The Vampire & Her Witch

”Some of you may have heard the rumors,” Jocelynn said carefully. ”That Ashlynn was sickly. That she was frail, and that was why she stayed inside the manor most of the time. That her weak constitution was the reason why she was so rarely seen in the city or at public events,” she said.

”That wasn’t true at all,” Jocelynn said flatly, shaking her head at the notion of her sister being weak in any way. ”My sister was never frail. She was one of the strongest people I’ve ever known.”

She paused, choosing her next words the way a sailor would choose a course through shallow water, aware that a wrong step could run her aground on truths she wasn’t prepared to share and some of the people in the chapel certainly weren’t ready to hear.

”Ashlynn stayed inside the manor because it was the only place where she was safe,” Jocelynn said. ”There were people who would have harmed her if they could have. I, I can’t explain it,” she said, her voice faltering as she struggled for words.

”It wasn’t her fault,” she clarified. ”It wasn’t anything she ever did, but... Father knew, and Mother did too. I, I didn’t understand it until it was too late, but... My sister was special in so many ways. But it wasn’t easy for her. It was actually the opposite of that,” she said, fumbling through her explanation bit by bit.

”It doesn’t matter who was trying to hurt her,” Jocelynn said, swallowing down the lump in her throat along with the words ’because I was the one who got her killed.’ ”What matters is that my sister lived most of her life behind walls. Not because she was weak, but because the world outside those walls was far too dangerous for her.”

The chapel had gone very still. In the back rows, Ragna’s sharp eyes had narrowed slightly, and Adala’s carefully pleasant expression had shifted into something more focused, more intent. Charlotte’s lip was trembling, and she clutched a handkerchief in her hands that was already wet with tears.

Even the stoic Sorcha looked like she was about to crack, her work-roughened hands clutching at her skirts as if to prevent herself from making fists to pummel whoever dared to threaten these young girls.

”That’s why she used to sneak out before dawn,” Jocelynn continued. ”Not because she was being rebellious or foolish, but because those few minutes on the cliffs were the only time she could feel free. She’d sit there with bread and cheese and watch the ships leave the harbor, and she’d talk about all the places they were going.”

”We used to play guessing games,” Jocelynn said, blinking back the tears. ”Was this ship going to come back with nets full of fish or an empty hold? Was that one sailing for Whalebone Isle, or Stormwarden Barony? We had as many guesses as there were ships in the harbor,” she said softly.

”It wasn’t like we could find out,” she said. ”The cliffs are too tall to make out the name of a ship from that far away. But to Ash, it didn’t matter if we guessed right or not. She just wanted to dream of all the places the sailors could go and all the adventures they could have... She wanted to think about the world over the horizon and to imagine herself in it.”

As she spoke, the ship captains shifted awkwardly in their seats, and Captain Devlin found his eyes just as full of tears as Jocelynn’s were. The open ocean, with all of its wonders, and the countless ports and places a sailor might find himself, were one of the greatest rewards a man could find for putting his boots on the deck of a ship.

Count Rhys Blackwell traveled freely among the islands that made up the majority of his domain. Whether they were only large enough to play host to a small fishing village with a fortress that doubled as a lighthouse, or the places like Stormwarden Barony that were large enough for a small town and herds of sheep and cattle to graze on the lush grasses of the isle’s leeward side, any Blackwell Lord would have countless places to visit without even leaving the waters of his own county.

But when Devlin thought about it, he realized that he could only recall a handful of occasions when Lady Ashlynn had left Blackwell City to visit the island baronies. In fact, until Owain Lothian began courting her, she’d never once left the county, even though Jocelynn had traveled upriver to visit her mother’s family in DuCoumont several times as a young lady.

For a moment, Devlin thought about the rumors that he’d heard, that Count Rhys had once fought a duel with Duke Trevarthen over Lady Maela before any of them had risen to their current stature. But even if Duke Trevarthen bore some kind of grudge over it, the restrictions on Lady Ashlynn felt rather... extreme. Clearly, whatever threatened Lady Ashlynn’s safety was no ordinary threat.

Jocelynn’s voice wavered, but she steadied it with a deep breath and pressed on.

”She used to say that she could feel the wind pulling her toward the horizon, and that someday, she’d follow those sails to the very edge of the world. But she couldn’t,” Jocelynn said softly. ”She couldn’t leave, because leaving would have meant putting herself in danger, and she wouldn’t do that to our family.”

”So she stayed,” Jocelynn said with a heavy sigh. ”She stayed, and she read every book she could find about the places she couldn’t go. She learned the names of every island and every port and every current and reef between Blackwell and the southern seas. She could have navigated a ship from our harbor to the Holy City and back without ever looking at a chart, and she never once set foot on a deck.”

”She said she wanted to find ways for the baronies to support each other more,” Jocelynn said. ”She’d try to find a new route through the Broken Tooth Narrows that would let the deep-drafted cogs bring grain to Stormwarden Barony from Dalais Barony, or a way to help Stackpole Barony get more of their catch to market before it spoiled...”

”She always wanted to find a way to help people,” Jocelynn said softly. ”Even when they were people she’d never meet, who would never even know how hard she worked for them...”

Several of the ship captains shifted in their seats. These were men who had spent their lives at sea, who measured freedom in knots and leagues and open water. The idea of a woman who gave so much of her time to studying the sea yet could never set foot on the deck of a ship struck them as a special kind of tragedy, and one they’d never even realized that Lady Ashlynn was suffering.

”When she came to Lothian March,” Jocelynn said. ”She traded one cage for another. The walls were different, the dangers were different, but she was still a prisoner here. She was never safe here, and she was never free.”

Jocelynn reached out and rested her fingers on the lid of the wooden chest.

”But now,” she said, and something in her voice shifted, something that was fierce and tender all at once. ”Now, no cage can hold her anymore. No walls, no secrets, no dangers in the dark. Wherever she is, whether she’s found the Heavenly Shores or whether she’s sailing toward them right now, she’s finally free. And I want to send her off the way she always dreamed of leaving, with the sunrise to welcome her and the whole horizon ahead of her.”

She lifted the lid of the chest.

”I brought a few of Ashlynn’s things to burn for her pyre, so they can accompany her on her journey,” she said, her voice becoming soft and tender, as though she were no longer speaking to the room, but making a promise to the sister who was no longer alive. ”Things that mattered to her. Things that were part of who she was. But, before they burn, I want to tell you why they mattered to her...”