The Vampire & Her Witch

”...it may be the most important decision of your lives...”

Heila’s words hung heavily over both young women, like an axe ready to fall on them, and Cossot and Roseen swallowed heavily as they saw the seriousness in Heila’s eyes.

”Dame Sybyll worked very hard tonight,” Heila started, glancing over her shoulder at the crimson-haired vampire with bone-white skin as she did her best to deliver reassurances to the departing townsfolk. ”She’s dressed like a lady, she’s put aside her weapons, and she’s restrained so much of her power that at times, you could almost mistake her for an ordinary, beautiful, young woman.”

To Heila’s experienced eyes, there were some things that would always mark a vampire as different. Sybyll’s bone-white complexion went beyond the milky, pale shade of her mother’s skin in the portrait that had been hung in the great hall, but skillful makeup diminished how shockingly pale she really was. The crimson eyes and occasional glimpses of fangs served as reminders that even inexperienced humans could see, but those faded away once people grew accustomed to them.

Rather, it was the stillness with which vampires rested, as though they no longer needed to worry about the aches and pains that came from holding a single position for too long, and the careful restraint they practiced when they did move, so they didn’t accidentally break things with their tremendous strength, that gave vampires away to the people who knew them best.

Sybyll had worked hard to appear human for her people tonight, but there had been moments, exceptionally tense ones, where the mask had slipped, and if Dame Sybyll hadn’t been working so hard to hold herself back, the people might never have been able to see her as the long lost daughter of Brighton and Caitlin... they would only have seen the demonic vampire sitting upon the throne.

”But when Dame Sybyll stepped into this great hall, she didn’t look like an ordinary young lady,” Heila continued. ”She still wore her armor, still splattered with the blood of the templars she slew, and she carried an axe that contains a whisper of Her Eternity’s own darkness. I’m a witch, and even I was frightened of what would happen if she reached Loman Lothian before I did,” Heila admitted softly.

At this distance, even over the chatter of the crowd, the shuffling of feet, and the scuffing of chairs on the stone floor, Heila was certain that Sybyll could hear her. Ashlynn might have to concentrate to pick out a single conversation amidst the background noise, but Sybyll’s physical gifts were even greater than what Ashlynn had received from Lady Nyrielle.

There was no way that the Crimson Knight would miss this conversation if she wanted to pay attention to it, but Heila forced herself to continue with all of the earnestness that made her seek out these young women to begin with.

”Were you frightened when she came in here?” Heila asked directly.

”I was,” Cossot answered, biting her lower lip and looking down at the floor, unable to meet the diminutive witch’s eyes when she gave her confession. ”I was scared when I saw her but I thought... I thought if I could just tell her what she needed to know, that Ian Hanrahan wasn’t here, then she would go away and we would all be safe...”

”And after that?” Heila asked gently. ”Were you afraid when she started giving you orders?”

”Mmmm,” Cossot said, reaching out to grab Roseen’s hand. ”That’s why I dragged Roseen out from under the table where she was hiding and made her stay with me... If I wasn’t alone then, then I didn’t have to be so scared.”

”And you, Roseen?” Heila asked. ”You could have run away from your friend whenever you wanted. Why didn’t you?”

”And leave her here by herself?” Roseen blurted. ”Do you know how much trouble she’d get into if I left her alone!” As soon as the words escaped her lips, she clapped both hands over her mouth while her face turned bright red.

She knew that Cossot was impulsive and that her friend was easily swayed by powerful and impressive people like Loman Lothian and Dame Sybyll, and that she would throw herself into anything she thought would let her reach the forbidden lofty heights where noblemen walked, but now was hardly the time to mention it!

”That’s what makes the two of you special,” Heila said with a warm, reassuring smile. ”Cossot, while others cowered under tables, you spoke up. You might have been frightened, terrified even, but I wasn’t any different the first time I was on a battlefield. I was scared, and all I could do was hide behind Hauke’s walls of ice while Tuscan Giants threw stones and hurled spears at us,” she said, blushing slightly at the memory.

”Dame Sybyll is a vampire,” Heila reminded the two young women as she pressed past her own embarrassing memories to make the point she needed to. ”Right now, everyone is in too much shock to process what that means, but soon, she’ll need to feed on people in order to survive. In the Vale, we have a way of doing this, and people compete for the honor of making an offering to the vampires of the Vale, but your people don’t have those traditions yet.”

”Are you, are you saying that Dame Sybyll held on to us because she’ll want to feed from us?” Cossot said. Her face had gone slightly pale, and there was a tremor in her voice when she spoke, but surprisingly, she wasn’t completely horrified at the notion.

”I, I didn’t know how much of a beast Ian Hanrahan was,” she said a moment later. ”He might have turned to me one day. Or to Roseen. We’re old enough now, but neither of us is so much as betrothed. So... he could have come for us, maybe even after this feast,” she said with words tumbling one after the next as she realized the danger she’d been in and never recognized.

”Dame Sybyll saved us from that,” Cossot continued. ”So, if she needs help. If I can help her by making an ’offering’ to her, then I’ll do it,” she said firmly, clenching her small fist in determination. ”I just, I just don’t know how...”

Sitting next to her, Roseen stared at her closest friend in horror as she offered herself up to be Dame Sybyll’s ... meal! It was one thing to be grateful; Roseen was also grateful for what Dame Sybyll had done. After all, once Cossot had pointed it out, it wasn’t hard to realize that her friend was right about the danger they faced when they attended the banquet.

For Roseen, it had been even worse. Her father mentioned that Baron Hanrahan had been asking about her for the past several months. It was only the occasional casual mention, asking how her studies were progressing or if she’d caught the eye of any promising young men...

At the time, her father had speculated that the Baron might be looking within his own borders for a woman to marry Bastian after so many matchmaking attempts had ended in disaster. But now, she realized the truth of the Baron’s ’innocent’ questions. So when she thought about Dame Sybyll saving her and so many other women from Ian Hanrahan’s clutches, of course, she was grateful...

But there was a difference between being grateful and becoming a vampire’s dinner!