Charming the heart of a man is a lot more difficult than it sounds. Especially when it's already bewitched by somebody else - literally!
--
All that former witch-in-training Avalon wanted was a simple job to get her life back on track and forget abo...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
The ointment felt oily on her fingers as Avalon rubbed it on her temples and between her eyes right at the bridge of her nose, making her wrinkle her nose. Trying not to think about what he'd said about wanting to taste the tincture on her skin, she put the can back on the bench. She turned toward the pentagram, exchanging one last glance with Neymar. Then she took a deep breath and closed her eyes.
Undoing spells required the skill set that usually only a master of magic had acquired of years and years of studying and practice. Someone like a clan elder, or a clean leader like a father. Normally. The form a spell and to make it hold, its delicate tendrils were interwoven with reality. That was easy enough, seeing as casting spells was a feat any little witch could do. But undoing a spell was something different. Especially someone else's. She remembered her parents' nagging whenever her childhood-self had screwed up something or another and they'd had to clean up the mess until she'd learned to do it for herself. But that had usually revolved around a cleaning spell gone wrong because she hadn't wanted to tidy up her room by hand and then her mum was stuck with undoing the spell and sorting out the magic that had stuck her jeans and sweatshirts together instead of floating them into her closet.
And now here she was, years later, trying to undo a spell, just like her mum. Only it wasn't clothes. It was a human being she was trying to sort out. Just like that one time...
Ever so slowly, she sent out her magic. Tentatively. To test the waters of the strength of Nina's love spell, of the power of their pentagram. The softest pull in her mid-section. There. That was–
"Hey, I felt that! Was that you?" Neymar asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
Avalon frowned, concentrating on the connection that was there now. So weak... "Yeah. Now quiet please."
She sent her inquiring magic further down the connection. It felt... weird. In an oddly familiar sense. Like she'd felt his aura before. But that shouldn't be odd, should it? The connection was his aura and hers, bonded through her magic, after all. Then why did it seem like an old friend?
"Right," she said, once she'd made sure the connection held firm. "I'm going to start probing for Nina's fabrications now. I'm sorry but this is going to be uncomfortable."
"Uncomf– holy shit that hurts!"
Pulling his arms over his abdomen, Neymar leaned forward, grimacing as he felt Avalon's magic tugging at the tendrils the love spell was made out off. The tendrils deeply entwined with his aura, his matter, his reality. 'Uncomfortable', Avalon knew, wasn't cutting it close but it couldn't be helped. What she was about to do was nothing less than pulling each tendril out of him, one after the other. All without ripping his aura into pieces.
Because it was as easy as it sounded. Not. Because she'd done a great job that one time she'd done it back then. Not. Don't think about it, Avalon! She squinted her eyes shut, her concentration faltering for the faintest of moments. It was almost enough to make her lose her focus on the task at hand, to make her lose the mental grip she had on that first tendril of Nina's spell that had wretched itself into Neymar's aura, into Neymar's chest and deeply into Neymar's heart.
