The Vampire & Her Witch

Ashlynn had no concerns about the members of her coven keeping the secret, but she made sure to make eye contact with everyone else in the courtyard, from the quiet carriage drivers to trusted retainers like Kurtz and Emmie, extracting a pledge from each of them before she turned back to face Sir Tommin, drawing a deep breath to steady herself before she issued her judgment.

The act of healing him had already put a considerable strain on her heart, and more than once, she’d struggled to keep the gentle energy flowing from the branches of her ethereal willow tree from turning violent.

She remembered how hard it had been to breathe beneath the damp, sodden soil that Tommin and Broll had shoveled atop her as she lay in the shallow grave and the temptation to transform a healing branch into a strangling noose hovered constantly in the back of her mind as she healed the man who had nearly sealed her fate.

Now that she’d let go of her power, it was easier to clear her mind and focus on the things that still needed to be done. She wasn’t certain that she’d made the right decision... but from the moment she summoned the power of the willow tree to heal Sir Tommin rather than killing him, she’d committed to this path. She only hoped that she wouldn’t come to regret her decision in the days to come.

The shining image of a giant Willow Tree had faded away when Ashlynn finished healing Sir Tommin, but no one in the courtyard would soon forget the majesty of that moment. Now, even though she was only wearing a simple green dress that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a farmer’s wife, nothing felt strange about hearing her pronounce Sir Tommin’s sentence.

”First, from today forward, it will be announced far and wide that Sir Tommin Pyre is dead,” Ashlynn said firmly. ”Lady Rosie is your widow,” she told the blinded Templar. ”She is free of you, to find a partner who loves her if she wishes, or to choose a life without companionship. From now on, whatever she chooses to do with her life is her business alone, and none of yours, do you understand?”

”I, I understand,” Tommin said with great difficulty. Lady Ashlynn had already spared his life and healed his wounds. As much as he wanted to run after Rosie, even if he had to beg people to show him the way to her, he understood he’d lost the right to be a part of her life the day he’d forsaken his marriage to seek the safety offered by the Templars.

”Your title and your lands, along with Hurel village are forfeit,” Ashlynn continued once she saw that he both understood and accepted her judgment. She’d already asked Rosie if she wanted to return to Hurel to rule it in her own name, without the need of a man to give legitimacy to her claim, but she’d resolutely refused.

Since Rosie preferred to leave her old life behind in order to make a new beginning in the Vale of Mists, Ashlynn saw no reason to force the village on young Tonnis simply because he was Tommin’s son. If Tonnis grew into the kind of man who was a worthy leader of a community, she would consider granting him lands and titles based on his merits, not on his heritage, and Rosie had accepted Ashlynn’s proposal not only willingly, but with a profound sense of relief.

”Since ’Sir Tommin Pyre’ is dead,” Ashlynn said as she gave the blinded knight an appraising look. ”From today forward you will be known as ’Knot’,” she said, feeling that the word suited him. The knots in a piece of lumber could be serious flaws, and to a commoner chopping wood for their hearth, knots could become stubborn, intractable nuisances that would dull the blades of their axe before the log finally yielded to the blade and split.

But, in the hands of a skilled woodworker, they could also produce patterns of surprising beauty, but only if someone invested both time and skill in the process of shaping the wood. Likewise, if ’Knot’ was willing to invest time in himself, perhaps one day, he could become a man who was worthy of the mercy that Ashlynn was granting him today.

Beside the Carriage, Diarmuid found himself nodding approvingly at Ashlynn’s judgment, though his brow furrowed and his lips pursed tightly in a frown as he examined her decree from different perspectives.

As a ruler, she was displaying a level of mercy and fairness that few would aspire to. From the few encounters that Diarmuid had with her father, Count Rhys Blackwell, he could see clear parallels in how the count’s daughter delivered her judgment. Loss of lands, title, and even his name was an extreme punishment, but the crime of attempting to murder someone like Lady Ashlynn usually carried the penalty of death.

By allowing Tommin, or rather, Knot, to keep his life, Lady Ashlynn had acknowledged that Tommin wasn’t acting on his own desires, but rather, the orders of his liege lord. He was also unaware that she was still alive when he buried her. Those two facts gave her grounds for leniency and opened a door to providing a chance for Knot’s family to reconcile with him in the future.

It was a wise, merciful decision that few rulers would have been able to arrive at, but that only held true when he treated Lady Ashlynn like a ruler. In this instance, however, she was more than just a ruler pronouncing her judgment... She was also the victim of Sir Tommin’s crimes.

In most instances, the victim would never sit in judgment over the accused. Only kings bore the burden of judging the people who had wronged them because there was no higher authority to appeal to for justice. In the end, if a victim was dissatisfied with the verdict of the lord who ruled on their case, they could direct a portion of their resentment at the judge or the people who may have influenced them.

But Lady Ashlynn was both the victim and judge in the trial of the man who had buried her alive and left her for dead. She had no one to blame but herself for the merciful treatment that he had received. Perhaps the ruler Ashlynn could live with her decision, but could the woman who had been so brutally wronged accept it?

And what would happen to that woman as she carried the weight of that decision? Diarmuid didn’t know, but the thought that she’d sacrificed her own ability to receive justice and to heal from such a horrific incident in order to show mercy to her attacker’s family concerned him deeply...