"You murdered your own father, and I, I was the one who bought the poison for you to do it!"

Hugo’s statement rang through the Great Hall like the call of a huntsman’s horn. Several knights, young and old, jumped to their feet, fury burning in their eyes. A few were men who had fought with Bors during the war of inches, but most were young enough to have grown up in the shadow of his legacy, men who had hoped they would soon follow Lord Owain the way their fathers had followed Lord Bors.

The sense of betrayal at the notion their former lord had been poisoned struck at their heart like a knife and the idea that Lord Owain had done it twisted the knife even deeper.

Elsewhere in the great hall, goblets of wine dripped from hands gone numb. Poison? It was impossible that someone had tried to poison the wine here, right before a wedding feast, yet as impossible as it was, something dark and frightened at the back of their minds wouldn’t allow them to touch the wine again.

"Lord Owain," Valeri Luefroy said in a voice that was both quiet and fragile. "This, this can’t be true..." When so many had stood against Lord Owain, he’d been the only baron to stand fast in the name of his bond with Bors. He did not believe that his closest friend’s son, that kind and gentle Isla’s son, could turn out to be such a murderous monster.

When Owain called Lady Ashlynn a witch, Lord Valeri believed it. But after listening to the serving girl, Samira’s tale, followed by everything Hugo had experienced with Lord Owain in Blackwell, cracks had formed in the armor of his loyalty, and Hugo’s final explosive accusation had slipped through those cracks with the force of a knight’s lance.

"What do you think?" Owain said curtly. "You saw my father in his final days and his sickness. What reason would I have had to poison him?"

"Of course, but, Lord Hugo..." Valeri started

"Hugo is a spineless coward that a witch has manipulated into speaking against me," Owain insisted. "Nothing more. Don’t let his lies drive a wedge between us, Valeri," Owain said. "I’ll be counting on you if either of us is going to escape this alive..."

"Yes, your Grace," the older lord said, pulling himself back together as he stood guard over the young marquis. But the cracks in his allegiance had already formed, and they weren’t so easily painted over.

Standing in front of the dais, Ashlynn raised her hand up high, a simple gesture calling for quiet in the suddenly noisy Great Hall. It took a moment, but one by one, people who were standing returned to their seats as neighbors nudged them to sit down and listen to the rest of Hugo’s story.

"Sir Hugo," Ashlynn said calmly, taking control of the hall with her commanding voice. "I know full well how dangerous my husband is, and how ruthless. But the people need help understanding, when Owain was about to become the champion of the march, leading the charge in a Holy War against the march’s oldest enemies... Why would he do this?"

"What reason could Owain possibly have had to make a move against his own father?" Ashlynn asked. "When the whole of the march was about to be his anyway?"

It was the question that burned in the minds of many who heard the accusation, and Ashlynn named it directly, calling it to the very front so they could understand.

"Because the march wasn’t about to be his," Hugo said, sending another ripple of gasps through the hall. "Because Lord Loman had begun to contend for the throne, and Lord Bors was upset with Lord Owain’s... transgressions. Lord Bors wasn’t just considering naming Lord Loman his heir; he was planning to send Lord Owain to the Templars to fight in the Holy War as a Templar rather than a lord..."

"Most grievous of all," Hugo said, giving Lady Jocelynn an apologetic look. "Lord Bors intended to break off the engagement he’d planned between Lord Owain and Lady Jocelynn. Lady Jocelynn was supposed to take her sister’s place as his bride to secure the alliance with the Blackwells, and Lord Owain had already come to regard her as his..."

"When Owain learned that his father intended to strip him of his title and his bride," Hugo said, looking at Owain with eyes that were still haunted by that night. "He became... Enraged."

"I, I think there must be some truth in this," Serle Otker said. At this point, he could see the way the winds were shifting, and he saw little hope that Owain would emerge from this with any sort of power, assuming he even managed to keep his life. But, drowning men had a nasty habit of pulling others down with them, so Serle leaped at the opportunity to drop a stone on the already floundering Lothian Lord.

"It isn’t known to many, but Bors invited me to Lothian well before demons attacked the Dunns or the Hanrahans," Serle said. "Bors insisted that I bring my lovely Charlotte with me when I came, so we could have a matchmaking meeting about Charlotte and Lord Loman."

"Wasn’t it the same for you, Valeri?" Serle said, looking at the Leufroy lord and raising an eyebrow. "Didn’t you bring Adala for the same reason?"

"Adala’s circumstances are... different," Valeri said, frowning at his daughter, who had found a place of refuge among the Blackwell retinue. "But it’s true that Lord Owain wanted me to introduce Adala to Lord Loman."

"At the time, I thought Lord Loman must be having a crisis of faith," Valeri continued. "And that Bors was trying to show his son what the life of a nobleman was truly like, to help him see that the grass wasn’t any greener on the other side of the fence, just different. I never expected much to come of it, or that Lord Loman was truly contending for the Throne."

"It’s true," an unexpected, feminine voice said, ringing out across the Great Hall from the Blackwell table.

"It’s true that Lord Loman was contending for the throne," Jocelynn said as she slowly stood from her seat. "And it’s true that Lord Bors favored Loman to inherit..."