by Char Webster
Aria shrugged.
Julie tilted her head in annoyance. “Want an example? Did you forget the time you got him beaten up by that dragon shifter? Or when you convinced that vampire to...”
“Okay, enough. I remember.” It bothered Aria to hear how mean she’d been. Aria opened her lunch wrapper and stared at her sandwich.
Julie took a large bite of her hoagie and could hardly chew. When she managed to swallow, she smiled at Aria. “Does he have anything to do with why you are a mess this time of year?”
Aria gasped in shock.
Julie snapped her fingers. “Now we’re getting somewhere. What happened between you two right before May?”
Aria took an unsteady breath. “He left me at the altar on our wedding day in front of the entire village.”
Chapter Two
Aedan jogged to catch up with his friend who was already a couple of blocks away. “Dude. Wait up. Where are you going?”
“Just walking.” Damian needed to get away from Aria and the person he turns into when he sees her.
“What’d she do now?” Aedan wasn’t going to let Damian blow him off again. He was going to make his friend talk to him. Things had gone on long enough.
Damian stopped and faced Aedan. “I don’t want to talk about it.” He moved to continue walking, but Aedan blocked his way.
“You’re going to tell me.”
“You saw what happened! We can’t be anywhere near each other without vitriol spewing from both of us.”
“I wasn’t talking about this latest round of hostility. What happened between you two?”
Damian wiped his hand over his face and moved it to the back of his neck. “It’s a long story.”
“The beach is only a portal away.”
Damian considered it for a minute. “Okay.”
Aedan walked behind the strip mall they were standing in front of and made sure no one was around. He pulled out a long, magical blade and created a portal on the back of the building. Grinning, he opened it up under the boardwalk in Seaside Heights, New Jersey. It was too early in the year for tourists, so the beach should be almost deserted.
Damian frowned when he saw the location. “Why here?” He loved the beach, but he usually preferred a much quieter location.
“It’s a beach, and there’s a bar right above us that is open year-round. I have a feeling you might need a drink.”
They climbed the worn wooden steps leading to the top of the boardwalk, directly across from the Beachcomber Bar and Grill. Over the years, Damian had become quite familiar with the typical shore bar, done in beach-themed décor with surfboards hanging from the ceiling and an assortment of neon signs. His favorite part was the roof deck that provided the best people watching spot ever.
Disappointed to see a closed sign on the steps leading to the roof deck, Damian led Aedan toward two stools at the end of the bar on the boardwalk level.
Damian noticed that only a handful of people occupied the large bar area, and they were concentrated toward the TVs in the back of the room. He was happy that no one was near them.
Aedan had walked to the other bar for two Flying Fish Extra Pale Ales. “Okay, so let’s hear it. No one’s around, so we won’t be overheard, and you have a beer for courage.”
Damian rubbed the back of his neck again. “I screwed up.”
Aedan laughed, almost spitting his beer. “That’s nothing new.”
Damian scrunched his face. “This was bad. Probably the worst act of stupidity I’ve ever done.” Damian stalled by taking a sip of his beer. “I walked out on our wedding.”
“What? Are you serious?” Aedan was sure Damian was joking.
“Why would I make up something like that?”
“You two were engaged? When? Why’d you break it off? Was it because she was a shrew?”
“She wasn’t a shrew. She was the sweetest, most amazing girl I’d ever met.” Damian took another swallow of his drink.
Aedan knew he was missing something. “So, why’d you call it off?”
“Remember when I told you about my older brother, Kallias?”
“What does he have to do with it? She didn’t fall for the loser, did she?”
“Aria hated Kallias from a very young age. She saw past his appearance and saw the evil within him. It was one of the reasons I first became friends with Aria.”
“Because she hated your brother?”
“More like we were the only ones who weren’t taken in by him. He had the entire village fooled into thinking he was an angel, but she never fell for his act. He certainly had the looks, but he was cruel, vicious, and greedy. Nothing was ever good enough for him.” Damian stared down at his beer.
Aedan’s eyes widened. “He turned to dark magic?”
Damian continued, “Yeah, but not right away. At least I didn’t think so at the time. Aria and I were inseparable growing up even though she was a couple of years younger than me. As she got older, she became almost as sought after as Kallias was. Everyone wanted to be around her and would do anything for one of her smiles.” Damian grinned just thinking about how she used to be.
“Dude, that sounds nothing like the Aria that I know.”
Damian’s face dropped. “She was different back then, and you just see what she’s like toward me.”
“You two are horrible to each other.”
Damian ignored him. “Anyway, by the time she was fifteen, I was completely in love with her, and I couldn’t wait to marry her. Girls got married young back then, but I wanted to wait until I could afford to support us.” Damian’s eyes became unfocused as he thought of the past.
“I had no idea that Kallias wanted her and approached her parents for an arrangement. He only wanted her because I wanted to marry her, and she was the prettiest girl in the village.”
“How did you end up engaged to her then?”
