Chapter 1703: Sweets and Snow (Part One)
Soft snow drifted lazily through the air as Adala’s heart hammered in her chest. Every fairy story she’d ever heard as a child about demons offering bargains that were never what they seemed galloped through her mind as Ashlynn’s words echoed in her ears.
"...I invited you out here to learn what your heart desires..."
"Your Grace?" Adala asked almost reflexively, falling back on years of etiquette lessons and everything she’d been taught about taking tea with higher-ranking nobles to buy herself time to think.
"I’m not sure what you mean," she said, her words coming out more clipped than she’d intended as the Iron Kingdom accent she’d acquired while studying overseas reasserted itself. She couldn’t help it. Her teachers there had been the strictest and most demanding she’d ever seen and when she reached for the strength of iron they’d instilled in her, certain mannerisms came along with it, even if they only served to mark her as even more different than her peers now that she’d returned home.
"A witch is a creature of desires made manifest," Ashlynn explained as she selected a golden honey-cake from the plate and nibbled idly as she spoke. "Nature doesn’t want anything. The snow doesn’t fall because it yearns for the ground any more than it falls because it wants to conspire with its brethren to crush the homes of the poor or steal the warmth from your skin," she said as she extended a hand outward, pulling a flurry of soft snowflakes toward her hand and setting them dancing in the air until the warmth radiating from the braziers turned the delicate snowflakes into wet raindrops that splashed on the ground.
"Snow falls because that’s its nature," Ashlynn said as she returned her attention to the young lady across the table from her. "It has no desires. But witches can share their desires with nature to bring about changes both great and small."
"The world around you is changing, Adala," Ashlynn said calmly. "Before you get caught up in it along with the rest of the snowflakes, I want to know what your heart desires. Whether you’re content to be carried along by the blowing winds or wish to struggle against them, or if you aren’t snow at all and want to stop pretending that you are," she said. "That’s what I want to know."
"Do you mean, do I want to become a witch?" Adala asked as her mind seized on the only thing that made sense after the explanation and demonstration that Lady Ashlynn had given her. "Like Sir Ollie and Master Isabell?"
"No," Ashlynn said bluntly, shaking her head. "If you tell me that it’s what you desire, then I’m willing to let you follow me the same way that Lord Liam follows me, but I won’t promise that a seed and hat are waiting for you at the end of that path. You don’t understand what it means to become a witch yet, and I don’t know you well enough to risk your life to make you one."
"Both of those things can change," Ashlynn acknowledged. "But is that really what you desire? Or is it what you think I desire?"
"The latter," Adala admitted, grabbing a walnut rubbed in spices and nibbling on it to buy herself time to think. Had Lord Liam asked to become a witch and that was why he’d been acting as Ashlynn’s herald? Or was he following her for his own reasons? And what did she mean about risking her life? There were too many questions, but none of them were the right ones.
"I, I do want to follow you," Adala said hesitantly. "Or, I did. I mean... wait," she said, drawing a deep breath to compose herself as she realized she’d begun to rattle. "Let me start from a few days ago when I met with your sister," she said, pausing slightly when she saw what looked like a wince of pain from Lady Ashlynn until the other woman gestured for her to continue.
"My father has tried to marry me off seven times," Adala explained. "Always to men who could gain him something that he desired. He offered me up to barons who were hungry for new lands and eager for a chance to claim them in the Holy War, or to slavers who could fill whole ships with soldiers to fight on the front lines... Even to disgraced and fallen houses, so long as their treasuries were still full to overflowing."
"What I wanted, more than anything, was to be free of that," Adala said. "That’s why I thought, when I thought that Jocelynn would become the next marchioness, that I could become her lady-in-waiting. That way, my father couldn’t dictate my marriage anymore, and it would be up to your sister to select a husband for me, if I ever married at all," she said, though she couldn’t quite bring herself to admit that she hoped to fall in the latter category rather than the former.
"I’m glad things didn’t work out that way," Ashlynn said as her fingers selected another pastry from the tray, seemingly without realizing she was doing so. "Owain once told Samira that he hoped Jocey would take her as her lady-in-waiting, that way he could continue his affair with her even after marrying my sister," Ashlynn said as her hands tightened on the pastry, crushing it’s delicate, flaky layers and spilling a small dollop of sweet, pink cream.
"It’s fine to desire an escape," Ashlynn said after taking a bite of pastry and licking the cream from her fingers. "I know that desire very well, and I can understand transferring your desire to follow Jocelynn to me once I returned. But if the only reason you have to follow me is to be free of a marriage your father would force you into," Ashlynn said. "Then I’ve already given it to you, along with every other man and woman in the Verdant Hills."
"So, beyond a desire to be free of your father’s schemes," Ashlynn said. "Or an escape from a marriage you don’t desire, what is it that your heart really wants? Not the road you think you need to take to arrive there, but that you genuinely, truly long for."
"What is it that your heart truly desires?"
