"I won’t let you make a mockery of this, Ashlynn," Owain said, looking down on her from his position atop the dais. "A fair fight with a woman? Don’t make me laugh! What would you have me do? Abandon my armor and half my weapons in the name of fairness?"

Owain’s outburst caught Ashlynn completely by surprise, and for a moment, she couldn’t do anything beyond stare at him in shock. Not because he had guessed at her intentions, but because that had been exactly the tactic she’d used against Sir Broll when she faced him in a Trial by Combat more than half a year ago.

At the time, she’d only had a few weeks of lessons with Sir Thane, and her challenge to the powerful knight had been an act of desperation when she and Ollie were cornered by Sir Broll and Owain’s hunters as they escaped the Summer Villa. Forcing a ’power fighter,’ as Thane would have labeled Sir Broll, to face her without the armor that allowed him to wade in and deal overwhelming damage with a poleaxe had been the only way she could obtain a chance of victory at the time.

For Owain to suggest that she’d chosen that tactic again, without knowing about her duel with Sir Broll, surprised her enough that, for a moment, she couldn’t form the words to refute him.

"Are the men who fight beside you so worthless and pathetic that you have to resort to such underhanded schemes?" Owain said, looking away from Ashlynn toward the flame-haired knight who had been cozying up to Jocelynn all night long.

"You there!" Owain shouted. "Sir Ollis, or whatever your name is. Stand up for your lady and face me like a real knight. Don’t let her turn this into a joke."

He hadn’t forgotten the way the tall youth had stood between him and Jocelynn at the start of the evening, and he’d been planning to find an opportunity to settle the score between them ever since.

Now, seeing the young man wrapping an arm around the woman who was supposed to have been his bride tonight, Owain couldn’t refuse the opportunity to call the young man out. He would ’redeem’ himself in the eyes of the law and remind Jocelynn what real strength looked like in a single stroke of his sword.

"She doesn’t need me to fight for her, Lord Owain," Ollie replied without moving from his seat. "Lady Ashlynn was trained by the same knights who trained me, and better teachers besides them as well. She may not claim to be the ’greatest swordsman of her generation,’ but she’s stronger than I’ll ever be, and more than enough for the likes of you."

Owain’s face turned red at the rebuke, but before he could respond, Ashlynn spoke up in the patient, kind tones a mother would use to placiate a rebellious child.

"Who said that you wouldn’t have a fair fight, Husband?" Ashlynn asked, raising a brow at the fuming lord on the dais. "Who said that you’d have to leave your weapons and armor behind?"

"Isn’t it obvious?" Owain said, gesturing to her long coat and cavalier hat. "You can dress yourself up like a pirate if you wish, but that doesn’t make you a knight. If you’d come here to fight a battle yourself instead of letting your knights do the work, you’d have had the good sense to wear armor of your own."

"You’re not a knight, Ashlynn," Owain said in a voice that dripped with scorn. "You have no business pretending you can fight one, and unless you intend to borrow that Holy Flame Blade to face me, you have no chance of victory. So stop putting on an act and let a real man stand for you... If there are any men left on your side who aren’t too busy hiding behind your skirts," he sneered.

"Cadeyrn!" Ashlynn called, ignoring Owain’s taunting even as the men at the Blackwell table simmered in barely restrained fury at Owain’s taunts.

"Yes, your Dominion," the young squire said, standing up from his place among the Blackwell retinue and rushing to kneel at Lady Ashlynn’s feet.

"Take Captain Devlin and half a dozen men with you," Ashynn commanded without taking her eyes off Owain. "Fetch my armor from the carriage in the courtyard, it seems like I’ll need it after all," she said with a gleam of challenge in her emerald eyes as she stared at Owain. 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

"Husband," Ashlynn said sweetly. "Feel free to send your men for your armor. Everyone," Ashlynn said, turning to address the Templars who blocked the doors. "Stand down. My husband has demanded a Trial by Combat, as is his right. Until one of us has fallen to the other, NO ONE is to raise his hand against another. We can all respect a truce, can’t we?" Ashlynn asked, turning back to face Owain.

"Tell that to the traitor you placed among my men," Owain said, turning his gaze to Captain Albyn, who still held Sir Gilander at knife point. "Your lady called for a truce, didn’t she?"

"That she did," Albyn said smoothly as he pulled the knife away from the gray-haired knight’s throat before giving the older man a jovial pat on the back. "No hard feelings, mate, it’s just the way the winds blew today."

Gilander snorted, not bothering to dignify Albyn’s words with a reply. The aging knight didn’t know what to make of what had happened tonight, and somewhere along the way, he found himself relieved to have been taken hostage... Honor demanded that he stand and fight for his lord, and had it been Bors on that dais tonight, he’d have struggled and fought to the death...

But hearing the things that Owain had done wore away at what little sense of duty Gilander had left. So rather than fight or struggle, he’d let himself be taken prisoner, breaking the momentum of Lord Owain’s counterattack, and this was the result. He couldn’t blame Albyn for what he’d done... He only wished he served a lord as worthy as the pirate-knight’s lady seemed to be.

"Clear the hall," Owain commanded, turning to the head chamberlain who had been trying to make himself very small along with the rest of the household staff along the walls of the hall. "Sweep the floors bare and give us space to fight."

"And Ashlynn," Owain said, glaring at the woman who haunted him like his own personal poltergeist. "Don’t say I didn’t give you a chance to escape this..."