The Vampire & Her Witch

It took time to explain the message that Rhys had sent via the Witch of Deep Currents and even longer to explain what she’d learned about the Blackwell family’s hidden history. As Ashlynn explained, she found herself continually pausing to answer questions about everything from the other Great Witches to Wolstan’s limited role as a relay of a spoken message.

By the time she finished explaining, everyone at the table had eaten their fill of the sumptuous feast as the conversation took a more serious turn.

”Your Father never told me about any of this,” Maela said once Ashlynn had finished explaining. ”When you were born, and he kept disappearing, I was more than a little upset with your father,” she added, furrowing her brows as she remembered the lonely nights when Rhys didn’t come home for days while she nursed and cared for Ashlynn.

”I had to do everything by myself those days,” Maela explained. ”We couldn’t take the slightest risk that your mark would be discovered, so I dismissed the wet nurse, the chambermaids and everyone who could have given me a moment of reprieve from the burdens of a mother with an infant,” she said. ”Jocey, you were a good baby, but every babe will test their mother’s patience and kindness at times... It was easier for me to be good to you because I had so much more help in those early years.”

”You were always good to both of us, Mother,” Ashlynn said gently. ”I never had any reason to complain about how much you cared for me.”

”It’s nice of you to say that,” Maela said. ”But you were too young to remember how... How frayed I was when you were just a babe. I changed every diaper and put you to bed in a crib next to my own bed just to make sure that I woke up to take care of your every need before a well-meaning servant could offer ’help.’”

”Even if Rhys had been busy all day with the affairs of the county,” Maela said, opening her heart and giving vent to all the old hurts. ”Just having his company at night to help rock you back to sleep or burp you when you were fussy would have been a heaven-sent miracle.”

”I’m sorry,” Ashlynn said almost automatically as her face heated. ”I didn’t realize I was so much trouble...”

”You weren’t any worse than Jocey was,” Maela insisted. ”I was just... Alone. There were times when I thought your father hated me for giving birth to a witch. I thought that he was desperate to escape me. Or maybe he was desperate to escape you.”

”My world was so small that first year,” Maela said as she dabbed tears from her eyes with a handkerchief. ”I didn’t want to leave you alone, but I couldn’t expose you to people who might see... I stopped entertaining the ladies of the court for tea and only occasionally brought you with me to stroll in the gardens.”

”There were rumors,” Maela said, pursing her lips as she gave her daughter an apologetic look. ”Rumors that you were unwell, that you might not survive the winter, and that I was only prolonging the inevitable. Others claimed that you were hideous and disfigured. Those finally went away once you were older, but the rumors that you were frail...”

”They became a kind of shield for me,” Ashlynn said, nodding in understanding. ”They gave the county an excuse for why I rarely visited the isles, why I needed tutors instead of attending an academy the way Micheline did...”

”It was pure fiction, but it was useful, and it kept me safe,” Ashlynn said. ”I don’t blame you for letting that rumor spread,” she said, knowing full well that if her parents had wished to, they could have worked to quash it.

It might have required her to spend periods out in public demonstrating how fit and healthy she was, but even if she couldn’t have gone on voyages with her father, she could have traveled the baronies of Ricarde and Dalais, visiting them by carriage if need be and spending her time on hunts in the woodlands upriver while Jocelynn accompanied their father on fishing trips at sea.

It hadn’t happened that way, and the rumor of Ashlynn’s ’frail health’ had formed the first bars of the gilded cage she grew up in.

”When he was home, your father did everything he could for you,” Maela continued, pulling Ashlynn back into the story. ”He was so sweet and tender when he held you that I could almost forget how he’d left me alone or that I’d thought he didn’t love you.”

”But it felt like there was some kind of goad driving him, like a hot iron pressed against his skin,” Maela added, her eyes growing distant as she thought back on those days. ”He could only spend so long at our side before he left again, like a man cursed by an intolerable affliction. He kept vanishing, not just from Blackwell Manor but from the whole city.”

”I tried asking the crew he sailed with,” Maela said helplessly. ”But none of them would say a word. ’Nothing to worry myself over,’ they said. ’Business of the First Crew’ was the most useful thing any of them would say, but after that, I hit a wall.”

”Esselk’ti, the Witch of Deep Currents, told Wolstan that Father tried lighting the beacon every day for a week, every week for a month, and every month for a year before he stopped trying,” Ashlynn said. ”Was it just that? Or was he gone more than that?”

”More,” Maela said. ”Much more. Once, he insisted on taking you to that strange forest, the Fleet Preserve with the trees that were supposed to have been planted during Phylip’s reign,” she said. ”You had only barely been weaned, and I wanted to go with him but... things didn’t work out that way.”

”When he came back from that trip,” Maela said. ”He looked more defeated than I’d ever seen him. He barely stayed a week before he left for the Stackpole Isles, and then he stayed gone for a whole month. When he came back from that trip, I thought he’d gone mad.”

”Was that when he tried to burn away my mark with a brand?” Ashlynn asked when her mother went quiet. She was too young to remember the attempt, but her father had never hidden it from her.

When she was old enough to learn what her mark meant and why it must be hidden, he’d explained what happened when he tried to remove it and how her skin healed perfectly despite the wound. He told her that it was proof that the mark was real, that there was power within her and that she must never try to use it.

The look in her father’s eyes had been terrifying at the time, but Ashlynn had never once doubted that he’d done what he said he’d done, or that he’d done it in the hopes of keeping her safe.

”It was,” Maela said. ”I never knew why he felt like he had to go so far, but maybe... Maybe he found something in Phylip’s writings that prompted him to do it. Whatever it was, he should have told me,” Maela said, pouring herself a fresh goblet of wine and taking a sip to wet her lips and wash away the bitter taste that accompanied so many old memories.

”I could have forgiven him for keeping a secret like this if you hadn’t been born a witch,” Maela said. ”But the day you were born with the mark on your hip, he should have told me.”