The Vampire & Her Witch

”Bors Lothian is dead...”

-THUMP- -CLINK-

Nyrielle’s pronouncement provoked reactions all around the table, but it was Virve who slammed her fists into the table, clenching them tightly enough that her arms shook with barely suppressed fury that the old man had died before she was able to get her claws on him.

Sitting next to her, Ollie rested a hand gently on one of her powerful arms, silently offering what comfort he could. Unlike the people of the Vale, particularly Nyrielle’s progeny, the young man struggled to think of anything that enraged him enough or tormented him enough that he needed to claim vengeance.

Perhaps that would be different if Diarmuid hadn’t prevented his parents from becoming scapegoats for what happened at the Summer Villa, but as it stood, Ollie had few people whom he held any sort of personal animosity toward. He couldn’t understand what Virve was feeling right now, but he didn’t have to understand her pain to know that it hurt, and in the face of that hurt, he offered what comfort he could.

”How, how do you know that?” Loman Lothian said from the opposite end of the table. ”My father should still be at home, so how, how can you know that he’s dead?”

After everything else he’d endured this evening, every shocking revelation, every slight, every bit of well-meaning ’advice’ that treated him like a petulant child... After pleading for someone to spare his father’s life.... Was this just a cruel joke? Had the ancient vampire decided to torment him even further for offending her earlier? Or was this just a manifestation of his ’darkening sky’ as one of the few remaining lights in his life winked out forever?

”I placed a mark on your father years ago,” Nyrielle said calmly. ”At the end of the War of Inches, when I wounded him to put an end to that war,” she explained in a voice that was calm and carefully neutral.

If Nyrielle felt any joy at the death of the current patriarch of the family she’d been at war with for generations, she didn’t display it. Neither did she display any satisfaction at seeing Loman’s face crumple in anguish. Instead, her midnight blue eyes looked as cold and distant as the heavens above, and every bit as uncaring as the stars themselves.

”Isn’t it too soon?” Ashlynn said, resting a hand lightly on her lover’s arm and looking at her with obvious concern. ”He was poisoned after Rosie and Tonnis, and when I healed them, they were still struggling against the Nightweaver Venom. I know that Bors is more vulnerable because of his age, but he should have had at least as long as the Pyres did before he succumbed.... Months or more.”

Nightweaver Venom didn’t kill quickly, and that had been part of the reason that Owain selected it when he lashed out at the people whom he felt had slighted him. He wanted Sir Tommin Pyre’s family to suffer for months before they died, forcing his former companion to watch helplessly as the Church failed to rescue the family of their newest Templar.

Similarly, Owain wanted his father to fade away slowly as the Nightweaver Venom gnawed away at his mind. He wanted to watch as the Lothian Court witnessed his father’s growing madness. He wanted to see the proud Marquis reduced to a confused, helpless invalid whose decrees were so erratic and nonsensical that the lords of the march would beg for Owain to take his father’s place before the madman on the throne could do something disastrous.

But Ashlynn had sent Zedya and Lennart to rescue the Pyres, denying Owain the satisfaction of tormenting Sir Tommin with their suffering, and Bors hadn’t been poisoned long enough to lose the trust of the Lothian Court, so it should be too soon for him to have succumbed to the venom’s effects.

”I doubt that it was the poison that claimed him,” Nyrielle said, shaking her head as she stared into the distance. ”But all I felt was the unraveling of the Kiss of the Void that suppressed his desires to seek glory and make war on us. That mark could only be removed by his death, or by someone as powerful as I am.”

”We’d have heard about it if the Saint left the Holy City to visit Lothian March,” Thane said confidently. ”Marcel’s informants would have passed that kind of news on, no matter where he was, so I doubt that the Church rescued Bors.”

”No, I’m confident that he’s dead,” Nyrielle said with a shake of her head. ”Whether he succumbed to Owain’s poison or some other tragedy befell him, I cannot say...”

”Jocey,” Ashlynn whispered, pressing a hand to her chest as her heart suddenly skipped a beat.

Few things could claim the life of a man as well defended as Marquis Bors Lothian, especially now that his struggle against the Nightweaver Venom had all but confined him to the fortress of Lothian Manor. But if there had been a fire or some other great disaster that struck the manor where her sister lived as Owain’s prisoner...

”I’m sure she’s safe,” Isabell said, wishing that her voice contained more confidence than it did. ”She’s clever, and now that she’s shaken off her illusions about Owain’s nature, she’s certain to be making moves to keep herself safe in Lothian Manor. And she has your cousin, Eleanor, with her, plus a number of your father’s knights. She should be safe, at least for now...”

Privately, Isabell worried that Jocelynn herself might have made a move against Bors Lothian. As her days in Lothian City wore on, Jocelynn had seen more and more evidence of Owain’s cruelty, and she’d become convinced that Owain hadn’t given Ashlynn the ’merciful death’ he’d promised when Jocelynn had asked how her sister had died. The certainty that her sister had suffered at Owain’s hands, combined with learning that Ashlynn had asked Isabell to protect Jocelynn from Owain if she could, had put tremendous pressure on the young woman’s heart.

When Eleanor had fetched Isabell to help, the engineer had found a dark fatalism taking hold of the formerly bright young woman, and it had been all Isabell could manage to convince Lady Jocelynn not to risk her own life for the chance to take Owain down with her.

Instead, Isabell had encouraged Lady Jocelynn to seek out the aid of the ship captains from Blackwell that Owain had recruited to become knights in the coming war, surrounding herself with loyal supporters who could keep her safe in the den of snakes that Lothian Manor had become.

It wasn’t much, but before Isabell followed Marcel to reunite with Lady Ashlynn, it had been the most she could do. Now, she could only hope that Lady Jocelynn had taken her advice and surrounded herself with the people who could further insulate her from the danger posed by the man whom Jocelynn had once conspired against her own sister to marry.