Warlock's Charm Read Free Page B

and now she had to pay the price for not probing
further.
    The fact that Damien sent witch hunters after her hadn’t
come as a surprise. He no doubt viewed her as his property now that she was his
bride. To be fair most men would be offended by having their bride pull a
runner at their wedding reception. The only problem—Damien was not any man. He
was a witch hunter himself and a very talented warlock.
    She’d never known how suffocating love could be until the
day she’d attempted to save her fate by clinging desperately to the love she
and Damien shared.
    Perhaps they could rebuild their relationship. It had been
love at first sight for her, and as Damien claimed it had been love at first
sight for him as well.
    The question was, how could she overcome her feelings of
betrayal? Had he been upfront about his family history she might have gotten
past it—as it stood now she had to live with the consequences of her actions
and attempt to figure out a way of breaking things off with Damien once and for
all.
    The push and the pull between love and hate constantly
blurred and her emotions were always so frayed she never knew how she felt
about him anymore…maybe his touch would solve all of her questions…maybe his
love could bring her back from the brink. The fact that she was able to
disguise herself so efficiently around him told her what she’d already feared, that
their love wasn’t enough to weather the storms that lay ahead—maybe they didn’t
share a soul-shattering connection like she’d originally believed. If he really
loved her, he should be able to see past the sort of enchantment she cast that
made her look like Mr. Stopper.
    The romantics throughout the ages always claimed that love
was strong enough to survive any strain but what if it wasn’t? What if it
couldn’t see them through the biggest hurdle their relationship had ever faced?
    Sighing heavily, she stood up and magically transformed the
gray suit, white shirt and pink tie she wore while posing as Stopper into a
black skirt and rose-colored short-sleeved blouse that would keep her cool
during the humid weather of the city this time of year. Relieved to be back in
an outfit that made her feel at ease without having that stiff, scratchy collar
around her neck, she walked through the lobby of the office building past the
security guard who would see the image she wanted him to see, which was still,
of course, Mr. Stopper.
    “Good night, Mr. Stopper, see you tomorrow,” Alvin Sweet
said as she walked past his desk toward the doors. Where would she go now that
she had to step up her game? Should she follow her husband on his wild goose
chase around the solar system or should she just wait for him here on Vanguard Prime
until he came home completely depressed and defeated?
    She pushed open the heavy doors leading out of Griffin Tower
and stepped out into the late afternoon sunlight.
    Vanguard Prime’s climate was comparable to the North
American climate on Earth. The province of New Mercia boasted plantation homes
much like the sprawling mansions found in North America’s Deep South. Slave
witch labor had built the majestic homes found in New Mercia and in many of the
other provinces, and her poor mother’s family had been amongst those slaves.
The planet had flourished with so much slave labor, and many families had
prospered financially because of it.
    She thought about the slaves’ grim fates toiling away in the
sun using their bare hands to do work their magic could have done for them.
Those peace-loving witches and warlocks like her mother who had been enslaved
and stripped of their powers were mercilessly abused by their slavers.
    If they had not had their powers repressed by the
power-binding collars around their necks, those who oversaw them never would
have been able to wield such control over them.
    Unfortunately, many of those who were enslaved didn’t know
how to fight, and so their magic had been taken quite easily from them.