The Vampire & Her Witch

After spending several days in Marcel’s carriages, navigating the backroads of the Verdant Hills and traveling through the night, the last thing Maela wanted to do was spend more time in a carriage. When Ashlynn escorted her out of the Gilded Horns, however, she realized that this would be a very different trip from how they’d arrived.

Ashlynn had kept her presence at the Gilded Horns hidden so she and Jocelynn could cook in peace and enjoy a quiet meal with family before they had to don their public faces again. Now that they were making their way to the evening’s event, however, the need for concealment had been replaced by all the needs of a traveling empress.

The carriage itself was among the largest that Isabell had ever seen, with wheels that looked as sturdy as those of heavy wagons. It looked almost tall enough for a person of modest height to stand upright in, and for people like Heila, she wouldn’t even need to duck her head when she walked through the door emblazoned with the tree and flowers of Ashlynn’s personal crest.

It took a team of six horses to pull the wide, long carriage, but Maela’s gaze slid off the horses quickly as she saw the mounted knights in front of them.

”Sir Elgon?” Maela said, stopping in her tracks when she spotted the knight from Blackwell accompanied by a young man wearing the white and gold of the Church’s Templars.

”Countess Maela,” the broad-shouldered knight said as he slid off his horse to approach Ashlynn and her family. A heartbeat later, he was kneeling at the feet of his liege lady, bowing his head and hiding a smile behind his neatly trimmed mustache.

”It’s been too long, my Lady,” Elgon said in a voice filled with emotion. ”I’m glad to see you’ve arrived safe and sound. If I’d known you were coming, I would have ridden out to escort you, but...”

”There wasn’t time to arrange things,” Maela said, quickly dismissing the notion that he should have accompanied her on the journey. ”And at the speed that Mister Marcel had us moving, you may not have been able to keep the pace. You’re here now, though,” she said, reaching out to lightly touch his shoulder. ”And that’s all that matters.”

”Most importantly, you kept my precious Jocelynn safe all these months,” Maela said, meaning it as a sincere compliment. It was impossible, however, for a woman as experienced as Maela to miss the look of pain and shame that flickered across the veteran knight’s weathered face when she mentioned her daughter’s safety, and she resolved to ask more questions about it when the time was right.

”Countess, I,” Elgon began, only to be interrupted by a rough, feminine voice.

”Ah hem,” a towering, bearish woman wearing the wide-brimmed, pointed hat of a witch said as she emerged from a second carriage that followed behind the first. ”Elgon,” the witch said, speaking his name as a word of warning.

”I’m sorry, my Lady, Captain Virve,” Elgon said, ducking his head in submission. ”I forgot myself.”

”There will be plenty of time for reunions later,” Virve said, rebuking the knight lightly while she glanced from the kneeling knight to the crowd that had gathered to watch them.

Elgon’s knights and Sir Beathan’s Templars only represented a third of the force Virve had assembled to serve as Ashlynn’s guard for their trip through Lothian City to the arena that Isabell and Hauke had spent the past three days preparing outside the city walls.

While Ashlynn herself was in very little danger, the same couldn’t be said for the ordinary members of her family, and Virve wasn’t about to let an ambitious zealot or determined assassin come close to Ashlynn’s close ones.

Under her watchful eyes, a dozen soldiers from the horned clan, accompanied by an equal number of imposing warriors from the Clan of the Great Claw, had fanned out around Ashlynn’s carriage to keep the crowd at a reasonable distance.

”Thank you, Virve, and Sir Elgon,” Ashlynn said lightly, acknowledging each of them before leading her mother into the opulent interior of the oversized carriage.

”This, this can’t be a carriage,” Micheline said, pausing the moment her foot touched the step into the carriage while she pulled back to look at the polished wooden exterior a second time before finally letting Jocelynn pull her inside.

”I was shocked by it too,” Jocelynn said as she took a seat on one of the plush benches. The upholstery was a remarkably soft, forest green suede, and the seats themselves had just the right amount of give to feel soft without transmitting every bump in the road directly to the person sitting on the bench.

Four crystal lamps glowed with a soft, otherworldly light, reflecting off the gem-studded ceiling of the carriage that resembled a piece of the night sky.

”The Ascended Swordsman,” Maela whispered as she looked at the carriage’s ceiling. ”And the Ascended Guide,” she said as she recognized the constellations marked by larger gems among the many smaller ’stars.’

”The Eldritch revere the same constellations, Mother,” Ashlynn said with a soft smile as Heila closed the door to the carriage, choosing to remain at Ashlynn’s side rather than joining Virve and Ollie in the carriage following behind them.

”They just use different names for them, and the traditions are slightly different than the ones handed down by the Saint Teacher,” Ashlynn explained. ”This carriage was a gift from High Lady Erna, the ruler of the High Fen,” she said as she opened one of the carriage’s many hidden compartments to retrieve a bottle of light, fruity wine and several small cups that she passed over to Heila.

”The High Lady has exceptional taste,” Micheline said, tracing her fingers along intricate carvings on the armrests and the wood paneling of the interior. Forest scenes dominated the interior, though many of the trees depicted in the panels were unfamiliar to her.

”Prince Henri doesn’t travel this well,” Micheline added as the carriage started to roll with barely a shake or jostle. ”Neither does his father. Perhaps only the Saint himself is blessed with this level of luxury...”

Even though the carriage barely bounced or swayed as it trundled down the rough cobblestone of Lothian City’s streets, Micheline felt her world shifting underneath her again. Weren’t the ’demons’ supposed to be savage brutes living in straw huts and caves?

If that was true, then how could they produce something so well crafted that even King Thibert would covet it? And if the Eldritch, as her cousin called them, were all as refined as the petite witch who sat in the carriage with them, then just how wrong was everything she’d been taught about the kingdom’s enemies during her years at the Royal Academy?