Elven Surrender

Chapter One

Silver Delacroix wiped her palm against the soft leather of her pants. The magi were making her nervous tonight. Powerful or weak, they glided through the nightclub like sharks in search of prey. More than once she’d seen one of them brush against a witch, as if testing for the presence of something beyond a willingness to couple.

She’d ignored it the first few times she’d seen it. Sorcerers—or magi as they liked to call themselves—might have an endless thirst for magical knowledge and a willingness to sell their services to anyone with the coin to pay for it, regardless of right and wrong, but they came to the club for the same reason coven-bound warlocks, the male counterpart to witches, did—to sate the needs of the body, or one particular organ anyway, and not the mind.

That was the usual case, but tonight… Something was different.

Whatever had brought the magi out in such numbers, the women, other than the nulls—humans without magic—should be safe enough. And even then, the nulls only had to worry about the sorcerers casting a spell and taking them as brides.

One of the circling magi stopped next to a group of witches and was welcomed with sultry smiles. Silver wondered if she was imagining things after all as she watched them flirt. They were a day away from the Turning Ceremony welcoming the spring. It stood to reason the sorcerers were out in such large numbers because they were responding to nature’s call to mate.

“While I’m responding to Aunt Fenella’s earlier discussion of The Mark,” Silver muttered. And feeling guilty because she hinted to those of us going through the Rite of New Beginnings that it would be best to stay home—and here I am, out among the magi.

Who are just horny, she tried to convince herself but slid into uncertainty as a more powerful sorcerer than the one who was talking to the witches glided by so close their skirts swayed.

Silver’s stomach lurched. Under normal circumstances the magi stood little chance of taking a witch as a wife. But if The Mark appeared on a witch’s palm, she lost all her magical abilities until the next Turning Ceremony arrived to mark the change of season. She became a null, a prize for a sorcerer.

A witch made null could be ensorcelled and bound through wedding vows. Her children would have magic in their veins. Her knowledge and skills would become the sorcerer’s because once married to him she would no longer be part of a coven.

Instinctively, Silver stepped into a group of talking women and out of the path of a magi so he couldn’t brush against her. The women paused in their conversation, greeted her with icy disdain. Elves.

Chilly eyes and waist-length hair, sensuous lips thinned into straight lines, they made it clear without bothering to speak that they viewed her as inferior. But then elves were a clannish bunch who let few outsiders into their world.

Silver shrugged their wordless opinions away. With her ears hidden, she could pass for their companion—if their expressions didn’t announce otherwise.

There were times when she wondered if her unknown father was elf. By all accounts her mother had been beautiful and powerful enough to enchant any male who came into contact with her. But as far as Silver knew, there were no half-elves, and beyond that, she certainly couldn’t claim to have the spell magic of an elf.

They were a deadly race, capable of turning a human into a toad or leaving one barking like a mad dog for offending them. She, on the other hand, was competent, but nowhere near as gifted as her mother was said to have been or as gifted as her aunt and cousin were.

With a sigh she stepped away from the elves and pushed through the crowd, heading toward the bar. It’d been a mistake to let her cousin Joelle talk her into coming here. They should both be at home, whispering and speculating about the direction their futures would take when the coven met for the Turning Ceremony and the Rite of New Beginnings.

It was the moment they’d both worked toward, studying and learning so they could take their places as full witches. At the conclusion of the Rite they would find out what town they would make their home in, which territory would be theirs to care for.

Silver imagined she’d be given an area to the west and north, somewhere remote and with a small population—a mining town above the snowline maybe since she had an affinity for fire and for locating veins of precious metals. Joelle would probably remain in New Holyoak. It was a much-coveted position, to be allowed to stay in a place not only dedicated to learning and training but where there were numerous large covens. It was a far cry from the isolated existence awaiting most witches and warlocks.

In addition to learning where they would serve, they’d be told which warlock family to look for a husband in and be given permission to form a union. Though her father was most likely a null, and she herself wasn’t as powerful as most of the others in the coven, because of her mother, Silver was considered a blood witch and the choice of a mate was important.

In the days before The Purge, magical bloodlines were a source of pride, but they hadn’t determined pairings. Witches and warlocks mingled and married freely. It didn’t matter if a witch with strong healing abilities mated with a warlock whose gift was for seeing the future. There were plenty with a variety of skills and the existence of a small coven in each village or town was a usual occurrence.

The Purge changed that. Witches and warlocks were hunted down by superstitious nulls, then by followers of one religion or another who wanted to completely eradicate the old ways, the ways steeped in mystery and magic. Most of the witches and warlocks from the thirteen ancient clans had been burned at the stake or stoned or drowned.

Misery soon came to the null population. There was no one to cure their ills and listen to their troubles, to guide them in their lives and help them avoid the wrath of the fey and elves.

Slowly the suspicion and paranoia yielded to desperate pleading for the witches and warlocks to come out of hiding. There were offers of housing and land, food and clothing.

Charlatans emerged to claim the bounty. It forced the witches and warlocks to follow lest more hardship and grief be caused by the impersonators.

