The Vampire & Her Witch

While Ashlynn focused on some of the most loyal and easiest-won lords and ladies in the gathering, Nyrielle kept her attention focused on the scattered pockets of resistance in the crowd, carefully tracking their reactions, listening to their whispered conversations, and looking for the unconscious signs of rejection from the people who wore well-practiced masks of complacent compliance.

Once Ashlynn had given Albyn his charge, Nyrielle tapped Ashlynn’s hand lightly to announce her intention before making her move.

”Maeril?” Nyrielle whispered, barely moving her lips and speaking so softly that only those with a vampire’s enhanced hearing could hear.

”Maeril,” Ashlynn agreed, selecting their first target for resistance breaking. For a moment, she considered targeting Sir Gilander, but he’d make a poorer target for Nyrielle than the lord whose lands lay closer to the Vale of Mists than any other.

The room had filled with applause for Albyn’s elevation, and it had only begun to die down when Nyrielle made her move, leaving Ashlynn’s side to appear before Sir Garrik Maeril and his wife, Lady Bronwyn.

”Hello, Lord of Stonebridge,” Nyrielle said, looming over the startled knight with her wings spread wide. ”You seem discontent with my darling’s arrangements. Could it be that you think we’ve been unfair?” Nyrielle asked.

Sir Garrik’s eyes went wide, and he nearly swallowed his tongue in his haste to come up with something he could say to the powerful vampire looming over him, but the instant he looked into her midnight eyes, the words in his mind poured out like water from a pitcher, and not one of them found its way to his lips.

”Did you know that, when I was a child, I would visit your humble town, just to stand upon the bridge and watch the moon rise over the river,” Nyrielle said, looking down at the quaking lord of Maeril. ”That was before your ancestors tore it down to deny my people a river crossing,” she said, licking her lips as she watched his pulse jumping in his neck.

”Your Eternity,” Bronwyn said quickly from beside him. ”If, if my husband’s family has offended you, we apologize...”

”Did you destroy the bridge I loved so much?” Nyrielle asked, shifting her attention to Bronwyn. ”If not, what do you have to apologize for?”

”I, I only meant,” Bronwyn stammered, only to stop when Garrik stood up to place himself between the looming vampire and his wife.

”Leave her alone,” Garrik said with a fierceness that surprised even him. ”I won’t see my wife bullied for a bridge that burned before she or I were born. I won’t apologize for it either,” he said stubbornly before offering up the only compromise he could think of that might preserve his family’s lives.

”If you want to visit Maeril Manor,” he said, forcing himself to meet Nyrielle’s midnight gaze. ”The moon over the river is just as beautiful from the towers there as it might have been from the bridge. You’re welcome as my guest, any time, so long as... so long as it’s just a visit,” he said, barely choking out the words at the end.

”You’re a brave man to get in my way,” Nyrielle said in a voice that dripped with menace. ”Do you know how many Lothian knights have fallen to my fangs standing as close to me as you are now?”

”I do,” Garrik said, setting his hand on the hilt of the dagger at his waist and gripping it firmly to stop his fingers from trembling. ”But it doesn’t matter. I’ve guarded the border between the march and the vale since I was a boy. I’ve heard all about the ’Demon Lady of the Vale,’” he said, deliberately using the name humans had hung on her. ”I know I can’t defeat you. Without the Church to summon a sun in the night sky, I doubt anyone could.”

”I’m standing here anyway,” he said, tightening his grip on the dagger until his knuckles turned white. ”You can kill me,” Garrik said. ”But you can’t stop me from protecting my family.”

”Is that so?” Nyrielle said, allowing a faint thread of power to creep into her voice. ”Kneel!” Nyrielle commanded sharply.

Garrik’s body moved without conscious thought, dropping to one knee and remaining there even as he glared furiously at the tyrant of an empress who had come to humiliate him. Elsewhere in the Great Hall, several knights averted their gaze, convinced they were about to witness an execution or hiding their secondhand shame as a man from among their ranks put up less of a fight than a wet, sputtering kitten.

”Your Eternity, please,” Bronwyn pleaded, dropping to her knees beside her husband in the hopes that the furious empress would grant them mercy.

”Quiet,” Nyrielle snapped, making a quick, dismissive gesture with one hand while keeping her eyes focused on Garrik Maeril’s. ”You’re struggling, Lord of Stonebridge,” she said as she watched his face turn from pink to red while sweat beaded on his brow. ”Even when you’ve lost, you’re still struggling.”

”A man must struggle to his last breath,” Garrik said through clenched teeth. ”For his family. A knight struggles to his dying day, for his people.”

”You know, I think you actually believe that,” Nyrielle said in a tone that almost resembled praise. ”I approve, my darling,” Nyrielle said, breaking her eye contact with Garrik as she turned back to Ashlynn.

”As a warrior, he may be lacking, but Thane can correct that quickly enough,” Nyrielle said, snapping the fingers of her left hand to release him from the grip of her power. ”His heart is stronger than I expected for a Lothian lord, and his love for his wife is more genuine than I’ve seen from many who earned Owain’s approval.”

”Even if only barely, he meets the qualifications to serve as Maeril’s Lord Warden,” Nyrielle pronounced. ”He’ll need a good Lord Gardener, though. Someone who can see the great bridge rebuilt,” she said as she walked slowly across the room, returning to Ashlynn’s side.

”You, you were testing me?” Garrik gasped as Bronwyn wrapped her arms around his shoulders.

”You have been the enemy at my gates since you were a boy,” Nyrielle responded. ”Did you think I would accept you into our ranks without ensuring your worth? There are too many of you who would cling to a fallen order out of a misplaced sense of loyalty or turn yourselves into sniveling dogs, wagging your tails for your new masters as soon as you realized you couldn’t win.”

”Loyalty to an order that never treasured you isn’t just pointless; it’s foolish and pathetic,” Nyrielle said as she swept her gaze over the lords and ladies in the room. ”But a man who will struggle, even hopelessly, just to stand between danger and his family... That, even I can admire.”

”If he can do the same for the people of his domain, why wouldn’t we desire such a man as our vassal? Or such a woman,” Nyrielle said, glancing briefly at Tosha. ”The question is, now that the opportunity lies before you to rise as the Lord Warden of a Ride, will you take it, even if the one who offers it to you was once your enemy?”