The Vampire & Her Witch

Niklas, who had remained silent during his companion’s punishment, swallowed hard when he heard Owain’s threat. As members of the Inquisition, they were supposed to be all but untouchable, even by the lords of the kingdom, but according to Lord Owain, the Church had abandoned them, withdrawing its protection and leaving them in the hands of a man who could be just as cruel as their mentor.

Owain’s methods of breaking a man might lack the sophistication that Percivus employed. The brute force beating was barbaric compared to the way the trained Inquisitor could bend and twist people to his will without ever leaving a mark on their bodies. But barbaric or not, Niklas had no desire to suffer for the Church that had abandoned him and the master that clearly could no longer protect him.

”What... what do you want to know, my lord?” Niklas asked.

”Everything,” Owain said simply. ”Start with Lady Jocelynn. From the moment Percivus took her captive until the moment you cowards fled the manor with your tails tucked between your legs, scurrying back to your abbey like rats,” Owain sneered. ”I want to know what you did to her. What you said to her. How you treated her.” His voice was calm, almost pleasant, but there was something deadly in his eyes. ”And don’t leave anything out.”

The acolytes exchanged a desperate glance, and then, slowly, haltingly, they began to speak.

They told him about the inspection, about forcing Jocelynn to strip in front of them while Percivus searched her body for the Mark of the Witch. Niklas’s voice shook as he described how they’d taken her fine clothes and jewelry, how they’d dressed her in a rough, undyed wool dress that offered no warmth against the dungeon’s chill.

But when they tried to move past that quickly, glossing over the details, Owain’s fist lashed out again.

This time, he struck Niklas in the ribs, a sharp, precise blow that cracked bone with an audible snap. The young man screamed, the sound echoing off the stone walls as his body jerked in the chains. His scream dissolved into sobbing gasps, tears streaming down his face as he tried desperately to breathe without moving his damaged ribs.

”So you looked at her, stripped of her clothing,” Owain fumed. ”And you,” Owain asked, rounding on the other man. ”Did you also defile her with your eyes? Don’t lie to me!”

Owain himself had yet to see Jocelynn without the layers of formal dresses that covered her body like armor. She gave him tantalizing glimpses with low-cut bodices, corsets that nipped her already slender waist, and shirts that clung to the curve of her hips, but he had yet to unwrap his treasure to behold the beauty beneath the wrapping.

Yet these pigs, these ’good and godly men’ of the Inquisition, had glimpsed what he hadn’t, and they’d done it with three of them in the room together while they forced his Jocelynn to strip off her clothing, like beggars pooling their coin to buy the time of a single whore.

”I, I, didn’t, I mean I, -OOF-” Samlet’s voice cut off as he suffered a second blow from Owain, this time landing with enough force on his floating ribs to split the skin over the ribs, cracking the bone that stood out so prominently because of the helpless acolyte’s stretched posture.

”I told you not to lie to me,” Owain snarled. ”You looked, didn’t you? And you enjoyed what you saw...”

”No, no, my lord, it wasn’t like that,” Niklas insisted, as he struggled to breathe. ”We took our vows,” he said, as though that explained things or somehow justified their behavior. ”We’re celibate for the rest of our lives. We just looked, because, because, she might be a witch. She might have a mark....”

”I said,” Owain repeated calmly, as if he hadn’t just broken a man’s bones. ”So, because you swore not to touch her, you can strip her naked and lust after her body... You just can’t touch her, so it’s fine. Is that what you’re saying?”

”We were wrong,” Samlet said, trying a different approach. ”We only stripped her because, because Percivus wanted to take away her nice things. He wanted her to suffer as common people suffer. He wanted her to appreciate how privileged she was. That’s why, that’s why he made her trade her rings and jewels away for food and clothing...”

”So you’re thieves as well as perverts,” Owain said, slapping the man across the chest with the back of his hand and smiling as he watched the acolyte scrambling to keep his balance, clinging to the chains that held him suspended from the ceiling.

”What did you take from her? Tell me all of it, don’t leave anything out, you cowardly thief,” he snarled. ”I want to know exactly what you took from her. Every ring, every necklace, every earring. I want to know what Percivus said when he searched her,” he said, stepping close enough to the swaying figure of Samlet that he could feel the heat of the other man’s breath.

”And you,” he said, turning briefly to Niklas. ”If he leaves anything out, and you tell me, I might be persuaded to be kinder,” he said with a cruel smile. ”After all, I’m not an unreasonable man...”

”Now,” Owain said softly. ”Try again. And this time, give me everything.”

And so they did.

They told him about the jewels they’d traded for scraps of food, including feeding her the tongues of the men Percivus had executed. They told him about the altar cloths Percivus had forced her to embroider while her fingers grew numb and bleeding from the cold and the work. They told him about Samlet meticulously inspecting every stitch, forcing her to unpick hours of work for the smallest imperfection, about the way her hands shook from exhaustion and hunger.

When they tried to skim over Eleanor’s treatment, mentioning only that the Confessor had been confined as well, Owain drove his fist into Samlet’s kidney with brutal efficiency. The acolyte’s scream was higher-pitched than his companion’s had been, a sound of pure agony that ended in violent retching as his body tried to expel the pain.

”Eleanor Blackwell was Jocelynn’s cousin; she was part of my woman’s family,” Owain said, his voice still terrifyingly calm. ” And you locked her in a cell and let her die.” He grabbed a fistful of Samlet’s hair, yanking his head back to force their eyes to meet. ”Jocelynn has barely left the temple in two days because she’s so heartbroken over Eleanor’s death.”

”Something happened while I was away to bring them that close,” Owain said, thinking back on how Jocelynn had spoken of Eleanor as an annoying mother hen when she’d first arrived in Lothian March.

”So tell me about the Confessor,” he said as he stared into Samlet’s trembling eyes. ”Tell me what Percivus did to her. Tell me how she died and why my Jocelynn cares so much that her nanny is gone...”