“What do you want?” A young woman was standing hand-and-hand with a man around her own age, looking up into the sky.

And hovering there was a dark figure in long black robes, grinning like the Cheshire Cat. His thick black hair could barely be seen against the darkness of the night. His bright, glowing golden eyes, however, could be spotted from a mile away. 

“What do I want?” the young man parroted back. “Let’s see… I want to see you punished, Laurel dearest. To see you face the consequences of your actions.” He cocked his head to the side in thought, turning to the man at Laurel’s side. “However, you are not the only one who must pay for your mistakes, my love.” The figure beside Laurel snarled, to which the young man simply chuckled. 

Laurel shook her head. “You will leave him out of this.” 

The young man grinned. “Oh, I don’t think I will. This is such fun.” He stuck out his lower lip in a pout. “You know, it’s been incredibly dull since you left, Laurel dearest. I’ve missed you a great deal.”

Laurel snarled. “I did what I had to do.”

The young man chuckled, but all amusement had vanished. “Oh, did you now? You had to desert me when I needed you most? You had to slaughter thousands of my Dark Knights for spite? You had to betray me without reason?” He laughed, joyless and cold. “No, my love. You chose that path. And now,” he turned to the man at Laurel’s side, “your new lover will pay for it. Marcus, isn’t it?”

Marcus pulled out his wand, but Laurel put her hand on his arm and turned to the figure hovering in front of them. “Perhaps we can come to an agreement. You will not be harming anyone tonight.”

The young man arched a brow. “Oh, won’t I?” Faster than the eye could follow, he pulled his wand from a pocket inside his robes and flicked it toward Marcus. The man’s limbs instantly locked up and he was pulled from the ground into the air, tauntingly hovering in front of Laurel. The young man stepped behind Marcus as if they were on the ground and pressed his wand to his throat. “Make one wrong move and his lifeless body will be laying on the ground in an instant,” the young man breathed.

Laurel nodded, knowing she had no other choice. “What do you want?”

The young man hummed in thought. “I want the girl,” he stated simply. “And not your girl. The other one; the one that doesn’t belong to you.” 

Laurel’s eyes widened, knowing exactly which girl he spoke of, but her voice remained even. “She belongs with us now. And you will not have her.”

The young man chuckled. “Ah, and why is that?” 

Laurel raised her chin defiantly. “Because she and her sister have been hidden and protected by magic. You will never reach either one.”

For a spit second, the young man’s face contorted with rage and confusion. But his easy, composed nature returned in the blink of an eye. “I see. That is a shame, truly.” He began to lower himself onto the ground and walked toward the young woman, while Marcus still struggled midair. “You are a disappointment, my love. Truly; I would have hoped for more of a challenge.”

Laurel shook her head in disgust. “I cannot believe I had ever sided with you.”

To her surprise, the young man only laughed. “Ah, yes. I had forgotten about that little detail.” He picked at his nails. “What a shame you turned against me in the end.”

Laurel did not hide the sorrow in her voice. Or the regret. “You turned into a monster; I could not stand with you any more.”

The young man chuckled darkly. “Oh, I never turned into a monster, my love.” He walked closer to her until his breath grazed her ear. “I always was one.”

Before anything else could be done, the young man whipped around and pointed his wand at Marcus, firing a green bolt at the man’s chest. Marcus fell to the ground, mouth agape in a half-formed last word to his wife. 

At first, Laurel simply stayed where she was, staring at the lifeless body of her husband. And then she started screaming. She didn’t see the young man’s face twist in pain at seeing Laurel like this, and instead clutched Marcus’s limp form. “How could you?” she shrieked. “How could you hurt him-hurt me-like this?”

The young man’s face kept neutral. “You hurt me even more when you left,” he whispered. “When you betrayed me. I will never forget the pain I felt that day.”

Laurel’s screaming slowly ceased, but her broken expression remained. “You have become a monster,” she replied cooly. “I do not care for your feelings anymore. I do not care for you anymore.”

The young man’s face twisted in rage, and he did not hide it this time. “You will regret those words, my love.” He raised his wand to Laurel’s heart and with one swift movement and a flash of green light, her lifeless corpse was laying beside her husband’s on the cold cement.