The Vampire & Her Witch

”There’s something you need to know about your sister...”

Devlin’s words were like a cold bucket of water, washing away the warmth of the moment Ashlynn had shared with Ignatious and returning her to the cold realities of the present.

”I know she’s in danger,” Ashlynn said carefully, watching the captain’s face. ”Why do you think I’ve rushed here so quickly? As soon as I heard what happened to her and Eleanor,” Ashlynn said, clenching her fist tightly enough that the knuckles turned white. ”I abandoned my plans and preparations to come here as fast as I could.”

”It’s more than danger,” Devlin said, glancing at Elgon before pressing forward. ”Albyn stayed behind because he believes Lady Jocelynn is planning something. She asked him for a knife and a thigh sheath, my lady. The kind pearl divers use, so she could keep a blade on her body,” he added.

”After what she’s been through with the Inquisition,” Devlin said, shooting a dark glance over at Ignatious and Diarmuid. ”I’d understand if she wanted to keep a blade on her for safety. But Albyn thinks there’s more to it than that. He thinks she means to kill Lord Owain on their wedding night,” Devlin said flatly. ”And that she doesn’t expect to survive it.”

Ashlynn’s expression didn’t change, but her chest heaved as she took a deep, slow breath to steady herself. She’d known this was a possibility. She’d feared it ever since Isabell told her that Jocelynn had been the one to betray her, and that her sister was finally coming to understand the sort of monster Owain truly was.

Before she could respond, Isabell’s voice cut through the silence from where the silver-haired woman had been standing quietly near the curtained doorway.

”So she’s gone back to that,” Isabell said, and the weariness in her voice was bone-deep. She pulled her spectacles from her nose and pressed her fingers against the bridge, the way she always did when she was confronting a problem she’d hoped she’d already solved.

”I should have brought her with me when I came,” Isabell said with a heavy sigh. ”Then she wouldn’t be in this mess and...”

”You made the right decision then, Isabell,” Ashlynn said firmly, turning to face her oldest friend. ”You couldn’t have known how far things would go, and if you had brought her with you when you came... If she’d been close at hand when I learned the truth... Things might be even worse than they are now,” she said in a small, quiet voice.

Without Nyrielle, Thane, and Sybyll to wrap her up in a cocoon of love in a haze of dreams or push her to the brink of exhaustion as she struggled through the pain and the fury that overwhelmed her when she learned what Jocelynn had done, she never could have arrived at the place she was now.

Ashlynn’s hand drifted briefly to the center of the chest, to the growing scar where a seed lay beneath her skin and where she could feel the echo of Nyrielle’s heartbeat alongside her own.

She still didn’t know if things could ever be mended between her and Jocey... But she wanted to try. And until she tried, until she got to hold her sister in her arms once again to see if they could ever love each other again the way they once had... No one was allowed to hurt her Jocey. Not the Inquisition, not Owain, and certainly not herself.

”But now,” Ashlynn said, turning back to face the room. ”It’s time to take my sister back from the man who’s responsible for all these tragedies and all this pain,” she said, forcing down her apprehension about what her future with Jocey looked like to focus on the things that had to be done.

Elgon straightened, his hand moving to the pommel of his sword as he stepped forward to kneel before Ashlynn once again.

”Give the order, my lady,” he said. ”I can have the knights assembled and moving toward the manor within the quarter hour. If we go now, while much of the manor is asleep in their beds and the knights are sleeping off the excesses of the Stag Feast, we might be able to reach Lady Jocelynn before anyone notices we’ve come back.”

”No,” Ashlynn said, shaking her head at Elgon and the knights who looked eager to follow him. ”As much as I want to, we can’t rescue my sister tonight.”

Elgon’s brow furrowed, and behind him, Devlin and Beathan exchanged a sharp glance.

”My lady, with respect,” Elgon pressed. ”Every hour that passes puts her in greater danger. If she’s carrying a knife to her own wedding...”

”I know what she’s carrying,” Ashlynn said, and the steadiness in her voice couldn’t quite conceal the anguish that flickered across her features for just a moment before she mastered it. ”And I know what she intends to do with it. But there’s more at stake tonight than my sister’s safety or my vengeance against the man who tried to murder me.”

She let her gaze sweep the room one more time, taking in the faces of knights and servants and Templars and Inquisitors, all watching her, all waiting for her to explain why she was willing to let her sister walk into a wedding with a knife strapped to her thigh when she had the means to stop it.

”If I go to the manor tonight, I can save Jocelynn,” Ashlynn said. ”I can even kill Owain. But I lose everything else. The barons will scatter. The truth of what Owain’s done will die in the chaos, and the march will tear itself apart in a civil war that kills a thousand people before spring.”

She paused, and when she spoke again, her voice was quiet but unyielding.

”I will rescue my sister,” she promised. ”And I will face Owain. But I’ll do it tomorrow, before the entire Lothian Court, during his Grand Ceremony, where every lord and lady of the march can see what he really is and hear the truth from the people he’s wronged.”

”So, as much as it pains me to wait,” Ashlynn said as she met the gazes of Elgon, Devlin, Beathan, and all the others. ”If we go now, we’ll lose too much to buy my sister’s life, and everyone who dies in the chaos that follows will be a stone on both our hearts...”

”Besides,” Ashlynn said with a ghost of a smile tugging at the corner of her lips. ”I know Jocey, and I know how stubborn she is. If she’s resolved to murder Owain on her wedding night, then she’s safe until after the wedding... And I intend to arrive at the ’Grand Ceremony’ long before Owain can say his vows...”