Damian laughed at the memory. “Her mother was a social climber and immediately said yes to Kallias, but her father was a reasonable man and asked Aria what she wanted. That was almost unheard of at the time. Her father had respected her wishes and turned down his offer. My brother was incensed and planned to force her into accepting by publicly proposing. He knew her mother wouldn’t allow her to refuse. Aria not only turned him down, she scorned him in front of everyone. He was so embarrassed that he left the village that night.”
“Wow. From what you told me about him, I’m surprised he left without doing anything.” Aedan was getting anxious to hear how the whole story fit together.
“So was I. A year later, I was engaged to Aria, and we were planning our wedding. A month before we were to get married, Kallias returned, but there was something off about him. He was much more reserved but had an evil and dangerous undertone. His magic had a different feel to it. He cornered her one night and made a scene in front of everyone, refusing to believe she had chosen me over him. He was staring directly at her, insisting over and over that she loved him and not me. Aria was annoyed and pushed him out of the way, screaming that she would never love him.”
“Did he leave after that?” Aedan suspected that Kallias had started to turn to dark magic.
Damian continued to be lost in the past. “He was furious and stormed off. Later that night, he came into my bedroom when I was sleeping and blamed me for everything. He screamed about Aria being immune to his powers and wanting to know how she blocked him.” Damian paused. “Everyone in our village possessed some ancient magic. It was a part of our everyday life. We didn’t know it until later, but Aria and I both have a much higher concentration of magic. That’s why we were the only two unaffected by his manipulations.”
“That’s crazy.”
“It gets worse. The year he had left, he’d met a male mystic who was obsessed with increasing his power. He was the leader of a group of other mystics that showed Kallias how to fully absorb the magic from others. They spent the year gaining more abilities. The magic they stole became corrupt and turned them more evil
with every bit they took. Once they were on the path, they couldn’t or wouldn’t stop.”
“They didn’t know they would turn dark?” Aedan was glad Kallias was dead.
“I don’t know. They had to have known what was happening to their magic.” Damian took another mouth-full of beer. “I later found out that they were followers of Roarik.”
Aedan nearly fell from his bar stool. “The mystic the matriarchs imprisoned in stone centuries ago?”
“Yes. His followers were trying to increase their own powers so that they could free him.” Damian twisted his beer bottle in his hands.
“After that, Kallias disappeared again, but a week before the wedding, we got word that my brother was killed in a fight. That night, a cloaked man named Pravus came to see me. He was the mystic that helped my brother. Pravus claimed that Kallias owed him a blood debt and that it fell to me to fulfil.”
“Wow. What did he owe the guy?”
“Magic. A lot of it. An endless supply to be exact. Kallias was supposed to marry Aria and combine their magic so that they could siphon it. It would not have been as powerful as it could have been because they were not a magic match.” Damian rubbed his neck again.
Aedan’s frown was so deep it creased his forehead. “Why Aria? Why not someone else?”
“Aria’s magic is so strong that it replenishes quickly when everyone else would lose their magic all together. Aria would weaken for a time but would survive. Most people would lose most if not all of their life force with their magic.”
“Your brother was going to let Pravus take their combined magic?”
“Kallias was planning on taking it himself. He was going to double cross the mystic.”
“How do you know that?”
Damian took another sip of beer. “Pravus laughed about it when he told me he had my brother killed. I refused to honor the blood debt, but it was sealed by really old magic, and it was unbreakable.”
“What did you do?”
“I was young and arrogant back then and I refused to believe I would be bound by anything like that, so I ignored it. We went ahead with the wedding plans, but on the morning of the ceremony, he came back and told me that if we married and combined our magic, she would be equally bound by the blood debt. I was devastated, and I knew I could never put her in danger like that.”
Aedan finished off his beer and motioned for two more. He had a feeling they were going to need them. “Why didn’t Pravus just go after Aria and take her magic?”
“I wondered that myself. I found out that Pravus was unable to pull magic from her. He needed a conduit to do it. He needed to have someone combine magic with her in order for him to use it. For some reason, her magic is protected.”
“Did you tell her any of this?”
Damian blew out a breath. “No. She would have married me anyway and tried to fight him with me.” He paused to rub the back of his neck again ‘What’s worse is our magic is a match, and if Pravus found out, his group of dark mystics would never have stopped until they had control of us both.”
“Does she know your magic can fully blend together?” Aedan took a long drink of his beer.
“She knew we were a match, but that doesn’t matter. The only way I could keep her safe was to break things off in a way that she would have no choice but to believe I didn’t want her anymore.”
“You didn’t.” Aedan knew where this was going.
“I left her at the altar in front of everyone, and I went after the dark mystic.”
~*~*~
“OMG, Aria. I’m so sorry. I had no idea. What happened?” Julie felt awful for her.
“I don’t know. I thought things were perfect, but then he just walked away. He left our village after that, and I didn’t see him for almost three years.” Aria thought back to the day she finally saw him again after he disappeared from their wedding.
