The Vampire & Her Witch

Jocelynn turned away from the altar, taking her portion of breakfast back to the pew in the front row so she could sit with a view of the altar and the stained glass window beyond it.

Somewhere beyond the clouds, the sun was just starting to rise above the low, rolling, eastern hills, and gray morning light filtered through the stained glass window, bringing with it hues of gold, amber, and the faintest hint of green reflecting off the altar.

”When you told me that the food in the march was rich, I thought you meant expensive and refined,” Jocelynn said as she pulled out the block of hard cheese and began breaking it into bite-sized pieces. ”I didn’t realize you meant that they ate vast amounts of red meat and that everything was cooked in butter and lard,” she said as she took a small bite of the cheese.

”And there’s barely any salt in anything because it’s so expensive here,” she said, frowning slightly at the cheese that still felt more creamy than savory, and a touch sour as well. ”I wish I’d brought some from home to offer you,” she said as a tear rolled down her cheek. ”I wish... I wish I could trade with you, Ash,” she said, brushing the tear away with the corner of her sleeve before reaching back into the basket for a bit of the crusty bread.

”That’s stupid, isn’t it?” Jocelynn said, taking a bite of the crumbly bread. It was a little dry, and the creamy cheese helped to make it a better bite, but it still wasn’t as salty as she craved. ”A year ago, I would have given anything to trade with you so I could marry Owain. Now, after I ruined everything, I’d give anything to trade with you... If you could live again, it would be worth it,” she said softly.

Her eyes brimmed with tears, and for a moment, the entire world felt hazy until she blinked them away. Both her cheeks were wet with tears now, but she let them flow, refusing to hold them back now that she’d opened the floodgates.

”I thought that you were getting the best life, and you didn’t even want it,” Jocelynn continued a few moments later after retrieving a small handful of dried cherries. ”I thought that it would be better if I took your place. I, I thought I could free you from something you didn’t want...”

It had been a foolish, stupid, arrogant, naive, careless, selfish idea. The thought that by telling Owain about Ashlynn’s mark, he would hold back from consummating the marriage. That somehow, at the eleventh hour, she could snatch Owain for herself and somehow take Ashlynn’s place so her sister could return to the life she loved, tending her gardens, reading her books...

But that hadn’t been a real life that Ashlynn loved. It had been her sister making the best of the gilded cage she was kept in, because leaving that cage risked certain death. Death that had found her because of Jocelynn’s ignorance and jealousy.

”You were protecting me from a monster,” she said bitterly. ”You know, before I left home, Father told me that you made him and Mother promise that I could marry whoever I wanted,” she continued a few heartbeats and several dried cherries later. ”He told me that he wouldn’t break his promise to you, even now, and that if I didn’t want to marry Owain, he would protect me until I found someone who could love me the way he loved Mother.”

”I was such a fool,” she said, shaking her head at her own stupidity. ”I told him that I wanted Owain and that I could take your place... That I would make it up to you by doing the things you were supposed to do...”

”I didn’t know,” she said softly. ”I didn’t know how heavy the burden you carried was. I didn’t know how hard it would be to come here,” she said, gesturing to the chapel around her and the whole of Lothian March beyond its walls. ”I didn’t know how much I’d miss home, or how... how horrible Owain would be.”

The whole time Owain had courted Ashlynn, her sister had always smiled politely when she talked about her betrothed, calling him a fine gentleman. She praised him for his skills and said that, once the war came, she would have to work hard to manage affairs in Lothian March as well as she was certain Owain would manage the war...

But Owain would never have allowed his wife to manage the march in his absence. He would have made Ashlynn send everything to him for his approval, or he’d have routed things around her to one of his stewards, like Hugo, instead of letting Ashlynn touch anything.

”You worked so hard to learn to rule this place,” Jocelynn said, staring out the stained glass window with tear-filled eyes. ”You spent two whole years planning to make this place your home, and Owain, he...” she tried to say, but she couldn’t get the words out past the sobs that wracked her body.

”Because of me, he...”

Memories flickered through her mind as tears all but blinded her. Owain in the training yard, brutally beating his own men as he trained with them, cracking bones with his blunt practice blade and blaming it on the men for being careless enough to get hurt. Then, the image twisted, and it wasn’t nameless soldiers receiving the beating, but her helpless sister, Ashlynn, instead.

In another memory, Owain sat in what had been his father’s office, confessing to poisoning his father with a demonic venom that robbed him of his sanity... Then snuffing out his father’s life when Bors’ delusions nearly cost Jocelynn her life at the hands of the Inquisition.

But once again, the vision twisted, and Jocelynn saw Owain standing over Ashlynn’s body in that office, smiling down at her corpse as if he was happy to be rid of the woman whose secret could have brought him to ruin.

Finally, her mind replayed her last conversation with Eleanor, glowing and radiant as she sacrificed her life to save Jocelynn’s... To save the woman who was least worth saving out of all of them. Because Eleanor was like Ashlynn, taking on all of the pain and suffering to give Jocelynn a chance at something better.

”I’m sorry,” she sobbed, sliding limply from the hard wooden pew to kneel on the cold stone floor of the chapel. Her tears were bitter and salty, and she felt them flowing from her eyes like rivers trying to return to the sea. Nothing could stop the flood, and her body shook with the force of her sobs as the tears overwhelmed her.

”Ash, I’m so sorry...”