Sapphic Snapshots: The Magick of Marriage
featuring love/hate, enemies to lovers, arranged marriage and witches. Ella is thirteen when she meets her arch nemesis for the first time. Prior to the meeting, she’s had no enemies, and hasn’t even fully comprehended the true meaning of the word. All it takes is a seemingly innocuous trip to the van Ladeghem residence and an earth-shattering announcement uttered by Victoria van Ladeghem - the reigning High Priestess of the Ladeghem Coven. An announcement Ella’s mother enthusiastically parrots back, no doubt trying to earn more favor despite being the High Priestess of a rather powerful coven herself.
Later, much later, her parents will explain to her that it is specifically because of their powerful coven that she has to marry someone she absolutely loathes.
“Joining our covens together is your sacred duty,” her father will tell her. “It was written by the gods themselves.”
And she will huff and mutter something like yes father back and then silently cry herself to sleep. But that will be much, much later.
Today, when she’s thirteen, she’s still struggling to comprehend what exactly this whole arranged marriage situation entails. That’s when she meets the gaze of her newfound future wife.
And Valeria van Ladeghem is looking at her with complete and utter disappointment. Like she was promised a dog for her birthday and got a parrot instead. Dark eyes, too big for her narrow fifteen year old face and her lanky fifteen year old figure, are trained on Ella for no more than a few seconds, and then Valeria looks away with an expression Ella can’t describe as anything other than crestfallen.
Ella stays rooted on the spot as familiar feelings of unfamiliar intensity flood through her. Shame, first, and then guilt, as if she’s to blame for this whole thing somehow. As if she’s tainting the giant pristine house of van Ladeghems with her mere presence. As if she’s unworthy to even stand in the general vicinity of the only van Ladeghem heir. Her white princess dress and the golden curls her mother has spent the entire morning on now seem ridiculous, and out of place. There’s nothing she dreads more as a barely-teenager than feeling like a little girl, and Valeria, turns out, is able to make her feel small with her mere glance.
Face flushed with embarrassment, Ella turns on her heels and runs, and it’s only once she’s in the garden that she realizes embarrassment gave way to red hot fury.
That day, as her parents bring her back into the house she’s supposed to move to once she’s eighteen, she silently vows to never spend a day as Valeria’s wife - or die trying to avoid it.
Valeria’s coldly polite the entire evening, and her gaze is no longer disappointed - it’s just empty.
***
She meets Valeria for the second time when she’s sixteen. Neither she nor Valeria have expressed any desire to interact with each other before the wedding, but they are both expected to attend the Night of the Blood Moon, and it’s fruitless to avoid each other with their parents present and very enthusiastic about the upcoming union of their covens.
“Hello, miss Good,” Valeria is the first to speak when their families run into each other. Just like the last time she saw her, the Ladeghem heir is coldly polite. “It’s good to see you.”
Ella’s sure she’s lying. She does the same, through gritted teeth. Her forced fiancee does look good, of course - the Ladeghem genes have provided her with enviable height, and her inky-black short curls are a sharp contrast against her pale skin. She’s finally grown into her eyes, as well. At eighteen, Valeria van Ladeghem is no longer an awkward teenager, but a handsome young woman.
Somehow, that makes Ella despise her even more.
They are, of course, forced to dance the first dance, and it’s then that Valeria casually asks her a question both expected and unexpected in its straightforwardness.
“Is the idea of marrying me this unappealing?”
Ella, usually not the one to be outwitted, only blinks. “What?” She clears her throat as Valeria gracefully turns them and continues to lead. “Why?”
The Ladeghem heir smirks. “Whenever you see me, your face looks like you bit into a lemon,” she reasons.
Ella feels the already familiar fury she’s come to associate with Valeria. “Well, you’re marrying that face whether you like it or not,” she spits.
The dance finally comes to an end. Ella’s not sure, but she almost thinks the corners of Valeria’s lips tip upwards. “Quite the spirit,” she comments, pressing her lips to Ella’s hand as she thanks her for the dance. “Save some for the wedding, miss Good.”
Ella is sixteen when she realizes her future wife is absolutely insufferable.
***
At seventeen, she meets the true love of her life. James joins the Good Coven in summer, right around Ella’s birthday, and he’s young and charming and funny. He’s a traveling witch, full of stories and adventure. Most importantly, he makes her forget about Valeria and her parents and her duties for short, blissful moments. He’s an alright kisser, Ella supposes, having no previous experience to compare it to, but he’s always so excited and eager to meet her lips that she always goes with it and indulges him.
James is righteously indignant when he learns about her situation, and he promises to whisk her away - far, far away, to another continent, where they’ll settle in a tiny cottage and dance with fae and have a lot of kids, but only if Ella wants to, of course. He’s fine either way, he tells her.
