The Vampire & Her Witch

Chapter 1054: The Strength To Do More

For several heartbeats, Nyrielle just held her lover close, giving Ashlynn the time to process her fears and worries. Isabell’s warning had pried open a wound that was still tender and fresh, but she and Ashlynn had discussed their fears for her family before. Little had changed between the last time they’d had this conversation and now, but Ashlynn’s heart was too riddled with hurts and fears to separate them neatly into problems that could be solved and wounds to be tended.

Eventually, however, her lover needed to confront the part of Isabell’s warning that stirred up everything else within her heart, or Ashlynn would sink into another series of nightmares as she tried to shoulder burdens far beyond what even a powerful witch could bear.

"Ashlynn, my darling," Nyrielle whispered, prodding her lover out of her spiraling thoughts. "You said that you were worried about the warning Isabell carried," she reminded her. "But the worries you spoke about aren’t anything you haven’t been facing since your arrival in the Vale. What is it about the warning of the Hemlock Witch that’s shaken you so?"

"You always see right through me," Ashlynn said, her lush lips brushing across Nyrielle’s collarbone as she spoke. "Even when I’m too lost in my own thoughts to see clearly, you always do."

"I feel your heartbeat within my chest," Nyrielle reminded her lover as she gently stroked the young woman’s silky hair. "We share our dreams during the day, and our bodies at night. How could I not see clearly when the woman I love is troubled by something she’s afraid to put into words?"

"But we’re facing the dangers of the world together, my darling," she whispered, placing a feather-light kiss on the crown of Ashlynn’s head. "And that includes the dangers of the heart. So tell me, and even if I cannot help you solve the worry, I can share it with you, and we can face this worry together too."

"I love you," Ashlynn breathed as she shifted her position in bed, stretching upward until she could brush her lips across Nyrielle’s, tasting the other woman’s sweetness as she hungered for the warmth and reassurance of her lover’s touch.

A trace of a smile flickered across Nyrielle’s lips before she yielded to her lover’s needs, parting her lips and savoring the taste that thrilled her more than any dish she’d ever sampled. Her fingers slid through Ashlynn’s hair, cradling and supporting her head while her other hand slid along her lover’s shoulders, descending to the curve at the small of her back to pull her more deeply into the kiss.

Time melted away between them as Nyrielle answered her lover’s fears with soft touches and deep kisses. She had to struggle against her hunger to keep from pricking Ashlynn’s lips and spilling blood into their kiss, but this was a moment for comfort, not passion, and Nyrielle refused to allow her bloodthirst to taint a moment when Ashlynn had turned to her for support.

Eventually, the intensity of the moment faded, and Ashlynn pulled back from the embrace. Her face was flushed, and her breathing had grown unsteady, but her heart no longer trembled with the same intense fear and worry that had plagued her moments ago.

A kiss couldn’t cure her of the anxieties that plagued her, but it gave her the strength she needed to face them, and put her at ease enough to share them with the woman who meant more to her than anyone else in the world.

"I wanted to transform Lothian March into the kind of paradise that Isabell mentioned creating in her trial," Ashlynn confessed. "I, I thought that, if I could transform the lives of the common people... If I could make things better for them in as many ways as possible, then they would be able to accept life alongside the Eldritch."

She knew how much people in Lothian March struggled, and a century of Lothian rule, marked by once-a-generation wars, hadn’t done anything to make their lives better. Every generation, families were broken, and the lucky ones who survived the war returned home with scars on their bodies and their hearts.

Then, everyone who survived the war scrambled to pick up the pieces, carrying on as best they could. No one was thriving except for the lords who squeezed out heavy tithes to fund the wars, siphoning off the excess to enrich themselves, and a handful of merchants who profited by trading war materials.

But putting a stop to the wars wouldn’t be enough... And it wasn’t a promise that Ashlynn could realistically make in the short term. She could stop the wars against the Eldritch, but she would only be replacing them with new wars against the Church and the Kingdom of Gaal. So, if she couldn’t deliver prosperity simply by ending the wars with the Eldritch, she would have to look elsewhere for ways to turn the wheel of wealth faster, and she’d hoped to do so with witchcraft.

There were more than a hundred villages and towns in Lothian March alone, plus all the Eldritch settlements that had been fenced in by constant human expansion. If Ashlynn and her coven spent a year or two visiting every one of them, healing the sick where they could, mending what was broken that could be mended, and leaving behind seeds that would flourish like no other, then she was certain that she could win over the people of the March in a few short years...

But the scale of it was staggering, and from what Isabell had implied, working on that kind of scale would tip the balance of nature’s delicate scales far too much, provoking inevitable calamities. Just making the attempt could destroy the very people she intended to help.

She was grateful for the Hemlock’s warning, but at the same time, it left her feeling powerless to help the people who needed it most. And without some kind of transformation to bind them together, she was afraid that she’d plunge the entire region into pockets of unrest and bloody civil war like the one Isabell had fought in the Emerald Kingdom across the sea.

"It feels... hopeless," Ashlynn said as she clung to Nyrielle for strength. "I have all of this power at my fingertips, but if I use it... Then I’ll just provoke new disasters."

"Will you?" Nyrielle asked, frowning at her lover. "You told me about Isabell’s trial and her warning, but that isn’t the way I understood it at all."

"Oh?" Ashlynn asked, blinking several times in surprise. "Then... how did you understand the warning?"

"I think the warning was meant more for Isabell than for you," Nyrielle said as she gently stroked Ashlynn’s hair. "Didn’t you say that she sacrificed her power over fire in order to prevent herself from using it as a weapon the way she had in the last war she fought? I think that your newest witch fears her own strength because she’d allowed others to guide its use," Nyrielle explained.

"From what you’ve told me of her, the war she fought in was every bit as terrible as the one that nearly destroyed the Vale of Mists," Nyrielle said. "So she’s both walled herself off from the power she used to destroy, and she’s taken on all of the responsibility for using her power, placing all of the burden on her own shoulders."

"But I think the warning she was meant to receive was that she can’t create the kind of future she wants to build if she does it all by herself," Nyrielle said. "Certainly, doing too much and throwing things out of balance can invite disasters, but that’s when you must turn to the others you rely on. You have to be stronger together if you wish to transform the world..."

"After all," she said with a soft, comforting smile. "Hasn’t one of your predecessors reshaped the world before? Why can’t you and your coven do it again?"

"Done it before?" Ashlynn said, furrowing her brow as she tried to think about which of her predecessors could be said to have reshaped the world. But when she did, her mouth dropped open in shock as she stared at Nyrielle in disbelief.

"You’re talking about the Mother of Forests," Ashlynn whispered, raising a hand to her chest and feeling the faint scar that had grown slightly larger each time she nurtured a seed of witchcraft for a member of her small coven. "You’re talking about the greatest Mother of Trees to ever live..."