No Witch Way Out (Maeren Series Book 2)

by Mercedes Jade

  Victoria had understood, even if she deeply resented it.

  Jill had tried to be the mediator between them, using her nursing-speak to explain the telepathic powers of her sister.

  Jill said that although sound could be broken down to mechanical components, like the eardrum beating, everything had to be interpreted by the brain in electrical signals.

  Lightning, electricity, both words described shocking powers that were Elizabeth’s domain.

  All of the senses came down to electricity and that meant Elizabeth controlled perception, absolutely, with her magic.

  The different voices that Elizabeth made Victoria hear were just slightly different electrical signals, so her brain would perceive the difference.

  It seemed like a lot of technical terminology to explain something that was based on imagination as Elizabeth called her power.

  Jill probably was as confused about Victoria’s explanation of ancient Maerenian magic.

  The night spent under the stars, the softly whispered description of Elizabeth’s frightening mind control, in textbook formality . . . Jill had tried her hardest to make Victoria see the reason for all their subterfuge and treasonous actions.

  It had been eye-opening about the court secrets and problems in Maeren that Victoria’s own brothers didn’t discuss with their baby witch sister, especially when they had all arrived in the human realm and Victoria had seen Elizabeth in action.

  The demons and vampires Elizabeth described were nothing like the noble lords of which the court was supposed to be comprised.

  They were more like the bloodsucking monsters that had tortured Victoria.

  Elizabeth had saved Victoria from that living nightmare when Daemon broke the blood contract to George’s clan and made Victoria her Lasier.

  It was why, despite the betrayal, Victoria didn’t hate the Norwoods.

  As she spent more time with their family, she was tempted to tell them her own secrets, even if she wasn’t quite ready to forgive them for theirs and the cost her twin had paid for Jill’s treachery.

  “Let me see.”

  Elizabeth’s polite inquiry was a mere formality. She could look inside Victoria’s mind any time she wanted.

  Ever since they crossed into the human realm, however, Elizabeth had kept her mental distance.

  Her morality was definitely shades of grey, but there were some lines Elizabeth wouldn’t cross, even for her family.

  Maybe it was the Lasier bond or the friendship that had sparked between them before the poisonings and running away from the court, something that still told Victoria she could trust Elizabeth.

  “Do it, Liz. Can you see the dream without me having to think about it again?”

  “Of course.”

  As soon as Victoria said she didn’t want to think about it, the male appeared in her thoughts.

  The feel of her ice touching his wing sent shivers up her spine.

  Every fear of the dark, from childhood phobias of the creatures under the bed and in the closet to the more real monsters of the last few years came screaming out of her unconsciousness, in warning, as she’d felt his wing.

  Danger had stalked her in that cave of nightmares.

  “Wings?”

  “Yes, wings, but the body was definitely humanoid.”

  “It was a male she heard in her mind. She was using water magic in the dream and she made it quite cold, and that may be what caused the ice here. I couldn’t see the male because it was dark in the dream, but Victoria was able to feel he had a human-like body, except for wings,” Elizabeth said, not mentioning Victoria’s fear or judging her for it.

  Elizabeth wasn’t much bigger than Victoria, but she fearlessly hunted those things that went bump in the night.

  Something flashed in Elizabeth’s eyes, but was gone a moment later. The other witch didn’t share what she was thinking.

  An unfair exchange, given Victoria had let Elizabeth see her deepest fears.

  “Is it something like the human version of a demon or angel?” Jill asked, crossing her legs at her bedside perch.

  Jill was one of those people that thought best while moving, even if it was just a little tap-tap of her fingers on the desk.

  Victoria could understand it. She paced and plotted on a regular basis.

  “No feathers, definitely not an angel,” Elizabeth said. “It felt like a dragon’s wing, smooth and fleshy. I think he had fire because he used it to melt the ice,” Elizabeth added. “Damn it,” she muttered under her breath.

