The Vampire & Her Witch

The gaze Ashlynn directed at the young acolyte was filled with an almost motherly reproach, as if the acolyte was a young boy who had just knocked a pitcher of wine off the table and posed just as much threat, no matter how much he tried to use his crimson and gold robes to puff himself up in order to intimidate her.

She could see the fear in him, bright and raw beneath the rigid set of his jaw, and she could see the way that fear was curdling into something worse with every heartbeat that passed.

He didn’t know who she really was. He knew enough to be terrified, but not enough to understand what he was truly facing, and that gap between his knowledge and reality was filling rapidly with everything Abbot Recared had ever told him about the enemies of the Holy Lord of Light.

”It’s true that I used the name ’Lynnda’ the first time I visited the Summer Villa,” Ashlynn acknowledged. ”It was a name I used to get close to Owain Lothian after he tried to murder me. As for who I really am, your sister can tell you. She’s known since before you arrived.”

She could have told him herself, but she still had some hope that there was enough love between the siblings that Cerys could calm him down. If Cerys could talk him down, then that was good. If she couldn’t, it was better that whatever came next would happen here, in this room, where she could control it, rather than later, on a boat or in the streets of Lothian City, where she could not.

Cerys looked at Ashlynn with an expression that said she understood exactly what was being asked of her and wished with every fiber of her being that it wasn’t. But, just like Lady Ashlynn had said, there wasn’t trust between them yet, and Lady Ashlynn was giving her a chance to earn some of that trust, so she turned to her brother, and when she spoke, her voice carried the same exhausted steadiness that had carried her through her own confession moments ago.

”Her name is Ashlynn Blackwell, Cian,” Cerys said. ”She’s Lord Owain Lothian’s wife. The one who was supposed to have died at the Summer Villa a few days ago.”

The silence that followed the revelation was so heavy that Cerys struggled to breathe. Her lips worked soundlessly for a moment as she tried to find a way to explain things further, but when she saw the smoldering look in her brother’s eyes growing hotter and hotter, she couldn’t find any words that would make it better.

”That’s impossible,” he said, but the word had no force behind it. It was the protest of a man who could already see the truth and was speaking only to give himself one more moment before he had to accept it. ”Ashlynn Blackwell is dead. The demons killed her at the Villa. That’s what the Inquisition determined, that’s what Abbot Recared...”

”Abbot Recared wasn’t there,” Ashlynn said quietly. ”Neither was the Inquisition. Owain tried to murder me on my wedding night, and Sir Broll was one of the men who buried me alive in a shallow grave. He died for that. Sir Kaefin died for trying to force himself on me while my ’husband’ paraded around an imposter dressed up in my clothes.”

”Whatever your Abbot has told you is a fiction invented by Owain’s family and your own Church to conceal the truth,” Ashlynn said ruthlessly, pushing the young acolyte all the way to the breaking point. She knew that she shouldn’t.... This wasn’t the way to ease someone into the truth, but she no longer cared.

This man might not be one of the acolytes who had helped Percivus torture her sister, but he was their brother, and right now, all the fury that Ashlynn had bottled up since learning what happened to Jocelynn found a convenient target in Acolyte Cian.

”That’s a lie,” Cian whispered, but his eyes were wide and darting, searching Ashlynn’s face for the signs of deception he’d been trained to detect, and finding nothing but the smoldering, furious gaze of a young woman who had suffered too much at the hands of the Church and had no fear of its agents.

”Ask your sister,” Ashlynn said again, refusing to give ground to the young man. ”Ask Sir Cynwrig. Ask Baron Loghlan, who staked his family’s future on the truth of what I’ve told him. Or ask Inquisitor Diarmuid, who spent months investigating the ’kitchen girl Lynnda’ before he learned the truth behind the Church’s lies and how far your ’faith’ has fallen in the Church’s insatiable quest for power and control.”

The mention of Diarmuid’s name landed like a physical blow. Cian flinched, his whole body jerking as if he’d been struck, because Diarmuid was real to him in a way that Ashlynn was not. Diarmuid wasn’t just an Inquisitor; he was an Inquisitor from the Holy City. He was supposed to be a man of unquestionable faith.

More than that, he was the man who had come to the Abbey to fetch him and whom Cian had followed without question because the robes and the title and the authority of the Inquisition had always meant truth to him.

And now this woman was telling him that Diarmuid had turned. That an Inquisitor of the Holy Lord of Light had weighed the Church’s word against a witch’s word and chosen the witch.

”No,” Cian said, and this time the word cracked open, spilling something raw and desperate into the room. ”No, that’s not... Diarmuid is an Inquisitor. He serves the Holy Lord. He wouldn’t...”

”He serves the truth,” Ashlynn said. ”Which is more than I can say for your Abbot.”

Cian’s breathing had gone rapid and shallow, his chest rising and falling in quick, sharp bursts beneath his robes. His hands had dropped from the medallion to his sides, and his fingers were curled into fists that trembled with a fine, with a righteous fury.

He’d been afraid that his sister had been corrupted by a demonic trap. He’d been worried that she’d been tainted in a way that would spread to their entire family. But this, this was heresy of a far greater order, and now that he saw it clearly, he couldn’t let it stand...