The Vampire & Her Witch

By this point, everyone was eating slowly, if they remembered to eat at all. At the second table, the young squire Cadeyrn and Lady Morwen were barely paying attention to the younger children as they’d been caught up in a tale of scandalous affairs, duels between knights and ladies, battles that destroyed a Lothian fortress that was as old as the march itself...

It was the most exciting story they’d ever heard, and even the normally fidgety Taliesin was on his best behavior, lest their parents decide that they needed to be rushed off to bed so that the adults could have the tent to themselves.

Reactions at the ’high table’ were considerably more varied. Sir Bedwyr and his wife, Esme, as the youngest lords at the table, looked just as caught up in the tale as the children did. The older women at the table, however, particularly Sir Padraig’s wife, Lady Seren and Sir Brennus’s wife, Lady Rhiannon, were sharing deeply horrified looks with Lady Mairwen as they tried to imagine the kind of life that Lady Ashlynn must have been living if she’d been forced to learn the sword well enough to duel against a powerful knight like Sir Broll.

All of them had seen the amount of work it took for their husbands to fight against the demons. The training never stopped, from the time they were young children until they were old enough to hand off their responsibilities to their eldest son.

If the ladies hadn’t possessed an understanding of what that meant when they got married, they quickly learned how young a knight’s training began when their sons turned thirteen and became old enough to serve as squires. From that point until their sons were old enough to stand their vigil and swear their oaths as knights, they spent at least four hours of every day on lessons, and more in the winter months when there wasn’t any work to be done in the fields or around the manor.

Everyone here had attended Lady Ashlynn’s wedding the previous spring. They’d seen how radiant she looked in her white dress with strands of pearls and spills of lace. But none of them had ever imagined that a polished and sophisticated lady from a county like Blackwell would be so... tenacious. Or ruthless.

”What, what happened in Hanrahan?” Sir Padraig said, reaching out to Seren and holding her hand tightly. ”You said that many people died. Was... was Sir Thorryn Quarrie one of the people who died?”

”Sir Thorryn...” Liam said, furrowing his brows for a moment before he realized why Sir Padraig looked so stricken. ”He’s fine,” Liam said quickly. ”I spoke with him briefly after the battle. Your niece, Drema is fine too. I’m afraid I don’t have any news to share from Tremlan village,” he added, turning to Sir Ollie.

”Sir Padraig’s sister, Kristal, married Sir Thorryn and moved to Tremlan Village in Hanrahan,” Liam explained briefly. ”Have you heard...?”

”The villages in Hanrahan were seized by the Third Army under Commander Tausau,” Ollie said in reassuring tones. ”None of them would dare to disobey their orders. Unless Lady Kristal tried to attack the soldiers of Tausau’s army, they wouldn’t have harmed her, and I never heard a report that there were casualties among the villagers.”

”You’ve seen Tausau’s men,” Ollie said, obliquely referencing the Mongrel Horde. ”Would you have dared to resist them?”

”No, no I wouldn’t,” Liam said with a firm shake of his head as he thought about his brief encounters with the misshapen vampires. While he was rapidly learning that appearances could be misleading among the Eldritch, he had to admit that in the case of the Mongrel Horde, their appearance alone was a powerful deterrent.

”Sir Padraig,” Liam continued, turning back to face the older knight. ”I’m sure she’s fine, but as soon as we can get word to you, I’ll see it done. You have my word.”

”Thank you, Lord Liam,” the lanky knight replied, slumping against his wife’s shoulder as he continued to clutch her hand under the table. ”If, if it’s as you say, and Lady Ashlynn prefers to avoid unnecessary bloodshed, then I’m sure Kristal is fine. She’s a smart lass, smarter than me by half. She wouldn’t have done anything foolish, especially if Thorryn wasn’t there to protect her.”

The atmosphere grew briefly heavy as people saw the anxiety on not only Sir Padraig’s face, but the faces of his wife and children as well. Suddenly, the exciting stories about duels and battles didn’t seem quite so exciting when they realized that something terrible might have happened to one of their family members.

”Padraig, I’m sure that Kristal is well,” Loghlan said diplomatically. ”And if she isn’t, then I’ll be the first to demand justice for her,” he promised. ”But Liam,” he said, turning a disapproving eye on his son. ”I think we’d all rest easier tonight if we understood what happened at Hanrahan. If Lord Owain was keeping a mistress in the Summer Villa, I can understand Lady Ashlynn moving against it to capture this ’Samira’ woman.”

”But you mentioned a name I’m not familiar with,” Loghlan continued as he absentmindedly rearranged the vegetables on his plate, as if he were organizing the thoughts in his head with the movements of his fork. ”Who is this ’Dame Sybyll Hanrahan’ and what reason was there to conquer Hanrahan by force?”

It took time to explain, but Liam laid everything out for them, from Aiden Hanrahan’s cold-blooded murder of his brother, Baron Brighton, to Ian Hanrahan’s cowardly attack on Baroness Caitlin, to Dame Sybyll’s harrowing story of escape and survival. He didn’t explain that she’d become a vampire, but he made it clear that she had a legitimate grievance and that the world had denied her justice.

”That, that’s terrible,” Eira said with tears swimming in her eyes. She’d completely forgotten about her dinner, and she was clutching Liam’s forearm as he explained the way Dame Sybyll had struggled for her entire life before she was taken in by the same knight who taught Sir Ollie.

”How could anyone be so cruel to a woman who just wanted to return to her family?” Eira asked, as she gazed up at Liam through misty lashes, clearly failing to notice how uncomfortable her closeness was making him. ”Lord Liam, you must have joined in the battle to fight for her after you learned all that. You weren’t injured at all, were you? The forces of Hanrahan can’t be much weaker than ours; it must have been a very dangerous battle.”

”About that,” Liam said as he gently removed her hands from his forearm. ”The battle was fierce, it’s true, but not for the reasons you might think...”