The SpellBinder's Grim (LONG LIST 2018)

Chapter One: Love is an Unfulfilled Promise

Chapter one: Love is an Unfulfilled Promise

Her pale skin felt warm beneath his palm as his hand glided along her shoulders and down her arms. She smiled at him fondly and he smiled back.

"Caius," she whispered in a chastising manner. She tugged on his dark brown hair cut below his shoulders playfully and he nuzzled his nose into the crook of her neck.

"Say it again," Caius brushed his fingers through her long red hair that rested at her waist in soft curls. Her light blue dress complimented her glacier colored eyes and her gray petticoat wrapped around her figure in an alluring manner.

"Elizabeth." He urged, wrapping his arms around her tightly to get what he wanted. She leaned into his touch shyly, blue eyes looking anywhere but at his face as a blush crept up her neck.

"I love you. I love you the way a poet is in love with words. I love you in the way I have loved you for three years," She giggled at her confession and lightly pushed him back, looking into his grass colored eyes for a moment before resting her head on a nearby tree to hide her blushing face.

Caius didn't like the distance she had made between them and stepped forward. He lifted a tanned hand due to summers of outside labor and pulled down a nearby branch that held the remainder of dying leaves in the greeting of winter.

"The forest is going to be blanketed in snow soon. It will be very cold." He said quietly, pulling the dead leaves of the branch off.

Elizabeth chortled, "As every winter before it Caius."

"I am only saying, as you choose to never wear foot wear outside, they may freeze. I hope you are aware." He smirked at her and then broke off the branch and handed it to her and she rolled her eyes. "Again, Caius? This has got to be your favorite trick, and it is quite overdone."

Caius closed her hand around the dead branch with an amused smile. "I have a collection to upkeep. Besides, it is my favorite trick." He looked from the branch in her hand, to her eyes expectantly with a childish grin.

Her eyes went stone-like, glazed over a dark violet, and her delicate hand squeezed the branch tightly. The branch suddenly became engulfed in a blue flame and bright green leaves with pink blossoms sprouted, healthy and alive in place of the dead ones. Her eyes shifted back to normal, and she triumphantly held the flower covered branch in front of her for Caius to take.

Caius was handsome. With a cleft chin and strong jaw- more handsome than the other men in the village. Green eyes that matched the grass and brown wavy hair that rivaled any. Always he made Elizabeth's heart flutter with his kind heart and charismatic grin.

"It never ceases to amaze me," Caius laughed bringing a blossom to his nose, the heat of magic still pulsing gently through it with life. He then placed the small branch at his side through the loop of his belt.

"It takes a lot out of me. I feel rather fatigued already today." She said, wiping her brow that had glistened with sweat.

"I will not ask this of you again." He replied, handing her an ivory colored rag

"You know you are a -"

"Dreadful liar? I am aware." He fiddled with the branch at his side and gave her a toothy grin. He reached his hand for her red hair and fiddled with it between his fingers.

"What are you thinking?" She asked attentively.

"Just that anyone else would have been condemned as a witch, you however, escape that assumption," he laughed.