The Vampire & Her Witch

Unlike the seating that Isabell had prepared for the common folk, the nobility had been arranged into individual seating areas with walls on three sides and a sloped, straw roof overhead. A warm fire burned in each seating area, and plush carpets had been spread on the ground while servants moved between boxes bearing skins of mulled wine and hot cider or trays of steaming sweet and savory hand pies fresh from the ovens of a small, stone building nearby.

It was an arrangement that would have been familiar to any summer tournament with only minor changes to accommodate fires for warmth and thin walls on the framing that supported the roofs. In the summer, no one wanted to block out a cooling wind while they took their ease in the shade, but now, that same cooling wind had become an enemy that had to be resisted.

More striking than the shelters the noblemen gathered in, however, at least to Maela’s eyes, was the number of women she saw wearing brilliantly colored, Blackwell-style cavalier hats, each of them sporting their own decorative plumage similar to the feather in Ashlynn’s hat.

”I don’t recall seeing so many hats the last time I visited Lothian,” Maela said, raising a brow at her daughter. ”Do you have something to do with this?”

”I never ordered anyone to wear hats,” Ashlynn said, shaking her head. ”I didn’t even suggest it. This,” she said, gesturing to the noblewomen who had stopped in their tracks to watch Ashlynn and her retinue crossing the cold, frozen ground. ”This, they did all on their own.”

”You didn’t have to give orders,” Jocelynn teased. ”Anyone who was there the night you fought Owain remembers the hat and coat you wore. You looked heroic and larger than life from the moment you stepped into the hall. Owain lost ground every time you clashed, right up until he demanded a trial by combat, and I think everyone knows that you intended to drive him into that particular corner from the very first moment,” she said, smiling at her big sister.

”Now, every milliner in Lothian is making cavalier hats as fast as they can to satisfy the demand,” Jocelynn said. ”And they’re paying skilled hunters a premium for the tail feathers of birds with impressive plumage.”

”Several ladies were complaining when they arrived,” Isabell added, further needling Ashlynn. ”They’ve all been fitted for long coats, but it will be weeks before any of them receive one to match your style. They seem to have drawn a line at breeches, though,” she added, nodding to Ashlynn’s fitted trousers and her rolled-down boots.

”Evidently even hero-worship will only take them so far,” Isabell said before stopping at a private box higher up on the rise than any of the others, with a commanding view of the field. ”We’ll gather the rest of your guests for the evening,” she said, gesturing for Heila, Virve and the others to follow her. ”I imagine that you’d like a few minutes alone with your family and Nyrielle before you need to become the Evergreen Empress for the rest of the evening,” she said with a playful half bow.

”Thank you, Isabell,” Ashlynn said. ”Truly,” she emphasized, taking the older woman’s hands in her own and meeting her silver gaze directly. ”For everything you’ve done, I know it hasn’t been easy on you, or on Hauke, these past several days.”

”I feel like we’re racing to build a foundation before a storm hits,” Isabell admitted. ”There are already cracks. Whether tonight mends more than it creates... I don’t know, Ashlynn,” she said. ”We’ve done our best with what we have. I only hope that it’s enough to buy us some time.”

”I know,” Ashlynn said. ”It was never going to be easy, and for everything that we’ve done so far, I’m certain there are a dozen ways we could have done better. But waiting until we had better plans would have carried an even higher cost,” she said, glancing at Jocelynn and pursing her lips together. ”My delays already cost us too much.”

”It’s not your fault, Ash,” Jocelynn said, stepping up next to her sister and grabbing on to Ashlynn’s arm. ”I, I’m the one who carries the blame for the things that happened...”

”Enough, you two,” Maela said, reaching out to put a hand on each of her daughters’ shoulders. ”What’s done is done. Learn from the past but don’t let it drag you down. You’ve already accomplished so much,” she said, gesturing to the gathering of nobles and commoners preparing to witness the evening’s events.

”And people are already eager to follow in your footsteps,” Maela added, pointing at the women wearing cavalier hats. ”So take that for the victory that it is and go looking for tomorrow’s.”

”Yes, Mother,” Ashlynn and Jocelynn said in uncanny unison, both nodding their heads and taking a strange amount of comfort in their mother’s admonishments.

”Wise words, Mother-in-law,” a rich, feminine voice said from the darkness above them.

The instant she heard the voice, Maela’s heart froze in her chest. An instant later, she heard a series of heavy wingbeats, like a bird of immense size had descended upon them, before a striking figure emerged from the darkness.

Beautiful.

The first, strongest impression that Maela had of the woman who emerged from the dark was that she was the most flawless, perfect person she’d ever seen, with pale, alabaster skin that seemed to glow in the shifting illumination of the banners of light above them.

The vision of beauty before her possessed far more than just flawless skin, and Maela felt a momentary pang of jealousy she’d long thought that she’d outgrown as she took in Nyrielle’s lean, lithe figure with gently sculpted curves and her long hair that fell in dark waves around a face more perfect and symmetrical than any she’d ever seen.

Most striking of all were her eyes. Like pools of midnight or fragments of the night sky, those midnight blue eyes seemed to see everything at once. Eyes that saw everything around them and, at the same time, saw through Maela to the depths of her soul.

”Come inside where it’s warm,” Nyrielle said, her words falling on Maela’s ears like rain on windchimes. ”We have much to discuss, you and I,” she said with a slight smile on her wine-dark lips. ”And not nearly enough time before tonight’s events begin...”