The Vampire & Her Witch

The meal turned out beautifully.

They ate together by the hearth, the low table between them laden with small portions of each dish they’d prepared. There was crispy boar belly nestled beside tender cabbage and potatoes that had fried in rendered fat, root vegetables caramelized to glassy sweetness on one side and fork-tender on the other, flaky cheese and onion tarts still warm from the coals, perfectly roasted pheasant with its aromatic stuffing of herbs, berries and crushed nuts, and finally the apple tarte with its glossy caramel coating catching the firelight like amber.

Nyrielle sampled only a few bites of each dish, leaving most of the meal for Ashlynn, but the praise she offered was genuine and generous.

”So this is the kind of dish you would have been served at the Lothian Feasts this winter,” Nyrielle said as she savored the combination of crispy, tender boar belly with sweet cabbage and decadent potatoes fried in the rendered fat. ”It looks humble compared to Georg’s presentation, but the flavors are so rich and decadent, you barely notice how little meat there is compared to the cabbage and potatoes.”

”It’s a tradition in Gaal that when a lord hosts a feast, they serve something that they hunted,” Ashlynn explained as she wiped a bit of grease from her lips. ”My father would spend all day on a boat with the Linemen to land a catch for the table, but even if he were to catch a very large swordfish or bluefin, it would be hard for everyone at the feast to get a portion.”

”So almost every noble house has a recipe like this one,” Ashlynn said as she took another bite. ”The prize cuts go to the High Table along with the head, while lesser parts of the beast or fish are cooked into dishes like this that stretch the meat as far as possible.”

”So what would we have been dining on in Blackwell?” Nyrielle asked. ”So I know what to look forward to once we’re finally able to visit.”

Whether they would ever be able to visit Blackwell, or if Ashlynn’s family would need to abandon the county, remained to be seen. Once word that Ashlynn was a Great Witch spread, the chances of the Inquisition turning on her family and pressuring the king to have them captured and tried as heretics would be enormous.

But for the moment, both Nyrielle and Ashlynn set that possibility aside, pretending for the evening that things would work out as they had once thought and they would be able to sneak across the kingdom so that Ashlynn could introduce Nyrielle to her parents.

”In Blackwell, we make a dish called ’Low Tide Soup,’” Ashlynn said, smiling fondly at the memory. ”We’d boil the bones of whatever fish my father caught along with seaweed and crab shells until it makes a delicious broth. Then, you take a little bit of the fish meat, a bit of the crab meat, and you mix them with the crusts of yesterday’s bread, eggs, and seasoning to make little dumplings that go into the soup, along with potatoes and onions and peas...”

”The biggest difference is that, in Blackwell, you find Low Tide Soup on every table,” Ashlynn said, shaking her head at the things she’d seen while visiting Lothian March. ”The soup had to be good enough to serve at the High Table, and everyone at the feast got a bowl of it. Everyone. One ship, one crew, one stew,” she said, smiling brightly at the old saying.

”But in Lothian, dishes like this one would only be served at the back of the great hall,” Ashlynn said. ”Mother says it’s the same in Keating, too. Too many lords would be offended at the notion being fed ’scraps,’ and too many lords would feel embarrassed to have failed to provide for the feast if they had to present something like this at their High Tables.”

”So, what about the new kingdom we’re going to build?” Nyrielle asked lightly as she moved on to the buttery, flaky, onion and goat cheese tart, savoring the contrasting textures of soft, caramelized onions, smooth, melted goat cheese, and crisp, flaky pastry. ”Do you intend to go hunting every time we hold a feast? Or should I?” Nyrielle asked with a predatory gleam in her eyes and a smile that revealed a hint of fangs.

Hunting had never been one of her priorities, but the same couldn’t be said for her parents after they’d become Torbin’s progeny, or Torbin himself, for that matter. Everyone who descended from Bardas valued the hunt to some extent, and Nyrielle had grown up in a more... predatory environment than the one the Vale of Mists currently cultivated.

Now, however, rather than nostalgia motivating the gleam in her eye, it was the thought of venturing out to find something delectable for her lover to savor that put a smile on her lips. Whether it was boar or elk, pheasant or fish in the sea, if she could watch Ashlynn’s eyes light up and her lips curl up in delight, then she would eagerly return to the hunt with glee and great anticipation.

”I... I hadn’t thought about it, really,” Ashlynn said honestly. ”I like the way it worked at home, in Blackwell,” she said after thinking for several heartbeats. ”I think it was good that my father spent time at sea with the Linemen. Most of the lords in Blackwell would be the same. To go fishing for anything impressive requires a whole crew, and everyone has to work together to bring in a prize catch.”

”But the Lothians and their lords don’t hunt that way,” Nyrielle said. ”They keep whole forests as private hunting grounds where only the lord is allowed to hunt, and anyone caught poaching is punished. When the Lothian lords hunt, unless it’s a small village knight hosting the feast, the only people permitted to join the hunt are other lords and a handful of their retainers.”

Nyrielle was well aware that she was at least partially to blame for that. In the early days of Lothian rule over the march, she and her progeny had frequently targeted lords who were foolish enough to stay in the wilderness for more than a single day in order to complete one of their hunts. She’d taught them all to fear the night, and so, in order to keep their tradition alive, they needed richly stocked hunting grounds where it was easier to succeed in their hunts.

Still, whether it was because of her upbringing in Blackwell, where successful commoners like Isabell held status comparable to the knights of the county, or because she herself had been sealed away from ordinary life, Ashlynn didn’t strike Nyrielle as someone who would want to maintain many of the Lothian customs once she seized the throne of the march from Owain.

”I hadn’t thought much about feasting,” Ashlynn admitted. ”But maybe... maybe I’ll encourage the lords of the march to roll up their sleeves and spend the day in their kitchens instead of out hunting. Or a day in the gardens harvesting produce for the feast. I think there’s a virtue in there somewhere about making sure that our lords understand the work that goes into the lives they enjoy...”

”But whether it’s this or any of the other traditions people currently hold,” Ashlynn said as she picked up her knife and began slicing into the roasted pheasant. ”Given time, once we’re able to live side by side as one kingdom, I’m sure we’ll start finding traditions of our own. Some things might need a little prompting,” she acknowledged. ”And some things will certainly need to be banned.”

”But for the rest,” Ashlynn said with a small shrug. ”I think it’s best to let the people show us who they are and what they value, and let nature take its course.”