Page 1 of Vengefully Matched

CHAPTER 1 Priscilla

It was possible that Priscilla Hart should not have waited until this precise moment to change her mind. For a minute, she willed herself to go through with it—she was Priscilla Guinevere fucking Hart, mistress of darkness, prankster extraordinaire—and she wasn’t about to be brought to her knees by a wedding, of all things.

Least of all, her own.

Snapping her fingers and thinking of her mother’s spell for strength, she stared down the aisle in front of her. The magic would work better if she had garlic. Or rue. She really ought to have replenished the emergency herbs in the back of the car, but she’d put it off, telling herself she wouldn’t need magic to marry the woman she loved. On any other occasion, she’d have kept vials and packets in her pockets. But in addition to being not quite her taste, the designer white pantsuit was too tight for pockets. Even if she could find a spare sprig or clove to summon into her possession, she’d have nowhere to hide it.

Really, that alone should have been her first clue that this particular union was doomed.

Tugging at the neck of the suit for a moment, she frowned. The crowd murmured, and she shifted her weight from foot to foot on the black heels they had argued about. Evelyn thought the red underside was overstated for a wedding. Priscilla thought they were her lucky pair, and absolutely necessary. Left, right. She weighed it. What were another few moments? She was already ten minutes behind her bride’s fastidiously planned schedule, and, right on cue, sparks shimmered and magical fireworks began to pop behind the chuppah. At the end of the aisle, Evie frowned, a disappointed queen in an elegant lace-sleeved ball gown.

Priscilla cursed under her breath but did not make any forward movement. For the first time in months, grief knocked hard against her rib cage, making its memory inescapable.

Her parents weren’t alive to see her do this. She had done such a thorough job of shutting away this particular emotion, but now the familiar sting of it squeezed in her chest. Whether it was the biggest mistake of her life or not, they would never know. All she could do was piece together the bits of what she remembered and stand here in an uncomfortable suit that she didn’t even like, her shoes the only bit of her ensemble selected with her own agency. She might never have control over her own life again. With one hand, she pulled at the high-fashion collar strangling her, and with the other, she dropped the bouquet of stupidly expensive orchids—Evie’s choice.

It shouldn’t have been loud, but the thing was, when there were a few hundred of her closest friends and family, including, of course, those who were not close to her at all, everything seemed more serious, amplified by the audience. The string quartet stopped, the crowd paused. Down the aisle, Evelyn glowered. Priscilla stole a glance at the onlookers.

People were judging her, based on the gape-jawed expression from Uncle Larry, who was here as part of a throuple from his senior living community. If even freewheeling Uncle Larry was appalled at her behavior, it had to be bad.

Judgment or not, she turned for the door and considered how much running might be possible in three-inch heels. If she ran, her dreams of continuing the legacy of her father’s politicking and one day becoming Council president went with her. If she stayed, well, she might only ever be the Council president’s wife.

“She’s making a break for it! Outrageous,” shouted one of the elderly Council members from behind her. She didn’t know which one, and she decided not to care. “What would Benedict and Persephone say? Dishonor on the Hart family. Shame!”

The familiar squeezing was back at the sound of her parents’ names. Prissy stopped in her tracks and scanned the crowd. She pressed her hand against her chest, as though firm fingers could still the panic and grief roiling within. Her eyes darted over person after person, desperate to find the offending speaker and snap ants into his pants or curse him to start each day of the rest of his life by stepping on the smallest, sharpest LEGO. But she couldn’t focus enough to guess at the culprit. The snug white pantsuit was a claw, clutching her in its claustrophobic tightness.

The suffocation was too much like the promises she had made to the would-be wife waiting at the altar.

And the impending threat of her decisions wasn’t the only thing turning her dreams to ash—it had been her job to stop the fireworks display, but of course she hadn’t made it that far. An errant burst lit the delicate tulle draped around the top of the square canopy she had insisted on. If she’d been the crying sort, this could have brought her to her knees, but she’d learned to bury her emotions deep, and to bottle them up to explode out later. It was a defense mechanism against a universe that had taken the people she needed most from her. A universe that had left her to marry her first love even though they weren’t on the same page for significant things.