  “Was there a magic circle?” Kaila asked, sharply.

  Victoria turned to Kaila. She definitely knew something.

  Victoria wanted to shake the knowledge out of her, but the older witch demanded respect. If not for her age, then for the fact that she could flatten Victoria with just her pinky.

  There was also the matter that Victoria owed her for the healing of a lifetime, erasing her old scars.

  “It was too dark to know if there was a circle,” Victoria answered.

  She hadn’t thought to look for one at the time.

  A magic circle made sense. With the right Maerenian spells, someone could trace her through her dreams.

  It might even be possible to physically transport through her dream with a blood bond.

  “It was a dragon!” Elizabeth shouted, but not as surprised as Victoria would have expected.

  Buried Pain

  Victoria handed her mostly empty cup of tea back to Kaila. There was no denying what she had seen. Elizabeth had confirmed it.

  “I need chalk. Now!” Victoria said, jumping out of the bed.

  This was bad, really bad.

  “Woah. Slow down!” Jill shouted, almost falling off of the bed cross-legged when Victoria had suddenly gotten up and pushed her off her perch. “We don’t just have chalk lying around.”

  Did they lock up their chalk? How strange.

  Perhaps they didn’t have much use for it in the human realm, every little feather of magic feeling like lifting bricks when done here. Victoria had forgotten how suffocating it felt just to exist on this side.

  “We have charcoal. Well, kind of. If you shield your hand, you could use a piece of wood from the wood stove, once it cools a bit,” Elizabeth suggested, following Victoria as she walked out of the room. “How bad is this? Can you block a dragon from your dreams with a chalk ward?”

  The sunny room they had left was a small library and morning room that they had converted into temporary quarters for Victoria.

  Kaila had suggested it, not saying anything about Victoria’s claustrophobia, but positioning her daybed to face towards the sunrise.

  The healing Kaila had done for Victoria’s scars had revealed the mental wounds as well.

  Victoria was grateful for Kaila’s closed-mouth empathy and kindness.

  The room for the wood stove was where they kept the only television and VHS.

  Victoria charged in, eyeing the soft flame still going in the wood stove. The charcoal would still be burning hot, although she could use magic to shield it.

  “Do you mean, you don’t have any chalk? What kind of witches don’t have chalk?” Victoria asked, heading in the direction of the wood stove.

  She didn’t answer Elizabeth’s question yet, pondering if it was possible to ward well enough with only charcoal. It wasn’t even blessed properly.

  Dragons were powerful in their magic.

  The fire and heat from the iron beast were as comforting as Kaila’s tea brews. Although Victoria had stronger water, she always preferred to use her fire. Her temperament wasn’t suited to cooler strengths.

  “We don’t need chalk on the human side of the portal,” Kaila said. She handed the cup of tea to Jill to take to the kitchen. “Before you burn a hole in my floor with a piece of firewood, I would appreciate you talking to me about why you want to ward yourself.”

  Victoria stopped her march and turned around.

  “You know why,” she said.

&nb
sp; Swinging back around, she started pacing around the room.

  How could she make plain charcoal from a fireplace strong enough? There were glyphs that could augment a ward made with inferior materials.

  “I think I know why,” Kaila said, responding to Victoria’s cryptic answer. “I’m not as knowledgeable as you are with Maerenian magic, but there are tales of dream tracing,” she said, explaining it for her daughters.

  “It was that dragon,” Victoria whispered, swinging around again as she made the connection.

  She looked at Elizabeth, The other witch had been unconscious at the time, under the spell she had woven with her lightning to subdue the dragons.

  “The big, grey one that you told me to guard. He bit me when we were in the caves. It had to be a blood bond that he stole from me with that bite, if he could trace into my dreams even in the human realm,” Victoria said,

  “The dragon can’t trace you . . . unless you’re sleeping?” Elizabeth asked.

  Victoria could see the worry in Elizabeth’s eyes.

