The Vampire & Her Witch

Seeing Ashlynn’s exhaustion, Zedya took the lead in answering Rosie’s questions, but she kept her answers minimal, expressing the necessary facts without revealing larger topics that would only make the delicate position the knight’s wife occupied even more precarious.

”The person who ordered your poisoning, as well as your son’s, was Owain Lothian,” Zedya said as she retrieved her knitting and resumed her work on the small blanket. ”According to his Steward, Sir Hugo, Owain resented your husband’s ’betrayal’ of leaving his service to join the Church as a Templar.”

”Lord Owain?” Rosie said, blinking several times in surprise as her mind struggled to accept the words, and more than that, the way the woman called Zedya had said them.

The statement had been so simple, so matter of fact, as if it was common knowledge that the future Lothian Marquis would poison women and children over something as, well, not petty, but something as honorable as joining the Templars. Rosie hadn’t spoken to her husband in months, as a Templar, he was supposed to leave his old life behind, but she’d paid attention to news of him and it had been news across the whole of Lothian March when he received a Holy Light Blade.

Sir Tommin’s accomplishment should have reflected glory back on the lord he’d served for much of his life, and according to the stories she’d heard, it had been Owain and Tommin who led the charge against the demons during the first raids of the summer. Several stories circulated about the men fighting side by side against devious, flat-tailed demons and even the Inquisition had praised them as the twin heroes of that raid.

So why would Owain want to harm her and Tonnis over something that Tommin had done?

”Owain isn’t the man that most people think he is,” Ashlynn said from the foot of the bed. ”He conceals it well most of the time, but there is a cruelty and a pettiness to him. I’m sorry you got caught up in things,” she said as gave the other woman a sympathetic look.

There was something about the way the strange woman dressed like a serving girl spoke, as if she knew Owain better than most, that made Rosie take another look at her, and this time, pieces that should have been obvious before finally fell into place as she realized who the blond woman really was.

”L-Lady Ashlynn,” she said softly, covering her mouth in surprise as her eyes opened wide. ”You, you’re the Lady Ashlynn who married Lord Owain! The one who’s been in the Summer Villa all this time carrying his child...”

”Her Dominion is the Lady Ashlynn who married Owain Lothian,” Zedya confirmed while Ashlynn wore a complex expression at being remembered as ’Owain’s wife’ instead of as ’Ashlynn from Blackwell.’ ”But anything else you’ve been told about her is likely a lie,” Zedya continued as her knitting needles clicked rhythmically.

”Owain tried to murder her on the night they were married,” Zedya explained. ”And your husband...”

”Enough, Zedya,” Ashlynn interrupted, holding up a hand and sliding off the corner of the bed so she could approach the boy who still needed healing. ”We’ll talk about Sir Tommin later, after his son has been healed.”

”My Lady,” Zedya said as the clicking of her needles paused. Her eyes were filled with worry as she looked at Ashlynn pushing herself forward. ”Madame Rosie hasn’t agreed to help us yet, are you sure...”

”I won’t use her son’s life as leverage,” Ashlynn said firmly, turning from Zedya to Rosie before she continued in a gentler tone. ”I won’t lie to you, I have something to ask of you once I’ve cured your son, but whether you agree to help me or not, it doesn’t change anything about what I’ll do to help you.”

”Of course, my Lady,” Zedya said with a slight smile as if Ashlynn’s response was exactly what she expected. But then, if Ashlynn was the kind of woman who would take a child’s life hostage to force the hand of their mother, she wouldn’t be the woman who had breathed life and love into the hearts of Lady Nyrielle and her progeny.

Zedya had never expected Ashlynn to insist on Rosie’s help first, but by planting the seed in the frightened mother’s mind, she both gave Ashlynn the opportunity to appear magnanimous and left the idea that there would be an opportunity to repay this kindness later.

”Come, Madame Rosie,” Zedya said, gesturing to another chair sitting next to hers. ”Sit with me while her Dominion cares for your son. You don’t want to accidentally get in her way.”

”Get in her way?” Rosie asked even as she slid off of the bed to take a seat next to the knitting woman. Perhaps this Zedya was Lady Ashlynn’s lady-in-waiting? ”Doesn’t she just need to give my son the same medicine she used on me?”

”There is no medicine in the world that would cure you or your son,” Zedya said quietly as Ashlynn began to gather energy to repeat the ritual that had cured Rosie. ”Perhaps if you had only been poisoned for a day or two there might be a potion that could save you, but after weeks? Absolutely nothing.”

”She called it ’Nightweaver venom,’” Rosie said quietly as the air in the room grew still and charged with a strange feeling, as if they were outside in the forest among the trees instead of within the stone walls of a castle somewhere. ”I don’t know anything about poisons, but is it really that fearsome?”

”In the Kingdom of Gaal, your people call it ’Spider Demon Venom’,” Zedya said. ”Even if you aren’t familiar with poisons, you should have heard of what happens to people who are poisoned by ’Spider Demons’, haven’t you?”

The words ’Spider Demon’ struck Rosie like a knife to the heart and she stared at her son’s sleeping figure with renewed horror as her mind swam with the horror stories that she’d grown up on about one of the most wicked and conniving of all the demons that Caun Lothian had faced during the Second Crusade.

People who were wounded by Spider Demons were said to go mad, and even those who survived the deadly poison were never the same after being injured. The Spider Demons had been so common in Leufroy Barony that, in the aftermath of the crusade, the baron was forced to build a bedlam just to handle all of the people who had become raving lunatics, yet, by a miracle of the Holy Lord of Light, managed to survive the bite of the wicked demons.

”I thought, I thought there was no cure for the venom of a Spider Demon,” Rosie whispered, staring at Ashlynn in wide-eyed amazement. ”How is she going to...”

”Just watch,” Zedya said with a slight smile on her lips. Perhaps, if she hadn’t lost so much of her heart by the time she became Amahle’s student, she would have felt the same kind of awe for Amahle’s witchcraft that she did for Ashlynn’s, but somehow, she didn’t think so.

Maybe it was because Ashlynn had supplied the spark of life that Nyrielle used to rekindle her heart, but whenever Ashlynn worked her magic, it was something special to see and now that Ashlynn was beginning again, Zedya found herself leaning forward just as much as Rosie was, waiting to see a miracle unfold.