"Ollie. Liam." Ashlynn turned to where the two young men stood beside Owain’s body. The layers of his armor had been neatly piled against the foot of the dais, leaving him wearing nothing but his blood-stained arming jacket and trousers.

He looked smaller than he had before, and without his helm, there was no denying the ruin that Water’s Edge had made of his once handsome face. Looking at him, Ashlynn didn’t know quite how to feel... Triumphant? Relieved?

Tired. In the end, she felt too exhausted to carry her hatred for him any further. It would be years before she would truly walk out of his shadow... He’d done too much harm, left too many problems behind that she would have to resolve to be ’free’ of him any time soon. But she could make a clean break with him now, and the rest would fade in time, she was certain of that.

"Bring him up," she told Liam and Ollie. "Set him on the throne."

Liam and Ollie shared a brief look, and then they bent to the work, each taking one of Owain’s arms across his shoulders. Owain had been a tall man, and even without his harness his weight was substantial, but they carried him up the steps of the dais without speaking, and they set him on the Lothian throne the way a squire sets a tournament prize on a stand; carefully, with the small reverence the act seemed to demand of them, even though neither of them respected the man whose body they were placing.

Owain’s head lolled forward against his chest until Ollie tilted it gently back so that he sat upright. The single eye Ashlynn had not put a sword through stared, dull and unseeing, at the rafters of the Great Hall.

If you ignored the wound to his face, he looked, Ashlynn thought, like a man who had fallen asleep after too many cups of wine. He looked nothing like the man who had beaten her half to death and ordered her buried alive.

She walked the last steps across the dais with Jocelynn’s hand resting on her back, steadying her from behind as she stood before the throne. The acorn in her palm pulsed with its scintillating light; crimson, midnight, emerald, and the wood of the cap stirred against her skin as if remembering a wind it had not felt in a very long time.

She placed her free hand against Owain’s chest, over the linen of his arming jacket. The weave was soaked through with sweat and blood. She could feel, faintly, the cooling stillness underneath. His body was already beginning to forget that it had once been a man.

"This is goodbye, Owain," she said in a voice that seemed strangely flat to her ears. "You would never have been a fit father, for my children, for Jocelynn’s or Samira’s, and the world is a better place because you are no longer in it."

"But you can still do one last thing, to give birth to something special," she said as she drew Water’s Edge. "And then, we will all be free of you..."

The hall behind her had gone silent. Even the kneeling whispers of ’Saintess’ had stopped, because no one in the march had ever seen what was about to happen, but they all understood that they were about to witness something they would tell their children and their grandchildren about.

Ashlynn placed the point of Water’s Edge against the linen of Owain’s chest, just below the sternum, and drove it in. Not deep. There was no need for a killing thrust like the one she had given to his eye. Just deep enough to part the cloth and the flesh beneath it, to open a place in him where something could be planted, much like she’d planted seed of witchcraft within her own chest for each and every member of her coven.

Just like the seed she nurtured in her chest, even now.

With a twist of her wrist, she widened the wound before she withdrew the blade. Blood welled slowly from the hole in Owain’s chest; sluggish, dark, the blood of a man already dead.

"Jocey," Ashlynn said softly. "Step back from the throne. Now, please. Ollie will keep you safe," she said.

Jocelynn’s hand reluctantly pulled away from her sister’s back, and she hesitated for a moment, as if she wasn’t confident that Ashlynn could stand without her support.

"Come with me," Ollie said, wrapping an arm protectively around Jocelynn’s shoulders and guiding her away to a safe distance. "I know she feels fragile," he said softly. "She pushes herself too hard sometimes and... She’s doing it again," he said with a worried glance over his shoulder.

"But she can do this," Ollie promised. "I promise you she can. And after that, we’ll all be ready to support her. And this time, so will you," he said gently.

"Is this, is this going to hurt her?" Jocelynn asked quietly.

"Probably," Isabell said bluntly before Ollie could try to plaster over the price that Ashlynn was about to pay in order to unmake something so vile that it had twisted the fate of the entire march for close to a century.

"Pain has never stopped your sister from doing what she feels is right," Isabell added. "Just like coming back for you was something she had to do, even if it was hard, and even if it hurt," she said with a meaningful look at the younger woman.

"You, you mean that she..." Jocelynn said, her face draining of color.

"She knows," Isabell said, refusing to sugarcoat it. "And still, she came, because she still has hope and she still loves you. So, when the time comes, face her openly, even if it’s painful. It’s what your sister would do, and I know that you can do it too."

"Isabell," Ollie said with a warning edge in his voice. "Now is not the time..."

"No, no, it’s fine," Jocelynn said as she locked her eyes on Ashlynn’s figure. This whole night she’d been wondering whether or not her sister knew, and if she didn’t, how she could ever tell her the truth after all her sister had done for her.

But Ashlynn already knew, and still, she came for her...

The weight of it settled onto her chest like a stone as she finally understood. It felt unbearably heavy, but Jocelynn refused to run away from it. If her sister could bear so much for so many people... Then she would follow in her sister’s footsteps.

She would tell Ashlynn everything, and then... then she would face whatever came next, no matter how much it hurt, because that was exactly what Ashlynn would do.