The Vampire & Her Witch

”You, you told Lord Owain that your sister is a witch?” Isabell said, staring at Jocelynn in open mouthed shock.

Marcel had told her when they first met that someone had told Owain about a mark on Ashlynn’s body that resembled the mark of a witch. He’d said that the mark was the reason why Lord Owain beat Ashlynn to death and ordered his nights to bury her body at the edge of the Vale of Mists. But Marcel never told her who had given the information to Lord Owain... perhaps the famed Black Merchant hadn’t even ferreted out this secret.

”I, I didn’t, I didn’t think,” Jocelynn sobbed. ”I didn’t think that they should be, should be together,” she said as she drew a shuddering breath between great, body shaking sobs. Tears spilled from her eyes and her hands clenched at her skirts with enough force to tear loose a spill of delicate white lace from the cerulean blue silk.

”I swear, I didn’t know, didn’t know what he would do,” she choked out. ”I didn’t realize how much, how much he hated demons or, or how v-violent he could be,” she added, unconsciously spilling out every reason why the tragedy that followed might not be, or at least wasn’t entirely her fault.

”What did he do?” Isabell said in a voice that was much softer and gentler than she wanted to be at the moment. She’d taught herself for years to be an open ear for her children, to listen to their entire story before she handed down any judgments or punishments and to give them a safe embrace that would welcome the truth so they never had a reason to lie to her.

Now, as she looked at the sobbing noblewoman, Isabell struggled to reconcile her habits and instincts as a mother with children very near to Jocelynn in age with her loyalty to the woman who Jocelynn had betrayed. While there was a good amount of mercantile self interest in her decision to pursue knighthood in Lothian March and to travel all this way, her loyalty to the Blackwells who had done so much for her and to her friend Lady Ashlynn had accounted for at least half of her motivation in coming so far.

The part of her who had spent months worrying anxiously about Lady Jocelynn’s safety and fretting about Lady Ashlynn’s fate wanted nothing more than to slap the sobbing young girl in her arms, or to shake her violently and berate her for what she’d done, but instead, she clamped down on those feelings and did her best to treat Jocelynn like the young woman she was... one who had made a horrible, perhaps unforgivable mistake and who was clearly still coming to terms with it.

”He, he killed her,” Jocelynn said, staring at the floor with blurry vision as she couldn’t bear to look at Master Isabell. The weight of what she’d done crushed down on her more than it ever had before and the knowledge that Ashlynn had tried to arrange a protector for her, someone to protect her from Owain, dragged her down like an anchor chain around her neck.

”He said he did it with a single stroke of his sword,” she said as the sobs subsided to be replaced by a growing feeling of having been hollowed out. ”But I, I don’t think that’s true,” she said quietly. She wanted to believe. Months ago, when he told her in the Summer Villa that he’d ended things quickly, she’d believed every word, but she’d seen more of the Owain beneath the dazzling smile since then and he was never merciful to people who he felt had wronged him.

”He wouldn’t return Ash’s body to my family, even for a secret burial,” Jocelynn said. ”He said that he commanded his knights to dismember her and burn the pieces, scattering the ashes to the wind to ensure that she couldn’t rise again, but I wonder if he said that because he’d already, already...” Jocelynn’s voice cut off as another bout of sobs burst from her chest, shaking her body as she imagined what Owain must really have done to her sister.

She’d watched him just moments ago as he used a wooden sword to hack at the men he told to play the role of demons attacking him. His sword was merciless, falling again and again and again until bones cracked and the men couldn’t stand, and this was only ’practice.’ How would he have treated her sister then, if he truly hated her for hiding her mark from him? If he really believed that she was a witch, would he have been any less thorough?

”You said you didn’t think that they should be together,” Isabell said gently, redirecting Jocelynn’s thoughts away from what had happened to Ashlynn in the hopes that she could better understand what led to all of this. ”Is it because you thought your sister’s mark would be discovered eventually? Were you trying to say something to protect her by revealing the mark before the wedding ended?”

”No,” Jocelynn said bitterly. ”I, I know that Ashlynn didn’t love him. She, she said that, that he wasn’t a bad man,” Jocelynn said between ragged breaths. ”She said that he was a man who many would desire and she, she felt that they could come to care for each other in time. She hoped that, even if he didn’t, didn’t love her, he could love, love their children,” she said as she recalled the way Ashlynn had spoken of Owain in the last winter before her wedding.

”And that bothered you?” Isabell prompted gently.

”I hated it!” Jocelynn spat. ”I, I adored Owain. He was so much more handsome and capable and charming than the,” she started to say only to stop sharply. This time, it wasn’t a sob that held her tongue but the realization that she’d been about to confess to hating her father’s notion of marrying the son of one of the Guild Masters.

”Than the... What?” Isabell prodded gently. Of course, she wasn’t oblivious to Rhys Blackwell’s intentions for his youngest daughter. As an honorary member of the Linemen, the current count had aligned himself with the fishermen who were a vital component of the county’s economy but he’d also distanced himself from the Wayfinders and the Carters in the process.

Marrying his younger daughter into one of those guilds would have gone a long way to solidifying his relationship with the other influential powers of the County and he’d dropped a number of hints about it over the years, though that seemed to have stopped when Owain Lothian began courting Lady Ashlynn.

”It’s not important,” Jocelynn said, shaking her head. ”There were other men that Father thought might suit me, but... I only had eyes for Owain.”

In truth, she had felt that the Guild Masters, as wealthy and powerful as they were, were still far beneath her station and she didn’t want to consider ’marrying down’ just to improve her family’s standings with the powerful merchants or to give a merchant family a path into the aristocracy. Now, however, it was one of those very Guild Masters who felt like her only safe harbor in the storm she found herself in.

But... could Isabell really do anything to help her now that things had gone so far? Or was it all too late...