The Vampire & Her Witch Chapter 2062: The Third Morning (Part One)

The Vale’s mist hadn’t lifted yet.

It clung to the Enchanted Grove in soft, grey ribbons, curling around the bare trunks of the hemlocks and pooling in the hollows where the frost hadn’t melted. The sun had been up for more than an hour, but it was only a pale smudge of light somewhere above the treetops, too weak to burn the mist away.

Ollie crouched beside the campfire and fed it another split log of cedar.

The flames crackled and leapt. He swung the iron hanging arm out over the fire and hooked his big porridge pot onto it, already half full of oats and water and a good pinch of salt. Beside it, on a three-legged trivet, a smaller pot of cider was beginning to steam.

Behind him, from the larger of the two pavilions, came a sound like a rockslide.

It rumbled and rolled until it rose to a long, gravelly crescendo that made the canvas walls shiver on their poles, and then it subsided into a wet, contented snuffle before beginning all over again.

Lady Charlotte giggled into her mittens.

"How does anyone sleep in there?" she whispered.

"They don’t," Captain Albyn said from his camp stool, without opening his eyes. "They lie awake and pray for the dawn watch."

"Lady Virve stood the night watch with the Empresses while most of us rested," Sir Beathan said, a little stiffly. He sat very straight on the bench beside the fire, his white Templar’s cloak with its rising sun drawn tight around his shoulders. "She’s earned her rest."

"Aye, she’s earned it," Albyn agreed. "That doesn’t mean the rest of us have to enjoy it."

"Captain Devlin stood the first half of it with her," Sir Elgon said. "And Anne and Mary. Lady Virve tried to send the girls back to the fortress at midnight, and Mary told her she’d sooner freeze."

"Did she?" Charlotte asked, wide-eyed.

"She did," Elgon said, and something that was almost pride crept into his gruff voice. "Lady Virve laughed so hard she nearly fell off her stool. Then she wrapped them both in her own cloak and let them stay."

The snoring paused. Everyone held their breath.

Then it resumed, louder than before.

Ollie smiled a little in spite of himself. He stirred the porridge with his long wooden spoon, then dropped a cinnamon stick and a few cloves into the cider and gave it a swirl. On his board, he cut thick slices from a cured ham and laid them in his iron pan at the edge of the coals, where they began to sizzle and curl.

It was plain food. Porridge and ham and boiled eggs, bread toasted on a fork. The sort of breakfast he’d cooked for Lothian soldiers on the days they insisted on dragging a camp cook along with them while they patrolled the wilderness for the slightest sign of the Eldritch. Simple food to fuel the body. He hadn’t had the heart for anything more complicated than that.

A tempting aroma rose up around the fire. Warm and salty and sweet with spice.

No one said anything about it. Three days ago, they would have. Three days ago, Sir Elgon would have been leaning over his shoulder asking what he was making, and Charlotte would have been begging for a taste before it was ready.

This morning, they just sat and waited, and every few moments, one of them glanced up toward the rise.

Ollie looked too. He couldn’t help it.

Through the mist, he could see the small hill rising at the edge of the grove, and the shape of a woman kneeling at its crest. Lady Maela had climbed up there before dawn, just after Mother Ashlynn left, and she hadn’t come down since. Ollie had taken her a cup of tea an hour after sunrise. She’d thanked him, and held it until it went cold, and never drank a drop.

She wasn’t praying. She was only sitting there in the frost, holding her daughter’s hand.

Every now and then, Ollie could hear her voice drifting down through the mist. Too soft to make out the words. Just the sound of it, low and gentle and steady, the way a mother talks to a child who’s fallen asleep by the fire.

Ollie filled a third pot with water from the stream and set it on the coals to boil. When it began to bubble, he lowered a dozen eggs into it with his spoon, one after another, still in their shells.

He forgot to stir the porridge while he did it.

By the time he remembered, he could smell it catching on the bottom of the pot. He stirred hard, scraping along the bottom, and the slightly acrid smell faded away. Mostly.

"Mulled cider," Lady Eira murmured, watching the steam curl up from the smaller pot. "My mother makes it every Midwinter when my father stands watch over the village."

"Mmm," Ollie said with a nod. "I’ve carried casks of it to the soldiers on the walls on Midwinter’s night. Every now and then, a sergeant would let me stay for a cup," he said with a slightly nostalgic grin. Life in Lothian Manor hadn’t been easy, but sometimes, it had its moments of small joys that stayed with him long after he left the manor behind.

"It smells like home," Eira said as she hugged her knees. "Like before. When we were all still..."

She didn’t finish. She didn’t need to.

When we were all still hopeful.

"Has Ashlynn gone back to the fortress?" Lady Adala asked. She sat close beside Charlotte on the bench, their fingers laced together on Charlotte’s knee. "I didn’t see her this morning."

"Lady Nyrielle took her before dawn," Ollie said. "Same as every morning. She’ll bring her back after nightfall."

"Does she sleep?" Charlotte asked. "Ashlynn, I mean. When she goes back."

"Lady Nyrielle makes sure of it," Ollie said.

That was all he said. He didn’t tell them about the look on Ashlynn’s face when Nyrielle had folded her wings around her in the quiet hour before sunrise. Grey-skinned and hollow-eyed, the bite marks on her throat still livid, and so exhausted that she could barely stand. And still, she hadn’t wanted to leave. Lady Nyrielle had needed to lift her off the ground.

Ollie turned the ham. One slice had already gone dark at the edges. He moved it to the cooler side of the pan and told himself it didn’t matter. If that was the worst of it, he’d take the piece for himself.

"Sir Ollie," Captain Albyn said.

Ollie looked up. The captain had opened his eyes, and he was watching Ollie with the steady, measuring look of a man reading the sky for weather.

"You’ve been through this," Albyn said. "The trial. And you’ve seen the others. Lady Virve’s, and Master Isabell’s." He nodded toward the rise. "How long did theirs take?"

The others went quiet. Even Charlotte. Every face around the fire turned toward him.

"Lady Virve’s took about this long," Ollie said slowly. "Three days. She didn’t have a trial, not like the rest of us. Mother Ashlynn said it was more like her body learning to listen to the world. But she slept three days, and then she woke up." He paused. "Master Isabell’s trial was three days as well. Maybe a little longer. Not much."

"Three days," Charlotte breathed. Her face lit up. "Then Jocelynn might wake up today! Mightn’t she?"

Ollie didn’t answer.

He fished the eggs out of the boiling water with his spoon and set them in a bowl to cool. He stirred the porridge. He did both of those things very carefully and very slowly, because it gave him something to do with his hands, and something to look at that wasn’t Charlotte’s hopeful face.

"Ollie?" Charlotte asked.

"What about you, lad?" Sir Elgon asked quietly. The old knight had gone quiet, his weathered hands clasped between his knees and his stormy eyes fixed on the rise. "How long was your trial?"

"And did you... did you have a tree like that?" Elgon asked, gesturing toward Jocelynn. "Or has that only happened to her?"

Ollie set down the spoon.

He looked up through the mist, toward the small hill and the woman kneeling at its crest. Toward the slender, silvery-green shape rising from the earth beside her.

From here, it almost looked like an ordinary sapling.

"It happened to me too," Ollie said. "My trial was a close thing, more than twice as long as Virve’s or Isabell’s. But... I didn’t start showing signs of turning into a tree until the fifth day," he said. "And it never went as far as that..."