The Vampire & Her Witch

Jocelynn looked at Adala for a moment, and something passed across her face that was harder to read than grief. Surprise, perhaps, that the cheerful young woman from Leufroy had offered an observation with that much weight to it. Or perhaps recognition that Adala had seen something in the courtyard that the others had missed.

”Thank you, Lady Adala,” Jocelynn said. ”That’s... That means a great deal.”

”What will happen to the urn?” Charlotte asked softly, her gaze resting on the small clay vessel beside the wine. ”Will you keep it here, or are you going to place it in the Lothian Crypts? If, if you need company to take it into the crypts...” she said, though her voice trailed off before she could make her offer clear.

It was hard for anyone in the room to imagine how Lady Jocelynn must feel about her sister’s final resting place. She was about to marry her sister’s husband. Would Jocelynn have a place in the Lothian Crypts next to her sister when she finally passed? Would Owain’s remains lie between them, forever keeping them apart?

There wasn’t a polite way to ask, but Charlotte’s half-spoken offer to accompany Jocelynn came as close as anyone could.

”I want to send it home,” Jocelynn said, her hand drifting back to touch the urn’s lid. ”To the family crypt in Blackwell. It’s where she belongs.”

”If there’s anything I can do to help,” Lady Ragna said as she cradled her untouched cup of wine in both hands. ”Men for the honor guard, swift horses for the journey, you have only to ask,” she offered. ”Or even just a swift messenger,” she said as her eyes clouded over. ”To carry the news.”

The offer was gracious, and from anyone else, Adala might have dismissed it as a political reflex. But Ragna Fayle didn’t waste words, and the Fayle barony had few men or horses to waste. For her to offer up any kind of aid would be to place her people in greater peril of suffering at the hands of the demons this winter.

Fayle Barony had very little to bargain with, and what they offered up needed to generate a return that was worth the risk. The favor of the next marchioness was certainly a reward that would pay dividends for years to come, but... Adala wasn’t certain whether Jocelynn intended to survive long enough to deliver favors to anyone.

She had seen the moment at the pyre. The others had been watching the flames or listening to the crackle of burning wood, but Adala had been watching Jocelynn, because Adala was always watching, and because something about the young lady from Blackwell had been nagging at her since the chapel doors first opened.

It was her stillness. Not the stillness of composure or the stillness of grief, though both were present. It was the stillness of someone who had made a decision so complete that it had settled onto her body like the stones of a mountain, weighing her down and keeping her level even as the storm raged around her.

Adala had seen that stillness before, in the Kingdom of Iron. In the eyes of men and women who had been broken down to nothing and rebuilt around a single, unshakeable purpose: to kill the person who owned them, no matter the cost to themselves. Most of them failed. The ones who succeeded rarely survived the attempt, and many of them didn’t want to.

She didn’t know who Jocelynn intended to kill. The grief pointed toward whoever was responsible for Lady Ashlynn’s death; a demon, perhaps, or perhaps whoever had been responsible for leaving her sister in the Summer Villa instead of bringing her home to Lothian City. Adala didn’t have enough information to be certain, and she wasn’t fool enough to guess aloud.

But the shape of it was unmistakable. Beneath all the pain and grief, Lady Jocelynn Blackwell was nursing a powerful hatred... One that threatened to consume her life. Worse, the future marchioness didn’t seem like she was unaware of her own growing darkness, and if Adala had read that half step by the pyre correctly, she wasn’t just willing to pay the price for her vengeance, she was eager to.

”L-lady Jocelynn,” Charlotte said hesitantly, breaking the heavy silence that had fallen over the room. Her eyes darted to the urn again, gazing at it as if it were a venomous snake barring her path, or a stone wall she couldn’t surmount. ”May I, may I be a bit impertinent?”

”Of course you may,” Jocelynn said automatically. ”I shouldn’t, that is, we shouldn’t stand on formality here,” she said. Then, as if she’d only just realized that her own abstinence from wine had forced the other ladies to refrain from drinking, she quickly raised her cup in an awkward toast.

”We should come together as friends,” Jocelynn said as she met each woman’s gaze. ”At least for today, we shouldn’t worry about titles or positions or even tomorrow,” she said with a ghost of a smile tugging at the corners of her lips. Tomorrow, Owain would hold a Stag’s Feast with the barons and their knights, along with the few commoners who possessed enough wealth or influence to secure an invitation.

The ladies of the court, however, would be subjected to beauty routines at the hands of their servants, light meals that were little better than fasting, and last-minute adjustments to the dresses they would wear to the funeral of one marquis and the ascension of another.

As far as Jocelynn was concerned, there was no reason for the ladies to restrain themselves when the men of the court would once again leave them behind.

”To Ashlynn,” Jocelynn said, lifting her cup slightly higher before she brought it to her lips and drank deeply. She only let a quarter of the wine in the cup slip past her lips, but it was enough to signal to the other women that they were free to drink as much as they wished. ”And to friends who will remember her name,” she said, smiling warmly at Charlotte Otker.

”Good then, since, um, since we’re friends,” Charlotte said awkwardly, raising her own cup to her lips to take a quick sip before she set it back down to stand up from her seat.

Adala only had a brief moment to process what Charlotte was doing before the young lady crossed the distance between herself and Jocelynn, flinging her arms around the startled Blackwell lady and pulling her out of her chair and into a fierce embrace....