"I’m going to live for a very long time," Ashlynn added in a quiet, hushed tone. It was something that had weighed on her for months, off and on, but never more than it did at this moment as she sat beside her kneeling sister.

"A witch like me would have lived twice as long as most people, even without my bond to Nyri, but with it... I might never die," Ashlynn explained. "Nyri is already two hundred years old, Jocey. In that time, she’s lost people who are dear to her, and the holes they left in her heart can never be filled..."

Whether it was her parents or her grandsire, or the first of her progeny, the people Nyrielle had lost, the ones who had been ripped from her life, were all people who should have been able to live alongside her for much, much longer than the time they’d had together. Unlike Ashlynn, who had said farewell to her grandmother as a young child and who knew that the day would come someday to do the same for her own parents, Nyrielle hadn’t grown up with the same fundamental truths...

When a vampire lost one of their own, the wound cut twice as deep, and for Ashlynn, the thought of outliving the sister she loved so dearly snuck up on her with a chilling knife that she refused to let touch her heart, no matter how much it hurt to hold Jocey close.

"So, even though you hurt me," Ashlynn said, reaching out to gently stroke her sister’s hair. "Once the shock had passed, I never... I never wanted to kill you."

Ashlynn didn’t know how she could live with Jocelynn after what had happened, but the idea of living without her terrified her even more.

"But I, I betrayed you!" Jocelynn cried, looking up at her sister with wide, tear-filled eyes. "Owain nearly killed you, and you... You suffered so much because of me! I, I deserve it," she muttered as she looked down, unable to meet her sister’s gaze. "At the end of everything, after all I’ve done and the horrible person I’ve been, I deserve to die and..."

-SLAP-

Ashlynn’s fingers slapped against Jocelynn’s cheek with just enough force to sting, shocking her out of her spiral long enough for Ashlynn to lift her sister’s chin and look her directly in the eye.

"No," Ashlynn said flatly. "No, you don’t deserve to die.... Not for what you did," Ashlynn insisted. "Owain is the one who beat me. Broll and Tommin are the ones who buried me. But you..."

"If you had done it to hurt me, if you’d been happy to see me die," Ashlynn said. "If you’d been as evil and heartless and cruel as Owain was, and I’d been wrong to love you from the start, then yes, yes, you would deserve to die. And I, I might hate myself forever, but I wouldn’t have hesitated to strike the blow."

Owain’s wickedness went far beyond the cruelty of one man, and if he’d twisted Jocelynn in his image, and if she intended to carry on his legacy, Ashlynn felt like she’d have had no choice but to strike her down. But the instant Jocelynn flung herself into her arms in the Great Hall tonight, she knew she’d never have to.

"But that isn’t who you are, Jocey," Ashlynn said as she cupped her sister’s cheek. "So, even though you hurt me, and even though I suffered, I don’t want to see you die... I don’t want to lose you from my life. Now, or for a long time to come..."

"But, but you just said that, that you’d live for a long time because you’re a witch," Jocelynn said as her mind reeled from what her sister had said. "That you’d live even longer, maybe forever, because of the, um, the bond you have with the Lady of the Vale. So, even if you don’t kill me, I’ll be gone long before you will. I’m not a witch like you, and I’m not a vampire, so I won’t..."

"But what if you were?" Ashlynn asked hesitantly as she placed a hand over the long scar at the center of her chest. "Isabell wasn’t a witch when she came to meet me in the Vale, and Ollie wasn’t one when we met in the Summer Villa."

"You, you can turn someone into a witch?" Jocelynn said, blinking in surprise while her stomach felt as if it had fallen through the floor beneath her. "You could... You could make someone like me into... into a witch like you?"

"Not quite like me," Ashlynn said as her chest swelled with a bit of pride. "I’m the Mother of Trees. I can nurture a seed to bring someone into my coven, giving them the powers of the tree that I nurtured for them. Ollie is the Cypress Witch, and Isabell is the Hemlock Witch. They, they may not live forever the way I could," she admitted as her chest deflated a bit.

She would have to say goodbye to her most treasured friends one day, and Heila and Virve and Hauke as well. Only Nyrielle’s life would be eternal, and hers as they were bound together. But they would have many, many more years ahead of them than an ordinary person would, and she intended to treasure every moment that they’d have.

"They won’t live forever," Ashlynn said. "But they’ll both live much longer lives now that they’ve become witches."

"The process isn’t safe," Ashlynn said as her tone grew somber. "It’s painful, and you could die... The seed I’ve been growing for you is special. It contains everything I feel for you, all the love and all the hurt too... You, you’d have to face that pain. But then, you’d have a mark of your own," Ashlynn said, managing a fragile smile. "And we could face the hurts together, for as long as it took to work it out..."

It wasn’t a perfect solution to anything. In fact, it was a solution that might still claim her sister’s life. But the way Jocelynn was now, feeling like she deserved to suffer and die, the chance to face that risk and suffer the pains of becoming a witch might be one of the few things that could free Jocelynn from the prison she’d locked her own heart into.

"I don’t know how to forgive you for what you did," Ashlynn said. "But I’ve been nurturing this seed for you as a way to try... You don’t have to accept it, and you don’t have to answer tonight," she said quickly. "But I..."

"I’ll do it," Jocelynn said with a determined look in her eyes. "I, I missed you so much, Ash," she sobbed. "I thought I lost you forever... But if, if I can stay with you like this. If I can be a witch like you and stay with you, then... Then I’ll do it. Even if it hurts and even if I might die, I, I have to try..."