The Vampire & Her Witch

”I know my father did awful things,” Charlotte said eventually. She was staring down into the dregs at the bottom of her teacup as if she could find some sort of answer in the pattern of the tea leaves.

”Part of me still worries about him,” Charlotte confessed. ”I wonder if he’s adjusted to the food here, and if he’s sleeping well wherever he’s staying. Is that foolish of me? To still love him for being a good father to me even when he was so terrible to so many other people?”

”No,” Jocelynn said softly, doing her best not to think about the dinner waiting for her in her mother’s chambers. ”I don’t think it’s foolish at all.”

”In the Kingdom of Iron, they would call it a weakness,” Adala said. ”They have a saying there. ’Crawl if you must, but save yourself.’ I spent four years believing it was the only wisdom worth having.”

She set her teacup down and laid her hand over Charlotte’s on the tabletop.

”I don’t believe it anymore,” Adala said. ”Here, when someone falls, someone else reaches back.” Her dark eyes met Jocelynn’s across the table. ”If you fall tomorrow, Jocelynn, we’ll be here to help you get back up.”

But when the conversation turned to the future, to the lives they hoped to lead and the happiness they had found with each other, the pressure Jocelynn felt quickly became unbearable. She was happy that her friends were happy and that their futures looked bright... But hers felt far too uncertain.

By the time she’d arrived at her mother’s chambers, intending to share a meal while explaining the upcoming ritual, her heart felt like it had been twisted in knots and wrung out like a rag. And then, instead of comforting her and welcoming her with open arms, her mother had tried to argue and prepared to confront Ashlynn about calling the whole thing off... after Jocelynn had worked so hard to prepare herself for the trial ahead.

They’d fought.

Just like they’d fought over the ’nice young lads’ from the Wayfinder’s Guild or the Shipbuilder’s Guild that her mother had tried to set her up with, or the way they’d fought when Jocelynn heard that her cousin Micheline would be attending the Royal Academy but she couldn’t even attend the academy in Trevarthen...

It was like they were home again, just like they’d never left, only they were reliving the worst parts of their relationship instead of the best ones. In the end, Jocelynn had stormed out, leaving Ollie behind to clean up the mess while she took a long walk in the cold night air.

She hadn’t returned to Ashlynn’s chambers until her skin was cold to the touch and her lips showed a hint of blue. And yet, as soon as she stepped into Ashlynn’s sitting room, she was greeted by the scent of warm bread, hearty stew, and the slightly woody scent that Jocelynn had come to associate with Sir Ollie.

Ollie hadn’t said anything about her fight with her mother, or the amount of time she’d spent out in the cold. He’d just wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and brought her to a seat by the fire before presenting her with a bowl of warm, hearty stew and fresh bread to sop up the savory juices.

At first, her hands had been too cold to manage anything, but Ollie had been patient with her, tearing up little bits of bread and dipping them in the broth before feeding them to her one at a time. Eventually, her body had warmed up enough to relax and to finish the rest of the beefy stew.

She even ate a second bowl, bit by bit, while she sat at Ashlynn’s desk, writing out the letter that she hoped her sister would never have to read. Eventually, Ollie excused himself for the night, and Jocelynn collapsed into Ashlynn’s soft bed, falling into a deep and blessedly dreamless sleep.

Now, the day of her trial had arrived. Everything that could be said had been said, and anything that hadn’t... Well, that was what the letters were for. She had no idea whether she would see Ashlynn before the ritual or not, but at least Ollie would come to cook for her.

He wouldn’t be alone today. He’d promised to bring Lady Eira to help Jocelynn prepare for the day’s trial. For a moment, she considered asking him to send Eira away. Not because of any animosity toward the young lady who had become her temporary ’squire,’ but because she wanted to lower the walls of propriety and trust herself to the person who made her feel safer than anyone outside of her family ever had.

But when the knock sounded at the door, she dismissed the notion as a flight of fancy. Today would not be the day that she died. It would be the beginning of her new life as the Olive Witch, and if she threw away basic, common decency by exposing herself to a man who only wanted to be her friend, she risked damaging one of the relationships she most hoped to return to at the end of her trial.

When she opened the door to the sitting room, however, it wasn’t Lady Eira she found next to Sir Ollie. Instead, it was her mother who accompanied him, and Eira was nowhere in sight.

”Jocelynn,” Maela said, stepping forward and holding her arms out wide. ”I’m sorry for last night. I was wrong, and I... I came to help you prepare for your trial,” she said, stopping just short of Jocelynn to ensure that her open arms were an invitation rather than an imposition if her daughter no longer wanted to be held.

”Mother,” Jocelynn said, crossing the last step between them in the blink of an eye and wrapping her arms tightly around her mother’s slender frame. ”Thank you,” she whispered as tears filled her eyes and light sobs shook her body. ”Thank you for coming...”