it had been mixed and applied by a high priestess of pure heart and strong magical abilities, as it was supposed to be. Ergo, my love mark was supposed to alert me to the presence of my life’s companion at first sight. And the love mark was never wrong.
Never.
Yet, I had questions.
So many questions. Because this seemed fucking wrong.
Despite the insistence from my mark, something was not right here.
I mean, if I was going to be paired off with an elderly gentleman, why couldn’t it have at least been a sweet old man who liked to laugh and regale everyone with stories of the good old days? Not this bitter, decrepit bastard who scowled at me as if I were the source of his life’s misery.
I couldn’t be reading the signals wrong either; I’d been able to follow the trail of longing and insistent nagging in my temple from over two blocks away. And when I’d taken my first look, I just knew.
He belonged to me. And I belonged to him.
After getting over the surprise of his gender, and age, and overall hostile glower, I’d started toward him merely to introduce myself and maybe learn his name and discover what it was about him that kept calling to me. Get my questions answered, you know?
But for some unknown reason, he’d taken off before I could reach him. I knew he’d seen me coming, too. He’d looked right at me, and then he’d turned away, wheeling his cart of wares he’d been selling in the square and trundling off into a crowd of people. What was worse was that he didn’t have the mark. He didn’t know we belonged together. The hardest part about this mess of a situation would be to somehow convince him that we did.
I’d called after him, trying to gain his attention, so unless he was hard of hearing—which wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility, considering his age—he had flat-out ignored me. On purpose.
Not very polite.
For all he knew, I’d just wanted to buy a damn loaf of bread off his trolley. Why’d he have to do me that way?
The fucker had moved fast too. There was something off about that as well. For as much as he’d limped when I’d first seen him, all off-balance as if he were hindered by a bum leg, one would think he wouldn’t have escaped so easily. But as soon as I’d made it through the horde he had disappeared into, I’d found his cart of bread abandoned by the side of a road, and he was nowhere to be found.
Tilting my head, I frowned at his wagon, then closed my eyes and let the mark take over, guiding me in the right direction. Oh yeah, I was definitely locked on to his essence now. From this point on, no matter where he went, I’d be able to follow.
Curiosity took over as I tracked his trail, catching sight of him up ahead of me every so often. Seriously, why was he running? This made no sense.
His attire seemed to change every glimpse I caught of him, too. He’d lifted a green scarf to cover his head once, then had acquired a straw hat from somewhere the next time. When I saw him dart into an alley not long after that, my grin spread.
“Gotcha,” I whispered.
I was so sure I’d be able to catch up to him there with fewer crowds and obstacles obstructing my path. But when I reached the mouth of the backstreet, I found him leaping into the saddle of a waiting horse with way too much agility and grace for a man of his advanced years.
“Hey!” I yelled, growing frustrated by the injustice of the moment.
But he wasn’t supposed to get away.
Besides, what had I done to scare him off in the first place?
I started after him on foot, as he wheeled his horse around and took off toward the opposite end of the alley. I’d just reached the halfway point and noticed that odd bell hanging from the wall when someone had rung my bell.
I swear, I had literally heard my brain gong inside my head when I was struck.
I don’t remember hitting the ground, but I did open my eyes once, not long after that, I think, because I heard footsteps race off as whoever had hit me fled the scene. It couldn’t have been my one true love who’d struck me, either. He’d clearly been ahead of me, escaping, and the culprit had come