Chapter 36: BONUS STORY #2 - Quaid

Quaid

From the moment I could understand, I knew she was my destiny. Her name spoken to me over and over again, a litany of control, command and ownership.

"Sydlynn Hayle," my mother said. "You will marry her one day and become our path to the Hayle coven."

I'd been promised to her as a baby, this mysterious girl my age from a coven I'd never met.

My future wife, written in power when we were too small to agree. As a young child, I often imagined her as a confidant, someone as rigidly suppressed as I was, as dominated by her parents. Maybe, ultimately, someone I could count on.

My parents made such a huge deal about her, about her family. Obsession was an early enlightenment, something that burned the pit of my stomach with unhappy bile, gave me stress and ulcers as a five year old. I soothed myself with my own magic while they plotted and planned, my mother's hatred for Sydlynn's mother, Miriam, a tangible thing that only made things worse.