The Vampire & Her Witch

For the second time this night, the doors of the Great Hall opened to reveal something shocking, though at least this time, the doors didn’t slam open with the force of a battering ram. Still, to many of those watching, the sight of the people entering hit them nearly as hard.

Hugo Hanrahan came first.

The slender young man with the hawk-like features and the prominent nose walked with his shoulders back and his chin lifted, though the effort it cost him to maintain that posture was visible in the tightness of his jaw and the way his hands stayed pressed flat against his thighs, as if he didn’t trust them to hang freely at his sides.

The emerald-and-midnight gambeson he wore was too broad in the shoulders for his narrow frame, and it gave him the look of a boy wearing his father’s armor. But he was here, and he was walking forward with his head held high despite the pressure of everyone’s gazes landing on him, and that alone marked him as very different from when most people in the Great Hall had last seen the Hanrahan bastard.

Behind Hugo walked a knight that no one in the Great Hall had expected to see alive again.

Underneath his coat of mail, Sir Carwyn Belvin wore the same emerald-and-midnight gambeson as Hugo, marking him as one of Lady Ashlynn’s people, but the way he walked, half a pace behind Hugo with his hand held close to the flail at his waist, resembled a retainer following his lord more than a knight escorting their charge.

Behind them came the others who had been waiting in the vestibule until Ashlynn gave the word that it was safe to enter. Ashlynn had expected trouble, after all, and many of the people entering now would have had very little hope of protecting themselves if things had gone badly, even if they did have the protective charms Ollie had carved or the gambesons lined with Nightweaver silk.

Others, even though they wouldn’t have been in danger, were simply far too shocking to have been included with the first group to enter.

Isabell, silver-haired and sharp-eyed behind her spectacles, surveyed the Great Hall with the methodical calm of a woman who had assessed fortifications far more imposing than a nobleman’s dining room. Inquisitor Diarmuid followed behind her, his dark eyes falling instantly on the slumped figures of the Inquisition lying at Ashlynn’s feet. His lips tightened slightly at the sight, but he quickly schooled his features into a carefully neutral expression as he started assessing the reactions of the guests gathered in the Great Hall.

Behind them, a strange trio made their way forward, following respectfully behind the Inquisitor and the engineer. There were a few people who recognized Lady Mairwen, particularly among the young ladies attending the Grand Ceremony, who remembered her as the daughter of one of Baron Dunn’s vassals. The young man who accompanied her looked similar enough to her to be kin, and the awkward way the midnight blue and emerald gambeson sat on his growing frame made him look even younger than he actually was.

But it was the woman walking between the squire and his sister who drew the most surprised reaction of all. The skirt and blouse she wore were exceptionally well-made, even though they weren’t embellished with elaborate embroidery the way most noblewomen would want to style their clothing.

But, no matter how well tailored her loose blouse and flowing skirt might be, nothing could hide the obvious bulge of a heavily pregnant belly, and the way she walked, with one hand resting protectively on her belly, only made it clearer that the young lady with the pale blonde hair was due to become a mother within a handful of weeks at most.

For a moment, the Great Hall simply stared.

Then the whispers began.

”Is that really Hugo Hanrahan?” a lady at the Rundel table whispered to her neighbor. ”Baron Ian’s bastard son?”

”Isn’t that the Guild Master, the engineer from Blackwell who went missing during the raids?” someone else said. ”The older woman with the silver hair,” they added, pointing directly at Isabell. ”I’m certain that’s her.”

”So the Hanrahans are missing because they already went over to Lady Ashlynn’s side?” a third person speculated. ”And Master Isabell brought them over? But then, where’s Baron Ian? Where’s his son Bastian? Why is it just Hugo?”

”Who’s the pregnant woman in the back?” someone asked at a different table. ”Say, doesn’t she look a bit like Lady Ashlynn?”

The last whisper spread faster than the others, rippling outward from the tables nearest the aisle where the resemblance was easiest to see. Samira was not Ashlynn’s twin, not by any stretch, but there was a similarity in the shape of her face and the color of her hair that had been enough to fool a march full of people who had only ever seen Owain’s bride from a distance. Now, standing in the Great Hall with the real Ashlynn Blackwell only a dozen paces away, the resemblance and the obvious pregnancy took on an entirely different meaning.

On the dais, Owain Lothian went very still.

His hazel eyes fixed on Hugo first, and the rage that rose in his chest rampaged through his heart like a beast with claws. Hugo had been his. His steward, his bookkeeper, his errand boy. He had been a poor replacement for Sir Kaefin in most things, but he’d earned just enough of Owain’s trust to help with his more sensitive schemes... like purchasing the Spider Demon Venom he’d used to torment Sir Tommin’s family, and to trigger his own father’s downfall.

And now Hugo was here, wearing the colors of Ashlynn’s soldiers and walking into the Great Hall as though he had the right to stand among the lords of the march.

As if seeing Hugo showing his face here wasn’t bad enough, Owain’s gaze slid past Hugo and found Samira.

For a moment, a flicker of confusion crossed his face. The girl was still pretending to be pregnant, which was absurd. He’d bedded her enough times to know that the timing didn’t work. She’d clearly overdone it with the padding because she looked like she was almost ready to pop. But that was impossible, because he hadn’t bedded her since...

Owain’s eyes narrowed. He counted the months in his head, then counted them again, and the answer he arrived at was the same both times.

No. That was impossible. The girl had been playing a part. The belly was padding, a costume piece, part of whatever theatrical production Ashlynn had orchestrated to humiliate him before the court. It had to be. He’d told her very clearly that Jocelynn would be the only one allowed to bear his child...

Owain chopped the thought off ruthlessly and turned his glare on Sir Gilander.

”You told me demons destroyed the Summer Villa,” Owain said, his voice low enough that only the knights closest to the throne could hear. ”You told me the soldiers there were killed, and the rest were taken toward the Vale of Mists as captives.”

”I saw the bodies of the soldiers myself, Your Grace,” Gillander said quickly. ”As to the tracks, my scouts followed them far enough to be certain that any prisoners the demons took were taken to the Vale...”

”Your scouts,” Owain said, his voice dripping with venom. ”Are going to have a very difficult morning when this is all over.”

On Owain’s opposite side, Sir Garrik Maeril’s jaw had gone slack as he stared at the group entering the Great Hall.

More accurately, he was staring at the man walking behind Hugo Hanrahan.

Sir Carwyn Belvin had been one of the most tragic casualties of the recent demon raids, and few people knew how tragic his death had been more than Garrik Maeril. While the two men weren’t close, Garrik had learned a great deal from Sir Carwyn’s father, Sir Rhodri Belvin, when he was still a squire visiting tournaments in his father’s shadow. Years later, he’d repaid Sir Rhodri’s lessons by inviting Sir Carwyn to squire for him.

In the years since Sir Rhodri had retired, it hadn’t been uncommon for Sir Carwyn to visit Maeril whenever he had a harvest to bring to market in Lothian City rather than selling it in Hanrahan Town, and Sir Garrik had become even better acquainted with his southern neighbor and his young wife than he’d been before...

Which is how he knew that Sir Carwyn’s wife was still carrying their first child when her husband was taken captive by demons, clinging to life after losing a duel to a serpentine demon-knight.

Only now, Sir Carwyn was here, and he looked like he hadn’t been injured at all. Which meant that either the story told by the younger knight’s servants about his capture was a complete fantasy...

Or something even more impossible was happening here.