Maybe it wouldn’t hurt if she let Silver out once a week.
No. No. No. She thought, if she could reclaim her life back, go out for parties at night with other maids. But she was a duchess now, she reminded herself, partying with the maids was probably not allowed.
A grand duchess with nothing to do but sign letters and look pretty. Hell on earth for her. Why had she agreed again? Oh yes, no choice. Well that was the last time that was happening.
She whisked back to the rooms she’d been in earlier, to find Katelyn still asleep on top of the covers and shivering. Romana quickly lifted the little girl and covered her in the thick woollen blankets, even as she noted the colder temperatures that were beginning to set in nightly. Winter was coming fast, and the sub-zero temperatures would cause frostbite far worse than the pain from the almighty headache she’d gained by blocking Silver.
She wouldn’t allow her out though, no matter what she’d signed on for. No-one had told her that she would be signing her life away by accepting the catsuit. She wouldn’t have agreed if she’d known. Or would it have happened even if she’d never looked behind the waterfall? The paradox was unnerving. Was Silver a part of her, or a parasite that had travelled from person to person by the mask?
The pain in her head intensified slightly, and she looked up at the waxing moon showing through the balcony with worry. Would the throbbing escalate until it became disabling, or perhaps forced her unconscious?
She would never get out of her room if she fainted in front of Marten.
So, leaving her room and the soundly sleeping Katelyn, she walked outside and in three easy bounds leapt over the wall and into the empty marketplace.
Guards patrolled the streets, imposing a curfew, so Romana took to the rooftops, running at a human speed across buildings to feel the wind cut through her hair. Silver had done her a favour in cutting it again.
Oh for heavens sake! Was the only thing she was capable of contemplating Silver? She needed to run it off.
Decision made, she was about to leap over the alleyway in front of her when she saw the two men tailing her. No guard uniforms, but plain black clothes and knit caps, making them camouflaged neatly into the night sky.
Her own pale blue clothes did little in her favour.
She stopped to face them. Only to recognise almost immediately that these were no mere humans she faced. Elves, two of her own people were tailing her.
“You will come with us.” They told her completely in sync.
“Why?” She asked, wondering if Marten had asked Endis to send over two guards for her.
“Because you are needed by our superior.” One replied.
“Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you guys, but I really don’t feel like meeting and greeting the head of Viper’s Crew today.” It was a stab in the dark.
“On the contrary, Wytch. He does not want to meet you, he merely wishes to see you staked in the market place in revenge for killing his brother and second in command.”
“But I’m not the Silver Eyed Wytch.” She insisted “I’m Lady Romana the Grand Duchess of Morendor.”
“We know who you are.” The same man informed her, the other remaining silent. “But as the Wytch’s kills were symbolic of Marten’s loved ones, yours will be symbolic of her. You are the only female elf in the city, after all.”
They drew swords, and pointed them at her.
“I’m not going with you.” She told them.
“Nobody said you had to be alive to make that decision.” The man replied coolly, like he was giving a weather report instead of a death sentence.
Terror gripped her veins as they began to swing the swords at elvenspeed in lithe practiced movements. She wasn’t going to stand a chance against these men, she realised in that moment, even as a sword rushed for her head. She put her hands out on instinct to block the blade.
It just happened.
No warning. No caution. No nothing.
One minute he was there, and the next, heat under her skin and a flash of light brighter than the sun turned the man to ashes where he stood, the only things left were the clothes he’d been wearing. The other looked at her in terror, and ran at elvenspeed from the roof, leaving her alone.
She looked around for the sorceress who had saved her, to find that she was completely alone. As shouts sounded from the alley below and guards whistles pierced the night she looked down at her hands in disbelief. Silver was still behind mental shields so it couldn’t have been her. It was all her. She really was a wytch.
Her legs had her running before she could think.
She ended up outside Hana’s rooms, her knuckles rapping at the door even as tears streaked her face.
“What is it?” Came the sleepy reply.
“It’s Romana.” Was her voice really that robotic? “I need help.”
The woman must have heard the panic in her voice, because two seconds later the door was opened and she was ushered into a small but cosy kitchenette.
“Wait here.” She was instructed, after being led to a stool.
Watching Hana work over the stove was oddly calming, the smell of melting chocolate and fresh milk even more so.
“Drink.” Hana ordered, pressing the cup of hot chocolate into her hands. “Now what happened?”
“I think I just killed a man.” She replied, surprising herself at the emptiness of her voice.
“You’re in shock,” came the head maid’s calm reply, even as she was led over to a fireplace with a warm old sofa. “Sit down and tell me exactly what just happened.”
“I was running.” She began, through tears which Hana carefully wiped away with a cloth.
“Through the palace grounds?” Hana guessed.
“Along the city rooftops.” She corrected. “I was annoyed with myself for thinking too much, and I had a headache. So it took me a while to notice these two guys following me. And it was even harder because they were elven.”
