The Vampire & Her Witch-Chapter 1188: Calls Unanswered (Part Two)
"My ancestor made sure we remembered what happened to Claire du’Gaal," Rhys said as he turned back to face the Witch of Deep Currents. The records weren’t entirely clear on how she’d died, but Oisin Blackwell’s notes made one thing very clear: the Church had promised to put the Evil Queen on trial for her crimes against the kingdom, but after her capture by the Inquisition, the only thing that followed had been the announcement of her execution.
Even that was suspicious, as witches and heretics were burned publicly, but even the most powerful lords of the land couldn’t claim to have been invited to witness the execution of Claire du’Gaal, leaving Oisin to conclude that she’d died at the merciless hands of the Inquisition’s torturers and the Church hoped to conceal the truth of her identity.
"I never wanted to see my daughter suffer a fate like that," he said as bitter, salty tears rolled freely down his cheeks.
Claire du’Gaal owed a debt to Phylip for helping her learn to use her powers. When she left, she repaid her debt with a grove of trees that would later become some of the mightiest ships in the Blackwell fleet.
She also left a warning that the Blackwells should stay out of her war against her brother and the Church. If she won, she would honor the Blackwells for the help they had given her, but if she lost, she feared becoming an anchor chained around their throats.
Now, centuries later, few people knew the true name of the ’Evil Queen,’ but Rhys, like his father before him, understood that no matter how powerful the King of Gaal might be, he couldn’t save his own sister from the clutches of the Inquisition. And if Charles du’Gaal couldn’t save Clair, what hope did Rhys have of protecting Ashlynn from the Church?
"I thought, it would be better to send her to you and your coven than see her fall into the hands of the Church," Rhys said, wiping the tears from his eyes and staring at the ball of blue flame in the center of the room.
For a moment, his eyes were like mirrors, reflecting the ball of flame that never appeared when he’d called out for help in the name of an ancient promise, and then, he turned his gaze, filled with hurt, betrayal and resentment, on the witch who had summoned him in the name of that very same promise.
"But we did not come," the witch said with a heavy sigh. "Beacon broken before you ever light it. Before need comes. I tell Mother, the Mother of Tides, you make effort, you try do what is right, what is proper. She will be... glad? Will be relieved in her heart. You did not betray daughter’s secret to her man... to Owain Lothian."
"But someone betray her. You know who?" Esselk’ti asked, making a strange gesture with her webbed hand, as though she was trying to snatch a name out of the air.
"I know who," Rhys said, lowering his head and closing his eyes in shame as he fought to regain control of his rapidly beating heart.
Outside the rough-hewn lighthouse, the winds grew fiercer, howling through the gaping stone windows of the chamber atop the central spire of the Isle of the Drowned as if the wind itself had come to demand an answer to the witch’s question. Yet, at the center of the chamber, the ball of strange blue flame burned just as peacefully as it had when Rhys first entered the room, neither roaring higher with the wind, nor guttering low.
The same couldn’t be said for Rhys himself. The count felt every year of his advancing age in that cold wind, and his heart sank as he tried to process everything the witch had said.
Everything that Ashlynn had suffered... even before Jocelynn betrayed her secret, all because some treasure hunter had found this ’Pearl of Echoes?’ And the Mother of Tides coven thought that the Blackwells had been the ones to turn their back on the ancient promise that bound his family to her coven?
It sounded ridiculous and cruel at the same time. If a treasure had been hidden here, it would have been hidden as well as the rest of Phylip’s secrets, and the former pirate who founded the Blackwell family wasn’t one to leave things lying about carelessly.
If someone had come here, to the Isle of the Drowned, and taken away the treasure that would let him summon help for Ashlynn, they couldn’t have been an ordinary treasure hunter, and for a moment, he wondered if the Church had a hand in whatever had happened here.
How much easier would all of this have been if the beacon had worked the first time? But then, how much emptier would his life have been without the warmth his clever, eldest daughter brought into their home?
Mark or no mark, witch or not, and despite living a life of virtual house arrest, she’d been a treasure that Rhys would have given a thousand, ten thousand pearls to protect. And in the end, it had been his second daughter who betrayed the first, tearing them both away from him and his wife as well...
"I know who betrayed my daughter," Rhys said, drawing a deep, shuddering breath and raising his head to look at the strange witch. His family owed the coven of the Mother of Tides many things, but he didn’t owe them Jocelynn’s name. Not when they hadn’t done anything to keep Ashlynn safe after he lit the beacon.
Perhaps Esselk’ti would lash out at Jocelynn for betraying a fellow witch. Perhaps they would hunt down his only remaining daughter because she had betrayed one of their own. But Rhys had lost one daughter already, and he wasn’t about to let these witches harm the other one, not when they’d failed to keep their end of the bargain, broken beacon or not.
"But how do you know about it?" Rhys asked, redirecting the conversation away from Jocelynn’s betrayal. "That’s a secret that very few people outside of my family and Bors Lothian’s know..."
