Page 490

A cool autumn wind blew down the mountain, dancing through the sparse, stunted pine trees and whistling through cracks in rocks worn down by year after year of heavy frost. Faint whisps of clouds drifted by overhead, parting to reveal a sliver of the moon, gazing down on the trio making their way through the woods by the silvery-green light of Heila’s witchcraft.

"A, a woman, my lady?" Ollie said, tugging at the lace collar at his neck that suddenly felt far too tight. "There’s no one, but, I mean... You and Lady Nyrielle are... and I.... Um," he stammered awkwardly, pulling a soft, musical chuckle from Heila.

"You’ve confused him, my lady," Heila said, hopping up on a nearby rock to give Ollie a teasing poke.

"Mother Ashlynn is asking about your love life because, the life we lead, it’s a hard one," she said, her grass green eyes growing briefly cloudy before they warmed and the smile on her lips grew wider.

"I thought I was done looking for love," Heila added, her cheeks heating as she spoke. "At least, until the war ended. But... maybe something found me. She’s just asking if love already found you because she’s worried about you. She doesn’t want to see you living a lonely life."

"Oh, um, I see," Ollie said, wishing he could hide his burning face in the hood of a cloak or anything that would mask his embarrassment.

"There’s no one, really," he said quickly. "Even when I was working in the kitchens, there wasn’t really anyone who had much interest in me. So, so you don’t need to worry about anything. "

"No, I absolutely have to worry," Ashlynn said, reaching up to give Ollie’s cheek a playful pinch. "Have you seen yourself in a mirror lately? If you were a few years older and I didn’t have Nyrielle in my life, even I might swoon over you. But you’re prettier like this I think," she added, tapping his face gently with her hand.

"But when you’re this good of a man, you leave me with a very difficult decision to make, Ollie," Ashlynn said as she tugged him along with her.

"Do I introduce you to Jocey? Or do I hide you from her.

Because I think that pretty face of yours is going to be very, very dangerous once you make your debut as Sir Ollie among other humans. "

"Jocey?" Ollie asked, struggling to keep up with the whiplash in the conversation. She hadn’t been interested in him but was she offering to play matchmaker? Where had this come from? "Wait, do you mean your sister? Lady Jocelynn?"

"The very same," Ashlynn said with a wistful smile. "You and she would be an amazing pair," she said as they walked. "You’re kind and brave, and I know that you’d protect her. She’s clever and she’s very good at helping people find ways to come together, even when they seem like unlikely partners. It’s just.. ."

"Just what?" Ollie asked when Ashynn’s voice trailed off and she showed no sign of continuing.

"She should be close, you know?" Ashlynn said softly as a quiet yearning built within her heart. "The Summer Villa isn’t far from here. Just a day or two if we move swiftly. Close enough to go for a visit..."

"Not yet, my Lady," Heila said, reaching out to give Ashlynn’s free hand a gentle squeeze. "You know it isn’t time yet."

"I know," Ashlynn said, trying to shake off the wave of melancholy that threatened to overtake her. "She hadn’t arrived in Lothian March yet when I left or I might have tried to rescue her. Now, I just hope that Owain hasn’t done anything to her in the time she’s been here. If he’s hurt her..."

"I don’t think he’s done anything to her," Ollie said quickly, hoping to offer up at least a small balm for the hurt and anxiety he could hear in her voice. "Marcel sends regular updates when he hears word of your sister, Lady Jocelynn. But she isn’t at the Summer Villa anymore. She’s been at Lothian Mannor ever since the Harvest Festival. "

"Well, there will be time for introductions later," she said with a wistful smile.

"I didn’t mean to talk so much about her.

I really meant to talk about you," she said.

Casting her eyes around the forest they were walking through, she quickly located a few larger stones that could double as seats in the wilderness and gestured for Ollie to help her over the rocky ground to reach them.

"Ollie, I have a very serious question for you," Ashlynn said, loosing her playful manner once she took a seat. "A good friend recently taught me that serious questions like this shouldn’t be answered instantly, so no matter what your answer is, I won’t take a ’yes’ or a ’no’ until we’ve returned to the keep. "

"I want you to give this a good amount of thought before you make a decision, you understand?" she asked.

