The Vampire & Her Witch

”You still haven’t told her about Nyrielle...”

Maela knew her daughters too well to take Jocelynn’s comment as a simple reminder that there was another empress besides Ashlynn in the fledgling Bloodroot Empire. The tone in her voice was obvious that even Micheline, who had only met her cousin on a few occasions, noticed the playfulness in her voice that clearly implied there was more to Ashlynn’s relationship with Nyrielle than they’d been told about so far.

Of course, it was far from the first clue Micheline had caught this evening. There was a softness in Ashlynn’s voice whenever she spoke about the vampire she was bound to. Beyond that, when she spoke about binding herself to the vampire for an eternity to achieve her vengeance, Ashlynn had referred to the vampire affectionately as ’Nyri’ rather than Nyrielle, which was all that Micheline needed to hear to understand that there was a closeness between Ashlynn and the Midnight Empress.

What shape that closeness took, Micheline couldn’t yet say. The pair might be close as sisters, or they might have the same sort of friendship that knights formed with each other after fighting together on countless battlefields. In her years at the Royal Academy, she’d seen deep affection take so many forms that she’d long ago learned not to assume anything scandalous based on the affection or closeness alone.

But she was watching, and Ashlynn’s reaction told her a great deal.

”Jocey,” Ashlynn said, her face heating slightly at Jocelynn’s tone. ”I was planning on introducing them at nightfall, before tonight’s events begin.”

”And you still can,” Maela said, making space for her daughter to make a graceful retreat even as her suspicions began to grow. ”But since your life is bound to hers, and you intend to rule your empire with her, I think it would be good if you could tell us at least a little bit more about her,” Maela prompted as she picked up her fork and returned to the half-finished portion of Snow on the Sea on her plate.

”Do you cook for her the way you cooked for us today?” Maela asked, raising a brow at her daughter before a crease formed between her brows. ”Do vampires even eat? I don’t think I’ve ever seen Mister Marcel take more than a few bites of anything the whole time we were traveling together.”

”Vampires sustain their existence by feeding on the blood of the living,” Ashlynn said, pulling back the neck of her blouse to reveal two faint white marks on her neck. ”The blood of a witch is a powerful thing. Nyri doesn’t need to feed from me very often,” she explained when she saw her mother’s horrified look.

”Before I came to the Vale, the tradition among Nyrielle’s progeny was to accept offerings from the people of the Vale,” Ashlynn added. ”In the Vale, it’s considered a great honor to offer blood to the vampires who have protected them against a hundred years of Lothian aggression.”

”No one dies unless something goes very wrong,” she said, thinking back to the first time she’d watched Nyrielle feed when a member of the Horned Clan seemed intent on becoming one of Nyrielle’s progeny by allowing Nyrielle to drink more deeply than she should have.

It wouldn’t have worked out in the end. Even if Nyrielle had drained the young man to the last drop, without offering her blood in turn, he wouldn’t have been able to come back from the brink of death. At the time, Ashlynn understood his gambit. He must have believed that she would offer her blood to save his life.

Now that Ashlynn understood how much it cost Nyrielle each time she transformed a person into one of her progeny, and how risky the process was, it was incomprehensible that the young man’s scheme would have succeeded.

”So, Nyrielle drinks your blood to sustain her life,” Maela said, her face going pale as she set down her fork. Thankfully, their meal didn’t include red meat. If it did, especially if it had been served toward the rare side when the juices seeped red, she might have had an even stronger reaction to the notion of her daughter becoming someone else’s meal.

”Does it, does it hurt?” Maela asked while staring at the pale marks on Ashlynn’s neck.

”No,” Ashlynn said quickly, shaking her head vigorously. ”No, there’s no pain. It isn’t a bad thing, Mother,” Ashlynn added, reaching out to rest a hand on her mother’s hand.

”The night I met Nyrielle, when we formed a bond of blood, it wasn’t anything like what you hear in the Church’s stories,” Ashlynn said. ”She was sweet and kind to me, even then. To form the bond, we filled a cup with both our blood, and we both drank from it, but she bled into the cup far more than I did, and I drank more deeply than she did. It means that I stood to gain more from being bound to her than she gained from me,” Ashlynn said.

”That does sound, um, sweet,” Micheline said hesitantly. If she imagined it as an offering of blended wine, it would sound sweet.

There was even a custom in the northern lands of Gaal that supposedly came from a nation across the sea where lords would mingle wine before sharing it to drink. Though, as far as Micheline knew, the custom had more to do with trusting that the host hadn’t poisoned the wine they served their guests than any kind of display of closeness.

”Eldritch customs and rituals can seem strange and a little scary at first,” Ashlynn said. ”They don’t see the world the same way that we were raised to. Power is part of the world,” Ashlynn said, raising her hand while summoning a small ball of emerald-green light. ”To the Eldritch, learning to use this power and performing rituals that channel this power is a normal part of life.”

”With Nyri, the bond we formed did far more than give me the strength to survive my wounds,” Ashlynn continued. She dismissed the ball of light with a wave of her hand before resting the tips of her fingers on her chest, directly over her heart.

”I can feel Nyri’s heartbeat, and she feels mine,” Ashlynn said. ”The power that flows between us lets us do things that I’d never dreamed were possible. During the day, while she sleeps, sometimes we share dreams with each other. I’ve seen the world she walked through more than a hundred years ago through memories and dreams we share, and I’ve shown her the cliffs over Blackwell Bay and the Festival of Lights there too...”

”The Church teaches that becoming the thrall of a vampire means surrendering your will to them,” Maela said carefully. She was willing to accept that the things the Church had taught her might not be entirely true, but the best lies were ones that contained a kernel of truth, and if there was the slightest possibility that her daughter had fallen under this vampire’s spell...

”So, are you saying that there’s no truth to that?” Maela asked, desperately needing to hear the answer from her daughter’s own lips. ”This bond is one of choice and sharing, without any compulsion or corruption?”

”I won’t say it’s impossible for her to force me,” Ashlynn said carefully. ”I am, um, I’m vulnerable to her powers in a way that I wouldn’t be without the bond. As a Great Witch, my desires are strong and all but impossible to override. I doubt that Thane could command me, or Zedya mesmerize me.”

”But Nyri,” Ashlynn said hesitantly. ”I can’t resist her powers. She’s only ever used those powers to compel me and manipulate me once,” Ashlynn added with a pained look at her sister. ”The night I learned that Jocelynn was the one who told Owain about my mark because she wanted to be the one to marry him.”

”I was overcome with pain and fury,” Ashlynn said, returning her gaze to her mother. ”I summoned a storm in my hurt that battered two baronies beyond the Vale of Mists, and that night, I was determined to put an end to Jocelynn’s life.”

”My bond with Nyri is what let her stop me,” Ashlynn said. ”Without her intervention, I would have stormed Lothian Manor by myself. The way I was that night, I might have succeeded in claiming Jocey’s life, and Owain’s too, but I never would have survived the attempt, and on that night, I don’t know that I’d have wanted to...”