The Vampire & Her Witch

Jocelynn knew that Eira’s circumstances weren’t the same as her own, unless Eira had been responsible for the disappearance of Liam’s lost love. From the way she spoke, Jocelynn didn’t feel like that was likely. But she could relate to the ache of watching someone you fancied while they directed their affection elsewhere.

”I didn’t know that,” Eira said, pausing for a moment as she processed what Jocelynn had said about Liam’s lost lover resembling Empress Ashlynn. ”Lady Mairwen only told me that she was worried that the young lords in Keating had been a bad influence on Liam. She was worried that he would find himself with a mistress before he’d even found a bride, and that, if he wasn’t careful, he’d find himself with a bastard that threatened their family line.”

Privately, Eira had long suspected that Lord Loghlan or Lady Mairwen had paid the woman in question to leave the march, even though they denied it. Liam had thought the same thing, and there had been a loud, public clash between father and son in the Great Hall of Dunn Manor over the summer about it.

Shortly after that, Liam had announced his summer campaign and began calling up soldiers to fight, and the barony had quickly forgotten the scandal when Liam brought home fresh victories to celebrate.

But Eira hadn’t forgotten. Instead, she’d done her best to remain close to Lord Liam. She couldn’t support him in his grief; they weren’t close enough for that. But she’d hoped that, in another year or two when his heart had healed, he might see that she had always been there, supporting him in whatever ways she could. And then maybe, if she was lucky, they would have a chance to build a relationship together.

Eira never wanted to take the place of the woman who Liam had lost. She just hoped that they could discover something of their own that could be precious in its own way.

”I can understand why Liam’s parents wouldn’t have approved of his relationship,” Jocelynn said, keeping her tone as neutral as she could. Liam seemed to have had genuine feelings for the commoner he was courting. He wasn’t like Owain, who treated women like toys to play with or prizes to be taken.

But Liam had to have known that he would never be allowed to marry a commoner. Not if he had any real ambitions of transforming Dunn Barony into Dunn County under the Lothians. Given that, it was hard to feel sympathy for a lord who played with the affections of a woman he was bound to leave eventually.

”But what does all of this have to do with Sir Ollie?” Jocelynn asked, feeling increasingly uncomfortable with the direction the conversation had gone. ”You said that he’s a different person in different worlds and that he did it for survival, not for romance...”

”Unless,” Jocelynn said, turning in the tub to look at Eira directly. ”Are you saying that Sir Ollie has someone he fancies, and he has to do this to gain their affection?”

”No, no, that’s not it at all,” Eira said quickly as she realized how far she’d wandered from the point she’d intended to make. ”I’m saying that Sir Ollie had to be different people in different worlds because the world he comes from is so different from the world that you and I are from, Your Highness,” she explained.

”For the daughter of a knight to court the son of a baron is a stretch across a small gap,” Eira said carefully. ”Like two slices of pie that are still next to each other, it isn’t too big of a line to cross. And I’m sure you felt the same gap when Lord Owain turned his attention to you.”

”But this kind of gap is crossed frequently between noble families,” Eira said. ”Like the filling in a berry pie, a little bit bleeds from one slice to the next or a few berries fall over the line. Not so frequently that it’s easy, but not so rarely that it’s scandalous.”

”Sir Ollie is different,” Eira said. ”And I didn’t understand until the march became part of the Empire. The gap between a knight’s family and the family of the marquis is wide, but it isn’t so wide that it feels crushing or dangerous,” she said. ”If we’re slices of pie, we’re at least cut from the same pie, and we’re headed to the same set of plates, not far from each other.”

”But the gap between a servant in the kitchens and a knight is wide enough to be dangerous, and Lord Owain proved that the gap between a marquis and a commoner is enough to snuff out several lives with no more effort than knocking a pie off a windowsill while it was cooling. It’s a tragedy to the family that lost a meal, but Lord Owain would barely notice.”

”Not every lord is like Owain,” Jocelynn protested. ”My father would never have treated a member of his household staff so callously or abused people the way Owain did. And the gap between a count like my father and a marquis isn’t as large as most people think,” she added.

”But that’s the world that Sir Ollie comes from,” Eira said. ”And I think that the common folk have to live with that fear of being crushed even outside of Lothian. Remember what Sir Hugo said about Lord Owain’s activities in Blackwell. How many women did Lord Owain harm, leaving Sir Hugo to go behind him, paying for healers and restitution. Yet despite all that, Lord Owain never stood trial for what he’d done until your sister stormed Lothian Manor with her soldiers and her witchcraft.”

Jocelynn pursed her lips, but she said nothing, because she couldn’t. Even in Blackwell, Owain’s status was so far above the common folk that he’d gone unpunished for his crimes. Even her father hadn’t been able to rein him in, which just emphasized that, no matter how close she thought a count was to a marquis, the gap between them was still very wide.

” I didn’t understand any of that until we were part of the empire,” Eira said. ”Because nothing in Lothian March could ever make me feel as small as I felt when I saw your sister’s power. And not just your sister, but the Midnight Empress or General Thane when he made a whole city kneel just by saying a few words, or any of the things that happened in the contest between the Aleese and the Southern Steppe...”

”In the Empire,” Eira concluded. ”I’m just as small and powerless as Sir Ollie was in the kitchens of Lothian Manor. Maybe even smaller. I can’t be the person I was if I want to thrive here, but figuring out who I should be and how to be that person, and who I can be myself around and who I have to be someone else for...”

”I didn’t understand Sir Ollie at first because, when I first met him, he had to be someone else to survive,” Eira said. ”He had to be a perfect knight because he was also a witch and he was representing Empress Ashlynn, and there was so much that he had to be and do... he couldn’t show his real face to the world. Just the parts of him that he knew everyone could trust and accept.”

”Now, I think we’re all seeing the real Sir Ollie for the first time,” Eira said. ”Because, for the first time, he’s not in our world. We’re in his world. His new world. One where he’s admired and respected by the countless people he’s helped. People who suffered at Lord Owain and Lord Liam’s hands,” she said in a voice that grew smaller and quieter toward the end.

”You belong in Sir Ollie’s new world, Your Highness,” Eira said. ”You belong there because it’s the world that your sister is building, and Sir Ollie is treating you the way he treats the other people who belong in his world...”