The Vampire & Her Witch

While Owain was drinking and feasting with his fellow hunters in the Lothian hunting lodge and Jocelynn had just crawled into her luxuriously soft bed to sleep off the effects of too much wine, someone else was ’enjoying’ the far more humble comforts of a room in the Broken Blade Tavern in the village of Maeril.

The room smelled of tallow and old wood, and the bed was a miserable thing.

Lady Cerys Stormbrook sat propped against the headboard with her broken arm cradled in a linen sling that chafed at the back of her neck every time she shifted her weight. The mattress beneath her was stuffed with straw rather than feathers, and it crinkled and poked through the threadbare fabric whenever she moved, which meant she’d barely rested since the strange, dark-eyed merchant had deposited them in this room more than an hour ago.

The candles were the worst of it, somehow. Three of them, stubby and uneven, were set in a clay dish on the washstand. They gave off a greasy, yellowish light that made the low ceiling feel even lower and the bare stone walls feel even closer, and the smell of the rendered fat they were made from turned her stomach in ways that the pain in her arm and ankle could not.

She was not accustomed to rooms like this. Stormbrook Village was modest by the standards of the greater baronies in the duchies, but it was the most prosperous village in Dunn Barony. The manor she shared with Cynwrig had rooms that smelled of lavender and clean wool, with proper beeswax candles and featherbeds stuffed with goose down that she’d plucked and cleaned herself.

This room, this cramped little cell at the top of a tavern in a village that smelled of river mud and old fish, was a punishment. She was certain of it. Even if no one had said so. If someone told her that Sir Ollie, the heroic witch who had saved her life, was lying on a similar bed just a few doors down, she wouldn’t have believed it. Not with the way everyone treated him after learning the truth of his identity.

”You should have been more careful,” Cerys’ younger brother, Cian, said from the corner of the room where he stood with his arms folded across the crimson and gold of his acolyte’s robes. His voice carried the particular blend of concern and reproach that Cerys had grown accustomed to hearing from her younger brother over the past two years, ever since he’d taken his vows at the Abbey, but just because the tone was familiar didn’t mean it didn’t sting, especially coming from him. ”A demon trap. Of all the careless, foolish things to stumble into.”

Cerys said nothing. Her fingers found the radiant sun pendant at her throat and closed around it, feeling the familiar edges press into her palm. The metal was cold. It had been cold ever since she woke in the carriage to learn that a witch had saved her life, even when she wore it directly against her skin.

”I’ve told you before,” Cian continued, shaking his head as he paced the narrow space between the washstand and the door. He was lean and sharp-featured, with the same chestnut hair as his sister but cut short in the austere style favored by the Abbey’s acolytes. When he spoke, he sounded like he was giving a sermon from the pulpit. Or rather, he sounded like a young man imitating practiced speakers, leaving his words sounding slightly stiff as if the cadence he’d practiced didn’t truly belong to him.

”The frontier is no place for a woman to wander without escort,” Cian said, lecturing his older sister as if she were a wayward member of the local Church’s congregation. ”If you’d stayed in the camp, if you’d just kept to the place that you already knew was safe, then you never would have been in danger of being tainted by...”

”Enough, Cian,” a sharp, reproachful voice interrupted the young acolyte.

Sir Cynwrig Stormbrook spoke from the chair he’d pulled to the bedside, his quiet, measured voice cutting through his brother-in-law’s lecture like a pair of sharp shears through freshly spun wool. He sat with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped together, and though his posture was calm, the tightness around his jaw told a different story.

”She had only ridden a few hundred paces away from camp along the river,” Cynwrig said, his light brown eyes steady on Cian. ”Just a simple morning ride because Dalwyn was restless,” he lied, covering up the truth of Cerys’ attempt to flee, both from him and the alliance that Loghlan Dunn had formed with Ashlynn Blackwell and the Vale of Mists.

”The trap was an ancient thing anyway,” Cynwrig added. ”Sir Ollie said it was likely left over from the Brothers’ War or even the War of Undying Demons. No one would expect to encounter such a thing or that it would even still be dangerous after all this time.”

”And yet here we are,” Cian said, gesturing at the cramped room with a sharp sweep of his hand. ”Don’t get me wrong, I was very happy when Inquisitor Diarmuid came to fetch me from the abbey, and that he seemed so concerned by what had happened to Cerys,” the young acolyte added.

”But I never expected to find my sister hidden away in a cheap tavern known for playing host to men with a... dubious past,” Cian added. ”Don’t you find it a bit strange, brother, that we had to meet in a place like this, instead of going to Sir Garrik’s keep, where my sister could at least rest comfortably?”

The way he said *brother* carried no warmth. It was a title he used the way one might use a tool, leveraging the family connection when it suited his purposes and setting it aside when it did not.

”I find many things troubling,” Cynwrig replied. His gaze flicked to Cerys, and something softened in his expression before he looked away. ”But Marcel gave us his word that there would be a way forward for us if we came here tonight. That’s more than we had this morning,” he said solemnly, fixing his brother-in-law with a stern look.

”Strange or not,” Cynwrig said firmly. ”This isn’t a chance we can afford to turn away from...”