Jill froze.
Elizabeth stopped.
That had been too harsh. Jill had been doing so good, without a panic attack the last couple days.
Elizabeth had to ruin it by being a total douche to her.
Victoria suddenly hugged Jill’s frozen body, surprising them all.
“I let your mother heal the scars, but the memories are still there,” Victoria said. “I don’t like tight, dark places.”
“Elizabeth is afraid of the dark, too,” Jill said. She hugged Victoria back. “I can’t stand being touched by guys, especially held down.”
Victoria choked back some inappropriate laughter.
“What?” Jill asked, pushing Victoria back, halfheartedly.
So much for those two baring their souls.
“You really should tell Vic about your hang up. Like, seriously, the first sentence out of your mouth when you see him should be about a phobia to do with being tied up, right after you apologize, or maybe even before it. I’m not sure how long you’ll have,” Victoria said.
“It’s not exactly something I share with everybody. I can cope with a little hand-holding and whatnot.”
Victoria sighed. She kept on walking towards town, marching ahead of them.
“My brother is kinky. I wish I didn’t know, but the witches talk about all of my brothers. I’ve heard a few things,” Victoria said, staying far enough ahead that Elizabeth couldn’t see if the princess was blushing.
“Whoa. What is she thinking about, Wicked?”
“I’m not reading her thoughts, especially about this. I’m pretty sure she’s not imagining him with some random witch anyway, but you. Maybe this whole poisoning scheme was a really bad idea.”
“Epic fail. Do you think I should dye my hair and call myself Diana Prince? I’ve always wanted a secret identity.”
“You are a nerd and as awesome as you are, I think that Wonder Woman is a stretch.”
“Apparently all the princes enjoy a spanking good time in the bedroom,” Elizabeth said out loud, refusing to let Victoria think they were intimidated by her kinky revelation.
Victor was never going to see Jill again.
Daemon would only get close to Elizabeth if she had eight inches of solid oak to greet him.
“Uh, Liz, nobody gossips about Daemon’s bedroom habits. And I didn’t say Vic spanked his ladies, although he might make an exception for Jill.”
“Don’t tell me any more,” Jill said. “He slept beside me the morning before the dragon’s cave. He was a perfect gentleman. I’ll keep that memory of him and not the S&M version you are espousing.”
“I warned you,” Victoria said.
Elizabeth opened her mind to Victoria, letting her and Jill know that all of their surface thoughts would be shared.
They were getting closer to the market now.
“Let’s behave. No need to overshare. Don’t think it, unless you want the rest of us to know it,” Elizabeth warned them as she opened the connection.
“Why are you in my head anyway, Liz?”
“She always does this for our protection at the market,” Jill explained, used to it by now.
“Everyone in town thinks Jill and I are mute. It’s part of our identity here. A surprising number of people don’t look too closely at you if they think you’re disabled and weak,” Elizabeth said.
Victoria’s icy amusement was difficult to convey, but Elizabeth tried as she shared the skeptical witch’s thoughts.
“I’ve seen a mute witch drown a soldier on land just for the offence of splashing mud on her skirt while helping her out of a carriage. She wasn’t weak,” Victoria said.
“Prejudices won’t protect people but they’re still common. Also, that is super creepy,” Elizabeth replied.
Jill felt sad. Her instinct to help came through her thoughts.
“We try to avoid coming into town. No one knows where we live or our family connections. If you could keep from drawing any attention to us so we can continue our anonymous existence once you leave, then we’d appreciate it,” Jill said a bit snootily.
“I’m the soul of discretion,” Victoria said without an ounce of humility.
“As we have so recently witnessed. Can you fake a less noble accent?” Elizabeth asked, unwilling to wade into the fight between her sister and Victoria again.
“Can’t I just be mute like you guys?” Victoria asked.
“The townspeople might wonder about the mute colony we’re starting, but I guess, no less than the surprise of seeing a new person anyway. It’s probably easier to fake being mute than your accent,” Elizabeth said in agreement.
Jill rummaged through her hip pack. She pulled out the marks that they’d brought over from their stash at the human realm.
The coins were a metal alloy, with only the smaller ones containing gold and silver, although they were the higher denomination.
In some Maerenian towns, they would still melt down the coins and value them based on their weight in those metals.
Their family mostly lived in the human realm. Jill’s job made human currency. Hence, their supply of Maerenian marks was low.
Victoria took the handful of marks that Jill handed her, dropping them into a pocket on her dress.
At least, the ill-fitting dress was still practical.
“Are we poor?” Victoria inquired.
“Yes. Don’t worry, you’ll be back in your rich castle soon,” Jill said.
“I’m not complaining. Although, Elizabeth’s services as a private guard for any of the noble families would bring this much for a few hours work. Why not hire out to get paid for the protection you already do for free for the humans?” Victoria asked.
“I can’t reveal my magic. I thought that was obvious. It would definitely attract unwanted attention,” Elizabeth answered.
The idea had tempted her before, when she felt guilty over seeing her sister work so hard to make their family money.
