Every Witch Demon but Mine (Maeren Series Book 1)

by Mercedes Jade

  Her feet touched the ground for a moment and then she sprung back into the air, leaping with him through the forest.

  This was expedient. He didn’t give her enough time to appreciate the intricate melding of their physical run with magical air bounce.

  “George will have an apoplexy. She’ll become your Lasier,” Daemon suggested when Elizabeth remained quiet, focusing on each death-defying leap.

  “I don’t need a Lasser,” she mumbled.

  She had no idea what a Lasser was, but she didn’t want to admit it.

  “Of course you do,” he insisted.

  “What if Victoria doesn’t want to be my Lasser?”

  He chuckled despite the air he was expanding for their bounding run. “It’s Lasier,” he said, correcting her mispronunciation this time. “Young, defenceless ladies that spend most of their time reading by the fire need a Lasier. It’s traditional for powerful witches, bound to a vampire, to be tasked with protecting new additions to a harem.”

  He hadn’t forgotten her mother’s lie.

  “Victoria is your half-sister. How can she join your harem and be your Lasier?”

  He stopped them for a moment, studying the ground and then pulled her east.

  “I don’t have a harem, but as you are claimed, Vicky can still be tasked to the role of Lasier as she is a close female relative and a powerful witch. That’s what is done for powerful vampires without a harem.”

  “I will have to announce the claim,” she figured out with dismay.

  Her mother was going to bury her.

  “Yes, you will,” he said. She felt the trap snap shut. “George won’t be bothering my claimed witch nor her Lasier.”

  It was damn perfect. He’d given her freedom, but with a leash held by the ninja elf.

  She followed him with a little less spring to her step.

  Daemon was serious. This wasn’t some fling based on a chance encounter at the ball. He hadn’t even fed from her properly, and yet he was binding her to him in every way possible.

  First, with the claim. Then, feeding her his own blood. Now, making his only sister her Lasier.

  She couldn’t deny the attraction to him, but they didn’t really know each other well enough to be making such serious commitments.

  She still had a traitor to catch. Daemon hadn’t even been cleared by her investigative efforts so far.

  The red glyphs flashed in her mind like a stoplight.

  “Wait,” she said.

  Daemon stopped. He turned to her, gaze searching, but she kept her face blank.

  “I don’t think this is a good idea,” she told him, taking a moment to catch her breath.

  He had been pushing them hard to reach the twins, but they needed to talk first. Perhaps, that was why he’d been in such a hurry.

  “Cold feet?” he asked, backing her up toward a tree.

  She would say it was intentional since he seemed to always be holding her captive against something, but this was a forest and the trees were hard to avoid.

  “What’s my middle name?” she asked, taking comfort from the rough bark meeting her back. At least, nobody could sneak up behind her.

  “You’ve never said,” he replied, stopping his prowling forward. His eyes quickly looked around the forest.

  The twins must be close. Now, she was the one in a hurry.

  “Favourite food?” she asked.

  “Strawberries?” he guessed.

  He was right in front of her. She looked down at the pommel of his sword, held at his hip in a simple leather strap.

  “Do you use your sword right or left-handed?” she asked. It rested on his right hip, so she guessed he was—

  “Left dominant,” he said. “I work both sides but I’m not ambidextrous.”

  “Jill is ambidextrous. I’m right-handed but I can barely hold a sword in either hand, so I guess it doesn’t matter.”

  He snagged her chin and forced her gaze up.

  “You don’t need a sword,” he said. She waited for him to add that he would protect her, but that was all he said.

  She needed to refuse him. She didn’t know him well. Anything more serious to bind them had to wait for them to get to know each other better.

  She looked into his eyes and opened her mouth to tell him her rejection.

  “Your eyes change,” she said, the wrong words coming out.

  Those hazel eyes widened in response, but he didn’t blink and shutter them from her curious gaze.

  Power flared, like in her mother’s eyes, a quicksilver flash of air that brought out the cool green of his hazel irises.

