-CLANG!-

-SHIIIIIK!-

-CLANG CLANG!-

The sounds of the duel filled the air as Ashlynn and Owain traded blows at a furious and increasing pace.

On the Blackwell side of the Great Hall, Jocelynn clung to Ollie’s arms, sheltering in his warmth and strength even as her heart felt as though it had been left out in the cold, winter wind.

Jocelynn knew Owain, and she’d seen him fight countless times against Sir Rain, Sir Franc, and the other knights of the Lothian house. She knew he was strong, she knew he was fast, and she knew he was absolutely ruthless, but she’d never seen him this... intense.

At times, Jocelynn thought she could see sparks flying when Ashlynn and Owain’s blades met, and the sound of metal scraping against metal whenever they came close enough to bind and rain down blows on each other’s bodies was piercing enough to feel in the depths of her chest.

More shocking than Owain’s intensity, however, was her sister’s answering fury. Ashlynn gave ground. Not once or twice in the opening exchange, but several times as Owain used his advantages of height, reach, and power to batter her around the dueling square.

Any time it seemed like Ashlynn might finally have found a counter for Owain’s swordwork, when the clipped point of Water’s Edge approached the gaps in his armor, he rushed her like an enraged bull, knocking her aside with pure physical power, denying her the chance to get close to him where she could do real damage.

"Sir, Sir Ollie," Jocelynn said as her fingers tightened on his arm. "Can she... Can she really...?"

She couldn’t bring herself to finish the question, but she didn’t need to as the flame-haired knight understood the worries in her heart.

"Have faith in her," Ollie said without taking his eyes off the duel. "Sir Thane always said that duels between knights in armor never end as quickly as they begin. At this pace, Owain will exhaust himself eventually, and your sister has more stamina than him by far. She’s just waiting him out and looking for an opportunity of her own," he said.

He’d intended to sound confident, but a thread of very real worry had wrapped itself around his words, and in the end, his reassurance landed more as a question than a statement of fact.

Something was very wrong with this duel. Ollie had fought Owain before, in the visions offered by the Cypress Seed during his trial of witchcraft, and he knew the man was an extraordinary fighter. Now that he could see it from the outside, however, against an opponent as strong and swift as Lady Ashlynn, he realized that Owain’s fighting abilities extended far beyond extraordinary skill.

Owain was a master of his blade, and even though the sword was new to him, he gave no sign that the weapon was unfamiliar. Rather, the man and sword moved as one, united in body and purpose. More than that, his movements contained the same subtleties that Ollie had come to admire in Thane’s swordsmanship.

The vampire who’d trained him was over a hundred years old and had spent most of his life learning to master a blade. He knew that dropping his tip by half an inch or shifting his weight by a fraction between his feet could transform a strong block into a deflecting one, and that a thrust with the point could turn into a cut with the edge just as quickly.

Thane had a dozen times a dozen options at his fingertips every time he picked up a blade and any move you made gave him a dozen more. Most of those options were useless to the ordinary fighter, but to a man with the speed, strength, and senses of a vampire, changing techniques mid-flow required no more effort than a lord changing his mind about which dish to sample at a feasting table.

Owain didn’t fight like an extraordinary knight, Ollie realized. Owain fought like Thane.

Within the dueling square, Ashlynn had arrived at much the same conclusion that Ollie had. Fighting Owain was... wrong. Wrong in a way that went far beyond the cold, methodical approach to his fighting and wrong in a way that had nothing to do with the sword that behaved nothing like what she’d practiced for.

There was a strength in Owain’s blows that no ordinary man could match, and fighting him felt familiar in was that sent shivers down her spine.

Her hands stung from the force of his blows, and sweat poured down between her breasts as she struggled to keep her breathing smooth and even while she adjusted to his accelerating pace. He’d been quick and decisive in his opening moves, but he was twice as fas now and hitting three times as hard, and still, he showed no signs of having reached his limit.

"Like Jacques," Ashlynn realized as the reptilian witch’s figure briefly overlapped in her mind’s eye with Owain.

In his armor, Owain could almost match the Sandbox Witch for size, and when he waded in, he approached her with the same invulnerable confidence that Jacques had carried into every clash when they’d practiced together in the briar.

Owain’s blows lacked the explosive, concussive impact of the Sandbox Witch’s punches. Nothing she’d seen before or since could emulate the effect of Jacques’ distinctive witchcraft, but Owain’s blows had a crushing power all their own, and Ashlynn could already feel a number of bruises forming on her body from the blows that had slipped past her guard.

Owain used his sword the way that Jacques used his fists and tail. At times, he battered her, and at times, he moved with explosive quickness, changing directions to attack her from an unexpected angle. The only difference was that there was no witcraft in Owain’s...

Ashlynn’s eyes opened wide in surprise, and a moment later, a cry of pain slipped past her lips.

"Agh!" Ashlynn grunted as the tip of Owain’s sword found an opening at last, sliding along the edge of her breastplate before slipping past the rim of her spaulder, splitting the worn links of her chainmail and cutting a long red line along the meat of her upper arm before Owain’s recovery pulled the blade free.

The last layers of her arming jacket, reinforced by a layer of Nightweaver silk, stopped the wound from being deep, but when Owain drew back his blade and retreated to reopen the distance, the bright red blood that stained its tip was plain for everyone to see.

Everyone, that is, save for Ashlynn herself, whose eyes were no longer fixed on the blade’s tip, but its hilt. The hilt that had been carved from a piece of plundered Ancient Oak...

"Owain," Ashlynn whispered as she stared at the abomination in his hands that fed strength and power into the Lothian Lord that never should have belonged to him. "What have you done?"