“Why?” she weakly asked the question that had tortured her for weeks and months already. Finally the perpetrator appeared in front of her, that man who had taken everything from her. Chained at the walls of a dirty little prison cell, her once splendid velvet dress reduced to dirty rags, stinking of dirt and her own excrements, she looked at him with widely opened silver eyes in spite of being dazzled by the brightness falling into her normally eternally lightless cell. There wasn’t much left of her former beauty. Her haggard figure and her matted fire red hair paired with a sunken pale complexion from lack of sunlight let her appear every bit the witch and sorceress she was said to be. Only she had not the slightest bit of knowledge about witchcraft and sorcery in her, how the forbidden kinds of magic were called.

The man who had stepped in and brought the light of a torch with him signaled the warden accompanying him to step back. Then he bowed over, near to her ear, sneered at her with a mocking smile and spoke:

“Because it is convenient. Or better to say that the margravial family is no longer of use to me. So I found the perfect excuse to wipe them off the face of the earth: you. In consideration of the marital bond we once shared I have spared you a few days longer than your family. Your uncle – oh, you call him father, don’t you? – and your cousins along with their spouses and children have already been judged for colluding with a witch. Now that I hold the access to the other march in my hands it was time for them to disappear. And you, my concubine, are simply the best excuse I had. With your inhuman eye color there are already enough rumors about you. Unfounded, yes, I know. But nobody would doubt if I would accuse you of any imaginable atrocity, would they? So, my dear, as the good husband that I am I will at least watch attentively your last moments of being consumed by the flames. But don’t fret, my heart won’t feel lonely even without you. I still have five other consorts after all.”

The woman couldn’t believe that she once had loved such a man, throwing all cautions her uncle and foster father had against the suitor in the wind to marry him, even to help him winning the throne. And this was how the king now thanked her. Not only had he degraded his main wife who had sacrificed so much for him, including falling out with her family, to a simple concubine, lifting another consort on the queen’s throne. No, he even sentenced her to death by burning at the stake because she had lost his usefulness to him at the point in time when he not only won the kingdom but also learned how to control the otherworldly realm of magic spread through the land known as the other march.

Since then the margraves that controlled the other march for centuries and had kept the kingdom save from supernatural disasters of all kinds had outlived their purpose. Instead of coexisting with the magical beings some of which were benevolent, others malevolent to humans as the margraves had practiced since time immemorial, the monarch even planned to conquer the other march for his own purposes. But that she didn’t know. Had she known, she likely would have been even more devastated. Even so she had no tears left in her already and her throat felt too constricted to say another word. The prisoner had needed all her remaining strength just to press out that single question from her parched throat. Now she hadn’t any left anymore, malnourished as she was. But it should be her end soon anyway.

The alleged witch had grown feeble during her imprisonment so that she had to get carried to the stake. Well, she was rather getting dragged there while rotten fruits and vegetables thrown by the booing crowd rained down on her. Some even wanted to throw stones but since nobody wanted to accidentally hit the righteous wardens dragging the nefarious sorceress to her death it remained relatively harmless. Although rotten foodstuff, when thrown with full power, sometimes still hurt sufficiently.

All the while, the convict kept her lifeless eyes on the figure of her heartless spouse who was accompanied by his present queen. Some people shuddered when looking into her eyes. It was rumored that her mother, the sister of the late margrave, sired her with a demon. But although her eye color was highly unusual, she didn’t possess any of the abnormally high magic aptitude often found in demons’ human offspring. Hers was rather mediocre instead.

Finally she was bound at the stake, wallowing in her despair and simply waiting for the fire to be lit, but the crowd gathered for the spectacle broke into a ruckus when a small figure hidden by a hooded cloak made its way for the stake and attacked the guards and the executioner, albeit to no avail. The attacker soon was subdued by the guards in the vicinity.

“So there is somebody siding with a witch?” the king asked in surprise “Let Us see who has the audacity to do so.” Clad in royal purple, the blond head shining like gold under the sun, King Gervase looked every bit as regal as his position let assume.

