She should be embarrassed to have her ass exposed to him, but all she felt was hot, imagining him sinking into her from behind in one hard thrust, pushing through her resistance to give her the pummelling she really wanted.
She blinked the image away. No doubt he’d seen her fantasy. Or had it been him feeding her his own fevered imaginings?
“Big talk. But in case you forgot, we broke up. It was right after you turned into an evil overlord and I checked the hell out of castle betrayal,” Elizabeth said, feeling her temper light even hotter than her libido.
“Rai!”
Elizabeth let all her frustration pour out into that shout, calling her familiar to her, so she could shield and get Daemon out of her head.
The fox demon obeyed, leaping into Elizabeth’s chest.
The dark demon behind Elizabeth, in her mind, tightened his phantom grip.
“We were too busy to discuss your abandonment earlier, sweetheart.”
The endearment was full of pent-up frustration and menace. He was really upset.
“It’s over, King,” she said in a wearied tone.
Elizabeth cut off Daemon’s reply as she stepped out of her circle and shielded lightning. All of the power she’d built in the circle dropped as soon as she left it.
This was very different than a regular circle.
The sudden emptiness in her shield, nobody in her head, felt like closing herself into a sound booth, isolated and alone.
Jill and Victoria didn’t need her help. They had the rest of the vampire handled.
She sat down on the grass to wait, to think.
Sweat covered her body from the power expenditure earlier, cooling in the breeze.
Her heart thumped, not fast, but hard enough she felt it beating in her chest. It ached, hurting her soul deep.
Better to blame it on the fox than the real demon that had broken her heart.
Shot of Wisdom
Maeren
Torsten
Torsten Auself watched his visitor dab at his lips with a little black swatch of silk. A handkerchief! He cleaned drops of whiskey from his mouth like it was an afternoon tea he was sipping.
At least, he didn’t grimace as the liquor burned on its way down.
With a sigh, Torsten refilled the prince’s thick-bottomed glass with another two fingers of his best liquor. He didn’t have crystal to serve it in, but the expensive alcohol tasted the same.
A pup like this wouldn’t appreciate the subtle flavours and scents of an exceptional whiskey and probably would only remember the glass.
“I appreciate the information on my daughter, but why are you delivering it personally?” Torsten asked, not one to mince words.
His weathered face revealed nothing of the shock he had received.
Kaila was alive.
The prince took advantage of having to answer a question to put down his mostly full glass.
Torsten doubted he would be picking it back up again.
“Jill only told me that she was estranged from her mother’s family, a few days before they abruptly left the castle. I couldn’t go after her myself, of course, as I have royal duties I must attend to in my father’s absence. I was worried about Jill and I hoped the rift between you and your daughter’s family wasn’t so large as to stop you from tracking her down to check on her health.”
Torsten poured himself more whiskey. The prince hadn’t wanted to chase after his granddaughter himself, but he had made his way up the mountain.
There was more to this story than what he was being told and the unspoken parts screamed of something personal to drive the prince to seek him out. He had come a long way to avoid a distasteful duty.
A blood bond should trump comfort.
Torsten hadn’t missed the look of disgust on the spoiled prince’s face at his well aged home. A twist of the younger vampire’s lips and a half-shuttered gaze that he blinked off when Torsten had come into the room to greet him.
Taking another sip of his fine whiskey, Torsten waited. The prince had more he wanted to tell him. Torsten hadn’t answered his question about the rift or if he would chase his daughter, clear across Maeren.
His granddaughters were also alive and apparently foolish enough to involve themselves with this useless male.
“I’m afraid that Kaila may have been frightened off by the recent events at court. She was such a caring mother, wanting only what was best for Jill, when she brought her to court for royal consideration. But a woman alone would naturally be prone to hysteria and make an impulsive decision to run, under the circumstances.”
Kaila, hysterical?
Now, Torsten had to pay attention. The prince was lying and the reason for it might be important.
Did the fool think a father would forget the nature of his daughter after the many times he had butted heads with her over another stubborn idea?
Kaila would have run the prince through with the ceremonial sword, dangling at the prince’s hip, before she let some prissy noble chase her from something she wanted.
She could harpoon him through the shoulder and let him wriggle, like a helpless trout for supper.
“I’m willing to accept Jill into my harem. It was all a misunderstanding. I’m sure a witch of good family wouldn’t want to squander the opportunity to join a royal harem due to silly, female nerves.”
The prince wanted his youngest granddaughter, and desperately enough to come here begging for her.
Too bad, for him.
Torsten had just heard that his granddaughters and daughter were alive. He was hardly going to trouble himself to find them, only to hand them over to a male that couldn’t even drink a proper glass of whiskey.
“What about the other one?” Torsten asked.
The prince jumped a little in his chair.
He was either surprised by the question . . . or was that fear in his eyes?
“I didn’t really spend time with the other sister. She left with them. I don’t think she was suited for a royal harem.”
The firstborn had definitely left an impression for someone with which the prince had spent little time.
