George was their unofficial spymaster and he had guards in his pocket who were loyal to only himself. George couldn’t be bought.
“Of course,” William agreed, not complaining when Phillip asked for the other brother with earth. “We should send messages for both George and Victor, with instructions to hurry back to the castle with the criminals.”
Phillip sighed, running a dirty hand through his golden waves, mussing his hair further. The agitation he felt remained.
He could pluck himself bald, but it wouldn’t solve anything. For now, he only had William to help him sort this mess out.
He exited the ensuite and looked one last time at the blackened slats left of the bed that his father had died upon alone.
If only Phillip had agreed to put aside his dalliances and taken up his father’s crown earlier.
Would Daemon have dared to attack a brother strong enough to fight back?
“Take me to Daemon’s room,” Phillip demanded.
He had never been to Daemon’s quarters, although he knew the way. William had been there a dozen times before to provide healings, when Daemon had the stomach flu, which everyone knew had been poisonings. Possibly misdirected ones, meant for the king.
Nobody in the royal family had been immune to the poisonings before the king implemented more stringent controls.
William’s grey eyes flashed annoyance, probably at being treated like a servant, but he walked over to Phillip and out the door his older brother held open for him.
“The maid was poisoned, but not burned, so her body is available for examination,” William informed him.
It was more of a reminder, really, as Phillip had already heard three times that the maid was found dead on Daemon’s bed.
There wasn’t anyone else who would have dared enter the room, when Daemon would take offence at the slightest invasion of his privacy. Their eldest brother only let servants he had hand picked to enter and clean his quarters.
His most recent, personally chosen servant lay dead now, so the list of suspects was short.
“We’ll have to hire another earth lord to examine the body and confirm the cause of death for the court,” Phillip said as they walked down the hallway.
Daemon had been housed close to their father, right next to the crown prince’s rooms that they had kept empty, out of politeness.
There had been no point taking over Daemon’s position at their father’s side in the years before the crown would be passed, rubbing salt into the wound.
Daemon had been clearly repudiated as heir when he was a young child. Phillip wasn’t eager to displace him.
“I can manage to determine the cause of death for such a simple poison,” William muttered, insulted.
He opened the door to Daemon’s room, allowing Phillip to enter first.
“The evidence has to be impartial if you expect to crucify Daemon without an uproar from the older lords and his clan,” Phillip said. William ought to know better.
Blinking his eyes to adjust to the bright room, windows were on three sides as it was set in a tower, Phillip entered and walked over to the bed first.
Daemon didn’t have curtains, letting the sunshine in to warm the stone walls. There were a few throw carpets and a couple of chairs, as well as a big bookcase along the far wall that was crammed full of texts and well dusted.
More books were stuffed into the fireplace as well, not to burn, but haphazardly piled on top of each other, supposedly when Daemon ran out of space in the bookcase. He’d repurposed the cold hearth for what he must have found of greater importance.
The dead witch lay on Daemon’s bed, frozen in a death rigour. She hadn’t died nicely. It looked to be quick, however, for she hadn’t even the time to get under the covers, dropping to the bed to writhe as the poison stole her life.
The bed wasn’t where he usually found poisoning victims, and there had been enough of them at court. Earth was too tempting a way to rid oneself of a rival, so commonly used, it made it difficult to trace to a particular culprit.
“She was found exactly like this?” clarified Phillip.
“Precisely,” William answered, coming to the other side of the bed to stare dispassionately at the witch’s naked body. “She was probably preparing for Daemon, when she was poisoned.”
Phillip grabbed a coverlet at the bottom of the bed and unfolded it over the twisted, naked limbs, deciding at the last moment to cover even her face.
He left her eyes open in their death stare, not quite able to shut them for her, even to spare her the indignity of looking helplessly for her murderer.
“I was unaware Daemon was feeding on her if she was also serving our father,” Phillip said.
“Of course, he was feeding on the witch. She was from the feeders pool, before he selected her for his new harem and to provide service to our father,” William said. “He always picked poor witches, so he could force them to do his will.”
It was true that Daemon never chose witches from prominent families to serve as feeders, although he asked for witches from his father’s exclusive harem to feed their father. This witch would have been a first—shared between father and son, if what William said was true.
Their father’s witches had been from the most powerful families, most chosen at the time of the king’s peak, when he had been victorious from the clan wars and wanted to unite the volatile powers of Maeren.
All of their mothers were in the king’s primary harem, including the twin’s now deceased mother.
Disbanding his father’s harem was going to be a political nightmare. The clans would scrabble to get Phillip to promote their daughters within his own harem. A task that made him queasy, knowing some of them might be distantly related.
Besides, his harem was already large enough as it stood, full of witches with faces he couldn’t picture the next morning. Few of them ever asked for his attention, once they had obtained one of the coveted positions.
