The Vampire & Her Witch

”You know, don’t you?”

The question, filled with months of pain and anguish, pierced Isabell’s heart like the lance of a charging knight, tearing away her ability to hide from this question for even a moment longer.

Just the day before, she’d still entertained hopes of helping these sisters reconcile, but now, those hopes felt feeble and thin once she came to understand what Ashlynn had endured in the past half year. When she left Lothian City, she felt like she’d come to understand how the past six months had been a slow, ever-increasing torment for Jocelynn as Owain revealed more and more of his cruel, true self to her.

Jocelynn understood that she’d made a terrible mistake, one that had cost her a person who truly loved her and bought her the ’affection’ of a brutal man who wouldn’t hesitate to do the same to her or worse if she ever crossed him. Now, Isabell stood before living proof that Jocelynn’s mistake, as horrible as it was, hadn’t torn her sister away from her forever. It should have been a joyous moment of revelation that would precede an even happier reunion.

But Isabell had seen for herself just the night before how Ashlynn responded to betrayal after what had happened to her, and the things she’d heard from Heila today only made it worse.

From the betrayal of Elder Paulus and his grandson Torsten in the High Pass to the ancestral spirits who had possessed young lord Hauke to attack Heila and Ashlynn, Heila had told Isabell everything that her lady had endured to reach the place where she was now. After hearing all that, Isabell understood that Ashlynn had learned all too well the feeling of a knife in the back, clutched by a hand she trusted to be at her side.

Now, months of pain and anguish turned Ashlynn’s gaze murky even while a fierce anger, bordering on pure hatred, simmered beneath it, churning up a maelstrom of boiling emotion that the young woman could no longer contain.

”Ashlynn,” Isabell said softly as she gathered up her courage to at least make an attempt at paving the way for the two sisters to reconcile. ”I, I won’t lie to you. I know. But, are you sure that you want to know? If it’s someone who loves you...”

”They don’t love me,” Ashlynn spat as the anger and pain in her eyes surged to the forefront and she blinked away the tears that clouded her vision. ”How could anyone who did this to me claim to love me? Telling Owain was as good as sentencing me to die, and if I hadn’t been a witch, if I hadn’t managed to fumble my way through using my powers that night, I would have died!”

Once again, the feeling of shovelfuls of cold, wet earth falling on her body as she was buried in the wilderness washed over her, making her world seem smaller, colder, and much, much darker as the stifling weight of the memory pressed down on her body. Her breathing grew shallow and labored, and the sound of blood rushing in her ears made the crackling of the fire and the rain against her windows feel distant, like they were sounds muffled by deep layers of soil.

”So how could anyone,” Ashlynn said hoarsely as she struggled against the memory of being buried alive. ”How could anyone do that to me and still say that they love me?”

”Because she made a horrible mistake,” Isabell said softly, closing her eyes and lowering her head as if she couldn’t bear to look Ashlynn in the eyes while offering up her explanation. Next to what Ashlynn had endured, it seemed like such a feeble thing to say, but she made herself press forward anyway because she would never be able to forgive herself if she didn’t try.

”Because she’s a young girl who gave in to a moment of jealousy for the ’perfect life’ her big sister was about to obtain,” Isabell said, shaking her head at how hollow her own voice sounded when she said it. ”And because she had no idea that the man she thought was perfect and gallant was a monster capable of horrific violence.”

”And because by the time she realized what she’d done,” Isabell said, opening her eyes and taking off her silver-rimmed spectacles as she forced herself to meet Ashlynn’s puffy, red-eyed, and tear-filled gaze. ”By the time she understood that the man she dreamed of was really a monster that her big sister had been sacrificed to, it was far too late to take back what she’d done.”

”So Jocey wanted Owain,” Ashlynn said bitterly, followed by a cold, mirthless chuckle. ”Amazing, isn’t he? He charmed my father into offering me to him, charmed my sister into betraying me for him, and he’s so charming and cunning that he has you laying all of the blame at his feet and making excuses for what my sister did in order to be with him.”

”Ashlynn! That’s not...” Isabell tried to say as Ashlynn’s words tore at her heart like claws sharper than Georg’s.

”But it is, isn’t it?” Ashlynn interrupted as she staggered to her feet, no longer comfortable sharing a couch with the woman who wanted to make excuses for her sister’s betrayal. ”The biggest secret of my life, the thing that would see me burned at the stake if the Church ever finds out, and when she tells someone, it’s a ’childish mistake?’” Ashlynn roared.

”Owain is a monster!” Ashlynn shouted, no longer able to contain the storm of emotions within her chest. ”He’s a monster who will destroy anything that gets in his way, and he’ll use anyone foolish enough to let him. He used me, used that poor woman Samira, and he’s using Jocey now, and we all let him do it! He destroyed me, destroyed the Heartwood Clan’s village, and who knows how many others he’s destroyed because they were in his way or they slighted him somehow?”