The Vampire & Her Witch

Outside the carriage, the fog grew thicker, muffling the sounds of hoofbeats on ancient pavers and the creak of the carriage as it rolled along at a speed that would have been impossible for any human driver to match on such a dark and foggy night. Inside the carriage, however, the dark of night and even the fact that they were approachign the legendary Vale of Mists seemed distant compared to the revelation of Ashlynn’s relationship with the vampire, Nyrielle.

For the past two years, both guild masters had seen what had looked like a proper and even happy courtship between Ashlynn and Lord Owain. There had been numerous formal banquets and balls where the Blackwells hosted the young Lothian Lord and his enterouge of knights and Ashlynn always looked happy to be hanging on the young lord’s arm at those events.

She’d seemed even more delighted when they toured Blackwell City and the county together, particularly the year that Owain had visited during the Holy Light festival when he’d taken Ashlynn around the festival, proving his skill and winning piles of prizes for her at the festival games. She’d looked so happy that everyone on the outside had assumed that they weren’t just entering into a political marriage but one of genuine love as well.

The truth, however, was very different than it appeared to be from the outside. Compared to Owain, Nyrielle had been more open and more vulnerable with her the first night they’d shared a meal than Owain had been in the entire span of time they’d been courting. Owain worked hard to present a perfect appearance of what a lord and gentleman was supposed to be, but he never once shared his pain or his fears with her the way Nyrielle had. He engaged in all of the ritual and spectacle of courtship without ever once attempting to understand or relate to the woman he was supposed to be courting.

It made Nyielle’s openness and honesty both confusing and a little frightening in the beginning when she’d mistaken Nyrielle’s honest admission that she hoped to benefit from Ashlynn’s powers as a witch for a statement that she only wanted Ashlynn for her powers.

That misunderstanding hadn’t been the only one while they each learned to understand each other, but her memory of that first dinner together and the way she’d overreacted to some of Nyrielle’s statements was something she still felt embarrassed about, even all these months later.

”Nyri and I both still learning about each other,” Ashlynn said, breaking the silence that had begun to feel awkward after she revealed how much she and Nyrielle had opened their hearts to each other.

”She’s so much older than I am, and my life has been very different from hers,” Ashlynn admitted, because it was true that there was still a great deal that she didn’t know about her lover and the reverse was also true. ”But we’re walking forward, hand in hand, discovering more and more about the person who holds the other half of our heart in their chest each and every night we spend together.”

”Pfft,” Isabell said with a snort as she shook her head at Ashlynn. ”You sound like my husband with all those pretty words,” she said, laughing for the first time in what felt like several hours since the carriage ride began.

”But I know what you mean,” she said, taking another long drink of the smooth, honeyed wine. ”I always said Casquas was like a rose bud, each petal pulled tight over the others, waiting for the right person to open up to before revealing all of the soft, beautiful layers within.”

”So how did you know he was the one?” Ashlynn asked. She’d met Isabell’s famous poet husband a few times in the past, but at the time, she’d thought love would never have anything to do with her. So she’d never asked much about how the two fell in love in the old countries or what convinced Casquas to give up life in the royal court of the Emerald King to follow Isabell all the way across the sea.

Now, however, she was genuinely curious about how Isabell had found herself in a relationship nearly as unlikely as her own.

”He sat with me in silence,” Isabell said laughing lightly as she realized that, for all their differences, there were still some things that Ashlynn and Jocelynn had in common. Both of them, it appeared, had a soft spot for a good love story.

”Casquas has dozens of words that can make a woman’s heart flutter and her knees go weak, but with me, he sat in silence,” Isabell said. ”The civil war in the Emerald Kingdom was tearing new wounds in my soul day by day and I felt so far away from home. I was surrounded by people but I felt all alone. So, at night, any time there was some formal dinner or gathering of the court, whenever I slipped away to find some quiet, he went looking for me.”

”I wasn’t hiding,” Isabell added, pointing at Ashlynn and Tiernan with a finger on the hand that was holding her cup of wine, as if it was somehow important that they understood that she was only withdrawing from the crowd rather than hiding from it. ”But he came and sat with me so I wouldn’t be alone. He didn’t tell me he understood, because he knew he didn’t. He didn’t try to tell me it would all be better soon because he didn’t know if it would.”

”He just sat there,” Isabell said, smiling as she savored the memory of those long ago evenings when she and Casquas had sat in dark gardens for hours, staring up at the stars and listening to the faint music echoing from the great hall as the banquet dragged on into the night. ”He sat with me so I wouldn’t be alone because he understood that was what I needed.”

”That sounds nice,” Ashlynn said as she thought back on all of the things that Nyrielle had done for her since they’d met, from the quiet nights where she helped massage away the aches and pains that Ashlynn accumulated while she was learning the sword from Thane to the grand gesture of a mural she’d painted in her underground bedroom to give Ashlynn a view of the sea in the space that they shared.

Nyrielle might be a person who favored grander gestures than the one Casquas had made, but as she listened to Isabell tell her tale, Ashlynn couldn’t help but hope that her friend would recognize the love that Ashlynn and Nyrielle shared once she saw them both together.

It had worked for Heila, after all, Ashlynn thought. Just seeing how affectionate she and Ignatious were towards each other had been enough to overcome the near bone-deep fear of Inquisitors that plagued most residents of the Vale. In the end, Heila’s mother had accepted Ignatious readily, simply because he made Heila happy. Now, Ashlynn just hoped that Isabell could do the same for Nyrielle.

After all, if Isabell could understand and accept the bond of love that had formed alongside her bond of blood with Nyrielle, then it was much more likely that she could come to understand the other bonds of family that Ashlynn had formed in the past half year. And if Isabell could accept those bonds between Ashlynn and the rest of her new family, then it would be much easier to convince her friend to accept a place within Ashlynn’s closest found family...