The Vampire & Her Witch

”Can you see the beauty in this moment, buried under the pain?”

Jocelynn wanted very badly to say yes, to say that she could see what Nyrielle saw when she looked at her sister on the brink of death. But the truth was that she couldn’t. She could see the defiance and the determination... It resembled in some ways the look her own eyes had come to hold in recent days.

But the closest Jocelynn could come to seeing Ashlynn’s determination to live was the absence of the shadow that had come to haunt her own eyes in the days since Eleanor’s death. The Ashlynn in the painting still clung to things that Jocelynn had already lost.

Perhaps the Ashlynn of that night had simply been naive. She’d suffered a great tragedy and a greater betrayal, but she hadn’t yet been helpless. She hadn’t watched their cousin die, sacrificing herself so she could live. She hadn’t taken up a blade to claim a life, whether someone else had guided her hands or not.

In that way, there was a kind of pure, almost innocent beauty in her determination, but Jocelynn doubted that was what she meant.

The instant Jocelynn realized the direction her thoughts were taking, she shook her head vigorously, desperate to rid herself of the sudden surge of jealousy that clouded her mind. Ashlynn had suffered for nine long months. She’d lost her family, her home, and she’d entered the Eldritch world with nothing to her name...

In those months, she’d stained her hands with more blood than Jocelynn had, and lost people as well. If it were only the beauty of her innocence that Nyrielle treasured, she would have discarded Ashlynn in much the same way Owain had discarded Samira as soon as his plaything had been ’spoiled.’

Besides, if there was anyone in the world who had no right to ever envy Ashlynn, for anything, it was Jocelynn.

”You really can’t,” Nyrielle said, sounding almost taken aback by Jocelynn’s reaction to the painting. ”Is it because you never could?” Nyrielle asked gently, cupping Jocelynn’s cheek so she could look into her eyes. ”Or because of what happened to you, that this is how you respond to seeing your sister’s strength?”

”I, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jocelynn said, clenching her fists as she heard how childish and frustrated she sounded. ”I don’t understand what you want me to say or what you expect from me. I’m... I’m not like her,” Jocelynn said as hot tears began to roll down her cheeks.

”She’s the one who always understood, even though she was locked away all the time,” Jocelynn said. ”She’s the one who always knew the right thing to say and who listened so well that she always.... I’m not like her, and I don’t know what you want to hear me say,” she sobbed as her chest started to shake.

”Ah, that’s the problem,” Nyrielle said, releasing her grip on Jocelynn and stepping back, leaving the young woman standing alone to sob. ”You’re right, Jocelynn, you aren’t like Ashlynn. You aren’t like me either, or any of my progeny or any of Ashlynn’s witches.”

”I’ll bring you back to Ashlynn in a few days, but now, I agree with Ashlynn, it’s best that she sends you away,” Nyrielle said, stepping forward to cover the painting again. ”We’ll find a way to send you home to your father in Blackwell. You can live out the rest of your days far from here, and if you love your sister at all, then you give her the gift of not having to watch you die,” she said as all of the warmth and tenderness drained from her face.

”What?” Jocelynn said, shocked out of her sobs by Nyrielle’s sudden shift in mood. ”No! No, Ashlynn promised that she was only sending me a way until she could resolve the problems with the seed,” Jocelynn said. ”Then, then we’ll have time, and I can find a way to make it up to her and...”

”No, you can’t,” Nyrielle said bluntly. ”Not like this, you can’t.”

”I know the look in your eyes, Jocelynn,” she said in a tone that almost managed to be gentle. ”You haven’t just lost your fear of death, you’ve come to yearn for it. Right now, you’re clinging to the one thin thread that Ashlynn offered you in order to stay alive but... Your drive is far too weak, Jocelynn.”

”If I tried to take you as one of my progeny, the way you are now, you would fail to cross the final gap,” Nyrielle said. ”I imagine it will be the same if my darling gives you the seed she’s working so hard to prepare for you. No matter what she does, she’s certain to watch you die, so give her one last gift and walk away from us and our life.”

”I know that you would die for her, Jocelynn,” Nyrielle said as she began walking around the gallery, snuffing out lamps. ”But I do not think you would live for her.”

”How can you say that?” Jocelynn asked, clenching her fists and shouting from the spot where she stood. ”You barely know me! How can you say that I wouldn’t live for her? That I wouldn’t make it up to her? How can you give up on me just because... because I don’t see what you see in that painting?”

”You forget, Jocelynn, how close to the Void I sit,” Nyrielle said as she snuffed out another flame, leaving only a few still burning that filled the room with inky, dancing shadows. ”And you forget how long I’ve lived. I’ve heard hundreds of dying declarations, thousands of last breaths, and I’ve gazed into the eyes of more people who were ready to die than you’ve ever met.”

”I can feel it in your heartbeat,” she said, suddenly standing just inches away from Jocelynn. ”And I can hear it in every indrawn breath and ragged exhale. I may not know you, Jocelynn, but I’ve known dozens who are just like you.”

”You say that you want to make it up to her,” Nyrielle said, meeting Jocelynn’s gaze with eyes that had lost their whites entirely, and their pupils as well, replaced by the endless depths of the night sky. ”But tell me the truth, Jocelynn. Do you want to make it up to her so she’ll hold you again?”

”Or will you make it up to her so you can finally unburden yourself enough to let go and welcome the death you so deeply desire?”