The Bewitching - Book 1

Chapter 10 - The Conflicted Heart

Her eyes were penetrating him to his very core as he held her by her shirt at arms length. He kept reminding himself to be strong, to not look away, and most importantly not to reveal what he was feeling at this very moment. He tried his best to remind himself of all the anger and pain she had caused him, and yet those eyes, those beautiful eyes upon her delicate face made it difficult to not let the past and all the pain and anguish slip away.

He took a deep breath, making it as subtle as he could hoping she wouldn't notice. Part of him though wanted her to notice, he wanted her to feel for him as she once had centuries ago even though he believed it to be pointless. He had resigned himself to the idea that even if by some chance of luck she was able to be remember, to be the one he had once so deeply loved, that eventually they would be destined to the same fate. At some point because she was human, and fallible as humans all are, he knew it would once again end with heartbreak. She would disappear without a word, and he would once again find himself broken or worse.

Those thoughts were the only things helping him to hide what was he was feeling at the moment. He wanted her to hate him, despise him even. If she did not, he wasn't sure if he would have the strength to walk away himself. It had to be this way because as much as seeing her was tearing him apart, letting anything more happen would destroy him completely. He was determined to make sure that that would not happen.

With every word he spoke, every movement he made, he meticulously made sure with each attempt to put forth the facade that he disliked her. He watched her closely for clues as too if he was succeeding but couldn't tell. The only thing he knew for sure was that he could feel her heartbeat beating as quickly and strongly as his own.

As he held her up, he couldn't help but think that he had made a mistake in watching her the last few nights. He knew something was wrong when he sensed the pack demons the other day and luckily he had decided to follow the demons when he had. He never would have thought that Elyssa would have been their target though and who knows what may have happened to her if he hadn't been there to help. As powerful as he knew Annette and her mother were, even they might not have been strong to fight off the group that had arrived.

Things had been too quiet for far too long for something not to happen. The demons were planning something, something horrible, and he knew it. He just wasn't quite sure what, and he wasn't sure exactly how Elyssa might be involved. It didn't make sense that she would be a target, and it made even less sense seeing how it didn't appear at the time that she remembered anything from the past, including being a witch.

He pulled her forward towards him, just enough so that she could regain her balance, and then leapt down beside her upon the overhang outside her window. She still hadn't spoken after dismissing the blue orb of light and he wasn't quite sure what to say himself. As hard as he tried not to look at her, he kept finding his gaze wandering back to her face and eyes before he pulled it away again. He caught her doing the same but still saw no hint of what she was feeling from her expression. Was she angry at him, or feeling as silly as he was at the moment.

"What was that thing?," he asked finally to break the silence that felt like death.

"A location spell. I was...," she stopped as she realized what she had just done. She had been so nervous she had spoken without thinking first. Her cheeks flushed a bright red and she hoped he wouldn't notice in the dim light that was coming from her window. It wouldn't be to hard for him to put two and two together and realize that the location spell was cast to find him. How else could she explain a blue orb of light that followed him around her yard?

Those three words had trapped her and there was no excuse she could think of to possibly explain why it followed him and had not gone after someone else. Maybe if she was lucky he hadn't heard her, or wouldn't put the two together, at least that's what she was praying for. She already knew though that she was never that fortunate, and his next words were confirmation of that fact.