The Forever Vow

Selene fumed with temper as she gazed out the window of the car she was riding. Just two days ago, her parents had pulled her out from the main artery of LeCharme New York, one of the satellite companies of the LeCharme Corporation in key cities worldwide. She was flown home to the Philippines, heading for a vacation at a provincial hacienda owned by a close friend of theirs, even before she had recovered from her jetlag.

Actually, Selene has an idea why she is seated in the backseat of a Mercedes-Benz SUV, driven to this damn, beautiful, green, mountainous province, she thought to herself as she sighed at the beautiful view outside the car window.

She is twenty-five and, in her race, is actually already late for marriage. A severely quiet… bigfoot is driving her to Hacienda Encantara, in the heart of San Bernardino—she isn’t even sure if the godsforsaken barrio is on the map—to meet an old bachelor who, she suspects, is on the list of potential husbands for her.

She is a Magickal. An Enchantress. Or witch. Whatever. She rolled her eyeballs. As if she hasn’t been living it the past years. Selene is actively living with the Mundanes. It is easy to make magick not so much a priority in the highly techie lifestyle she is used to.

But, yes, she is a person with magic in her blood. Her family and friends, connections, and many others live among the Mundane, or non-Magickal people.

While growing up, Selene’s parents encouraged her cleverness by letting her ask questions and answering them as honestly as they can without withholding anything, and her wittiness by letting her enjoy the keen sense of humor abundant in her family. In a time of technology and artificial intelligence, cultural revolution and the renewal of the mind-set, they shaped her with free thinking and rejoiced in her passion to match skills with intelligent people her age, whether Magickal or not. She started traveling with them around the world as soon as she was old enough to board planes and is productive in ways she chooses to be as a modern woman.

But now, she is waking up to the truth that it is not entirely real.

That she does not hold all the decisions in her life.

That she does not control her future.

Her mother is a Seer, someone who is mostly conscientious about her duty to know the future and not ever be complicit in changing it. Her mother has never liked being the bearer of bad omen. Selene knows this better than anyone. She grew up sitting in the front seat when her mother was depressed from seeing a vision about tragedies, knowing she can’t say anything to prevent it, only to help the affected get ready for it in the most subtle way she can. Those were the only times of sadness she remembers from her childhood.

Oh, her parents are good parents. They are the best. They try really hard to make her life as happy as they can make it. The last people Selene can blame for what is happening right now is her parents.

When she started dating, they supported her the same way as they have her personal endeavors. Not in any way have they voiced out their objections and none of her ‘boyfriends’ ever felt her parents haven’t like any of them. They were only three, and all short-lived.

But she and they know that none of her dates will be her husband.

It isn’t their fault.

It isn’t her parent’s fault, too.

It has something to do with the culture of her race, and what is expected of her family’s specific bloodline.

The law of her race is a natural and ancient power that Selene cannot turn away from no matter what she does or feels.

Selene was born into one of the most powerful races of mystical beings and Magickals.

She comes from the lineage of one of the first three children of the Mother Spirit who was the first enchantress to live in the dimension of humans.

But of those three children, in her ancestor Chemeia, the Mother Spirit gave the blessing of hope—and the most valuable inheritance that can be given to mystical races.

The Three Maidens are born in her lineage whenever disaster will strike in an era.

Indeed, Chemeia gave birth to the first Three Maidens at a time when she fell in love with a mortal, a very handsome Frenchman. Yes, as a child and teenager, Selene has kept finding as much literature as she can find about her ancestors. And her great-great-to-the-nth-degree-father was smoking hot, no wonder her great-etcetera-mother fell in love with him even if he was a mortal.

From the first Three Maidens, the children of siblings spread throughout the mortal world, down the era until her grandmother Soliel, who was French, fell in love with a Filipino, from which her mother Sienna was born.

And because of what Selene is and the lineage she hails from, it is expected of her to marry a man with Magickal blood.

And one of those could be a Spanish sorcerer.

And this is the intention of this trip to this hacienda.

His name is Philippe Alfonso Encantara, a pureblood sorcerer.