“Two elves were following you?” Hana asked. “That’s impossible; all the elves left the city with Prince Endis.”
“It happened. But they attacked me, said they were from Viper’s crew and that their leader wanted me dead because Silver was an elf too. So they attacked.”
“What happened?” Hana asked again, gentler this time.
“Light.” She replied “I held up my arms to block the sword aimed at my head and it was like the sun erupted from my hands. One was dust in an instant, and his clothes just fell onto the roof.” She let out a small scream “I can’t be a wytch, I can’t, I can't. And I’m crying! I never cry.”
“Let me go and verify this with the guards. There must have been another person.”
“I saw no-one. And you know how good my sight is.” She replied, in hysterics now.
“You might be wrong.”
“Don’t tell anyone.”
“Of course not dear,” Hana replied, stroking a piece of hair away from her face as she left the room.
But this was Hana, and Romana heard every word that the head maid relayed to Marten behind office doors. That was when she knew she needed to run. Wytches were automatically executed for using magic to kill among humans, and even as a grand duchess Marten wouldn’t be able to sway the law from passing that judgement.
She stood up to leave, only to fall under the pain from the mental shields collapsing. Keeping Silver back had been an illusion. She’d never had any power over the Wytch, and she’d been deluding herself to think that she ever had.
But it had been a nice delusion, she thought as she faded to blackness.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
LIKE KNOWS LIKE
Silver made short work of picking the lock on Hana’s window and climbing up to the roof.
The girl’s discovery of her magic had left her shields weak and her mind confused and distracted, providing the perfect conditions to break them. Jumping from the roof she ran silently across the grounds; changing silently into her spare clothes that she’d stashed into a small hole by th
e base of the wall for just such a contingency as this.
Mask on, she ran back to the palace, to find Prince Marten ordering guards into search parties in the courtyard. She perched on one of the roofs there and called down to him.
“It won’t work.”
At once everyone stopped whatever they were doing and looked up. Nice to have an audience.
“Tell me why I shouldn’t shoot you now.” He asked.
“Because I know where she is. You obviously don’t. Now tell your men to stand down, the death threats were old yesterday.” He gave the order, and she smiled smugly. “Did you miss me? I was out of town picking up a few things; some new swords, more arrows, that sort of thing.”
“Where is she?”
“Running away to someplace you’ll never find her, but she hasn’t realised that she’s forgotten something yet.”
“Did you make her?”
“No. Your laws did. The moment the girl realised her powers, she was so scared that she would be burnt at the stake like every other wytch who’s killed a human, excluding me of course. So she ran for her life, but she’ll be back to pick up some things, providing you don’t kill her first.”
“How could I kill her?” Marten asked incredulous. “She’s a friend, and I never uphold the laws of Grenov in Morendor as a general rule. Where did she go?” He leapt up to the roof next to her in one bound. Clearly his elvenstrength was improving, she noted, he’d been practicing like she suggested.
“To the colony.” She replied, bored already at how obvious it was.
“To the sorceress’ colony, but why?”
“Because she thought you were going to kill her.” She layered her voice with sarcasm.
“Did you know this would happen?”
“Which part?” She asked.
“That she would have magic.” He clarified.
“Of course I knew she had magic, like knows like as they say. But it’s best she doesn’t know it was her who killed those men. Say it was me, but don’t get her into another frightening situation again or it will re-emerge and kill whoever threatens her.”
“We argue all the time.”
“That won’t put her in a situation where she’s terrified. She’ll come back for Katelyn, stay with the girl and then grab Romana when she comes back. She’ll attack you out of fear. I trust that you can restrain her without harming her or involving anyone else?”
“I’ll protect her.”
“Why do you think I want to protect her?”
“Because you just told me how to.” He replied.
“Tell me something.” She interrupted him “What do you intend for her? She has played the part of your lady for a week, and will be seen in that position by the rest of the court until you say otherwise. To the serving staff she’s an ex-maid. To the elves she’s a lost princess. From where I’m standing, you’ve unlimited complications with any chosen story.”
“I’ll get to that when I get to it. At the moment I just want her here and safe.”
“Oh, and you owe me another favour for this, and I’m using it to get rid of the death warrant.” She replied. “It’s annoying. Put me on the most wanted but being shot by the damn thieves everywhere I go is just a pain.”
“You’ve been hit?”
“Once or twice to date.” She recounted. “The scars are almost fully healed by now though; who would have thought that humans could be such a pain?”
“They’ve given me no knowledge of your activities.”
“Who said that I let them live?”
His mouth tightened into a grim line. “I’ll call off the thieves and the death warrant. But if you don’t make an appearance soon I’m going to have to deal with more ‘come back Wytch’ parties. I’d appreciate it if you could tell them to stop.”
“I’ll give them a reason to stop.” She turned to run from the roof.
“Don’t hurt them.” Marten replied in elvish.
She looked back and nodded, leaping over the palace wall in two bounds, she began her hunt.
