"I am the woman who pretended to be Lady Ashlynn in the Summer Villa," Samira said. "And I am the mother of Lord Owain’s child."

Samira’s simple declaration froze the occupants of the Great Hall in their seats, and some people even forgot to breathe as they watched the heavily pregnant woman making her way to the central aisle between the tables where the families of the barons and their knights sat.

When she entered the Great Hall, her presence was odd enough for people to take note of her. A pregnant woman in the middle of an assault on Lothian Manor couldn’t be an ordinary woman, but everyone had been much more focused on Hugo Hanrahan at the time, so while many people found her presence strange, they quickly forgot about her as they were caught up in the trial of Abbot Recared and his Inquisitors.

Now, everyone looked at the woman named Samira, and for the first time, they really looked at her. From her pale blonde hair to her modest height, the shape of her face, and even her pale green eyes...

She really did resemble Saintess Ashlynn. Not enough to mistake the women for each other when they stood side by side, but enough that, if you say one across a crowded market square, you might call out to her only to realize you’d mistaken yourself.

"Tell us how you came to be there, Samira," Ashlynn said quietly from the dais. "From the beginning, in your own words. Take whatever time you need to say the things you need to say tonight," she prompted.

"A year ago, I was just a chambermaid in Lothian Manor," Samira began.

Her voice was steadier than she had expected it to be. She’d been a blubbering mess every time she had to act like Lady Ashlynn in public before Owain hid her away in the Summer Villa, and even there, he told her to keep to her chambers because she embarrassed him when she tried to speak up in front of other members of the aristocracy.

But she wasn’t the same Samira who had been scooped up in Lothian schemes. She didn’t know precisely when it happened, but she was no longer afraid of what people would think when she spoke.

Maybe it was because she’d learned so much about how to carry herself the way a noblewoman would from Lady Jocelynn. Or maybe it was because she’d taken much greater risks in the Summer Villa when she abused the power of her stolen identity to care for Noomi and Saku in Owain’s dungeon.

Or perhaps it was Isabell’s comforting presence next to her, like a towering tree with wide, sheltering branches that gave her a source of support that would never falter. Whatever it was, when she spoke, her voice was clear and strong enough to be heard across the entire great hall, and even the pressure of everyone’s gaze couldn’t stop her from telling the story she’d come so far and risked so much to share.

"I worked for Marquis Bors," Samira said. "I cleaned his rooms and changed his linens and brought his fires up in the morning. One time, he saw me doing a bit of embroidery to pass the time, and he asked me if I’d teach him how," she said. "I never got the chance; he was always so busy, but he’d mention it sometimes. That Lady Illa had been good with a needle and thread, and he wanted to learn a bit."

Samira paused and drew a deep breath when she realized she was starting to ramble, reminding herself to keep the story on track.

"After Lord Owain married Lady Ashlynn, in the early hours of the morning, Marquis Bors summoned me to his office. He, he never called me there before, and he was all alone when we met," she said, clutching her skirts as she remembered the day her life had changed forever in ways that even she couldn’t have dreamed of at the time."

"He told me that Lady Ashlynn had been murdered on her wedding night," Samira explained. "He said that assassins had poisoned her, and that he needed to hunt down the men who murdered her. He told me that I resembled her, and that he needed a young woman who could pretend to be Lady Ashlynn until the killers were caught..."

At the time, she had no idea that it had been Owain himself who’d murdered Lady Ashlynn or that everything was an elaborate ruse to disguise the fact. But even if she’d known, when she thought of the woman she’d been back then... Maybe she would have gone along with it all anyway.

"He promised me," Samira said, bowing her head in shame as she remembered the way the conversation had gone. "He promised me that, that if I helped him do this, he would make me a Dame when it was over and the killers were caught. He said he would grant my family lands of their own, in a barony of his choosing, and that we would never want for anything for the rest of our lives."

At the high table, Baroness Peigi pursed her lips tightly as she imagined what the scene must have been like from the young woman’s perspective. She knew what it was like to be a young lady, bartered away for a chance of fame and riches in a wedding to a frontier lord. The pressure she’d felt from her family to accept her father’s arrangements and marry Tybal had been tremendous.

But compared to a commoner receiving an offer to join the nobility, the title of Dame and lands of her own...

Peigi doubted that Bors Lothian ever intended to follow through with it. Too few women had received the title of ’Dame’ to make it something easily bestowed. People would have asked questions about what extraordinary deed Samira had done to be worthy of such a rare honor. Bors was smart enough to understand that.

But this young woman named Samira... Even if she’d grown up in Lothian Manor, she likely had no idea. The offer from her lord was too enticing, and since men like Bors never had a reason to scheme against their own household staff, she never learned how cunning the former Marquis could be.

Which meant, Peigi realized with a stomach-sinking certainty, that Samira never knew that accepting Bors’ request was as good as signing her own death warrant.

Forget being named a Dame... Bors had likely never intended to make good on the promise that would have attracted too much of the wrong kind of attention because he’d never intended for Samira to survive this charade.