They were both being ridiculous.
Like most elementals preferred, they had waited until night to set off on their trip. It was only now starting to bleed daylight.
If Daemon was with them, they might have to consider seeking some shade, but the rest of them could tolerate full sun for a period, especially in Maeren.
The sun wouldn’t burn them up into ash—complete hogwash for everyone.
Only overpowered and under-blooded fools had to worry about something more than a sunburn.
Unbound magic would heat up their skin and result in more sweating than normal for humans.
Nothing else.
In Maeren, even Daemon could handle being out in the sun without any lasting consequences. He’d be thirsty and sunburned, but that was about it.
The sun from the human realm wasn’t so friendly to their kind—but they were in Maeren, not there.
Hence, some refreshment was preferable right now, but nobody was going to expire without it.
“I’m sure you’ve already swigged your pint,” her mother muttered to Jaeson.
Her mother sent another foot of dirt up and out of the grave she was digging up. She wiped some sweat from her forehead and glared at Jaeson, sitting on a rock and taking a sip from his canteen.
“You could share some of my water,” he offered—again.
Indirect kiss.
Jill blushed and focused on digging up the grave she’d been given, trying to use her magic sparingly.
The last dead body she had sent flying had landed on Alexander.
He had been pelting her with tiny rocks for the last twenty minutes in retaliation. The elders weren’t the only ones diving into childish depths.
“You can share my water, too,” whispered Victor.
She looked up to see his smirk. He must have noticed her blush. He seemed much too pleased with himself.
Ever since he’d gotten his way with the ‘five’ minute kiss punishment, he’d been insufferably arrogant about everything else.
His tongue was the worst tease.
“No thanks, cooties,” she said, refusing to let him get a rise from her.
“What exactly is cooties?” he asked, popping the top off of his gourd.
She hadn’t seen him take a sip yet. She knew his offer of refreshment was meant in an entirely different way.
That was his magic water, not meant for hydration.
“Germs, bugs, gross boy infectious things that you can get by touching. Cooties never wash off,” she replied.
Sweat dripped between her breasts and down the small of her back.
It really was a workout, digging up bodies.
Ironically, she was sweating from trying to conserve her magic, using smaller amounts, so she didn’t ‘overdo it’ as her mother kept reminding her.
She’d bet Elizabeth felt like this all of the time, holding back her powerful magic. It was awful.
Victor laughed instead of getting offended.
“Keep your mouth closed if you want to avoid cooties,” he advised.
Water misted all over her body with his magic, feeling like tiny flakes of snow as he froze it to cool her instantly.
She shut her mouth and eyes, enjoying the few seconds of relief, before he took his water back again.
“Thanks,” she muttered, going back to heaving dirt.
“Anytime you want me to get you wet, just—”
Her mother screamed. Air flew from the sound, magic touching everything as it rippled out with the echo.
That scream would haunt Jill’s dreams tonight.
Her mother had disappeared!
Only the sound of her mother’s second yell for them ‘to shield’ told Jill where her mother had disappeared into—The safety of the ground!—as Jill turned around to find her.
It had to be an attack!
Blue fire-shields snapped up around Jill and Victoria.
Victor uncorked his second gourd with a single flick and pulled hard on his water to shield himself, too.
“Where’s the attack?” Alexander called out. He had hardened his body with a good coating of earth.
Torsten was surrounded by a whirling storm of tiny rocks and dust that would shred anything that entered his range.
“Arrows, air-magic!” Torsten barked out.
He sounded more the general than her grandfather in that moment.
“I’m not hit,” her mother called up from her earthy-grave. “The arrow is stuck in the dirt.”
“Don’t touch, it’s probably poisoned!” Jaeson ordered.
He sounded freaked-out, which made Jill’s heart leap in her chest.
“Don’t touch it, Mom!” Jill repeated the advice.
“I’m not stupid,” her mother muttered. “Not my first assassin's arrow,” she reminded them. “Jill, are you shielding? Jaeson, put her in the ground, too.”
“I’m fine,” Jill insisted. “I’m shielded blue,” she told her overprotective mother and Victor.
More projectiles were flying and thudding harmlessly in the dirt. Jill could barely see them whiz by, noticing only the faint sound of whistling from the ones landing close to her and then the shafts sticking up in the dirt.
Torsten pulled hard on earth, the ground trembling at his demand.
“I’ll expand the earth-shield around all of us. Jaeson, take point before I close it. I’ll send someone—”
“I’m not hiding in here like a child,” her mother interrupted.
The ground trembled again as her mother hit her shoulder against the earth-shield containing her with battering ram force—and bounced back.
“Take off your shield, Jaeson. You can’t bury me here while you go on the attack!” her mother shouted.
Surprisingly, Jaeson’s magic held as her mother tried again, making Jill re-evaluate his strength. Her grandfather’s right hand man should be powerful.
However, to hold her raging mother in her own element?
“You’re the target, hen-wit,” Jaeson yelled down at her mother. “Stay put, while I go see how well air can levitate a mountain falling upon it.”
