questions. The other side of it was quiet and in denial; unbelieving and refusing to accept what she saw with her own eyes.

  Siarl said nothing.

  Eventually she turned to face him and somehow found the courage to look directly into his face. The anger was gone, replaced with a kind of weary acceptance that Seren wasn’t sure she liked any better.

  She wanted to rail at him, to argue, but she didn’t have the energy… or the platform. And for his own part, Siarl seemed to understand her dilemma because he softened and pulled her close, holding her like she needed to be held right now. Maybe he needed the same thing.

  “What does it mean?” she finally whispered.

  The silence stretched between them for so long that she thought he wouldn’t answer.

  “I don’t know,” he finally conceded.

  It was a long time before she asked the question that was hammering at her consciousness and obliterating all other thoughts. “Do you believe me?”

  He was quiet for a moment. A beat too long. Long enough for her heart to drop and her mind to think the worst.

  “Believe what?” he asked.

  “I didn’t dress up and come to your room last night, Siarl. Do you believe me?”

  He sucked in a deep breath, and Seren feared the worst, but then he surprised her.

  “Yes, I believe you.”

  Her head popped up. “You do?” Rubbery rainbows, why did she say that? He had just conceded the point, why the heck would her stupid mouth question the reply. She really needed to invest in a ‘sensible’ spell to keep her responses under control.

  Ha! Like you’d ever consider such a thing when you’ve always rebelled against such constraints in the past, the little voice of her conscience, which sounded remarkably like Carrot, whispered in the back of her mind.

  Shut up! she told the voice.

  “Pardon?” Siarl asked.

  Shitsickles! Did she say that out loud?

  ‘You’re connected through your tattoo exchange, just like you were during Yule. He can hear your thoughts, when you don’t shield them.’

  This time the voice did belong to Carrot, and she glanced over to see the little orange fox peeking around the bedroom doorway.

  ‘Can he read my memories too?’ Seren asked telepathically, communicating with her familiar, a plan forming in her head.

  ‘If you allow him to.’

  Seren took a fortifying breath and looked back at Siarl, con
sidering her options. What she had in mind was risky on a very personal level. It would mean opening herself up. Allowing herself to become exposed and vulnerable in a way she hadn’t been since she was a child. Opening the doors of her mind for Siarl to see all her innermost secrets.

  And the same would be true of him, so maybe there was no chance that he would ever allow such a thing. Of course, he had lived very many lives, so maybe it wasn’t the same for him at all. Were his memories segregated? Compartmentalised into each of those different lives so they wouldn’t be accessible to her in the same way as her meagre twenty-six years and nine-months’ worth would to him? Seren didn’t know.

  The real question was, was it worth it? She could just turn the other cheek. Accept the accusations he had thrown at her and brazen them out.

  Or she could accept his words at face value. He’d already said he believed her. Even if there had been that tell-tale hesitation.

  Let’s face it, she’d never been overly troubled by her reputation. She knew the truth, and that was all that mattered.

  Except it was different with Siarl. She wanted him to know the truth too; to be certain that he could trust her and know beyond a shadow of a doubt that she had done nothing to compromise their relationship. Even if that relationship was currently nothing more than a mutual, hard-won respect. It was still something she valued.

  But even more than all of that, there was something unnatural about the events that had taken place during the dark, silent hours of the night. Something that needed to be investigated and understood.

  More than ever, Seren was certain that something sinister was operating just under the surface of perception. Something that involved both her and Siarl. She didn’t know how much Siarl believed it, if he was aware of it at all, or if he had just put down the disturbing events at Yule as a one-off. Certainly, he’d chosen not to discuss it any further. Not even to tell her the verdict of the Mage Council. Maybe they’d even persuaded him she, herself, was to blame. She was usually the one who got accused when anything around her went wrong, for some unfathomable reason. It had been the same since she’d first come here as a child.