Jory Strong - Elven Surrender

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.