
Bewitched
Categories
Romance, Fantasy, Adult, Romantasy, Witches, Paranormal, Fantasy Romance, Magic, Enemies To Lovers, Paranormal Romance
Content Type
Book
Binding
Kindle Edition
Year
2023
Publisher
Lavabrook Publishing, LLC
Language
English
ASIN
B0DT3JMN8D
File Download
PDF | EPUB
Bewitched Plot Summary
Introduction
# Memories Unbound: The Witch and the Ancient Sorcerer The plane screams through Peruvian storm clouds, metal groaning as impossible forces drag it earthward. Selene Bowers presses her palms against the cabin wall, orange light pouring from her hands as she fights to save three hundred lives. Each spell costs her precious memories she can never recover—the curse of her power, magic that devours her past with every casting. She's twenty years old and already lost years of her life to abilities that mark her as broken in a world where witches are supposed to remember everything. But salvation comes wrapped in chains she cannot see. When the crash strands her in ancient ruins, following midnight-blue magic that whispers her name in forgotten tongues, Selene awakens something that should have stayed buried. The sarcophagus holds a man carved from bronze and shadow, tattoos covering olive skin like living art, a wicked scar running from eye to jaw. Memnon the Cursed, according to warnings etched in stone. When his amber eyes open and he whispers "Roxilana" with desperate love that turns to rage, Selene realizes she's unleashed more than an ancient sorcerer. She's awakened a love story written in blood across two millennia, and she's forgotten every word of it.
Chapter 1: The Memory-Eating Magic: Selene's Quest for Belonging
Henbane Coven rises from California redwoods like something from a Gothic fairy tale, all stone towers and leaded windows that catch morning light like jewels. Selene navigates the halls with notebooks clutched against her chest, walls of her dorm room covered in sticky notes that map a life her own magic keeps stealing. Every spell devours another memory, leaving gaps where her past should be. Her familiar prowls the grounds like a living shadow. Nero isn't some ordinary cat—he's a black panther with golden eyes that chose her in the Peruvian jungle, their bond sealed with a touch that announced her power to anyone with eyes to see. Feeding a panther requires money she doesn't have, and the coven's expectations weigh heavy on shoulders that already carry too much. The murders begin as whispers in the evergreen forests. Witches found torn open, organs missing, magic drained like wine from broken bottles. When Politia officers arrive with their questions and suspicions, Selene's memory loss transforms from tragedy to convenient cover for guilt. Every "I don't remember" that falls from her lips deepens their certainty that she's hiding something darker than damaged recollection. But something else stalks her dreams. A dark-haired man with ancient eyes calls her name in languages she shouldn't know, his voice carrying the weight of empires and heat of desire. She wakes with his name on her lips and recognition stirring in places deeper than conscious thought, terrified by how much she wants to answer when he calls.
Chapter 2: Awakening the Cursed: The Tomb in the Jungle
The consequences of Peru manifest in her dorm room like nightmare made flesh. Memnon stands before her window, moonlight catching the brutal scar down his face, presence filling the small space with barely contained power that makes the air taste of copper and starlight. He speaks in tongues that predate Christ, calling her Roxilana, claiming she is his wife, his queen, his betrayer. His magic wraps around her like chains she cannot see—deep indigo plumes that respond to her orange flames like lovers recognizing each other across a crowded room. When he touches her face with hands that have toppled empires, bone-deep knowledge stirs beneath her damaged memories. This man has held her before, loved her, destroyed worlds in her name. But Selene fights with everything she has. Her magic lashes out in desperate defense while he laughs—not from cruelty but something that might be pride. He tells stories of Sarmatian steppes and Roman legions, of a time when magic ruled openly and love could literally move mountains. To her, these are fairy tales told by a madman who happens to wear the face of her deepest desires. The confrontation ends not with victory but with questions that burrow under her skin like splinters. As Memnon vanishes into the night, he leaves behind leather and ancient power, and the terrible certainty that he will return. His parting words follow her like a curse—he will destroy her world piece by piece until all she has left is him.