  An air barrier snapped up around them.

  “Elizabeth Jane Norwood, I need you to trust me.”

  The barrier dropped. “Get over here, Vicky,” Daemon called.

  He shouted to the east, but two bodies slipped out of mist from behind her. Elizabeth saw them approaching in the stiffening of Daemon’s shoulders.

  She released the pent up breath she had held since he said her full name in his midnight voice and told her to trust the demon she barely knew.

  Would have he told her more if they didn’t have company?

  “Prince Daemon,” Victoria greeted. She sounded so formal.

  Daemon stepped beside Elizabeth and turned, slipping his hand into hers.

  “Princess Victoria,” Daemon greeted back, equally formal. “Prince Victor,” he greeted her twin. Victor was following close behind Victoria.

  Victor had at least a dozen knives floating around him, just like Victoria did in the fantasy, before an imaginary Daemon had sent a bolt through her heart.

  Just how deadly serious this family drama could get, came crashing down, as Elizabeth squeezed Daemon’s hand.

  They stepped together towards the twins.

  Daemon didn’t need the hand that was holding hers to wreak mayhem.

  A dozen white-hot bolts hit the floating knives, vaporizing their water cores as the melted metal clattered to the forest floor.

  The molten mess splashed, but none of them were burned. Daemon’s air shields caught the specks of silver, inches from the twins’ pale faces.

  He had shielded and used offensive magic in multiple ways, simultaneously. The potential difference in power between a demon and everyone else was succinctly demonstrated.

  The twins should be pissing themselves.

  “Is that any way to treat your eldest brother?” Daemon asked the twins.

  Victoria bared her teeth in a parody of a grin. “We wouldn’t want to shame you without offering our best effort.”

  “Stabbing in the back is considered shameful in most cultures, Vicky,” Daemon said.

  Victoria flinched.

  Elizabeth turned around. She looked in disbelief at another dozen ruined knives melted on the ground behind them, blocked by a thick shield of air.

  Daemon must have shielded before the lightning attack.

  She hadn’t heard a thing.

  Victor pulled a freaking samurai sword out of a sheath on his back.

  Elizabeth squeezed Daemon’s hand harder and made herself let go.

  She didn’t remember a sword in the library. It was like the twins had some special camouflage over and above the mist and fog with the number of weapons they had hidden on them.

  None of the vampires she’d staked before had carried weapons like these. They thought that their fangs and superior strength were all they needed to drain a few measly humans.

  She hadn’t needed more than a stake and misdirected thoughts to gain the upper hand.

  Daemon may have been right about her underestimating the unique dangers at court.

  Daemon dropped the air shields. The metal fragments they had caught and cooled, rained down between them and the twins.

  Victor stepped in front. He knew how to hold a sword.

  “Fighting an injured witch is shameful, too,” he accused.

  Elizabeth kicked Daemon. This had gone on long enough. No more weapons could
be pulled between the siblings.

  Victor paused his prowling forward at the kick.

  Victoria muttered, “Ah shit, Liz.”

  Daemon merely said, “Ouch,” and ripped Victor off his feet with air.

  He blasted Victor up ten feet high against a tree, with the ruined knives embedded into the trunk under Victor’s feet for him to precariously balance on.

  Daemon made for Victoria’s frozen position.

  Victor threw his sword down between Daemon and his twin. He walked off the metal edge, catching the knife handles with his hands to hang for a second, before letting go to complete his rapid descent.

  Daemon pulled Victor’s sword from the ground and handed it back to Elizabeth, handle first.

  She took it carefully and with two hands, prepared for its weight after handling the twins’ weapons in the library.

  Daemon didn’t touch Victoria, waiting for Victor to reach them.

  “Show me your neck,” Daemon demanded.

  Victoria sighed and craned her neck back.

  Victor made a low rumbling sound, like the warning growl of a woken beast, glaring as Daemon looked at Victoria’s burned neck.

