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"I am happy for them!"

The small, feminine voice speaking from the table filled with honored guests startled everyone in the room, and all eyes turned to the figure of a woman who bore a striking resemblance to the Willow Witch as she climbed up onto her chair and then onto the table so the entire hall could see her.

"Look at how he holds her," Helga said, much to the horror of her husband who seemed torn between pulling her down off the table and crawling under it to hide in embarrassment at his headstrong wife who didn’t seem to have the slightest regard for propriety.

"Look how she turns to him for reassurance, even now! My little Heila used to look at me like that whenever she got her horns caught climbing trees or playing hide-and-seek in the underbrush with her brothers," she said, completely oblivious to the way Heila’s face began to heat at her mother’s display.

"What woman here doesn’t want a man to look at her that way?

" Helga said, turning on the table to look out over the crowd.

"How many of you knew you found the one when he held you like that? So I approve and I applaud because my daughter found someone she loves so much that even when everyone is staring at her and whispering, she hasn’t looked once at her parents for support. .. she looks at him."

"Oh, damn it all woman," Kaisen grumbled as he hopped directly from the floor to the table, standing next to his wife, but this time facing Ignatious directly and pointing a finger sharply at the powerful vampire. "I don’t approve of you!"

"Father!" Heila cried, breaking her silence at last as she stared at her father in open-mouthed shock.

At this point, her face had turned as red as a cup of wine, and she desperately wanted to hustle her family into one of the side rooms to have a personal conversation, but how could she when they insisted on speaking up so publicly?

"Just wait a moment, little lambkin," Kaisen said patiently as he stared directly into Ignatious’s dark, mysterious eyes. "There is a way to go about things, and I won’t have anyone taking shortcuts or liberties with my most precious daughter. I don’t care if you’re older than I am," he said, shaking his finger at the former Inquisitor.

"I expect a visit from you tomorrow night to ask permission to court my lovely Heila.

You have to treat her right if you want to receive my blessings, do you hear me? "

Standing on a table and shaking his finger at a vampire known to have tortured Nyrielle’s progeny beyond the breaking point of sanity, Kaisen felt that he must have gone mad himself.

He didn’t have the horns for this! But once Helga charged in, how could he let her stand up here all by herself? He couldn’t! Not for even a minute!

At tables nearby, the looks falling on Heila subtly shifted as several young women found their faces heating in secondhand embarrassment.

From the puffed up chests of their fathers, many of them felt they could almost hear the sounds of the grown men at the table slapping each other on the back, ready to congratulate each other for being the sort of man who would stand up against even a terrifying vampire Inquisitor to see that their darling girls were courted with respect and propriety.

Slowly, as the mood began to shift across the hall, Ashlynn began to clap, relieved that Heila’s family had been the ones to step in, even if her Willow Witch’s face seemed to be burning fiercely enough that she might catch fire.

Ashlynn’s clapping was followed quickly by Ollie, Thane, Zedya, and Lennart. After a moment, Achim and his wife joined in, along with Old Nan, Milo, and Juni, who slapped their tails excitedly on the ground. Soon, a wave of applause filled the hall as the infectious joy gained momentum.

"I see," Nyrielle said, withdrawing her dark, threatening aura and smiling at the crowd. Some of them still held reservations, and she was certain that many of the people clapping with the greatest enthusiasm were doing it more to please her than for the happy couples, but it didn’t matter. She’d said what needed to be said, and her people would have time to learn the lessons they needed to learn. It was enough, at least for now.

"It seems as though I was mistaken," Nyrielle said magnanimously.

"You were only concerned for the propriety of it all.

Ignatious," she continued, turning to the former Inquisitor. "I presided over Zedya and Lennart’s wedding, but if you want me to preside over yours, then you should work quickly to obtain Mister Kaisen’s approval.

Otherwise, someone may snatch Heila away from you," she teased.

Across the hall, several people who thought they knew Lady Nyrielle nearly choked on their own tongues as they saw her sudden shift in mood.

Her cold, tyrannical declaration of disappointment was something they were terrified of but none who knew her felt it was strange.

They only regretted that something they hadn’t ever considered she would react to had been important enough to draw her ire.

But this? Teasing and taking the sides of two people so unruly that they were literally standing on a table to chastise not only the other guests but one of Nyrielle’s progeny as well? But as those thoughts occurred to them, another quickly followed.

Lady Nyrielle was disappointed because she wanted tonight to be a celebration of joy when she announced her betrothal.

There had been rumors, ever since her return, that she had secured such a mighty army by offering her hand in marriage to one of the powerful High Lords or Great Lords across the mountains but. .. maybe the rumors were wrong.

Maybe, just maybe, this betrothal that Lady Nyrielle was so eager to announce didn’t come in the form of a political alliance... but from the rarest of things among unions between the powerful. Perhaps Lady Nyrielle had found true love!