Chapter 3: Nero's Shadow: Finding a Familiar in Darkness
The revelation comes through official documents that shatter everything Selene thought she knew about herself. According to her Awakening records from Peel Academy, she isn't just a witch but a soul mate, bonded to another through magic so fundamental it predates conscious thought. The connection she's been denying thrums to life in her chest—a river of power flowing between her heart and Memnon's across any distance. When she finally reaches out through their bond, his response comes like sunlight after endless winter. The link allows them to share thoughts, emotions, even magic itself. Through it, she feels the depth of his loneliness, how her absence carved him hollow over centuries of waiting. But she also feels his rage, cold and patient as glaciers, and terrible certainty that he will have his revenge. Their first tentative peace comes when Selene stumbles into danger in the woods behind the coven. A spell circle gone wrong, witches with dark intentions, a young lycanthrope girl drugged and marked for magical enslavement. Selene fights with desperate fury, her magic burning through memories as she battles creatures of clay and shadow animated by will and malice rather than life. When her power fails, Memnon's floods through their bond, lending her strength of ancient kings. He finds her afterward, broken and bleeding in the forest, carries her home with gentleness that wars with everything she knows of his nature. His hands heal wounds while his voice murmurs endearments in dead languages. For one night, she lets herself believe the monster from her dreams might also be salvation.
Chapter 4: The Sorcerer's Claim: Memnon's Pursuit Across Continents
Trust, once broken, leaves jagged edges that cut both ways. Even as Selene's body responds to Memnon's touch, even as their magic twines together like lovers' fingers, she knows his devotion comes wrapped in chains. He saved her not from kindness but possession, and the difference defines everything that follows. The burning comes without warning. She returns to find him waiting, her life's work floating in the air around him like condemned prisoners. Her journals—years of meticulous notes, the only anchor to her own existence—hang suspended in his magic, and his eyes burn with satisfaction of a man about to claim his due. Sorcerer's flame consumes her notebooks, fed by power and malice in equal measure. They burn with colors that have no names, reducing her carefully recorded life to ash and memory. Selene screams, throws her magic against his, but she might as well try to stop an avalanche with bare hands. Memnon watches her desperation with cold appreciation of a connoisseur, savoring each moment of anguish. This is his revenge—not death, which would be too quick, but slow dissolution of everything that makes her who she is. Without her journals, she's adrift in a world that changes too fast for damaged memory to track. He's made her as lost as he was in his tomb, as helpless as he felt waking to a world that had forgotten his name.
Chapter 5: Blood and Bindings: Dark Magic Rising at Henbane
The Samhain Ball transforms Henbane's conservatory into fairy tale gone wrong. Lanterns float like captured stars among tropical plants while witches in silk and satin dance to music that seems to rise from earth itself. Selene arrives in black, her dress a declaration of war, Nero prowling shadows like a guardian angel with fangs. The evening shatters the moment Memnon takes a hostage. The witch in his arms trembles as his blade kisses her throat, entire gathering frozen under weight of his magic. This is Memnon as he truly is—not lover but conqueror, not suitor but tyrant. His power holds hundreds of supernaturals captive while he makes demands with casual cruelty of a man who has never learned to ask for what he wants. The battle that follows is less fight than massacre. Selene throws everything at him—spells that could level buildings, magic drawn from moonlight and fury and desperation. But Memnon is a creature from an age when power meant survival, when magic was wielded not in classrooms but on battlefields slick with blood. He turns her attacks aside like swatting flies, his own power rising like dark tide. When he begins suffocating innocent guests, Selene's choice becomes no choice at all. She watches witches and mages collapse, faces turning blue as Memnon's magic steals their breath, knows her pride isn't worth their lives. The words taste like poison—yes, she will lift the curse, yes, she will marry him—but she speaks them anyway because heroes sacrifice themselves so others might live.
Chapter 6: Soul Bonds and Whispers: The Truth Between Worlds
In her dorm room, with Politia sirens wailing in the distance, Selene and Memnon perform the ritual that will change everything. Blood magic binds their oath—she will lift the curse, marry him, become what he needs her to be. The words feel like nails in her coffin, each syllable sealing fate a little more completely. But when the curse breaks, when two millennia of magical suppression finally lifts, Selene discovers some prices are too high even for salvation. The memories that flood back aren't just her own but those of another woman, another life, another world entirely. She is Roxilana, queen of the Sarmatians, beloved of a king who conquered nations in her name. The memories come like tsunami—love and betrayal, passion and politics, slow corruption of a relationship that began in starlight and ended in blood. She remembers Memnon as he was, young and fierce and devoted, willing to burn the world to keep her safe. But she also remembers what he became, how power twisted love into possession, how protection became a cage she couldn't escape. The final memory is worst—the moment she chose to destroy them both rather than live as his beautiful prisoner. The spell that cast him into eternal sleep, that erased their empire from history, that condemned her to forget their love entirely. She had thought it mercy, clean ending to something that had become monstrous. Instead, it was merely first act of tragedy spanning centuries.
