The Vampire & Her Witch

Micheline’s heart fell into her stomach when she heard Ashlynn calmly explain that she’d summoned a storm that battered two baronies before setting out to kill her own sister.

From the look on Jocelynn’s face, this wasn’t a surprise to her. Clearly, a great deal had been shared between the two sisters to cook and share a meal together as lovingly as they had. But when Ashlynn spoke, there was a rawness to her voice that suggested a great deal of pain still lurked beneath the surface.

And all of this because Jocelynn had designs on Ashlynn’s husband?

Micheline made herself pick up the goblet of wine sitting near her elbow and drink from it, because her hands wanted something to do and because it gave her somewhere to look that was not her cousin’s face.

Micheline couldn’t blame Ashlynn for wanting to kill her own sister. Not after everything that had happened because her secret had been exposed.

Which brought her back to the vampire, Nyrielle. The vampire who had saved Ashlynn on the night of Ashlynn’s wedding, and saved her again, along with Jocelynn, when she stopped Ashlynn from assaulting Lothian Manor alone.

It was clear that Nyrielle had done good things for Ashlynn, but the question that prodded the back of her mind like an itch she couldn’t scratch was one of motivation. Sometimes, people did good things for good reasons. More often, in Micheline’s experience, they did ’good’ things because interests were aligned or because they advanced other plans.

”When I see her,” Maela said, swallowing heavily as she met Ashlynn’s gaze. ”When I meet Empress Nyrielle, I’ll have to thank her for saving both my daughters. It sounds like she’s done a number of things that your father and I should have been doing this past year.”

”I’m sorry that I wasn’t there when you needed me, Ash,” Maela said. ”And Jocey, I should have,” she started, only to trail off as words failed her. Should have what? Noticed her daughter was enamored with her brother-in-law? Should have stayed by her remaining daughter’s side while believing that Jocelynn had caused Ashlynn’s death?

Maela’s hand had come up off the table while she was speaking and it stayed there, halfway to her younger daughter, like it had become caught in a net. For a moment, Maela looked at it as though it belonged to someone else before setting it back on the table, leaving whatever gesture she’d intended to make incomplete.

Micheline couldn’t imagine what her own mother would have done in such a tragic circumstance. Perhaps she would also have sought out the peace of a convent away from her family and the wounds everyone had suffered.

”It’s fine, Mother,” Jocelynn said, reaching out to take her mother’s hand. ”It’s not all better yet, but it’s getting better every day, bit by bit. You’re here now, and that’s the important part.”

”Nyri had a hand in that too,” Ashlynn said sheepishly. For a moment, her eyes drifted to the painting that covered much of one wall in the small dining room, no doubt painted from Nyrielle’s memory of a time before the first stone had been laid in what became the City of Lothian. Even without being here, there were traces of her lover’s presence, gently reminding her that some things didn’t have to be faced alone.

”She was the one who suggested I write to you,” Ashlynn said. ”I, I was afraid that you’d be unwilling to leave the Church. That you couldn’t accept me and everything I’ve done in the past year...”

”But she knew,” Ashlynn added. ”Sometimes, it seems like she always knows. She reminded me that you spent more than twenty years hiding me from the Church. She said a mother who would do that isn’t one who would turn her back on her daughters easily,” Ashlynn said with a fragile smile on her lips.

”So she’s not just protecting you because of the pact of blood,” Micheline said, imagining that such a pact would have dire consequences for both Ashlynn and Nyrielle if it were ever broken. At least, that’s what the stories she’d grown up on always implied. That killing the master would kill the thrall and killing a thrall would lead to the master’s doom.

But while protecting Ashlynn’s life when she’d prepared to attack Lothian alone could serve a sort of self-interest, helping Ashlynn reconcile with her mother only served Ashlynn’s interests. That implied that the closeness between her cousin and the vampire was mutual, whatever shape that closeness held.

”No, it’s much more than that,” Ashlynn admitted. For the first time this evening, she took a long, slow drink of the light, fruity wine in her goblet as if the goblet contained liquid courage that would help her say one of the hardest things she intended to tell her mother this evening.

Her heart hammered in her chest, and the wine burned slightly going down her throat but Ashlynn refused to back away from this moment. If her mother could accept that she was a witch, then certainly, she could accept this... couldn’t she?

”I love her. I love her with all my heart, and she returns that love ten-fold. We’re going to spend the rest of our lives together, and for Nyri, that means hundreds of years. The idea of getting to spend so long with her makes me happy in ways that the thought of a lifetime as Owain’s wife never could.”

”We’re betrothed, Mother,” Ashlynn said, setting down the goblet and folding her hands over each other to stop herself from fidgeting or from drinking more than she should. ”We intend to get married, but only when you and Father can both attend. It won’t change our decision,” she added. ”But I hope that you’ll both give your blessing.”

She watched her mother’s face closely for the slightest reactions; whether it was the tightening of a jaw or narrowing of eyes, she searched for the slightest hint of rejection...