The Vampire & Her Witch
Chapter 456: Warm and Tender

Chapter 456: Warm and Tender

Sometime after Nyrielle enveloped Ashlynn in her sorcery, offering up her own strength to speed Ashlynn’s recovery from her grievous wounds, Ashlynn found herself drifting somewhere warm and calm. Nyrielle’s sorcery wrapped around her like a thousand hands, softly caressing her body and bringing soothing warmth as they drew out the strength of her healing gifts to soothe her body’s aches and pains.

Time slipped away from her in the warm, floating darkness where the only sound Ashlynn could hear was her own heartbeat and the echo of Nyrielle’s heartbeat alongside hers. Each soft -thump thump- faded into the next, reassuring her that no matter how bad the battle had been or how severe her wounds were, she still lived and Nyrielle did as well. As long as that was true, nothing else mattered.

Eventually, the drifting feeling changed and the sounds of gently splashing water joined the beat of her heart, followed by the soft -lap, lap, lap- of waves reaching the edge of a pool. Next came the sounds of a crackling hearth and the faint scent of cedar woodsmoke and the lavender soap that always reminded her of Nyrielle.

"Hello, my darling," Nyrielle whispered in Ashlynn’s ear. Water splashed and Ashlynn felt Nyrielle’s soft skin sliding over her own as her lover pulled her floating figure closer, enfolding her in a gentle embrace in the middle of a pool of water so perfectly warm on this chilly night that steam rolled just above it’s surface.

"We’re dreaming," Ashlynn whispered, opening her eyes and finding herself in the luxurious marble bath that adjoined Nyrielle’s bedroom, deep underground at her fortress in the Vale of Mists. It had been months since the days that Nyrielle brought her here for a restorative bath after Ashlynn pushed herself to exhaustion training with Thane but tonight was hardly the first time she’d dreamed longingly of sharing a bath with Nyrielle in this place again.

"We’re not so far apart right now," Nyrielle said softly as she pulled Ashlynn over to one of the marble benches that ringed the steaming pool, keeping her injured lover close as she drew Ashlynn into her lap. "The last time we shared a dream, the sun rose even in your dream, pulling us apart."

"This time, we can take our time together," the vampire whispered. Her soft lips brushed across Ashlynn’s ear and she let the point of a fang trace ever so slightly against the soft morsel of flesh at the base of Ashlynn’s ear before pulling herself back. At the same time, Nyrielle’s slender arms tightened around Ashlynn’s trim waist, pulling her tightly against Nyrielle’s body as if she was afraid her lover would be torn away from her.

"Will you hold me like this the whole time?" Ashlynn asked, smiling slightly and wrapping her arms around Nyrielle’s, savoring the feeling or her lover’s protective desires and the security she felt in the vampire’s embrace. "Or can I look at you while you hold me?"

"Stay like this," Nyrielle said, burying her face in Ashlynn’s soft, pale blonde hair and clinging even more tightly. "Just for a little while."

Holding Ashlynn like this, feeling her soft, smooth skin and smelling the warm, evergreen scent that clung to her, Nyrielle wanted to blot out the memory of Ashlynn’s frostbitten flesh and her badly burned arm. Her darling had been cut by so many shards of ice that it took layers of bandages wound tightly over each other before the blood stopped seeping through, and even Tallauia’s healing hadn’t been able to completely suppress the pain Ashlynn must have been feeling from her wounds.

The wounds were just as bad as the ones she’d suffered from Owain on the night of her wedding to the Lothian heir, but this time, her bond with Nyrielle gave her the strength and the durability to keep fighting long past the point where she would have succumbed to her wounds before. Part of Nyrielle was grateful for their bond because without it, her Ashlynn would surely have died tonight.

Another part of her, however, cursed at how Ashlynn must have suffered under the relentless assault of the spirits possessing Hauke. Nyrielle knew all too well how little the dead cared for the living and how little they understood the suffering that often accompanied their actions. For what those spirits had done to Ashlynn alone, she intended to grind their horns to dust, but one feeling clawed uncomfortably at her heart whenever she considered what Ashlynn had endured.

"I’m sorry that I didn’t come for you," Nyrielle said softly. "If I had broken you free from the beginning, then none of this..."

"Hush," Ashlynn said, turning in Nyrielle’s arms and brushing a stray lock of the vampire’s dark hair out of the way so she could look directly into her lover’s midnight eyes. "We’re both alive," she said, pressing her forehead against Nyrielle’s and looking directly into the deep, midnight abyss of the other woman’s eyes. "That’s all that matters, isn’t it?"

"No," Nyrielle said, pulling back and pushing Ashlynn away enough that she could truly look at her. In the dream, Ashlynn’s skin was smooth and flawless. Beads of water ran down from her wet hair, gliding over the full swell of her breasts before sliding into the steaming water below. Her hands were soft and her limbs unbroken. Her chest rose and fell freely, without a wince of pain or shallow breath taken to spare her from the pain from cracked and broken ribs.

The Ashlynn in the pool with her bore none of the wounds that the witch’s body currently bore, but that didn’t stop Nyrielle from remembering them when she looked at her lover here in this dream.

"I’m sorry that you suffered so," Nyrielle said with deep feeling and meaning every word. Much of what happened tonight was her fault for jumping at shadows and dashing off to hunt Shubnalu when, for all she knew, he was still on the opposite end of the continent, sleeping away the years in his domain or waiting for the other vampire lords to capture her. But there was more that she had to say than just a sincere apology.

"Ashlynn," she said, taking the other woman’s hands in hers and squeezing them tightly. She struggled for a moment with how to say what she needed to say next, and looking at Ashlynn’s gentle, loving expression didn’t make it any easier. But if she didn’t, if she couldn’t speak the words now, when everything was so fresh, she was afraid that she never would.

"I’m sorry, but I’m also upset with you tonight. I want to give you the world," she said, reaching up to cup the younger woman’s face gently while the tenderness in her voice faded into firm resolve. "And I never want to take your freedom away from you. But if you keep acting like you did tonight, then I swear to you, I’ll never let you leave the Vale again."