The Vampire & Her Witch

All eyes in the Great Hall turned to Lady Jocelynn, the woman who was supposed to have been the bride of the evening and their next marchioness, as she spoke up for the first time since the dramatic proceedings began.

The weight of those eyes felt immense, but Jocelynn forced herself to stand as calmly as she could, like a pale cerulean flame in a sea of midnight and emerald at the Blackwell table. Her sister had done so much, from rescuing Samira to capturing Hugo and... And countless other things that she didn’t even know.

Ashlynn had done all this and come to rescue her. Not just to rescue her, but to completely eviscerate the man who had harmed them both, and Jocelynn couldn’t sit still and watch her sister and her allies do all the work. Not when she could help. She owed her sister much, much more than that, and it was time she began to do something instead of just allowing everything to happen around her.

”I dined with Lord Bors several times while Owain was in Blackwell,” Jocelynn said, looking at her sister rather than meeting Owain’s gaze. Her sister, who seemed so calm and in control of the moment, that for a heartbeat, Jocelynn hesitated, wondering if she would disrupt Ashlynn’s careful choreography of the moment.

”Go on, Jocey,” Ashlynn said, giving her sister a fragile smile. ”Tell us what you know.”

”Mmm,” Jocelynn said, nodding gratefully to her sister before turning to address the court.

”Lord Bors didn’t like me,” Jocelynn said bluntly. ”I, I won’t even say that he was wrong to dislike me. I was naive and, and I made many mistakes,” she said in a voice that grew quieter as she approached her own role in everything that had happened. But she couldn’t confess to her own crimes now, not until she’d spoken to Ashlynn privately, so she forced herself to shake off the gloom and continued onward.

”One night, when he summoned me to dinner, he told me that he was considering passing his throne to Lord Loman,” Jocelynn said. ”But more than that, he asked me if I would consent to marrying Lord Loman in the name of the alliance with my family. He was... he was testing me because he knew that, that I had fallen for Lord Owain’s charms,” she said, lowering her head as her cheeks burned at the admission.

At the high table, Baroness Peigi sighed as she looked at the conflicted young woman she had first met at Ashlynn’s memorial. It was no wonder, she thought, that things had come to be like this. A young woman’s heart wanted what it wanted, much as her own heart had found a forbidden desire. But Jocelynn’s, it seemed, was far, far more tragic.

”I told Lord Bors,” Jocelynn continued after taking a deep breath. ”That Lord Owain and I would prove he was worthy to inherit, and that I could help to lead the march as the next marchioness. I, I’d lost my sister,” she said with tears in her eyes as she looked toward Ashlynn. ”So I promised that I would do her part too.”

”Jocey,” Ashlynn said softly. ”It’s all right, you’ve said enough...”

”No, no, there’s more,” Jocelynn said, wiping her tears away with the spills of lace at her wrist as she forced herself to continue. ”Lord Bors gave a deadline of Midwinter’s night, tonight, for Lord Owain to prove himself a worthy successor. That’s what forced Owain to make a move. He was running out of time,” she explained.

”Lord Hugo,” Erling asked from his seat at the High Table. Now that so many things had been revealed, he could see the shape of what must have happened and the many moves in the shadows that had led to where they were now, but there were some things that still needed to be spoken aloud to remove all doubt.

”When I saw Lord Bors last spring, he was hale and healthy,” Erling said. ”I didn’t see him in his final months but his health failed very quickly for a man who was so strong. You said that he was poisoned and that you were the one who bought the poison. What manner of poison was it?”

”Spider Demon Venom,” Hugo said flatly. ”When Lord Owain sent Sir Rain and me to purchase it, he told us to obtain enough for three people, his father, a woman, and a child,” he explained. ”Lord Owain knew that his father intended to announce Lord Loman as his successor, but he felt that, even if the venom didn’t kill his father, the madness it caused would give him grounds to contest his father’s decisions as the ravings of a madman who had lost touch with the world...”

”And he, he wanted his father to suffer,” Hugo said, swallowing heavily. ”For daring to give away a woman who had been promised to him.”

”Lord Hugo,” Loghlan Dunn said carefully. His hands were balled into fists on the table, and it took every ounce of restraint that he had to remain in his seat when he wanted to charge at Lord Owain and pummel him the way he’d apparently pummeled countless women.

It wouldn’t do him any good, Lord Owain was a man in his prime, and Loghlan was well enough past his own to know that he’d only humiliate himself for trying. But the knight in him, the one that had sworn decades ago to uphold the virtues of Compassion and Justice... it seethed with the desire to strike out at a man who had none of the former and whose victims cried out for the latter.

”I can accept Lord Owain moving against his father,” he said, holding his hand up before anyone could protest his choice of words. ”I cannot justify his actions, but I can at least see the logic of a man who thought he would be disinherited choosing to plot against his father before Lord Bors could renounce him. That tale, unfortunately, is as old as time. What I can’t understand is who the rest of the poison was intended for,” Loghlan said.

”You said a woman and a child, but Lord Owain didn’t even know that Lady Samira was really with child,” Loghlan said. ”So who was it that Lord Owain intended to poison?”