The Vampire & Her Witch

Faint morning light filtered through heavy curtains and soft lace drapes, gently tugging at Isabell’s consciousness as the needs of her body grew increasingly persistent in banishing sleep from her mind.

The bed she woke in was one of the largest she’d ever slept in and the most comfortable by far. The sheets were soft and silky and the blankets were fluffy with a weight to them that made it feel almost like she’d fallen asleep in Casquas’ gentle embrace. The lace curtains that hung from the bed frame were intricately woven and dyed a pale blue that grew darker the further up the curtain she looked.

It would have been a glorious morning to wake up to, if not for the pounding headache that felt like horses stampeding across her skull and the pain in her eyes that felt like someone had stuffed fistfulls of coarse salt under her eyelids every time she blinked.

Isabell was no stranger to strong wine. Long years spent fighting to exist in a world where few women existed taught her that she had to keep up with the men dinking around her if she wanted to be taken seriously when they finally got down to business. It didn’t matter if it was an evening with the lords of the Emerald Prince’s army or a day of intense negotiations with the masters of other guilds, being able to hold her liquor was a skill that Isabell had honed over decades of her career as an engineer.

But when confronted by Ashlynn’s strange thornberry wine, she felt like she’d become a young woman again, out for her first real drink with the adults. Only, the first time she’d spent a night out drinking, while she remembered the hangover being bad, her memories of that hangover felt pale in comparison to the pounding in her head that she felt now.

Slowly, cradling her head beneath a pillow as she struggled against the headache, Isabell tried to piece together the events of the night before that led her here. The carriage ride lasted for hours and at some point, Tiernan, Isabell and Lady Ashlynn had fallen into discussions of their romantic partners over cups of wine that seemed to grow deeper instead of shallower as the night went on.

”Casquas has it so easy,” Isabell had said as the carriage trundled down the road. The soft lighting in the carriage and the elegant carved woods combined with the plush upholstery in the carriage to make it feel more like they were sitting in an intimate private dining room at an upscale restaurant than in a cramped carriage riding through the dark of night.

It was an illusion that Isabell clung to as she prompted Ashlynn to refill her wooden cup with more of the strong thornberry wine as she told her tale of romantic woes.

”When his hair was dark, dark as mine, even or darker than dark,” she said, carefully enunciating her words to avoid slurring as she spoke. ”When his hair was dark, all the women of the royal court, they all called him ’suave’ and ’dashing.’”

”Bet they called you beautifwool, bootiful, booty full, no, no, not that,” Tiernan slurred next to her. The barrel-chested ironmonger had been slower about indulging in strong drink, but once he got going, he acted as though it was a matter of masculine pride to match the two women in the carriage cup for cup as the hours of the night slipped by.

”Enchanting! Enchancing is the world for you. You must have been, Imprancing,” he said, pointing at her with a thick, sausage-like finger at Isabell as he clutched his cup of wine. ”Or brilliant. Always so brilliant.”

”They called me no such thing,” Isabell said, drawing herself upright in a mocking imitation of a proper lady. ”They called me, called me... nothing polite is what they called me,” she said, breaking off in a fit of laughter and taking another drink of the fragrant, dry wine.

”But him, he was dashing and suave and dashing with his dark hair and soft, soft lips for kissing, and everyone was jealous when I was kissing him,” she said, with an expression that wavered between affectionate and indignant. ”But now, now his hair is gray, and they all, you know what they call him? Distinguished is the word they use, and refined,” she humphed. ”And still, the young girls are jealous when he kisses an ’old bat’ like me! He’s two years older than me, but I’m the old bat!”

”I don’t think anyone is jealous when I’m kissing Nyri,” Ashlynn said as she prodded her mind to try to think of what people looked like when Nyrielle kissed her in public, but when Nyrielle kissed her, she lost track of the people around her and she couldn’t think of a single reaction, jealous or otherwise.

”Blood scares people so no one is jealous of my kisses. And I won’t kiss Cacquas, no matter how soft his lips are, because my lips are her lips and her lips are mine,” Ashlynn rambled. ”So no one can know if his lips are softer than Nyri’s because her lips are mine and you can’t compare to his kisses at all,” Ashlynn said as she struggled to refocus her gaze on Isabell.

”And if you tried, Nyri would bite you,” she said with a firm nod. ”Except she only bites me. But if you try to kiss her, I’m sure she definitely wouldn’t bite what she couldn’t because only she bites me.”

”What does blood have to do with kissing? And why all the biting?” Isabell asked, blinking in confusion. ”I think you’re doing it wrong. Did your mother teach you to kiss a man before you married Owain? But you need to kiss a woman, not a man, but it should be the same except where it isn’t the same at all, but you still shouldn’t be bleeding!” the engineer insisted, tapping her cup on her knee for emphasis until a bit of the wine sloshed over her hand.

Ashlynn had given a confused and rambling explanation about Nyrielle’s fangs and the feeling of having a vampire drink her blood, but most of it failed to penetrate Isabell’s mind as the fog of strong alcohol grew as thick as the fog outside the carriage.

Isabell did her best to remember what had happened afterwards and whether or not Ashlynn had revealed anything important during their intoxicated carriage ride, but the memories slipped through her fingers like water, leaving her with more questions than answers as she pulled her head out from under the pillow and tried to figure out what she was supposed to do now that she was awake...