CHAPTER 1116: SUMMONED TO BREAKFAST (PART TWO)

"Tea and honeycakes," Aubin offered as he helped her into the carriage. "A friendly ear if you need someone to listen. Advice if you need help making a decision. Or silence and a meal, just so you don’t have to eat alone, though I suggest you keep your meals light and bland for the next few days until your body is ready for a more substantial meal."

"The Church is not your enemy, Lady Jocelynn," he said solemnly. "But I cannot say it’s been your friend either. I have no illusions or plans to befriend you for the Church’s interests. Those will tend to themselves between your father and greater men than I. But I think that you, Lady Jocelynn, could very much use a friend right now, and so my door is always open to you."

"Thank you, your Worship," Jocelynn said, feeling a trace of familiar warmth in his words that reminded her all too much of Eleanor’s quiet, supportive friendship. "It may be some time before I’m free to visit, but if I have the chance... I’d like to speak again some day," she promised.

She wasn’t certain that she’d be able to keep that promise. Now that Bors was dead, everything would happen very quickly and she feared that the hours she’d stolen to mourn her cousin’s passing would be the last quiet ones she would have for days or weeks to come.

But if she could, if she could find a way to escape from the gilded cage of Lothian Manor, just for a few hours... She resolved herself to take the High Priest up on his offer, even if it was just to repay the kindness he’d already shown her tonight.

But now, she had to face Owain over a breakfast table, in the office where Bors Lothian had died just the night before.

She wished that Owain would have done something, anything, to make this morning easier for her. She would almost have preferred to meet with him in his own chambers rather than the morbid office of the Lothian lords, filled with grinning demon skulls, and the stuffed and mounted trophies of more than a century of Lothian conquest.

How Bors wife, Isla, could sit calmly in that space, working on her embroidery and watching over her children, Jocelynn had no idea. But now, it seemed like Owain intended for her to step into the space his mother had vacated, remaining at his side as he brought Lothian March under his rule.

The office where Owain awaited her felt like a battlefield, and Jocelynn dressed accordingly. The dark, ocean blue dress she chose was high necked, completely covering both her bosom and the scar across her chest left by Bors’ attack. The whalebone corset she added to the dress forced her to remain upright, no matter how much she wanted to curl up and hide herself away, but more importantly, it felt like a layer of armor when she slipped it on.

From her ears, a pair of pearl earrings dangled. They had once belonged to her grandmother, and they were among the most treasured pieces of jewelry she owned. But now, for the first time since she’d retrieved Ashlynn’s jewelry from the imposter, Samira, she added the matching pearl necklace that had been given to her older sister after her grandmother’s death.

She briefly considered adding one of the silver and emerald studded bracelets from Ashlynn’s jewelry box... It would have been comforting to carry a memento from her sister while she had to force herself to play the besotted young woman she’d been just a few months ago. Ashlynn had managed to court Owain for two whole years, and Jocelynn was increasingly certain that her sister had noticed the warning signs that Jocelynn herself had been blind to.

But, even as her hand hovered over the jewelry box, she couldn’t make herself do it. Ashlynn owned less than a third the amount of jewelry that Jocelynn did, and each piece was distinct. If Owain recognized it, if he was offended by seeing her wearing something that had belonged to her sister...

She didn’t know how Owain would react, but she was coming to understand the monster within the man well enough to be afraid of finding out. In the end, she went without bracelets at all... everything else reminded her too strongly of being shackled in the dungeons, and if she couldn’t turn to her sister’s jewels for comfort, then it was better to leave her wrists completely bare.

She wished that she had a knife to add to the outfit, even though any weapon she took up was unlikely to pose a threat to a knight as skilled as Owain was. Still, the image of drawing close to him, taking advantage of his lust as he pawed at her in order to bury a knife in his heart, was a thought that had come to her more and more frequently of late.

It was an unrealistic fantasy, and she knew it. Her chances of killing Owain were far too small, and she would likely follow in Ashlynn’s footsteps, dying by his hand just for making the attempt.

There was a time when that wouldn’t have bothered her. She knew that she didn’t deserve to be the one who survived after she betrayed Ashlynn, and she deserved her life even less after Eleanor had fallen to protect her. But, as unworthy as her life was, she couldn’t let go of it yet.

After all, she still had to find a way to make Percivus pay for what he had done, and her best chance of that lay in convincing Owain to make a move against the deranged Inquisitor. If she could do that, and find justice for Eleanor’s death, then she was willing to play along with whatever Owain wanted, for as long as it took to see justice done.

And after that... there was always time to find justice for her sister too, even if it cost her everything to do it.