  “Victor is not fighting you alone,” Victoria said, pulling her own sword from her back as she straighten.

  Where had that sword come from?

  Elizabeth stabbed Victor’s sword into the ground, using air to give herself some heft, but it still only went a few inches into the clay earth.

  Daemon had given her the means to end this.

  “Hey, Elf!” she yelled.

  “I’m busy, Liz,” Victoria answered, looking a little ridiculous holding a sword against Daemon, though she gripped it right.

  “My Lasier should be too busy to play with swords.”

  “Lasier?” Victoria repeated.

  She looked away from Daemon. Both twins did.

  If their older brother had a devious bone in his body, he could have laid them out in those few seconds of inattention.

  Daemon smiled and looked at Elizabeth instead.

  He went all formal again when he spoke, turning to his sister.

  “Princess Victoria, it would please me greatly if you would agree, as my closest female relative of appropriate skills, to act as Lasier for my first claimed witch. To teach her and guard her when I am not able. As your eldest brother, I invoke the right to your service over all previous contracts and bonds.”

  Victoria seemed to deflate. She sheathed her sword.

  “I accept, Prince Daemon. I swear myself into your service. I will act as Lasier until you deem your witch no longer needs me or the claim is void.”

  Victor grabbed his sister’s hand and pulled her closer.

  “The Torimoto clan entrusts her safety to you, with utmost gratitude for your protection.”

  “Go with Elizabeth and get yourself healed.” Daemon looked over at Elizabeth, adding, “Her mother is a fine healer.”

  “Come on, Elf,” Elizabeth said, holding out her hand. She wasn't about to start with all this formality now.

  Victor seemed reluctant to let his twin leave without him, but he didn’t stop her.

  Daemon pulled the sword from where Elizabeth had stuck it and threw it back at Victor, who caught it single-handed.

  “Victor and I will meet you both after dinner. We have a few things to finish discussing,” Daemon said.

  Elizabeth nodded her agreement.

  She walked hand-in-hand with Victoria over the melted dagger remains, saying nothing about how tightly Victoria squeezed her hand.

  Diamond in the Rough

  “My mother doesn’t know about the claim yet,” Elizabeth warned Victoria as they neared her mother’s room.

  “I should leave you two alone,” Victoria said, sounding relieved.

  Elizabeth grabbed Victoria’s hand again, not letting her escape that easily.

  “You need to be healed. Besides, I need a witness. She can’t bury me in front of you,” Elizabeth explained.

  “I could ask Will to heal me,” Victoria suggested with desperation.

  It was because of the twins that Elizabeth had to tell her mother about the claim, so she refused to feel guilty about dragging Victoria in for parental disapproval and possibly a lecture.

  “Why didn’t you see William earlier? He’s your brother,” Elizabeth pointed out.

  “George told Will that I had to wait a day for a healing to learn my lesson.”

  “What? How does George get to decide when you get healed? Isn’t William the older one?” Elizabeth asked, confused.

  “George owns me. Owned me. I guess it’s different, now that Daemon made me your Lasier. Daemon takes precedence, so he just voided my contract to George.” Victoria took a deep breath and her whole body seemed to relax as she let it out. “I’m free, thanks to you, Liz.”

  “Maybe you misjudged Daemon.”

  “Maybe,” Victoria allowed, but Elizabeth knew she was getting credit for this one.

  She noticed Victoria didn’t shorten all of her siblings’ names, but it was curious why George and Daemon seemed the exceptions.

  Was she reading too much into it, or was there something important she was overlooking?

  She supposed she could ask once she got Victoria to trust her more.

  She used lightning to find her mother’s familiar thoughts.

  “I’m bringing Princess Victoria to your room for a healing. She has a burned throat.”

  Elizabeth didn’t get into the claim part yet. Yes, she was putting it off. One crisis at a time.

  She knocked on the her mother’s door once they arrived, and her mother answered it with faked surprise. Their family was very good at keeping secret their shared thoughts.