Chapter 7: The Circle's Deception: Unmasking the Hidden Evil
The arrest is almost anticlimactic after cosmic horror of recovered memory. Selene goes quietly, hands cuffed behind her back, while Memnon watches with satisfaction of chess master achieving checkmate. The charges are murder, evidence planted by his careful hand, frame-up so perfect even she had begun doubting her own innocence. But as they lead her away, Selene finally understands the full scope of his plan. This was never about love or redemption or second chances. This was about control, ensuring she could never again choose freedom over his devotion. He has arranged her life so he is her only option—lover, protector, and destroyer wrapped in one impossible package. The modern world that seemed so solid, so rational, reveals itself malleable as clay in hands of someone with enough power to reshape it. Memnon has money, influence, connections spanning centuries. He's had lifetimes to prepare for this moment, to build the trap that would finally catch his wayward queen. The Politia, legal system, even her own coven—all can be bought, bent, or broken by a man who remembers when might truly made right. Yet even in defeat, even facing a future promising nothing but golden chains and velvet prisons, Selene refuses to break. She has been Roxilana, queen and betrayer, and she has been Selene, lost girl with broken memory. Now she must become something new—a woman who can love a monster without becoming one herself, who can survive in spaces between devotion and destruction.
Chapter 8: The Price of Memory and Magic
The story ends not with resolution but recognition. Memnon has won this round, claimed his prize, secured his queen. But love extracted at sword-point isn't love at all, and even the most powerful sorcerer cannot magic genuine affection into existence. He has bound her with oaths and obligations, legal documents and magical compulsions, but her heart remains her own. In the spaces between their shared memories, in the silence that follows his ultimatums, something new begins to grow. Not the desperate passion of their first life or the terrified resistance of their second meeting, but understanding born from seeing each other clearly for the first time. Memnon is a man shaped by an age when power meant survival, when love was claimed rather than earned. Selene is a woman who has learned that sometimes the greatest act of love is knowing when to let go. The future stretches before them, uncertain and dangerous. The magical world will not easily accept a Sarmatian sorcerer and his reluctant queen, and there are other enemies stirring in shadows, drawn by power they've unleashed. But they will face it together, as they always have, bound by something stronger than memory or magic or time itself. Perhaps, in the end, that small rebellion of the heart will be enough to save them both. Or perhaps it will destroy them more completely than any curse ever could. Some loves, after all, are too dangerous to survive, too consuming to endure, too strong for any force in heaven or earth to break.
Summary
In this dark tapestry of love and vengeance, the tale asks whether some bonds are too strong to break and some loves too dangerous to survive. Selene's journey from confused student to reluctant queen mirrors struggles with identity, memory, and weight of choices we cannot remember making. Her relationship with Memnon—part soulmate, part stalker, part salvation—explores the thin line between devotion and obsession, between protection and possession. The story's greatest strength lies not in supernatural elements but in its unflinching examination of toxic love dressed in romantic clothing. Memnon's actions are presented without excuse or justification—he is monster and victim of his own making, shaped by forces beyond his control yet responsible for choices that span millennia. Sometimes the greatest tragedy isn't that love dies, but that it survives everything that should have killed it, growing stronger and more twisted with each resurrection until it becomes something unrecognizable, beautiful and terrible as a star going supernova in the darkness between worlds.
Best Quote
“It’ll be fine. It’s always fine. I’m smart, and creative, and crafty as hell. I’ll manifest the shit out of this.” ― Laura Thalassa, Bewitched
Review Summary
Strengths: The review highlights the engaging and fun nature of the book, particularly praising the character Memnon for his intriguing personality traits. The storyline is described as interesting, with a compelling magical quest and unexpected plot developments. Weaknesses: The reviewer expresses disappointment, particularly in comparison to Laura Thalassa’s previous works, indicating that the book did not meet expectations. The narrative is critiqued for its execution, with the protagonist Selene being occasionally irritating due to her memory loss issues. Overall: The reader's sentiment is mixed, with enjoyment derived from the book's vibe and character dynamics, but overall disappointment due to unmet expectations. The recommendation level is moderate, suggesting interest primarily for fans of the genre or author.
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