Chapter 185: Respect For My Teacher
By this point, a small crowd of spectators had formed around the face-off between Lady Nyrielle, the Blood Princess, and Jacques, the Sandbox Witch. Bloodsport had been a part of the culture of High Fen city for too long and no one wanted to miss a good show if one was about to erupt.
Elsewhere in the great hall, serpentine servants had quietly slipped away to find High Lady Erna. While there were ways to allow a bit of violence to erupt at the masquerade, should the situation call for it, a confrontation between a powerful witch and an even more powerful vampire was one that could harm even onlookers. Before that happened, they hoped that High Lady Erna could suppress the rowdy guests.
"Mistress Nyrielle," Ashlynn said, tugging at her lover’s dress and gazing pleadingly up at her. If she’d realized that things would turn out like this, she would never have accepted Jacques’ invitation to dance. She could have stopped this then and that made it her responsibility to stop it now. "May I say a few words?"
"You want to plead for him?" Nyrielle said, looking helplessly at the woman in her arms. Sandbox Witch or not, Jacques wasn’t a match for Nyrielle and she deeply desired to put him in his place for making a move on her darling Ashlynn. Her lover, however, still had a soft heart that sought to resolve things with words when a sharp blow would have settled things much more cleanly.
Taking a deep breath, Ashlynn discarded everything she had been prepared to say and attempted to start over from her lover’s perspective. Clearly, the way her magic responded to Jacques was different from what anyone had expected. Even Zedya had been worried that Ashlynn would be injured by him.
Looking from Zedya to Heila, Ashlynn’s heightened senses caught something she’d missed while she was dancing. There wasn’t so much as a drop of blood on Ashlynn’s dress but there were small drops on Heila’s gown. Seeing her lady-in-waiting hovering in Zedya’s shadow and clutching at her palm changed Ashlynn’s perception of events significantly.
"Heila," she said softly. "Are you hurt?"
"These wounds aren’t large my Lady," Heila said, clutching her hand anxiously. When she spoke to Zedya, it seemed like rushing to report things had been the right thing to do but now she wasn’t as certain. If Ashlynn wasn’t in any danger then she may have made things worse by rushing to get help too soon.
"Jacques," Ashlynn said, turning her emerald gaze on the Sandbox Witch. "You hurt my friend?"
"Ah," the witch said, understanding dawning in his golden eyes. "I didn’t know she was your friend, cher," he said, spreading his hands wide and lowering his head. "Thought she was just another bloodsucking mosquito, trying to climb higher by clingin’ to your skirts," he added, glaring at the other women who’d been hovering nearby. "I was just tryin’ to keep dem from spoilin’ our dance."