The Vampire & Her Witch

"Sir Ollie," Morwen said gently as she stepped toward the blood-soaked knight.

Sir Franc had fallen just five paces away from her. Ollie was another ten paces away, not far at all, but it felt like a league as she crossed the polished flagstone floor to reach out to the man who had saved her life.

"Morwen, wait," Cadeyrn said, reaching out to catch her arm as she passed by him. Liam Dunn, however, caught his arm before he could touch his sister. Liam gently shook his head at the young squire and then nodded in the direction of Lady Ashlynn and Master Isabell.

"If they’re worried, be worried," Liam said softly.

"But he, he just," Cadeyrn stammered, unable to take his eyes off the man who had just hurled a knife hard enough to cleave through three layers of armor and sever another man’s spine. "He’s a butcher..." Cadeyrn said softly.

The look he gave Sir Ollie wasn’t very different from the way a person might look at a tamed bear. Certainly, it could be useful, and it would fight fiercely, but ’tamed’ wasn’t the same as ’trusted’ or ’controlled,’ and a person always had to be wary around the bear lest it turn on its own masters.

Now, Cadeyrn’s sister was approaching someone who was far more dangerous than a bear and Cadeyrn didn’t want her anywhere near him!

-SLAP-

"Don’t you dare," Liam said sharply. His hand stung with the force of the blow, and Cadeyrn’s cheek was already turning red from the impact, but the young man looked more shocked than hurt by the fact that Liam had struck him.

"Sir Ollie is a knight," Liam said in a voice that was tight and strained as he fought to be quiet when he wanted to shout at the young squire. "He protected all of us tonight and carried far more than his share of the burden for the fighting. You respect that. Your sister does," Liam added pointedly. "Learn from her example."

"Y-yes, my Lord," Cadeyrn said, swallowing heavily as he realized how badly he’d overstepped.

To the side, Ashlynn nodded her approval before returning her attention to Ollie, frowning slightly as she watched him struggle with the power and fury of the Blood Acorn.

This battle had become a crucible for Ollie in a way that the assault on the Summer Villa hadn’t been. She was ready to rush to Ollie’s side, to help him if she needed to, but if Ollie could at least round the corner of this trial on his own, he would be stronger for it afterward.

This, in her mind, was the real battle that Ollie needed to win. Through the doors, she could hear the High Priest leading the guests in a hymn, and the singing must have drowned out much of the noise of the duel.

A few people closer to the door had muttered about servants dropping things in the hallway, but if anyone had heard the cries of pain or the shouted commands to yield, they’d said nothing of them. Or at least, they’d said nothing that Ashlynn could hear.

They didn’t have much time. She refused to let Jocelynn so much as speak her vows to Owain, but if she could give Ollie just a few extra heartbeats to win this battle on his own, she wanted to give him that chance.

"Sir Ollie," Morwen said when she reached his side. Up close, she could see his limbs shaking and his eyes, which had looked glassy and unfocused from a dozen paces away, seemed like they were fixed on something she couldn’t see, and they were shaking rapidly.

"You saved my life, Sir Ollie," Morwen said, reaching out with both hands to take hold of the hand that had thrown a cleaver to save her life. Ollie’s hand was rough and calloused, and there were dozens of tiny burn scars on the back of his hand where embers from cooking hearths had landed on him, but Morwen didn’t care.

This was the hand he’d saved her with, and she owed it thanks for that.

"Thank you," she whispered, bowing her head low. "I know you didn’t want to kill him, but you... You did it to save me," she said as she stared into his pale eyes. "Thank you doesn’t feel like enough but..."

"No," Ollie said, pulling himself back to the present with visible effort. "Thank you, Morwen. Thank you is plenty," he said as he offered her a weak, fragile smile.

The power of the Ancient Oak sang in his veins, carrying with it all of the rage and hatred that had accumulated over a century of war with the Lothians. It combined with Ashlynn’s own fury and Nyrielle’s cold, ruthless desire for vengeance against the people who had slain her parents and destroyed her home...

But those feelings belonged to other people.

They’d woken something inside him that he didn’t know how to put back to sleep. But he could separate them. Morwen’s touch reminded him how many innocent people had been hurt by the Lothians, but the rage that knowledge provoked within him was very different from the Ancient Oak’s rage.

Ollie hadn’t been hurt by Owain, the Lothians or their minions the way Ashlynn, Nyrielle, and even Morwen had been. When he thought about how delicate, sweet Morwen had just been attacked for no other purpose than to take her hostage against him, his heart filled with anger. But it wasn’t an anger that demanded destruction.

Ollie’s anger demanded that he DO SOMETHING, anything, to protect the people who were in danger. It was a guardian’s fury, and when he recognized that, he found the grounding that he needed in the knees of the Cypress tree to resist the floodwaters of anger that didn’t belong to him.

He wasn’t an avenger the way Ashlynn and Nyrielle were. He had nothing to avenge. He was a guardian, and if anything filled his heart with rage, then he would use that rage to defend the people who depended on him, whether they were people he knew well, like his villagers, or people he’d only recently met, like Lady Morwen.

But most importantly, he would protect the hearts of his coven and the people his coven held most dear. They’d fought their way all the way to the heart of Lothian Manor. Now, there was only one more person whom Ollie needed to keep safe, and she was just the other side of those giant doors...