The Vampire & Her Witch

”Stop,” Ashlynn said as soon as she realized that Nyrielle was planning to leave. ”If you love me, if you really, really love me, then don’t go. Just, just stay right there,” she added as she screwed her eyes shut and clutched her head.

It had only been a few minutes since she woke, and already she felt like she’d been cast adrift at sea in the middle of a storm.

Jocelynn had betrayed her because she wanted to be with Owain. The pain of that discovery flared within her mind like a searing hot brand, and thinking of it provoked an answering fury and rage that demanded blood be spilled.

But Joceylynn wasn’t here, and neither was Owain. Nyrielle was though, and the way she’d betrayed Ashlynn, using the Mesmerizing Gaze to fill her mind with happiness and joy that her heart wasn’t capable of feeling at the moment, just to keep her prisoner here.. It hurt. It hurt more than Ashlynn had thought that Nyrielle was capable of hurting her.

Owain would never have let Ashlynn have true freedom. He’d have bound her in chains of duty and obligation, hammered into place with violence and pain. Even worse, Jocelynn would help him, stabbing her sister in the back to weaken her or killing her because she was in the way.

But what Nyrielle had done... It was like binding her in the same soft, silk ropes that had come to be a part of their most intimate moments. It wasn’t the first time that Nyrielle had threatened to take away her freedom. She’d said something similar in the High Pass when Ashlynn risked her life fighting the ancestral spirits possessing Hauke without using their bond to call on Nyrielle for help.

Only this time, Nyrielle had done it. She’d really used her power to keep Ashlynn from fleeing, and she promised to do it again.

Nyrielle had betrayed her trust and she knew it, she knew that Ashlynn couldn’t accept being manipulated that way, but she did it anyway. The part of Ashlynn that was deeply wounded wanted to lash out, wanted to gather all of the power she could to strike out at Nyrielle with all of the hurt she felt from what Owain had done to her, what Jocelynn had done to her, and now, what Nyrielle had done to her as well.

Standing in the dark, Nyrielle stayed motionless, allowing the storm of emotion raging in Ashlynn’s heart to batter her as a small, pathetic form of penance for the wrong she had done. And at the same time, she clung to Ashlynn’s word ’stay’, like it was a mighty tree that could hold her up even when she felt like collapsing to the floor.

Her Ashlynn wanted her to stay, so she would stay, all the way until the sun rose if she had to. Even that would be better than being told to ’go.’

”You promised me,” Ashlynn said as she struggled against her darkest impulses, fighting to reason her way through Nyrielle’s actions instead of just reacting to them. ”You promised me that you’d protect me from my nightmares. That you’d keep me safe while I slept and give me peace until I could find it for myself. You promised me that, didn’t you?” Ashlynn asked, opening her tear-filled eyes to stare at Nyrielle’s figure in the cool, blue-green light of the crystal lantern.

”Of course I did,” Nyrielle said softly. ”But you know, and I know, that what I did goes beyond protecting your dreams. I never should have...”

”But you had to,” Ashlynn interrupted as she flung back the blankets and crawled across the bed to reach Nyrielle’s side. Her lover wasn’t even defending herself, she wasn’t trying to make up excuses for what she’d done, and she took all of the blame on herself. It should have been the right thing to do, but somehow, it left Ashlynn feeling even more distant and hurt than the betrayal itself.

Nyrielle hadn’t just taken it upon herself to manipulate Ashlynn’s mind to protect her from herself. She’d confessed her wrongs, judged herself guilty, and imposed a sentence that amounted to exile, all without giving Ashlynn a chance to come to understand it or to decide how she was going to move forward from here.

Nyrielle had made all of the decisions herself, probably before she even mesmerized Ashlynn and now she was standing there in the cold light of the lantern, looking desolate and alone in the exile she’d sentenced herself to.

”You flew out into the storm to rescue me,” Ashlynn said, reaching out and capturing Nyrielle’s ice-cold hand. ”I wasn’t avenging anything like that,” she admitted as an embarrassed blush spread across her cheeks.

”I was lying in the mud and crying when you found me, and you brought me home safe and sound,” she said as she pulled herself up into a sitting position with her legs dangling over the edge of the bed. Gently, she wrapped her arms around Nyrielle, pulling her lover back to the edge of the bed and pressing her body and head against Nyrielle’s slender back.

”But then I betrayed your trust,” Nyrielle said softly. She stood perfectly still, unwilling to respond to Ashlynn’s comforting touch when she didn’t feel like she deserved it. In her mind, what she had done was just as deep of a betrayal as Owain’s violence had been, and it wasn’t something that could be easily forgiven. ”I...”

”You did what you thought you needed to,” Ashlynn said, squeezing Nyrielle tightly enough that an ordinary person wouldn’t have been able to breathe. ”But you didn’t lie to me about it. You didn’t hide it. You knew I would hate you for betraying my trust, but you accepted my hatred if that was the price you had to pay to save me from myself,” Ashlynn said as her hot tears began to soak into Nyrielle’s silk robe.

”You can’t just do that and walk away. You can’t do that and act like it’s okay for me to hate you,” Ashlynn cried. ”It’s not fair. It’s not fair to you, and it’s not fair to me. You can’t just wall yourself off from me and let me hate you when you’re trying to protect me.”

”If, if I’d gone all the way to Lothian City,” Ashlynn whispered as she forced herself to imagine what would have happened if Nyrielle hadn’t rescued her the night before. ”If I weren’t in control of myself and I had to fight the Lothian Army, the Church’s Templars and Inquisitors, and the High Priest in the temple... I would have died last night,” she said.

There was a reason that Ashlynn had orchestrated her plan to claim vengeance the way she had. Perhaps in a few years, when she had truly mastered her powers, she could stand against the might of the Church and the armies of the Kingdom of Gaal, but at the moment, she was still far short of possessing the power to storm Lothian City by herself.

”You betrayed me, Nyri,” Ashlynn sobbed. ”But you also saved me. So, instead of walking away from me... make it up to me. I can’t do this alone,” she said, pulling back and turning Nyrielle around to see her lover’s tearstained face. ”So help me. Help me when I need it most and don’t ever walk away from me again!”

”You’re so willful,” Nyrielle said with a faint laugh as she finally allowed herself to move, reaching up to lay a slender hand over Ashlynn’s arms that held her so tightly. ”But when you say it like that, how can I ever deny you?”