Nimue ~ Preface

by Marie Lynn in the little place that exists over the rainbow

He hardly dared to breathe.
The angelic, inhuman witch was leaning across him, her pale, mauve hued eyes fixed unwaveringly on the oak tree's trunk, her rippling, russet, lustrous hair tickling his skin, muttering something, a spell. She said in a fluttering murmur, "It was foolish of you to contradict me."
Merlin sighed in ecstasy, love for Nimue searing through him.
"I'm merely doing my job," he mumbled.
She turned her attention from the tree and put a hand on his wrist, her fingertips cool and soft, her colorless cheeks flushing. He could feel her heartbeat thrumming through her skin. A thrill shivered down his spine.
"You should have let me do what I wanted," she whispered, and her voice, delicate as a freshly spun cobweb, trembled, whether with terror or impending delight, Merlin couldn't tell.
A sixth, half-forgotten sense warned him wildly to flee, but he was too lost in the heavenly aroma of her leafy perfume to regard it. Her beauteous violet eyes were locked with his, and all that mattered was that she stay there, and that he could hear her heartbeat forever.
Nimue smiled a deadly, entrancing smile, gripped his wrist tightly, and uttered one of his own spells.
And then his spirit was imprisoned in the oak tree that he had been propped against, and he could see his own body, lifeless and pointless as a rag doll. He struggled to free his spirit from the tree, but he had no voice, and couldn't form a spell, even in his mind.
Nimue was standing before him, her eyes glinting venomously. "You've lost," she breathed. "Lost to one of your own pupils. You were so smitten with me that you could hardly concentrate on the lessons. It was positively easy to defeat you. I expected a fight. Well, now you're gone, and the line of wizardry will end, right here, with your downfall. Goodbye, Merlin." She gave him one more glimpse of her devastatingly beautiful face, and flitted away, leaving him to contemplate in silence how foolish it was to love.