Page 16 of Bewitched By the Pumpkin Queen

His gaze drops to the gold band circling his finger. He twists it slowly, testing its weight and fit like an unfamiliar shackle. "Husband?" The word falls from his lips like something rotten. "Death was more preferable to this."

The room spins, his words chilling me quicker than a winter breeze. My heart plummets into my stomach, the reality sharper than the ritual blade. For a moment, all I can do is stare at him, lungs refusing to inflate, vision tunneling to the raw edge of his sneer.

"Jasper, stop. This isn't you. You're confused. The spell—sometimes it takes a minute to—" I'm grasping at straws, at fragments of hope torn loose by the violence of his resurrection.

Whiskers approaches cautiously, sniffing the air around Jasper, which in return, makes his hackles rise. "No, Delia," he whispers. "Something's not right.

He’s right. I see it now…the subtle wrongness. It’s not enough that I broke every oath a witch can make and risked the wrath of the council. Now I have to face the living nightmare of what I’ve done. What I created.

Jasper breathes, but something vital is missing. The man I loved has been replaced by a mechanical facsimile. His gaze sweeps over me with the clinical precision of a scientist examining a specimen. Behind those familiar brown irises lurks a stranger. One who processes information but feels nothing. The warmth that once made him mine has been hollowed out, leaving only the shell of the man who used to look at me like I hung the moon.

But why?

I already know the answer to my own question.

The universe demands balance. I thought I was clever, substituting pig for person, thinking death wouldn't notice the difference. But the magic knows. It always knows when you're trying to slip a counterfeit coin into its palm. Now, I fear that I have conjured something even worse than an empty house and a cold bed. I have conjured a future where love is a one-sided ghost, haunting what remains.

I should have known better. I should have known that by changing out his heart for another’s that I would lose the part of him that made him Jasper. His heart was more than just an organ, it was the foundation of his soul, the essence of the love we shared.

"We need to get him home," Whiskers says, breaking my spiral of self-recrimination. "The spell's complete, but we're still in a morgue with unconscious guards who won't be out forever.”

He glances meaningfully at the slumped forms outside the door. "Also, the longer we stay here, the more likely it is you’ll end up in a holding cell, and I’ll have to eat my way through the evidence locker to rescue you."

I nod, scrubbing the last of my tears from my face, “Here.” I reach into my bag and grab the clothes I brought shoving them at a naked Jasper.

He snatches them without a word, his movements jerky, the muscle memory functioning even if the man beneath it is absent. I gather my supplies with trembling hands, candle wax hot against my skin. I barely feel it. All I can focus on is the stranger wearing my husband's face, the cold calculation in eyes that once looked at me with such warmth.

I got what I wanted.

Jasper is alive.

But as he turns to look at me, impatient and cold, I realize with sickening clarity that maybe, just maybe, I've made a terrible mistake.