Chapter 1261: I Am Your Enemy
Ollie felt the weight of everyone’s eyes falling on him as Baron Loghlan asked him about his ti living among the Eldritch. For a mont, he wanted nothing more than to tell them that it was just as Liam had said, that everyone who followed Lady Ashlynn would rather approach their enemies with kindness and hopes for a brighter future instead of resorting to violence and bloodshed.
But that wasn’t true... not even within Lady Ashlynn’s coven, or within his own heart.
"I can’t give you a simple answer to your question, Lord Loghlan," Ollie said, briefly placing the tips of his fingers over his heart in a distinctly Eldritch gesture as he struggled against the torrent of feelings that welled up within him when he tried to find the right words to answer the baron’s question.
It had beco harder, he realized, to hold back his feelings when they grew stronger. At first, he thought it was because the events of his life in the past few months had beco more intense than anything he’d ever known before. Of course, he felt deeper sorrow than at any other mont in his life when he saw the ruins of the Heartwood Clan’s village in the aftermath of Owain’s savage raid.
But that wasn’t the whole of it. Ever since he’d received his seed of witchcraft, he felt more deeply than he’d felt anything before. If he was happy, then the joy that filled him brought light and warmth into his heart and the world around him. Everything seed brighter. And when he wept, he felt like the world wept with him, the trees bowed their crowns, and the air grew cold.
"You may not understand this, and I don’t know if I can explain it properly," Ollie said as he gave Liam a look that held the weight of a hundred arrows and dozens of sharpened axes. "But my greatest enemy this sumr was you, Lord Liam. You and the people of Dunn Barony," he said, sweeping that intense, heavy gaze across the knights and ladies gathered at the table.
"It didn’t start with you," Ollie continued when he saw a few hands twitch toward the daggers littering the table, only to freeze mid-motion. "It started with Owain Lothian’s destruction of a single village, which had nothing to do with Lady Ashlynn and my escape from the Sumr Villa or the deaths of Sir Kaefin and Sir Broll. But Owain Lothian needed to make a show of strength, so he burned an innocent village to the ground to do it..."
Ollie’s voice was heavy with unshed tears as mories of burned-out burrows and the ashes of treasured carvings danced through his eyes. He rembered Old Nan lying in bed, having lost all of her treasured mories of her parents and grandparents, and the long lines of defeated-looking people whose tails hung low while their fur grew rough with self-neglect...
"This sumr, I went from village to village, warning the people who lived beyond the protection of the Vale’s walls that the wilderness wouldn’t be able to protect them this year," Ollie said slowly. "So listened, others didn’t. Many waited until they saw the army led by Lord Liam and Loman Lothian. When those people abandoned their hos and villages, they ca to my village in the Vale of Mists."
"It started as a small village for the Heartwood clan," Ollie said. "They had nowhere to return to, and they lost so of their best defenders in the battle against Owain Lothian and the Inquisition. But soon, we were building hos for the Nightweavers and the Clan of Painted Masks and so many others who were in Lord Liam’s path."
"So, when I say that I am your enemy, and there is blood and fire between us," Ollie said as he gave the baron a piercing, cold look. "Please understand what you have done to the people I’ve been working hard just to keep them fed, clothed, and housed before this winter arrived. Imagine how you would feel if it had been my soldiers burning down your hamlets and villages and leaving you without hos to call your own."
As he spoke, the air in the tent grew chill, as if the frost covering the walls had combined with Ollie’s sorrows, frustrations, and all of his hurts to finally overco the fear that had made the tent so stifling.
"Sir Ollie," Lady Rhiannon said softly, glancing between the heartbroken witch and her son, Cadeyrn, who was only a few years younger than the fla-haired knight. She couldn’t imagine what it had been like for the young knight, but the thought of her son having to face such a burden was overwhelming.
"I don’t want to be your enemy," Ollie continued as he forced himself to push down the pain and sorrow by rembering the joyful monts like Daithi’s children playing with children from all of the clans in the village, inventing new gas and exploring the ever-changing landscape around the village as Ollie’s people slowly transford the village from a collection of houses into a place they could call ho.
"There are people from half a dozen different Eldritch clans in my village," Ollie said, returning to one of Loghlan’s earlier questions about how the people lived. "There are several human families as well. One of Sir Broll’s soldiers, Daithi, has beco our Constable. We’re all learning how to put aside the old hurts so we can live together in the world that Lady Ashlynn wants to build."
"In the Vale of Mists, there are no bondsn," Ollie continued. "My villagers all own their land and their hos, and we work together to take care of each other, because we have to. Because it’s too hard just getting by when you have to rebuild everything to worry about who owes what to whom."
"But that’s changing now that Lady Ashlynn and Lady Nyrielle returned from the far side of the mountains with their armies," Ollie said, sending another ripple of shock around the table. "Because they didn’t just recruit warriors from the Eldritch cities beyond the High Pass. They brought rchants and engineers, architects and artificers."
"If you want to know how we live in the Vale of Mists," Ollie said, looking at Liam to confirm his words. "Then I’d say we live better lives than it was possible for most n to live in Lothian March. The humans who have settled in my village all believe that it’s so. But we live better because we’re all working hard, together, to build sothing better."
"We don’t live in a world that’s free of hurt for things people did to us, and our loved ones before," Ollie said solemnly. "But even I have seen enough of war and fighting," he said as mories from his trial flickered behind his eyes. mories of Milo, Harrod, and Old Nan, even himself, falling to the swords and spears of the Lothians or the terrifying sorcery of the Church and the Inquisition.
"So, even though I’m your enemy, I don’t want to be," Ollie said firmly. "I want to find a way to be friends instead. Whatever that takes."
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