Wasteland (Find You Book 0) Read online

  “I won’t marry him,” Jay said. “I’m already mated.”

  “That ridiculous ancient rite?” The man who had raised him, sheltered him, sneered, his face ugly. “At any rate, not for long.”

  I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.

  There was a knock at the locked door. Jay looked to it listlessly; it wasn’t as though anyone needed his permission to enter. That had been made abundantly clear to him. He had been locked inside for weeks, seeing only his mother, the maid Celia, and the doctor. After he heard the shouting the other night between his mother and her husband, she hadn’t been back to see him.

  He placed a hand on the light, increasing swell of stomach. He expected Celia again; it was a bit early for his nightly meal but it wasn’t as if his comfort was anyone’s priority.

  A key rattled in the lock.

  It wasn’t the maid.

  “Who are you?” he demanded, but even as the words left his lips, he knew the answer.

  Witch. They said she was Jessup’s mistress - a slender, evocative thing with ink-black hair and enough presence to command an army. The look of anxiety on her face appeared unseemly, somehow.

  “I can’t be found here,” she said quietly, closing the door behind her with a quiet snick.

  “Why are you here?” Jay asked.

  “To bring you this,” the witch said, and produced a small vial in her hands, setting it down atop his dresser.

  Jay swallowed. “What is that?”

  “I think you know.”

  Jay said nothing for a long moment. Then - “Do you know what happened to him?”

  The witch regarded Jay calmly. “Not for sure,” she said, cautious, but then her tone turned bitter. “I only know that my own beloved came back one night gloating, and that he still has plans for you.” She gestured to his stomach. “After.”

  “You have to know I want no part of him,” Jay said, and the witch snorted.

  “I know. Believe me. Your soul fairly reeks of the love you have for your husband. It’s… overwhelming.”

  “You’re here for another reason,” Jay guessed, and backed away as she strode forward, catching his shoulders in hands of steel.

  “I’ve come to warn you,” she said. “And may your souls find peace.”

  I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.

  *

  The witch was a canny sort. She could see for herself the light that shone between the two lovers - perhaps she had seen it before they had, on a dusty summer’s day, when she’d spied the two of them cooling off in the creek.

  When Jessup came to her, teeming with rage and a viciousness that scared even her, she knew that she would do his bidding. It was for the good of her own survival that she had laid the curse, that each life lived in each other’s company would be full of toils and trials, that their mistake of loving only each other might haunt them through the many worlds.

  But she was not without a heart. And when she brought the curse to bear, she writ in a failsafe: that if they found their way back to one another, again and again, their love might burn apart the bindings of the curse, so that each time they encountered it, the curse would be weaker than before.

  In this life, Gavin was lost, no trace of him to be seen, leaving only agony in his wake.

  But in the next life, and the life after, and the many worlds as they were writ parallel throughout the universe, there were other Jays - other Gavins.

  And the misery of her curse did take them, twisting their circumstances and their hopes and sometimes their very natures - but with each incarnation, the pain eased, and lessened, until all that was left was their very own

  Happily ever after.

  Wasteland is the prequel to the Find You series, which tells the stories of the other Jays and Gavins and how they find their (actual!) happy endings through five novels and novellas. Find You: In the Desperation will be available on April 12, 2019.

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