Their mother had always said it wasn’t worth the risk.
“Don’t use lightning, then. Your air is enough to get you hired, from what you showed in the practice room, when you broke my circle. Nobody is going to pay that much attention to another air witch,” Victoria pointed out.
Air was almost as common as earth. Victoria was right.
A human job like Jill’s wasn’t really possible for Elizabeth. She had to contend with greater difficulties than the rest of her family had, adapting to the human realm, due to her lightning.
Technology mishmash outside Maeren, as well as the time she spent slaying, made even part-time work unrealistic.
Perhaps some small contracts in Maeren were something she could now pursue. Her native realm wasn’t such a mystery any longer.
“I’ll give it some thought,” Elizabeth said.
“You want to do it!” Jill said, sounding surprised.
“Slaying isn’t my life. It’s important, and lately it has been almost a calling, especially with all of the vampires and demons coming over. That would be difficult to manage without lightning giving me the advantage. If we win, then there will come a day where I won’t be needed in the human realm, anymore. That’s not a bad thing, but I have to find something more for myself than just slaying,” Elizabeth explained.
Her sister had a career. Their mother had her library and friends.
“You are meant to be in Maeren,” Jill said.
Elizabeth wasn’t in a rush. She would never leave her family in a lurch. As long as they needed her, she’d stay close, no matter if it left her less fulfilled.
“What’s easier isn’t always what’s the best. I like the human realm and I don’t regret moving there. Besides, I’m not retired from slaying yet. We still have a demon epidemic to deal with and a royal plot afoot,” Elizabeth reminded Jill.
“I don’t even want to hear you guys thinking about trying to mess with Daemon. Seriously, I plan to claim complete ignorance. Liz ought to know how impossible it would be to overpowe
r him, after seeing what he did to Vic and me. That was child’s play to Daemon,” Victoria claimed.
Fair enough, and the warning was hardly needed. They had already implicated the princess enough in their crimes.
“We are going to wait until we have more evidence to decide about Daemon. Even you have to agree that something is going on in the royal family, something that someone is willing to kill to achieve. The vampires and demons coming over to the human realm, the hidden portal in the library leading to the dragons, the king suddenly killed and Daemon taking over the throne . . .” Elizabeth trailed off in her thoughts to let Victoria fill in the answer herself.
“Our father—the king—disappeared. There was no funeral. Daemon hasn’t made an announcement. I told you that Daemon assumed the throne in our father’s absence because Phillip refused it,” Victoria reminded them.
“What do you want to bet that Daemon threatened to kill Phillip, too, if he didn’t abdicate?” Jill asked, suspiciously.
Jill’s trust in Daemon had been wiped away the moment she had seen those dragon heads.
Her sister was a healer. Victoria seemed to have failed to recognize it, despite the deadly strength of Jill’s magic.
Poisoning the royal family had been one of the most difficult things Jill had ever done.
The cost of it was something all the marks of the kingdom could never pay up. It was going to be a lifetime debt of their family looking over their shoulders and hiding at the edges of Maeren.
“Enough!” Elizabeth thought to both of the other witches. “It isn’t our job to guess at motivations. I have always worked with evidence, hard facts. I’m not going to make any assumptions about Daemon or Phillip and neither should you, Jill. Let’s just get Victoria a dress and go back to the cottage to recharge.”
“Fine,” Jill snapped back.
“I agree,” Victoria said, sounding tried of it all.
They were all running on fumes. The infighting, fears, poor sleep, and the consequences nipping their heels were a wearying weight to bear.
“I’ll buy everyone ice cream and we can binge the first season of Buffy when we get home,” Elizabeth suggested.
This time she got a more enthusiastic response.
Ice cream could solve anything.
All That Glitters is not Gold
They had reached the edge market, while they conversed. Telepathy let them continue the conversation, while Victoria browsed ready-made dresses from a stall built into the lean-to main building that housed most of the market sellers and their wares.
A lot of them had their homes in the back of their stores, so it was common to see their children hanging around. School attendance wasn’t mandatory this far at the edge, and most of the children would be lucky to be able to take over a parent’s business.
Elizabeth waved to a little girl that she knew well. She loved being around children, now that she was older. They minds were so open and their thoughts full of wonder and imagination.
Often, she’d get caught up and share a daydream with a child, making it as real and happy for them as possible.
A little moment out of their harsher reality.
This little girl loved ponies, even though she’d never ridden one.
Victoria spent only about a minute, flicking through the dress rack, before heading over to the male apparel.
Elizabeth glanced over as she helped the little girl to imagine herself riding a unicorn with a rainbow mane.
At least, male clothes would be cheaper and probably more comfortable for Victoria. The princess truly was elf-like, so petite.
Jill pulled from the boys’ rack some martial arts looking robes, similar to Victoria’s old set.
Black, of course. Her sister had a good eye for size.
Elizabeth figured they should keep it quiet that Jill had pulled it from the boy’s section.
Victoria accepted the robes without question and brought them the seller, trying to haggle without talking.
The hand gestures were not getting her anywhere.
