Tom should've known better to mess with magic. Most of the stories about people who'd dealt with witches or the Fair Folk tended to end badly. Sometimes they were smart enough to outwit the unnatural creature they were dealing with, but only after several trials and tribulations. Others, usually the cruel or the undeserving, failed in their task entirely, and ended up suffering a gruesome fate for their pains. His own fate could've been considered merciful considering some of the other options, but it did not feel that way to him.

Being born to parents who scoffed at the idea of magic, labeling it as superstitious nonsense, he had not recognized the spell until it was too late. Seeing as they both had been small children at the time, he had thought she'd been playing at magic when she'd had him make that vow, but as it turned out, it had been all too real, and it had ruined his life.

Some days, he thought she had known what she had done, and on others he figured that she too had been a child who had been unaware of the potential consequences of her actions on that day.

They'd both been young, and allowed to run wild in the woods and fields that surrounded Little Hangleton because they were young, and his Governess had thought that fresh air would do him some good. Because she'd been the tramp's daughter and he'd been the Manor Lord's son, they both had been the odd ones out. Being alone, they had gravitated towards each-other and often played together, when her drunk of a father let her out of the house that was.

One day, they'd been sitting by the murky stream that had marked the far border of his family's property, well away from where the Gaunt shack was located, talking about their futures. He was going to be sent off to school next year, and she would be staying to tend house for her family. After that, when they were really old, like fifteen, he was going to be coming back, and he would marry her since she was the only girl in the world he liked besides his mother.

"You promise?" Merope asked, looking in his general direction with her funny eyes.

"I promise." he said.

"Swear it. Swear on your magic that you'll marry me." Merope said.

Seeing as they'd been playing "wizards" an hour earlier, he'd thought nothing of the girl's words and had so sworn. There had been a bright light following his oath that he'd later come to believe he'd completely imagined. The day he realized that the light might not have been his imagination had been when he'd found that no matter how hard he'd tried, he just could not propose to Cecilia. He loved her dearly, but he could not propose to her.

It was after his third failed attempt to propose to Cecilia that he'd finally remembered that odd day by the stream and decided to go to Merope for some answers. The answers he'd gotten however, he didn't like. Apparently, he and Merope had been betrothed since they were six, and they had to get married or something bad could happen, something bad enough that it might cause them to die.

He went through with the wedding, figuring that he could quietly divorce Merope afterward and marry Cecilia. Things didn't work out that way however. The quiet church wedding that he'd hoped would go unnoticed by the community as he and Merope disappeared to London where he would procure divorce papers and a judge had become the talk of the town by the time they'd reached the train station, and according to everyone, he'd run off with the girl after getting her in the family way.

If only that were true. The truth however was a far different and more difficult story. He'd gotten the divorce papers signed and approved by a judge and all, but apparently, as far as Merope's magic was concerned, he was still married to the girl with whom he'd only consummated the marriage once. Even after the girl had seemingly vanished off the face of the Earth never to be seen again, he had found that he could not propose to Cecilia after they'd rekindled their relationship following his return to Little Hangleton.

Try as he might however, he had never been able to find a way to break the spell that kept him away from his beloved.