The Vampire & Her Witch

Several hours after he knelt before Lady Ashlynn, as he made his way to the evening’s dinner, Liam didn’t know if he’d made the right decision or not when he asked if she had a place for him in her coven.

”A coven is a family, Liam Dunn,” she’d said after looking at him for what felt like several minutes. ”Asking to join one is close to proposing marriage. Is that what you’re trying to do?”

She was smiling when she said it, but her tone carried a hint of warning, as if he’d come very close to making a horrible mistake that could have dire consequences if he kept pushing forward.

”If you can convince your father to accept my terms, then you can follow me, Liam,” Ashlynn said as she helped him to his feet. ”Whether or not there is ever a place for you in my coven remains to be seen,” she said, neither accepting nor refusing him.

”But I agree that you lack strength compared to Dame Sybyll and the others who lead here,” she acknowledged. ”At the very least, you should learn enough sorcery to fight against the Templars of the Church. Sir Ollie started that way,” she added with a smile filled with genuine warmth. ”It wouldn’t be a bad thing if you followed in his footsteps.”

Lady Ashlynn left matters there, or so it seemed. But a few hours later, when it was time for everyone to meet for dinner, he received a strange greeting from the bearish witch, Virve, when she and Hauke came to collect Liam and his fellow lords.

”I should peel the flesh from your bones for what you’ve done, Liam Dunn,” the towering witch with russet fur said as she loomed over him, flexing her claws in front of his face as if she intended to start peeling him from the top like a ripe piece of fruit.

”My Lady, I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Liam said, standing his ground and refusing to back away from the intimidating witch even though he could feel sweat beginning to form on his brow and in the space between his shoulder blades as her presence pressed down on him. ”But, if we talk about this...”

”It’s ’Captain’, not ’Lady,’” Virve said with a wide grin that revealed her sharp teeth as she clapped him on the shoulder with a large, heavy paw. ”I like you, you have more spine than Eamon and the others. Just remember, when the time comes and training begins, you asked for this,” she said, tapping him on the nose with the point of a claw before she turned to greet the other human lords who were sharing a set of chambers.

”What, what was that about?” Liam said, more to himself than anything else. Unexpectedly, the even taller man who had come to collect them, the white furred Frost Walker who had blanketed the whole of Hanrahan Valley in snow, provided an answer, or at least part of one.

”Virve leads Mother Ashlynn’s personal guard,” Hauke said, as if it explained the witch’s strange behavior. ”Mother Ashlynn said that you’d asked to follow her and that you needed to learn how to fight against the Church’s miracle workers.”

”Does that mean I’ve joined Lady Ashlynn’s guard?” Liam asked with a complicated expression on his face. ”Or that I’m training with them?”

”I don’t know,” Hauke replied with a shrug. ”But Virve said she’d take care of you, and Mother Ashlynn accepted that, so it should be a good thing,” the young Frost Walker lord concluded, though Liam would have felt more comfortable if Hauke had sounded more confident in his answer.

Now, however, he did his best to put the future out of his mind as he collected his thoughts for the dinner ahead. After all, while he’d received a ’friendly’ greeting from the Oak Witch, not everyone accompanying him had been so lucky, and Virve had made it abundantly clear that there were some provocations that wouldn’t be tolerated.

”Inquisitor Diarmuid,” Loman said with a wry expression on his face as the group of young lords entered the formal dining room buried deep in the caverns behind the ancient fortress ”I see I’m not the only one who has been stripped of the icons of our faith,” the young priest said as he took in the Inquisitor’s simple black tunic over the midnight blue undershirt.

Loman himself was dressed in finery befitting the son of Marquis Bors Lothian. The front of his dark blue tunic was covered with elaborate silver embroidery, and matching embroidery extended all the way from the tips of his shoulders to the rolled back cuffs of his tunic.

His undershirt offered less lace at the cuffs and at the neck than Liam’s outfit did, and from the tightness of the tunic’s fit, the lord from Dunn couldn’t help but wonder if this had been something that Loman acquired during his time in the Holy City when he was a younger man. But, wherever he’d acquired the garment, this would likely be the last time the Lothian Lord wore it anywhere now that it sported a ragged, three-inch tear near the collar.

”I wasn’t stripped of anything,” the dark-haired Inquisitor said, frowning as he looked at the ragged state of Loman’s collar, noting the faintest of blood stains on the white lace of his undershirt. ”I... made a decision that felt like the right one for this evening,” he said as he gestured to the simple attire that their hosts had provided for him.

There was no shame in Diarmuid’s voice when he spoke about his decision to leave his crimson robes behind, and he didn’t try to blame his choice on their hosts. No one had suggested that he couldn’t wear the robes of the Inquisition if he’d wanted to. But when he thought about the answers that he was seeking, he felt like the robes would only hinder his search for the truth, rather than helping him to learn what he needed to know, and so he left them in his chambers.

He didn’t regret that decision, but now, he looked at the powerful Oak Witch with deeply furrowed brows, wondering if he’d misread the freedom he’d been given to choose his attire for the evening.

”Don’t mistake yourself, little lord,” Virve said with a fierce glower at Loman. ”Inquisitor Diarmuid is a trusted friend. If he wanted to drape himself in the holy symbols of your Church, we’d allow him to, even here. He could have worn his crimson robes if he wanted to and no one would have stopped him.”

”You lost your pendant because you’ve proven you can’t be trusted with the powers of your Church,” Virve said as she stepped close enough to Loman to strike him with one of her powerful paws without taking another step. ”Heila told us what you did in Hanrahan, ’priest.’ You should be grateful that Mother Ashlynn isn’t keeping you in a cell now that you’re here.”

”Virve,” Ollie said, standing up from his seat near the head of the table. ”Let it go for now. He can’t hurt anyone here, even if he wanted to,” the young knight said confidently. ”And if Lady Ashlynn wanted him punished, she wouldn’t have invited him to dinner.”

There was more Ollie wanted to say, but in front of guests, he left it at that. Privately, he wondered if Lady Ashlynn was testing Loman, to see if he could set aside the biases of his faith to break bread with witches and vampires tonight. Clearly, he’d already made a significant error of judgment in attempting to wear any of the icons of the Church to this gathering, and Ollie didn’t blame Virve for stripping it from him in the slightest.

But, if Lady Ashlynn was testing Loman to see if he could break bread with witches and vampires, she was also testing some of the other guests at this dinner to see if they could sit peacefully in the company of a Lothian Lord whom Ashlynn wanted to make peace with.

If Loman failed in the test that Lady Ashlynn had set for him, Ollie would be sad for what it meant for her dreams of unifying the lands that had been taken from the Eldritch and placed under Lothian rule.

But while Loman failing would be sad, a failure from within her coven was something Ollie couldn’t accept, and he hoped that Virve understood the message he was trying to convey when he asked her to let it go...