The Vampire & Her Witch

For several heartbeats, Maela sat almost perfectly still, staring at her daughters as she searched for the right words. In the end, she gave up the search because there were no right words. Not for this. But her daughters deserved an answer nonetheless.

”I don’t understand,” Maela admitted, setting her hands on the table, though whether it was because she was preparing to stand or because she needed the support of something solid was difficult to say.

”Mother Koulma, in the convent, said that a Confessor must first understand the path a person followed to arrive in a place of darkness before she can hope to lead them back to the Light,” Maela recited. ”To understand the steps that lead to darkness without descending into darkness yourself is one of the greatest struggles a Confessor must face,” she said.

Hearing her mother recite the teachings of the Confessors, Jocelynn bristled, gathering herself for a hot retort as she sifted through the pearls of wisdom bestowed on her by the greatest Confessor she’d ever known. Jocelynn owed her life to her cousin, Eleanor, and she wasn’t about to let her mother use the words of Eleanor’s order to describe Ashlynn as a sinner lost in darkness.

Ashlynn’s hand shifted slightly, applying gentle pressure to her sister’s arm. She shook her head slightly, quieting her sister long enough for their mother to say her piece. Perhaps for the last time, if their mother’s posture was any indication.

”I can’t understand the paths you’ve walked to arrive here,” Maela said. ”What Owain did to you, Ashlynn,” Maela said, balling her hands up into fists that trembled with impotent fury that had lost its target the day she learned of Owain’s death. ”I can’t imagine it.”

”It was supposed to be the happiest night of your life when you and your husband became one,” Maela said, biting her lower lip as she remembered the useless advice she’d given Ashlynn just hours before Owain tried to murder her eldest daughter. ”My wedding night was a precious night for your father and me... It was supposed to be special for you too.”

”I don’t know what it feels like to have that ripped away from you any more than I know how horribly alone and betrayed you must have felt in the cold and the dark of that night,” Maela said. ”And as fierce as my father called me, I can’t comprehend the strength it took to crawl out of your own grave,” she said, looking down at her hands on the table as she found the weight of Ashlynn’s gaze too heavy to bear.

”How could I hope to lead you back to the Light if I can’t understand the path you’ve walked?” Maela said softly. ”How can I help a daughter who betrayed her sister’s greatest secret... A daughter whose actions ripped her sister away from us and pushed her onto a path of all this suffering?”

”I can’t,” Maela confessed, looking up at her daughters with tight lips and puffy eyes. ”I doubt any Confessor could.”

”Eleanor could,” Jocelynn said, no longer willing to silently endure her mother’s confession of inadequacy. ”Eleanor gave everything to help me,” she said as hot tears gathered in her eyes. ”Even before Percivus threw us in the dungeon to torture us, she was trying every day to help me see the truth that I’d been so blind to...”

”And to help me feel like there was still something I could do that would make my life worth living,” Jocelynn said softly. ”Eleanor didn’t need to understand. She listened, and she asked questions, and she said things I needed to hear even if I didn’t want to and.... And I miss her so much,” Jocelynn sobbed, clinging to Ashlynn for comfort.

Ashlynn, for her part, stayed quiet, gently stroking Jocelynn’s lower back as she held her close while the ghostly winds of the past year buffeted them both. Slowly, the pain of those memories receded, and a faint evergreen scent filled the air as Ashlynn pushed back against the hurt. She didn’t dispel it; she couldn’t, even if she’d wanted to. But she could provide a place of shelter from the storm, and she did so readily.

”You’re probably right,” Maela said. ”Eleanor was, she was incredible. I doubt I’d ever be her equal as a Confessor and... And I miss her too,” she said softly.

Maela had been the one to introduce Eleanor to Mother Superior Koulma all those years ago when she found a kindred spirit at one of the large gatherings of the extended Blackwell family.

Now, after all these years, she found herself torn between regret that she’d pulled such a kind and giving soul onto a path that ended so cruelly and a profound sense of gratitude that Eleanor had been able to help Jocelynn while she couldn’t. Either way, she owed the fallen Confessor a tremendous debt that she could never truly repay.

”I can’t be the kind of woman that Eleanor was, any more than I can understand the paths you’ve walked,” Maela said. ”The things you’re talking about... A Lothian High Priest and dark sorcery to fuel Owain’s rise? Blood pacts with vampires, duels to the death... I thought I’d lived dangerously when I was young, but the things I faced can’t compare to what you’ve overcome to sit here today.”

”But I don’t have to understand,” Maela said firmly. ”Not the way the Church says a Confessor should at least,” she clarified. ”I’m not a Confessor. Someone,” she said with a fragile, wry smile. ”Someone sent a vampire to stop me from taking a Confessor’s vows. So I don’t have to look at any of this with the view the Church wants me to hold.”

”And that’s what you’ve been afraid of this whole time, Isn’t it?” Maela said, meeting Ashlynn’s gaze directly for the first time in several minutes and finding it every bit as guarded as she’d feared. ”You’ve been worried that I would come to judge you for the sins of witchcraft, and I... I haven’t reacted well to everything you surprised me with.”

”I’ve faced my share of zealots in the past few months,” Ashlynn said in a tone that was anything but apologetic. ”Sybyll broke Loman before he ever reached me, but he still clung to a narrow view of the world that has little room for people like me. Abbot Recared was worse, but even he paled compared to what Percivus did to Jocelynn and Eleanor,” she said as her tone grew sharper.

”You can understand my fear, at least, can’t you?” Ashlynn asked.

”Only a little,” Maela said. ”I was afraid of what would happen to our family if the Church ever found you, but I was more afraid of what they would do to you than what they would do to the rest of us for hiding you away.”

”No one has ever attacked me the way they’ve attacked you,” Maela said. ”And I won’t pretend the fear I’ve held is the same as yours. But that, that’s not the important part of what I wanted to say,” she said as she realized she was wandering away from the point she’d been trying to make. The most important thing she needed to say.

”I didn’t come here to be a Confessor, Ash,” Maela said, taking off the pendant that hung around her neck and setting it on the table.

For a moment, her fingers lingered on the golden, radiant sun that had hung from her neck almost constantly since the Mother Superior placed it there so long ago. For years, it had been a source of comfort and even pride, but now, she couldn’t afford to let the things it represented come between her and her daughter.

”A Confessor needs to understand,” Maela said. ”But a mother only needs to love and to accept,” she said. ”I may struggle with some of the things you do, and may ask questions until I’m breathless and blue in the face, but it will always come from a desire to support you.”

”I love you, Ashlynn,” Maela said as tears streamed down her face. ”I don’t love you despite the witch in you; I love all of you. And Jocelynn, if you want to become a witch like your sister,” she said, looking at her younger daughter. ”Then I’ll accept that too. Because I love you... All of you. Even if I don’t understand...”