CHAPTER 1069: LOVE’S END (PART TWO)

"Tonnis is safe, but he isn’t here," Rosie said, staring at her husband’s outstretched hand and refusing to take it. "We’re safe because her Dominion, Lady Ashlynn, sent two of her vampires to rescue us... Then she healed us. Lord Owain, he used Nightweaver Venom on your son and me. ’Spider Demon Poison,’" she added when she saw confusion on Tommin’s face.

"Your master wanted us to suffer because you abandoned him. He wanted you to watch us suffering... but you never cared about us enough to know that we were sick," she said as a heat began to build within her chest that slowly overwhelmed the anguish of seeing him laid low like this.

In the time since Tommin had left Owian’s service and turned away from his family to take the oath of a Templar, he hadn’t written a single letter to his family. He hadn’t visited Hurel village to check in on his people either, nor had he done anything to help his son prepare to take on the heavy responsibilities that would belong to him as the next knight of Hurel.

Tommin had acted as though his family no longer existed. Or perhaps it was better to say that he acted as though the Sir Tommin Pyre she’d married had fallen in battle, and Templar Tommin had nothing to do with the man he’d once been.

"But why?" Tommin asked, finally lowering his hand when he realized that Rosie would no longer reach out to him with comfort, even now in his final moments. "Why would Owain do something so vile to you... And to Tonnis? You’d done nothing to him. If he blamed anyone for anything, it should have been me! That’s why I left. So he wouldn’t harm you if he came to resent me..."

"I can explain," Hugo Hanrahan said, stepping out from behind Hauke’s looming, protective figure in order to address the broken templar and his wife. His heart twisted in his chest as he watched the tragedy unfolding in front of him, but he couldn’t let the victim of this tragedy bear the sole responsibility of explaining it to Tommin. Not when he had his own share of guilt for what had happened to her and her son.

"Lady Rosie," the young lord continued, bowing his head to the knight’s wife and choosing his words with care. He wasn’t blameless in this tragedy, but he wasn’t about to fall on his sword for Owain Lothian either.

"When I served Lord Owain as his Steward, he commanded Sir Rain and me to purchase the Nightweaver Venom to be used on you and your son," Hugo explained. "He wanted you to suffer from a malady that the Church couldn’t cure. He wanted your husband to feel betrayed by the Church the way he felt Sir Tommin had betrayed him."

"Once Sir Tommin proved he could wield a Holy Light Blade, it became impossible for Owain to move against him directly," Hugo continued as he turned to face the kneeling knight. "You were too well protected, Sir Tommin, and if the Church caught wind of Owain moving against one of their most holy Templars, they would not have hesitated to turn loose the Inquisition on him, son of a marquis or not."

Standing to the side, Diarmuid drew a sharp breath of cold wintery air, letting it out slowly as the magnitude of Owain’s cruelty and the complexity of his scheme struck him. The fact that Lady Ashlynn sent a pair of vampires to retrieve Sir Tommin’s wife and child had already become a painful reminder that the enemies of the Church were fighting this war with more honor and compassion than the Church’s greatest disciple in Lothian March had displayed.

Owain might be Lady Ashlynn’s bitter enemy in a blood feud that would surely end with one of their death’s, and Sir Tommin, first as Owain’s vassal and later as a representative of the Church had to be someone that Ashlynn wanted to see defeated and punished for what he’d done... yet she’d intervened to stop that feud from claiming the lives of Tommin’s wife and child.

The fact that she’d tried already spoke volumes of her restraint in this war, but the fact that she’d succeeded in curing someone afflicted by Spider Demon Poison was even more impressive. Diarmuid knew very well how few healers within the Church could cleanse such a lethal poison, and for most of them, it would require the use of sacred rites similar to the one Loman had used to fight in the Battle of Hanrahan.

The Church could save someone who had been deeply poisoned by Spider Demon Venom, but the longer the poison had been left to fester, the more lives would be placed in jeopardy by the healing rite. For Sir Tommin, the church wouldn’t have hesitated to risk the lives of dozens of acolytes... but for his family?

Even Diarmuid had to admit that the most the Church would have done was to ease Tonnis and Rosie’s suffering. Moreover, there were those within the Church and the Inquisition who would have sent an Inquisitor to sit with Sir Tommin as he grieved, propping up his faith in the Church that was failing him while honing his anguish into yet another weapon pointed at the ’demons’ whose only role in this tragedy was to be the source of the venom.

It was unlikely that Owain’s scheme would have broken Tommin’s faith completely... the Church would find a way to preserve a Templar who could wield a Holy Light Blade, and he might have been even more lethal after emerging from the tragedy, but the fact that Owain was willing to try said a great deal about how intensely the young lord hated Sir Tommin... and how little he feared the Church behind the Templar.

"Your master couldn’t hurt you," Rosie said bitterly. "But he could hurt us and make you watch. It’s just, he was wrong. Because you never cared about us enough to even notice... So Tonnis and I were doomed to die, just to make you suffer, and you, you didn’t even know we were sick."

"Even now, when Lady Ashlynn asked you for your last words," Rosie said with hot tears spilling down her cheeks. "You didn’t leave any words for me. No words for Tonnis. You turned to your Church and your hateful Holy Lord of Light because that’s all you care about!"

"You lied to me, Tommin," Rosie said, clinging to Sionid for support as she did as the other woman had suggested, pouring out her heart full of grievances. "You promised me the day we wed that we’d struggle together for the rest of our lives. You swore to me that you’d carry me forward so we reached the Heavenly Shores together."

"But now you’ve given up on even that!" Rosie cried. "Even if you thought we’d already died, you didn’t care to struggle for us. Where did your faith go, Tommin? Your faith that was so important to you... Didn’t you think that Tonnis and I would be waiting for you on the Heavenly Shores? Couldn’t you have asked to spend the rest of this life struggling to reach us there?"

The force of her grievance clawed at Tommin like a physical thing, tearing at him with greater force than the claws of a demon, ripping open the scars of his broken faith and exposing them once again.

He remembered the day they’d stood in the great Temple in Lothian City, bathed in the light of dawn filtering through the stained glass windows and reflecting off the golden icons of the Church. Her chestnut hair sparkled in the light like spun gold, and Tommin thought himself the luckiest man in the world when he promised to be her sword and shield, to defend her from harm and lead their family on a path of duty and devotion to each other and to the Holy Lord of Light, until they reached the Heavenly Shores at the end of this life...

The only day more precious than that had been the day just a year later, when they held each other and their infant son Tonnis, promising to build a home filled with love for their fledgling family. He’d hoped to have another son or even a daughter, but following Owain into battle and guarding his liege lord left him with much less time for his family than he would have wished for... So what time he’d had, he’d poured into raising Tonnis up to be a good knight who could follow in his footsteps.

He’d promised to defend his home, to raise up his son, to protect his wife and family till his dying day... but here he knelt, ready to give up his life because everything he believed in, everything he cherished in this world no longer had anything to do with him. He’d given it all up for his faith, and he’d told himself that doing so would keep them safe, and he’d been so very, very wrong.

"So you tell me, why, Tommin?" Rosie sobbed softly as her shoulders shook and her strength faded. "Why is it that, even after everything you’ve done, it still hurts so much to see you like this? What happened to the brave man I loved, to the knight who kept me safe in his arms and held up the world on his shoulders?"

"Is there anything left of him in there?" Rosie asked mournfully. "Or did that man die long ago, and I was just too blind to notice?"