  She remembered that another dragon shifter had bitten Elizabeth’s sleeping body, almost stealing her from them all, before George found them in the caves.

  The shifter had then decided to help the dragon that had taken a nip from Victoria to escape, instead of confronting an earth prince in such a rage that the cave walls had trembled.

  Was Elizabeth worried that she would have a dragon visiting her dreams as well?

  It was technically possible, with the bite and blood needed for the spell, but executing such rarer magic was another beast entirely.

  Realm magic was such a finicky thing. Some spells needed the full moon and others could only be done with the sun at its zenith, and if the stars didn’t align up right, then all your magic would be for naught.

  “No,” Victoria said to answer Elizabeth, shaking her head. “I don’t think the dragon can connect to me awake. Even the tracing in my sleep is uncertain. The kind of magic that would require—he was strong. I can’t take the chance.”

  Victoria stopped pacing, running a hand through her short hair. Sleep couldn’t mess with a pixie cut as short as hers. The ‘roll out of bed and go’ look was core to her personality.

  She needed to do something to stop this dragon, although she had just reasoned that there was at least enough time until she slept again to act.

  “By tracing, do you mean transportation?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Yes. I’m not aware of magic that would allow transport outside of a dream or a portal,” Victoria admitted, although she wasn’t knowledgeable on all the ancient magic of Maeren.

  Some texts were lost to fires, others simply stored in forgotten treasure hoards.

  “I don’t want to find out the hard way that I’m wrong about tracing outside of dreams,” Victoria added.

  “Staking,” Elizabeth threw in. “Anything that causes your magic to be released from your chi or if your magic is drained fully. It’s an automatic trip to hell, er, Maeren from here.”

  Elizabeth would know all about staking. The Norwoods hadn’t lied about it . . . exactly.

  Victoria could still hardly believe those stories Elizabeth had told her, one night at the castle when they were drunk, claiming they were based on her mother’s favourite TV show, weren’t really a made-up fantasy.

  The Norwoods may have the VHS tapes to prove that such a television series existed, but Kaila had handed her daughter a handful of stakes their first night home. She sent Elizabeth hunting. It had all become too real.

  Through the mind-connection Elizabeth maintained with her lightning, the rest of them shared the quick staking of a vampire trying to feed on an illegal human victim.

  It had been a heck of a welcome back to the human realm and a lesson in just how much things had changed since Victoria had last visited.

  “Wait a minute,” Jill said, running to the kitchen with Victoria’s cup and quickly returning. “Define tracing, exactly. How is it different from transportation?”

  The question sounded academic. Only in a witch household would mythical questions and discussion of various potions be considered intellectual chatter.

  Kaila had kept her daughters in the human realm so long, trying to protect them from the dangers of Maeren. What those dangers had been, none of the Norwoods had properly explained to Victoria yet.

  The time away had left Elizabeth and Jill sorely uneducated about their own world. Every opportunity to learn had to be explored.

  “True transportation involves reconstruction of the body. Tracing means to use magic to transport just a soul through a dream. You can only trace with a specialized magic circle. As soon as the dream is over, the magic holding the soul bound releases it back to the body,” Kaila explained.

  “If you are blood bonded to the one doing the tracing, your physical body can be pulled through the dream when you wake by your soul being tied down to the circle, using blood glyphs,” Victoria added, further explaining her particular concern.

  The dragon must have been circling her to draw the glyphs, playing on her fears to distract her long enough. If Elizabeth hadn’t shocked her awake, she would have been truly trapped.

  “Can the dragon find your thoughts when you are awake?” Jill asked. “Elizabeth doesn’t have to be close to use telepathy.”

  Victoria shivered, even standing next to the wood stove.

  She didn’t know which was scarier: the casual reminder of Elizabeth’s unrestrained power or the thought of her nightmares becoming a waking dream.

