The Vampire & Her Witch-Chapter 757: Dame Sybyll Hanrahan

"Which one of ya is Cousin Hugo?"

The question couldn’t have been clearer but hearing it seemed to rob both men of their senses as they struggled to process what they’d heard.

Carwyn glanced back and forth between the woman in the doorway and young lord Hugo several times, trying to find anything to call a resemblance between the two people. Both were tall, but Hugo rarely drew himself up to his full six feet of height. The scholarly lord had spent too many years hunched over desks or ducking the abuse of ’proper’ noblemen to carry himself with the kind of posture that was expected of a knight and his bearing only added to the impression that he lacked the strength to speak up for himself.

By contrast, the woman in the doorway radiated physical power and dominance. The red dress she wore hugged a figure that was solidly built with wide hips and a full bust, but it was her toned, muscular arms that caught Sir Carwyn’s eyes along with the broad-bladed sword hanging from her waist that caught his attention more than anything. The hilt of her sword showed the signs of years of wear and use and when she moved, the weapon felt like a part of her body.

Unconsciously, Sir Carwyn rose, dropping a hand to the place where a sword should have hung at his own waist before he remembered, once again, that he’d been stripped of his weapons. Still, that didn’t mean he would retreat from his duty to protect his lord and while the enchanting woman’s words had been light and casual, the power and sense of menace she radiated, combined with the place where they were, was too much for the young knight to feel comfortable about.

While Carwyn focused on trying to determine if the other woman was a threat or not, all of Hugo’s attention was on her face. At a glance, she was a few years younger than he was, with the smooth, unlined features of a woman just entering her twenties.

When he first compared her features to her own, he struggled to find points of commonality, but the longer he looked, the more he realized that she possessed the same sharp, almost bird-like eyes and fierce brow that he’d seen not only in his own mirror but every time he looked at his half-brother Bastian as well. And while she’d avoided the prominent, hawk-like nose he’d inherited from a maternal grandfather, there was something about the set of her slender, curved lips that felt very similar to his own.

"I, I’m Hugo," the hawk-nosed knight said, placing a hand on Sir Carwyn’s shoulder to hold the man back as they faced the crimson-haired woman. "Whether I’m a cousin or not," he said with a heavy swallow. "That I don’t know."

"Yer Ian Hanrahan’s git, aren’t ya?" the red-haired woman asked as she strode into the room, closing the door behind her and trapping the men in the room with her by sheer force of presence. "So long as yer the spawn of that man’s seed, yer a cousin o’ mine," she said as she took a seat at the table along with them.

"Sit," she commanded, pointing downward while her crimson eyes surveyed the remnants of their meal before reaching out and taking an untouched walnut-crusted mutton chop from Hugo’s plate and taking a bite of the succulent, tender meat.

"Mmm, this is good," she said around a mouthful of mutton as she licked her lips. "Is this Georg’s cookin’? He’s even better ’an the last time I came home."

"It should be," Sir Carwynn said awkwardly, still standing as he watched the strange woman picking at the remnants of their meal. "I think Georg is the name we were given for the Master of Kitchens, lady...?" Carwyn asked, allowing his voice to trail off in the hopes that this woman would at least give them a name.

"Sybyll," she said with a slight frown as she looked at the young knight. "I said sit," she added, pointing at the chairs the men had occupied before she entered the room. "An’ name yerself, since ya insist on knowing me," she added, giving Sir Carwyn a piercing look that was sharp enough to draw blood.

"Sir Carwyn Belvin," the young knight said, giving a slight bow. "Knight of Raek Village, vassal of Baron Ian Hanrahan."

-THUMP- -CRASH-

Neither man saw Sybyll move. One second, she was sitting in her chair, gnawing on the bone of a mutton chop. The next moment, she was standing over Sir Carwyn’s chair with a hand outstretched while the young knight lay in a heap where he’d crashed into a side table by the sofas nearly four paces away from the dinner table.

Carwyn gasped, struggling to draw breath as pain exploded across the center of his chest where her open hand had struck him. The blow had lifted him completely off his feet, hurling him through the air like a rag doll in a display of physical power no human could possibly match. Sharp agony lanced through his shoulders and the back of his skull where he’d struck the table’s edge, and for several heartbeats, his vision swam with dark spots. When he tried to push himself upright, his arms trembled like a newborn foal’s legs.

Vampire, he realized far too late. He should have known there would be others here, but the tales he’d grown up on always described vampires as hideous, fanged monsters. Demon horrors with sunken skin and hollow eyes who sustained themselves on the blood of the innocent. So how could he have realized that this beautiful woman with her powerful, alluring figure was anything other than human?

"Call that thieving bastard ’Baron’ one more time an’ I’ll take yer tongue," Sybyll said, glaring at the fallen knight. "But I’ll give ya a chance ta make amends," she added, reaching into a pouch at her waist and slipping on a heavy, well-worn men’s signet ring.

Standing at the table, blood drained from his face as Hugo watched the exchange with a growing sense of horror. But it was the sight of the ring, even more than the physical violence, that made his blood turn to ice water in his veins.

His scholarly mind cataloged every detail automatically, from the aged gold band, clearly sized for thicker fingers than Sybyll’s, to the way she had to make a fist to keep it from sliding off as she displayed the crest to Carwyn.

"No," Hugo whispered, not even aware that he’d spoken in his shock. "It can’t be."

But there it was. The stone signet at the center of the ring was carved with a farmer’s scythe facing an upside-down woodsman’s ax in front of three rolling hills, exactly the same as the one his father wore on his own hand every day.

The ring of tiny red and amber stones surrounding the central crest, however, held a luster and fire that his father’s ring had never possessed with each stone carefully selected to compliment its peers and precisely cut to enhance their beauty. And beneath it all, the detail that turned Hugo’s knees to jelly. The tiny indent in the shape of crossed swords underneath a diamond. The mark of the Royal Jeweler of the Kingdom of Gaal.

The original ring. The one he’d seen described in the family’s archives that had been bestowed by the king himself upon the creation of Hanrahan Barony during the Second Crusade. The ring that had been lost since before Hugo was even born.

The ring his father wore was nothing but a pale imitation, crafted by local jewelers in Lothian City using stones looted from Airgead Mountain who could copy the design but never managed to match the Royal Jeweler’s artistry.

Hugo had only heard stories of the lost family heirloom during the period when his half-brother Bastian had yet to recover from his fall, and Ian Hanrahan had thought that Hugo might inherit the barony. At the time, Ian Hanrahan had spoken of it as the irreplaceable symbol of their barony that had vanished before his own father claimed his title.

"How?" Hugo asked, staring at the signet ring in open-mouthed shock. "How do you have that ring? That ring..."

"The ring belonged to me father," Sybyll said coldly, turning her gaze to Hugo. "The man yer grandfather killed to pass his throne ta yer father, my cousin Ian. So you, Sir Carwyn," she said, turning back to the knight on the floor. "If yer goin’ ta claim fealty ta the house o’ Hanrahan, then kiss the ring ’o Dame Sybyll Hanrahan, and help me put an end to the usurper’s line!"

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