Chapter 268: Shana, The Witch Tutor

An awkward silence lingered over the training yard after Ulrich left.

The three sisters remained together near the middle of the practice ground, while Shana stood several paces away. Ulrich had told them to listen to her and made it clear that he expected her to teach them properly. His orders had done what they were supposed to do. They had done very little to make Shana’s first moments alone with them easier.

Airam watched her with an expression so cold that Shana kept her hands where the girl could see them. She had the uncomfortable impression that if she reached into a pocket without warning, Airam would assume she was drawing a weapon and act before Shana could explain. Hermione made no attempt to conceal her dislike. She stood with her arms crossed, openly glaring at the woman who had once come to take them from the estate.

Only Esther looked pleased to be there. Her eager smile softened the sight of the three sisters waiting together, though Shana knew better than to take it as proof that she was welcome.

She had considered how to begin a lesson. There was much she could tell them about a Witch Tree, and far more she needed to learn about the Trees they had inherited from their mother. But she could hardly ask them to pay attention to her while the memory of the raid stood between them.

“Um…” Shana clasped her hands before her. “First of all, I would like to apologize to you properly.”

Airam’s expression did not shift. Hermione’s glare sharpened, as though she expected an excuse to follow.

“What I did, and what the others—”

Shana stopped.

She had meant to speak of them together: herself, Lucida, and the Blooded Sons who had entered Rubenhart territory with them. The words caught when she remembered their faces.

Theos. Dan. Creon.

Lucida alone was still alive. Shana could remember the deaths of the three men far too clearly, especially Creon’s. She had been closest to him. For a time, she had wondered whether what she felt for him might become love, if either of them ever found the courage to say anything about it. Then Ulrich had killed him, and there had been no time left to discover what those feelings might have become.

For a long while afterward, Shana had thought of Creon whenever she thought of the Count. Beneath her fear of Ulrich, there had been anger too. She had hated that he was alive and Creon was not. Even now, two years later, she could recall the hurt without difficulty.

But she could no longer hold on to the belief that they had been harmless people struck down for no reason.

She had gone with Lucida to seize Anna-Maria’s daughters. They had entered a count’s territory knowing witchcraft itself was condemned there. They had tried to force their way through the estate’s protections and take three girls whom Ulrich had publicly adopted into his House. Shana had agreed to the plan. She had not merely followed the others without understanding its purpose.

What, exactly, had she expected Ulrich to do when he caught them?

The question had troubled her through much of her imprisonment. At first she had answered it with anger. Surely he could have spared them; surely he had been needlessly cruel. Yet each time she returned to what they had done, the answer grew harder to ignore. They had come to take his daughters from his own home. A lord could have condemned them for crossing into his territory even before they attempted the abduction.

Ulrich had let Lucida live so she could carry a warning back to the Coven. He had had no such reason to spare Shana. Nevertheless, she had survived. After two years beneath the ground, he had brought her out and given her a chance to teach the very girls she had once helped pursue.

Shana still mourned Creon. Understanding the danger they had chosen did not erase that grief. But the anger she had directed at Ulrich had gradually turned toward her own foolishness, and toward the Coven that had abandoned her without once trying to bring her home.

She doubted many other lords would have left her alive after the raid. Some might have made her suffer in other ways before killing her. The thought made her feel no less afraid of Ulrich, but it reminded her that she was standing here because he had decided to give her another purpose.

If she could help Anna-Maria’s daughters, perhaps she could begin to answer for what she had tried to do to them.

Her thoughts faltered briefly on Ulrich’s promise to reward her if she served him well. She might have understood what kind of ‘reward’ he meant; there was no way he would really reward her after all…

This was not the moment to dwell on that. Airam, Hermione, and Esther were waiting for her to finish speaking.

“I was wrong to come here with them,” Shana said at last, raising her gaze. “We meant to take you away, and I knew that. I am sorry for what I did.”

“Apology accepted!”

Esther’s answer came so quickly that Shana stared at her.

The youngest sister was smiling again, bright and open, as though the difficult part of the conversation had already passed. Shana had prepared herself for anger, or for the girls to refuse to hear her at all. She had not expected Esther to answer before Airam or Hermione could speak.

“E—Esther?” Hermione turned toward her in disbelief.

“She apologized, Big Sister,” Esther said. “We can accept it and move on now.”

Hermione crossed her arms over her chest. “She tried to abduct us, you know.”

“I know.” Esther’s smile faded for a moment. She had not forgotten the raid, nor how frightened she had been when she understood that witches had come for them. “But we’re all right now. Lord Ulrich protected us, and Shana was punished for what she did.”

“That doesn’t mean—”

“If Lord Ulrich has decided to give her a chance,” Esther continued, “then I can forgive her too!”

