The Vampire & Her Witch

”... pact of blood that bound our lives together for eternity...”

”... might not have lived to see the dawn...”

The phrases slammed into Maela like the hammer of a smith against an anvil, crushing her heart mercilessly between them as Ashlynn’s words forced her to confront a cold, hard truth.

Ashlynn had been powerless when Owain Lothian turned on her. She’d barely survived by fumbling with her powers, and when that hadn’t been enough, she’d been forced to bind herself to a vampire for eternity, just to preserve her own life.

”That, that must have been... horrible,” Micheline said, looking at Ashlynn with wide eyes and speaking while Maela couldn’t. ”All alone, in the dark and the cold and...”

”And powerless,” Maela added when she was finally able to speak around the lump in her throat. ”Tell me something, Ashlynn,” Maela said in a voice that was light and distant. ”If you had known how to use your powers. If you’d learned growing up... Could Owain have done to you what he did? Would you have been forced to bind yourself to a vampire just to survive?”

”I don’t know,” Ashlyn said, surprising both her mother and Micheline. ”Owain’s reputation as the greatest swordsman of the current generation wasn’t undeserved,” Ashlynn said. ”But it was also more than just the result of his skill, talent, and training.”

”Owain was the result of almost a century of plotting and dark sorcery,” Ashlynn said bluntly. ”It began with High Priest Leon Lothian and his brother, Marquis Odhran Lothian, when they corrupted an Eldritch Ancient Oak to ensure the ’destiny’ of their descendants. They harvested good fortune and power from all over the march and beyond to enhance the abilities of their heirs...”

”You weren’t there to see it, Mother,” Jocelynn added, reaching out to hold Ashlynn’s hand. ”The Lothian Throne attacked the lords and ladies of the march with tendrils of darkness, feeding their lives to Owain while Ash fought him. Even with her armor, Ash was wounded several times...”

”If I’d fought him as a witch, it might have been different,” Ashlynn said. ”There were limits to what I was willing to reveal to the lords and ladies of the march that night,” she explained. ”But if I’d known how to use my powers as well as I did after leaving the Briar on the night I married Owain... I’m confident that he couldn’t have killed me.”

”I’m less confident that I could have escaped after revealing myself as a witch,” Ashlynn said honestly. ”Even if I emerged from a fight against Owain with my life intact, I would have become a fugitive, and I’d have run to the same place.”

”But you would have had more freedom,” Maela said, clenching her hands beneath the table until her fingernails bit into her palms. ”You wouldn’t have been forced into a ’blood pact,’ and you...”

”Mother,” Ashlynn interrupted. ”I told you, didn’t I? A witch’s power flows from her desires. The night I met Nyri, my strongest desire was to live, but my second strongest desire was to see Owain Lothian dead, along with Broll and Tommin and everyone else who was responsible for what happened to me.”

”Not Sir Kaefin?” Micheline asked, surprised at the missing name. Everything she was hearing came in so many fragments that she was struggling to put together a complete mental picture of events, but if Ashlynn had killed the knight when she snuck into the Summer Villa, then surely she had a reason. ”But I heard...”

”I killed Kaefin because he saw through my disguise,” Ashlynn said. ”And because he was a sick man who thought he could have his way with me when I appeared to be an ordinary kitchen girl. It wasn’t personal, or vengeance, but it was necessary,” Ashlynn said as her emerald eyes grew hard.

Across the table from her, Maela began to tremble, and she had to fight to keep herself from making a face she didn’t want her daughter to see. Maela had heard words like that before, spoken by her husband’s knights when they hunted pirates who traded in human flesh.

Those knights killed without regret because the men they killed were monsters wearing a human face... Maela could respect those men, and that the things they did were necessary, but she’d never once in her life hoped that her daughter would grow up to resemble them.

And whose fault was it that Ashlynn had been forced to learn these things?

”Nyri asked me that night if I was willing to trade an eternity with her for a brief moment of vengeance,” Ashlynn said, continuing her story. ”And I said yes. I won’t say that I’ve never regretted the decision. There were days and nights early on where I was lost and confused and hurt... and afraid of the woman I’d bound myself to,” she admitted.

”And now?” Maela asked, swallowing heavily and looking at her daughter with a deeply conflicted expression. ”Now that Owain is dead, how many others are left? Have you obtained what you desired that night?”

Was it worth the price you paid? Maela thought, though she couldn’t say the words.

”No, I haven’t,” Ashlynn said, shaking her head. ”If I obtained everything I desired that night, Jocey would have died alongside Owain for what she did,” she said, turning to look into her sister’s seafoam eyes and giving her a gentle smile.

”I left parts of myself in the grave that I crawled out of that night,” Ashlynn said. ”Just like Jocey left parts of herself in the dungeon beneath Lothian Manor. Finding those parts and healing the holes they left is hard, but now, if you ask me what my heart desires... It wants to try,” she said.

”That’s why, when Ash asked if I was willing to join her coven to become a witch, I said yes,” Jocelynn added. There was moisture at the corner of her eyes when she met her sister’s gaze, but her eyes were clear and free of doubt.

”I, I know I did wrong, Mother,” Jocelynn said, turning to face Maela. ”I don’t know if Ash can ever forgive me. But she’s my sister. She’s the most important person to me in the whole world...”

”So you’re doing this to make it up to her?” Maela asked, narrowing her eyes at the pair of sisters.

”I’m doing this for more reasons than that,” Jocelynn said, gathering up her courage and reminding herself of Nyrielle’s advice. ”Ash isn’t the only one who nearly lost her life out here. I never want to face that again. I never want to be that weak and powerless and dependent on people to protect me from every person with a little bit of strength and a little bit of authority to abuse...”

”And I want to live in Ashlynn’s world,” Jocelynn said. ”Not just because I’m her sister, but because I’ve earned my place in her world. I know it won’t be easy,” she said. ”And I know I might die trying, but... This is my path to choose,” she declared. ”And I won’t change my mind.”

”You two,” Maela said, taking a deep, shuddering breath as she looked from the fish and the rest of the feast to her daughters, to Micheline and briefly, to the Heavens above as she searched for the words she needed...

Words that wouldn’t tear her family apart when her daughters were fighting so hard to stitch it back together. Because whatever she said at this moment would likely ring in her daughter’s ears for the rest of their lives.