The Vampire & Her Witch Chapter 2063: The Third Morning (Part Two)

The fifth day.

No one said anything for a long moment. Even the snoring from the pavilion seemed to pause, as though Virve herself had heard.

"I never saw it," Ollie said, trying to make light of it. He picked up the spoon again, because his hands needed something to hold. "Not on myself. I was asleep the whole time. But Milo told me. And Old Nan. On the fifth day, my skin started to look like bark. Rough, and grey, and hard. And on the seventh day, there were little flowers growing in my hair."

He swallowed heavily as he remembered how stubborn he’d been at the end of his trial and how close he’d come to failing.

"I heard it was the same for Lady Heila," Ollie added. "Near enough."

"But Princess Jocelynn already has a tree growing from her," Adala said. Her voice was very quiet and very precise, the way it always was when she was frightened. "It started on the first night. Before the ritual was even finished."

"I know," Ollie said numbly as he used a stick to adjust the coals. A bit of smoke stung his eyes and Ollie blinked hard, pretending that was the only reason for the moisture there.

He’d gone up to the rise at dawn, when he took Lady Maela her tea. He’d seen the tree up close.

On the first night, it had been nothing but a sprout. Two soft, silver-green leaves, no bigger than a fingernail, rising from the small cut over Jocelynn’s heart.

Now it stood more than a foot tall.

It had a trunk, slender and pale and already beginning to twist the way old olive trees twisted. It had branches. Three of them, thin and tender, each one fringed with narrow, silvery leaves that trembled in the cold air. And the roots...

The roots were the worst part.

The four that had pierced Jocelynn’s wrists and thighs on the first night had thickened. They’d grown down out of her and into the frozen soil, and they’d spread there, digging deep. They wound around her arms and legs like grey ropes, binding her flat to the earth. Her black silk gown was covered with a light dusting of frost while her face was pale as candle wax, and her lips were faintly blue.

She was breathing. Slowly. Barely. She was still with them, and she was still fighting, somewhere inside her trial. But the Olive Seed had taken hold with a speed that disturbed all of them.

Even Talauia said she’d never seen anything like it. Not even when the Mother of Thorns used a seed from the Bloody Sandbox Tree for Jacques, though she admitted that Jacques had also struggled with his trial and that the seed’s growth had been aggressive enough to show signs on the third day. But never from the very beginning.

"It’s as if her trial started on the seventh day," Ollie said. "Not the first. The trials only get harder the longer they take, so if she started like this," he said, drawing in a sharp hiss of breath through his teeth. "And it’s growing so fast..."

He didn’t finish the thought. He didn’t want to say the rest of it out loud.

If it keeps growing like this, what will it look like by the ninth day?

"She’ll make it," Charlotte said firmly.

Everyone looked at her.

Charlotte lifted her chin, and her round, pretty face was set in a stubborn line that Ollie had never seen on her before.

"She will," she insisted. "You didn’t see her when she was in Lothian. When Owain had her locked up in that horrible manor, and everyone thought she was just a pretty, foolish girl. She survived him. She survived the Inquisition. She survived the dungeons. And she walked into that circle on her own two feet, barefoot, in the frost." Charlotte’s voice wobbled, but she pressed on. "Jocelynn is the bravest person I know. And she’s going to wake up."

"Aye," Captain Albyn said quietly. "She will."

He leaned back on his stool and looked up at the rise.

"I’ve seen storms that tore the masts off dromons," Albyn said. "Watched ships go down with every man aboard. And I’ve seen little cogs that had no business surviving ride out the same storm, because their captain was too stubborn to sink." He nodded toward the hill. "Princess Jocelynn is too stubborn to sink. She’ll fight to the last, mark my words."

Sir Elgon pursed his lips and said nothing. He only looked down at his hands.

Sir Beathan shifted on the bench. His jaw was set in a hard line, and his cheeks were flushed red with the cold.

"I’d like to believe that," the Templar said. "I would. But I’ve stood guard over too many deathbeds to ignore what I see." He hesitated. "I’ll pray for her. Every hour. I don’t know what else to do."