The Purge had succeeded in decimating the number of blood witches and warlocks. There weren’t enough for each village or town to have even a single practitioner to serve them, much less a coven. As a result, making the right marriage and having strongly gifted children had become vitally important.

Anticipation managed to chase some of Silver’s anxiety away. She was ready to leave her aunt’s house and gain her own territory. She was ready to have a husband to build a future with.

Hasty couplings might satisfy the body for a time, but they didn’t fill the place in her heart that longed for her own family, for a sense of belonging, for—She knew only that no man, null or warlock, had ever made her feel the things she dreamed of feeling.

Her mother had died in childbirth, her father was unknown, and while her aunt provided a home, Silver had known isolation there too—love filtered through a wall erected by guilt. Her aunt was her mother’s twin. According to coven law it should have been Aunt Fenella who left New Holyoak and served in the isolated region where her mother had died. Aunt Fenella was the weaker witch. But instead of sending her, the coven elders had sent Silver’s mother instead, perhaps in punishment but more likely in the hopes it would make her settle on a single warlock and take him as her husband. Instead she’d gotten pregnant though no villager had stepped forward to claim paternity when Silver was born, and no clues to who her father was could be found in her mother’s house.

None of that matters now, Silver told her herself as she reached the bar area. She wasn’t completely her mother’s daughter when it came to men. They weren’t an endless strand of polished gems to her, each as beautiful and interesting as the last—or the next. She might dream about having two men in her marriage bed—cocooning her in love and security—but she would find happiness with one rather than find loneliness in variety.

Theirs was a monogamous society. The marriage vows, once said, were permanent and binding to both parties. And given the need to strengthen the bloodlines, few witches or warlocks married for love though with the right pairing, it almost always took root and flourished as they built a life together.

Despite the fact she wasn’t as strong as some of the other blood witches, more than one warlock had made it clear he would welcome a chance to join his future with hers. They were men she could come to love. But she hungered—not just for tenderness but for a dominant lover who made her ache, who possessed her completely even as he protected and loved her.

Heat coursed through her veins thinking about it. Her clit stood erect and her cunt lips were swollen, wet, waiting for a lover’s mouth, a lover’s tongue. She dug the fingernails of her left hand into her palm and reminded herself that she still wasn’t free to have what she wanted most—not yet. Not until the coven met and the Rite was performed.

“What can I get you?” the bartended asked.

Silver turned to look at him. Fey. He was new to her but she still asked, “I’m looking for my cousin, Joelle. Have you seen her?”

“She an elf?”

His question startled her. The fey should know she wasn’t elf even if he couldn’t see the tips of her ears.

He pointed in the direction she’d just come from. “Saw five or six of them over there.”

Silver opened her mouth to correct him but gasped instead as pain lanced through her left palm. It burned so sharp and deep that tears sprang to the corner of her eyes.

Dread filled her. It chased the breath from her lungs and made her heart pound wildly. She stared down at her fist, willed herself to open her clenched hand.

The buzzing in her ears drowned out the sounds around her. The grayness at the edge of her vision formed a tunnel, blocking out everything but the sight of her hand. Slowly, one by one, her fingers uncurled to reveal The Mark.

Wraith In Shadows watched as his half brother, Tynan Carved From Stone, stepped from the thick forest and into the light-and-dark pattern of the moonlit field. So he came—alone. He hadn’t been sure Tynan would, but he’d hoped.

Years of intrigue and politics played out by others had all come down to this moment. They’d been raised as enemies, groomed to claim their father’s position. They could pass for twins but they knew each other only through rumor and distant regard.

It was on the basis of those rumors that Wraith had sent a message to Tynan, inviting him to meet, suggesting there was a way to keep their honor and yet avoid a fight to the death in order to claim their father’s position as Lord of the Southern Borderlands.

If one of them had been born before the other, the ascendancy would be clear. But whether truth or political fiction, their births were said to have occurred at the exact same time.

Elven law was clear and ruthless. When there was no absolute line of succession, those who would lead must be willing to fight to the death—either magically or physically. In their case, whether one of them elected not to fight or the victor granted the loser a stay of execution, those who’d spent years maneuvering for this moment would work to ensure that the one not claiming their father’s position didn’t live long enough to become a future threat.

If Tynan had been like their father, self-absorbed and pleasure-seeking, ruthless without the redemption of caring for the people under his stewardship above his own political and sexual agendas, then Wraith wouldn’t have proposed this meeting. He would have fought the man who was related to him by blood and only one of them would have left the battlefield alive. But he had reason to hope, reason to believe Tynan was honorable, driven to unite the various clans where their father seemed to delight in dividing them.

The earth could be capricious. It was capable of providing a wealth of abundance or harrowing depredation. The elves could be the same. These lands bordering on those invaded and settled by the humans had long been viewed as cursed and uncivilized.

Deep in the heart of elven territory the royal court was one of breathtaking splendor and gentility, of virgin forest and herds of winged horses. Fey creatures rarely bothered to hide themselves and unicorns were easily found.

Much of the magic on the southern, outer edge had leached away. Many claimed it was because of the humans.

Wraith suspected the true blame lay with the elves, and more specifically, at his dead father’s feet. But he also believed that if he and Tynan joined forces and worked together, they could free the borderlands from the disharmony gripping it.

