The Vampire & Her Witch

”Can you accept the arrangement I made in the High Pass? Or do you object to the decisions we made?”

Ashlynn’s question stunned many people in the audience, but Hauke had been expecting it for the past few days. Frost Walkers tended to be more straight forward than most, but when she approached him on the second day of his recovery, she made it clear that handling an audience as large and diverse as the one they’d gathered in the Vale of Mists would require more ’theatrics’ than the young Frost Walker lord was accustomed to.

Ashlynn gave him plenty of time to consider his answer, and he’d rehearsed what he needed to say several times, running through his lines in his mind right up until the moment that the heavy, iron-bound doors to the great hall opened and he entered alongside Virve.

He thought he was ready for the moment, but as he stood in the great hall, looking at Lady Ashlynn before him, all he could feel was the weight of his father’s gaze on his back, like a glacier about to come crashing down on him. Feeling that weight, along with the countless stares from the crowd, Hauke froze, as if his mind was once again trapped in unbreakable chains of ice, stopping him from speaking.

”Whatever you rehearsed,” Virve said quietly enough that only Hauke and Ashlynn could hear her words. ”Forget it. Just speak from your heart. The truth is all that matters.”

”Thank, thank you, big sister Virve,” Hauke said as the quiet prompting broke him free of the momentary paralysis that gripped him. I, I can do this,” he said as he stood up as tall as he could, drawing a deep breath to speak loudly enough that the entire hall could hear his every word.

”Lady Ashlynn has been most kind in her judgments,” Hauke started, shaking his head and filling the air briefly with a small flurry of ice crystals shaken free from his white mane as he spoke. ”Kinder than I deserve after putting her and Lady Heila in so much danger and causing so many problems in the High Pass.”

”You never deserved any of this suffering,” Ritchel said under his breath at the table filled with honored guests. Ipiktok briefly raised an eyebrow at the former Eldritch Lord of the High Pass but said nothing as the father put all his attention on his young son. ”Your elders failed you, Hauke, and your ancestors betrayed you, but that doesn’t mean you deserve to suffer.”

Ritchel’s words were heard only by those few people at the table he shared with Heila and Old Nan’s family, but every parent sitting there gave him kind, sympathetic looks as the fallen lord watched his son standing up straight under the weight that his father’s shoulders could no longer bear.

”My lady has been kind to take me in as her apprentice,” Hauke continued, finding the formal phrases awkward but doing his best to stick to the lines he’d rehearsed. ”I know I have much to learn. But more than that, you’ve been kind enough to offer me a position in your coven. Assuming that I can survive the trials to become a witch, I will spend my entire life in your service,” he said, lowering the tip of his iridescent horn in a sign of submission.

Several people in the crowd sat up straighter in their seats as they realized the implications of what Hauke had just said. They’d already seen the Willow Witch, the Cypress Witch, and the Oak Witch, but Lady Ashlynn was clearly still expanding her coven, and young lord Hauke would be one of the next to join her!

Already, the youngest attendees of the banquet, children and family members of more distinguished guests, were starting to imagine what they would do if they had the chance to join the coven of the Mother of Trees. A few had even gone so far as to begin rehearsing what they would say if they could introduce themselves to Lady Ashlynn in the hopes that she might consider them for her coven.

Only a few of them thought they had any great chance of success... at least, until they realized that a young lord only a few years older than them had somehow carved open a path. Hauke was an apprentice, whatever an apprentice to a witch was, and he would have a chance to take a test to become a witch! A test that, evidently, was dangerous enough that he might not survive it, but if he did, then he really would be a witch!

”That’s why,” Hauke continued after taking a deep breath. ”That’s why I cannot accept my Lady’s judgment,” he said, setting off a wave of sharp breaths and startled looks throughout the crowd. ”My Lady, if you give the throne to me and I continue to serve you still, then am I truly the Eldritch Lord of the High Pass? If I cannot best you and tear the throne from your grasp, do I deserve to sit on it?”

”The people of the High Pass deserve to be ruled by the strongest protector of our people,” Hauke said. ”If I join your coven, I know I will become many times stronger than I am now, but I still won’t be stronger than the Mother of Trees. So, instead of living a lie and sitting on a throne that is only mine because someone else has given it to me, I would have the High Pass submit to you forever more, so you may protect it for as long as you and Lady Nyrielle both live.”

”You know I can’t reside in the High Pass,” Ashlynn pointed out. ”The lands there are cold and barren. Nothing grows that can sustain my powers there. Perhaps of everywhere I have ever been, the High Pass is the place where I am at my weakest. And still, you would ask me to be its protector?”

”You and Lady Nyrielle are already the guardians of the High Pass,” Hauke said, tipping his horn at Nyrielle, who stood silently over the proceedings. ”Lady Nyrielle has guarded the High Pass from humans for more than a hundred years. We have lived our lives in peace, never knowing the horror of the Inquisition’s Holy Fire because she kept the battlefield from ever reaching our peaceful homes,” he said.

”It is time that the High Pass accepted reality,” Hauke continued, turning to face his father and giving him a look that was deeply apologetic. ”We can no longer stand on our own against the enemies who threaten us. We must join with those who are stronger than we are, and we must march to war as if your battlefield is our battlefield, because the truth is that if you fall, we will fall next.”

”Lady Ashlynn,” Hauke said as he lowered himself to one knee. ”For as long as there is a throne in the High Pass, then you should be the Eldritch Lady of the High Pass. But in truth, I do not know if there should be a throne in the High Pass after today. You wish for me to be the next Eldritch Lord of the High Pass when my exile ends, but... I would rather see the High Pass become the westernmost border of the Vale of Mists!”