What would Benedict and Persephone say? She paused at the door, and turned to look at Uncle Larry, who was now gesturing toward the flaming chuppah, his girlfriend at one side and his boyfriend at the other. Was this showering dishonor on her ancestors now? She’d created her very own proverbial burning bush, except it wasn’t a miracle; it was a fucking disaster. No one moved to get up, no one moved to come closer. They were looking at her like she was some sort of prey, hunted and liable to bolt if anyone went too close.

She preferred to be the hunter, but in this instance, flight was the only reasonable approach. And her parents, if they were alive, or if she had been brave enough to speak with their ghosts last fall, would have probably told her long ago not to let the beautiful woman she loved think that she might change her mind and want kids one day. A better person would have realized this before staring down said beloved at the end of an aisle, under a now-flaming wedding canopy.

“Oi! Someone ought to handle that!” Uncle Larry, bless his heart and his shiny bald head, wolf whistled, pointing again, standing up, and creating enough of a scene to distract a chunk of the crowd from looking at her. One of the bridesmaids hurried to magic the blaze out, demurely tapping the fingers of her right hand against the bottom of her left palm, like she was Clarisse fucking Renaldi or something. Her decorum, even in something as simple as how she accessed her magic, was an annoying reminder that the entire British delegation was here, and she had definitely offended them. Uncle Larry was her favorite for a reason. He was buying her time. A better not-a-wedding-anymore gift than anything she could think of.

You’ll change your mind. How could you not? Evie had insisted.

Swallowing, she made the mistake of stopping to glance at the guests closest to her. The back section had been tacitly designated for people who didn’t very much know or like the wedding party.

“Oh, shit, she’s going to run,” a blond man with a square jaw and a look on his face like he had been told one too many times how handsome he was whispered loudly to Agatha Vanderbilt Voisin. The woman had only worked on the Council with Priscilla for six months, but that was long enough to know that Agatha was a grade-A, planner-carrying, spreadsheet-wielding pain in the ass. For antichrist’s sake, Agatha had once reprimanded Priscilla for using the wrong format for an office supply order spreadsheet. She absolutely would have opinions about this.

One more point toward beelining out of here before any sort of ceremony or reception. At least there would be no awkward conversations with people she barely knew.

“No fucking way,” the blond man slurred, not bothering to pretend it was a whisper this time. He was loud enough that someone—possibly Uncle Larry—cleared their throat. Agatha blushed a furious pink, rubbing her palms on her pink sheath dress as though the action could calm her date. This sort of thing was anathema to everything that golden-coiffed, ramrod-straight-postured Agatha loved. This was definitely the wrong form for Priscilla to be proverbially filling out.

Priscilla smirked, relishing the discomfort of her most irritating coworker, until she caught the eye of Evelyn’s personal assistant. Kevin was wide-eyed, in a smart tuxedo with a bow tie, glancing from her and back up to Evelyn. Priscilla fixed her face into what she hoped was contrite consideration. It was bad form to smirk while actively abandoning a fiancée at the altar.

You’ll change your mind, Evie had insisted, over and over again, not hearing or not wanting to hear the response. Maybe, Prissy had grown accustomed to saying.

The thing was, though, she hadn’t. Or, awkwardly, the thing she had changed her mind about was the wedding, and the time she had changed it at happened to be the absolute worst possible, short of after the vows. She supposed that would have been worse.

“Priscilla Hart.” Evelyn’s voice boomed down the aisle, and for a moment, Prissy looked away, and out the doorway in front of her. The safety of the outside hallway beckoned her. Evelyn had either grabbed a mic or magicked one, and if Priscilla turned now, she might do something inconceivable and marry the woman just to avoid the agony of awkwardness. “You can trust never to see my face again if you don’t turn right back around and at least do me the courtesy of talking to me before running.”

Nibbling her lip for a moment, Prissy considered it. She could turn around. Have Evie convince her, again, with those big, limpid eyes, that love was enough to change her life.

Behind her, drunk guy was getting louder, Agatha was blushing harder, and two seats down, Kevin was muttering frantically about how he’d rescheduled an entire delegation from Monaco for this wedding, and how inconceivable it was that he was wasting his life keeping a scheduling calendar if entitled councilwomen were just going to change plans last minute.

“Aggie, really, thanks for bringing me,” slurred drunk guy. “This is the best fucking wedding I have ever been to—better than reality television.”