Tynan studied the man who was his brother. They were of equal height, their raven-colored hair worn long and straight in the custom of their race. Almond-shaped eyes were outlined with a thin line of black, as though The Mother had wanted to draw further attention to the beauty she’d bestowed on her elf creations.

They looked alike except for the color of their eyes. Wraith’s were dark, like the forest at night or the shadows he could command, while his were the green of polished jade and moss.

He’d been curious and pleased by Wraith’s unexpected invitation to meet. Honor demanded they both step forward to claim their father’s title and position in order to undo some of the damage wrought during his reign. But the prospect of killing his half brother didn’t sit easily with Tynan and he’d hoped to find a way to compromise.

Tynan cursed himself for not searching for it earlier, for not anticipating their father’s unexpected and unnatural death. The answer was somewhere in the past, in another time, perhaps even in another elven territory. Then again, the outcome of his search probably would have been the same whenever he’d started looking for a solution in earnest.

He was no scholar. From the time he could walk his fascination had been stones, finding them, cutting and polishing them, offering them to the craftsmen who could fashion them into jewelry beautiful enough to sell to highborn nobles and members of the royal family.

As soon as he’d taken an interest in the scrolls documenting elven history and law, suspicion had fallen on him. He’d felt the surreptitious glances, would have laughed at the sudden onslaught of tasks requiring his attention if his heart hadn’t been heavy, weighed down by the knowledge his mother’s hand would be found in the scheming.

She was Earth Clan, but not the nurturing warmth of sun-kissed soil. She was barren tundra and hard ambition.

From his earliest moments of selfhood he’d pledged to be different than his parents. He’d fought not to let his mother’s plans for power etch themselves into him the way grooves formed from the continuous dripping of water on stone.

He’d turned away from offers of easy sex, had kept his heart shielded and his cock safely contained in his pants despite his desire for a wife and the fierce urge to fuck that had him waking morning after morning in twisted sheets with a seed-coated belly. It had gotten worse lately, his dreams remaining unfocused, the gray of storm clouds or barite, though the woman who writhed unseen against him was always the same.

Until he’d received Wraith’s message yesterday while in New Holyoak to trade the last of his stones, he’d never seen his dream lover. But this morning as he awakened with lava-hot semen rushing through his cock, he’d seen silver-colored eyes in a face so beautiful his heart cried with joy and pain.

Maybe the unknown woman would play a part in the crisis now looming in front of him. Foreseeing ran in his family. Or perhaps she was only a manifestation of his desire to find peace and prosperity not only for himself but for the borderlands.

With a sigh Tynan put his thoughts aside and said, “I’m glad you asked to meet. I’d hoped to have something more than an olive branch to offer before sending you a message.”

The dark knot of tension in Wraith’s chest dissolved into mist. Those simple words confirmed the rumors of Tynan’s honor and the carefully gathered evidence that he was different from his mother and their father.

It had taken Wraith years of hidden study to find a possible solution. He hadn’t done it openly for fear the written histories would be altered or simply disappear. His duties as a hired bodyguard had masked his quest and given him an excuse to travel between the various elven enclaves and territories. He’d finally found what he was looking for in the libraries of a Fire Clan enclave in the western borderlands—a precedent set long ago by two half brothers who claimed to have been born at the same time.

Though Wraith’s spies had already provided an answer, he asked, “Is your heart already claimed?”

If Tynan thought the question odd or offensive it didn’t show. “No,” he said, his answer accompanied by a smile with a hint of something that might be labeled discomfort, there and then gone so quickly Wraith couldn’t be sure.

“Neither is mine,” Wraith said, “which is just as well. If you are willing to share a wife, then we can claim our father’s position jointly. A clear line of succession will be restored with the birth order of our children.”

“You found a law?”

“A precedent.”

Unbidden, the dream face with the silver-colored eyes flashed through Tynan’s mind. He rubbed his chest, remembering how his heart cried with both joy and pain in that instant when her features were finally revealed to him.

He’d thought he reacted to her beauty, but now he knew the true source of his emotion. Discovery coupled with loss. Pleasure meshed with sacrifice and responsibility. On some level his heart had understood that the dream was a prophecy and the woman a reality, though she wouldn’t be his alone.

Tynan’s hand dropped to his side. “I’ve had a recurring dream since puberty,” he said, wishing he could call the shadows and shield himself from the moon’s light in order to hide the flush of color working its way up his neck. “It’s gotten stronger since our father’s death, more powerful. Last night I saw her face for the first time.”

Surprise flickered in Wraith’s eyes though Tynan had the impression it was directed at a sudden, unexpected thought rather than at his admitting to the dream.

“Foreseeing runs in your family?” Wraith asked.

Tynan nodded.

“Mine as well.” There was almost an imperceptible shift in Wraith’s stance, a subtle leaning forward. “What color was her hair?”

“The black of onyx.”

“And her eyes?”

“Silver. You’ve dreamed of her, too?”

“Not a dream,” Wraith said, “but an obsession I should have questioned. I have a cottage nearby. Come, I want to show you something.”