  “Come, sit by the fire, Princess Victoria,” her mother invited the princess.

  Her mother had prepared a soft blanket on the chaise and a pillow. It wasn’t that unusual a set up for a healer to have in her private rooms.

  Victoria could lie back and let her neck be exposed as much as possible to allow for the best healing.

  A bite stick lay on the side table, next to a sleeping potion. Her mother always had healing supplies on hand.

  Magic would heal things that conventional human medicine could not, but it exacted a price.

  Tissues were knitted together like thousands of needles threading at once, toxins were boiled from the blood, and burns were melted to the healthy flesh, or at least, that was what it felt like.

  Healers first learned to make sleeping draughts to render their patients unconscious, especially children.

  The stick was for the resistant ones. Adults would sometimes elect to put up with the pain of healing, then let a strange healer dose them asleep and helpless.

  Victoria took a seat where her mother indicated and laid back, ignoring both the stick and the potion.

  Stubborn!

  Elizabeth could understand why Victoria wouldn’t be the most trusting witch. The royal family was like a pit of vipers and some of them were very poisonous.

  She tried to convey, by telepathy, the anxiety and worry that Victoria was feeling, sitting there, to her mother.

  “She was abused severely and often in the past, from what I’ve read of her thoughts.”

  “Get a candle, please, Elizabeth,” her mother asked.

  She declined to take it from Elizabeth once she’d gotten it and instead nodded to Victoria.

  “Princess Victoria, please hold the candle and lean back, so I can assess the damage. I can see this is not a fresh wound and it is difficult to determine the depth,” her mother instructed.

  The lie burned Elizabeth’s thoughts. Her mother could take stock of wounds without even needing to touch her patients. A foot or less of distance was plenty.

  She didn’t need to see the wound to heal it, either, simply able to heal with a skin-to-skin touch, anywhere on the body.

  Her real strength was her ability to heal quickly. No matter how severe the wound, if
the heart beat, her mother’s healing speed reversed what should have been fatal wounds.

  Now that Elizabeth knew her mother was a blood witch, she wondered if her mother’s limit stretched even further.

  The candlelight revealed grotesque burns on Victoria’s neck that had been partly hidden under a glamour.

  A little glamour was basic magic, easily broken in the flickering light or looking at it sideways, but the latter would make examining the wound awkward for her mother. Hence, she’d asked for the candle.

  Elizabeth gasped as she got a better look, shocked that Victoria had run, hunted, and even fought Daemon, injured like this.

  “Have you had a burn healed before, Princess Victoria?” her mother asked.

  “Of course,” Victoria replied.

  “Who normally heals you?”

  “My brother, Will, er, Prince William,” Victoria answered.

  The princess didn’t explain why she was here, instead.

  Elizabeth felt guilty. Forcing Victoria here for a healing was a form of torture.

  Victoria probably would have trusted Will to heal her while under a draught. This was going to hurt.

  “I was unaware he was such an amateur,” her mother remarked, taking the candle from Victoria’s surprised fingers before she dropped it.

  “He is the greatest healer you will ever meet,” Victoria told her mother with pride. “He’s been busy with all the witches in the castle demanding draughts for headaches and monthlies, and every, little paper-cut. He needs to feed before I can bother him with this training accident.”

  The lies were giving Elizabeth a headache as they pinged her barrier.

  William had recently fed from Jill and her sister’s rich blood would have strengthened him plenty.

  “The training accident burned your windpipe, inside and out. You’re lucky your throat didn’t swell shut on your breath.” Her mother eyed Victoria with impatience. “You will come to me immediately, next time,” she said in a tone that brooked no disagreement.

  “I’m not so clumsy as to need a healer at my beck and call,” Victoria muttered.

  “Then, why are you covered with scars?” Her mother asked.

  Elizabeth thought she was going to be the one getting the third degree here! She couldn’t believe her mother was tormenting Victoria instead of getting this healing over with and letting her rest.