The Vampire & Her Witch

Chapter 1986: Chapter 1986 - Broken Remnants

While Ashlynn and Nyrielle enjoyed an evening filled with laughter and Georg’s finest dishes, a much more somber event was taking place elsewhere in the ancient fortress.

”My lord, Loman,” Sir Gilander said after knocking sharply at the door. ”It’s Gilander,” he called. ”My lord, will you speak with me?”

”Gilander?” A broken, drained voice called from the far side of the door. ”What are you doing here, Gilander? Who ordered you to come?”

”No one ordered me, my lord,” Gilander said, glancing briefly at the horned servant who had guided him here. ”My lord, we should speak in private,” he said. ”May I come in?” 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

”It makes no difference if you do or if you don’t,” Loman said. ”I have no power here to send you away. Do as you please.”

Gilander frowned as he opened the door, and the frown only deepened at the sight that greeted his eyes.

For as long as Gilander had known the younger of the Lothian brothers, Loman had been the picture of polite society. He wore his long, chestnut hair in a neatly gathered tail, kept his face clean-shaven, and always dressed immaculately, whether in the formal vestments of his faith or the fashions of the aristocracy.

Now, Loman seemed to have lost all of those things.

He sat on a window bench in his chambers’ small sitting room, gazing out over the sprawling Vale City. His left side faced toward the window, but Gilander could see his empty shirt sleeve hanging limp at his side. The white tunic had been left unlaced across his chest, and the cuff at his right wrist was unlaced as well.

His face bore several days of coarse stubble, and his cheeks looked sunken and hollow. The once neatly tended chestnut hair looked rough, ragged and unkempt. Perhaps Loman had run a comb through it some time recently, but he’d made no effort to tie it back, nor had he allowed anyone to do it for him.

Perhaps the most unusual, and most alarming thing Gilander noticed was the silver goblet in Loman’s right hand and the half-empty bottle of wine sitting on the nearby table. Had it been Bors or Owain, a bottle of wine wouldn’t have given Gilander pause, but Loman... When had he ever seen the man consume more than one or two cups of watered-down wine?

Never.

”Why are you here, Gilander?” Loman asked again. ”My father can’t have sent you. My brother wouldn’t have sent you. If no one ordered you to come to this place, then you must have some reason to be here,” Loman concluded.

”Or are you a prisoner too?” Loman asked as he swirled the wine in his goblet before taking a long drink. ”Is joining me your punishment for some crime you committed by defending my brother? Are we cell mates then?”

”I haven’t been exiled or imprisoned,” Gilander said as he took several slow steps across the room, approaching the young lord the way he might have approached a wild beast. Loman still hadn’t looked at him. His gaze was fixed on the silvery light of the moon or the stars above.

”I gave my whole life to your father’s service,” Gilander said, stopping three paces short of Loman. ”I would have given what’s left of it to your brother if he’d lived. I tried my best in the days after your father died...”

”You mean in the days after my brother murdered our father,” Loman corrected sharply. ”Where were you, Gilander? The night my brother killed our father. Did you guard the door for Owain? Or did you help to hold my father down while Owain did the deed?”

”Lord Loman!” Gilander protested. With as much swiftness as his aging bones could manage, Gilander lowered himself to one knee and bowed his head before the sole surviving Lothian Lord.

”I would never have betrayed your father,” Gilander swore. ”I’d have taken a knife to the heart before I allowed him to come to harm. The night he died, I was preparing a party to search for you, my lord,” he explained.

”We all knew your father’s illness was weighing on him,” Gilander said when Loman remained silent. ”We didn’t know that it was Nightweaver Venom. We just knew that he’d hanged his own physician on the Inquisition’s word, and he refused to take another. He stayed up late at night, writing down all the things a man should before he dies and I thought...”

”I thought that, if he was truly that close to leaving in search of your mother on the Heavenly Shores or in the next life,” Gilander said, looking up at his young lord with misty eyes. ”I thought you should be there with him.”

”He loved you, Loman,” Gilander said softly. ”As well as any father could. He had high hopes for you,” he said. ”And if he could see you now, it would break his heart...”

”Why?” Loman said, turning to face Gilander for the first time since the older man had entered.

As soon as Loman turned, the pale, silvery moonlight fell on the ruined side of his face, casting shadows across the scars left by Sybyll’s claws that made the wounds look even deeper than they were. A patch covered the empty socket where a gentle, hazel eye had once gazed benevolently on the world, and the remaining eye looked wild and wounded as it stared at the kneeling knight.

”Why would it break his heart?” Loman asked. ”Because I’m no longer useful to his schemes? Or because I don’t remind him of Mother anymore? He’s the one who sent me to fight demons,” Loman spat. ”So why would he care what happened to me?”

”Isn’t this what he wanted?” Loman raged, flipping his empty left sleeve in the air. ”I’m just like all of you now, aren’t I? I have my own scars and war wounds, so I can be just like all of Father’s closest friends... So why would seeing me like this break his heart?”

”Why, Gilander?” Loman choked out as a broken, half-strangled sob escaped his lips. ”Why would he...?”

”My lord,” Gilander said, coming quickly to his feet as he crossed the last three paces between himself and the young lord in the window. A lifetime of etiquette and restraint crumbled beneath the weight of Loman’s anguished cry as he threw his arms around Loman, pulling him into a tight embrace.

”You...!” Loman started, only to be interrupted by his father’s most faithful knight.

”Let it out, Son,” Gilander said in the same soothing tone he’d have used on his own children. ”Your father isn’t here for you, but I can still do this much for him,” he said, holding Loman tight. ”Let it all out, and we’ll face the hurt together...”