Chapter 450: Heart’s Desires
For a moment, Jocelynn was frozen, like a deer startled by hunters, as she looked at Owain’s furious gaze and the knife gripped firmly in his right fist. Looking at him, her mind flashed back to a time several months ago, at the Summer Villa, when she asked if her sister suffered before she died.
"Of course she didn’t suffer," Owain had told her, as he stroked Jocelynn’s hair. "She may have been a witch, but for a few hours, she was my wife. I gave her a clean death. A single stroke of my sword. Swift, merciful. She was your sister after all," he said gently. "She deserved that much."
"...a single stroke of my sword..."
The knife in Owain’s hand filled her vision, and she wondered if he could kill her with a single stroke of his blade.
"Did she use witchcraft on you?" Jocelynn had asked that night, so many months ago. "If she hurt you in any way..."
"As if I would give a witch the chance," Owain said fiercely, as if he was insulted that Ashlynn could threaten him in any way, even with the powers of witchcraft.
"... as if I would give her the chance..."
The words echoed through Jocelynn’s mind, and for a moment, her world trembled as Owain’s furious gaze broke open the lock on her doubts about what had happened that night between him and her sister. But now wasn’t the time to doubt, nor even the time to ask. Now, as she saw his normally warm gaze growing colder by the second, she had to act before... before he decided not to give her a chance.
"My lord," Jocelynn said, dropping to one knee beside him, resting both her hands on his knee and leaning forward to look up at him through quivering lashes. "You know my heart is yours, now and forever more. Loman is kind, handsome even," she admitted, only to tremble when she saw Owain’s eyes narrow at her honest appraisal of his brother.
"But he is no hero," she added quickly. "He cannot lead the people of Lothian March, no the future Lothian Duchy, because he lacks your strength, your drive, and your courage," she said, piling up heartfelt praises on the man she loved lest he doubt her genuine affection. "No man in the world is more perfect than you, my lord," she said, lowering her gaze to the floor as if she couldn’t bear to see him looking at her with hostility. "I would never betray our love," she added softly.
For what felt like an eternity, Owain said nothing, simply looking down at the kneeling figure of Jocelynn Blackwell as he struggled to suppress the surge of rage that overwhelmed his heart and senses. After all that he’d done for his father, all the battles he’d fought against demons on the Southern Steppe or even in the dark forests outside the Vale of Mists, after traveling the entire breadth of the country just to negotiate with merchants on his family’s behalf...
After everything he had done to show his father that he was strong enough to take up the throne, to win the battles that even his mighty father couldn’t, it had come to this. His father wanted to give the throne to the sniveling coward who had run into the safe shelter of the Church’s mighty walls while his brother risked life and limb against the demons.