Chapter 688: Illuminating Carriage Ride (Part Two)
"And? Are you a witch?"
When Isabel spoke, she tried to keep her voice as calm and even as possible, but even she couldn’t help but think of the children’s tales she’d grown up with when it came to the horrors of a wicked witch who could destroy whole towns and armies all by themselves.
There was a reason, after all, why the Inquisition aggressively hunted people on the slightest suggestion that they might be a witch. After all, witches were one of the few threats the Kingdom of Gaal faced that could drive one of the Church’s legendary Exemplars to make a move, though if there were records of battles between the Exemplars and Witches, Isabell had never seen them.
"Isabell, how could you say something like that?" Tiernan asked, twisting in his seat to stare at Isabell as if she’d transformed into a stranger. "Ashlynn couldn’t be an evil..."
"I am," Ashlynn said, interrupting Tiernan before he could say anything more hurtful than what he’d started to say. "I was born this way and my parents have always known that I was different," she said slowly as she thought back to her earliest memories when her mother had explained to her again and again that no one could ever be permitted to see the mark on her hip.
"My parents thought as you did once," she said after taking a small sip of wine to steel her resolve. "They even thought the mark might be an ordinary one," she said as she turned to look out the window at the trees passing by in the darkness of the night. "You know, my mother has never had much luck bearing children. By the time I was born, she’d already been through more than one failure to conceive."
It wasn’t until Ashlynn was old enough to experience her first moonflow that she’d learned from her mother just how miraculous her own birth had been to her parents. Her mother had described what it felt like to miss her monthly flow and to feel her heart begin to flutter with hope only for things to pass several weeks later with pains that twisted her womb and enough blood to fear that the Holy Lord of Light had torn away her ability to bear children.
But then, a few months later, she once again felt the signs of life stirring within her, only to feel it torn away again weeks later and to endure the cycle repeating all over again.
"When I was finally born, it was the happiest and saddest day of their lives," Ashlynn said softly. "They finally had a child, but she bore the mark of the witch. Just how tragic must it have been fore them? But they refused to give me up," she said, biting her lip as a tear rolled down her face.