The Vampire & Her Witch

Ignatious lowered the Holy Flame Blade. The golden flames along its edge dimmed but didn’t extinguish, clinging to the steel like embers refusing to die, and the warm light they cast turned his youthful face into something that looked gentle and serene.

”Take them alive,” Ignatious said. His rich, velvet voice carried across the stunned silence of the hall with an authority that brooked no argument, and the men of Blackwell moved before the echo of his words had faded.

For days, ever since the men from Blackwell had learned what Lady Jocelynn endured at the hands of the Inquisition and how Lady Eleanor had died, a slow, simmering fury had built in the hearts of the knights and sailors who had come so far from the sea to serve their lord’s daughters in a distant land.

Ignatious’s words weren’t just an order to these men; they were permission. Permission to give vent to the fury in their hearts, and while many of them would prefer to quench their rage in the blood of their enemies, the men of Blackwell knew full well how to subdue someone who had gotten out of hand when he set foot on shore for the first time in months...

And if the Inquisition fought back and gave them an excuse to be extra rough... Well, that was fine too. Ignatious said ’alive’ after all. He didn’t say ’unharmed.’

Devlin was the first to reach the Inquisition’s table.

The ship captain’s gambeson was torn across the ribs where a halberd had nearly killed him in the corridors, and the fabric was stiff with dried blood, most of it his own. But the wound beneath had been sealed by Ashlynn’s witchcraft, and the fury that drove him forward had nothing to do with pain and everything to do with the innocent woman who’d suffered under the Inquisition’s cruelty.

”For Lady Jocelynn!” Devlin snarled as he vaulted the corner of the table, his boots scattering goblets and decanters as he closed the distance to the nearest Inquisitor.

The man tried to rise, raising the burning sun amulet he wore as if it could protect him, but Devlin’s fist caught him under the jaw before the first syllable left his lips. The Inquisitor’s head snapped back, and his crimson robes billowed around him as he toppled backward over his chair, hitting the stone floor with a crash that sent his amulet and prayer beads clattering across the flagstones.

”For Lady Eleanor!” Elgon’s voice boomed from the other side of the table as the veteran knight seized an acolyte by the front of his crimson robes and hauled him bodily across the table.

The young man’s eyes went wide with terror as the tall, mustachioed knight slammed him onto the linen-covered surface hard enough to crack the wood beneath, scattering silverware and shattering a crystal decanter that sprayed red wine across the crimson of the acolyte’s robes like a splash of blood.

”D-do you know who I am?” the acolyte shouted, scrambling backward on the table in an attempt to escape the furious knight. His voice cracked with outrage and his hand thrust out in front of him, palm raised, as if the gesture of warding that worked on frightened villagers would stop the Lighthouse Knight. ”I’m a servant of the Holy Lord of...”

”You’re a coward who bullies the weak,” Elgon said as his fist connected with the bridge of the acolyte’s nose before he could finish the sentence. Cartilage crunched and blood sprayed across the linen tablecloth as the young man collapsed, his eyes rolling back in his head before the force of the blow carried him off the table.

”To think we were ever intimidated by the likes of you,” Elgon spat as the acolyte collapsed in an undignified heap on the floor. An Inquisitor and two acolytes had been enough to keep anyone from realizing Lady Jocelynn had been taken to the dungeons beneath Lothian Manor...

The realization twisted in Elgon’s belly like a hot knife, and his body trembled as he swallowed back the rising bile of hatred and shame that came with the realization that the Inquisition, for all its towering reputation, amounted to so little.

”We failed you, Lady Jocelynn,” he said softly as he glanced toward the young lady taking shelter in the arms of Lady Ashlynn’s flame-haired knight. ”You and Lady Eleanor, too,” he added as he grabbed the unconscious acolyte and dragged him toward the central aisle.

Elgon had no idea how to make amends for how badly he’d failed... Perhaps he never could. But seeing how weak his opponents truly were only made the failure worse in his eyes, and he was determined to do whatever he could to make up for his failure.

From the front of the Great Hall, Sir Garrik Maeril stared at the unfolding violence with wide eyes and a slack jaw.

There were those who joked that Sir Garrik wasn’t a vassal of the Marquis at all. Rather, his true lord and master was the Abbot of the Inquisition, and Sir Garrik had to take a ferry across the River Luath every other day to see if the Abbot had any instructions for him.

It wasn’t true, but it was difficult for a man like Garrik, with fewer than fifty soldiers under his command, to claim that he represented the true might of Maeril. He might be the lord of his village, ruler of one of the most important ports on the River Luath in Lothian March... But he could never make the Inquisition submit to his demands, and they only occasionally complied with his requests.

The notion of defying them was uncomfortable. The notion of assaulting them was unimaginable. And yet, Lady Ashlynn’s men swept over the Inquisition like the incoming tide, doing what he’d never dreamed possible. It was almost enough for him to admire them.

Almost.

”My Lord,” Sir Garrik said as he turned to face Owain on the dais. ”Should we help them? At least to rescue Abbot Recared?”

”Don’t,” Owain said without looking at his knights. His gaze remained fixed on Jocelynn, where she sheltered in the arms of the flame-haired knight who had already embarrassed him once. Now, he felt as though he’d been cuckolded on his wedding day, and before all the lords and ladies of the march at that.

”I’ll find a way to preserve their lives,” Owain said as his grip tightened on the hilt of his sword. ”But things will only escalate if you get involved in this... brawl,” he said, pursing his lips as though the word itself was sour.

”Besides,” Owain added as he turned his gaze toward the struggle between the men of Blackwell and the Inquisition. ”This will help to humble Recared,” he said, shaking his head at the sight before him. ”We have more to gain from standing aside than from fighting...”