Adala’s fingers tightened around Charlotte’s.

"If the tree keeps growing at this rate," she said, very softly. "It will be taller than she is by the fifth day."

"Adala," Charlotte whispered.

"I’m sorry." Adala closed her eyes. "I’m sorry. I just... I count things. When I’m frightened. I can’t help it."

Charlotte leaned her head against Adala’s shoulder, and neither of them said anything more.

The ham was done. Overdone, if Ollie was honest. He’d left it in the pan while he was talking, and the edges of every slice had gone dark and crisp.

He cut thick slices from a dense, dark loaf and toasted them on a long iron fork over the flames, one after another. He held the third slice too long while he was looking at the rise, and it came away black along one side. He scraped the worst of it off with his knife and put it on the pile anyway.

Then he served up the simple breakfast to the group gathered around the fire with him.

There was a generous portion for each of them. A bowl of porridge stirred through with dried cranberries and chopped nuts. Two thick slices of ham. Two eggs, still warm in their shells. Toast. And a wooden cup of hot, spiced cider to wrap their cold fingers around. The same for Sir Elgon as for Lady Eira. The same for Captain Albyn as for Lady Charlotte. He’d never served anyone any other way.

It wasn’t his best. The porridge had a faint, scorched taste from the bit that had stuck to the bottom of the pot. The ham was tough at the edges. Two of the eggs had cooked too long, and their yolks had gone chalky instead of staying soft.

No one said a word about it.

"Eat," Ollie said. "You need your strength staying out in this cold. All of you."

They ate. A little. Charlotte peeled an egg to mix in her porridge and then forgot about the second one. Sir Beathan managed half his porridge before setting the bowl down on the bench beside him. Sir Elgon ate everything with grim, methodical determination, the way old soldiers eat when they know they’ll need it later. None of them seemed to taste a thing.

Only Lady Adala noticed. Ollie saw her look down at the blackened edge of her toast, then at the dark rim of her ham, and then up at him. She didn’t say anything. She just held his gaze for a moment, with something quiet and understanding in her sharp eyes.

Then she ate the toast, burnt edge and all, like it was a perfect, ordinary meal. She didn’t even make a face at the bitterness.

Ollie slid a second slice of ham onto Albyn’s plate before the captain had finished his first. Albyn looked at it, then at Ollie, and didn’t argue.

"Sir Ollie?" Lady Eira asked, startling everyone when she broke the silence of their meal.

Ollie looked up and found Eira staring at the rise, at the dark shape of Lady Maela kneeling in the mist. Her plate sat untouched in her lap.

"Can Princess Jocelynn hear her?" Eira asked. "Her mother. Lady Maela’s been talking to her all morning. Can she hear anything at all?"

"No," Ollie said without hesitation.

Eira’s face fell.

"It doesn’t work like that," he said, more gently. "When you’re in the trial, you’re... you’re inside it. Completely. Everything you see and feel, it’s all real. You forget there’s anything else. It’s hard to even remember that you have a body lying in the dirt somewhere, let alone hear what someone’s saying beside it."

He looked down at his own plate. He hadn’t served himself. He hadn’t even noticed.

"But..."

The word slipped out of him before he could stop it.

"But Mother Ashlynn reached me," he said slowly. "Near the end. When I was almost lost. She found her way into the vision somehow, and she spoke to me, and I heard her." He looked up at the rise again. "So maybe... between a mother and her daughter... maybe there’s a chance. A small one."

It was a thin hope. He knew it, and so did everyone gathered around the fire.

But it was the most he had to offer. It felt like a small thing, little more than an ember to keep them warm, but they huddled around his words anyway, taking what reassurance from it they could.

Up on the rise, Lady Maela bent low over her daughter, her lips moving close to Jocelynn’s ear.

And beside her, without a breath of wind to stir it, one of the olive sapling’s tender branches trembled. A new leaf unfurled from its tip, silver-green and glistening, growing stronger with every breath...