And an old bachelor.

He belongs to one of the rarest bloodlines, still so pure that he remains living at more than two hundred years old. Philippe hails from the lineage of powerful warlocks and witches that fought from the good side of a bloody war centuries ago in Europe, from which his whole family perished. He was barely ten years old then, if Selene remembers correctly from the history books in the Magickals’ libraries. Years after the war, Philippe was found by his great-aunt already a young adult, surviving in the Mundane world and was still traumatized enough he was suppressing his magick. Since then, that aunt has been his only connection to his Magickal roots. Later, he sought to find a place where he can start a new life without the pain and despair of his past life.

He arrived in the Philippines where her aunt lives as a wealthy heretic. No one knows how old she really is. All everyone knows is she has been passing herself off as the daughter and the daughter and the daughter of herself to the Mundanes. She owns the provincial house in Hacienda Encantara, and her great-nephew has acquired all the lands he could around the place to make it one of the most secretive and biggest estates on this side of the continent.

When he met his father, Johnny Le Charme, one of the richest businessmen in Asia, he decided to invest in one of his father’s growing companies.

No one can say how wealthy he is, just that he is extremely wealthy from the inheritance he received from his parents. He doesn’t even need to work. But he did that, and studied the business to pass time, while growing closer to his father.

Her father himself grew to love this sorcerer like the son he never had—that’s what Selene clearly felt from him every time he talked about Philippe. But how her father had taken on the role of the older one when the stranger was decades older than her father, she struggled to imagine.

He must just be humoring her parents, old as he is and as bored as his life must have turned out, he needs their light. She can imagine he probably has tried and experienced everything in two hundred years. Her parents are the happiest and most loving people she knows. They can make the grumpiest person laugh. People gravitate to them because of their charming vibes, and they do not have to try hard making those around them happy.

Her parents are happier when everyone around them is happy. That’s why she can’t say no to them if she can help it. So she didn’t say anything when she received the call from them, instructing her in their kindest voices to leave everything and come home to meet Philippe.

Well, at least, this Philippe doesn’t seem to begrudge her parents for this matchmaking attempt. He gifted her a tiara that must be worth millions for her last birthday. Honestly, he intimidates the hell out of her. He has met princesses and queens in his decades-life in Europe, but he never got married. Not even once. What made her parents think he will want her for his first-time wife?

Selene isn’t even sure if he’s straight. Who actually knows these days?

She took a deep breath. She plans to just let this vacation happen, meet this old guy, try a conversation—although what can you even say to a man like that?!—try to not panic, and then go back home and tell her parents it is a no-go.

How can she marry a man she hasn’t ever seen? He is one of the most notoriously private Magickals in the world that until more than a hundred years ago, not one picture was ever seen of him.

Not one.

They say he is extremely handsome, as in extraordinary. But that was more than a century ago. How can she marry and make love to an old man?! Even though her parents said he still looks young physically, much that her mother even swoons about him in front of her father, she suspected he’s showing them an illusion. Why is he hiding himself if he actually still looks young? He attends meetings remotely, and only on audio, according to those who work in the company he built with his father, a company that seemed only a pastime activity for him.

Still, Selene cannot marry a man she has never seen, spent time with to learn his value and principles. No.

She has no time for games. The responsibility of being the only daughter of a Le Charme is hard enough… she knows how important her future husband will be if… if… she becomes the mother of the Three Maidens.

No matter how pure the intentions of her parents, Selene feels it her responsibility to have the final say in choosing the man who will parent her children with her.

A father who will guide them as they grow up, protect them from terrible adversaries that will surely come their way, and die for them if need be to make sure they live and fulfill what they came here to do.

The Three Maidens are a gift. They are a promise from the ancestors that whatever happens, goodness will remain to keep the bloodlines strong forever.

This is more important than anything else in the world. And the possibility that the importance of a man being a good father to her future children might outweigh her desire to marry the man she loves brings her great sadness.

People have lived and died not even meeting their twin flame.

But she is different. Her twin flame, her soul’s half, lives in this lifetime.

She knows because it was shown to her by the wishing well.