Title: Maledictum Magae
Disclaimer: I own nothing in this story except for my own little plot line. Everything else is property of the genius Stephenie Meyer.
A/N: "Maledictum Magae" roughly translates to "The Witch's Curse." Why I'm writing another fic amidst the several WIPs I already have, I don't know. For those of you who read "Secret Prophecies," don't worry! I'm not going to stop updating it. Mkay? My plan for this story is to update once a week as I already have a few chapters written, but we'll see how things go. Big thanks to my beta, twi-ction, for putting up with this insanity. And a HUGE thanks to the folks at little_details on LJ for helping me translate my title, (also to this_ismy_story for directing me to the site and to pixievamp08 for putting up with me while I fretted over all of it).
Summary: The curse happened in 1692. For over 300 years, Isabella Swan has lived alone, afraid to be close to anyone again. But when she finally meets someone who captures her heart, the unthinkable happens, leaving her in a kind of danger she never thought possible. ExB, AU, OOC, rated M for violence and dark themes.
Prologue
The air was thick. It smelled of must mixed with the particles of mildew that soured each breath.
The intricate spun web glistened beneath the moonlight as its thin, sticky strands fluttered in the light breeze. It hung in the corner of the small bedroom, decorating the shattered opening in the window.
She felt her heart jump as a beetle scurried past her foot, burying itself inside a hole in the splintered floor. The boards creaked beneath her muddy shoes, giving way to her weight as she snuck quietly into the abandoned room. She kneeled down before a small chest of three drawers, its walnut frame chipped and burrowed in by insects.
"It has to be here," she muttered to herself, pulling a drawer open and rifling through faded silk scarves, her fingers dislodging little mothballs in her quest.
When her nails began to scrape against bare wood, she knew she had hit the bottom of the drawer. Sighing in frustration, she held her head in her hands, feeling her heart splutter within her chest. Anxiety and fear seemed to wrap around her tightly, cocooning her petite frame.
That's when she saw it – a snag in the woodwork just at the bottom of the dovetail joint. Quickly, she stuck the tips of her fingers inside the crevice and pulled. Molded cloth and dust flew up around her as she lifted the flat slab of fractured wood out of the bottom of the drawer. Setting the slab aside and picking up a stray tattered scarf, she looked inside the antique crate where tea-stained papers and rust-tinged trinkets met her sight. Her small fingers gingerly leafed through the items – an old deed, a torn ragdoll, several cards that resembled recipes. Finally, she found the sole parchment she had come all this way for. She had only chanced a glimpse at it before, decades ago. The soft, gray pencil markings were almost completely faded into the bruised, fragile paper but Bella knew what those markings used to define. It was a sketch Mary Alice had made a week before her death – "a record of her vision" as she called it then.
Her hands shook as her eyes drank in the curves of the pencil, outlining the sketch of a young man – his cheekbones high, his long hair tied back, the slender lines of his neck.
She knew this man. She saw him everyday.
But this was no ordinary man.
A creak echoed from downstairs, startling her. Ice froze her nerves as she listened, hearing only the pulsing sound of her erratic heart. Wisps of her hair, as dark as chocolate, fluttered past her forehead as a slight breeze swept into the room. Her hands trembled, threatening to lose the crucial sketch as the paper wrinkled within her grasp. A mirror, cracked and tarnished, hung lopsided on the far wall. Her gaze instantly focused on it as waves of electricity shot down from the top of her head, flowing over her chest and limbs. Fear had proudly constricted the beating organ within her chest.
Glowing, golden eyes met her frightened gaze, reflecting back through the stained glass, staring at her delicate form within the shadows.
The drawing slipped through her fingers.
She held her breath… and waited.