Elven Surrender
Jory Strong
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.