A New Beginning (Past)

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There's no remedy for memory of faces

Like a melody, it won't leave my head

Your soul is haunting me

It had only been a few months since Rayna had found James’ lifeless body in the woods when he hadn’t returned home from his hunting trip. It had broken her heart to find him, that he was dead and that nothing short of using the darkest form of magic that she knew would be able to return him to her. She’d wanted to bring him back though knew that he never would have wanted her to resort to black magic in order to do so and so, in order to honor him she forced herself to bury him and attempt to move on. Still, she hardly believed that she would ever move on, would ever love anyone as much as she’d loved him and while men sought to be with her she simply turned them away. Considering she’d left her family, given up their wealth when she had gone against her parents in order to marry James she refused to even attempt to return, her pride too great for one thing and she knew that if she had returned they would only attempt to force her into a union that she would want nothing to do with. Therefore, she decided to take a job at one of the pubs in town and continue to live a modest life.

She’d been working as a server for nearly a month and despite many of the men attempting to catch her eye, some even attempting to force her into being with them, she refused them all. Her pain of losing James was still relatively fresh and none of them caught her eye or changed that grief. She saw the men attempting the same with the other women in the pub though whenever they became too persistent and Rayna felt as though either the others or even herself were in danger she would protect them against those who wished them harm. She wasn’t one to show her magic usually, however, she’d always been told to hide it from others and growing up she and her siblings had been forbidden from practicing it, not that she or even her elder brother had listened. They had often snuck out to do just that, going against their parents.

As she stood behind the bar tending to a man who’d had plenty to drink already, attempting to persuade him to return home and sleep it off she couldn’t help but roll her eyes when he’d attempted to talk her into going home with him. Moving around the bar to grab him and usher him to the door he grabbed her unexpectedly and pulled her to him. “Release me, Marcus,” she said, her tone hard. He was a regular and one that tended to drink far too much and constantly tried to get her to go back with him. She’d already been forced to defend herself magically against him on several occasions though he never seemed to learn. Pushing him away, using her magic to strengthen the force, he stumbled backward and nearly fell over. “Will you never learn?” she asked and shook her head, moving back to him and pulling him toward the door. Once they reached it, however, he became even more persistent, pulling her out of the pub with him where there were hardly any others around given the time of night, and tried to force her into sleeping with him. Her anger increasing at his refusal to stop she lifted her hand and magically threw him against a nearby tree, pinning him to it. “Go home, Marcus,” she said firmly and released him, causing him to fall face first in the mud.