The Vampire & Her Witch-Chapter 718: Family Matters (Part Three)

"I think your mother would gladly take up whatever burdens she carried if she could have you back by her side," Isabell said softly, taking Ashlynn’s slender hands in her own. "I can’t say for certain, but I think that the reminders of you are why she left Blackwell Manor after returning from Lothian March."

Of course, Isabell only felt like that was part of the reason. After all, the countess knew just as well as Isabell did who had betrayed her eldest daughter to a murderous husband. She had lost one daughter to the schemes of the other one. How could any mother still live in the house that carried so many reminders of the children she’d raised to suffer such a tragic fate?

Try as she might, even as a mother herself, Isabell couldn’t imagine how the poor woman must feel. If Lassian ever did something so heinous to Issandra or vice versa, she couldn’t imagine forgiving the child who had betrayed their sibling. At the same time, she struggled to say that she would have the strength to see one of her children punished for their crimes against the other.

And Countess Maela’s situation was even graver. If she ever exposed what Jocelynn had done, she would have to expose her own crime of hiding Ashlynn away for more than twenty years. The stain of heresy over so many years would spread far beyond herself and who could say how many of her loved ones would suffer at the hands of the Inquisition before the Church was satisfied they’d rooted out the infernal influence of ’demons.’

Savaged by so many wounds to her heart and soul, with no one that she could share her agony with, was it any wonder she would want to escape any reminders of the life she’d lived in Blackwell Manor? After all, given his own role in arranging the marriage that had caused this tragedy, even her husband would struggle to become a source of comfort for his grieving wife.

"She left?" Ashlynn asked, snapping Isabell out of her thoughts and bringing her back to the present. "Where, where did she go?" Ashlynn asked, trying to understand where her mother would have run to if she couldn’t bear to be home. "Did she go back to live with her family?"

"That’s what your father said when I last spoke with him," Isabell said, though her tone suggested that she didn’t believe it. "Perhaps she has, but if that was the case, I’m sure we would have visited her when we passed through duCoumont County on our way to the frontier, especially since Jocelynn was with us."

Looking back, it had been one of the many signs that something was very wrong with the relationship between the Blackwells and the Lothians. Owain could be forgiven for taking the most direct route through Keating Duchy to return to Lothian March without making a lengthy detour to visit Duke Keating. After all, doing so would have added weeks to their journey.

But bypassing his mother-in-law’s family home when it would have added only a few days to their journey was a different matter entirely, especially if that very mother-in-law was currently visiting her aging parents and her elder brother’s family.

But neither Owain nor Jocelynn seemed to have any desire to make the detour and instead their course clung to the River Luath as soon as they crossed it and officially entered Keating Duchy, all the way until they passed the marker between Keating and Lothian lands.

"So she’s returned to the convent," Ashlynn speculated. It made sense as one of the few places that a noblewoman could go to retreat from the world without provoking the sorts of scandals and rumors of infidelity that could tear Blackwell County apart. It also explained something else that Ashlynn had been wondering about since she reviewed what little information Nryielle’s spy master had managed to gather about her sister.

"Marcel said that Jocelynn is keeping a Confessor at her side as a chaperone wherever she goes," she said as he worked to fit the pieces of the puzzle together.

"Is it Cousin Eleanor? She has dark hair and a severe look," asked, briefly describing one of the few members of the Church that her mother had trusted to be around her daughter for important events like her coming of age ceremony. "She was just a novice when my mother first visited the convent, but she’s been a Confessor for several years now. If there’s anyone mother would have been able to share the ’truth’ with, it was probably Cousin Eleanor."

"It is," Isabell said, impressed that Ashlynn was still able to reason things through so well despite the storm of emotions she must have been struggling with. "She brought four Templars with her to keep Jocelynn safe, though I don’t think they can do much to protect your sister from Owain," the engineer said with a heavy sigh as she thought about the severe woman’s strange warning before she left Isabell to have a private meeting with Jocelynn.

"Eleanor is aware of the truth of what happened to you," she added. "Or, as much of the truth as anyone in the Kingdom is aware of. At the very least, she believes that Owain killed you for bearing the mark of the witch. She and an Inquisitor named Diarmuid have been asking questions about you and your childhood."

"So the Church knows," Ashlynn said with a heavy sigh. "I wonder if they were the ones who tried to dig me up. Not that it matters," she added a moment later when she realized she was wandering farther and farther afield of what she needed to ask and the question she needed to find an answer to.

It was easy to get caught up in the plots and machinations of her family, the Lothians and the Church. She could speculate for days about what the different factions were doing based on the scraps of information they possessed. The pressure of the war she’d just begun provided a convenient excuse for her mind to tug at the loose threads surrounding this nightmare until she had unraveled all of the plots and schemes.

But those things were only on the periphery of what she needed to know. They were questions for later. The question that burned in her heart refused to let her distract herself anymore. She didn’t know whether Isabell held the answer she needed or not... but she had to ask.

And then... once she knew, there would be no hiding from what she needed to do to the person who betrayed her.

Updat𝓮d from freew𝒆bnov𝒆l.co(m)