Definitely time to re-evaluate Jaeson’s strength.
How had he even noticed the attack in time to bury her mother before that first arrow found its target in her mother’s heart?
He would have had to have been on guard the entire time that the rest of them were bickering and working, careless of their surroundings.
“I should go,” Jill offered.
Her mother needed Jaeson’s shield if they wanted her to stay put. That had been too close.
Jill still had some of the strongest magic amongst them, even if Jaeson was levelling the playing field with his demonstration.
It was her mother that the attackers were trying to kill.
Her normally hard to arouse temper was boiling at the thought.
“No!” rang out from Torsten, her mother, and Jaeson.
The latter was already walking towards the direction where most of the arrows were coming from, with his earth-shield solidly up.
“Bury yourself,” ordered Victor at the same time.
Now she knew how her mother felt.
“The arrows aren’t tagged for witch and vampire,” Jill snarked at Victor. “I have as equal a chance at being hit as Jaeson.”
“Exactly,” Victor said, dropping his blue fire from shielding her.
He grabbed her by the front of her shirt to slam her up against his chest. He’d never been so rough with her before. Even though she was hard as rock, he’d always been so gentle.
“I gave you an order and you will obey me now, or so help me, I’ll—”
She buried Victor, ripping free of his grip with a flashover of her black-shield. All of the practice had come in handy after all.
Using the same earth to create a rising shelf of rock, she leapt over Victor and towards Torsten’s shield, trusting her grandfather’s magic wouldn’t harm her.
“Bring her back, Jaeson!” shou
ted Torsten, parting his shield for her just in time.
“Jill Verity Norwood!”
Her mother was going to kill her before any assassin. The panic in her mother’s voice almost made Jill turn around, but another arrow flew close by and hit Torsten’s shield, strengthening her resolve.
Elizabeth wasn’t the only one with magic and the will to defend others with her greater power. This time Jill could make a difference.
“Do you plan on just standing out here or are we going to crush someone?” Jaeson asked.
Jill turned to her right and met Jaeson’s serious gaze.
“You’re letting me?” she asked, disbelieving. They had all heard Torsten’s order.
“Does one allow an earth-witch anything?” he asked with an arched brow, not that different from her mother’s own.
“Let’s go,” Jill answered, taking a step towards the direction of the arrows.
“Stay behind me. Keep your black-shield up at all times and block any attacks with your earth first. Air can play havoc with fire.”
Jaeson’s rapid-fire directions were spat out as he took the lead.
She reluctantly followed behind, realizing she was going to be protected, after all.
“Why bother with fire at all?” she whined.
“I said air could play havoc with fire, not defeat it. Everything burns in the end.”
He was saying fire was the strongest, right?
She would have to release her black-shield from her hands to use magic, and that left an opening for an attack.
Victor had taught her how to peel back her shield, although he also told her—with training—she could learn to make a better shield that allowed her to use magic without leaving herself vulnerable.
They should have spent more time training instead of fighting.
She chanced a quick look behind her, but all she saw was Torsten’s earth shielding the others.
Victor hadn’t come after her.
“He can’t leave the general—alone—to guard both Kaila and Victoria,” Jaeson said, reading her glance back. “Kaila is a job for an army to handle. Her will to throw herself in front of assassins versus the general’s determination to protect his daughter—when he’s just found her alive after all these years—which do you think will prevail?”
“Well, he is an experienced war general, while my mother prefers to go to book-reading club and sip tea,” Jill hedged.
How well did Jaeson know her mother?
An arrow almost reached Jill from the side.
A block of earth rising from Jaeson’s magic stopped the attack from testing her shields.
“There’s more than one attacker,” he said.
“Yes, Mr. Obvious,” she agreed, peering in the direction of the arrow. She hadn’t even heard it coming.
“We need to eliminate as many attackers as possible, before your mother joins us,” he stated, ignoring Jill’s snark.
Maybe he knew her mother better than she thought.
“So, we eliminate the threat by throwing a mountain of rock on it?” Jill asked, keeping her voice cool, even if she felt queasy at the notion of crushing another elemental to death.
“Bury them first and then crush quickly. Air magic can move fast.”
“Which direction?” she asked.
“This is far enough,” he cryptically answered, bending to one knee and plunging his hands into the ground. “Get your hands dirty,” he suggested.
Another arrow—from in front of them—aimed in her direction. It whistled her death.
She had just plunged her own hands into the earth, squeezing her eyes shut and hoping her fire-shield was as tough as it looked.
Nothing hit.
She felt herself grabbed from behind, and shifted—with her head shoved down—as Jaeson shielded her body with his own.
He had moved between one blink and the next, shockingly fast for a lumbering earth-lord.
“Are you hurt?” she yelled.
Why hadn’t he used his magic to shield her again?
“No, I chopped the arrowheads off. The shafts dropped without air able to guide them. Spit your magic at the next arrow coming that close to your head,” he told her.
