Chapter 211: A Burning Question
"Of course, my Lord," Jocelynn said, snuggling close to Owain and pressing her head against his firm, muscular shoulder. "I put my trust in you for everything," she whispered.
This close to him, her heart thundered in her chest and her face flushed bright red. The warmth from his body seemed to radiate through his fine linen tunic, and the rich scent of woodsmoke still clung to his freshly washed skin, mixed with the subtle hints of cedar and musk from the expensive soaps he’d used.
This moment felt like a gift from the Holy Lord of Light, offering her everything she had ever wanted from life. Owain desired her deeply, she could feel it from the strength in his arm as he held her close, tensed like he couldn’t allow her to escape.
Looking up at him from inches away, she fought down the desire to reach out to him with her soft, slightly parted lips. What would he taste like? What would the kiss be like? Gentle and tender like his eyes when he looked at her or fierce and possessive, asserting his claim to her the way his arm already had?
But one question held her back. One answer she still didn’t have.
Confessor Eleanor had been circumspect with her questions during their journey from Blackwell County to the Summer Villa but it was impossible for someone as intelligent as Jocelynn to fail to notice a certain trend.
There were too many times when the Confessor asked questions about Ashlynn’s habits, their time together, or her more unusual hobbies for Jocelynn to mistake the other woman’s interest in her sister for idle curiosity. When she confronted the woman, she didn’t even deny it.
The stone walls of her chamber had felt cold and unyielding that morning as Eleanor’s questions seemed to chip away all of the confidence and justifications Jocelynn had painstakingly constructed around her heart in the days since her sister’s death.
Even now, remembering the confessor’s stern face and the firm grip of her bony hands whenever she offered a ’comforting’ touch made Jocelynn’s shoulders tense. The woman’s voice had been soft, almost gentle, but each question had cut like a knife.
"There is no doubt that your sister possessed the mark of the witch," the Confessor said, accepting as fact something that very few people had witnessed. "Your decision to tell Lord Owain that his newlywed wife was a witch likely saved both his life and his soul. But if your sister was a witch, how did she use her powers? What evil might she have done? Who did she learn from?"
Each question landed on Jocelynn like a stone dropped from the top of a tower because she had no answers for them. She and her sister were different in many ways, they had been raised too differently to have great similarities, but she’d never seen her sister’s actions as wicked or mysterious.
When had Ashlynn transformed from a loving elder sister, trapped in her family’s manor, into a scheming and deadly witch that had to die for her crimes? Jocelynn couldn’t say and her inability to answer Confessor Eleanor’s questions ate away at the carefully constructed certainty in her heart that there had been no other fate her sister could have had.