The Vampire & Her Witch Chapter 2044: Understanding the Risks (Part Two)

Ollie’s parents had stopped at the edge of the firelight, close together, looking uncertainly at the knights and ladies gathered around the nearest fires. Micheline recognized the look at once. It was the look of people who had spent their whole lives knowing exactly where they were permitted to stand, and who had suddenly found themselves in a place where no one would tell them.

She’d seen it more than once from young noblemen and women whose families had scraped up everything they could to send their son or daughter to the Royal Academy in the hopes of reaching a higher station than the one their parents could offer them. She’d worn that look herself once when she first arrived in Gaalen.

Without quite deciding to, Micheline crossed the frozen ground toward them.

The woman saw her coming and sank at once into a deep, practiced curtsey, low enough for a marchioness or a duchess. Her husband snatched the cap from his head and bowed.

"Please," Micheline said quickly. "There’s no need for that. You’re Sir Ollie’s mother and father, aren’t you?"

"Yes, my lady," the woman said, rising slowly. "I’m Lilee, and this is my husband, Jamys. We... we worked at Lothian Manor," she said sheepishly. "The laundry and the stables."

"Twenty years," Jamys added gruffly, turning his cap around and around in his big, callused hands as he did his best to repress a lifetime of habits that told his body to bow before such a high-born lady. "Our boy was born there."

"I’m Micheline DuCoumont," Micheline said. "Empress Ashlynn is my cousin. And your son helped her escape from the Summer Villa, from what I hear," she added. "So, if anyone should be bowing tonight, I think it ought to be me."

Lilee’s eyes filled with tears so quickly that Micheline wondered whether anyone had ever said such a thing to her before.

"Thank you, my lady," Lilee whispered. "Thank you..."

"The people from your son’s village are just there," Micheline said, gesturing toward the fire where Barsali lay coiled around his warm rock. "I think they’ve been waiting for you."

They had.

The old woman with the carved walking stick was already beckoning them over, her long, flat tail sweeping a little arc through the frost behind her. A Heartwood archer with a bow across his back rose to make room for them on the blankets, and a younger woman from the Heartwood clan pressed a cup of something steaming into Lilee’s hands before she’d even sat down.

Micheline lingered a few steps away, with Charlotte and Adala close beside her. She told herself it was only to make sure Ollie’s parents were welcomed.

"Milo," Lilee said hesitantly, once she’d settled. She wrapped both chapped hands around the cup, as though drawing courage from its warmth. "You were there, weren’t you? When our boy... When Ollie did this?"

"I was," Milo said. "I sat outside the circle every night until he woke."

"What was it like?" Jamys asked. His voice was gruff, but his hands had gone very still around the brim of his cap. "Ollie won’t say much about it, just that it was hard. He never tells us the hard parts."

"He never told us the hard parts at home, either," Lilee said softly. "When he was a boy, he’d go hungry for days and swear he’d eaten in the kitchens..."

Milo glanced at the old woman, and she answered for him.

"It was hard," Old Nan said, her voice cracking like dry wood when she spoke. "He screamed the first night. Loud enough to wake the whole village. After that, he slept. Days and days, he slept. Lady Heila stroked his back and sang over him at night. We brought him blankets and kept the fires going."

"And then his skin started to change," Milo said quietly. "Rough, like bark. His hands dug down into the dirt, like they were trying to grow roots. On the last night, there were little flowers growing in his hair."

Lilee pressed her chapped hands over her mouth.

"Flowers," she whispered. "In my boy’s hair..."

"The Mother of Trees said that it wouldn’t be more than nine days," Old Nan said, glancing briefly in the direction of the ancient fortress. "Any longer than that, and the seed would overtake him, and he’d have been lost. A tree would have grown in his place to watch over the village he built for us but... None of us could bear the thought of that."

"But Sir Ollie came back," Old Nan said firmly, and her long, flat tail thumped once against the frozen ground. "Mother Ashlynn went to him and helped him to find his way back to us. And he’s stronger now," she added. "Much stronger than before."

"Not just his powers," Milo added. "We all expected that. But he’s... He learned things in those days that he slept. The Wisdom of the Wood. He has it now, and you can see it in his eyes sometimes. He’s different, but his heart is still the same, just... stronger now."

"Do you," Micheline started unconsciously before she realized it might not be a proper question to ask. But the thing Old Nan had said about a tree growing in Ollie’s place... She’d heard that Jocelynn was risking her life, but she’d never known it was like this...

"Do you know what my cousin did?" Micheline asked. "How did she help Sir Ollie to find his way back?"

"None of us know, child," Old Nan said. "It’s a thing of witches. We’re lucky they let us see their rituals at all. The ancient tales are wrapped in so much myth, they’re as informative as the mists," she said, waving her hand at the drifting droplets in the air.

"But I have faith in the Mother of Trees," Old Nan said. "She has a good heart. She made sure that Sir Ollie found his way back to us. She wouldn’t let anything bad happen to her sister," she said confidently.

But Micheline, who had come to understand how tense things were between Ashlynn and Jocelynn, wasn’t so sure...