On His Majesty’s signal the guards robbed the assailant of his cloak. Surprised voices were heard all around. What came to sight was a meticulously groomed boy of at most twelve years dressed in a spotless black butler uniform only slightly brought in disorder by the previous rough treatment. The boy was very good looking, growing up he surely would become a handsome man many women would fall for. His evenly formed face had a pale complexion that gave him a somewhat noble semblance framed by the neat black hair. Most striking, though, were his big blood red eyes looking at the king with deep hatred. Only when the boy opened his mouth the surrounding audience didn’t appear spellbound any longer.

“Let Milady go, you traitorous, vile excuse of a monarch!” the boy demanded with a cold voice. It nonetheless sounded as pleasant as a choir boy’s. “You know exactly what she has done for you in all those years, how she has given everything for you. And that is how you thank her? You scum are utterly unfit to sit on the throne, not to speak of being worthy of Milady’s heart. All those years I have honored Milady’s wishes although I deemed you unfit as her husband. But it seems I was incorrigibly wrong. Shame on me. Now let her go!”

The boy’s voice seemed to wake the woman on the stake from her apathy. “Malford!” she whispered with a broken voice. More she couldn’t do with a heavily parched throat.

“Oh, if it isn’t the witch’s little vampire butler!” the king exclaimed with a broad smile.

Those words led to the crowd panicky trying to get away from the incapacitated bloodsucker. That some especially hoary vampires were resistant against sunlight wasn’t unheard of after all. Nobody had expected the boy to be an elder vampire although his red eyes weren’t exactly inconspicuous.

“To be honest, We have to thank you, vampire.” King Gervase continued “To thank you that you have come to Us on your own accord. As such We also might begin the extermination of your kind with you as the first example. Executioner, take your sword and behead this vile creature of the night for all Our beloved subjects to revel in.”

Faced with such a judgement, the convicted witch grew panicky at last. She had already given up on her own life but that didn’t mean she would accept it lying down when any other of her important people were to die, especially as she had originally thought her butler to be at a safe place.

“No! Not Malford!” she cried with a raspy voice at the top of her lungs while weakly tearing at the ropes binding her with all power she had left. When she looked at her former spouse, she saw him mouthing the words: “Oops! Too late.” Then the vampire’s head went flying and his body crumbled to dust.

Grief and hatred filled her heart when the wood was set on fire. If she could, she would tear her fetters and rush to her former husband to strangle him to death with her own hands in retaliation. She never would’ve thought she had been such a bad judge of character until she suddenly found herself in prison from one day to the next. She had even tolerated Gervase preferring other consorts instead of his legal wife, had accepted – although with a heavy heart – that he had fallen out of love with her. But, so it seems, he never had any love for her in his heart from the very beginning, only deceit. And that although she was the major reason he had risen to the throne instead of one of his eight brothers, all of whom had lost their life one after the other.

“You don’t have to die here, my daughter.” a roaring voice boomed through the air, nearly blowing out the fire. It belonged to a man with an angel’s wings, a terrifying lion’s head, a hare’s tail, and goose feet. His whole appearance was unspeakably unclean.

Panic broke out in the crowd that rapidly dispersed. The queen had fainted from shock, and the king showed a fearfully pale complexion. Even the convict herself was surprised with the sudden turn the affair took.

“You never have met me, my daughter, for your mother who was able to summon me at will died so soon. I am the great Ipos, an infernal earl and prince. For I have the time itself at my disposal, I already knew your present dilemma at the time of your birth. Therefore I sealed most of your magic for this very day to enable you to turn your fate around. Since I have never been there for you, please allow me to do at least this one fatherly action for you. You have the choice now: Do you want me to unseal your latent magic power so you may free yourself and take revenge for all that was done to you. Or do you want to likely use it completely up to be transported back into the past instead so you may start over. Choose well!”

“I choose to return to the past.” the demon’s daughter declared nearly inaudible.

“So be it!” Ipos spoke, still able to hear her whispered words. Then he disappeared back to where he had come from, only leaving a sulfuric smell behind to tell of his short presence in the mortal world.

The very same moment the flames exploded, swallowing the red-haired woman whole.

On that day Violant of Avallach died. On that day she got a second chance.

Her story should just begin.