Page 2 of Vengefully Matched

“Will you be quiet,” Agatha hissed at him. And looming behind them like Mount Doom, wearing a couture princess ball gown and an expression thunderous enough to smite the magical and nonmagical alike, was Priscilla’s would-be bride, still at the altar, in front of a now-smoking chuppah that leaned dangerously to the left.

Squaring her shoulders, Prissy reminded herself that she did not have to settle for love that would not take her exactly as she was. And as she wasn’t. Selfish or not, it would be more selfish to stay, knowing as she did that Evelyn would eventually wear her down.

Evie’s words from that tired old exchange echoed in her head as she power walked out the door as elegantly as could be managed, given the circumstances. She picked up her pace down the hall, her snug pantsuit with the matching white jacket making her feel like a gentleman rapper from the late nineties. She could claim she was making a feminist statement, fleeing in suffragette white, but of course, the impact was dulled by the fact that she was actively abandoning another woman at the altar.

She wasn’t going to face her would-be partner.

“Don’t you dare run away from me,” Evelyn boomed, loud enough to reach down the hallway, the slight crack in the last word almost breaking Prissy’s resolve.

Someone grabbed her hand, and she turned, ready for the defensive, and then heaved a sigh of relief when she saw that it was only her brother. She waited for him to argue. To try to convince her to go back down the hall and through the door and up the aisle and into a lifetime of sensible decisions that wouldn’t jeopardize the future of her career in the witching community.

But Azrael’s face looked grim. Not surprised. He took her elbow gently, and sped up to match her pace until they were both at the end of the hall.

Az steered her down a side staircase, the one she had memorized just in case, and yet forgotten in the moment. It led to the parking lot, where the cherry-red Packard was sitting, in the prearranged spot it was supposed to keep until he drove her, with her wife—her ex-girlfriend, she reminded herself, because there was definitely no salvaging this—to the airport to leave for Europe and a luxurious honeymoon cruise.

That part had been Priscilla’s idea, and it should probably say something about the state of her relationship that she had been more jazzed about a European river cruise than she had about committing to a life that would force one of them to give up their dreams. She’d realized the moment she stepped on that runner to start up the aisle which one of them it would be. It wasn’t Evelyn, standing gorgeous in a fairy-tale gown. Evelyn would have gotten what she wanted. The perfect wedding, the perfect wife, the perfect family.

Not what Priscilla wanted.

“Where to?” He waited for her answer as she slid in the passenger seat, staring straight ahead at the trees, still lined in golden hues of orange and red despite the chill of the November air. They were past peak foliage season, but only just, and she’d thought, for a moment, that this could be a sign that the universe had held space for her wedding.

Maybe, though, it was just a sign that the leaves, too, had waited a bit too long to fall away.

Prissy rubbed the throbbing spot between her eyebrows. “What about Vickie?” The last thing she needed was for her sorrows to spread like poison to her friend. She could obviously live with inconveniencing her brother, but not his girlfriend. She didn’t deserve that.

“She has the house keys. She’ll be fine. She’s probably calmly talking people through a graceful exit strategy for the wedding party right now.”

He wasn’t wrong. Vickie was nothing if not coolheaded in a hot situation. The Starnbergers had lived next to her family growing up, or at least in a close approximation of next, since both houses were set atop rolling acres of manicured lawn (on their side) and wild woods (on hers) that meant proximity was a relative thing. Vickie and Az had been childhood sweethearts, then estranged, and then, last year, had fallen annoyingly and adorably in love again, only to be cursed so they couldn’t touch without dying. They had solved the curse and were in the process of living happily ever after. It was a whole thing. The point was, Victoria understood. The Witchery Council, the drama. All of it. And Azrael, especially. That made her chest hurt a little. Not because she begrudged her brother that he’d found the perfect partner, but because she remembered exactly how much trouble she had gotten herself into, thinking she could change someone’s mind about their life plans. Letting someone else think that they could maybe change hers.

Her brother slid the key into the ignition and snapped his fingers twice. The temperature dropped, and she exhaled as the windows tinted a shade darker than legal. Azrael had always known how to make people feel better.

How was it possible that her wayward, morose brother had managed to become the one with his life together and she had ended up the runaway bride bringing shame on the Hart family name?

“The airport,” she announced.

“Your honeymoon?” Azrael, to his credit, did not bat an eye.

“Yes. Shit. I meant to stop by the parlor. It’s in the parlor. My suitcase—”

He snapped again. “Is in the trunk now.”

“Thanks, Az,” she mumbled, dropping her head into her hand and propping her elbow against the window for one deflated moment before shaking it off and straightening back up.

Wordlessly, he pulled out of the parking lot, a few stray leaves fluttering under the wheels of the car.

Priscilla could see Evelyn in the rearview, storming out the door and down the concrete stairs, magic crackling around her angrily, rubbing her hands together. A bolt of lightning hit dangerously close to the car before Azrael jammed his foot down on the accelerator, rounding a corner and leaving the storm to flicker dimly in the background.

Priscilla sighed, leaning back against the seat, and snapped once to change the pantsuit to black, and the fabric blend to flexible. For good measure, she snapped again, and the horrible restrictive collar met an unfortunate end far, far away from her neck.

A normal person would feel grief, a hole where the love had once been, or some sort of regret or wistfulness about leaving their long-term partner at the altar.

But the only grief she felt was the knowledge that, two years later, her parents were still dead. And when she looked in the mirror, the localized turbulent weather of her almost-wife now a dim flashing glow in the distance, there was another feeling that outweighed all the brewing sorrow and heartache.

Relief. She felt relief.

CHAPTER 2 Agatha

Six Months Later