93 A Coven Of Two

Flora flew off to inspect every room of the new castle the moment they arrived but Ruby took her time inspecting the land surrounding it. She had a million ideas running through her head about what sort of shrubs, trees, and other flowers to plant to make gardens around the cement paths and fountains the builders had left according to her specifications.

They had a lot of land here that she bought primarily for privacy purposes. The more space there was, the less likely they were to be disturbed over time as human society continued to shift.

With Ash's blood barrier, they could remain in a peaceful bubble as centuries passed and the world continued to change around them. Ruby preferred that bubble be as large as possible.

He had been practicing his blood magic a lot over the past year using her as a crutch and he was confident he would be able to maintain a barrier this size on his own as long as he held onto her while casting it. Unless the caster personally made changes to the spell, it was indefinite as it was impenetrable.

Ash came up beside her with his cloak off since the sun had gone down shortly before they arrived. "Are you ready to help me make the barrier?"

He read her mind. Ruby turned to smile at him. "Yeah. Do you know where the boundaries of our land are? There is a dinky little fence going all the way around it but that's pretty far from here since I had the castle built in the middle of the property."

"I don't but that information is helpful. I'll go leave markers on the fence now so the barrier will automatically expand to it. Be right back!"

He zoomed off so fast that she barely saw him vanish. She could fly as fast as he could run if she really tried but it tended to make her dizzy so she usually didn't bother unless it was an emergency.

Ash returned a few minutes later and held out his arm. Ruby went one step further and clung to him from behind, wrapping her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck.

"What are you doing?" he asked with a slight laugh.

"Well, I figured the more of you I was touching the more effective the magic boost would be," she reasoned as she squished the side of her face against his.

He twisted slightly to kiss her cheek. "I like your logic. And this does leave my hands free to cast the spell so it definitely works."

Ash closed his eyes and poured all his concentration into casting the barrier spell. Ruby watched as the glowing red dome began to rise in the distance ahead of them. With such a large barrier it did take a while for it to reach its peak but the dome did fully close above them and continued to glow for a minute before disappearing.

"Done," he said. "We do need to go find Flora though so I can put the blood seal on her that will allow her to reenter the barrier freely."

Ruby frowned. She had always been able to come and go from the barrier back at the old castle whenever she wanted but that hadn't been the case at the Cromwell coven. She was only able to get in because they held onto her.

She let go of Ash and flew around to face him with her hands on her hips. "Did you cast a blood seal on me already without my permission?"

He shrugged, the picture of innocence, but his expression was guilty. "…yeah, sorry. I didn't want to deal with the hassle of letting you in and out all the time but wasn't sure you would want vampire magic on you.

"It really doesn't do anything aside from leave a tiny red mark on the back of your neck but it's always covered by your hair anyway, which is probably why you still hadn't noticed. I did plan to take it off you originally when we parted ways but since that didn't happen there wasn't a point."

Ruby was slightly annoyed that he had done something the day they met without bothering to tell her but she was also curious what exactly this entailed. "Does this mean I don't need to get another one for this particular barrier?"

Ash fiddled with his hair nervously and wouldn't meet her eyes. "Uh…no. Blood seals aren't spell specific, they're vampire specific. You'll be able to get in or out of any barrier I cast. Normally they're used to bind a coven together. I swear I didn't mean anything weird by it; I simply didn't want you to wake me up constantly to let you back in!"

She blinked at him in surprise. So she had technically been a member of his coven all this time by default? No wonder he looked so nervous right now; that was a pretty big deal.

If she had found out about this before they were dating she probably would have been furious with him. As it was, Ruby felt a pang of sadness. He had used something meant to be permanent on a stranger out of convenience because he was completely alone when they met.

Then he hadn't taken it off of her in Las Vegas even though at the time they weren't planning on going back to the castle together. He had wanted to ensure that she would be able to come visit him again as promised.

Her money was on the latter. If they had parted ways as planned, she would have remained able to come back to him no matter what.

Ruby flew forward and threw her arms around him. He had loved her and wanted to keep her with him that far back. In this moment, she could almost believe he wouldn't ever leave her and go back to the vampires. They were a coven of two.