Hermione looked at her for a long moment. Esther met her gaze with the determined expression she wore when she knew her sisters thought her too trusting but had decided not to change her mind.

Shana’s eyes filled with tears.

“P—Princess Esther…”

Esther turned back to her, startled by the emotion in her voice. Shana had expected to face Anna-Maria’s daughters with her own guilt. Instead, the youngest had offered her forgiveness before she had found a way to ask for it fully.

Then Hermione repeated the word Shana had used.

“Princess?”

Her surprise shifted to shock. “H—How do you know?”

Airam’s eyes narrowed as she stared at Shana.

For a moment, neither elder sister cared about the apology. Anna-Maria had kept the identity of their father hidden, particularly from the Coven. There were people who knew, but Shana should not have been among them. Hearing her call Esther a princess raised a question neither Airam nor Hermione was willing to let pass.

Shana looked from one sister to the other, bewildered by their sudden suspicion.

“B—Because you are Anna-Maria’s daughters,” she said. “She was called the Queen of Witches. Of course her daughters are princesses…”

Hermione stared at her. Then she let out the breath she had been holding.

Shana’s answer had nothing to do with Valmoria. She did not know who their father was. She had spoken of Anna-Maria and the standing she once held among witches, using a title that meant something entirely different to her.

Even so, Hermione had not expected it. During their brief time among the Coven, she remembered how closely its members had watched them. They had spoken of the sisters as unusually gifted children and treated their potential as something precious. Hermione had known their mother’s position mattered to those witches. She had not realised that, in Shana’s eyes, it made Anna-Maria’s daughters princesses.

Perhaps Shana’s use of “princess” should not have surprised Hermione so much.

Witches had pursued them since their mother’s death, and the Coven had been willing to force its way into Rubenhart Estate to take them back. Shana had just explained the title she used for Anna-Maria’s daughters. To the people who wanted them, the three sisters clearly held a place of great importance.

Even so, Hermione doubted those people understood what they had been trying to claim.

She did not need to exaggerate her own abilities to know that she and her sisters were talented. Airam, in particular, possessed a kind of power Hermione had never seen in anyone else. Witchcraft seemed to come to her with frightening ease, and when her black runes appeared, Hermione could almost understand why kingdoms told such terrible stories about witches. Airam resembled the embodiment of the figure those stories feared, though the kingdoms that spread them knew nothing of the sister who used that power to protect her sisters.

Hermione’s gaze returned to Shana. Whatever the Coven believed about Anna-Maria’s daughters, it had not known them as people. If it had, its members might have thought more carefully before trying to take them away.

“I honestly don’t understand what you expected to happen,” Hermione said, crossing her arms again. “Did you think you could drag us back to the Coven and we would simply obey you?”

Shana’s expression fell. Esther’s forgiveness had made it easier for her to speak, but Hermione’s question reached the part of their plan she could not defend.

“I… we doubted that the Count was treating you well,” she said.

“We were treated well. Didn’t you notice?”

“Yes.” Shana lowered her eyes. “We noticed, and we should have cared about what you wanted. I thought I was being helpful to the Coven, to Lucida. I didn’t stop to consider what taking you by force would mean for any of you.”

Hermione looked at her. Shana wasn’t making any excuses or throwing the blame to her friends; she was truthfully and sincerely apologizing and acknowledging her fault.

Hermione still remembered the attack. She was not ready to look at Shana with Esther’s easy trust. But she found it harder to hold on to the anger with which she had begun the morning.

Airam, who had remained silent throughout the exchange, spoke suddenly.

“What do you know about our mother?”

Shana looked at her in surprise. She had expected another question about the raid, or perhaps a warning about what would happen if she tried to contact the Coven. Airam’s expression was as guarded as before, but she was waiting for an answer.

“I don’t know as much as I wish I did,” Shana said carefully. “I heard a lot about Anna-Maria’s power. She is a legend within the Coven, and among witches beyond it.”

“Tell us,” Airam said.

“I—I want to hear about Mommy too!” Esther added. She raised her hand as though they were already in a lesson, smiling so brightly that Shana blinked.

Hermione said nothing, but she had turned fully toward Shana as well.

The sisters had known Anna-Maria as their mother. They remembered the woman who had lived with them, cared for them, and kept them safe. They had heard others speak of her importance, yet there were parts of her life before their village that none of them knew. Shana’s stories might be incomplete, but she could tell them how witches outside their family had seen her.

Ulrich had brought Shana here to teach them about their Witch Trees. Looking at the three girls now, Shana understood that beginning with what she knew of Anna-Maria might help them listen to her. She could not expect their trust merely because Esther had forgiven her; she would have to earn it.

First of all, she had to build a relation of trust between them.

Shana smiled and nodded gleefully.