  The dragon had made her patently aware of the magical gulf between them as Victoria had held a dagger by its water core to his body to hold him still.

  It had felt like she had a mastiff by a ribbon.

  He had flipped the tables on her quickly and stolen the taste of her blood to allow this bond.

  Did he even play by the same rules of magic as her?

  “I don’t know if he has the same sort of telepathy. Elizabeth is the first person to use that kind of magic on me and this dream dragon . . . I don’t know if it was just his voice in my head because it was a dream, or if he was using magic, like Elizabeth.”

  “If I had to guess, I would say it was a dream. Even I can’t use telepathy across realms,” Elizabeth said, taking a seat in her favourite chair.

  It was made from soft leather and had a little wooden handle on the outside that caused the footrest flip up as the back extended into a reclining position.

  Elizabeth had called the chair a Lazy Boy, although she didn’t spend much time in it, seeming to take a few minutes to recharge and then she was back up and ready to fight again.

  It sounded a bit arrogant for Elizabeth to make herself the standard for telepathy, but really, it wasn’t. Elizabeth was incredibly powerful. She likely she could match Daemon in power, and for a witch, that really ought to be impossible.

  Victoria’s trip across Maeren with her entire body under Elizabeth’s lightning to move her, make her talk and slip them all out of the castle, without alerting the guards, was evidence of just how much power the witch could pack.

  Elizabeth had been half-dead at the time, too, barely recovered from fighting dragons.

  That last bit was the problem with her logic.

  “Dragons are stronger,” Victoria said, plopping herself down on the couch, beside Elizabeth’s chair. “I don’t think they play by the same rules,” she added, sharing her worry.

  “Dragon rules? How much else do we have to learn and how fast?” Elizabeth asked, sounding frustrated.

  “They may play hard and fast with the rules but they still have to obey them,” Kaila said. She took a seat in her rocking chair. “Dragons were a powerful clan when I was a child. My father was close to them. He had a best friend amongst the royal family.”

  “Dragon royalty?” Jill asked, her eyebrows rocketing sky-high. She remained standing, shifting from foot to foot, obviously thinking. “Were dragons in charge of the kingdom, back then?”


  Victoria looked aghast at them, sitting up straight.

  They were practically speaking treason, although perhaps she shouldn’t be so surprised with the Norwoods.

  Nobody in Maeren referred to the dragons as contenders to the throne since they had been defeated and the clans united.

  Kaila shouldn’t even acknowledge an association with them.

  It had to be edger talk.

  “My father is the king,” Victoria reminded them all, looking each of them in the eye.

  Her tone brokered no further conversation on the topic.

  “I’m just saying that I may have more knowledge about dragons than you possess, Victoria. Such knowledge may be useful in your situation,” Kaila said, chastising her just like she would her daughters.

  Seemingly done lecturing, Kaila stood up abruptly and walked over to the wood stove. She opened the door, poking the red embers with a hooked rod. There weren’t really any good-sized charcoals to use.

  “It’s dangerous to speak of them,” Victoria insisted, peering around Kaila into the wood stove. All of this talk was making her more nervous. “The ruling dragons were all put to death.”

  “Really? Doesn’t explain what you told us about your dragon,” Kaila fired back, closing the wood stove door again.

  It was no big deal if Kaila didn’t vilify dragons like the rest of Maeren. She could think they farted rainbows for all it mattered.

  “He is not my dragon,” Victoria said, sounding quite civil. “There was a group of them in the caves and we were all attacked. He is no more mine than any of the others.”

  Elizabeth awkwardly coughed. She had better stay out of Victoria’s head.

  “The only prince left in the dragon clan would go to the ends of the realm and beyond to steal the only princess of the Maeren royal line that wiped out his entire family,” Kaila said.

  He was her dragon.

  Victoria didn’t crumble. Kaila was right. Victoria didn’t know much about dragons. She needed to confirm absolutely that it was him.

  Don’t panic.