Chapter 533: The Oldest Oak
Hours after their meal, Ashlynn and Virve walked quietly through the gathering gloom of the autumn afternoon, having left the ancient fortress and the town surrounding it far behind.
Their meal together had been an opportunity to put down the barriers of guardian and liege lady, along with the need to play their parts before the people around them. It let Ashlynn see a side of Virve that the older woman had kept bottled up and rarely showed.
Ashlynn had no idea how much courage it had taken Virve to be honest about her struggles to consider integration with the humans of Lothian March, but she wasn’t about to cast aside her veteran guardian just because she bore deep scars from personal losses. Ashlynn herself struggled to imagine a world where she reconciled with the Lothians after what Owain had done to her.
Still, she had some hope that Owain’s brother, Loman, might be redeemable enough to become an ally rather than an enemy. By all accounts, he had been a good man, focused on the charitable efforts of the Church in Lothian City. If that was true, and if he could be reasoned with, then he could help her prevent a great deal of needless bloodshed.
If he couldn’t be reasoned with, however, and if he turned himself into a rallying point for resistance, then she would be left with little choice but to deal with him in the Eldritch way and destroy him as a threat to her rule of the march. It was something that the Ashlynn of six months ago would never have considered, but much had changed for her in those six months.
That was why, when Virve said that it would be hard for her to ’play nice’ with the Lothians, Ashlynn understood at least a little bit of what the older woman meant. They were both wounded, but Ashlynn’s wounds were still raw and fresh, and they were still something that could heal once she’d dealt with the man who nearly killed her.
Virve’s wounds were old and deep, with layers upon layers of scar tissue built up over them. Healing wouldn’t be easy and true acceptance might be impossible. But, with humans like herself and Ollie in the coven, Ashlynn hoped that she could eventually build a bridge to reconciliation that Virve could cross. And who knew, perhaps the entity they’d hiked out into the wilderness to meet with could help her next coven member with that healing.
"Have you ever been to the Ancient Oak, Virve?" Ashlynn asked as they walked across the tall, damp grass that covered the hillside. "This one specifically," she added. "I know there are others still within the Vale."
"Only once, my lady," Virve said as she walked slowly beside the younger woman, taking one step to every two of Ashlynn’s. "I accompanied Lady Nyrielle when she visited the Ancient Oak a few years ago. Every decade or so, Lady Nyrielle makes an offering of blood to each of the Ancient Oaks in order to strengthen them and protect them from any humans who might slip over the wall to do harm to our treasured trees."