The Vampire & Her Witch

Ollie looked back at the shimmering, jewel-like acorn in Ashlynn’s hand and tried to get a sense of the purpose it might serve. When he looked at the focused, scintillating bundle of energy contained within the Acorn, however, it felt either incredibly chaotic or far too complex for him to understand, so he ventured his best guess.

”Since you brought it out,” Ollie said hesitantly. ”I guess it’s for healing?”

”That’s true,” Ashlynn said, nodding in approval. ”These acorns can pull someone back from the very brink of death,” she said quietly. ”They can restore what’s been broken and heal what’s been damaged beyond normal recovery. I made one for you, one for Isabell, and one...”

She hesitated, color rising in her cheeks.

”One for Jocelynn,” she finished softly. ”In case anything happens to my sister. In case I can’t be there to save her. They can be used in other ways besides just healing a person. There’s an entire forest worth of power within each acorn, so if you or Isabell needed to fight a desperate battle to protect Jocelynn, it could help with that, too.”

”But mostly,” Ashlynn said, looking deeply into Ollie’s eyes and allowing all of her concerns and worries to show on her face. ”Mostly, I made them to make sure that, if something happened like what happened to Lord Jalal... we could do more than just preserve a life. For you, or Isabell or Jocelynn... for the people I can’t bear to lose, it’s a last hope, even if something terrible has happened to me.”

Ollie felt something tighten in his chest at the vulnerability in Ashlynn’s voice, especially when she mentioned that something might happen to her that would result in her coven needing such extraordinary power.

”You’re going to use one on me,” he said softly, and it wasn’t a question when he said it. He could see the determination in her eyes behind the anxiety, and he knew her well enough by now to know when she’d made up her mind.

”Yes,” Ashlynn said simply. ”Because you need more than just rest and time, Ollie. You need this.”

She finally looked up at him, and the fear in her eyes made his breath catch.

”When I examined you earlier,” she said quietly. ”When I sent my power through your body to see what you’d done to yourself, I found that the roots from your seed of witchcraft were withered. Dry and brittle, barely clinging to life.”

She reached out to place her hand flat against his chest, directly over his heart, where the seed resided.

”If you’d used any more of your power before healing,” she continued, her voice barely above a whisper. ”If you’d tried even one ritual, the seed itself would have shattered. You might have survived,” she said, swallowing heavily. ”You probably would have. Your body is strong enough. But you would no longer be a witch.”

What she said wasn’t entirely true, but it was close enough to the truth for him to understand. He might have survived in part because he’d gained the enduring strength and tenacity of the Cypress Tree, and his body had been forever changed when the seed of witchcraft transformed him. That much was true.

But the other part, the part that Ashlynn couldn’t make herself say aloud because she was afraid of how he might react to it, was that he might survive because he hadn’t been a witch for very long. His body still remembered how to live without the power of the world coursing through his veins. But over time, that would change. The same injury, a decade or two from now, would be impossible to survive.

Right now, she understood Ollie well enough to know that he might be able to accept that. His identity as a knight was far more important to him than his identity as a witch. But in time, she was certain that wouldn’t be true... She just didn’t want to see him throw away something irreplaceable because he didn’t yet understand the sort of sacrifice he’d be making.

”Do you understand, Ollie?” Ashlynn asked softly. ”How close you came to losing the gift I nurtured for you? How much you would have lost?”

Ashlynn’s question hit Ollie like a physical blow. For a moment, he stared at Ashlynn, his pale eyes unblinking as he struggled to process what she was telling him.

”I would have lost the seed of witchcraft?” Ollie asked, his voice coming out hoarse. ”I, I wouldn’t be the Cypress Witch anymore?”

”Yes,” Ashlynn said, and there were tears gathering in her emerald eyes now. ”And I wasn’t there to stop you. I wasn’t there to tell you it was too much. I felt you dying, Ollie. I felt you falling into the Void, but I couldn’t reach you. I couldn’t help you. I couldn’t do anything except hold onto the bond between us and pray that you’d pull back in time.”

She’d tried. She’d flailed madly at the connection that tied them together, desperate to find a way to infuse her strength into him, but he was too far away, and by the time she felt his desperate need, he was already too fragile to help. If she’d done anything, if she’d used too much power in an attempt to save him, she might have doomed him instead.

In the end, she’d been helpless, unable to do anything but watch as she felt one of her witches withering away and dying.

A tear slipped down her cheek, and she brushed it away impatiently. He’d survived, she reminded herself. He’d survived his own recklessness once. Now, the important part was to make sure that he never did it again... and that he recovered from the tragedy that he’d narrowly avoided.

”I need you to understand how close you came,” she said, her voice shaking slightly. ”Not just to losing your life, but to losing everything that makes you who you are. Your connection to the trees, to the world... To me and the rest of the coven,” she added softly. ”All of it could have been gone.”

She leaned forward, her hand still pressed against his chest.

”And I need you to understand that I can’t always be there to rescue you,” she whispered. ”I want to be. I want to keep you safe and to make sure nothing ever hurts you. But I can’t.”

”So you need to be more careful, Ollie,” she said firmly. ”You need to think before you push yourself past your limits. Because next time, I might not be close enough to help. Next time, you might lose something you can never get back.”