The Vampire & Her Witch

”I understand Lord Liam is still missing...?”

Owain’s question landed precisely where he intended it to, in the soft place between Loghlan’s composure and his fear. But Loghlan had been preparing for this moment since Maeril, and he met it with the steady, tired expression of a father who had rehearsed his grief until it felt almost genuine.

”Still searching,” Loghlan said heavily. ”I’ve left men behind to continue combing the western frontier. Good trackers, men who know the wilderness. They’ll carry on while we attend to the ceremonies, and once the Grand Ceremony is concluded, they’ll head back to the search.”

”The frontier,” Owain repeated, and the word carried an edge that the lords around them wouldn’t have missed. ”The same frontier where demons raided my Summer Villa and murdered my wife.”

Loghlan heard the performance in Owain’s voice, the fury that was real enough in its heat but manufactured in its timing, as if Owain was more offended by the loss of his family’s villa than the loss of his wife, and Loghlan struggled to keep his own expression carefully sorrowful.

”I share your grief, my lord,” Loghlan said solemnly. ”Lady Ashlynn was...”

”Lady Ashlynn was a treasure that this march did not deserve,” Owain said, and the crack in his voice was so perfectly placed that Loghlan had to remind himself that the man standing before him had tried to beat that treasure to death on their wedding night.

”Which is why,” Owain added, turning his gaze on the assembled barons. ”After the ceremonies are complete, I intend to lead every lord in this march west. We will call up every knight and soldier, we will find the cowardly demons responsible for these raids, and we will eradicate every last one of them.”

”The Dunns will ride with you, my lord,” Loghlan said slowly as the conversations in the hall died down around them. ”You have my word on that. I only ask that you won’t begrudge me using my own scouts to continue the search for Liam while we march. A father’s hope is a hard thing to set aside,” he said, clutching his hands together and holding them over his heart.

”Do as you please with your scouts,” Owain said, and the dismissiveness in his voice was genuine rather than performed. ”So long as your knights are with me when we move to crush these demons, the rest will make no difference.”

He clapped Loghlan on the shoulder hard enough that the older man felt the force of it through his doublet and then moved on to greet Valeri Leufroy and his son Tulori, who had been waiting with the patient stillness of men who understood that their turn would come when Owain decided it would.

Loghlan watched him go and allowed himself one slow, measured breath before turning to survey the hallway.

He knew that he’d be forced to endure Owain’s ’hospitality’ this evening, but clearly the young lord’s successful hunt had managed to blunt both the sharpness of his tongue and the force of his ire over Loghlan’s absence during the hunt. It helped, Loghlan supposed, that Owain had seen Loghlan ’suffering’ for his missing son, otherwise Owain might have lingered a moment or two longer to twist the knife even deeper before he moved on to speak with the other lords.

But now that Loghlan was free of his host’s attention, he had more important matters to attend to, and he wasn’t about to let Lady Ashlynn down when the requests she’d made of him had been so small.

Loghlan found Baron Erling Fayle standing alone near a window alcove at the far end of the hallway, holding a cup of wine that he didn’t appear to be drinking. The youngest baron in the March cut a modest figure among the richer lords; his doublet was well-made but plainly cut, and his sandy hair fell across his forehead in a way that made him look more like a squire who had wandered into the wrong gathering than a ruling lord.

It was, Loghlan suspected, entirely deliberate. Erling Fayle had built a career on being overlooked, and the practiced mediocrity of his appearance was as carefully constructed as any of Owain’s masks of charm. The only difference, Loghlan supposed, was that Owain’s mask concealed a predator while Erling’s mask was intended to protect him from predators like Owain.

”Baron Fayle,” Loghlan said, keeping his voice conversational as he settled into the alcove beside the younger man. ”I trust the journey from Fayle wasn’t too treacherous?”

”The roads were tolerable, my lord,” Erling said with a pleasant, unremarkable smile. ”The cold this winter has been harder on the vineyards than it was on any of my people,” he said, keeping the conversation shallow. ”I’ll be making apologies to anyone who was expecting a decent vintage from our cellars next year if the winter drags on like this.”

”I’m sure they’ll survive the disappointment,” Loghlan said. He let a beat of silence pass, then lowered his voice enough that the words wouldn’t carry beyond the alcove. ”I have a message for you, Baron Fayle. From a mutual acquaintance.”

Erling’s smile didn’t change, but the look in his eyes changed subtly. His gaze was sharper, and he scanned the hall the way a hunter gazed over tall grasses, looking for signs of anything moving that might decide to hunt the hunter before he could reach his own prey.

Erling only nodded for Loghlan to speak when he was certain that there was no one paying them enough attention to overhear whatever the other man had come to say.

”I was told to mention,” Loghlan continued, keeping his tone light, as if they were still discussing nothing more consequential than the weather and next year’s vintage. ”That the message comes from a little bird. A raven, in fact.”

The cup in Erling’s hand went still.

For a long moment, the youngest baron in the March said nothing. The color didn’t quite drain from his face; he was too controlled for that, but Loghlan watched a rapid succession of calculations pass behind those deceptively mild eyes. Shock first, then assessment, then the careful, probing caution of a man who had just heard someone invoke the most private secret of his life in a hallway full of lords who would kill him if they knew the truth.

”The raven,” Erling said, very quietly. ”Has it delivered messages to you as well?”