The Vampire & Her Witch

Ollie saw Cynwrig flinch when he described what he would do, and he saw the understanding dawn in the knight’s eyes. This wasn’t just about skill or power. It was about endurance. About being willing to suffer alongside the person you were trying to save.

Cynwrig might have spent most of his life as a knight administering his lands and tending to the businesses that made his village prosper, but he was still a knight of Dunn. He’d fought against the Eldritch more than once, and gone to his share of tournaments as well. He knew that the wounds Cerys had suffered should be a death sentence, and in most healers’ tents, the most she could hope for was a strong dose of Essence of Poppy to dull the pain and allow her to pass peacefully to the Heavenly Shores or her next life.

”Lady Ashlynn or Lady Heila would be better at this than I am,” Ollie continued, his voice soft. ”They’ve had much more practice, and they know techniques that I haven’t learned yet,” he said, feeling the familiar prick of jealousy for the chance to learn directly from the Mother of Thorns, only this time, the pain of that jealousy came from a very different place and it mixed with his fears about being unable to save Cerys life.

”But they’re not here,” Ollie said as he forced himself to ignore the pain and regrets that would do nothing to help him now. ”And your wife is dying right now. So I’m going to try the only thing I can think of, which is to work very slowly and endure through the pain for as long as it takes.”

It was a feeble plan, but it was the only one that Ollie had managed to come up with. Lady Ashlynn could have healed everything at once, he was sure of it. Lady Heila might not have been able to do everything at once, but she would have been able to work quickly enough that the difference wouldn’t matter.

But the Cypress wasn’t a healer’s tree. It was a guardian’s tree. It was resilient and regenerative. It would hang on, and eventually, it would grow back, recovering from wounds that would destroy a lesser tree. It was a tree that could endure for as long as it had to, even when floods and storms ripped everything else away.

It was that power that Ollie intended to rely on to save Cerys. The ability to endure and slowly recover. But he would have to endure right alongside her, feeling her pain with her, and as stubborn as he was, his trial had taught him that even he had limits... and this might be beyond them.

”Then, please try,” Cynwrig said, his voice rough with emotion as he placed a hand on the young knight’s shoulder. Looking into Sir Ollie’s pale eyes, he knew that the request was unreasonable, that it was asking more than anyone had a right to ask of him, but he had to ask... because the alternative was to lose the woman he loved and the mother of his children.

”Please, Sir Ollie. Do whatever you have to do. I... I don’t know what I can do to help, but if there’s anything, tell me. I’ll do whatever it takes,” he promised. ”I’ll pay whatever it costs. Just save her. Please.”

Ollie nodded and stood, his hands moving to the laces of his tunic. He needed to be in contact with the water and the trees for this. He needed to feel the living world around him without any barriers between his skin and the elements. This wasn’t going to be a gentle, controlled healing like the one he’d performed on Sir Gavin the night before. This was going to be raw and desperate and painful, and he needed every advantage he could get.

He stripped off his tunic and let it fall to the ground, then his undershirt, then his boots and socks, until he stood bare-chested in the freezing morning air wearing nothing but his trousers. The cold bit at his exposed skin immediately, raising goosebumps across his arms and chest, but he ignored it. Cold was nothing. Pain was nothing. The only thing that mattered was the dying woman at his feet.

Cynwrig’s sharp intake of breath told Ollie that the knight had seen it, the mark of the witch that covered Ollie’s torso in intricate patterns of dark green and faint brown, like a birthmark or bruise, only it was far more extensive than any birthmark that Cynwrig had ever seen.

It looked like the trunk and branches of a cypress tree had been drawn across his skin in living ink, starting from his lower back and spreading up across his ribs and around to his abdomen.

Two cypress knees, the distinctive root structures that the trees developed in swampy ground, adorned his lower back on either side of his spine, and two more mirrored them on his stomach just above his hips. Around each knee, delicate ripples spread outward like water disturbed by a stone, and the whole design seemed to shift and move with each breath Ollie took, as if the tree painted on his skin was alive and growing.

It was beautiful and strange and undeniably unnatural, and Ollie heard Harrod’s quiet whistle of appreciation even as Cynwrig stared in what might have been horror or awe or some mixture of both.

”That’s...” Cynwrig started, but his voice failed him.

”The mark of a witch,” Ollie acknowledged. ”For this to work, I need to connect to more than just the trees, Cynwrig. I need the water, the earth, the whole living world around me. And I need her to be part of that connection too,” he said as he pushed down the last of his hesitations to do what needed to be done.

”Trust me, Cynwrig,” he said softly, refusing to allow any of his lingering doubts any space in his heart as he got to work. ”If it’s possible to save her, I’ll do it. You have my word.”

He bent down and carefully gathered Cerys into his arms, lifting her as gently as he could. She weighed almost nothing, her body light and fragile in his grasp, and he could feel the unnatural angles of her broken bones through the thin fabric of her riding dress. She didn’t wake, didn’t even stir as he lifted her, and Ollie wasn’t sure if that was a mercy or a sign that she was already too far gone.

”Sir Ollie, what are you doing?” Cynwrig asked, his voice rising with alarm as Ollie began to wade into the stream.

”What I have to,” Ollie replied, and then the icy water was closing around his legs, so cold that it felt like knives cutting into his skin.

”Don’t distract him,” Harrod said sharply before softening his tone. ”Sir Ollie is the Cypress Witch,” Harrod explained in an effort to distract himself from his own anxiety that Ollie was taking on too much and that the price of this healing would be higher than his friend should pay for a woman who clearly rejected his help.

”The Cypress tree grows and thrives in places where it floods,” Harrod continued, repeating what he’d learned from Ollie about the strange tree from the far side of the mountains. ”Sir Ollie’s powers are balanced across all of the elements, so he’s going to stand in the water like a Cypress tree in a flood. It... it should make his powers stronger,” he said, though his voice contained a trace of uncertainty at the end.

While Harrod spoke, Ollie kept walking, pushing forward against the current that tried to knock him off his feet. The rocks beneath the water were slick with silt and algae, treacherous and uneven, and more than once he nearly lost his footing. But he kept going, one step after another, until the water reached his waist and Cerys’s body was floating in his arms on the surface of the stream, supported by the current and by his own shaking grip.

The cold was overwhelming. It drove the breath from his lungs and made his muscles seize up, and he could feel his body starting to shut down in response to the frigid temperature. But he gritted his teeth and forced himself to stay upright, to keep holding Cerys above the water, and to begin the ritual that might be her only chance at survival.