The Vampire & Her Witch

In the forest, not far from where Ashlynn’s companions were erecting a large tent to host her first meeting with someone from Blackwell County since this entire nightmare began, Ashlynn sat on the roots of an old cedar tree, staring into the deepest pit she’d ever seen. So deep, in fact, that the pit seemed to have no bottom no matter how intensely she stared at it.

The scent of wet cedar mixed with damp earth filled her nose, just like it had on that night seven months ago, and the damp chill air that filled her lungs lungs was the very same as the air she’d struggled to breath after Sir Broll kicked her ribs hard enough to crack them in order to prove that she was really dead.

Were it not for the lack of pouring rain and distant thunder, the night might very well have been a perfect recreation of the night she’d been unceremoniously dumped in a shallow grave after suffering the worst beating of her life. Of course, there were other differences as well, one of which gnawed at a corner of Ashlynn’s mind like a persistent rat.

Piles of earth nearby made it clear that someone had dug up whatever might have once lain beneath the soil and scattered sword ferns and tall soft grasses had already taken root on the piles of earth. Recent rains left the pit with a puddle of water that covered much of the bottom and left the rest of the soft earth muddy and slick.

The pit shouldn’t have looked like this. It shouldn’t have been so deep with sharp sides that had clearly been dug out with shovels. Neither should there be smaller pits nearby, appearing as if someone had wanted to plant new trees only to give up after a few minutes of labor before searching for a different spot to bury something. Or, more accurately, as if someone couldn’t remember exactly where they had buried something and they had been digging like a dog in search of his buried bone.

”Who came here looking for me?” Ashlynn whispered as tears rolled down her cheeks in a silent stream. ”And why? Why would anyone have come here for me?”

There were only two people who knew where she’d been buried. One of those people, Sir Broll, was already dead at her hands. The other, Sir Tommin, had left Owain’s side to take up the mantle of a Templar. According to Marcel’s reports, he’d even come to possess a Holy Light Blade and achieved great fame for his ’contributions’ during Owain’s assault against the Heartwood Clan.

It was impossible to know which man had come here to dig her up, or why. She had spent a month in the Vale of Mists before visiting the Summer Villa and killing Sir Broll during their escape. It was possible that it had been him. There was no way to know who had done it but the fact that someone had left her deeply unsettled.

”Did you come here for me, Jocey?” Ashlynn wondered as tears continued to fall. ”Did you come to take me away so I could have a proper rest?” She doubted that Owain would have let her, but he’d been away in Blackwell City for months and Jocelynn could be every bit as ’willful’ as Ashlynn herself, if not more so. She might have found a way to coerce Tommin into revealing the secret of where she’d been buried.

But what would Jocey have done if she discovered that the grave was empty? What would any of them do? She didn’t know, and when she tried to summon even a shred of Nyrielle’s cold detachment to think through the puzzle of the yawning, open pit where Owain’s men had buried her alive, she failed utterly.

Instead, the pit grew larger and larger in her mind, as though it had become a portal to Nyrielle’s abyss and everything that waited after a person failed their final struggle and death claimed their soul. Visions of what might have been if she’d failed to free herself from the grave swirled behind her emerald eyes as she considered the dark possibilities.

Without her trip across the mountains, perhaps Nyrielle would have tried to resist the coming Holy War alone as she had always done. Nyrielle herself wouldn’t fall to such a war, but the Vale’s defenses would surely crumble.

Common people like Georg and Heila would tumble into the abyss of their own shallow graves or be thrown on great pyres as an offering to the Holy War’s honored dead, lighting their way to the heavenly shores.

The pit grew larger in her vision as it swallowed up more and more people. Captain Lennart who never would have found love with Zedya without the miracle of reawakening the heart that Nyrielle had conferred using the power of Ashlynn’s blood. Virve, with a bitter heart yearning for vengeance that she could never claim. Commander Bassinger and Marshal Jakob, or Heila’s family whom Ashlynn had only just met...

All of them fell into the gaping abyss before her eyes, and in her mind’s eye, they stared at her from the darkness of the void. Their mouths moved silently,y and their sunken eyes were filled with the questions ’Are you strong enough?” and ”Can you truly prevent this?”

Ashlynn had survived, and she’d escaped from her own grave. As she stared into the gaping pit, she reminded herself again and again that she hadn’t fallen here and that had been when she was much, much weaker. But now, while she had gained countless new allies, friends, and even family members, she also felt the weight of all of those people pressing down on her, begging her to ensure that they didn’t meet the same fate that she herself had only narrowly escaped.

She thought that there couldn’t be any place in the world where she felt weaker than she did in the High Pass, where the barren landscape and the freezing cold stripped away her access to almost all of the powers of the world that supported her. But she’d been so very, very wrong, because the place in the world where she felt the weakest and most helpless was right here in the place where her life had very nearly been snuffed out by the crushing weight of damp earth as she lay in her own grave.