The Vampire & Her Witch

Jocelynn felt her heart go still as she listened to Sorcha describing her husband. Jocelynn had thought of Owain the same way once. Handsome, strong, covered in glory from fighting demons. He was the perfect storybook hero in every way, and for a moment, Jocelynn was afraid that she was about to hear a tale of how Sorcha’s dream had turned into a nightmare.

But the warmth in her voice and the sparkle in her eyes, even after so many years had passed, told Jocelynn that she only had so much in common with the Baroness. It sounded like Sorcha had truly been rescued by a hero, whereas Jocelynn had found a demon lurking behind a hero’s mask.

”Things were bad in Silver Bluff when Wes arrived,” Sorcha continued, failing to notice the shadow that lurked behind Jocelynn’s eyes.

”The whole village was on the edge of revolt,” the baroness explained, closing her eyes for a moment as her tone grew solemn. ”People were starting to go hungry. We’d just buried three of our own, but there were more than two dozen who were badly hurt. Some of them would never work again.”

”A few people blamed my father,” Sorcha said, opening her eyes to meet Jocelynn’s gaze directly so she could make sure the future marchioness understood. ”But most people blamed Wes’s father and Marquis Bors for demanding such a high tithe. I, I didn’t understand then that the king placed such a high tithe on the Marches... It’s twice what the duchies pay, and it’s not fair,” she said bitterly.

”Most of the workers, the really skilled ones at least,” Sorcha said. ”They followed my father from Keating. They didn’t know either. All they knew was that their bellies were empty, their friends were hurt or dead, and it was all so someone else could demand a share of their profits.”

It wasn’t surprising that the people of Keating hadn’t understood how heavy the burden the marches shouldered was. Jocelynn herself had only learned about it because she spent years studying trade. The Kingdom of Gaal had developed an insatiable appetite for the raw materials that were extracted from the frontier, and much of it was refined into finished products in the workshops of the duchies before it was loaded into the hulls of mighty sailing ships to be sold in the old countries across the sea.

Jocelynn’s tutors made sure she understood the deliberateness behind the crown’s strategy. The soldiers of the marches were the most dangerous, the most battle-hardened, and the most feared warriors in the entire kingdom. The crown had already faced one rebellion from the frontier before the marches were founded. This time, the crown worked decisively to keep the marches from growing too wealthy or too powerful, lest they turn their armies inward once again.

It made sense to Jocelynn in a cold, calculating sort of way. She’d even called it wise at the time, believing that it was the decision of a good king who acted to preserve the stability of the realm. Now, however, as she listened to Sorcha explaining the human cost of the heavy tithes the crown imposed on the marches, her stomach turned at how naive she’d been.

”When he arrived,” Sorcha said, pulling Jocelynn out of her thoughts as she continued the story. ”Some people were afraid that he’d come to put them in chains for defying his father. He had soldiers with him, with armor and spears... We only had pick axes and hammers to fight with, but some people were still willing to give it a go.”

”Of course they were,” Adala said, nodding her head in understanding. ”When you have nothing left to lose, or you think you have nothing left to lose, then it’s easier to throw your life away in a fight you probably won’t win,” she said, fighting hard to keep from glancing at Jocelynn as she spoke.

”Some people think that a slim chance of success if you fight is better than no chance of success if you don’t,” Adala said in a carefully neutral tone. ”Many of them die believing that. But I never heard that Baron Wes had to put down a revolt,” she added, cocking her head slightly at Baroness Sorcha. ”So how did he handle things?”

”He paid the tithe himself,” Sorcha said simply. ”Out of his tournament winnings. Every gold sovereign he’d earned that season, he handed over to his father’s steward and told the village they had a year to sort things out without the debt hanging over them.”

After that, he could have ridden away and left the people of Silver Bluff to sort it out themselves. But he didn’t. Instead, he’d stayed behind after sending his father’s soldiers. He’d rolled up his sleeves and went into the pit alongside the men who were still willing to work. Wes spent the next several months learning the difference between a bearing wall and a false one, between stone that would hold and stone that would crack under load.

He’d known almost nothing about quarrying, but he was strong, he was willing to learn, and he wasn’t too proud to take instruction from men who had calluses older than he was.

”That’s when I noticed him,” Sorcha said, and the faintest blush touched her weathered cheeks. ”Not because he was handsome, though he was. But because he didn’t act like he was doing us a favor. He acted as if he owed us something, and he was trying to pay it back.”

Jocelynn listened with her hands wrapped around her cup, the wine warming slowly against her palms. There was something in Sorcha’s story that pressed against the hollow place in her chest, not painfully but persistently, like a hand testing a locked door.

It was almost cruel how similar Wes sounded to how Owain had appeared. But Jocelynn knew exactly how the men differed. Owain would have put down a rebellion ruthlessly, and anyone who defied him would have fallen to his sword. At the same time, he never would have deigned to roll up his sleeves and carry a shovel with quarrymen. He was too proud for that.

Jocelynn hadn’t been wrong to think that amazing men and great loves existed, she realized. She’d just been blinded by what could be seen on the surface, and was too foolish to look at what lay beneath the mask.