The Vampire & Her Witch

”There are things that you learn about war between humans that I hope you never learn Baron Hanrahan,” Isabell told the slack-jawed baron as she finished telling her tale. ”I hope you never learn to take joy in windy days because the wind drowns out the sounds of people screaming as they burn to death,” she said coldly. ”I hope you never count it a double blessing because the flames burn hotter and spread faster when the winds are high and the work will be done sooner.”

”More than anything, I hope you never fight demons who learn to fight the way humans do in the old countries,” she added as she stared at the trembling baron with gray eyes that felt so haunted they must have belonged to a ghost. ”Because the day they learn that is the day you learn what it’s like to survive the destruction of your entire city, and what it feels like to preside over funerals that last for days.”

”Survive?” Owain said, blinking rapidly as he tried to process everything he’d heard from this terrifying engineer. ”The baron you attacked, Baron Balleste, he survived what you did to his city?”

”Most keeps survive the destruction of the town that surrounds them,” Isabell said, glancing over her shoulder to see the people sitting at the lower tables staring at her as though she’d prouted horns and claws. ”So long as your fortress wall is far enough from the walls of the keep itself, then there’s usually enough of a gap to keep he flames from jumping across. Your odds of surviving are even better if you have a moat between your keep and your people, like the one you have here.”

Beside her, Master Tiernan reached out to rest a comforting hand on her shoulders. Of all the gathered Guild Masters of Blackwell City, perhaps only Master Sebastian of the Wayfinders Guild truly understood the ghosts that haunted Master Isabell. On more than one occasion, Tiernan had spotted the two masters sharing a bottle of strong wine and pouring extra cups for people who had departed for the Heavenly Shores many years ago.

It wasn’t until today that he realized why neither master ever spoke much of their youth and the things that had shaped them into the strong masters they’d become. For Master Sebastian, it was impossible to escape the tales of his heroism that were told by his crew and companions. His legends, for better or worse, resounded across Blackwell Harbor. Isabell, on the other hand, seemed to have left her life of war entirely behind in the old countries, taking up an ordinary life among her fellow engineers with few understanding her past.

”But wait,” Bastian said, frowning as he looked at the steel-haired Isabell. ”If you did all that, if you commanded soldiers in battle, even engineers, and if you defeated whole armies, then how is it that you’re still a commoner? You should have been knighted for that at the very least. If you had done something so amazing here, I’m sure that Marquis Lothian would grant you the title of Baron to rule over the lands you conquered. So, if everything you just said is true, how is it that you have to buy your way into the peerage now?”

”Some things are worth more than a title and land, Young Lord Bastian,” Isabell said simply. ”My husband was bound in service to the royal court. I traded the title and lands that his majesty offered me for a chest of gold and my husband’s freedom. We left the old countries behind and never looked back.”

”To turn down a title and lands of your own,” Jocelynn said, her carefully composed demeanor momentarily falling away. ”That’s the kind of love you only find in fairy tales and storybooks.”

For a heartbeat, the coldly calculating young woman Jocelynn had been fighting hard to become disappeared, replaced by the girl who had spent countless evenings in the Blackwell library with her tutors of her own, devouring tales of knights who fought against demons for their ladies and bold captains who won the hearts of maidens by braving dangerous seas and fearsome pirates to rescue them. Now, as she listened to Isabell telling her story, her seafoam eyes shone with a genuine wonder that had been absent ever since her sister’s death.

”To have someone love you so much that they would fight in a horrible war just to win your freedom and the right to marry you,” she said, turning her shining eyes unconsciously to Owain before looking back to Isabell. Her voice had lost its practiced polish, instead sounding wistful and almost longing. ”Having that kind of love in your life would make any woman jealous.”

When she spoke, Jocelynn’s eyes were filled with stars as she tried to imagine what a young Casquas and Isabell might have looked like. Casquas had always struck her as suave and courtly, with silver hair worn long in a neat ponytail while Isabell looked more like one of Ashlynn’s tutors, but twenty years ago... With flames of war burning around them and an almost impossible love between them, the image of the young couple was more than enough to make Jocelynn’s heart flutter with the same innocent delight she’d felt when her sister first read her stories of heroic love as a child.

Belatedly aware of how transparent her emotions had become, Jocelynn straightened in her seat, struggling to reclaim her composed exterior. But she couldn’t quite dampen the spark that Isabell’s story had ignited. Beneath all of the struggles and the politics that drove her family’s entanglement with the Lothians, a part of her still yearned for the pure, unconditional love she’d dreamed of before politics and position had tainted her dreams for the future.

Even as her mind struggled to resume its calculations, carefully considering how Isabell’s revelations might affect their plans, Jocelynn found herself wondering if Owain might someday love her the way Casquas had loved Isabell.

Certainly, Owain hadn’t fought a war for her yet, but when she thought of everything that stood between them and how hard she had to work now to appease Marquis Bors so he would give his blessing to Owain instead of passing his throne to Loman... it was hard not to see a little bit of herself in the aging engineer, and to hope that perhaps her own story might end with the same fierce devotion from Owain that Casquas enjoyed from Isabell.

”I didn’t fight the war for Casquas,” Isabell pointed out. ”I fought the war because I was young enough and foolish enough to get myself involved with the struggles of a young prince who fought for a throne because he thought it had been stolen from him.”

Isabell’s words were chosen very carefully. She didn’t say she fought for a prince whose throne had been stolen from him, she said that the prince ’thought’ it had been stolen from him. The difference was subtle, but in this audience, with so many clever lords and knights gathered around the table, her words landed like a canister of hot shot fired from one of her ballistae.