The Vampire & Her Witch

The corridors of Lothian Manor’s guest wing had begun to fill with people making their way from the Great Hall to their chambers under the watchful eyes of Ashlynn’s forces.

It helped that Jean, the acting Master of Kitchens, had rallied the kitchen staff to send warm meals to individual rooms, and servants carried trays loaded with bread so fresh from the manor’s great ovens that it filled the air with steam while others moved from room to room with warm pots of stew.

The most important thing Jean had done, however, was to send every room a heaping bowl of roasted, salted nuts mixed with dried fruits, small bits of hard cheese, and thin slices of cured meat.

The evening’s events in the Great Hall had inflicted varying degrees of trauma on the people who witnessed them, but even more on the people who participated in them. Like snacks placed on a bar in the most common of taverns, the small dishes that Jean provided to every room were intended to help remind people who couldn’t even think about eating that their bodies needed food.

One nibble would turn into two, and then another until each person realized they really were hungry, at which point, they would discover the bread and stew waiting for them. No one could have sat through the feast that was supposed to take place this evening, but neither would they go to bed hungry.

As servants and guests mixed in the corridors, one figure moved through the press of people in a bubble of open space filled with a combination of reverence, respect, and a small measure of fear.

News that Sir Ollie Heartwood had been the one who killed Sir Franc in the vestibule outside the Great Hall had spread through the manor faster than grasshoppers fleeing a wildfire and the emerald green tabard he wore over his armor was still stained with the blood of the men he’d fought and slain during Ashlynn’s assault on the manor.

Some people, as soon as they saw him, shrank back in fear, as if he would cut them down with his dark cleaver for having supported Owain or the Lothian family in the past.

Most, however, drew back with reverent bows and a few offered heartfelt words as the young knight passed.

”Thank you, Sir Ollie...”

”You saved my father, Sir Ollie; I can never repay you...”

”Sir Ollie, I, we, my whole family owes you a debt...”

Everyone had witnessed the horrifying power of the Lothian Throne this night, but at the same time, they’d watched as Sir Ollie led the charge against its power with Templars in his wake but everyone who watched him struggle against the dark tendrils of power emanating from the throne had seen that it was Sir Ollie alone who could cut people free of the throne’s power, and no one would soon forget the lives he’d saved tonight.

Ollie barely heard the words of thanks as he moved through the corridors. One of Jean’s men had already told him where to find the room he sought, and Ollie’s pale gaze was fixed straight ahead as he counted doorways until he reached the one he sought. Once he reached the door, however, his heart hammered in his chest, and his hand hesitated just inches from the door as a sudden dread overwhelmed him.

He wasn’t worried that something had happened to the people who were supposed to be on the far side of the door... The fighting hadn’t come close to this wing of the manor, and the chances that any of the manor guards had come to retaliate against his family while the fighting was still happening were vanishingly small.

Nine months.

It had been nine months since he’d last seen his family, and in that time, Ollie had changed enough that he hardly recognized himself at times. When he’d arrived in Lothian wearing his old clothes, he got a physical reminder of just how much he’d physically grown compared to the man he’d been, but the rest of the changes were even greater.

He could always return to the kitchens to cook, but he no longer belonged in them the way he had before. He’d become the knight he always dreamed of being, but that knighthood came with costs he’d never dreamed of paying, and one of those costs had been painted across his emerald tabard in waves of crimson over the course of tonight’s battle. For a moment, he considered turning away from the door and returning to the Gilded Horns in Lothian City where he could wash away the blood and traces of the battle before returning in freshly washed clothing.

At least that way his parents wouldn’t be confronted with visible proof of the carnage he’d left in his wake tonight when they reunited for the first time in almost a year.

But the other changes were even more shocking than the knighthood and the violence that accompanied it.

Already, the people of Lothian Manor knew that Sir Ollie was special. Soon, everyone would also know that he’d become a witch, one of the most powerful forms of ’demon’ they’d been taught to fear and distrust their entire lives.

Ollie didn’t care if the common people were afraid of him for being a witch. He’d learned to overcome that fear with patience and small acts of kindness every time someone new came to his village in need of a safe place to stay after they’d become caught up in the war between Ashlynn and Owain.

Ollie cared even less if the noblemen and women who currently praised him came to fear him for carrying the mantle of witchcraft. He had long grown accustomed to the disdain of the aristocracy, and while he deeply hoped that his fellow knights could accept him into their ranks, enough people like Sir Gavin had already accepted him that he felt like he could find his way among his new peers.

But if his father, or his mother, looked at him with even a fraction of the fear he’d seen on the faces of some of the people in the hall tonight, or if they turned away from him when they learned the truth... he didn’t know how his heart could bear that pain.

”Courage,” he reminded himself. A knight needed the courage to do what was right, no matter what it might cost. Moreover, while he was afraid of how his parents might react to the man he’d become, he held no shame in it. If he had to face the decisions that led him here all over again, he would make them yet again.

He just hoped his parents would understand...