Ashlynn sat in silence for several heartbeats as she struggled to digest what Jocelynn had told her.

It would have been easier, she thought, if Jocelynn had truly been a manipulative, scheming backstabber who had sought Owain out in a twisted bid to torment her sister and steal the ’perfect’ life she had. It would have broken her heart, but it would have been cleaner. Simpler.

Instead, she was confronted with a much harder, much messier truth. Jocelynn had betrayed a secret she shouldn’t have, and the things she’d told Owain had been the trigger for everything that followed after... But she’d done it from a place of hurt, loneliness, and her own sense of betrayal.

Worse, she’d done it as Owain manipulated her with strong wine and kind words, preying on her feelings and putting her in a compromising position where something like Ashlynn’s deepest secret could just ’slip out.’

Jocey should have known better. She should have known better than to accept the strong wine, or, even if she accepted it, she should have known to hold herself to a few sips. Neither of them had a good head for strong drink, and they both knew it. But in her place of hurt and isolation, Jocelynn had given in to the dark impulses of her heart and accepted the seductive lure of Owain’s charm and heady wine... And then she’d said things that she could never take back.

Could Ashlynn understand what had happened that night, when Owain found Jocelynn hiding in a hallway away from the feast? Yes, she could understand it. But could she forgive it? That was something else entirely...

"Would you like to know?" Ashlynn said slowly as she tried to sift through the maelstrom of feelings in her heart. "Would you like to know what happened after you told him? What happened to me?"

"Mmm," Jocelynn murmured, nodding her head. "Owain said that he killed you in a single stroke of his sword, but I, I don’t believe it. He, he must have made it hurt or... Or he wouldn’t have felt satisfied," she said, thinking of what he had done to Percivus’s acolytes and the way he’d ’tutored’ her when he placed a knife in her hands to kill Percivus himself.

"No, he didn’t use his sword," Ashlynn said, shaking her head. "He didn’t need to. I was weak and powerless that night. I’d never touched the power of the world, I didn’t know what it meant to be a witch or how to use the gift I’d been born to... I was completely helpless."

Owain had torn the dress from her body to confirm that she bore the mark of the witch and then the beating had begun. He’d started with his fists, pummeling her to the ground, but once she fell, he’d kicked and stomped on her helpless, frail body until she lay broken and unmoving on the floor...

"But that’s not what I meant," Ashlynn said as she pulled herself free of the nightmare that had haunted her for nine long months. "I meant after Tommin and Broll left me in a shallow grave... How I came back and how I changed."

"I, I would," Jocelynn said. She knew that whatever had happened afterward, it must have been hard on Ashlynn.

Other people might not know how different her sister was from the woman she’d been; they might think that Ashlynn had always been as strong and courageous as any Blackwell captain on the deck of their ship, but Jocelynn knew better. The Ashlynn she’d known might have been brave, but she’d never possessed the strength or the skill to make a stand like the one she’d made tonight, and she’d been wise enough to understand her limits.

When Jocelynn ran to her sister tonight and said they should run, the Ashlynn she’d known would have done it because escaping would have been all she would have hoped for. But the Ashlynn of today was a different woman entirely.

"In that case," Ashlynn said, glancing toward the hearth where Ollie had set out a basin of water to warm beside the fire. "Help me up, and join me by the fire," Ashlynn said.

"I need your help, Jocey," she added softly. "Getting out of the rest of these clothes," she explained, gesturing at the arming jacket and padded breeches she still wore over her blouse and trousers. "And letting down my hair and washing up," she added. "And right now, just standing feels like too much work. So... can you help me?"

In truth, there was a part of Ashlynn that wanted to curl up on the sofa they were sitting on and just fall asleep now. After everything she’d been through today, her body was at its limit, and the conversation with Jocelynn placed an even heavier burden on her heart.

But this moment was too fragile. More than that, Jocelynn had just taken an extraordinary step, baring her heart and sharing a truth that had haunted her for just as long as Owain’s violence on her wedding night had haunted Ashlynn.

Right now, Ashlynn could feel Jocelynn teetering on the edge of an abyss and as much as part of her wanted to wrap her arms around her sister, to tell her that everything would be all right and she was forgiven the way she’d done with a much younger Jocelynn who accidentally dropped one of her books in a tide pool when she’d taken it to read at the beach... She couldn’t.

Not yet, and maybe not ever. The wounds in Ashlynn’s heart were still too raw tonight.

But that didn’t mean she couldn’t extend a hand to her sister, to trust her with something small and ask for her help once again. And from that, maybe they could find their way to something larger.

"O-of course I can help you," Jocelynn said, turning bright red in embarrassment as she realized that Ashlynn was still wearing the innermost layer of her armor and that she hadn’t even tended to her wounds.

"Here," Jocelynn said quickly, rising from the sofa. "Let me set a chair by the hearth and fetch my soaps," she said as she sprang into motion. "And then... then you can tell me what happened to you these past nine months..."