The Vampire & Her Witch

DuCoumont Manor was a massive, sprawling structure, built to handle dozens of lords visiting with hundreds of knights and their retinues. Its grounds included neatly manicured gardens, a carefully curated hedge maze, stables for warhorses and racing horses alike, and more than a dozen outbuildings dedicated to household staff and the administration of the county.

To the people of DuCoumont, it was a glittering jewel of whitewashed stone walls and powder blue roof tiles that represented the power and prestige of their lord. To Maela, it was the home she’d grown up in and still visited whenever she could.

By the time the carriage carrying her and Marcel reached the grand entrance of the manor, pages had already carried word of their arrival, and a familiar figure stood waiting to receive them.

Dylan DuCoumont was older than Maela by a handful of years, and the decades he’d spent sitting on the throne of his county had left their mark in the worry lines on his brow and the receding of his hairline. Still, he stood straight and tall, cutting much the same figure he had as a younger man who’d won the hearts of countless young ladies with his skill in the dueling ring, and both his short sandy hair and pale mustache were as neatly maintained as the elegant doublet he wore beneath a hastily donned fur cloak.

”Maela,” Dylan said warmly, rushing forward to help her down from the carriage personally before one of the nearby footmen could make a move. ”If you’d told me you wanted to visit, I would have sent a carriage and an escort,” he said, pulling her into a tight embrace.

”Welcome home,” he said, giving her an extra squeeze before pulling back to look her over and frowning at what he saw.

Her eyes were red and puffy from crying, and she felt thinner than she had months ago when she last visited. Her eyes were even more haunted than they’d been before, but then, it was the first time he’d seen her since word of Ashlynn’s death reached the county. That she’d managed to leave the convent to visit at all was already a minor miracle.

”We were just about to eat,” Dylan said, gripping her upper arms tightly. ”Please, tell me that you’ll join us. Hedra would be thrilled to have your company, and Micheline misses her aunt so much.”

”Of course I’ll join you,” Maela said as fresh tears threatened to spill from her eyes. ”But it would be best if we kept it as a family affair for now,” she said hesitantly. ”I, I brought a guest,” she said, pulling back and gesturing to the vampire who had silently emerged from the darkness of the carriage behind her.

”This is Mister Marcel and the message he carries isn’t one that should be heard by many,” she said, keeping her voice quiet enough that the nearby footmen would struggle to overhear her words.

”Of course,” Dylan said, frowning slightly before he smoothed his features into a courtier’s mask of welcoming civility. ”Any guest of yours is welcome at our table,” he said before calling over a footman to make the necessary adjustments. He’d been planning to host a few of his knights and their families this evening, but he dismissed the notion the instant he laid eyes on his little sister’s tear-stained face.

Anything that brought Maela to his doorstep in tears moved to the top of his priority list, and politics and propriety could wait until he’d done all he could to put a smile back on her face, just as he had when they’d both been children.

”I tried to visit you when I heard about Ashlynn,” he said as they walked through the long, wide corridors of DuCoumont Manor. ”I was turned away by a Confessor Noyala who insisted that Initiates weren’t allowed to receive visitors. Did she at least give you my message?”

”You sent a message?” Maela said, her brows raising in genuine surprise. ”No, I didn’t know you came. I’m sorry,” she said softly. ”You must have thought I was ignoring you...”

”I was too busy drawing up plans for my knights to capture the convent,” Dylan said with a chuckle that felt a bit forced. ”It’s like I told you, Maela, once you don their robes, they’ll stop respecting you the way they should,” he said, unable to let go of the opportunity to revisit the issue of her joining the convent now that he had a concrete example of the Church trying to control her that he could point to.

Even if it was something as small as preventing her family from visiting her in her time of mourning, he hoped it would be enough for her to see that the Church prioritized their rules and traditions over the care of their own people.

Dylan knew that Rhys Blackwell shared his own dim view of the Church’s practices. As counts, they might not be privy to all of the secrets held by the Ruling Council, but they’d both seen enough to know that the Church left a long string of broken acolytes in its wake every time they performed one of their ’great miracles’ and the lifestyles they imposed with restrictive vows were enough to break the spirits of most men.

That shared understanding had been one of the reasons he’d helped Rhys to prepare for his duel against Huchon Trevarthen. Until recently, he’d felt like Rhys had done an excellent job tempering his sister’s devotion with an appropriate amount of skepticism for the Church’s actions, but everything seemed to have broken down when Ashlynn Blackwell had married Owain Lothian.

”Mother Koulma has always been good to me, Dylan,” Maela said in a tone that carried a mild rebuke. ”But you’re right that the convent isn’t where I belong. I’ll be leaving for Lothian after dinner,” she said, balling her hands up into small fists as she fought to keep herself composed.

”Of course, you’ll want to attend the memorial,” Dylan said solemnly, watching his sister out of the corner of his eye. ”I’ll have an escort prepared for you at once, and you can leave first thing in the morning...”

”We’ll be leaving tonight, your lordship,” Marcel said, intruding lightly on the conversation. ”As to an escort... Perhaps you should hear what I have to say before you make any decisions,” he said, giving Maela a knowing look.

”If Maela says it’s important, of course I’ll listen,” the count said, frowning at the flamboyant young man who followed behind his sister. ”But when it comes to men I’d trust with my sister’s safety in lands plagued by demon raids, the list isn’t long, and half of them are here tonight.”

”I doubt your sister has much to fear from ’demons,’ your lordship,” Marcel said with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. ”Your men, however, are another matter entirely...”