Chapter 582: A Letter Unsent
Ashlynn’s attempts to use her recurring nightmares as a means of finding the person who betrayed her turned out to be worse than a waste of effort. Unlike Nyrielle, who relived her memories each night, Ashlynn’s dreams, no matter how vivid and real they felt, were still dreams. They still prayed on her hopes and fears and the things she ’discovered’ within them were no more reliable than wild guesses.
In one dream, she managed to catch a young female acolyte, peeking in her chambers within the temple. Later on, she saw that same acolyte whispering in Owain’s ear during the preparations for the banquet. In another dream, it was one of the maids from Blackwell County who had accompanied them on the long journey that stopped Owain just outside the door of the bridal chamber to tell him what she had seen on Ashlynn’s hip several years ago.
The worst nightmares were the ones where her own family moved against her. In some of those dreams, a member of her family arrived in the bridal chamber after Owain had beaten her nearly to death in order to confirm that she was ’dead.’
"The deed is done?" Count Rhys Blackwell asked, striding into the bridal chambers where Ashlynn lay limp on the floor, unmoving and barely breathing after suffering yet another beating at Owain Lothian’s hands.
"I’ve done your dirty work," Owain said, fetching a handkerchief to wipe Ashlynn’s blood from his knuckles and the places on his face where dark crimson droplets had splattered when he pummeled her once beautiful face. "You’ll keep your promise to deliver the ships and supplies that we need, no matter the cost, won’t you?"
"As long as you keep the other half of your bargain, young lord Owain," Rhys Blackwell said darkly. "The Lothian artifact that allows your family to birth multiple sons into each generation. I expect that it will work for my Maela, or we won’t have a deal..."
"Relax, Count Blackwell," Owain said as he gestured for Sir Tommin and Sir Broll to carry Ashlynn away. "Even if it doesn’t, you still have one more daughter. If you cannot father a son with Countess Blackwell, then I will wed Jocelynn, and I can promise you that I will father enough grandsons to provide you with a method of continuing your bloodline’s rule over Blackwell County..."
Listening to her father speak over her ’body’ in such a cold, detached way, as though the wedding had been a trap all along, left Ashlynn heartbroken, waking in tears and struggling to catch her breath through the sobs that shook her body long after the feeling of being buried beneath the wet soil of the Vale of Mists left her.
But Rhys Blackwell wasn’t the only person who appeared in her dreams after betraying her. Another time, it was her mother who appeared, this time claiming that she had to put an end to her daughter’s evil and that she couldn’t allow the spawn of a witch to inherit both Blackwell County and Lothian March. Before the nightmare ended, she watched as her mother pleaded with Owain, offering up Jocelynn to buy his silence about the Blackwell family’s ’great sin’ of sheltering a witch.