The Vampire & Her Witch

”Did you want to hurt me that night?”

The words were like a knife to Jocelynn’s heart. The expression on her sister’s face, the frightened, wounded look that shouldn’t belong on the face of a woman who had just returned from the dead to conquer Lothian March in what felt like a single evening, was even worse.

There was a fragile sound to Ashlynn’s voice when she asked the question, as though she was certain she knew the answer and she was terrified to hear it spoken aloud, which left Jocelynn feeling as though she’d just plunged into the icy, turbulent, winter seas in the dark of night and she was desperate for a rope, a rock, or anything she could cling to.

”No,” Jocelynn said firmly as she reached out to hold on to the hands that her sister had balled up into fists. ”No, I never, never wanted to hurt you,” she said as tears rolled down her cheeks. ”But I did hate you...”

Ashlynn’s head jerked up as if she’d been slapped, but Jocelynn pressed on, refusing to paint herself as anything other than the terrible person she’d been.

”I hated you for leaving me behind,” Jocelynn said. ”And I, I hated you for lying to me all those years when you said you’d never marry anyone. Do you remember what you told me at your coming-of-age feast?”

”My coming of age feast?” Ashlynn asked, blinking in surprise as she tried to recall what had happened that night. It had been a very small event by the standards of a county. The only lords her father invited were his own vassals, and none of them brought their heirs or unmarried knights. In the end, she and Jocelynn had snuck away early because...

”I remember,” Ashlynn said softly, pursing her lips together as she remembered the night they’d spent on one of the manor’s watch towers, gazing up at the stars on a clear, moonless night. ”I made you promise to visit me, and to bring your children too, so I could be ’Auntie Ash’ because I, I wasn’t meant for weddings or children...”

”And I promised to do your part too,” Jocelynn said as she remembered the childish promise she’d made that night. ”I promised to have the biggest family, with sons and daughters too, and that we’d always visit you.”

”You were twelve,” Ashlynn pointed out. ”I didn’t expect you to keep a promise you made when you were so young...”

”It’s not about the promise,” Jocelynn said in a voice that was a touch petulant. ”It was about you going so far away, and Mother and Father acting like you were making this big sacrifice for them when you were getting such a perfect-looking husband and such a beautiful-looking life and...”

”We used to go to the festivals together,” Jocelynn said, swallowing back the lump in her throat and staring at Ashlynn’s hands in hers. ”But then, you were either visiting Owain in Lothian, or he was visiting you at home, and I...”

”And at the wedding, at your wedding, I was left there,” Jocelynn sobbed. ”With the leftover lords, and they... they didn’t want me any more than you did and...”

”And it hurt,” Jocelynn said in a small, broken voice. ”It hurt so much. And you weren’t even there for me to talk to because you were busy with so many things before the wedding. And during the wedding you were...”

”Trapped,” Ashlynn said as the image started to come together in her mind. ”Meeting the long line of ladies, or talking to Bors or Loman or someone else I couldn’t say ’no’ to...”

”You weren’t there,” Jocelynn repeated. ”So I, I tried to slip away. Just, just out to one of the gardens, but it was still so much colder than home, and it had started to rain, so I was just, just standing there, in the hall, looking out the window when.... When Owain found me.”

The instant Jocelynn mentioned his name, Ashlynn’s eyes sharpened and her breathing slowed. For a moment, she could almost feel the blows on her body that had come just hours after Jocelynn’s conversation with Owain, along with the heavy, oppressive feeling of sodden earth being shoveled over her.

Even though he was dead now, even though she’d finally killed him, just thinking about him on that night still caught her off guard.

”I, I didn’t mean to tell him,” Jocelynn said softly. ”I just... It just slipped out...”

”Slipped out?” Ashlynn said, shaking herself free of the ghosts of the past to focus on her sister’s words. ”How does something like that just... slip out?”

”Owain he, he sat with me, outside the garden, watching it rain,” Jocelynn said. ”He sent his Steward, the old one, Sir Kaefin, the one you...” The one her sister had killed in the Summer Villa for trying to force himself on her. She didn’t say it, but it hung heavily in the air between them anyway.

”Owain told him to bring us cups of wine and then to leave us alone,” Jocelynn said. ”And to, to make sure we weren’t disturbed. He, he asked me what was so wrong that I was hiding from the ball, and he, he sounded so sincere...”

”The wine was stronger too,” Jocelynn added in a small, fragile voice. She knew that it didn’t excuse her actions, nothing could, but she wanted Ashlynn to know anyway because it was true. Because she couldn’t be trusted with strong drink, and that was her failing, too.

”At some point, it just... It just slipped out,” Jocelynn said again. ”How I didn’t think it was fair that you got to marry someone who was so handsome and brave and perfect and that I, I hated you for, for lying to me,” she said, hanging her head low and speaking softly enough that people without Ashlynn’s sense of hearing might have missed what she said next.

”All those years, you lied to me,” Jocelynn whispered. ”When you said that your mark meant you could never marry. You said, you said you couldn’t hide it from a husband for long, so it was better... better that you never have one, and... And now you had him, the ’best husband of them all,” Jocelynn finished lamely.

Through her fingers, Ashlynn could feel Jocelynn’s racing heartbeat, and she could hear every catch in her breathing. Her eyes followed her sister’s gaze, even through the tears that flooded them, and she knew... she knew just the way Nyrielle and Marcel had trained her to, that Jocelynn was telling the truth.

It wasn’t hard to imagine how things had gone in that hallway. Owain puffing up as Jocelynn called him ’handsome’ and ’brave’ and ’perfect.’ Strong wine mixing with a wounded heart. And in the end, careless, stupid words, as her sister gave up the most important secret she held to a man she thought would have found out anyway...

”I, I didn’t mean to,” Jocelynn said, and the words tasted like ash on her tongue as soon as she spoke them. ”And when he asked about it, I thought... Because he was your husband, I...”

”But then, I said something even worse,” Jocelynn said, lifting her head to look directly in her sister’s eyes. ”I said, I wished it had been me he married because you, you didn’t even seem to like him, and all anyone ever, ever talked about was...Was how much you were sacrificing for the family by marrying him and how... how brave you were and...”

”Ah,” Ashlynn said as a final piece finally fell into place in her heart. She’d always thought that Owain’s response to learning about the mark was a bit extreme, even for men of the frontier who had a personal history of fighting against the Eldritch.

But if Jocelynn had made Owain feel like Ashlynn was making a ’sacrifice’ by choosing to marry him, then she’d provoked something far more deadly than Owain’s zealous hatred for anything ’demonic.’

She’d wounded his pride, and in the very same breath, she’d given him an excuse to vent his fury. It hadn’t just been the mark on her hip that had doomed her; it had been the notion that the woman he’d just married only married him because she had to, and the two years he’d spent courting her had only won him Ashlynn’s grudging acceptance.

For a man like Owain, it was an unforgivable insult, and one he’d answered with murder.