The nervous fop actually picked up his whiskey glass, again, and took a fortifying sip, before remembering himself and coughing at the taste.
Torsten knew his eldest granddaughter had air, and even if it had strengthened to Kaila’s own power, that was hardly something which should unnerve a royal prince. Air being so common.
The prince put his glass back down with a gloved hand. Such pretentious coverings may keep the dirt off his fingers, but gloves wouldn’t save him if an earth lord made a real effort to bury him.
Torsten sipped again.
How had Kaila ever managed to marry a nobleman? If they were all milksops, like this one, afraid of young witches just learning their magic, his daughter would have run roughshod all over her noble husband.
Kaila’s temper must have mellowed with a good deal of patience—probably hard learned—to tolerate the antics of the nobility.
He had warned her.
“Tell me, again, the circumstances of their leaving court,” Torsten ordered. The prince hadn’t bothered with any useful details. “I need to know where to start,” he explained.
The more times the prince repeated the story, the better the chances that he would slip up.
A practiced lie was a story that was never experienced, so it was unable to leave the impression of a good memory.
“Our king has been indisposed. Unfortunately, the transition didn’t go smoothly, and unexpectedly, Prince Daemon had to take the position of a temporary rule to keep things running in the king’s absence.”
One of Torsten’s shaggy eyebrows went up. This was news.
“He is the firstborn?” Torsten asked. It was only a delay tactic, while he thought over the implications of a change in rulers.
“He is a demon,” the prince answered.
As if being a demon precluded being the firstborn prince, and hence, th
e first in line for the throne.
“We don’t hear much about politics here,” Torsten excused. He shrugged with the careless ignorance expected of his earth clan.
They had spies at the castle, but this had to be very recent. Torsten hadn’t heard a word about his daughter or that Prince Daemon had taken the throne.
He would have to bring the clan heads together to discuss if they would be backing the oldest prince.
Daemon was not frivolous, like this one. The king had sent the dark enforcer out to do his bidding before, and thankfully, none in the earth clans had drawn his notice.
How Daemon would rule, without his father’s orders, remained to be seen.
“So, my daughter left the castle soon after this transition?” Torsten prompted.
“Yes. Things were a bit chaotic, as I’m sure you can imagine.”
Torsten frowned at the prince, doing his best to convey that he wasn’t a man that imagined. He liked solid facts, not the suppositions of a silver-tongued liar.
“Help me understand why my daughter ran away.”
“Left. She just suddenly left.”
“Did someone threaten her?”
“No. Absolutely not.”
“Did someone threaten the girls? Hurt them?”
“No. Jill was safe and provided for during her stay.”
“Who was protecting her?”
“All royal harem candidates are protected by the castle guards. The vampires she fed would defend her as well.”
Vampires, as in plural? Torsten tucked that bit of information away to examine later.
Nobles and their harems made for poor commitments.
“And her sister?” Torsten asked. Why did the prince keep forgetting the oldest one?
“Elizabeth was well protected. She had Daemon’s favour, although, he couldn’t claim her, of course, as he’s a demon.”
Torsten didn’t let his expression reveal that he had heard the name of his oldest granddaughter for the first time. Kaila had chosen well.
Letting Elizabeth draw the attention of the dark enforcer, however, was not such a wise choice.
Once again, Torsten knew he wasn’t hearing the important part of the story.
Why would a powerful demon like Prince Daemon want anything to do with the little air witch his daughter had given birth to first?
He had been told there was nothing special about her.
Kaila had never let Torsten meet Elizabeth to judge for himself. Their rift, as the prince had put it, had been a bitter separation when Kaila insisted on marrying a slick noble with flashy fire magic and empty promises of bringing her to court.
The life Kaila’s husband had promised had been so far from the dusty earth town, where he had raised his daughter, with what he had thought was sensibility.
That hadn’t been enough. His daughter had wanted so much more.
She had the imagination he lacked, and she dreamed of using her earth to heal their world, not only the miners and their families in their little corner of Maeren.
“I’m sorry. I still don’t understand,” Torsten said and sipped the last of his whiskey. He couldn’t have another with the way this conversation was going. “Why did they leave the castle and all that protection?”
“I d-don’t know,” the prince stuttered.
He seemed surprised that Torsten wanted a reason other than female nerves and hysteria. Certainly, he didn’t want to be blamed.
“Did it have anything to do with Prince Daemon? He’s a demon,” Torsten said, feeding the prince back his excuse to fish for more information.
“There was a little incident. Some dragon heads that Daemon had taken as trophies and displayed at the court. I think it was too bloodthirsty for the ladies. They weren’t the only witches who suddenly left when he temporarily took over.”
Torsten held back a snort of contempt at that ‘temporary’ again. Somebody had aspirations.
The king would never allow this milksop to rule. If he went insane, and somehow allowed it, then the clans would rebel and make the last wars look like a child’s game.
The current rule had been hard earned through fighting and only accepted by the king's show of strength, as well as the obvious benefit of amalgamation.