The promise of having a choice is enough to make Ella fall for him even harder. They decide to run away once she comes into her full power at eighteen.
***
Ella van Ladeghem née Good is eighteen when she marries the High Priestess of the Ladeghem Coven. Valeria gets the title when her mother dies in a car accident, a month before the wedding.
(Ella’s not proud of it, but the very first thing she asks her mother after they learn of Victoria’s passing is whether the wedding is off.
It’s not, so it’s not like it matters anyway.)
Their wedding is a grand affair, which makes sense - it’s more of a political union than a personal one, and Ella has never even met most of the guests. Neither has Valeria, but she’s handling herself much better than Ella. It’s infuriating.
Ella quietly fumes through the entire event. The only thing keeping her sane is the plan she’s hatched about a week ago - the night her parents took James away from her.
Her mother reasons that paying James a hefty sum he specifically asked for in exchange for dumping Ella hardly counts as taking him away, but Ella is eighteen and hurt and angry and, most of all, tired of feeling like a bargaining chip in the games the adults play.
So she figures the only logical next step is to poison her wife.
***
“Is everything to your liking?”
The question is the first time Valeria speaks to her directly after the wedding. They are seated on the opposite ends of a ridiculously long dinner table the very next day, having obviously spent their first night as newlyweds apart.
(Last night, Ella let out an audible sigh of relief when Valeria told her staff to direct Ella to her own bedroom.)
She blinks as she processes the question. “You have a beautiful house,” is the first thing that comes to mind.
Valeria raises an eyebrow. “I’ve always thought it was too big,” she comments lightly, and takes another bite. They are having roasted lamb for dinner, and Ella has to admit it tastes delicious.
She watches her wife swallow and then reach for the glass full of wine, and her heart flutters in her chest. There it is. She’s spent several days and an unreasonable amount of money hunting down the poison that suits her purposes - the one that simply stops the heart and is untraceable. After Valeria takes a sip and falls dead, Ella will take a memory-altering potion, and even if the Coven tries to get inside her head, which she’s confident she won’t allow in the first place, they’ll find nothing.
Valeria swirls the wine in her glass as she meets Ella’s eyes with her own unreadable ones. “What about the food?” She prompts.
Ella tries not to frown. “It’s delicious. Thank you.”
The Ladeghem heiress hums as she smells the wine next. Ella squeezes her fork. “And the wine?”
“What?” She realizes she’s starting to bend the fork with her magic and puts it down. Valeria’s still staring at her. “Oh, it’s - I haven’t tried it yet. I’m letting it breathe.”
Her wife gives her a slow, cat-like blink. Then, “Come.”
“Excuse me?”
One corner of Valeria’s mouth twitches upward. “Come here, miss Good.” It’s not quite an order, but it’s not quite a simple request, either. Ella looks at her for a beat. Valeria looks back.
With an annoyed sigh masking her nerves, Ella rises to her feet and quickly walks over to the opposite end of the table.
“Good,” she’s not sure if Valeria’s praising her obedience or saying her last name. “Now, sit, please.”
Ella’s eyes widen with horror when Valeria gently yet insistently tugs her in her lap. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?!” She exclaims, trying to twist her arm out of Valeria’s strong grip.
Her wife gives her a muted smirk. “I’m inviting my wife to taste the wine for me,” she says, and it suddenly becomes crystal clear to both of them that the other knows exactly what it is about.
Ella manages to rip her arm out of Valeria’s hold with a short, enraged cry. She doesn’t expect Valeria to let her go this quick, though, so the momentum sends her tumbling to the floor.
When she springs to her feet, Valeria’s already standing. “I really thought you were much smarter than that, miss Good,” she tells her, coldly. Her dark eyes are almost black, and the air around them is cracking with power.
Ella doesn’t reply. Only snarls and summons fire in her hand, ready to throw it in Valeria’s infuriatingly calm face.
She never gets the chance as Valeria waves her hand up, looking almost bored, and all of Ella’s muscles harden and freeze. She can feel her blood flow stop entirely, and it’s as painful as it is scary. The scream in her throat stays there, like a bitter lump.
“Goddess,” she hears Valeria mutter to herself, and her voice sounds just as disappointed as she’s looked all those years ago after meeting Ella for the first time. “Poison. It’s almost insulting.” She sighs and drops her hand. Ella drops to the floor next, panting and hating the silent tears streaming down her face.
“Do you ever think before you do things?” Valeria’s voice is calm, but she can sense the underlying quiet rage just as much as she can feel the hardwood floor under her flushed cheek. “Do you even realize what the Covens would’ve done to you once they found out?”
