The Vampire & Her Witch

Chapter 1720: Springing A Trap (Part One)

Serle Otker felt like he’d lived and died a dozen lives in the last day alone.Last night, he’d accumulated enough red in his ledgers that he was still searching for a way to balance the scales before it was too late. Attempting to sell Owain his support had been a disastrous miscalculation. It might be survivable, but he’d miscalculated again when he ordered his knights to protect him from the dark tendrils that seemed to leach the life out of a person to strengthen Owain Lothian.

He was lucky that Sir Ollie had been able to save Melsinde, though she’d been more subdued ever since her ordeal. Serle tried to mark that part down as a wash; Lady Ashlynn had promised to bestow a miracle on the victims of the Lothian throne, so Melsinde should recover from what had happened to her but... His choice to guard himself while she struggled against the darkness alone had accumulated even more red in his ledger.

He’d tried to offset that by rewarding Sir Ollie this morning, praising the hero who had saved her life. He hadn’t known that the young man was a witch, but that explained why he could do what Serle himself never could. It wasn’t his fault he couldn’t rescue her from the cursed throne; only a witch could do that!

But the young man rejected his offer of armor, and when he tried offering up Charlotte, his own flesh and blood, the offer hadn’t just been rejected; Lady Ashlynn had dismantled the ability of every lord in the march to arrange marriages for their sons and daughters! The line of knights and lords who’d found him in the Great Hall after Lady Ashlynn left, letting them know how much they ’appreciated’ the results of his efforts and accumulated even more red in his ledger, to the point that he felt like he’d slit his own wrists to write out his losses.

Now, rumors were swirling that Valeri Leufroy wouldn’t even be granted an audience with Lady Ashlynn after she’d met with Lady Adala, and his days of calling himself ’Baron Leufroy’ were about to come to an end. So when Serle walked into the small sitting room where Lady Ashlynn had been meeting with the lords and ladies of the march, his thinning hair was already damp with sweat and the jewel-encrusted finery he wore felt stiflingly tight over his thick frame.

"Your Dominion," Serle said as smoothly as he could, giving a deep bow along with the strange fingertip-to-chest salute that Liam Dunn had been teaching to anyone who would listen. "Thank you for making time to meet with me and my family," he said, watching the rest of his family making similar gestures of respect behind him.

Neither Melsinde nor Serge looked like their usual selves. Melsinde’s movements were slow and restrained, and the intricately embroidered cap she wore seemed to weigh down on her as though it were made of lead.

Meanwhile, Serge had been struggling all morning to avoid strong wine or cider, and while that should have left him more clear-headed, the way his eyes fell on the pitcher of wine sitting on the room’s low table told Serle that his son would need several days to fully emerge from the stupor he’d fallen into yet again.

Only Charlotte seemed like her usual bright, cheerful self, particularly when Lady Ashlynn responded to their arrival.

"Charlotte," Ashlynn said, ignoring the rest of the Otker family to cross the room and envelop her old friend in a tender embrace. "You don’t know how much I’ve missed you these past nine months," she said, giving the younger lady a firm squeeze.

"I missed you too, Ashlynn," Charlotte said, shamelessly allowing tears to roll down her rounded cheeks. "We thought that you died," she said with a soft, feeble sob.

"I did," Ashlynn said, giving her friend one last squeeze before pulling back to wipe the tear from Charlotte’s cheek. "But Nyri rescued me, and I got better," she said with a warm smile.

"Now, come, sit," Ashlynn said, gesturing to the chairs around the table by the hearth. She’d added a chair next to her own, and she guided Charlotte to that one, pulling her friend by the hand until they were both sitting on the opposite side of the Otker family and making it very clear to Serle where Charlotte sat in relation to the rest of his family.

The question that gripped Serle’s heart like the claws of a bear was whether this meant that he was about to follow in Valeri Leufroy’s footsteps, losing his barony to his daughter, or if it was something as simple and innocuous as a girlish friendship between two young ladies. After all, they’d both spent considerable time together over the past few years whenever Lady Ashlynn passed through Otker Canyon on her way to visit Lord Owain in Lothian...

It could just be friendship. Or it could be that the time to settle the balance for all of the red in his ledger had finally arrived... and Serle had no way to know which it was.

"When we’re done with business here," Ashlynn said as everyone took their seats. "I’d like it if Charlotte could stay back with me for a few minutes. It’s a personal matter," she said, flashing Charlotte a genuinely warm smile. "Nothing your family needs to worry about."

"Of course I can stay," Charlotte said before either of her parents could give an opinion. "We have so much to catch up on, and I have so many questions I want to ask you," she said brightly before noticing her father’s darkening expression. "But we should get the business out of the way first, so we can talk after."

"Mmm," Ashlynn agreed with a nod before gesturing to a stack of slender scrolls lying on the table next to the pitcher of wine and silver goblets. "I’ll make this very simple, Baron Otker," Ashlynn said as the warmth in her voice faded away. "I have a great deal of faith in your capabilities, and I have very little trust in your character," she said, delivering faint praise hand in hand with a stinging rebuke.

"The Vale of Mists employs considerably more spies across the Verdant Hills than you may realize," Ashlynn explained, picking up one of the slender scrolls and rolling it between her fingers without removing the silk ribbon that held it closed.

"Over the years, they’ve collected a significant amount of information about your hidden dealings and on a few occasions, they’ve made use of your ’services’ directly," Ashlynn said with a smile that lacked all of the warmth the expression had held when it was directed toward Charlotte.

"That puts you in a precarious position, Lord Serle," Ashlynn said. "I can’t hold a grudge with you for cheating the Lothians out of their due. The enemy of my enemy can be some form of ally after all," Ashlynn said. "But if you treat me the same way you treated your last liege lord," she said with a growing amount of menace in her voice. "I’m afraid we’re destined to be anything but friends..."