The Vampire & Her Witch

”My lords,” Owain began, and his voice filled the nave like a blade sliding from its sheath. ”My ladies. Faithful servants of the Light.”

He let each word land separately, giving the assembled court time to settle into the cadence of his voice the way a congregation settled into a hymn. Speaking from a pulpit was not so different from addressing soldiers before a battle. The trick was to make every person in the room believe that you were speaking directly to them, and to them alone.

”We have gathered here today to honor a man who gave everything he had to the march he loved,” Owain said, resting his hands on the cool marble of the pulpit. ”A man who bore the weight of a duty he was born to carry, and who carried it without complaint for more than thirty years.”

He paused, letting his gaze sweep the chamber as he allowed the weight of the moment to build as he carefully cultivated the impression that he was struggling against the weight of this moment along with the mourners in the pews. The candles in the iron chandeliers above cast his features in warm, golden light, softening the hard angles of his jaw and the flint-like quality of his eyes until he looked almost gentle. Almost grieving.

”My father was not a perfect man,” Owain continued, biting his lower lip in imitation of the fragile vulnerability he’d seen from so many others before. He’d suffered at the old man’s hands, but he refused to touch the genuine hurt buried within his heart as he spoke.

Touching real pain carried the risk of touching the sense of triumph and freedom that came from escaping his father’s abuse, and he couldn’t afford to have those feelings show through his carefully cultivated mask.

Not now, when he was standing on the cusp of victory, about to claim the birthright that had nearly been denied to him along with the woman his father’s carelessness had nearly destroyed.

So even though it would have added a touch of authenticity to his performance to let the mask slip just a little bit, he held it tightly in place as he continued to deliver the eulogy he’d practiced a dozen times in his mind on the carriage ride from the manor to the temple.

”My father was stubborn,” Owain said, allowing a small, rueful smile to cross his lips. ”Those of you who served beside him know this better than anyone. Once he set his mind on a course, no one could convince him to change it.” No one but Mother, Owain’s mind silently added. It wasn’t like his father had ever been swayed by the arguments he made, no matter how hard he tried to convince the old fool.

”I believe Baron Leufroy can attest to that,” he added with a brief nod of acknowledgement toward the other man that gave him a moment to shake himself free of the ghosts of a past that was finally dead and soon to be buried.

”He was demanding,” Owain continued once he had control of himself again. ”He expected more from the people around him than most men would dare to ask, and he held himself to an even higher standard. There were times when his expectations felt impossible, and there were times when they were.”

No one could live up to Bors Lothian’s standards. Not Owain, not Loman, not Jocelynn... His father could list out a person’s flaws like he kept them written in a journal, all in the name of pushing, pushing, pushing his children to be greater than the failure that Bors himself had become after the War of Inches.

Owain had surpassed his father long ago, but the old man would never acknowledge it. Even Loman had been poised to rise to greater heights in the Church if he’d just kept to the role he’d chosen for himself instead of contending for the future that should have belonged to Owain by right of birth and achievements.

Owain let the silence breathe for a moment, watching the barons grappling with the question of whether or not Bors would have felt like they measured up to his standards as vassals. Many of them nodded to themselves as if they’d reached the conclusion that Bors would find little fault with them, while others looked sheepish, unable to meet Owain’s gaze that reminded them so much of their fallen lord.

Good. At least they recognized they’d fallen short. Soon, Owain intended to teach them that he could be every bit as demanding as his father had been... and that he was far less forgiving.

”But above all else,” Owain said, pulling people back out of their thoughts and memories. ”My father was a warrior. Not just in the way that any lord who raises a sword in defense of his people is a warrior, but in a deeper, more fundamental way. He was a man who understood that the struggle never ends.”

The word ’struggle’ landed with deliberate weight. In a temple dedicated to the Holy Lord of Light, invoking the Struggle was a calculated act of piety that cost Owain nothing and earned him the silent approval of every clergyman in the room.

”Even in his final days,” Owain continued, ”when illness had robbed him of the strength that once made him the most feared knight on the frontier, my father never stopped fighting. He fought the sickness that ravaged his body. He fought to protect the march from the threats he saw gathering on our borders. And he fought to ensure that the people of Lothian March would be prepared for the storm he knew was coming.”

Every word was true, in its way. Bors had fought. He’d fought the venom that ate at his mind and body, raged against shadows and phantoms while his grip on reality crumbled like a sandcastle beneath the tide. He’d written out decree after decree in his final days, some brilliant, some delusional, all of them stamped with the desperate energy of a man who could feel himself slipping away and refused to go quietly into the night.

”My father saw what others refused to see,” Owain said, his voice rising with conviction as he moved toward the heart of his message. ”He saw the demons massing in the west. He saw the raids growing bolder, more organized, more devastating with each passing season. And in his final days, he saw a barony fall silent, its lord vanished, and its borders undefended.”

He let the implication settle over the room like ash from a distant fire. Hanrahan. The empty pew in the front row was impossible to ignore, and Owain watched the discomfort ripple through the assembled lords as each one glanced toward the gap where Baron Ian’s family should have been sitting.

”My father was a man who knew what it meant to carry a heavy burden,” Owain said. ”Were it not for his illness, I’m sure he’d have ridden west himself. Instead, he sent my brother, along with a column of our finest soldiers, and a unit of the Temple Guard led by my own former guard, Templar Tommin.”

The title ’Templar’ burned on his tongue like spoiled wine, but Owain forced himself to set aside his hatred for the man who had not only abandoned him, but who went running to the Church with secrets that never should have passed his lips.

Without Tommin’s treachery, Loman would never have thought to contend for the throne, and life would have been so much easier. The man deserved to suffer for that, and Owain sincerely hoped that the missing Templar would turn up soon so he could be the one to tell him that his wife and child had died in the fire that consumed Pyre Manor.

It wouldn’t make up for what Owain had endured as a result of Tommin’s betrayal, but the look on his face when he realized that he’d lost everything that was precious to him would at least help to soothe the open wound in his heart that had never healed after Tommin stabbed him in the back.

”Now, my brother, Sir Tommin, and all the men who went with them are also missing, along with countless others lost to raids at our borders,” Owain continued solemnly, looking at Baron Tybal Aleese and his wife Peigi for a long moment before turning his gaze toward Baron Loghlan Dunn and Lady Mairwen, as though he mourned their son’s absence as much as he missed Sir Rain.

”But in the final days of his life, when my father had sent his own son to face the danger of the demons beyond the frontier, he saw men who should have been protecting the march instead turning their attention inward, whispering in his ear, exploiting his illness to advance their own ambitions.”

”Worse, he found himself conspired against by the very men he’d summoned to help him uncover threats from within our own borders,” Owain said sharply.

The temperature in the cathedral seemed to drop by several degrees. Owain hadn’t raised his voice. He hadn’t pointed a finger or named a name. But every eye in the room drifted, almost involuntarily, toward the crimson-robed figure seated at the end of the second row.

The figure of the most prominent Inquisitor in all of Lothian March, Abbot Recared.