The elf that had seen what Romana had done was dangerous to her. If he reached his superiors to give them news of her then much of the girls secret would be out. Because the truth was, you weren’t a natural elf if you had magic. The only way that the elves could become magicians was by stealing a sorceress’ magic of another race. Hence there were only four or five elven magicians in history.
But finding one elf in a crew that large was going to be troublesome, she admitted, even as she flew across the city at a speed that made walking look like a snails pace.
She could see the crew easily enough, those in black, terrorising shop owners, and she snatched them up one by one, till she had a dozen in the barn she’d deemed suitable for the night’s entertainment.
They knew what was coming for them, you could see it in their eyes as they pounded and screamed at the door. She coughed lightly from the rafters. All noise stopped; the familiar sound of terrified prey in the grip of a merciless predator.
“I only need to know the names of the top people in your organisation and I’ll let you all go.” She told them, walking along the beam and jumping to one closer to their little group.
“We won’t tell you anything.” One of them told her, ah, the traditional devoted believer. He would be first.
“Very well.” She informed him.
A blink of an eye later and the rest of them were tied to a peg in the ground like animals, while the zealot was left to run free.
And he did run.
It was hardly sport, she thought as she blurred around him, cutting him in a tribal pattern until he was on his knees begging. His clothes were stuck to his body like a second skin by the time she killed him. The smell of sweat blood and acrid fear surrounded her, none of it her own.
“Nobody else want to talk yet?” She asked.
Only one nodded, a woman in her thirties.
“Can you write?” Silver replied, and at the continued nodding, Silver took her outside and watched as she wrote out a list of six names.
“The others know nothing.” She pleaded. “They’re low in the substructure but I wanted to know more about the gang and so I used certain talents.”
This woman had whored herself out for information, Silver realised.
“Do you have a home?” She asked though the continued blubbering.
“No, we had to give up our houses as hideouts.”
“Write down any addresses you know are important.” She commanded, walking back to the barn, after retying the woman to a fence. “Don’t try to escape. I will know.”
She was merciful with the other small fries; she killed them before making them into art. They clearly didn’t know anything. After taking the list of names from the woman and memorising them, she sent them to the prince through the twin boxes. Then she took the dead and left them in the middle of the square where the party was taking place and waited till the screams of fear drifted up to where she stood on the rooftops. Almost too soon however, one person saw her, and screamed her presence to the world in delight; he was soon joined by many others although unsurprisingly many of them had run at the sight of the bodies.
Their delight was a shocker. She didn’t do the heroine scene; she was villain through and through. It was how she’d been forged and she’d never wanted to try and change.
In response she ran back to the barn and quietly and efficiently killed the woman and delivered her corpse straight into the prince’s study, while he was in a meeting with his captain of the guard. She’d been good to this one, there was no pain, a quick flash across her throat with the knife and she’d been gone, no desecrations, no humiliation, she respected whores, after all a girl had to survive right?
“What do you think?” She asked
“You’re insane you bloody woman!” The captain replied, jumping out of his seat as she stepped through the broken window she’d created when she sent the body flying through it like a projectile.
“Oh, w
ell there’s a surprise.” She replied, settling herself down on one of the sofas like she owned the place. “I meant about the info I just got for you.”
“It will take us at least a week to round up all these people and search all of these residences.”
“Fun.” She replied sarcastically. “Did Romana come back yet?”
“No.”
“I give it an hour.” She replied “Oh, and another chore for you. There’s a blood-soaked barn about twenty minutes ride south of here. You may want to clean it up.”
“How much longer will we have to clean up after you?” The captain asked.
“Not much longer.” She replied. “Now shoo peasant.”
The captain’s face turned an alarming purple at being addressed thus, but stomped from the room none the less, muttering about reports that needed writing or something like that. The end result was her alone with Prince Marten.
“You plan on leaving?” He asked “Why?”
“I have places to terrorise, people to kill, kingdoms to fell, that sort of stuff.” She replied.
“Stay.” He said, and it was barely a whisper.
“For you, little prince?”
“For my city; your methods, although unorthodox are effective.”
“You would have to pay me for such a favour.” She replied.
“What would you want? Another child? What did you even plan to do with the first one?”
“I had a moment of foresight with which I foresaw the necessity of such a child in the future. You know how quickly centaur children grow, and you have my vow that she will be well equipped and properly trained when the time is right.”
“What time?”
“There will be a time when we will need to exterminate all of these crews, but to do that will require all the armies of the mainland. The Vipers are in league with a far darker purpose, I think, and are almost certainly a distraction to keep us from discovering their true intention. They appear to be a dark army with even more powerful sponsors.”
She snapped out of the clairvoyance with a blink, and staggered slightly.
“What just happened?” Marten asked, his hand steadying hers the moment she began to fall. She pushed him away on principle.
Romana's Freedom (Soul Merge Saga Book 1) Page 21