The Vampire & Her Witch

”My last sword wasn’t famous,” Ashlynn said, trying to bring the conversation away from the notion of supplying Captain Elgon and his men with Eldritch weapons. Her voice softened as her fingers traced the wave pattern on Water’s Edge’s scabbard, and a slight smile tugged at the corners of her lips.

”My last sword didn’t even carry a name,” she added. ”But it protected my life in battles against giants and beasts and spirits, and it defended me until the very end. When it shattered, it was because it had given everything it had to keep me alive, and I’ll never forget it.”

The mood in the room had grown heavy, and Ashlynn could feel the weight of it pressing on the people around her. Elgon’s expression shifted through emotions like the surface of the sea rippling in the wind. There was pride that his lord’s daughter had survived things that would have killed most knights, grief that she’d been forced to endure them at all, and a gnawing worry about what the coming night would bring for a woman who spoke of fighting ghosts the way other noblewomen spoke of attending garden parties.

Ashlynn reached for something lighter before the heaviness could settle.

”But considering who made Water’s Edge,” she said, tapping the pommel with two fingers and summoning a smile that carried a hint of genuine mischief. ”If Owain manages to shatter this one, I’ll eat its sheath.”

The laughter that followed was brief and slightly strained, but it did its work, easing the atmosphere enough that people began to breathe again.

”You’re really serious about fighting him yourself,” Elgon said, and it wasn’t a question anymore. The uncertainty had left his voice, replaced by a careful, measured tone that he’d used with her father when he was worried about the Count’s plans.

Ultimately, Rhys was the one who would be held responsible for the outcomes of his decisions, and Elgon knew that whenever he offered up advice that seemed to go against his lord’s wishes, he could suggest, but his lord had several conflicting interests to navigate between, and Elgon understood that his position often limited his vision.

Now, he took the same approach with Ashlynn that he would have with her father. She’d been fighting this war for close to a year, and he hadn’t even known it was happening. He was certain that she’d considered many things before arriving at this point, and as a man joining her campaign at the end, he had little right to sway her mind...

But since he was here, and since additional men joining her cause gave her additional options, he wouldn’t stay silent either. He owed her more than just his sword, and he intended to support her the same way he’d supported both Count Rhys and, more recently, Lady Jocelynn.

”I’m serious,” Ashlynn confirmed. ”Owain’s life belongs to me, Sir Elgon. He tried to murder me on our wedding night. His knights buried me in a shallow grave and left me to die. The justice I’m claiming isn’t something I can delegate to a champion, no matter how capable.”

”But my Lady,” Elgon pressed. ”With the greatest respect for what you’ve accomplished and the battles you’ve survived, Owain Lothian is one of the finest swordsmen of our age. He’s been training since he could walk and fighting de-, er, fighting the Eldritch since he was old enough to ride to war. Twenty years with a blade in his hand, and ten of those spent in real combat.”

”I watched you grow up, my Lady,” Eglon said, his brow furrowing and his face creased with worry. ”And I’ve seen how Owain trains himself here in the march. The two can’t be compared. If you need a champion to stand for you,” he said, about to offer himself, Sir Beathan, or any of the others who would be more than willing to stand up for her, only to be interrupted by Sir Ollie.

”Lady Ashlynn was trained by Dame Sybyll Hanrahan and Lord General Thane,” Ollie said in a voice that was quiet but firm enough to cut through Elgon’s protest. The flame-haired knight hadn’t moved from his seat, but his pale eyes were fixed on Elgon with a directness that gave the older man pause.

”Both of them agree that she’s ready for this,” Ollie continued. ”I know you haven’t been in the march for very long, and Lord General Thane’s name probably doesn’t mean very much to you. But if you know anything about the Crimson Knight’s reputation, then you should have an idea how dangerous her teachers are,” he said.

”The Crimson Knight of Airgead Mountain?” Sir Beathan said, blinking in surprise before shaking his head at himself. ”Of course, why wouldn’t the Crimson Knight be among your allies if the Eldritch Lady of the Vale is already on your side. Still...”

”The Crimson Knight?” Elgon asked, confused by the title that seemed so familiar to the Templar.

”We were warned about the Crimson Knight by the local Templars when we arrived,” Beathan explained. ”The Church has never known who he was, but his armor is said to drink in the blood of the fallen. He wears a helm with a visor shaped like a vampire’s skull and carries an axe that can cleave an armored man in two. He showed up during the War of Inches and has been guarding the place ever since.”

”The Church has spent years trying to learn which noble house the ’traitor’ came from,” Beathan said. ”For a time, I’m told the Inquisition investigated every family of knights with a strong tradition of wielding axes in battle to see if one of them had gone missing, but they never found anything.”

”She’s my cousin,” Hugo said, setting down his empty bowl of porridge and shaking his head at Beathan’s account of his cousin. ”The Church would never have figured it out because they’d never have thought that the person under the armor was a woman.”

”The rest is accurate, though,” Hugo said, turning to look at Sir Elgon. ”Sybyll is... She’s not something an ordinary man can stand against. Even Sir Tommin, with his Holy Light Blade, fell to her axe. She’s also very... direct in her words,” he added. ”She didn’t grow up in polite society. She’s not one to offer unearned praise. If she says that Lady Ashlynn is ready, then she’s ready.”

”I understand why you’re worried, Sir Elgon,” Ollie added. ”But Owain’s life belongs to Lady Ashlynn. It’s not mine to take, and it’s not yours to claim on her behalf. And anyone who gets in the way of that will have to answer for it.”

The finality of Ollie’s words closed the door on the argument, and Elgon, to his credit, recognized when a door had been closed. He pressed his lips together beneath his mustache, gave a single, sharp nod, and said nothing more.

But the worry didn’t leave his eyes. It settled deeper, burrowing into the lines of his weathered face like water seeping into the cracks of a seawall, and Ashlynn could see it there, the fear of a man who had carried her on his shoulders as a child and couldn’t quite accept that the child had grown into someone who carried a sword.

She understood. She even appreciated it. But the time for being carried was long past. Ashlynn’s entire life for the past nine months had been about preparing for this moment, when she would meet Owain again with a sword in her hand to claim vengeance for what he had done to her.

Now that the time was almost upon her, nothing would get in her way. There were only a few last obstacles between her and claiming Owain’s life, and she would need the help of everyone in this room to overcome them.

”All right,” Ashlynn said, taking a deep breath and gesturing for Isabell to bring over the map of Lothian Manor that Marcel had prepared for them. ”We overcame the first layer of defenses by sneaking in with the Dunns, but from here, things get harder, and there’s no way to sneak past the defenses of Lothian Manor, so listen to what I have in mind for our assault.”

”If you have questions or suggestions, I want to hear them,” Ashlynn said, looking from Elgon to Beathan and Devlin. ”I don’t want to lose anyone on the way, but we won’t have much time between the moment we hit the front gate and the time we need to arrive in the Great Hall if we’re going to interrupt Owain’s ceremony while the full Lothian Court is gathered.”

”I’ve already asked Diarmuid and Ignatious to lend us the weight of the Inquisition’s authority to order the gates opened and people out of our way,” Ashlynn said, tapping the map. ”I doubt most of the common soldiers will want to risk the ire of the Inquisition when no one will fault them for standing aside, but just in case...”