The Vampire & Her Witch

Bastian Hanrahan’s revelation that his father had hidden away a trio of illegitimate daughters spread through the crowd like wildfire. Hugo’s appearance years ago had been shocking enough. If Hugo had been older than Bastian, if he’d been born before Ian Hanrahan’s marriage, then there would have been more understanding about the ’youthful indiscretions’ of a young lord.

But Hugo was younger than Bastian by more than four years, which transformed a simple ’indiscretion’ into a matter of infidelity. Once was scandalous, but the way Bastian spoke of it, his father had been bedding countless women over the years, paying them to keep quiet, and rushing them away whenever he accidentally sired another illegitimate child.

”What about Maude, the lacemaker?” a voice in the crowd cried. ”Did Baron Hanrahan really give her coin to flee a man who was rough with her, or was she one of his women?”

”Two years ago, my Lilwen came home from the keep in tears after delivering our tithe, but she never told me why she was upset,” another man said. ”But our tithe was reduced by two silver pennies that year and the year after too... Are you saying that the Lord Baron has been having his way with my wife!?! And all this time, I’ve been praising her for helping us save up for a cottage outside the walls,” the man choked out when he realized where the extra money had been coming from.

”Vera, what about my neighbor Vera who...”

”My sister Elsbina....”

”I haven’t seen Florrie since....”

”SILENCE!”

Dame Sybyll’s voice resounded off the walls of the great hall like thunder, reminding everyone who had become caught up in Inquisitor Diarmuid’s slow, methodical interrogation and unfolding drama of his son’s revelation that the woman who sat on the gilded throne wasn’t just Baron Brighton’s long-lost daughter but the powerful Crimson Knight as well.

Instantly, tongues stilled and all eyes turned to face the crimson-haired woman on the throne. Some still wanted to cry out, to beg for her to give them justice for the women in their lives who were missing or who had been wronged by the disgraced baron.

But one look at the smoldering fury in her eyes was enough to make even the most aggrieved among them swallow their own tongues and keep silent until she gave them permission to speak.

”Cousin Bastian,” Sybyll said as she looked down at Ian’s shackled heir with eyes that smoldered with barely restrained fury. ”Can ye write out a list of everyone ye know who yer father has harmed? Every crime, large an’ small, every abuse ye’ve been privy to or heard of in yer years at his side?”

Bastian’s mouth hung open like a fish gasping for air when he heard his cousin’s ’request.’ Everything. She wanted him to write out everything he’d seen and heard in all his years as Ian Hanrahan’s heir.

It wasn’t that he couldn’t do it. He might not be as clever as his half-brother, Hugo, but he could still remember a good many names and faces. Men his father had met with when he needed a ’problem’ to be solved, women he’d taken back to his chambers after a feast... even a few women that his father had sent to his son’s bed chambers.

But that was the rub of it, and the part that made Bastian hesitate to agree to Sybyll’s demand. If he wrote out all of Ian Hanrahan’s crimes, he’d expose his knowledge of them... along with his involvement in them. He’d acted as his father’s messenger more than once, both collecting extra ’tithes’ or delivering ’gifts’ to other members of the Lothian Court in exchange for their support.

Bastian Hanrahan might never have schemed against anyone, but he’d been a tool in his father’s hands, helping the aging baron to bend others to his will and enjoying the fruits of his father’s ill-gotten gains. If he wrote out his father’s crimes, all of that would come to light.

And yet... it was also the only chance that Bastian would ever have to strike back against the old man who had neglected him so badly in the years that mattered most. For all the petty slights, all the times he’d been told that he was a failure as a man for not marrying a good woman and producing a grandson who could inherit the throne before Ian died... for all the times his father had lined his own pockets while telling his son that there wasn’t enough to go around...

Bastian could finally strike back at the old man, this one time, at the very end. He could finally drop a stone on his father that was so heavy, it would drag him down to his death, and in doing so, he could preserve his own life. That alone was reason enough to do as his cousin asked. So long as she would forgive him for his complicity in his father’s crimes, then it was worth exposing himself to ensure that his father died for what he had done.

”I, I can,” the young lord choked out around the lump that suddenly formed in his throat.

”An’ yer half-sisters,” Sybyll continued. ”They’re me cousins too. Do ye know where they are, an’ can ye reach them when tha’ time comes?”

”When the,” Bastian started to say, only to change his mind as he felt the weight of the crimson-eyed vampire’s gaze. ”Yes, I, I know where they are and their names. I’ve never met them, but it should be enough to find them.”

”Cousin Hugo,” Sybyll said, softening her tone slightly as she turned to the young lord on the dais. ”Can ye do tha’ same? Can ye write out the wrongs ye know yer father has done? From tha’ ledgers ye’ve seen an’ anythin’ else ye know?”

”I’ve already begun,” Hugo said with a nod. ”I’ll need to examine the ledgers since I left in the spring to serve Owain Lothian,” he added. ”But you’ll have a full accounting of the wrongs I can discover within three days’ time.”

Hugo had known that it would come to this from the moment they left the Vale of Mists. Whether it came up in a trial or if it was simply something that his cousin Sybyll or Lady Ashlynn needed when they took control of Hanrahan Barony, the things he knew about his father’s wealth and where it had come from had to be useful to someone.

Lady Ashlynn had given him choices when he asked to enter her service, and everyone in the Vale of Mists had made it clear that he would have to prove with his deeds that he could be trusted before anyone would consider giving him a place in the new world that Lady Ashlynn and Lady Nyrielle were building.

He understood that and he accepted it, so when he realized how useful his knowledge could be, he made every effort to provide it to the people who could use it. It might be a small thing, after all, the Vale of Mists seemed to have skilled spies of their own, but at the very least, it proved his intentions and that was enough for now.

”Do ye see it now, Inquisitor Diarmuid?” Sybyll asked with a predatory gleam in her eyes. ”Do ye see why I claimed me cousin’s life long ago? Do ye see any cause ta’ spare his miserable life from the justice me people deserve?”