"...I’ll do it. Even if it hurts and even if I might die, I, I have to try..."

"Don’t say yes so quickly," Ashlynn said as she stroked her sister’s hair. "I won’t accept the answer you give me right away, and it’s been the same for others in the coven," she explained when she saw Jocelynn’s face begin to darken.

"Jocey, there’s so much I need to tell you about what it means to be a witch before you choose to become one," Ashlynn told her little sister. "I, I won’t lie, I want you to accept this and I want you to join me, but... I’m worried that, if you say yes tonight, before you understand, then you’ll start to hate me later on when you do understand, and then everything will only be worse between us."

"How could I hate you?" Jocelynn asked as tears flowed from her eyes. She looked up at Ashlynn with a mixture of hope, fear, and anxious determination. There was a chance to make things right between them. Or, if not right, better than she’d ever hoped they could be.

"Ash," Jocelynn said softly as she dipped the washcloth back in the warm, soapy water in the wash basin before bringing the cloth back to her sister’s hip, where blood from the wound to her thigh had smeared over the tree-shaped mark that had brought Ashlynn a lifetime of isolation and misery.

"You said I’d have a mark of my own, right?" Jocelynn said as she began to gently, almost reverently, wipe away the blood. "So I, I’d have to carry the secret like you did. I’d have to live like you did, and if I can’t make things right between us, then you could tell people about my mark and..."

"Jocey, no," Ashlynn said, shaking her head at her younger sister. "I don’t want to give you a mark to have something to hold over you," she explained. "I’m proud of my mark now and I don’t want to have to hide it away. Even though most people will never see it because of where it is," she added, her face heating slightly as she thought about the one person who saw her mark more than anyone and the kisses that Nyrielle bestowed on it.

"But it’s not just the mark," Jocelynn said, forcing herself to be honest about the other emotions swirling in her heart that made her blurt out that she’d take the risks to become a witch like her sister. "You, you killed Owain. With his armor and his swordsmanship and that dark, evil witchcraft from the throne making him stronger... You still killed him so he could never, ever, hurt me again. Me or anyone else," Jocelynn said, clenching her hands tightly enough that a small stream of water poured from the washcloth she was holding.

"I want that too," Jocelynn admitted. "If, if I get to live then, then I want to be strong enough that people don’t need to rescue me. Eleanor died protecting me from Percivus and his acolytes. She, she sacrificed herself to give me a miracle. She healed my wounds and protected me from the cold, and then she... she just... faded away."

"I didn’t know," Ashlynn whispered, hanging her head low as she watched grief and frustration war with each other in the set of her sister’s brow and the tightness of her jaw. "So that’s how Eleanor died... I should have come for you sooner," Ashlynn said. "It’s my fault that..." 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

"No, no, it’s not!" Jocelynn said sharply. "It’s mine. I’m the one who wanted Owain enough to get tangled up in everything after he, he tried to kill you," Jocelynn said, biting her lip as she struggled with how to respond to her sister and to make her understand. "I’m the one who kept ignoring the warnings and tried to make things work, and I just waded deeper and deeper, dragging Eleanor with me until the waves finally pulled us under..."

"Jocey," Ashlynn said, reaching out for her sister’s hands and pulling her into a tight embrace. The roots of the seed in her chest tightened around her heart the moment Jocelynn’s body pressed up against hers, but she didn’t care about that any more than she cared about the way the pain from her wounds flared as she put fresh pressure on them.

"I’m sorry," Ashlynn murmured as she stroked Jocelynn’s hair. "It’s been hard for you too, I know it has."

"I missed you so much," Jocelynn sobbed. "And I miss Eleanor and she... for me, she..."

"She protected you," Ashlynn said softly. "And you have to carry that. I do too, along with the people who died protecting me before I was strong enough to protect myself."

"Died protecting you?" Jocelynn said, pulling back enough to look at her sister in surprise. "But, you had the Lady of the Vale to keep you safe, didn’t you? Who, who could threaten her?"

"Nyri isn’t invulnerable, Jocey," Ashlynn said with a slight smile. "And she can’t always be at my side. There have been dangers on the way, battles I couldn’t run away from and ones I never wanted to fight... A lot happened. Some of it was wonderful, but some of it was terrifying too, and I, I’ve come close to dying more often than anyone likes," she said.

Now that Owain was dead and she’d rescued her sister, Ashlynn wished, more than anything, that she would be able to pull back a little bit. That she wouldn’t have to take so many risks. But there was too much danger still ahead of her, and she was afraid that it would be years before she could find anything resembling peace and safety.

She had too many enemies. Even with Owian dead and the Lothian line broken, there was still the Church and the Kingdom of Gaal. The wheels were already turning, and the Holy War the Lothians had sponsored would arrive at her doorstep whether she wanted it to or not, and if Jocelynn became a witch, then she’d be every bit as much of a target for the Inquisition as she was.

"It isn’t easy to be a witch," Ashlynn explained as she wiped a tear from Jocelynn’s cheek. "It isn’t instant power, and the things you saw tonight are only a piece of it. I’m not just strong because I’m a witch," Ashlynn pointed out. "I’m also strong because of my bond with Nyri, and that’s something you won’t ever have."

"But the dangers that you’ll face," Ashlynn added. "The people who will hate you just for what you are and all the struggles that come from wielding the power of the world... You’ll face all of those things and more. That’s why, even if you tell me that you want to become a witch tonight, I still won’t accept your answer until you understand..."