Chapter Seventeen
Armando

“Enchantra, be quiet!”Hagatha warned her.

Enchantra dismissed her, “No, I won't. I stood by quietly three hundred years ago when this Council passed judgement on an innocent witch and her descendants. I won't do it again. No more secrets, no more lies. It’s time to face the truth, Tichiba.”

Samantha looked to the Queen who suddenly looked weak and ashen faced. Cassandra begged Enchantra to stop, but truth was a runaway train now. “Rebecca Anne Stewart was not the first witch who wanted to marry a mortal. A young witch some five hundred years earlier asked her father, the King, for his permission to marry a young handsome mortal man from Aragon, or Spain as you call it now. His name was ..”

“Armando”, Tichiba said the name breathlessly and with a look of fond remembrance and pain in her misting eyes. “He was tall, dark and handsome and it was love at first sight. I begged my father to let us marry, but he refused because Armando was not just a mortal, but a poor peasant boy and I was in line to be Queen. When I told my father I would give up everything for him, he called me foolish and then proved it.”

Her pain touched Samantha's heart “You don’t have to say anything else. I think I understand.”

“No”, Tichiba waved her off. “Enchantra was right. This is not a time for silence. It's time for the truth.”

Tichiba went on to tell them that her father offered her a deal. He would meet Armando while she stood nearby invisible. He would offer him riches and power to never see her again. If he refused, then her father would consent to the marriage but if he accepted, she had to agree to never see him again. Tichiba, so sure of Armando's love, agreed to the terms, but then had her heart broken when Armando traded her love for a bag of gold and then demanded a second bag or he would out her as a witch should she ever return.

Tichiba shook her head and sighed,“For five hundred years I carried that pain, that loss and that anger.”

“And then Rebecca Anne came before you as you had your father”, Samantha connected the dots

“Yes, and as queen, I had to protect her like my father did me. I offered him everything, but he wouldn't be bought and she wouldn't give him up. Even when we stripped her of her powers and gave her a mortal life span, they loved each other until the end.”

“Even the curse we placed on her daughters could not stop true love”, Enchantra continued for her. For three hundred years through illness, misfortune and calamity, love always found a way in each generation, including this one. It’s time for everyone to stop suffering and as I once heard some young mortals say, ‘Make like Elsa, and let…it …go!’”