The Vampire & Her Witch

As soon as Liam uttered the word ’betrayed,’ the whole table went still, and Isabell felt like her stomach had fallen through her chair and the floor beneath it. She’d been present the last time a traitor had been brought before Ashlynn for judgment, and she’d watched as Ashlynn used Sir Rain’s sword to execute the man that an impromptu tribunal of knights had declared guilty. A tribunal that had included both Sir Ollie and Sir Hugo...

”She ran,” Ashlynn said flatly, though there was something in her tone that suggested she wasn’t surprised. ”A mother took her child and ran in the middle of the night because she was so afraid of what Ollie might do to them. Or because she was afraid of what an alliance with the Eldritch and me would mean for her and her family.”

”Yes,” Liam said, his voice heavy with guilt. ”I, I don’t think she was specifically afraid of Sir Ollie,” he said. ”But she was clear in the note that she left for her husband that she didn’t believe that she could live alongside the Eldritch.”

”And then what happened?” Ashlynn asked, already suspecting that the answer wouldn’t be good. After all, it had been in the earliest hours of the morning, almost right at dawn, when she had felt Ollie pushed to the brink of death. From the way Liam was speaking, it was clearly Cerys’ fault; she just didn’t know how a fleeing woman could pose such a grave threat to a knight and witch like Ollie.

Liam exchanged a glance with Ollie, who nodded slightly, finishing the last bite of his hand pie before picking up the tale from where Liam had left off.

”Liam already mentioned that Sir Gavin and Lady Isolde met Milo and Harrod with me in the copse of trees the night before,” Ollie said, working his way up to explaining what had happened. ”I didn’t call for them, but they noticed me recovering from healing Sir Gavin and came to see if I needed help.”

”Before I left them, I warned them that we, um, that we told more people than just Baron Loghlan and Lady Mairwen,” Ollie said. He’d almost said that they had been forced to tell more people, but Liam had made it abundantly clear that it had been their decision to yield to Lord Loghlan’s demands, and it had been the wrong one. Since Ashlynn had accepted that answer, Ollie wasn’t about to contradict it.

”I warned them that someone might try to carry word about our meeting to Maeril and the Inquisition,” Ollie said. ”Or to Owain Lothian. I didn’t want to risk another Darragh,” he said, remembering the man who had acted like a friend and neighbor for months only to flee at the first opportunity in the hopes of receiving a reward from Owain Lothian for his information.

”Harrod tried to stop her, but she wouldn’t stop,” Ollie continued in a voice that grew softer the more he spoke. ”So Milo shot her horse. He, he killed it with a single arrow, and Cerys and her son were thrown from the saddle. She protected her son, but her injuries... She almost died. She would have died if I hadn’t...”

”If you hadn’t healed her,” Ashlynn said, and it wasn’t a question.

”Sir Ollie saved her life,” Liam confirmed. ”But the cost...”

He trailed off, and Ollie picked up the story once again.

”She was too far gone,” Ollie said quietly. ”Too badly hurt. I had to draw on everything I had, and it still wasn’t enough. I, I know I’m not as good at healing as you or Heila, but I couldn’t give up,” he said, looking at Ashlynn with pale eyes that were moist with remembered pain. ”Even after every tree in the copse died to save her life, I still had to fight against the pull of the Void, and when the void let go of her, it latched onto me instead...”

”Milo saved me,” Ollie added. ”He pulled me out of the river, and he pulled me back from the edge of the Void too. Without him, I probably would have died,” he admitted. ”After that, I had just enough strength to pull the last bits of life from an old oak tree to nourish dozens of seeds, just like you taught me,” he said with a fragile smile.

”It will take time, and I plan to go back there to care for the saplings,” he promised. ”But it all worked out in the end. I saved her, saved Dalwyn’s mother and Cynwrig’s wife... And I protected our alliance with the Dunns... I, I know it was risky, Ashlynn,” he said softly. ”But it was a risk worth taking.”

Ashlynn’s hands had gone very still on the table, and her knuckles had gone white where she gripped the edge. The silence that followed Ollie’s statement was oppressive and heavy. Even Marcel, who’d been lounging casually at his end of the table, had gone still and watchful.

Finally, after several heartbeats, Ashlynn spoke.

”No,” she said, and there was something broken in her voice. ”No, Ollie, it wasn’t worth it. Not if I’d lost you.”

She’d been lucky so far. It wasn’t that there hadn’t been losses along the way. Even though she’d only known him briefly, Andrus had been a good friend, one she’d hoped to get to know better.

There were others, too, people who had fallen at the Battle of the High Pass, the Battle of Hanrahan, and in the raids as well. People whose families she’d gone to with a heavy heart to let them know that their loved ones would never come home again...

But despite all that, she’d still been very lucky until recently. Until Percivus tortured and killed her cousin, Eleanor, she hadn’t lost anyone who was truly close to her. Worst of all, she hadn’t even known her cousin was in danger. She’d believed that the robes of a Confessor would shield her from harm, but it turned out that she’d been very, very wrong.

And if Eleanor had died, then Jocelynn hadn’t been nearly as safe as Ashlynn thought she’d been... and the uncertainty about her sister’s safety tore at her like the jaws of a wolf.

But, just as she’d once believed that Eleanor and Jocelynn were safe, she hadn’t really thought that anything on this mission could threaten Ollie. He was the Cypress Witch. He was incredibly resilient, capable of surviving wounds that would kill or cripple most men...

But there was no protecting him from the overwhelming generosity in his own heart, or the foolish risks he would take because of that, and she desperately needed him to understand that she could risk almost anything, but she could never lose him.