The Vampire & Her Witch

”So, if Lady Ashlynn needs me, then that’s what I’ll do.”

Riwal’s declaration echoed through the sitting room, landing on Tosha’s heart as hammer blows. Suddenly, the warmth of the hearth had gone from comforting to stifling, and the room that had felt cozy and intimate transformed into a prison cell she couldn’t escape from.

Ten years ago, she’d watched her husband’s body burn on a pyre while she held Riwal’s tiny hand in hers. Tonight, she would stand beside him and watch over another pyre for Riwal’s grandfather. And now, she could all but see the pyre that would consume her son’s body when he rode to a war that he was too young to fight, and too proud to turn away from.

”Your Dominion, please,” Tosha said, sliding from her seat to kneel on the plush carpet of the sitting room. ”It’s your right to demand this of your vassals, but please, please don’t ask this of him. Sir Ildut served as a squire in the War of Inches, and he’s still strong and fit to ride to war; let him lead our men in battle while...” she started to say only to stop as Ashlynn’s hardened emerald gaze fell on her.

She wanted to ask that Riwal be allowed to stay home so he could learn to be what a baron should. She even considered asking for a few more years for Riwal to grow and train before riding off to war, but... wars didn’t wait for a man to grow up.

Like Sir Ildut, her husband had been little more than a squire during the War of Inches, but he hadn’t refused Bors Lothian’s call because he knew that he couldn’t. And neither could Riwal.

”Do you think I’m being unreasonable with you?” Ashlynn asked, looking from Tosha to Riwal and back again. ”Do you think the price of ruling over Saliou is too high?”

”This is the price every lord pays and the burden every lord carries, your Dominion,” Riwal recited. ”Our struggles must be greater to match up to the privileges we are born to. To go to war... This is a lord’s struggle,” he said firmly.

”But Riwal, you,” Tosha started, staring at her son and cursing him for choosing this moment to embody his grandfather’s lessons about what it meant to be a man and a lord. If Riwal was older and capable of fighting for himself... Ten years from now, if he’d said the same things, she might have been proud, even if she feared for his life. But now, he was too young to understand what he was saying.

”You aren’t ready to go to war,” Tosha said, even though what she meant was that she wasn’t ready to lose him. ”You don’t even have armor of your own yet, and, and you, you...” Tosha tried to say only for her chest to deflate as she saw her son preparing to argue with her.

Every argument she could summon was feeble, and she knew it. Lady Ashlynn had given them until summer, which was plenty of time to have armor made. If there were things he needed to learn, he had months still to learn them. If the only thing she could summon was a fear of losing her son, it wasn’t enough to change anything, especially when she saw that same stubborn look in Riwal’s eyes that she’d so often seen in his father’s...

”Enough,” Ashlynn said, softening her tone as she stood up, walking around the small table to help Tosha back into her chair. ”I’m not going to send your son to war when he’s not old enough to fight,” Ashlynn said, resting a hand on Tosha’s shoulder while her gaze shifted to Riwal.

”You have a good heart, Riwal,” Ashlynn said. ”And I hope you can keep it in the years to come, but your mother’s right. You’re not ready.”

”Thank you, Lady Ashlynn,” Tosha said as she blotted tears from her eyes. ”Thank you...”

”Don’t thank me yet,” Ashlynn said as she returned to her seat. ”And don’t look so disappointed, Riwal,” Ashlynn scolded lightly as she looked at the young lord. ”Battlefields aren’t glorious places, and the battles ahead of us will be far worse than anything the march has seen since the Brothers’ War. Don’t be in a rush to step onto a field of battle like that.”

”Yes, your Dominion,” Riwal said sheepishly.

”Riwal isn’t ready for war or for the throne of Saliou,” Ashlynn repeated. ”But Tosha,” Ashlynn added in a sterner tone. ”You aren’t ready to be his regent either. You’re a good mother, but a good regent would have protested such a heavy levy of soldiers. You can’t possibly offer up three hundred men and half your knights for years at a time and still tend to your fields and pay your tithes,” Ashlynn explained.

”What I asked of you was unreasonable, and a good regent would have recognized that,” Ashlynn said. ”A good regent would also have told their charge that he wasn’t mature enough to make the decision he was making instead of pleading with him to change his mind. A regent bears more responsibility than a parent, and those responsibilities are different from the ones a mother bears.”

”I see,” Tosha said. Her shoulders slumped, and her posture deflated as she bit her lower lip to hold back the scathing, self-deprecating words that wanted to spill from her tongue. ”You were testing us.”

”I was,” Ashlynn admitted. ”But this isn’t a test that you pass or fail. It’s a test that tells me how to support you, your family, and your domain. I have a proposal for you,” Ashlynn said. ”Are you willing to hear it, both as a mother and as a regent?”

”You’d still accept me as a regent?” Tosha said, surprised by Ashlynn’s generosity after her abysmal performance.

”I will, on two conditions,” Ashlynn said with a soft smile on her lips. ”First, I will take Riwal away from you in the fall, but not to send him to war. I’m establishing an academy in the Vale of Mists, similar to the ones in Keating and the Royal Capital. Lady Adala has already agreed to attend in the fall, and I’d like to see Riwal there too, every year, for the next four or five years before he ever considers taking his father’s throne.”

”During that time,” Ashlynn added. ”You need to accept some tutoring of your own. I’m still reorganizing the march, and I’m not convinced that all of the current barons are people that you should learn from, but I’ll select someone to serve as your advisor and mentor for the next several months.”

”War is coming for us, one way or another,” Ashlynn said. ”I’ll delay it for as long as I can, and I’ll do everything I can to give both you and Riwal the time that you need to prepare yourselves and your domain. When the time finally comes to fight to protect the nation we’re building, I hope I can count on you both.”

”You can count on me, your Dominion,” Riwal said firmly as he stood up from his chair before kneeling before Ashlynn and placing the tips of his fingers over his heart, just the way Lord Liam had taught him. ”On my honor and the honor of Saliou, I promise.”

”Good,” Ashlynn said, nodding at the young man before turning back to his mother. ”Do those arrangements work for you, Lady Tosha?”

”They’re more than generous, your Dominion,” Tosha said, standing up to give Ashlynn the deepest curtsey of her life. Ashlynn might have rejected the title of Saintess, but at this moment, the word burned itself deeply into Tosha’s heart as she realized the sort of woman who had come to take the throne of the march.

The distance between them couldn’t be any wider, and Lady Ashlynn had just made it very clear how much Tosha was lacking. And yet, rather than feeling defeated by the gap between them, Tosha felt a stirring in her heart unlike any she’d felt before. There was a shining beacon before her, lighting the way forward...

It wouldn’t be easy to draw closer to Lady Ashlynn and the example she set, but Tosha was determined to try, not just for Riwal’s sake but her own as well.