The Vampire & Her Witch

The room Aubin had prepared for the noblewomen was smaller than Adala expected, but it was warm, and after the cold of the courtyard, warmth was enough.

It was a modest chamber off the chapel’s western corridor, the kind of room that might serve as a meeting place for temple elders or a quiet space for private counsel. A single brazier glowed near the far wall, and candles had been set in iron sconces at intervals, casting a steady amber light that softened the stone walls.

A narrow stained glass window added a splash of color to the room, turning the gray morning light into a soft golden glow that projected the image of a sun rising behind a temple on the floor of the room.

A heavy oak table dominated the center of the room, laid with a clean cloth and the provisions for the wake: two clay jugs of wine, a wheel of pale cheese, a round loaf of dark bread, a dish of pickled vegetables, and a bowl of dried fruit. Five simple wooden cups had been set out, along with a stack of linen napkins folded with the kind of care that suggested the hand of experienced servants despite the simplicity of the meal.

It wasn’t lavish, but it was thoughtful, and Adala respected the thoughtfulness. It was a rarer commodity than gold in many of the places she’d visited since leaving home for the Iron Kingdom, and far more useful.

The five women settled into the room with a sort of cautious formality, clinging to familiar etiquette as they moved, but with a bit of uncertainty as to who should be taking the lead in this gathering. Most would agree that Lady Jocelynn, as the daughter of a count and the future marchioness, held social precedence... but she wasn’t the marchioness yet. Sorcha was the only one who currently held a title of her own as baroness, but Lady Ragna was older and had been a baroness herself until her son, Erling, came of age and assumed the title of Baron.

With Jocelynn’s song still ringing in their ears, no one seemed ready to break the silence yet, but Adala was grateful that no one seemed to expect her or Charlotte to take the lead in anything, and she followed along quietly as Lady Ragna and Baroness Sorcha claimed one side of the table for themselves, making it clear that she intended to defer to Lady Jocelynn by leaving the head of the table for her.

Lady Jocelynn set the urn on the table beside the wine, because there was nowhere else to put it, and from the way she held it, because she clearly wasn’t ready to let it out of her sight.

Jocelynn’s fingers lingered briefly on the lid before she pulled them away and folded her hands in her lap. The young woman’s knuckles were white from the force of her grip on her skirts, the same way they’d been white around the chest all morning, and for a moment, Adala found herself wondering if they should really be here at all when the woman they’d come to support was so clearly struggling to hold herself together.

Perhaps, she thought, it would be better to say a few polite words and leave Lady Jocelynn to her private grief...

But then Sorcha poured the wine without being asked, moving with the practical efficiency of a woman who was accustomed to doing things herself rather than waiting for servants. She filled each cup almost to the brim and passed them around with the steady, capable hands of someone who had probably helped serve meals in her father’s quarry house before she’d ever set foot in a baron’s hall.

Adala accepted her cup with a murmured word of thanks and watched as Jocelynn brought her own cup to her lips. The young lady barely let the wine touch her tongue before she lowered it again.

There had been a brief flicker of an expression on Jocelynn’s face when she tasted the wine, a tightening around the eyes and a slight press of her lips, before she set the cup down on the table with a deliberateness that spoke less of dislike than of caution.

Adala worked to keep her own expression mild as she sipped the strong, fragrant wine that carried rich, earthy notes along with a strong fruity flavor. She’d only shared tea with Jocelynn in their previous meetings, and she wondered what Jocelynn’s caution stemmed from. In her opinion, a young woman in grief who refused to drink was either deeply pious or deeply afraid of what she might do if her control slipped.

Given what Adala had seen so far in the courtyard, she suspected it was the latter.

”Thank you,” Jocelynn said, addressing the room. Her voice was steadier than it had been during the memorial, but it still carried the rough edges of a morning spent in tears. ”For being here. For the memorial, and for this.” She gestured at the table. ”I know Ashlynn would have appreciated it.”

”It was our privilege, my lady,” Sorcha said warmly now that the awkward silence had been broken. ”The memorial was beautiful. The song especially.” She paused, and her broad, plain face softened into something almost tender. ”I’ve never heard anything like it.”

Charlotte nodded vigorously, dabbing at her eyes with her handkerchief. She was sitting close to Adala, her chair angled slightly toward the young woman from Leufroy, and her free hand rested on the table near Adala’s arm in a way that was probably unconscious and almost certainly meant nothing more than Charlotte’s habitual need to be near the people she felt comfortable with.

Probably.

”Did you teach them the words beforehand?” Adala asked lightly, tilting her head slightly as she looked at Jocelynn. ”Your people, the way they joined in during the song. Was that something you planned together?”

”No,” Jocelynn said quietly as she shook her head. ”I only told them that I planned to sing for my sister. I didn’t ask anyone to join me.”

”If that’s the case, then I confess, I’m a little envious,” Adala said while her delicate fingers idly turned her cup on the table. ”If I asked the servants of Leufroy to join a song without prior instruction and time to practice, I’d be lucky to get more than blank stares and a few brave souls humming off-key.”

A few small smiles appeared around the table. Charlotte let out a soft laugh that managed to be crystal clear and slightly musical despite the somber atmosphere, and the tension in the room eased just a little bit further than it had when Baroness Sorcha poured the wine.

”But then,” Adala continued, her voice shifting into something more thoughtful, as she decided there was no point in holding back her words. ”Blackwell was one of the first colonies, wasn’t it? Your history stretches back hundreds of years longer than Leufroy, or any of the baronies in the march,” she said as she traced the rim of her cup with one finger, her dark eyes resting on the urn beside the wine.

”The loyalty and respect your people give their ladies,” Adala said with both genuine praise and a hint of envy in her voice. ”That kind of devotion can’t be bought or commanded. It has to be built over generations. And the songs of their home are etched into their very bones.”

In the Kingdom of Iron, she had seen what happened when loyalty was extracted by force rather than earned through centuries of shared struggle. The songs that slaves sang were not the songs of their masters. They were the songs of the places they’d been taken from, or the ones they’d learned from their captured ancestors, sung quietly and in secret, because music was one of the few things that couldn’t be taken away from a person who wasn’t allowed to own anything else.

The song in the courtyard had reminded her of that. Not so much the words of the song, Blackwell’s people were not slaves, and their loyalty was given freely, but in the way the melody had moved through them like a tide, pulling voices into its current without anyone deciding to be pulled. That kind of unity came from a place deeper than obedience.

It came from a sense of belonging to something greater than yourself, and Adala couldn’t help but wonder how generations of Blackwell lords had created something so enduring that it echoed even here, hundreds of leagues from the salt water of the sea... And if her own family would ever abandon their schemes long enough to cultivate that kind of devotion themselves.