He didn’t move away, still covering her with his body.
“What are we doing?” she asked, dry swallowing.
Jaeson was way too close for comfort. She felt surrounded, which was probably the point.
Other than the closeness that Victor insisted on taking, no one else had been this close to her when fighting.
Not since her sister, when they were children, and that one fateful, terrible night.
“Breathe deep and slow,” Jaeson said, noticing her rapidly panicking state. “My daughter used to like me to sing to her. Do you want that?” he asked.
His daughter?
She thought about her father, but not of that night—that was the only real memory she had of him.
Rather, she focused on the thought of what she had always wanted: a warm, strong embrace from a father that loved her unconditionally, not because of her magic nor her blood, just Jill.
“Please, try singing,” she said.
Jaeson sang a lullaby.
His voice was rich and pitched higher than she thought it would be when he sang. A wonderful tenor that never shook as he blocked more whistling arrows for her.
She felt his earth, so solid and reassuring, tunnelling through the ground as he sought out their assassins.
Letting her fingers weave over top of his in the ground, she tried to send her magic into his hands, sharing their strengths.
His lullaby switched to gentle instructions, but he still pitched his voice higher, as if singing to her, humming in between each step she took.
“Bury the one to the east and I will do the rest,” he told her.
She did it and cringed as blood soaked the ground nearly in the same moment, feeling the death echo back to her in the earth.
Real tremors from the sudden drop of a ton of earth onto the assassin’s grave shook the ground in aftershock.
“Bury the two in the north,” he said without pause.
She did it as he hummed to her, tensing for the crushing sensation that never came.
Popping her eyes back open, she asked, “Did you miss?”
“He never misses. That was a bloodstone attack, more the signature of my father,” her mother said from behind them.
“She has a tender heart and can feel the deaths,” Jaeson said, not sounding surprised that her mother was there.
Jill wondered how long her mother had been watching them.
“Pull your hands from the earth before these deaths bleed on your conscious as well,” Jaeson advised Jill, pulling his own hands up with hers.
“How many left?” her mother asked.
“One to the west, running away,” Jaeson answered. “Your father would prefer—”
“I need the practice. They shot arrows at my daughter!” her mother said.
“At the general’s granddaughter and daughter,” Jaeson reminded her. “Interrogation might—”
“No,” her mother said, flying off in a whirlwind of dust and air.
“My mother might need help,” Jill said, prepared to launch herself with earth-magic.
Jaeson stopped her, snagging one of her hands in his warm, calloused grip. He held on.
“She left you in my care,” he said. “We will return to your grandfather, so he might release his shield. If he wishes me to go after her, then I will.”
“You’re such an obedient soldier,” Jill said, not exactly complaining, although her displeasure was obvious.
“And you’re too young—as well as the daughter of the woman that I would like to teach a lesson to about running from my help—to even begin to understand,” Jaeson said, bringing a blush to Jill’s cheeks.
Oh.
“I’m not that y-young,” she stammered, but followed as he tugged her beside him and they walked.
“Don’t worry, Jill. You will have plenty of time to grow. I promise it,” Jaeson said, giving her hand a squeeze.
“Do you think Victor will be mad?” she whispered as they got closer.
The earth shook hard, a true quake that had gone deep.
“Ask for your grandfather’s protection if you need it,” Jaeson advised, ignoring the earthquake.
Victor would have no choice but to acquiesce the loss of his claim if she did that, but she knew he would never ask to claim her again once spurned, thusly.
One thing had been made perfectly obvious by their time together. Victor had been badly burned by a witch in the past.
“He won’t hurt me,” she said with confidence.
“Physically, no,” Jaeson agreed. “He is a young, powerful vampire with a past, however, and he looks haunted by it still. You should be more careful with your heart.”
Did Jaeson have telepathy?
“Do you read minds?” she blurted.
Jaeson reached out to the general’s shield and it parted for them.
“Bring it down!” he shouted.
He bent down to her ear and whispered, just for her, “Reading minds isn’t a power I crave. I wish I could read hearts.” His hand released hers. “Go, talk to him. Delay will only harden his hurt and worry. Remember, your mother and grandfather are here to help and guide you.”
Victor was standing by his twin, his hands fisted at his sides and a dark, angry look on his face that disappeared the instant that their eyes met.
It was replaced by a blank look of indifference.
Blue flames flickered at his fingers, his white knuckles visible, even at a distance.
An earth-vampire was supposed to feel like a boulder, but right now, Victor looked like he was made of rock.
She threw herself at him, leaping—
He caught her and immediately tried to release her.
She wrapped her arms around him and squeezed, letting him feel her earth-strength and mule stubbornness.
“I was scared,” she admitted. His heart thudded against her ear as she lay her head against his chest. “We killed three of them. Well, Jaeson, he—” she sobbed, interrupting the confession. She sucked it back. “My mother went after the last assassin.”
Witch Darkness Follows (Maeren Series Book 3) Page 25