The Vampire & Her Witch

”How do you fit into all of that? Is he doing that because of what he’s become, or is it because he’s found his way to you?” Isabell asked, sighing in relief as she felt tension melting away from her body as Heila worked. The potion she’d been given at the beginning might have blocked the pain, but that didn’t mean that her body had healed. Now, however, bit by bit, she felt even aches and pains that had troubled her for several years starting to loosen and fade away.

”I love him,” Heila said, without a moment of hesitation. ”Not just because he fed on me either,” she added quickly. ”But he began to change long before I was even born. I just,” Heila started to say before pausing again and wrestling with how forthcoming she should be.

Ashlynn had told her not to hold back secrets, but this wasn’t just her secret to share. Still, she firmly believed that Isabell would find her way into the coven one day, and even if she didn’t, she felt like Isabell could be trusted. After all, she was a woman who could stand up to a witch’s fury because she cared about Ashlynn, and that bought her more than a little bit of trust from all of the members of Ashlynn’s coven.

”A witch’s blood has power,” Heila said after a brief hesitation. ”Lady Nyrielle has been more, alive, I suppose, since she began to feed on Lady Ashlynn. It’s the same with Ignatious, though not as much. Since he fed on me, we’ve formed a sort of connection, and I’ve been able to help him heal the scars in his heart.”

”I’ve seen what lies at the center of his heart, and he’s felt what’s at the core of mine. I think it scares him a little bit, to feel so close to someone so quickly. I don’t think he’s ready to call it love yet, but that doesn’t matter to me,” she said, pausing as her eyes were momentarily distant and her face heated yet again.

”Father insists that he court me properly for at least a year,” Heila said with a light laugh. ”Mother says she doesn’t care how long the courtship lasts, as long as she gets an invitation to the wedding.”

”That sounds... very normal,” Isabell said in a surprised tone. If she set aside the matter of ’feeding’ on the person you loved and the power of a witch’s blood, it sounded like a very ordinary relationship. In fact, Isabell had been the one in her relationship who was slower to say she loved Casques, but he’d been patient with her, telling her that he would wait until she was ready to say the words. ”Honestly, I didn’t expect something so normal from a vampire and a witch.”

”Lady Ashlynn and Lady Nyrielle aren’t that different, you know,” Heila said, meeting Isabell’s grey-eyed gaze for a moment and pausing her work. ”They’re so very strong and they fight so hard. They carry so much weight on their shoulders. But at the end of the day, the things Lady Ashlynn talks about the most are the times she’s gone dancing with Lady Nyrielle, or the dinners they share on her terrace. Even for people like us, with all of the power that we have, the things we desire the most are still very ordinary kinds of happiness.”

”Is that your way of telling me that becoming a witch wouldn’t change me?” Isabell said lightly. ”That I could still go back to my Casques and continue life as though nothing had changed?”

”No,” Heila said, gently helping Isabell to sit upright and helping her back into her tunic now that she was finished healing her injuries. ”Becoming a witch would change you. Nothing would ever be the same. Ashlynn told me that I shouldn’t hide anything from you and I won’t. Even if she hadn’t asked, I wouldn’t. But just because some things change, it doesn’t mean that you can’t still love who you love and do as you please.”

”It’s just that, if you become a witch, you become a part of something much, much greater than yourself,” Heila said. ”You become part of a family like no other, and you become a part of the world itself,” she said before shaking her head and laughing lightly. ”It sounds a little, um, pretentious I guess, when I say it that way. But you can feel all of the living and growing things around you, and you can feel yourself as part of the greater whole. You can’t feel those things and not change a little.”

”I think I understand,” Isabell said, carefully getting to her feet and moving gently to feel her body now that Heila had finished healing her. She’d been injured before, she’d been tended to by healers before, but never in her life had she felt better after the healers were done with her than she felt before they started. Until now, at least.

”The first time I gave birth, my world changed,” Isabell said, smiling at the young witch. ”There was a whole other person who had come from me, who needed me to protect them and nurture them and guide them. I felt closer to my mother at that moment than I ever had before, and all the family before me. Maybe it’s not the same, but I can understand, at least a little bit, what it might feel like to be connected to something greater than yourself.”

”Then, in that case, just... just think on it,” Heila said awkwardly. She really should have waited until Ashlynn brought things up, she thought. She could hear the distance in Isabell’s voice, as if the older woman wanted to understand in order to understand someone else instead of wanting to understand something that might matter to her own future.

There was still time, however. Once Ashlynn had a chance to process the news of Jocelynn’s betrayal, she would return to other matters, including inviting Isabell to join them. For now, all Heila needed to do was to help the other woman keep an open mind.

”I don’t know if there will still be a dinner tonight,” Heila said as she led Isabell down from the room atop the tower. ”Ashlynn wanted to introduce you to Lady Nyrielle tonight, but with everything that’s happened, things may have changed. I promise, I’ll come check on you in an hour or so, but you should take some time to rest after healing. Even if you’re not feeling it now and the wounds have all been treated, your body still went through a lot today.”

”Can we, can we check on Lady Ashlynn before I return to my chambers?” Isabell asked hesitantly as they reached the floor where the shattered door leading to Ashlynn’s room was still visible, hanging by one hinge and swaying slightly in the breeze from an open window.

”Let me go see if she needs anything,” Heila agreed as she stepped into Ashlynn’s room, moving more quietly over the carpets and stone floor than Isabell would have thought possible when looking at Heila’s cloven hooves.

A few moments later, however, Heila emerged from Ashlynn’s bed chamber looking as pale as a freshly washed sheet.

”She’s gone,” Heila said, staring at Isabell with eyes that were open wide and looked a little bit lost. ”She’s not there, and neither is her armor.”