“I…” Ella coughs, releasing the air stuck in her airways. “I had a plan.”
“Let me guess, a memory altering spell,” Valeria mocks. She sighs at Ella’s glare. “Things have memories too, Ella. Anyone with basic divination skills would’ve been able to tell what happened here. With me gone, you’d be executed on the spot.”
“I’m not some… damsel,” Ella manages to squeeze out.
“No. No, you wouldn’t be a damsel,” Valeria says, and her voice is cold again. “You’d be a murderer.”
It might be the sudden flow of blood to her brain or the words Valeria says out loud, but it only then dawns on Ella - just how stupid she’s been.
“Did your parents teach you magic?” Valeria’s question is sudden. She sounds both incredulous and concerned. And Ella - she just feels small, again.
“...Yes,” she whispers.
She’s not ready to look Valeria in the eye yet, but her wife kneels next to her, and it’s impossible not to meet her inquiring stare. “Did you know about object memory?” She asks.
Ella swallows. “...No.”
What else doesn’t she know? What else did her parents hide from her, in their desperate attempts to keep her in line, keep her obedient and weak so she wouldn’t escape the arrangement they’ve made for her?
Exhausted and drained of all fight, Ella takes a shuddering breath, lets it out, and starts to cry.
***
“I was in love before I met you.” Valeria isn’t looking at her as she speaks. They moved to her study after Ella cried her heart out and Valeria awkwardly patted her shoulder before offering her a throw blanket. “Her name was Anna. We were children, but I knew she was the one for me.”
She ignores Ella’s sharp intake of breath as she continues.
“The night before you visited for the first time, I welded a ring for her. The night after I met you, I gave the ring to my mother as a promise to fulfill my duty before our Coven.” She glances at Ella, then, and there’s no anger or hurt in her gaze. Just resolve, and weariness that Ella imagines comes with the title of the High Priestess. “Everyone sacrificed something for this union, miss Good. Because this is bigger than one person’s personal wishes and desires. It’s about our survival as a species. I hope you understand that.”
“I do,” Ella whispers, trying not to let her voice quiver with embarrassment too much.
Valeria nods. “Tonight was your one and only free pass,” she says next, and her voice gains back the usual steel. “Given the circumstances, your actions are understandable. But it can’t happen again, or you will be tried for treason. You can’t just go around attempting to murder the High Priestess, Ella.”
“I… I know.”
“I sure hope so.” Ella’s sure she’s hallucinating, because there is no way Valeria’s amused with her. And yet, that’s exactly how her voice sounds - full of muted mirth. “This stays between us. But only this once.”
Ella blows out a breath, suddenly irritated. “I said I got it.”
“Ah, there she is.” For the first time, well, ever, dark eyes sparkle with something, no longer dull and stoic. Then, she grows serious as she rises from her chair. “I’m not asking you to be a good wife. I’m asking you to be a good partner. I will never ask anything of you other than your help in keeping our Coven safe.” Valeria searches her face for something as she looks at her. Judging by her slight smile, whatever it is, she finds it.
“Thank you,” Ella tells her, earnestly. Taking everything into account, she’s lucky to still be alive and relatively unharmed, and there might be a silver lining to her situation.
The High Priestess cocks her head to the right. “You’re welcome,” she tells her. “Tomorrow, we will start your lessons.”
“My lessons?”
Valeria nods. “This attempt, while… cute,” well, some things aren’t that different - Ella still wants to lightly slap her wife, turns out, “is also concerningly amateur. So. Your lessons start tomorrow.”
“Alright,” is the only thing Ella can really say. As she watches Valeria leave, however, there is something else, burning at the tip of her tongue. It might be the emotional rollercoaster of the night or the unexpected vulnerability Valeria displayed when sharing about her own circumstances - she’s not sure, but it’s strong enough to make her speak again, just as Valeria is about to exit the room.
“I loved someone, too.” When Valeria stops in her tracks and slowly turns her head to look at her, she swallows and continues. “James, a witch from my coven.”
“Ah.” Valeria purses her lips, as if remembering something. “What happened to him?”
Ella smirks a humorless smirk. “Guess my parents’ money was a better life mate than I ever was.”
She’s not prepared for shock and then quiet fury to cross Valeria’s face at her words. “And you’re better off not spending your life with an absolute moron,” she tells her in a low, dangerous tone. “He had to have been one, to…” She cuts herself off, just as Ella starts to frown. “You’re better off,” she just repeats, then. “Good night, Ella.”
With that, she turns and finally walks away, leaving Ella alone with her thoughts and a strange, grateful warmth spreading through her chest.