“Did he come back home?”
Aria shook her head. “No, I saw him on a human battle field where supernaturals were altering the outcome of the fight.”
Julie inhaled deeply. “Now that, you have to explain.”
“After Damian left my mother tried to marry me off to anyone, but no one wanted me since he walked out on our wedding like that. My reputation had been ruined. My mother was furious and wanted to throw me out, but my father and brother Markos stopped her. She was horrible to me after that, and so were the villagers. I knew I had to leave.
“You just left on your own?”
Aria shook her head. “No. Markos would never have let me do that. He had become restless and wanted to explore the world. I didn’t care where he was going. I was determined to follow him.” Aria laughed to herself. “I convinced Markos to let me come with him.”
“That couldn’t have been easy. Your brother is seriously over protective.”
“I could fight better than most of the men in our village, and I was better with a sword than just about anyone. Plus, we have magic. He tried to argue with me, but I told him that if he didn’t let me come with him, and watch over me, I would wait for him to leave and follow behind and probably get myself into trouble.”
“You’re unbelievable. He let you come?”
“He had no choice. We were so close that I think he liked having me around.”
“What happened when you saw Damian?”
“Oh. That day we stumbled upon a particularly gruesome battle that supernaturals were interfering with. Some mystics had teamed up with vampires and a few others to toy with the warriors. Markos and I had blocked a few of their nastier attempts when we watched as a different group of supernaturals in black uniforms storm into the clearing. In minutes, they subdued the aggressors. They worked as a team, and the humans had no idea what had been occurring.”
“Which group was Damian with?” Julie thought she might know but wanted to hear it from her friend.
Aria closed her eyes for a second. “Damian was with the second group. I had never seen him so confident and in command. It was obvious that he had been training with the group for a while.”
“Did he see you?”
Aria popped a couple of chips in her mouth, making Julie frown from the delay. “Not at first. I was torn between wanting to punch him for leaving me and wanting to throw myself into his arms and demand to know why he left that way.”
Julie arced a brow. “You would never stoop to crying in his arms.”
Aria smirked. “Not now I wouldn’t, but back then, I wasn’t as tough.”
Julie still looked skeptical.
“I didn’t do either. A vampire had hidden from the group’s attack and had circled around behind us without us knowing. We had been distracted by the battle, and I didn’t realize he had me until his arm went around my throat and he was tilting my head aside.”
Julie started to rise from her seat. “He bit you?”
“No. I grabbed hold of him and flipped the jerk over my shoulder, slamming him into the ground,” Aria announced, proud of herself.
“Of course, you did.” Julie smiled.
Aria crunched on a couple of more chips. “The vampire had been so stunned to have been thwarted by a girl that he simply stared up at the growing crowd around him. That was when I saw Damian. He was in the process of running toward me when I flipped the vamp. It looked like he was going to help out but then stopped when I took care of things.”
“He was going to save you? Did he still have feelings for you? Did you talk to him?” Julie was rattling off questions.
“At first he looked devastated, but then it turned to indifference and annoyance. Whatever feeling made him race toward me was gone.”
“He must have still loved you.”
Aria ignored that comment. “The leader of the second group had ordered his team to take the vamp into custody. They had already rounded up a few other vampires, shifters, and mystics.”
“Was he a part of Legacy?”
“Yes. The leader, Derrek, explained that his group of enforce
rs traveled around to make sure supernaturals didn’t cause too much trouble. Derrek had watched Markos and I take out a few of the troublemakers and offered to train us.”
“What about Damian?” Julie asked.
Aria was lost in thought. “He pulled the leader aside, and they had a heated argument, and Damian stormed off. He hadn’t wanted us to be a part of Legacy.”
“That made you want to join up even more.” Julie leaned back in her seat.
Aria took a sip of her iced tea. “Of course. Only, I wanted to help supernaturals, not punish them.”
Julie spun her potato chip bag on the table. “Did you have to see Damian every day after that?”
“No, he had taken off on assignments, and I didn’t see him again for years.” Aria shrugged. “The next time I saw him, I knocked him on his butt in front of a bunch of enforcers. You know the rest.”
Julie was reeling from all the information. “Not all of it. It was this time of year that you were supposed to get married, wasn’t it?”
Aria pulled a couple of pickles from her hoagie and ate them. “Yeah. May first.”
“I’m sorry.” Julie took another bite but much smaller this time. She needed to at least attempt to seem like she had manners. “Why do you get sad after all this time?”
“I always wonder what my life would have been like if we had gone through with the wedding.”
Julie snitched a chip off of Aria’s pile. “How about, for the next few days, we keep your mind off of horrible ex-boyfriends and spend time at the beach. It’s a little too cold to lay out at the beach around here, but we can go to the townhouse in Florida. Our next assignment doesn’t start for another two weeks anyway.”
Aria grinned. “That sounds like a plan.” Her Sunset Beach place was the right spot for her to recharge and get out of her funk.