The Vampire & Her Witch

For a single heartbeat, Ashlynn stood frozen.

She’d been struggling just to hold herself together all day long. It had started right at dawn, with the terrifying feeling of something trying to rip Ollie away from her, and it had only gotten harder from there. Seeing the gleaming, golden spire of the abbey that had produced a monster like Percivus nearly shattered her control.

Going from that to the half-empty village where the dark windows of abandoned homes glared accusingly at her, as if they were blaming her for striking fear in the hearts of the families that should be living there, had further frayed her ability to keep her feelings and her powers under control.

In order to get through the day, she’d bottled it all up. She forced it down and locked it away behind walls of willpower and the desperate need to maintain control because she was the Mother of Trees, and she couldn’t afford to break. Not again, not when so many people depended on her strength.

But then Ollie looked up at her with those kind, tired eyes, and something inside her shattered.

”Get up,” she said, the words coming out cracked and strained as she spoke around the knot that had formed in her throat. ”Get up, you fool, don’t kneel to me, not you, never you, and not at a time like this...”

She crossed the distance between them in three quick strides, reaching down to grab his arm and pulled him to his feet with strength that had very little to do with the gifts she’d received from her bond with Nyrielle, and everything to do with her desperate need to have him standing, whole, unharmed, and alive in front of her where she could see him properly.

Ollie rose awkwardly with a slight wince and half a stumble. His legs were unsteady after hours in the carriage, combined with the effort of kneeling, but Ashlynn didn’t give him time to find his balance. The moment he was upright, she pulled him into an embrace so fierce it would have broken ribs on anyone who wasn’t strengthened by the seed of witchcraft she’d planted in his chest.

”You fool,” she said against his shoulder, and her voice was shaking now, all the careful control she’d maintained throughout the day spilling out in a rush of words and emotion. ”You absolute fool. Nothing is worth it if I lose you, don’t you understand that, Ollie? There is no mission or alliance that is important enough to lose you over, so don’t you dare say that it was worth it!”

Her arms tightened around him, and she felt him stiffen slightly, whether from pain or surprise, she couldn’t tell and didn’t care. She’d spent the entire morning feeling him plunge toward the Void, feeling that bright flame of his presence gutter and nearly extinguish, and she’d been completely powerless to help him. Powerless to do anything but clutch at her seat in the carriage and try not to scream as the bond between them stretched and frayed and threatened to snap entirely.

”I’m sorry,” Ollie said quietly as he wrapped his arms around her trembling body to return the embrace despite the obvious discomfort. His voice was steady despite the pain he felt in her tight embrace, accepting the bruised ribs as if he understood that this was his penance for the fear he’d caused her. ”I’m so sorry, Ashlynn. I never meant to worry you like that. But I’m here now. I’m safe. You don’t need to worry anymore.”

”Don’t tell me not to worry,” Ashlynn said, and she could feel tears burning hot tracks down her cheeks now as she abandoned any pretense of holding herself together in front of onlookers. ”Don’t you dare tell me not to worry when you nearly died this morning.

”I felt it, Ollie. I felt you falling into the Void, and I couldn’t reach you. There wasn’t anything I could do to help you from so far away, and feeling you dying... It felt like someone was ripping out the roots that had grown into my heart,” she sobbed. It was a pain that only a witch could understand, perhaps only a Great Witch.

She’d grown Ollie’s seed of witchcraft next to her own heart, and its roots had buried themselves deeply in her very soul. Pulling the seed out of her chest in order to bestow it on him, or on any of her witches, was excruciatingly painful, but the seed always left some of its roots behind, wrapped around her heart and binding her to the witches of the coven.

When Ollie teetered on the edge between life and death, she felt the icy claws of the Void ripping at those roots, tearing them away like a gardener pulling weeds.

”I thought I was going to lose you...” Ashlynn cried in a voice that was so quiet and fragile that only Ollie could hear them.

Her voice broke entirely on the last words, and she buried her face against his shoulder, not caring that there were strangers watching, not caring that she was supposed to be the Great Witch who commanded armies and struck fear into the hearts of kingdoms. Right now she was just Ashlynn, and Ollie was her friend, her student, her family... and he’d nearly died on a mission that she’d sent him on.

”I’m here,” Ollie repeated softly, using one of his hands to gently stroke her soft, pale blonde hair while her body shook against his with the force of her sobs. He’d tried to make light of what happened, but feeling how fragile Ashlynn felt in his arms as she gave vent to the hurt in her heart, he couldn’t pretend that it had been a small risk that he’d taken...

Ollie wasn’t used to thinking of himself as anyone important, and there was a part of him that always felt like it wouldn’t matter much what happened to him in the end. If he could do something great, even if it was just to save one person heroically, the way a knight should, then that would be enough to give his life meaning, and he would have been content.

But now, Ashlynn’s sobs piled on top of the words Milo had spoken in the dead copse of trees, and Ollie couldn’t hide from the truth of them any longer.

All the songs and sagas of knights dying heroic deaths, trading their lives for something greater than themselves, missed the point entirely. The hard thing wasn’t dying a worthy death... That was surprisingly easy.

The hard thing was finding a way to do what needed doing and come home safely to the people who loved him so much... because no heroic death could ever heal the wound in their heart that his death would create.

”I’m here,” Ollie whispered as he gently stroked Ashlynn’s hair. ”And I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”