They were all but strangers to each other, serving the single purpose of establishing rank for their families.
“What poisoned her?” Phillip asked, brushing off his less urgent worries.
“Cyanide,” William answered.
No wonder it was so fast. She probably only had seconds to a couple of minutes.
“How?” Phillip asked. He didn’t want to accidentally poison himself so fatally if the cyanide was still on her.
William nodded to the side table, where an upside down wooden box had been placed over something. The word ‘poison’ was written on the box.
One of the guards investigating with William, earlier, must have done it to stop anyone from touching the evidence.
“It was in the tea,” William said.
Phillip lifted the box and confirmed the innocent-looking teacup and pot, with the poisonous brew still mostly unfinished.
“Who brought the tea to her?” Phillip asked, replacing the box.
“Don’t know yet,” William said.
George would have had the answer already.
Phillip walked around the bed to look for the amplification circle he’d been told about, but all he saw were some scuff marks on the floor.
“Where’s the circle you say he was using to communicate with the Norwoods?” Phillip asked.
Daemon’s room was fairly sparse for a prince and the search wouldn’t take long.
There wasn’t a mother’s influence, not surprising, but Daemon lacked even the comforts of a working fireplace and his blankets were plain wool instead of silks.
He knew Daemon was more often outside of the castle, doing work for their father. He kept busy, at all corners of Maeren, reinforcing their borders and even chasing the occasional rogue into the human realm.
This room didn’t look truly lived in. It was simply a place in which store his books when he was done with them and to rest his head before he went on his next adventure.
Phillip felt like he didn’t really know Daemon at all if this shell of a r
oom was all they had to base his existence on in court.
“The circle is under his bed,” William said, interrupting Phillip’s search.
William pushed, without much effort, to move the huge sleigh bed across the room, no doubt expending some earth strength to make it look so easy.
The scrape of wood on the stone floor was loud. Daemon would have needed to use an air barrier to mask it, when he moved the bed. Inch by inch, the makings of an incredibly complex circle were revealed.
The circle was damning.
What need did Daemon have to amplify within the castle walls?
Phillip would require time to work out all of the glyphs and their purpose. Circle work wasn’t one of his strengths. William would know more about it, given his earth magic.
“What does it do?” Phillip asked as William stopped pushing the bed and turned around, vindication in his gaze.
“It allowed Daemon to do whatever he wanted,” William said. “He could reach all the way to the human realm to talk to his witch conspirators, even pull them through a dream and back into the castle to commit murder.”
The human realm? “You think the Norwoods ran to the human realm?” Phillip asked, caught by surprise.
“This circle has glyphs specific to that realm,” William quickly replied.
Too bad, they hadn’t found it before they send their younger brothers on a wild chase across Maeren. Would they even be hunting the right trail?
“We’ll have to send messengers with this information to George and Victor,” Phillip said.
William shrugged. Phillip would take care of it, not trusting William to care enough to see to the task.
He looked over the circle again, but the glyphs were mostly a mystery to him.
A circle could be used for multiple purposes. Each glyph was just a hint of what kinds of things Daemon would have been able to do, but nothing could tell them for exactly what purpose this circle had been used.
Phillip knew William had to be guessing. The possibilities alone were still troubling.
“Anything else?” Phillip asked, burning the circle to memory.
He bent down and touched the first barrier line, pushing a little air at it, and surprised when the circle sang back to him.
Oh, Daemon had made a circle that Phillip could use. Why hadn’t his brother used lightning? There were plenty of others with air in the castle, though none with Phillip’s strength.
“I don’t know,” William said, looking warily at the bluish glow of the circle lines as they responded to Phillip’s magic. “I wouldn’t activate it fully, if I was you. Daemon may still be connected to it, somehow.”
That was preposterous. Still, perhaps this was the connection they were looking for?
“Don’t we want to talk to Daemon?” Phillip said, pushing a little more air.
“Not under the power of his circle,” William said and Phillip backed off.
He was better to study the circle before pushing any further magic into it. Daemon was powerful. Phillip didn’t want to challenge his eldest brother before understanding his purpose.
“Have someone disable it,” Phillip said, feeling more uneasy the longer he looked at the beautiful glyphs.
He felt the magic calling to him, tempting him to stand in the centre and light the room up with his power. The circle may have been used by Daemon, but it felt like it was made for him.
Had Daemon left it like this as a trap for him? Only Phillip had air magic out of all of their siblings, other than Daemon.
Philip stood.
William was still looking at the circle with hate and anger, his arms crossed over his chest.
They both gave the chalked lines a wide berth as they made their way to the door.
“Shall I send the messengers now?” William prodded, offering to do what Phillip had asked without argument.
William motioned to the guard standing by the door, waiting for orders.
“Send messengers for Victor and George to tell them the witches they are hunting may be in the human realm,” Phillip said. “They are to tell my brothers that there has been an emergency, but not that the king is dead. Nothing has been confirmed yet.”