"I understand," Ollie said. "But I’ve already put a great deal of thought into what I want. I know you offered a chance to become a knight as a reward for helping you escape the Summer Villa... but, this whole time, I’ve been working as hard as I can to be worthy of that offer."

"I want to be the kind of person who deserves to be a knight," he said, dropping to one knee in front of Ashlynn and placing a fist over his heart. "I want to be worthy of being your knight. So, whatever you have to ask, the answer is ’yes,’ before you even say the words."

"Even if that ’yes’ might get you killed?" Ashlynn asked, staring directly into his pale eyes as she weighed his words.

"Listen to her, little brother," Heila said, taking a seat on the ground at Ashlynn’s feet. "I nearly died. Mother Ashlynn, she had to watch me dying, for days, because I said ’yes.’ And if I died, I don’t think she’d ever forgive herself, even though it would have been my fault for failing."

"Heila," Ashlynn said sharply. "It wouldn’t have been your fault. It would have been Cecile’s fault for sabotaging you, and my fault and Big Sister Amahle’s fault for taking a shortcut with you that was more dangerous than we realized. It wouldn’t have been your fault at all."

"See?" the diminutive witch said, turning her grass-green gaze to Ollie. "She would have blamed herself for my death, and it would become a wound in her heart that would take years to heal. So don’t go saying that you’ll say ’yes’ when you don’t understand yet.

You might be willing to die for her, but she’s not willing to lose you. "

"I, I don’t know what to say," Ollie said, taken aback by the intensity of the exchange between Heila and Ashlynn. Just what had happened that nearly cost the diminutive lady-in-waiting her life? Just how much danger had they faced on their journey?

"Ollie," Ashlynn said softly. "I know you’ve been working hard to become a good man and a good knight for me. This whole time we’ve been away, I’ve been thinking about what I can offer you that would match up to the dedication and the.

.. the heart that you’re so generously offering me.

Being someone’s liege-lady, it’s a heavy thing and in the same way that you want to be worthy of me, I want to be worthy of you. "

"In the Briar," Ashlynn said, her voice growing stronger as she gathered momentum. "I learned how to transform a person into a witch. How to welcome them into my coven. A coven is a special kind of family," she explained, seeing the confusion on his face. "Heila is the first. That’s why she calls me ’mother’ sometimes. I’m not just the Mother of Trees, I’m the ’mother’ of every witch in my coven, and she is the first."

"You, you want me to become the second?" Ollie asked, blinking several times in surprise. Until he found out Heila had become a witch, he hadn’t even known that it was possible for someone who wasn’t born with a mark of the witch to become one.

The idea of becoming a witch was so far removed from possible in his mind that he’d never once considered it.

"Is that why you’ve been calling me ’little brother’?" Ollie asked, turning to look at Heila. "Because you knew she was going to ask me to join her, um, her coven?"

"Our family," Heilla said, reaching out to rest a hand on the tall human’s knee. "Our small but growing family. It’s not an easy thing to make a seed of witchcraft for someone, you know," she added, glancing at Ashlynn before looking back at Ollie and continuing.

"Mother Ashlynn, she’s known what she wanted to offer you since months ago, and she’s been growing a seed of witchcraft that’s meant for you," Heila said. "There are other things to that she has..."

"Heila, enough," Ashlynn said, raising a hand before her friend could say anymore. Already she could feel the pressure gathering on Ollie’s shoulders, but the only pressure she wanted him to face was the decision itself.

She wanted him to choose based on his own views, not because he could feel the weight of her expectations and hopes weighing him down.

"Ollie," Ashlynn said. "The transformation from a normal person into a witch isn’t easy. There are trials to face and if you fail them, then you’ll die, leaving nothing behind but a tree that contains an echo of the person you once were. I’m not asking you to risk your life in battle," she added.

"You want to be a knight and I respect that. A knight will inevitably risk their life in battle and I won’t try to shield you unreasonably from those dangers. "

"But this is different," she said, placing a hand over the spot on her chest where the seed of witchcraft pulsed with the energy she’d spent several months showering it with. "There’s no enemy to protect me from, no opponent but yourself and the question of whether or not you can come out the otherside of the seed’s trial. "

"Knowing that," Ashlynn said, giving the flame-haired young man a very serious look. "Knowing that, would you still say ’yes’, now that you’ve heard the words?"