Morwen Trelane

Morwen Trelane was seventy-nine years old when she was bitten.

Nobody turns an old woman. Vampires know it well: eternity keeps the body it finds. Creaking knees, spotted hands, a back that no longer straightens. Forever.

That is why there is a Law of the Blood nobody argues with: you do not turn someone who has already lived their life.

They turned Morwen anyway. They saw something in her.

She was born in Varkhad, to a human father and an elven mother. From her mother she got the pointed ears and little else. The long life of the elves never reached her. She aged like a human: slowly at first, and then all at once.

She went to serve in a hospice of Elyra when she was very young. And there she stayed her whole life.

She washed wounds. She changed bandages. She sang to those who would not see the morning. And she prayed to Elyra every night, without missing one.

Elyra never chose her.

Dozens of Elyri came through the hospice. True healers, the good kind. They laid a hand on a wound and the wound closed. They asked for nothing in return. They thanked Morwen for every bed she made, and they meant it.

That was the worst part. That they were good.

She had spent half her life praying and her hands were still empty. They arrived barely more than children, not even knowing the whole prayer, and Elyra gave them the light.

One winter night, Morwen went down to the hospice crypt and tried the other moon.

Obsidia answered the first time.

Since then her hands heal. But they give nothing away. What they close in one body, they take from another. A little life from here, a little from there, like pouring water from one bucket into another.

And she chose the bucket.

For years nobody noticed. Some of the dying died a little sooner. The ones Morwen chose got up a little sooner. In a hospice, nobody keeps that kind of count.

Until a young Elyri saw her praying under the light of the white moon. And saw, beneath the old woman's skin, a black half moon.

He did not report her. They did not throw her out. The Elyri are not like that.

They sat her down in the chapel and offered her forgiveness. They would pray with her, all of them together, until the shadow was cleansed. All night, if need be.

Morwen thanked them. She said she would think about it.

That same night she carried the sick out of the hospice. One by one, bed by bed, out into the street, without waking a single one. With those knees, it took her until dawn.

Then she locked the chapel door. The Elyri were still inside, praying for her.

And she set it on fire.

That night, Alfonsus de Çaragoça was walking down that street.

The oldest of the vampires who still walk. Patron, scholar, keeper of the Laws of the Blood. For centuries he has collected what no one else knows how to see.

He saw an old woman with burned hands, sitting on the pavement, surrounded by sleeping patients, watching a temple of Elyra burn. Praying. To Obsidia.

He asked her how many Elyri were inside.

Morwen told him their names. One by one. Without skipping any.

Alfonsus understood two things. That at dawn they would come looking for her, and that a woman like her did not have a single moon left. And that in all his centuries he had never seen a mortal heal with the black moon.

He did not bite her to keep her. He bit her because at dawn they would kill her, and Alfonsus has never known how to look the other way.

The other time Alfonsus broke a Law, he got a Prince. He has still not forgiven himself.

This time he broke one anyway.

But he could not take care of her. A keeper of the Laws cannot keep at his side the proof that he breaks them. Before dawn, Alfonsus left her at the door of a closed house of the Night Veil and knocked twice.

Aldrec Cendal opened it, the old Tiefling who keeps watch over those doors. He looked at the vampire. He looked at the old woman. And he stepped aside to let her in.

No one joins the Veil. They owe it. Morwen owes eternity to a vampire and a door to a Tiefling.

Neither of them has come to collect yet.

To the vampires, she is a newborn. With a grandmother's wrinkles.

Today she heals with the same hand she corrupts with. She touches one of her own and the wound closes. She touches an enemy and something black seeps inside them, slowly, like damp in a wall.

What she takes from one, she gives to another. She has been doing it since the crypt.

Her Holy Strike is still holy. She learned the words in a temple of Elyra and has not changed a single one. Only the one listening has changed. Some Elyri freeze when they hear her, because they recognise the prayer. It does not last long.

The black half moon that boy saw on her will not fade. Now she hands it out.

Under Morwen's mantle, her own hold on. And when she closes all their wounds at once, the Elyri carrying the most Marks gets one more.

She closes Ilvana's wounds every full moon, and she is the only one Ilvana lets near on those nights. She bandages Seraluna's claws without asking whose blood it is. She insists with Nixil every month, and every month Nixil tells her that what he has does not close.

Morwen does not give up. A whole life praying to someone who never answered trained her well.

On the Blind Night, when the others name the Elyri they have marked, Morwen says other names: those of her own she has saved since the last time. Without skipping any.

Nobody dares to interrupt her.

In the temples of Elyra there are still those who pray for Morwen Trelane. That she may return to the light.

She prays too. Every night, without missing one.

And this time, someone answers.