The Vampire & Her Witch

”I know because daughter, you daughter, she visits the Ancient Clan. At Crystal Lake City,” the witch said, as if it was an ordinary thing, but the words slammed into Rhys like waves against the bow of a ship. For a moment, he shook his head, as if he’d been rocked by the force of a blow, but the Witch of Deep Currents gave him no time to collect himself as she continued to speak.

”Word comes to southern shores, where the White River meets the seas, word that new Mother of Trees is born,” Esselk’ti said. ”Word that she goes to learn from Mother of Thorns in the Briar. Word travels fast on the river, reaches me, so I learn of this. My Mother, the Mother of Tides, she learns of this fast because no witch faster on the seas than me,” she said with a hint of pride in her voice.

”After told her, she send me back,” Esselk’ti said, taking a few steps closer to Rhys, then a few steps back to where she started, miming the course of her journey.

”I travel far upriver. Long travel. I swim through shallow waters, waters with no salt, hard for me, to visit Mother of Thorns as days grow short and nights grow long. Auntie Amahle, the Mother of Thorns, she tells me many things. Things about daughter of Black Sails, betrayed by... by one of her own clan, her own blood,” the witch said as her deep voice grew darker and a slight growl at the back of her throat began to accompany her words.

”She says your daughter almost dies to this ’Owain Lothian,’” Esselk’ti said, and her voice carried a new quality now, something cold and deep like the ocean floor where no light reaches. She moved toward Rhys, not walking but flowing across the uneven stone as if she could float atop even the shallowest puddle.

Her webbed feet made soft, wet slapping sounds against the rock with each step -slap-, -slap-, -slap-, but instead of splashing like it should, the water she stepped in flowed around her feet, swirling around her in a small but growing whirlpool that grew a few inches wider and spun just a little bit faster with each step that she took.

”Almost dies,” she repeated, stopping close enough that Rhys could smell the deep ocean on her, not just salt, but the cold, familiar scent of tide pools and kelp beds and things that scuttled back to the watery darkness of the deep sea when the tides returned to carry them away.

Her whiskers were trembling now, vibrating with some emotion he couldn’t read, and when she spoke again, her voice had dropped to a near growl that carried more menace than the meanest captain could summon for a crew full of mutineers.

”And she says you are one who sends daughter to him.”

As the Witch of Deep Currents spoke, the moisture on the walls began to move. Not dripping down as water should, but flowing sideways, creeping across the stone in thin rivulets that merged together like streams joining rivers on their way to the sea.

The water flowed toward her like a school of fish, swarming for a meal, gathering and pooling around her feet until she stood in a whirlpool of water that reached all the way up to her ankles.

The wind howling through the windows grew louder, wetter, carrying more spray with each gust until the air itself felt thick with moisture.

But Rhys noticed none of these things, nor did he hear the warning and disapproval in Esselk’ti’s voice after she’d uttered something he’d hoped to hear for almost the entire year.

”Almost died,” Rhys repeated, and the words hit him like a wave breaking over the bow of a ship.

Almost. Not died. Almost died.

His legs went liquid beneath him, his knees suddenly unable to bear his weight as the full meaning crashed through him. He staggered sideways, like a man on the pitching deck of a ship caught in a gale, one hand shooting out blindly to catch himself until his palm slapped against the wet stone wall.

The cold shock of it barely registered. His knees buckled, and he slid down the wall, unable to stand, unable to do anything but sink toward the floor as relief overwhelmed every other sensation.

”Then, she’s alive,” he breathed, his back against the stone now, sliding down until he was half-sitting, half-collapsed on the uneven floor. Water soaked through his breeches immediately, but he barely noticed, and even if he had noticed, he couldn’t care. ”She’s alive, and she found her way to witches who could teach her.”

The water Esselk’ti had gathered around her feet, the whirlpool, the rivulets flowing across the walls, all of it, barely registered in his eyes. The threat in her voice, the anger in those large, dark eyes, the power that could sink his fleet and crush his county... None of it mattered. She could drown him right here, right now, pull the water up his body and fill his lungs with seawater, and he would die grateful.

His daughter was alive.

”Bless the tides and she who rules them,” Rhys said, his voice breaking completely as he tilted his head back against the wall and laughed, letting loose a sound that was half-sob, half-hysteria, finally releasing a year’s worth of desperate, secret hope, fear, and self-loathing for ever putting Ashlynn in danger.

Tears streamed down his face, mixing with the spray and the water from his soaked hair, and these tears tasted different, less salty than the ones he’d shed just moments before.

His hands were shaking where they rested on the wet stone floor, fingers splayed in the pooled water, and his whole body trembled with the force of the emotion coursing through him. His throat ached from holding back sobs, his chest felt like it might crack open, and he couldn’t stop laughing even as he cried.

”My little Ash is still alive,” he whispered to the stone floor, to the water, to the wind, the blue flames, and the angry witch whose power surrounded him, as if the words were a talisman that would shelter him from all of it. ”My little Ash is still alive....”