The Vampire & Her Witch

”But Jocey isn’t a little girl anymore,” Ashlynn insisted, rounding on Isabell as she gave vent to everything buried in her heart. She’d suspected for some time now, even feared it was true, but she would have felt so much better about the betrayal if it had come from her mother. Her mother had at least suffered because of Ashlynn’s existence, but what had Ashlynn ever done to Jocelynn to deserve this?

She’d tried so hard to be a good big sister. When Jocey was young, Ashlynn stayed up late with her, reading her favorite stories long into the night whenever social obligations kept their parents away, even if they were gone for days at a time. She’d shared all of her secrets with her little sister, holding nothing back because she thought that Jocelynn deserved a big sister who led by example.

As children, Ashlynn brought Jocelynn to play in her very first garden, digging in the dirt together without a care in the world for what ’proper young ladies’ should be doing. Jocelynn had looked up at her sister as if she were a miracle worker when Ashlynn showed her the sweet peas and marigolds she’d planted and carefully tended until they turned into colorful, beautiful flowers.

When they were young, Jocey had even insisted in wearing clothes that were the same color and fabric as her older sister’s, even when her parents explained that she was growing too fast to wear things that were as delicate as the refined dresses that Ashlynn was starting to wear as she began to transition from being a girl to a young woman.

Jocelynn used to idolize her older sister, and they seemed inseparable for years after she was born.

Things began to change when Jocey was old enough to attend more functions with other noble ladies close to her own age. After years had passed without any hope of an heir, Rhys Blackwell had begun making considerations for his daughters, and that included sending Jocelynn to the sorts of gatherings that were expected of young noblewomen that Ashlynn herself had never been able to be a part of.

Slowly, Jocelynn started drifting away from her bookish, cloistered sister. She started to dress and act more like her peers instead of imitating her big sister, but she still understood the cage that Ashlynn lived in and tried to make it easier for her. There were both growing up and a distance was forming between them but Ashlynn had never felt like Jocey was abandoning her.

”They gave out party favors at Young Lady Tise’s coming of age feast,” a fourteen-year-old Jocelynn had said excitedly as she held out a slender, polished wooden case with both hands. ”They didn’t have any extras, but you can have mine,” she said, excitedly opening the box to reveal a metal-tipped quill pen with a lustrous blue-green feather.

”In the old countries, they say that ladies who keep a diary written with the tail feather of a blue jay will never have sorrows to write about,” Jocelynn said, excitedly pressing the expensive ’party favor’ toward her older sister as she recounted the story that had been told at the party as though it was a solemn truth. ”You write more than I do, so you should have it!”

Briefly, Ashlynn wondered if the quill pen was still among her belongings in Lothian Manor or the Summer Villa. She’d used it for years, and it had been one of her most treasured possessions.

Had Owain pressed it on Samira as part of her ’disguise’, the way he’d given the imposter her grandmother’s pearls? Had Jocelynn or Ashlynn’s family reclaimed the treasured quill as a reminder of their lost loved one? Or had it been thrown on a rubbish heap, discarded with the same rough treatment that Ashlynn herself had faced when Owain’s knights dumped her into a shallow grave?

Another time, Ashlynn remembered, a slightly older Jocelynn had come home in a fury from a tea party with other young ladies. It had been shortly after word began to spread that Owain Lothian would be arriving to formally court the eldest Blackwell daughter, and in Blackwell County, no gossip could be juicier for the young ladies of the court than the love life of the count’s eldest daughter, especially when Ashlynn’s younger sister would be at the tea party to provide even juicier details.

”Cassidy dePries is a hateful woman and I won’t go to her tea parties ever again,” Jocelynn fumed when she returned home late in the afternoon. ”How dare she say that Lothian March is a place for savages and barbarians who only know how to fight demons? She said that Lord Owain would probably arrive riding a bear or something else ridiculous, and that you’d be lucky if he didn’t dress you up in furs for your wedding.”

”Jocey,” Ashlynn remembered saying gently, laughing at the image of Owain riding a bear even as her heart warmed at her sister’s fiercely protective tone. ”We don’t hear much from the frontier besides their battles with demons. I’m sure she doesn’t understand how sophisticated things are in Lothian March.”

Remember, it’s been over a century since the first Lothian became a Marquis. I’m sure it’s not as wild as it once was, but Lady Cassidy may not have as good of tutors to teach her that,” she said, gently reminding her sister about the gap that separated the daughters of the count from the daughters of his vassals.

”It doesn’t matter,” Jocelynn said stubbornly. ”It was still a hateful thing to say, and I still won’t go to her tea parties, at least not until she apologizes to you for what she said!”

Not quite three years later, Ashlynn’s world had turned completely upside down. The younger sister who once stood up for her in places she couldn’t go had become the woman who hurt her more than anyone, betraying her secret to a murderous villain who had nearly beaten her to death before ordering his men to dispose of her body.

Just those few years, and her sister had become a completely different person... Perhaps she’d even become the kind of person who should marry Owain. After all, if Jocelynn could sell out her own sister to get what she wanted, wasn’t she the same kind of selfish, ruthless monster that he was?

Was there anything Jocelynn wouldn’t do to get the life she wanted? After all, she’d already sacrificed her own sister... So, since she was willing to go that far, since she could already be that wicked, was there any reason that Ashlynn should show her any mercy?

”Jocey isn’t a little girl anymore,” Ashlynn repeated as she took a deep, shuddering breath and let it out in a long, slow exhale. ”She had her coming-of-age celebration last year. She had the chance to choose between me and Owain, and she chose him,” Ashlynn said as she gathered in the hot, simmering rage that threatened to boil over and turned it instead into an icy cold fury.

All this time, she’d fretted and worried for Jocelynn. All the sleepless nights she spent hoping that it had been anyone but her sister who had shattered the life she knew and ripped her away from the family she loved. All of the pressure she felt to race back to Lothian City to pry her sister free of Owain’s grip and bring her back to the safety of the Vale of Mists...

All of that, and it had been her sister who shoved her into the shallow grave that refused to completely let go of the woman who had crawled out of it. All this time, she’d thought that her sister had become Owain’s latest captive when in fact, she’d happily betrayed her sister just to take Ashlynn’s place at the Lothian Lord’s side.

”Since she wants to take my place as his wife,” Ashlynn said coldly as she fought to suppress the warmth of her memories of the little sister she loved, leaving herself with nothing but the bitter cold of betrayal buffeting her heart like the winds of the High Pass. ”Then she can stay by his side... until death comes for them both!”