Infighting and clan wars had been killing them all before the king intervened on his father’s weak rule, enforcing the laws that had been meant to end the bickering.
The king had purposefully gathered a harem representative of all the clans. With virility unmatched by previous rulers, he had gotten children on them to seal his rule.
The assassination attempt on the Blue Queen had almost ruined it, but the king had raised the demon child with the rest, so none could complain. He had found another fire witch to replace the void left when the Blue Queen disappeared, soulless.
Prince Daemon was the representation of the king's strength and his greatest weakness. Torsten was very interested in hearing about this temporary ruler who had shown interest in Elizabeth.
“Dragons are so few now and they tend to hunt alone,” Torsten said. “Five heads seem like a small battle.”
“It wasn’t an accidental run-in or a hunt. The king sent Daemon after the dragons,” the prince quickly answered, taking an unwise gulp from his glass in relief that Torsten seemed to be accepting his explanation.
He choked again and Torsten ignored it.
What a waste of good whiskey.
“What did the dragon clan do to merit a visit from the enforcer?”
“They’re dragons,” the prince answered with a little wheeze.
He’d definitely gotten some of the whiskey down the wrong pipe. His answer dismissed the dragons as mere beasts to be hunted, just like he’d dismissed his eldest brother as unfit to rule for being a demon.
“I thought the dragon clan had stopped kidnapping witches. It has been a long time since the birth of the last of their young. Dragons are dying without needing a hand.”
Torsten had been there when this prince’s grandfather had ordered the poisoning of the entire clan, wiping them out through their females in a final solution to the power struggle to rule.
Earth magic had seen some dark times, but none had been as abhorrent as that mass destruction of innocent females. The old king had sold the rest of them on it to preserve the natural balance that the dragon’s strange, powerful magic had upset.
“They’re running out of strong witches to kidnap, but until the last dragon is killed, they’ll always covet what we have and try to steal it.”
Like witches were a possession and not somebody’s daughter, wife, or sister.
Torsten cynically remembered that it was other vampires coveting dragon magic that had helped push the other clans to agree to the destruction of their greatest rivals. The balance hadn’t been served by the actions on either side.
“Thankfully, we have a strong enforcer to keep the traitors in line,” Torsten said, falling in line with the current propaganda.
Dragons weren’t even spoken of as the same race any longer, treated as animals, perverted by dark magic. It made it easier to excuse the slaughter, to panic the masses into thinking their daughters were at risk of being eaten by monsters.
Kidnapping innocent witches wasn’t excusable, but he highly doubted the dragons were feeding on them in the sense the kingdom was led to believe.
Torsten’s best friend had been a dragon, when he had been very young, long before the wars.
“Daemon is gifted with a demon’s strength,” the prince said with a twist of his lips. “Witches can’t stand the brutality of war. They’re meant to tend to the home and hearth. I’m sure Jill fainted at the sight of those piked heads, like the gentle lady she is, and her mother probably packed them off quickly, for fear of their safety,” the prince said, pretty much repeating the same spurious reasoning he’d given earlier.
Earth witches had tended to all the brutal wounds of war, from amputations to burns and even the near-mortal injuries that on
ly a blood witch could hope to reverse.
Torsten wasn’t getting anything from this line of questioning. He had let the mention of dragons distract him, thinking of his old friend.
“Do you know where they would go?” Torsten asked.
He knew the castle Kaila’s husband had inherited upon their marriage was still a pile of rubble. His daughter’s body and those of the children had never been recovered.
He had personally turned over every rock, when the spies had told him that the castle had been destroyed, searching for any hint of his family. The daughter he’d never reconciled with had been taken so suddenly and finally from him.
Her possessions had been buried, including the many unopened letters he had sent her, pleading for her to forgive an old man’s stubbornness upon her marriage as a father’s folly and love for his only child.
He still had the letters, along with the unsent letters his daughter had penned. They had been stuffed in a jewelry box, buried in the stone walls with her magic. Letter after letter, almost outnumbering his own, outlining her lonely and disappointing marriage.
He had learned about his grandchildren from those letters, more information in one paragraph than years of reports from his spies. He was sure she had never shown another soul those letters, especially her husband, but she had still moderated her words.
Kaila hadn’t even mentioned her firstborn’s name, although she’d hinted it had been a strong and royal name with pride.
She was full of pride, his daughter, and courage. This prince shouldn’t have been allowed to smear her name with his cowardly accusations.
“I believe they went back to the edge when they ran from court. Jill had country manners from growing up so close to the human realm. I’m sure they still have a cottage there, or something . . . rustic,” the prince said.
The edge?
There were many edge towns, but he knew Kaila would have realized even at the edges of Maeren, he would find her.
He suddenly suspected that he knew where she would have gone to escape everything, the only safe place to lick her wounds and pride.
It was just inconceivable she could have lived there, all of this time, with her young witches, full of growing magic.
No Witch Way Out (Maeren Series Book 2) Page 16
