The Vampire & Her Witch

"I know," Heila said, closing her eyes and snuggling into Ashlynn’s warm, comforting embrace. "I used healing magic to kill a man," she said, opening her eyes and looking briefly at her petite, delicate hands. "I filled him so full of healing magic that his body failed him, and I just, I just wanted to..."

"It’s all right," Ashlynn said softly as sobs shook her friend’s petite figure. "I understand wanting to use your hands to do something good after doing something that felt so bad."

"It wasn’t like in the visions," Heila sniffed. "In the visions, no matter how real it felt, I knew it wasn’t real. So I just, I just wanted to do whatever it would take to make the visions stop. But this time I felt... I felt like I was connected to him while he died. I could feel the energy flowing through him, destroying him bit by bit. Because of me. Because I was doing it to him."

"And?" Ashlynn asked gently as she stroked her friend’s horns in long, slow strokes from the base of the horn all the way to the tip, just the way Heila said her parents once had whenever she felt sad or lonely. "Do you think you made the right decision?"

"Mmmm," Heila said with a slight nod. "If I didn’t stop him then, he might have done something far worse. He might have hurt the spectators again or lashed out at you or... or something even worse."

"But it still bothers you, doesn’t it?" Ashlynn asked.

"It does," the diminutive witch reluctantly admitted. "Did it bother you? When you fought Owain’s knights or the Tuscans on the lake?"

"It did," Ashlynn said. "Time helps. Memories fade with time. The feelings aren’t as sharp. You gain perspective too. I thought a lot about what happened between me and Sir Kaefin at the Summer Villa, and about what happened between me and Sir Broll when we fought afterward."

"There are other things I might have done at the time, if I’d thought of them," Ashlynn admitted. "In hindsight, I wasn’t a very good spy, even if I thought I was being very clever. I wasn’t a very good warrior on the lake either."

"But you did your best," Heila protested, squirming in Ashlynn’s embrace until she could turn around and face her friend. "You protected me and Hauke and even Virve in the end. You saved us from them."

"And you saved countless people in the arena that night," Ashlynn pointed out. "Because of you, the children in the audience weren’t harmed. In fact, there’s one that would very much like to meet with you. I told her that when you’re feeling better, then if you’d like, she can join us for a meal at one of the smaller arenas. She said that you’re her hero."

"Me?" Heila asked, confused that someone would want to meet her and that they would consider her worthy of being a hero. "Why does she want to meet me so badly?"