They were going to keep this quiet from the public for a little while yet. Only immediate family was aware that something had happened, and even they didn’t know the kingdom had suddenly changed rulers. A turn for the worst was the most Phillip would allow to be said.
“Yes, King Phillip,” said the guard.
Phillip flinched. Something flashed in William’s eyes, but it was gone too fast to interpret.
“Just call me sir,” Phillip told the guard. “And send for the leader of the Dogs to come to my rooms,” he added.
William couldn’t hide his relief.
George may not be happy to hear his personal soldiers were going to be commanded by someone else, but no one in Maeren was exempt from the king's orders.
If Phillip was going to drag his oldest brother in, then he had no choice but to send the deadliest squad after him. For anyone else, it would be a suicide mission. None had the authority or power to force the demon prince against his will.
Only this very specific set of circumstances could change Daemon’s omnipotent power.
Daemon had become an enemy to the crown.
Stripped Down
Maeren
Elizabeth
Elizabeth woke up naked. Naturally, this meant she was in hell.
“Thank Maeren,” a male voice whispered beneath her.
She elbowed his blessing short.
Worse, she was naked in hell with George.
She didn’t know how he had managed it. At least, her dragon wounds and concussion had been healed by the transporting magic, but did she really want to be clear-headed for this?
In hell with George. It deserved to be repeated.
“You stabbed me?” she asked, her voice trailing off in disbelief as she felt her chest for the heart-probing wound.
Her flesh didn’t have a mark to reveal his betrayal. It had already healed.
She had landed square on top of his large, solid, and very warm body, his muscular arms quick to wrap around her before she could escape.
As if she would get up and give him a better view.
“You stabbed me first,” George grumbled underneath her.
His chest was full of scars, but she hadn’t added to them, the healing of transport working on him as well as it had on her.
Age of the wounds mattered, something to do with cellular memory and scars that Jill had tried to explain to her more than once.
What a disaster! She had known her family was on borrowed time after the unintended show of her power at the market, and that someone would eventually track them to their edge town.
After a week of nothing, she had just begun to hope nobody would find them hidden on the human side.
George was especially a surprise, given that he had been thoroughly slapped down on his last ill advised attempt to snag Jill.
Of course, he had been the one to carry Elizabeth out of the dragon cave. She could remember his strong embrace and the whisper of his mind in hers as she revealed her telepathy.
Maybe the latter was why he had come after her, instead of going for Jill.
“I hoped it would work the same on a female,” George mumbled, running the fingers of one hand in soothing circles along her naked back.
It served to rile her up more, although, if she had been calmer, she would have realized he was just checking her injuries were gone. His weaker earth required touch to work.
All of her outrages tried to come out in a jumble. “Bastard . . . just hoped . . . could have exploded all over the damned universe . . . fucking hate the dust!”
She sputtered and coughed.
George patted her on the back, since she wasn’t really hurt, and made the kind of nonsensical sounds used to calm babies and excited puppies.
Impotence choked the rest of her rage.
Cursing him wasn’t going to help the situation, now she was stuck in Maeren.
With both of them depleted of magic by chi staking, their physical attributes weighed more in the vampire’s favour.
George may have fallen hard when it had been three against one in the practice room the last time they had fought, but then, he cut a dragon nearly in half in front of her a few moments ago.
She wasn’t eager to test him, even if his big sword had been lost in the transport.
Somebody had clearly been holding back the first time.
It was bad enough that George had physical superiority over her. He didn’t need to hear her confirm it, as well.
“Do not pat me,” Elizabeth warned, discouraging any thoughts of he may have of patronizing her.
She would smack him down again if necessary, or at least, she wanted him to think she could.
George wisely stopped.
Elizabeth popped her head off of George’s chest to try to look around, but all she saw were rocks, dirt, and a hot sun.
“My sister and mother will be going crazy, wondering where I have gone.”
“Victor will take care of them,” George said, propping himself up on his elbows, underneath her.
It was strangely reassuring. Victoria should be able to rein in her brother’s anger at being poisoned.
Victor had also already shown he was competent enough to protect Jill and their mother, when Elizabeth couldn’t be by their sides.
It still wasn’t ideal. She frowned down at George to let him know her displeasure.
He ignored her, rolling his neck and shoulders. The movement shifted her hands on top of him.
Must have been George’s first time being staked. He looked like he was getting used to the feel of his body all over again.
The first time always smarted the worst because nothing could prepare you for the feeling of your body being ripped apart on the molecular level and put together again.
“Why would Victor be helping you?” Elizabeth asked.
She was pretty sure after the bond Victoria had owed George was broken that Victor wouldn’t have anything more to do with him.
No Witch Way Out (Maeren Series Book 2) Page 24
