CHAPTER 829: A WITCH’S DANGEROUS DESIRES (PART TWO)

"When I was younger, it was easier to make these sorts of decisions," Isabell repeated. "But now... now I have Casquas, and my daughter Issandra, who’s just begun her apprenticeship with the Shipwright’s Guild. She’s just taking her first steps out into the world, and she needs a safe home to return to."

"And my son Lassian still needs a bit of guidance to keep his hot head from getting him into trouble he can’t handle," she added with a wry smile and a faint chuckle as she thought about her son’s growing interest in the young women around him and his father’s ’advice’ about wooing them using his poetry. Already it had led to a few moments of public embarrassment and one spectacular fist fight when he unknowingly selected someone else’s fiancée as the object of his desire.

"There’s so much of his father’s passion in him that, if I were consumed by desires and lost my ability to be the parent with a logical voice of reason to counter the strong pull of his heart, I worry that I wouldn’t be able to be the mother he needs."

The more she spoke of her children, the tighter her throat became, and moisture began to blur the corners of her vision. It had already been months since she left Blackwell County, and while she’d received a handful of letters from them, it was the longest she’d been away from her family in years.

Now, as she spoke to Ashlynn about how desires drove witches, part of her couldn’t help but wonder if Casquas or her son Lassian would make a better witch than she would... or if it would be even more dangerous for them because they were already driven by strong passions and desires.

Either way, just thinking of them right now made her heart tremble with the feeling that they were even farther away than they had been when she was in Lothian City, and any decision she made here tonight carried the risk of increasing that distance even more.

"I won’t say that I understand," Ashlynn said carefully as she placed her hands on Isabell’s. "I don’t have children and I never will. But... I have people that I care about. I have so many more people that I care about today than I did a year ago, but even a year ago, I would still take tremendous risks if it would help my family."

After all, that had been the entire reason for her betrothal to Owain Lothian. She did it to help her family secure an alliance, and if all had gone well, to bear enough children that one of her sons could inherit the Blackwell name and her father’s throne in Blackwell County. To obtain that, she’d risked being discovered as a witch, and when she was discovered, it could easily have spelled doom for her family.

"So, I think I can empathize, at least a little bit, with what you’re feeling right now," Ashlynn said. "You have to choose if the risks you’re taking will make your loved ones safer or not. But Isabell, now that you’re here, you have enemies, and people like Owain will target your family because they cannot hurt you."

"For all that you’re the ’logical’ parent," the young witch continued. You have a deep desire to protect your family, and becoming a witch will give you the power to help keep them safe. It can also give you the tools to build an even brighter future for them than the ones they can currently reach. I know this isn’t just about you, but it’s an opportunity not only for yourself but for your family as well."

"I know there’s an opportunity here," Isabell acknowledged. "But it’s one that comes with more danger than anything I’ve ever done before. And if the very worst happened, and I lost myself," she said as her voice caught slightly. "Then my family would lose their mother or their wife. Bad enough if it happened because of an enemy’s arrow or because I was caught up in a battle I couldn’t escape," she said with a shake of her head.

"That, at least, they could understand," Isabell said with a heavy sigh. "But if it was because of something I did to myself, because I made a choice and I couldn’t control what happened to me after that... that’s a very different kind of risk to take, isn’t it?" Isabell asked rhetorically.

"So, assuming I’m willing to become... someone," she said carefully after nearly saying ’something.’ "Someone who is driven by their desires to a greater extent than most people. What is it that you want me to do with those desires that would require me to become a witch instead of remaining at your side as an engineer?" Isabell asked.

As she thought, she picked up her spectacles and turned them over in her hands, studying the wire frames that had been bent and straightened countless times over the years. She probably needed a new pair, but she kept telling herself that as long as this one could be mended, there was no reason to bother with something new.

But maybe she’d been holding on to something for too long, simply because it was easy to mend when she should have selected a pair that would serve her better. Now, as she stood at the crossroads between the familiar world she understood with all of its problems that she had learned how to navigate and the idea of something completely new... she felt deeply conflicted.

Reaching out to the young woman in the seat next to her, Isabell carefully took Ashlynn’s hand in hers and looked directly into the other woman’s emerald eyes before she spoke again in a very quiet, very sincere tone.

"Because, no matter what," Isabell said. "Now that I’m here, and now that I know you need my help, I’m willing to stay by your side to do what I can." Whether there had been a right or a wrong side in the civil war of the Emerald Kingdom, she couldn’t say. But after seeing Owain Lothian and his family’s ambition and what it had done to the Eldritch people who had never once been the aggressors, she no longer doubted that there was a ’right’ side to Ashlynn’s war, or that the ’right side’ of the war lay with Ashlynn and her people in the Vale of Mists.

"The only thing I don’t know right now is if becoming a witch and joining your coven is something I can, or should do. So, help me understand," she said with a gentle squeeze of Ashlynn’s hand. "What kind of witch is it that you want me to become?"