The Vampire & Her Witch

Ashlynn’s arms closed around her sister the way the sea closed around a drowning sailor, pulling her in and holding her fast against the current that had been dragging them both toward the dark for nine long months.

”You’re safe now,” Ashlynn whispered into Jocelynn’s hair, feeling the violent trembling that wracked her sister’s body as Jocelynn pressed her face against Ashlynn’s shoulder and wept. ”I’m here. No one is going to hurt you.”

As soon as she said ’no one is going to hurt you,’ Ashlynn felt a spasm in her chest, as if something had constricted around her heart. Part of her, a dark, violent part of her that strained against the cage she’d trapped it in, wanted to break her promise. To throw her sister to the ground for betraying her and to denounce her for everything she’d suffered because of her sister’s selfishness.

Ashlynn knew she couldn’t keep those feelings locked away forever, no matter what she did, and the place she’d trapped them fed on her own darkness, growing stronger every day. But today wasn’t about finding a way to resolve the hurt in her heart. It was about destroying the man who had hurt them both so badly that neither sister would ever be the same again.

Until Owain was dead, the only side of her that Jocelynn needed to see was the side that loved and cherished her, just like she always had... Just like she hoped she always would.

”I’m here, Jocey,” Ashlynn repeated as she gently stroked her sister’s hair. ”He won’t ever hurt you again, I promise.”

The words were meant for Jocelynn alone, but the great hall was quiet enough that they carried further than Ashlynn intended, reaching the nearest tables where Charlotte Otker clasped her hands over her mouth, and fresh tears spilled down her already wet cheeks.

Her words also reached the Aleese table, where Baroness Peigi fought to cling to the composure expected of a baroness, even though no one was paying much attention to her or anyone besides the pair of sisters reuniting in the center of the Great Hall and the standoff between Lord Owain and the flame-haired knight who towered over him.

Jocelynn couldn’t speak. She wanted to say a thousand things, but all of them tangled together in a knot of grief and guilt and desperate, aching relief. She wanted to say she was sorry. She wanted to say she didn’t deserve this. She wanted to tell Ashlynn about Eleanor, about what she’d done, about the knife strapped to her thigh and the wedding she’d been about to endure and the monster she’d been preparing to kill...

She wanted to tell her big sister about every terrible thing that had happened since the night she whispered a secret into the ear of a man who used it to destroy her sister’s life. More than anything in the world, she wanted to spill out all of those things and then hear her sister tell her that it was all right, and that everything would be better now, even though she didn’t deserve anything ever being better again.

But when she opened her mouth, all that came out was a single, strangled word, spoken in a voice so small and broken that it sounded like it belonged to a child who had woken from a nightmare and found her sister sitting on the edge of her bed, ready to chase the shadows away.

”Ash...”

Ashlynn held her tighter. She could feel everything, from the bones of Jocelynn’s corset pressing against her chest, to the trembling of her sister’s shoulders, and the dampness of tears soaking through the fabric of her sailor’s coat. She could feel the thudding of Jocelynn’s heart, wild and fast, and beneath it all, pressed against her hip through the layers of Jocelynn’s cerulean skirts, she could feel the rigid outline of something that didn’t belong beneath a wedding dress.

A knife. Strapped to her sister’s thigh, exactly where Captain Devlin had warned her it would be.

”We’re too alike, you and I,” Ashlynn said as she gently pressed against the knife, just enough for Jocelynn to realize that she knew it was there. ”But his life belongs to me, little sister,” she whispered. ”So just let go, and let me take care of things from here.”

Jocelynn’s face heated under the tears, and she wanted to say something, to explain that she’d meant to do it for Ashlynn, because she couldn’t let Owain go on living after he’d destroyed a sister who had meant more to her than she’d ever realized until she was gone. She wanted to say so much, but Ashlynn just pulled her head in close, gently stroking her hair the same way she had when they were both little girls and the scariest thing in the world was the crash of lightning and thunder on a dark and stormy night.

Jocelynn had so much she wanted to say, but right now, her sister was holding her in her arms, and she was alive, and she was safe, and for a few precious heartbeats, that was all that mattered in the world.

”YOU CAN’T BE ALIVE!”

Owain’s voice shattered the moment like a stone hurled through glass, ringing off the high timbers of the ceiling and silencing even the whispered conversations that had begun to ripple through the tables. He stood on the dais where Ollie’s shove had driven him, flanked by Sir Gilander, who had moved to his lord’s side the moment the confrontation began, and his face was a mask of fury that had finally cracked wide enough to show what lived beneath it.

”I saw you die!” Owain shouted, jabbing a finger toward the woman in the cavalier hat who held his bride in her arms as if she had any right to her. ”I ended you! You were supposed to be burned and scattered to the winds so that nothing of you would be left to haunt me!”