The Vampire & Her Witch

”What exactly does Lady Ashlynn mean when she says that High Lord Dirar might want to ’settle old debts’?” Erling asked, looking up from the fire to meet Reynold’s stormy gaze. ”Did she give you any ideas?”

”I don’t know,” Reynold said, frowning as he recalled the brief, private conversation that he had with Lady Ashlynn after she’d finished speaking to his parents. ”She asked me if I was as good with a lance as my brother, Rain, and if I’d brought my armor with me.”

There had been more to it than that. Reynold’s mother had pleaded for the return of her second son, and Ashlynn had agreed to release him, but not before explaining the extent of Rain’s transgressions during his time in the Vale of Mists. From fighting a duel with Sir Ollie to insulting Ashlynn at her own dinner table, she’d laid it all bare and made it clear to both Peigi and Tybal how restrained his punishments had been.

When Ashlynn asked Reynold about his skill with a lance, she’d also asked if he was as hot-tempered as his brother or if she could trust him to show restraint of his own.

”I don’t like the sound of that,” Wes said, draining half his cup of wine in a single, long swallow. ”You don’t have many men with you. If it comes to a battle against the Horse Lord, er, against this ’High Lord’s’ horde, you’ll be overwhelmed.”

”I thought the same,” Reynold admitted. ”But her Dominion said that the Eldritch resolve things through contests of strength and skill between champions. If I have to ride against one of their champions, I have some confidence in my skills.”

”And if you lose?” Erling asked. ”What’s on the line if you have to face off against their champions?”

”Likely the fate of our barony,” Reynold said, drinking the last of his wine and pouring himself another cup. ”Lady Ashlynn mentioned that she was redrawing the borders in the ’Verdant Hills’ and reorganizing the lords of the land now that we aren’t bound by the rigid limits the kingdom imposed, but she couldn’t promise where Aleese would land until we’d resolved things with the High Lord.”

”If I lose,” Reynold said, clenching his hand into a fist. ”I might just cost my family the lands we’ve called home for a hundred years,” he said bitterly.

A few days ago, while the three of them had ridden together to help Owain Lothian hunt an elk, he’d told both of these men about the things he’d seen as he scouted the Southern Steppe, but it wasn’t until he heard that his family might lose their place in the world that he realized what he’d really discovered in all the years he’d spent in the saddle.

The further south you went, the more gently the hills rolled, giving way to stretches of tall grasses that extended as far as the eye could see. At night, there was nothing but the sound of wind rustling through the grass, and in the morning, the sun split the sky from the earth in a vision of grass turned to gold.

This summer, Reynold hadn’t just found a place to build a fortress in the lands south of his father’s barony... He’d found a place that called to him in a way nowhere else did. Somewhere beyond the reach of the Lothian Court and the petty squabbles that he was certain would come to define his life once his father was ready to pass on his throne.

It was a place where he felt free, and he’d been close, so close, to finding a way to build a place for himself there... He’d even begun to consider letting Rain have the barony so long as he could prove his claim and defend a southern fort, though he doubted his father would have approved of his decision.

But if the High Lord took back the lands that Reynold’s family had claimed for the past hundred years, then he could forget about ranging further south... He’d be lucky to find a place in Ashlynn’s army, fighting in wars to the north and east, taking him ever further from the place that called to his heart.

Everything he wanted would depend on whether or not he could defeat the High Lord’s champion... and Reynold knew almost nothing about what that battle would entail.

For several moments, the trio fell into silence as the campfire crackled into the night, growing brighter and brighter as the first flickering flames found their way to the rest of the wood Wes had stacked above the kindling.

This time the night before, the inner bailey had been filled with fighting and bloodshed as Ashlynn fought her way into the heart of Lothian Manor. Now, the entire world felt like it was a table that had been flipped end over end, and all three men were struggling to find their place in the new order before the place settings finished falling to the ground.

Erling had been holding himself back, watching the pieces fall while he waited to see where they would land. And now, it seemed like some of those pieces, or perhaps the table itself, were about to crush a man he’d only just begun to think of as a friend.

”What if, what if there was another way?” Erling said slowly as he warmed his hands by the fire. His own conversation with Ashlynn had been weighing him down for most of the day, and he felt like he’d been lost in a fog too thick to see a target. Yet, hearing the ache in Reynold’s voice, he felt like he finally saw something he could aim for, if he was bold enough to do it.

”What if I could protect your barony with the same pact that protected mine?” Erling asked. ”If it meant acknowledging me as his liege lord and becoming my vassal in exchange for my protection... Could your father accept those terms?”