The Vampire & Her Witch

”Please, can I rest?”

Ollie’s simple, feeble question pierced Cynwrig’s heart like an arrow, and for a moment, his eyes drifted from the young knight to his wife’s unconscious figure. Cerys was slowly starting to recover her color as she lay next to the fire, and her face still held the tension of intense pain from the broken bone and twisted ankle that Sir Ollie hadn’t been able to heal, but she was alive... and she would recover in time so long as she received good care from here on out.

”Yes,” Cynwrig said, placing a hand on his son’s shoulder and guiding Dalwyn to accompany him as he moved to kneel beside Ollie so the young witch could hear him clearly. ”Yes, Sir Ollie. My wife will live because of you. You saved her life, saved our family. I owe you a debt that I don’t know how I’ll ever repay. But you did it.”

”Dalwyn,” he said softly, leaning close to whisper in his son’s ears. ”Do you remember the words I taught you? Sir Ollie saved your Mama’s life, so what should a knight say to the man who risked his life to protect your Mama?”

”Th-thank you, Sir Ollie,” Dalwyn said, wiping the snot from his nose with the back of his sleeve as he stood up straight and did his best to make his father proud. ”If the day comes that you, um, that you need my help, I, um, I will forget, no... I will not forget what you did today,” he said, stumbling his way through the formal phrases.

”Thank you for saving Mama, Sir Ollie,” he said more simply. ”Thank you...” he said again, trailing off when he realized that Sir Ollie didn’t seem to know how to respond to what he’d said. In fact, the way the flame-haired knight looked so lost, with a stare that looked past the young boy, Dalwyn wasn’t sure if Sir Ollie had even heard him.

”There, you hear that?” Carwyn said, hoping that his son’s words would bring the young knight a measure of peace, though looking at him, Carwyn wasn’t certain whether they were giving Ollie the peace to sleep, or the peace to pass on from this world. Either way, a knight deserved to know that their sacrifice hadn’t been in vain. ”Your duty is done, Sir Ollie, and now that Cerys’s life isn’t in danger anymore, you can rest. You’ve earned it.”

The words were meant to be comforting, meant to give Ollie the peace of mind he so clearly needed. But Milo heard something else in them, something that sent a spike of cold fear straight through his chest.

Permission.

Cynwrig was giving Ollie permission to let go, permission to stop fighting, permission to rest in a way that might mean he would never wake up again.

”No!” Milo said sharply, moving forward so quickly that he nearly knocked Sir Gavin aside. He dropped to his knees beside Ollie and gathered the young witch into his arms, holding him close against his chest despite the cold water that still soaked both their bodies. ”No, you haven’t done your duty yet. You can’t rest yet.”

Ollie’s shadow-filled eyes opened slightly, confused and questioning, and Milo felt the trembling weakness in his friend’s body as he held him. It would be so easy for Ollie to slip away right now. So easy to stop fighting, to let the cold and the exhaustion and the seductive call of the void take him to that place of rest he was asking for.

Milo couldn’t let that happen. Wouldn’t let that happen.

”Everyone is still counting on you,” Milo said urgently, his voice cracking with desperation. ”You can’t rest yet, Ollie. Not yet. Even if you’re tired, even if it’s heavy, you have to hold on a little longer. Please.”

”But... I saved her,” Ollie whispered, confusion evident in his weak voice. ”I did what... a knight should. I stood between her and death,” he said, turning his unseeing eyes back in the direction of Sir Carwyn and little Dalwyn. ”I brought her back. Isn’t that... Isn’t that enough?”

”No,” Milo said firmly, even though the word felt like a lie on his tongue. How could he tell Ollie that saving a woman’s life wasn’t enough? How could he demand more from someone who had already given everything he had? But he had to, because if Ollie thought his work was done, if he believed he had permission to stop fighting, then death would take him.

”Your mission isn’t finished,” Milo insisted. ”Lady Ashlynn is waiting for you to return. She needs you, Ollie. She sent you here because she needs you.”

Ollie’s head moved slightly in what might have been a shake.

”Ashlynn has... Lady Heila,” he breathed. ”Better healer than me. Has Virve... stronger warrior than me. And now... Isabell. Smarter and wiser... than I’ll ever be. She doesn’t need... failure like me.”

”That’s not true,” Harrod said, moving to kneel on Ollie’s other side. His normally gruff voice was surprisingly gentle, and there was a fierce protectiveness in his wide-set eyes. Like Milo, he had stood watch over Ollie during his vigil, and he understood from what Ollie had told him afterwards that a witch’s heart was the center of their power.

Right now, Ollie sounded dull and hollowed out, as if all of the passions and desires that gave him strength and power, the fierce protectiveness he felt for his people and his unflagging willingness to help and nurture the people around him had been scooped out of his chest, carried away by the cold currents of the river while he gave his all to saving Lady Cerys from the tragedy of her own making.

Ollie was always humble, sometimes to a fault, but he’d never sounded so... defeated before. He’d always been a man who strove to measure up to the ideals of what he thought a knight should be... More recently, when he became a witch, he’d taken the other witches of Lady Ashlynn’s coven as a challenge, a new standard that he had to strive to meet.

But now, he sounded like he’d forgotten that he was worthy of standing among those witches, and he was giving up on life because he no longer felt like he had anything to offer that the other members of Ashlynn’s coven couldn’t do better.

He was wrong, so very wrong, but Harrod struggled to think of how he could help the dying witch realize that...