The more intense a moment is, the stronger the emotions contained within it are, the shorter it tends to last. Like a candle burning brightly at both ends, the surge of feelings in Jocelynn’s heart slowly faded after Ollie left, leaving Jocelynn feeling weak and wrung out like a rag hanging limply in her sister’s embrace.

"I’m sorry," Jocelynn said, pulling back from Ashlynn and blotting the tears from her eyes. "I, I shouldn’t have... I just...."

"Hush," Ashlynn interrupted gently, placing a finger on Jocelynn’s lips.

Ashlynn had her own storm to weather, and just standing there with Jocelynn in her arms had both soothed and tormented her own anguished heart. At times, her arms wanted to squeeze her sister tight, and worlds bubbled up in her throat, ready to promise that she’d never let her go.

Still, there was a part of her, a darker, wounded part, that mocked her for setting aside her own hurts, again and again, to offer Jocelynn comfort. It was just like before, when she sacrificed her future, promising to marry Owain Lothian so that everyone else in her family could get what they needed or wanted while she left her home behind to live with a monster...

When would she finally stand up for herself? After all this time, when would she finally stop believing that things would work themselves out somehow?

The entire time that Ashlynn held Jocelynn, she teetered between the desire to pull her closer and the need to push her away. In the end, she did neither, simply holding her sister lightly and allowing her to give vent to the fears and pains in her heart.

"H-how can you be like this?" Jocelynn asked, staring at her sister’s calm, reassuring strength with puffy, red, tear-filled eyes. "I, I know that Isabell told you wha-what I did," Jocelynn sobbed. "So, how? How can you still hold me like this? How can you still..." Still love me? She wanted to ask, but she couldn’t bring herself to say the words.

At first, when Ashlynn had stormed into the Great Hall, she’d been too overwhelmed by the impossibility of it all to even question her sister’s love. Then, she’d been consumed by the horrible feeling that Ashlynn hadn’t known...

She’d watched as Ashlynn fought for her, and for herself, and the whole time a seed of dread had grown larger and larger in her belly as she thought about how she would tell Ashlynn what she’d done and whose fault it really was.

And then, just as she’d finally begun to face the notion of telling her sister so she could finally receive the condemnation, the fury, and the hatred that she deserved... Isabell told her that Ashlynn already knew, and Jocelynn had no defense against that.

"You have to be a saintess," Jocelynn murmured softly. "No one but a saintess could forgive me for..."

"I haven’t forgiven you," Ashlynn interrupted. Her tone was sharper than she’d meant it to be, but she pushed on anyway, saying the things that needed to be said. "Jocey, I don’t know if I can ever forgive you for what you did," she said, pursing her lips and looking directly into her sister’s seafoam eyes.

"Sit with me," Ashlynn said, pulling Jocelynn toward one of the sitting room’s plush sofas. "Let me... Let me try to explain."

Ever since she’d learned the truth, that Jocelynn had been the one who betrayed her secret, she’d rehearsed this moment in her mind over and over again. She’d gone through countless scenarios, some of them filled with shouting, others turning violent.... But in the end, every time she prodded at the wound in her heart, there was one she kept coming back to again and again, and a question that needed an answer.

"Jocey, I can understand being taken in by Owain’s charms," Ashlynn started slowly. "Even I found him... attractive, I suppose, in his own way. When we first met, I thought that it wouldn’t be so bad to be married to such a man. It could certainly have been worse. He could have been a fish-faced dandy like Count DuCree’s son... what was his name?" Ashlynn asked, trying to lighten the mood enough that she could say the things that were hard.

"Oh, Light, Wist DuCree?" Jocelynn said, her eyes going wide in horror. "The one with the fat lips and the oiled mustache who thinks we should be sending our fleets to sail around the End of the World to establish new colonies?"

"That’s the one," Ashlynn said, shuddering as she recalled how the obnoxious young lord had shrugged off the idea of losing half a fleet of ships and all the men they carried as the ’price of progress.’ The man had more in common with Owain than she’d realized at the time.

"Wist DuCree has as much depth as a puddle," Ashlynn continued. "He isn’t difficult to see through, and there’s nothing redeeming under the surface. I, I might still have married him if Father thought that it was the only thing that would have saved our family, but... It would have been much harder to lie to myself and pretend that I could have a good life living with him."

"With Owain," Ashlynn said, her voice catching slightly on her dead husband’s name as a vision of his final moments flickered behind her eyes. Not the charming, handsome Owain, but the Owain who had lost an eye to her sword in the final killing stroke of their duel. The Owain who would never trouble her or her loved ones again.

"With Owain," Ashlynn repeated, pushing forward as best she could. "I could understand the attraction and even infatuation. I can even understand how ’perfect’ our life together must have looked from the outside. I, we I guess, we worked hard to make it look that way, even when we fought in private."

"So, I can understand, at least a little, why you would be envious of the life it looked like I was leaving for," Ashlynn said. "But what I can’t understand, and what hurts me so much, is why you never talked to me about what you wanted."

"Help me understand, Jocey," Ashlynn said around the lump that formed in her throat. "Why did you run to him instead of confiding in me?"