“Lay down half of the marks you are willing to spend,” Jill suggested.
Elizabeth left the little girl galloping along a sunset beach in her imagination, which had started to add enough details that she hardly needed lightning to help her, to make sure Victoria didn’t get bamboozled by the owner of this stall.
The princess laid out double the expected price for the robes.
The seller started scooping up marks and then asked for two more, holding up grimy fingers.
Great, the seller thought them foolish and rich. They only wanted to make the first half of that impression.
Victoria took back two of the marks she had given, before the seller could confiscate them all.
She thanked the seller with a neat little bow and grabbed the robe he had tied up for her to carry.
His outraged bellow was cut short when Victoria dropped one of the marks she’d confiscated into the equally grimy hands of the seller’s daughter, who suddenly blinking her eyes awake from her unicorn daydream, clutched the mark in her hand.
The girl smiled and thanked the princess.
“Hello, sparks,” Geer said, dropping into Elizabeth’s head with no warning as she watched the happy girl.
Her vision of the poorly lit shop was overtaken by his sight of a bright, blue sky. The view then changed to trees, way below him, and that were moving by rapidly.
He must be flying. It was dizzying with his speed and height.
She used lightning to force Geer’s vision to the back of her mind before it made her vertiginous.
“Let’s get moving if you’re done,” Elizabeth said to Victoria, ignoring Geer as if he wasn’t there.
Geer was still on her crap list. Besides, any conversation she wanted to have with him had to be out loud, the mate bond they shared different from her lightning telepathy.
The witches were all still pretending muteness as part of their disguise for the townsfolk.
“You don’t do a lot of shopping, Tor?” Jill inquired once they were out of the stall.
Jill didn’t mention Geer. It must mean she couldn’t sense him in Elizabeth’s thoughts as long as he was communicating over the mate bond. A definite bonus.
“Shopping would require leaving the castle, which I was forbidden to do the last few years,” Victoria answered.
Forbidden?
“I see the princess is with you and safe. Are you in Maeren, shopping?” Geer asked, like he was part of their conversation.
He must have guessed at what they were doing by what he was seeing through her eyes, with the mate bond.
How did that work for him? She certainly couldn’t imagine flying at the same time as watching someone shop.
In fact, how was Geer was speaking to her out loud, while he was flying?
Could dragons talk when shifted?
She wished she could respond to him, so she could get her answers, but there was no point ruining her cover. In a few minutes, they would be far enough out of town for her to stop pretending to be mute.
Then, she was going to give Geer a lecture! He had a lot of gall to show up in her head again after pulling that dirty trick on Victoria.
‘Why were you forbidden from leaving the castle?” Elizabeth asked, not letting them know about her dragon visitor yet.
Thankfully, this town was unremarkable and dull, so it wouldn’t help him to locate her. She wouldn’t be able to fake being blind, suddenly, as well as mute.
“I fell for the wrong guy,” Victoria replied, walking over to a chalk and potion seller’s stall.
They browsed a selection of chalk so cheap that it was stored loose in a bulk bin. Dust coated Victoria’s fingertips as she touched a broken stick.
“Was he the wrong magic type?” Jill asked with curiosity.
Too common air or an earth vampire from the mines, Elizabeth figured. Heck, anything but fire would be deemed inappropriate for a royal princess.
“Human,�
� Victoria said, giving the one answer neither of them would have expected.
It got their attention. Jill looked up from her browsing to stare at Victoria. Their shocked thoughts were almost delivered simultaneously to the princess.
“You’re not the first witches to run to the edge to hide. When I was sixteen, my father had betrothed me to a vampire from the Western Water clan. I ran away during the trip to his home to formalize our betrothal,” Victoria said.
The princess put the broken chalk on the seller’s table and made a gesture of disgust, wiggling her nose and dusting off her hands.
She pulled out a few marks and let them clink on the table, covering them up with her hand before the seller could grab them.
It was clearly not the price for broken merchandise.
“Chalk? That dusty stick isn’t worth the marks the princess laid down. But don’t let me stop you. Go ahead and try to reinforce the glyphs you’re using on the princess to block her from her mate,” Geer commented, as if he was right over her shoulder.
She shivered, but ignored him. He was still flying.
He just couldn’t resist sharing his opinions, even when it would be to his advantage to keep his mouth shut.
He had to know he was in trouble with her.
She wished she could give him a snarky reply. He had failed to steal Victoria from under her protection. She wasn’t going to let him get another chance.
“Want something fancier?” the seller asked, spitting a wad of tobacco at stained tureen.
Victoria’s nose scrunched up.
He looked at her dress. It was ill fitting, but made of very fine material. That fact that it was white, a very impractical colour for commoners, who often toiled in dusty fields, said a lot about their station.
They usually could afford better chalk.
The seller signalled for them to wait and went into the back of his store, pushing through curtains as dusty as the rest of his wares.
“So, you were a runaway bride?” Jill asked, eager to hear more of Victoria’s story.
No Witch Way Out (Maeren Series Book 2) Page 12