The Vampire & Her Witch

”You say that you can learn, Lord Liam,” Ashlynn said as she examined the determined set of the young lord’s jaw and the intensity of his gaze. ”And that you’re not afraid of hard work. I believe you,” she said calmly, as she had no reason to doubt the truth of those words.

Liam had done something that few lords in the Frontier ever managed. He attended one of the prestigious academies in Keating Duchy and proved that he could hold his own in an environment that was intended to mold young southern lords into cosmopolitan rulers who could thrive anywhere in the world, whether they were at home, in the Royal Capital or even across the sea in the old countries.

But that education was sorely lacking when it came to the practical skills of life on the Frontier. A frontier lord needed to be both knight and lord at all times, possessing the strength of arms to ride into battle against the Eldritch and to prove before the other lords of the frontier that they would be a reliable asset on the battlefield when the next war came.

The frontier was a place for warrior lords, and men like Owain Lothian dedicated their entire lives to mastering the tools and techniques of a warrior. That single-minded dedication made Owain a terrifying force on the battlefield, but it also left him poorly equipped to administer his domain and earned considerable scorn from the well-educated noblemen of the kingdom’s duchies.

But Liam had managed what Owain hadn’t. He possessed the education and knowledge of a nobleman from the heartlands with a record of victories in battle that would turn unaccomplished men like Bastian Hanrahan green with envy.

So when Liam Dunn said he wasn’t afraid of hard work and that he could learn to rule the Eldritch as well as he would rule the people of Dunn Barony, she believed him. There was just one problem.

”I believe that you’d work hard to become the sort of ruler that we need if we’re ever going to stop these endless wars,” Ashlynn said. ”But you aren’t the Baron of Dunn yet. Can you convince your father to accept my offer? Or will he disinherit you for treason before you come near the throne?”

Sending Liam Dunn along with Dame Sybyll’s army had accomplished everything Ashlynn had hoped for and more, and she owed much of that success to Heila’s squire, Emmie. It had never occurred to Ashlynn to put Liam to work in the healer’s tents.

When she sent him, she’d only hoped that he would have a chance to witness the overwhelming disparity in military might between the forces of the Vale and those of a single barony in order to arrive at the conclusion that this was a war his family couldn’t win. At that point, she trusted in his combination of ambition and pragmatism to convince him that it was better to accept generous terms for cooperation instead of fighting a battle that they were doomed to lose.

Now, however, because Emmie had decided to put him to work while she was supposed to be watching over him, Liam had a chance to see the Eldritch as people in a way that he never would have otherwise. He wasn’t just afraid that they would defeat him; he’d begun to see the tragedy of this war from both sides, and he shared Ashlynn’s desire to see that tragedy and suffering end.

It was more than she’d hoped for, but if his father rejected him, then it might all be for naught. He could take the throne of Dunn by force, but that risked plunging his territory into a bloody civil war. Men who were loyal to Liam’s father wouldn’t easily serve a usurper even if that usurper had once been the legitimate heir.

”My father intended to retire at the end of the Holy War,” Liam said, not bothering to mince words now that they’d reached the heart of the matter. ”When I came home from the academy, he told me that I needed to start taking responsibility for the barony because it would be mine to rule in just a few years.”

”Your father wanted to give you the chance to win glory and lands in the coming war,” Ashlynn said, nodding in understanding. ”That’s why he’s had you skirmishing with the outlying villages every summer since you returned home. Once you take the throne, it’s much harder to dedicate yourself to a campaign, and you’ll have to offer up more territory to the people who fight in your stead.”

”It’s more than that,” Liam said, nodding in acknowledgement of Ashlynn’s deduction. ”He’s entrusted me with the villages of Taun and Mere,” the young lord explained. ”You know how different life is in the duchies compared to the frontier. I’ve been working every autumn and spring to raise them up so my people can live lives that are as comfortable as the ones your people in Blackwell enjoyed.”

As a younger man, with stars in his eyes, dazzled by the sights he’d seen in Keating, Liam had argued with his father at great length about the poor conditions of their barony. He’d felt embarrassed and ashamed by the squalor he saw in the streets, the dirt roads that turned to mud every rainy season, the roofs that leaked in fierce storms, and the constant need to patch things...

His father, Loghlan Dunn, could have scolded him for his outbursts, and sometimes, Liam thought he should have. Looking back, he’d been immensely disrespectful to his father when he returned home from the academy in Keating each summer.

At some point, without realizing it, he’d soaked up the duchy’s disdain for the rough conditions of the frontier along with his lessons in history and commerce, and he’d acted like the sort of entitled lordling that he’d made friends with when he came home.

He was lucky, he’d realized recently, that his father was a very different man from Ian Hanrahan. If not for his father’s patient lessons, he shuddered to think about the sort of man he might have grown into. If he’d turned out like Bastian Hanrahan, he couldn’t imagine Lady Ashlynn giving him the opportunity he had been presented with... And without his father’s guiding wisdom, he wouldn’t have known what he needed to do with that offer.