Page 507

"Little Sister, Virve!" Heila cried, dropping her pastry to fling her arms around the startled veteran soldier. "I knew it had to be you. If it was going to be anyone, it couldn’t be anyone else but you, and I know you’ll be the best Oak Witch ever."

"She will, she really will," Talauia said as her wings quivered behind her in unconcealed excitement. She hadn’t known the bearish woman for very long, but what she’d seen of her had impressed the Thistle Witch, particularly when Virve offered herself up to Nyrielle to provide the strength the vampire needed to help Ashlynn heal.

This was a woman who would protect the Mother of Trees and the rest of her coven, no matter the cost to her personally. As far as Talauia was concerned, you couldn’t ask for a better quality to form the heart of the Oak Witch.

"Congratulations, Virve," Ollie said awkwardly, extending a hand to shake Virve’s in the same way that Thane had taught him to greet a fellow knight, grasping her muscular forearm firmly. "I guess we’ll face our trials together."

"Not exactly," Ashlynn said, smiling at how readily everyone accepted Virve as a member of their small but growing family. "Virve, I have nurtured that seed for some time now, but I have yet to transform it into a seed of witchcraft for you. I can’t do that until I give Ollie the seed of the Cypress tree that I’ve been nurturing for him. "

"That’s fine," Virve said as she struggled to calm her racing heart. At this point, she thought that she’d long ago lost the ability to become as flustered as a young girl seeing a man stripped to the fur for the first time, but clearly there were still things that could leave her head feeling as light as the clouds while her stomach danced around her spine and her knees lost the strength to stand.

For a moment, her eyes focused on the courtyards far below, where armored figures in the midnight blue of Nyrielle’s forces mixed with the assortment of armor styles and colors worn by the army Nyrielle had brought across the mountains to face the mounting human threat.

Turning that motley collection of warriors into a unified army would take months of dedicated practice and drill, and she didn’t envy Commander Bassinger the task in the slightest.

"I could use some time to prepare anyway," she said, realizing that she wasn’t much different from the soldiers below in some respects. Becoming the head of Lady Ashlynn’s personal guard had already transformed her life in a number of subtle ways, but joining her coven and becoming the Oak Witch would completely transform her life in ways that she hadn’t even begun to consider.

"So our young knight will keep the honor of being second," she said, clapping Ollie heavily on the back with a large paw. "And I can become everyone’s ’little sister’ next," the veteran soldier said with a wide, toothy grin on her lips and a twinkle in her dark brown eyes.

"Everyone, everyone, I have something to say," Talauia said, hovering over her seat and looking at the smiling faces of Ashlynn’s coven. "A coven is a family, a family like no other family anywhere because it’s a family that you choose, bound together with magic that’s stronger than bonds of blood or bone. "

"You don’t know yet, you don’t know because you can’t feel it yet, but what Auntie Ashlynn is giving you, it’s more than just a seed," the Thistle Witch said, turning her multifaceted purple eyes from Virve to Ollie before landing briefly on Heila.

"Cousin Heila knows. Once you become a witch, you become a part of the world, and everything, everything you desire can be yours if you bend the world to your will. "

"So, whatever you do, whatever you do, you can’t let your heart become twisted," she said, clutching the back of her chair tightly enough that the sharpened points of her fingernails bit into the soft wood of the chair.

"But you have a family now, a family who understands what it’s like now, a family that’s strong enough.

.. strong enough to... to..." she trailed off as moisture flooded her eyes and her throat tightened up too much for her to force out the words that she felt were so important to say to this new and forming coven.

"Tala," Ashlynn said, standing up and quickly crossing the terrace to wrap her arms around the hovering witch. Most of the witches in Amahle’s coven had lost their birth families for one reason or another, and Talauia’s loss hadn’t been limited to her family, but her entire clan.

Worse, her clan had been slaughtered because the Fangs of Death, Shubnalu, coveted her strengths as an assassin.

The scars she bore from those days had faded, but they would never heal, and moments like this, when a family was celebrating joyfully, had a way of poking at those old wounds and bringing old hurts back to the surface.

"Talauia is right," Ashhlynn said as she held the Thistle Witch in a tender embrace.

"We’re a family bound together by root and branch, and we are stronger as a forest than we are as individuals," she said.

"And we owe it to each other to create a space where we can watch over each other and support each other in times of need. "

"A family needs a home," Heila agreed, nodding along with Ashlynn’s words.

"Does that mean you’ll be finding a different space for us outside of the fortress?

A place like the Briar?" the diminutive witch asked, thinking of how well the Mother of Thorn’s defensive barriers protected the people of her coven.

At Heila’s question, all eyes turned to Ashlynn.

A home like the Briar... For Talauia, it seemed obvious that the Mother of Trees would rule over a domain as vast and as isolated as the vast swamp that bordered Crystal Lake.

To be a Mother of the Earth was to be one of the most powerful people in the Eldritch world and if such a person wanted any peace in their life then a domain like the Briar was essential.

For the people who would actually be joining Ashlynn’s coven, a home like the Briar was something hard to imagine.

Virve had come closer than Ollie but neither of them had set foot in the vast swamp to understand the sort of shelter that it provided for people seeking refuge from a hostile world.

What they did know, however, is that they had built lives in the Vale of Mists, whether those had been short or long, and the notion of leaving that behind not only didn’t sound right to them, it didn’t sound like the Ashlynn they knew either.

"So will you? Will you create a forest somewhere hidden away like the Briar to keep your coven safe?

" Talauia asked, pulling back from Ashlynn’s embrace enough to ask the question directly.

A coven was a family, and a family needed to be kept safe.

But how exactly was Ashlynn planning to protect this precious little family of hers?