The Vampire & Her Witch

”Wes wintered with us that year,” Sorcha continued, oblivious to the turmoil in Jocelynn’s heart. ”The snows closed the mountain passes, and he couldn’t leave, but I don’t think he wanted to. He and my father worked together to redesign everything from the ramps for hauling stone to the scaffolding to brace it, and I...” Sorcha’s voice trailed off slightly as she paused, and the blush across her strong cheeks deepened.

”I took over the duties my father couldn’t do anymore,” she said, as though running a village full of rough quarrymen was work any daughter could just step in and do. ”The schedules, the supply counts, the negotiations with the timber merchants for pit props. Wes and I spent most of that winter working side by side, and by spring...”

”By spring, you were in love,” Charlotte said softly, as if she were narrating the ending of one of her favorite books.

”By spring, he asked me to come with him when the passes opened,” Sorcha corrected with a gentle smile directed at Charlotte. ”The love part came somewhere after that, but neither of us had the sense to recognize it until a bit later, when we had to spend some time apart.”

It had been an agonizing moment for the young couple. The feelings that had started to grow between them were still young and tender, like a seedling that had only just begun to unfurl its leaves and send down its roots. They might have been resting in fertile soil, but what would happen when one of them was ripped away by his duties to the rest of the barony and the march beyond its borders?

Neither of them knew, but when the passes cleared, Wes left Silver Bluff and returned to the tournament circuit. But he fought differently that season, and every season after. The young knight who had once competed for glory and the thrill of victory now fought with the grinding, relentless determination of a man who needed to win because lives depended on it.

”Every prize he won, he sent back to the village,” Sorcha said. ”New tools, lumber, wages for the men. He funded the quarry’s transformation with his sword arm, one tournament victory at a time.”

Wes had a reputation as a swordsman, one who many people said could have outshone even Owain Lothian. He pushed himself harder than any other knight in the march, and at the time, competition to attract his eye had been fierce among the noble ladies of the march. None of them had realized that there was already someone precious in his heart and that he was fighting to build a future for her village.

They’d lost the fight for his heart before they’d even issued a challenge.

At the head of the table, Jocelynn thought of Owain in the training yard, cracking bones with his practice blade and blaming the men for being careless. Two men who fought for a living, and the comparison between them was as sharp as a knife that cut without being drawn.

”When his father fell ill, Wes had to leave the tournaments behind to take up his responsibilities,” Sorcha said. ”He asked me to come with him, and I said yes before he finished asking.” She paused. ”We married a few months later. His uncle wasn’t pleased about it, but Wes had made up his mind, and once Wes makes up his mind about something, you might as well argue with the mountain.”

Ragna made a quiet sound that might have been agreement, with a slight smile on her lips that spoke volumes about what she thought about the current Baron Iriso. He’d taken up the mantle of Baron more recently than Erling had, but he’d been a good example for her son to follow in more ways than one, and she’d worked hard to develop a friendship between the Fayle and Iriso baronies even though the Luefroy’s territory lay between them.

”Maston passed not long after the wedding,” Sorcha added, more softly. ”I think he held on just long enough to see Wes settled. He was a good man. Stubborn, like his son, but kind-hearted. He never meant our village any harm; he was just... Just stuck doing what the lords above him demanded.”

The room was quiet for a moment. Charlotte’s eyes were glistening again, though this time with the particular brightness of someone who had just heard a love story and found it deeply satisfying.

”Now the quarry is finally starting to produce the way Maston always dreamed it would,” Sorcha said, shaking off the gloom as pride warmed her voice. ”We’ve been sending slabs of granite and pieces of fine quartz downriver to be sold in DuCoumont County and across Keating Duchy. The colored stone is starting to get noticed. It’s not the Royal Court yet,” she added with a self-deprecating smile, ”but we’re getting closer. Someday, the stone of the Shattered Hills will be famous, and my father will get to say he was the man who brought the treasure to the world.”

She reached for the wine jug and refilled her own cup with the easy confidence of a woman who had earned her drink.

”I suppose what I’m trying to say,” Sorcha concluded, looking across the table at Jocelynn. ”Is that I know what it’s like to be somewhere strange, surrounded by people who don’t know what to make of you, and to feel like you’re carrying something too heavy to hold on your own. But you don’t have to carry it alone. That’s what I had to learn, and it’s what I hope you’ll let us help you see.”

”To the women who carry heavy things,” she said, raising her cup in an awkward toast. ”And to the stubborn fools who love them.”

”To stubborn fools,” Ragna echoed dryly before drinking down half her cup as if to chase away the spectre of her own stubborn fool who had ridden off to war and never come home...