The Vampire & Her Witch

The private dining room on the ground floor of the Broken Blade Tavern was a world apart from the cramped room where Ashlynn met with Lady Cerys above.

Where the upstairs room featured bare stone walls and inexpensive tallow candles, this space was paneled in dark, seasoned oak that drank in the warmth of a generous hearth at the far end. A long table of polished walnut dominated the center of the room, set with clay pitchers of mulled wine and platters of food left over from the feast that Ashlynn had prepared while waiting for Ollie to arrive.

Both Loghlan Dunn and his wife, Mairwen, had eaten an evening meal at Maeril Keep before the dark-haired youth called Marcel had appeared outside their chambers with an ’invitation’ to meet with Lady Ashlynn in the dark of night.

Still, when their hosts presented them with a tray of freshly baked hand pies stuffed with candied nuts, dried fruits, and rare spices, they found it difficult to resist their host’s courtesy. More importantly, at least to Mairwen, the simple pastries gave them something comfortingly mundane to discuss with their clearly extraordinary hosts.

”These are exquisite,” Mairwen said as she savored a bite of the sweet treat. The crust was delicate, flakey and buttery while the filling blended a tart, red berry with earthy, crushed walnuts and a spice she couldn’t quite identify. It was rich, sweet, and tart all at once with a scent that was almost minty and floral.

”I didn’t expect that Lady Ashlynn would be traveling with her Master of Kitchens,” the Baroness said, smiling warmly at their hosts. ”Perhaps when this is all over, she’d be willing to arrange an introduction between her Master and ours?”

”I’m sure she’d be delighted to,” the silver-haired woman sitting across from her said, smiling brightly behind her spectacles. ”Master Georg is immensely talented, as good as the Masters I met in the Royal Palace of the Emerald Kingdom, or better,” Isabell added.

”But if you want an introduction, it’s best that you send your Master of Kitchens to the Vale of Mists,” Isabell said. ”I think it will be some time before Master Georg is able to travel freely in the march without creating a stir,” she said, pursing her lips and shaking her head at the reactions she imagined the kind-hearted cook would provoke among humans who didn’t understand that they had nothing to fear from the bearish man.

”Oh?” Mairwen said, raising an eyebrow at Isabell. ”Then who...”

”You can thank Lady Ashlynn and Madame Samira for those,” the dark-haired Inquisitor sitting next to Isabell said. His voice was rich and warm, matching the gentle warmth in his eyes and standing entirely at odds with the robes of the Inquisition that he wore. Though when Mairwen looked closely at those robes, she realized that they weren’t quite like any of the robes she’d ever seen the Inquisitors of Maeril wearing either.

”It seems like Lady Ashlynn is a woman of many talents,” Loghlan said politely as he reached for the last few bites of pastry on his plate, only to realize that he’d already finished every last morsel. ”I can’t wait to meet her,” he added, glancing briefly toward the door before turning his attention to the jugs of mulled wine.

”I don’t mean to be rude,” Loghlan added as he topped off his cup and did the same for Mairwen. ”But I’m not as young as I once was. Perhaps it would be better if we met in the morning? If Lady Ashlynn is too busy tonight...”

”Patience, Lord Dunn, patience,” Ignatious said with a light chuckle. ”You remind me of Liag,” he said with a smile. ”He was always in a hurry, too. He wouldn’t even wear heavy armor because it slowed him down too much. I wonder, did he ever learn to slow down and rest in one place, or was he restless until the very end?”

”Liag?” Loghlan said, pausing with a cup of wine halfway to his lips. ”Liag Dunn? As in, my grandfather, Liag? How do you know of him?”

”Your grandfather was bold,” Ignatious said after taking a small sip from his own cup of wine. ”He pushed harder and faster than almost anyone else during the Brother’s War, and he led more raids against Mistress Nyrielle’s progeny than anyone else. For someone like me, it was difficult not to know him,” he explained.

”Ah,” Loghlan said, carefully schooling his features into a diplomatically neutral mask. His hand, however, tightened on his cup enough for his white knuckles to betray his unease with the answer he’d received.

Liam had warned him that one of the Inquisitors traveling with Lady Ashlynn was a vampire. When he was introduced to Ignatious, who appeared to be a few years older than Liam at most, he’d been certain that it was the other Inquisitor. After all, compared to the vampire Marcel, Ignatious’s complexion was fresh and ruddy, and his grip when they shook hands was both warm and firm.

But appearances, it seemed, were deceiving, and the ’young man’ across the table from him was actually old enough to have fought his grandfather in a war that started more than eighty years ago.

”So you and my grandfather met on the battlefield,” Loghlan said, covering his unease by taking a heavy swallow of mulled wine. ”I suppose I owe you my thanks, then, for sparing his life back then.”

”You mistake me, Baron Dunn,” Ignatious said, shaking his head lightly at the baron who very few people in Lothian March would think of as ’young’ the way Ignatious thought of him. ”Your grandfather and I weren’t enemies. If anything, I liked to think of him as a friend, as much as I was a friend to anyone during those years,” he said.

”Back then,” Ignatious continued. ”Before Mistress Nyrielle took me to punish me for what I’d done to her progeny, I was almost as impatient as Liag was. My flames burned hotter then, and those flames... They eat away at a person’s patience in a way I couldn’t have understood until I spent some time in darkness where I couldn’t run away from myself,” he said as his eyes grew distant.

Beside him, Isabell reached out with a hand, gently resting it on his forearm. No words passed between them, but when Loghlan looked at Isabell’s bright, silvery eyes, he received yet another surprise.

Outside of a man’s wife, few people understood that a soldier didn’t always need words to beat back the ghosts of battlefields past. Too many women would talk away the moment with the same words they used to soothe a frightened child. But Isabell reached out to Ignatious the way a soldier would, with a gentle reminder that he still had companions who would fight by his side, even if the enemy came in dreams of the past.

”I’m sorry,” Ignatious said, giving Isabell a brief, grateful smile before he turned his attention back to Loghlan. ”For all the darkness I’ve walked through, there’s also been plenty of light, and I like to think that Liag was one of those bright spots in my life.”

”So, tell me,” Ignatious said. ”If you had the chance to know him, what was he like in his final years? How did my old friend meet his end?”