The Vampire & Her Witch

”From this day forward, we are no longer subjects of the Kingdom of Gaal.”

The sound of falling utensils filled the air as forks and knives fell from limp fingers while dozens of lords and ladies felt the turning of their thoughts grind to a jarring halt.

”Did, did she just say that, that we’re...” Sir Garrik Maeril said, unable to believe what he’d just heard and equally unable to speak the words that Lady Ashlynn’s declaration had implied.

Treason.

Rebellion.

Doomed.

All three landed on his mind in rapid succession, but none of them could make it past his tongue, and he wasn’t alone in his reaction.

At the far end of the lower table to which he’d been exiled, Valeri Leufroy felt a cold chill pierce his heart as he imagined what would come next.

War.

It was unavoidable. It had taken time, but the kingdom ruthlessly crushed the Shield Breaker Rebellion and every family involved in that disaster had suffered generations of shame, humiliation, poverty, and suppression from the loyalists of the kingdom, assuming their houses weren’t broken by the Crown.

Once the king learned that Lady Ashlynn intended to rebel, the armies of the kingdom would descend on Lothian March like a swarm of locusts, and Leufroy Barony, which had been safe from demons for decades as one of the march’s easternmost territories, would suddenly find itself at the frontline of a war against forces marching from Keating Duchy to the east.

Valeri’s head turned to the side in slow, halting movements as he met his son’s eyes, hoping against hope that Tulori had formed enough friendships during his years at Keating Academy to find them a path to escape, but his son was still staring wide-eyed at Lady Ashlynn...

No, not at Lady Ashlynn, but next to her. Tulori was staring at his own sister and Valeri could almost see the wheels beginning to turn in his son’s mind as the younger man calculated whether it would be better to stand with his father and escape, or his sister who was poised to rise in Ashlynn’s rebel nation.

Others in the room were making the same calculations that Tulori was making, but some of them were much further ahead.

Serle Otker had already been looking for a way to recover from his blunder of offering Charlotte as a bride for Sir Ollie, but now, he saw something much richer taking shape before him, so long as he could find a way to grasp it. The Otker Baron was certain that war was coming, but with every war came something precious.

Risks.

Rewards.

Opportunity.

Certainly there would be danger, but he could already see a map taking shape in his mind, and unlike Baron Leufroy, whose domain held a pair of rugged mountain passes that connected to the baronies of Keating, the far end of Otker Canyon was held by Count Dylan DuCoumont... Lady Ashlynn’s uncle!

If Lord Dylan could be convinced to side with Lady Ashlynn in her rebellion, then Otker Barony wouldn’t be on the front lines at all, and if he could help her convince her Uncle to stand with them, then there might just be a chance for the Otker family to rise higher than it ever had before.

But while the lords in the east fretted about the kingdom’s response, one lord to the south had an entirely different reaction.

”We’re on our own,” Tybal Aleese muttered, looking from his wife, Peigi, to his son, Reynold, to see if they understood as well as he did.

Lady Ashlynn had just declared war on the Kingdom of Gaal and the Church that supported it, even if she hadn’t used those words, and it was all but certain that the northern and eastern territories would soon become embroiled in that war. But matters were different for Aleese at the southwestern corner of the march. The kingdom couldn’t easily reach Aleese Barony, but someone else could...

Demons.

The Horse Lord’s Horde.

For years, Tybal Aleese and the Demon Lord who ruled over the Southern Steppe had traded blows in a series of increasingly futile raids. Each year they committed fewer and fewer men to their offensive campaigns, and each year they defended themselves a little bit better but the border never truly moved.

Tybal knew full well that he couldn’t extend further without additional support from the kingdom. If he did, his forces would quickly find themselves overwhelmed. But the same was true of the Horse Lord. If the demons pressed north, the forces of the march would rally around the Aleese banner to crush any raiding party that penetrated too deeply into the march.

But if the march was busy fighting a war to the north and the east, then there would be no reinforcements for the southwest... The Aleese Barony would have to stand alone.

Most people in the Great Hall were thinking similar thoughts, but a few people at the center table had begun to smile as Lady Ashlynn made the bold declaration they’d been waiting for, and one of those people took the opportunity to make his own position abundantly clear to the rest of the lords and ladies of the march.

”It’s about time!” Loghlan Dunn said in a booming voice as he stood up from his seat at the table.

”For too long, we’ve paid our heavy tithes to the Crown and the Church, and what have they done for us in turn?” Loghlan asked rhetorically. ”They’ve conspired against us with ’dark miracles’ and tyrant rulers. They plunder our treasuries and send our sons off to fight in endless wars while we pick up the pieces and struggle just to hold the line. No more!”

”I’m done bowing down to a king I never see and a church that treats me like a tool,” Baron Loghlan Dunn declared. ”Lady Ashlynn, all of Dunn stands with you,” he said, gesturing for his knights, scattered across the hall, to stand.

Valeri Leufroy wasn’t surprised when the pauper knight sitting next to him stood along with his lady, but he’d expected better of the older, wiser heads among Baron Dunn’s vassals. Yet one after another, he watched every knightly family stand in support of madness and rebellion until the only vassal Loghlan had that was still sitting was the woman who had to be carried to the banquet on a litter because of her injuries.

”Madness...” Valeri muttered as he watched it unfold. It was the only word he could think of to describe what he was seeing, and the madness was only just beginning.