The Vampire & Her Witch

Morwen’s hands stilled in the process of slicing another piece of sausage. Kitchen scraps. He’d lived on kitchen scraps. The casual way he said it, as if it were just a normal part of his past rather than something that should never happen to anyone, much less someone who would become a knight...

”The Lothians, they, they only gave you scraps to live on?” Morwen said with a horrified look on her face as she stared at Sir Ollie.

”My parents aren’t wealthy people,” Ollie said simply, as if there was no shame in the way he’d been treated. ”My father is a stablehand at the manor, and my mother is a chambermaid. Half of their wages go to renting a couple’s room in the servant’s dorm, and they worked hard to make sure we could live together.”

”Me working in the kitchens and scrounging for the leftovers,” Ollie said with an oddly nostalgic smile on his lips. ”That was my way of trying to ease my parents’ burdens. Now, I’ve given them months of worry,” he said, shaking his head as he imagined how they must be suffering since he ’ran off with the witch, Lynnda.’

”I’ll make it up to them soon,” he promised the occupants of the carriage. ”Whether they want to stay in Lothian or come to my village, I’ll take care of them as much as they took care of me.”

”You’re a good man, Ollie,” Liam said from the seat opposite the young witch. ”I know that when they finally see you again, your parents will be proud of you.” He said it confidently, but without knowing them, it was hard to be certain that it was true.

If Ollie’s parents turned out to be like Lady Cerys, then their reunion would be a rocky one, but Liam doubted that they could have raised such an outstanding knight if their hearts harbored the kind of zealotry that seemed to lurk in Lady Cerys’ heart.

”Here,” Morwen said, her voice a touch softer than before as she held out another prepared piece of bread, this time with cheese, sausage, and a thin slice of apple she’d added. ”You should eat more. You need your strength back.”

Ollie accepted it with another grateful smile, and this time when their fingers touched, Morwen didn’t pull away quite so quickly.

”You’re spoiling me,” Ollie said with a faint smile. ”I’m not used to being waited on like this.”

”Well, maybe you should get used to it,” Eira interjected from across the carriage, her tone light and teasing. ”At least until you’ve recovered from this morning. You’re the hero who saved Lady Cerys’s life, after all. The least we can do is make sure you’re properly fed,” she said, though it was clear from her tone that she meant it as more than thanks for his heroism.

”Eira’s right,” Morwen added, preparing another piece before Ollie could finish what he was currently eating. ”You’ve given so much today. Let us take care of you for a little while.”

She held out the next piece, and this time Ollie didn’t even try to take it from her hand. Instead, in an effort to lighten the mood that seemed to have darkened when he spoke about his past, Ollie just leaned forward slightly and took a bite directly from her fingers.

Morwen’s face flushed hot, and she was suddenly very aware of how intimate this had become, sitting beside him, feeding him with her own hands, feeling the warmth of his breath on her fingers. It was the sort of thing a wife might do for her husband, or a lady for her...

She cut that thought off before it could fully form, quickly pulling her hand back and reaching for the apple to slice it into more manageable pieces. Her heart was beating too fast, and she could feel Eira’s knowing gaze on her from across the carriage.

”You know, most of the time, I cook for myself,” Ollie said around a mouthful of bread, sausage, and cheese, trying to move the conversation on now that he seemed to have dispelled the dark cloud of his past from the carriage. ”Or, lately, I cook with Lady Ashlynn and the rest of the coven. It’s a tradition she brought back from the coven of The Mother of Thorns,” he explained. ”It’s not always practical for us to share every meal the way Auntie Amahle’s coven does, but we try to do it as often as possible.”

”I remember the dish that Lady Ashlynn made for the banquet,” Liam said, smiling as he recalled the palate-cleansing course of frozen, blended fruit that Ashlynn had evidently prepared herself. ”I envy you, getting to eat her cooking so often,” he said with a light chuckle.

”Don’t envy me too much,” Ollie said with a light chuckle. ”I also get to eat Virve’s cooking,” Ollie said with a slight shudder. ”She’s learning, but she has a stomach that can endure anything and a tongue that’s immune to harm. Be glad that you can rely on Georg and the kitchens when you come back to train with Virve.”

”Go back to the Vale?” Morwen said, her hands pausing mid-motion as she was slicing a winter apple for Sir Ollie. ”You, you’re going back? But you only just came home...”

”It isn’t certain yet,” Liam said carefully as he looked from Morwen’s worried eyes to Eira’s. ”But I’ve asked if Father will put off his retirement so I can spend some time following Lady Ashlynn, to learn the Eldritch ways of fighting and ruling. Her Dominion seems to have approved, at least enough to place me in the care of the captain of her personal guard.”

”Does that mean that you’re joining Lady Ashlynn’s guard?” Eira asked, frowning slightly at the notion that Liam would be offered such a low position in Lady Ashlynn’s court. It would be a grand position for a knight like her father, but for the son of a Baron, or, perhaps, the son of a Count, once things changed, it felt a little... lacking.

”Does your father know?” Eira asked hesitantly. ”And is he, is he willing to allow this?”

”I haven’t told him much beyond what you know,” Liam admitted. ”But don’t think that this is a bad thing for me,” he said with a smile that looked a little awkward and slightly forced, as though there were several things he wasn’t explaining.

”Captain Virve is the Oak Witch,” Liam explained. ”Her status is no lower than Sir Ollie’s, and it’s a high honor to be trained by her,” he said, and he meant it. What he didn’t mention, however, were Virve’s comments about getting him some ’real practice’, fighting the other elite warriors among the Eldritch, or her promise to bring him to Lady Heila if he suffered any injuries that she wasn’t able to heal herself.

The training offered by the Oak Witch would likely benefit him greatly... Assuming that he survived it!