Page 1 of To Hunt a Demon King

The Wheel of Fortune

Part 1

Chapter 1

“Goddess curse me,” I growled, pulling the blackened pie from the oven as I coughed through the smoke that filled our tiny kitchen. I swear I had only left the thing in the oven for one minute too long, and somehow it was charred to a crisp.

This was the third pie I had burnt in as many days, and I fumed at my own inability to produce an edible pastry. How was it possible that I could cast a hundred different spells and perform every piece of magic I came across, but baking was beyond me?

“Maybe the fire was too hot,” said Mama consolingly, opening the window to let the smoke out, then leaning over my shoulder and grimacing at the blackened mess of a crust. “Or you left it longer than you thought.”

“I swear, I followed the instructions perfectly,” I replied, throwing my apron down in frustration and wiping my sweaty face, probably leaving even more streaks of flour on my freckled cheeks.

“Pie is complicated,” Mama said patiently, taking a knife and cutting away the blackened edges. “And what appears to be horrible at first glance may be wonderful underneath.” She gingerly removed the smoking crust, lifting the top to reveal golden peaches underneath. She beamed at me. “See?”

I rolled my eyes at Mama’s insistence on being positive, accepting the fork she handed me and nibbling on one of the cooked peaches from the filling. It was heaven and somehow not too hot under the blackened crust, but I was determined to be annoyed.

“Mmm,” Mama said, also biting into a steaming peach. “Delicious.”

“It’s not a real pie without a crust though,” I complained, contemplating the dissected pie with animosity. My birthday was in two days, and I was determined that this year, as I would finally reach what witches considered maturity, I would make my own pie to celebrate. I was failing horribly.

“I am happy to make your birthday pie, my heart,” Mama said, patting my shoulder as she began to tidy the mess I’d made of the kitchen. “I don’t think I mastered baking until I was in my fourth or fifth decade. You’ll get there eventually.”

I sighed, frustration over the pie not my only source of annoyance this morning. I gathered the dishes and spoons and measuring cups, and joined her at the sink.

“I’m sure,” I said sarcastically, taking the clean bowl she handed me and drying it like we did every evening after supper. “Just like how I’ll make it to the Coven meetings someday.”

Mama stilled, her hand hovering in the air between the sink and the next dish before going to the black stone at her throat. She always wore the necklace, a black stone on a gold chain, wrapped in delicate threads of gold to hold it in place. It was a gift from my father, and she usually fiddled with it when she was uneasy.

She wouldn’t tell me about him, no matter how many times I asked, but I thought she must have loved him. I would often catch her looking sadly at me when I was a child as she played with the necklace. It was unusual for a witch to be so attached to her witchling’s human sire.

Witches did not marry, as mortal men were short-lived in comparison. Mortal men were needed for producing witchlings, as witches only bore daughters who would inherit their powers. The Crone and Coven declared that all mortals in the witchdom were required to live in the border villages near the woods, separate from the witches, but available for breeding. Love was almost never a factor in witch pairings, as long as the man had good looks and a strong disposition.

My thick, wavy, copper hair and freckles had certainly not come from him. I looked like I could be Mama’s younger sister, her warm brown eyes glowing with the same golden light that could be found in mine, her copper hair and freckles the twin to my own.

She was so different from my grandmother, who had thick, black hair and creamy pale skin, and eyes so icy they were devoid of any warmth. While I was pleased to be more like Mama in looks, I sometimes wished she was a little more like my grandmother in her beliefs about witchlings.

“You don’t need to attend Coven meetings to be a witch,” Mama said, for what seemed like the millionth time this year, returning her hand to the dishes. “You still have a month before it’s mandatory.”

I sighed. While most witches gained their Goddess-blessed gifts around puberty, it was traditional to wait until twenty-five to attend Coven meetings. This was the year we were no longer considered maidens of the Coven, but full adult witches. Many witchlings attended earlier if their mothers allowed it, but mine never had. She treated me more like a child than a fully grown adult.

Mama had come into her power at eight, one of the youngest in a century, and had quickly mastered all there was to know about witchcraft. But when her twenty-fifth birthday arrived, she refused a position of leadership in the Coven, much to my grandmother’s chagrin. It was one of the reasons we lived in a small cottage on the edge of town instead of the Crone’s manor.

“Grandmother will never take me seriously if I don’t attend,” I said, drying the dishes and piling them neatly on the counter. My grandmother had served as the Crone of the Coven for over a hundred years. She was a fierce and terrifying witch, and Mama and I seemed to be a source of intense disappointment for her.

“What a terrible loss that would be for us,” Mama said, adopting my sarcastic tone and giving me a wry smile. I wasn’t sure why Mama had refused Coven leadership, but I knew she didn’t get along with my grandmother. Grandmother was an ancient beast of a woman, so I wasn’t too torn up about it. I had tried to impress her as a child, and I think a part of me still wanted to, but I had long given up hope of receiving affection from her. Still, I didn’t understand why their disagreement should stop me from attending Coven meetings.

“I may as well go and live with the mortals,” I said irritably, contemplating missing yet another Coven meeting with dismay.

Mortals had no power and very few rights in the Coven. I suspected that some tried to leave our witchdom, but most died crossing the demon-cursed woods that surrounded the Witchlands. The fact that the Demon King also killed any mortal that entered his lands probably deterred the rest.

They might not be equal here, but at least they were safe from demons.

“If you did, my heart,” Mama said, using the pet name she had called me all of my life, “you would find that most mortals are kind and lovely. Some would envy such a life.” I scoffed, eliciting a frown from Mama as she fiddled with the necklace.

We finished the dishes in silence, Mama washing and I drying, as the smoke from the burned pie cleared in the breeze from the open window. It was spring, and the buzz of insects in the flower beds was its own special rhythm as we worked.

“There’s a Coven meeting tomorrow,” I said finally as Mama cleared the last of the measuring cups. “I’ll be a day away from my quarter century. Can I please attend?”

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