The Vampire & Her Witch-Chapter 1407: Arranging Breakfast
Jocelynn didn’t know how long she sat behind the altar with her back pressed against the cool stone. It was long enough for the light filtering through the great eastern window to shift from the pale grey of early dawn to something warmer, though the overcast sky still refused to let the sun break through in earnest.
She sat there long enough for her tears to slow and then stop, leaving her cheeks tight and stiff with dried salt. Just long enough for the bread and cheese in the basket to disappear, piece by piece, eaten without thought or taste while she stared up at the golden sun in the stained glass and pretended that the colored light was real.
When she finally rose, her knees ached from the cold stone, and her back was stiff from leaning against the altar. She steadied herself with one hand on the stone slab and looked down at Ashlynn’s portion of the breakfast, still arranged neatly where she’d placed it. The bread was untouched. The cheese sat in its careful pile. The walnuts and dried fruit waited with the patient stillness of an offering that would never be accepted.
All except the cherries. There were fewer of those than she remembered setting out, and a ghost of her usual smile appeared on her lips.
"Now you have to let me find you in the next life," she murmured, reaching out to steal one more dried cherry. "Or join you on the Heavenly Shores. You have to scold me for taking more than my share," she said as a fresh tear rolled down her cheek.
She brushed the crumbs from her mourning dress and wiped her face with the back of her hand, then with the linen cloth from the basket when she realized that her hands alone weren’t enough to erase the evidence of the past hour.
Her eyes were still red and swollen, and there was nothing she could do about that. Taking a deep breath, she scolded the part of herself that still cared about keeping up appearances as she decided that she didn’t care if people knew she’d been crying. These were her people. If she couldn’t cry in front of them, then they didn’t belong here in the first place. And if the ladies from the baronies had a low opinion of her for breaking down in tears at her sister’s memorial... It didn’t matter anyway. 𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮
Jocelynn straightened her back, touching the pearls at her throat for a moment to help regather her composure, and then crossed the chapel to the main doors.
Captain Devlin was exactly where she’d left him, standing with his back against the chapel wall and his arms folded, looking for all the world like a man who had been carved from the same stone as the building. His weathered face shifted when he saw her, a brief flicker of concern crossing his features before he smoothed it into the careful, professional neutrality that he wore like a second coat.
"I’m almost ready," Jocelynn said quietly. "I just need a few minutes to set things up. Will you bring them in?"
Devlin nodded and pushed off the wall without a word. He disappeared around the corner of the chapel toward the cloister where Aubin had directed the Blackwell household to wait, and Jocelynn turned back inside, leaving the main doors open behind her.
She still had a little bit of work to do before they arrived.
She moved quickly, pulling Aubin’s reed basket from behind the altar and carrying it to the small table that had been set near the side wall. The servants who’d prepared her simple breakfast had left additional baskets of bread, wheels of cheese, pouches of nuts, and cloth-wrapped bundles of dried fruit alongside the clay jugs of wine.
Jocelynn ignored the wine for now and began portioning out the food, breaking bread into pieces and arranging small servings on squares of linen cloth that she laid along the pew seats in the front several rows.
It wasn’t sumptuous or elegant. A proper Blackwell wake would have platters of smoked fish and pickled oysters, bowls of shellfish stew alongside crusty bread still warm from the ovens, and enough ale to float a fishing boat. There would have been musicians too, tuning up their lutes or unpacking their drums for a day that would contain as much drunken dancing as it did tear-filled weeping.
But this wasn’t Blackwell.
The bread was already cold, the fruits, nuts and cheeses were a poor substitution for the hearty feast her sister deserved. And yet, none of that mattered because the point had never been the food. The point was eating together while they watched the sun come up.
"I can’t tell them the whole truth," Jocelynn said, looking from the food on the pews to the portion on the altar. "I owe you that, and I promise that I’ll write it all down for... for afterwards. I’ll give it to Albyn so it doesn’t get lost," she promised.
"But I hope you don’t mind me telling them a little bit," she said as she returned to her work, gathering up the last few portions from the table. "They may not understand but, I hope they do. At least a little bit."
As she drew closer to the end, Jocelynn found her thoughts falling more and more into the things she should have done, and the few things she still could. Part of her regretted that she hadn’t hired a minstrel to witness this moment. To collect some of the stories that would be told today so that Lothian March would better understand the woman who should have been their Marchioness.
But even if she tried, Owain would never allow songs or stories of Ashlynn to spread very far. If she couldn’t put an end to him, then he would certainly put an end to anything that helped Lothian March remember either of the Blackwell Sisters.
Still, there were things she could do. She could make sure that her own people understood Ashlynn a little bit better... And she could fight to make sure they escaped Lothian March, before she pulled the rubble of a century of Lothian rule down on top of them all.
If she couldn’t protect the common folk who had always supported them, she was certain that Ashlynn would never forgive her, even if she managed to murder Owain Lothian in the process.
