"Mother," Ashlynn said in a sharp tone that the Ashlynn of a year ago would never have used, particularly when speaking to one of her parents.
"I do have some explaining to do," Ashlynn admitted, because in this, at least, her mother wasn't wrong. She'd tried to just have dinner and to approach this casually. After explaining what she was to Ollie when she brought him back to the Vale, and to Isabell when she came to the Vale, and to Loman and…
Ashlynn had been through enough versions of 'the conversation' with enough people, always feeling like she was walking on the edge of a knife, that when it came time to talk to her mother, she didn't want to go through it all over again. Her mother knew she was a witch. She knew that before she left the convent to come here. Ashlynn had said in her letter that she'd embraced her identity as a witch…
But Maela clearly didn't understand what that meant, or she'd never have reacted the way she did to the idea of Jocelynn joining her coven.
