Chapter 720: Traitor Revealed
"You know, don’t you?"
The question, filled with months of pain and anguish, pierced Isabell’s heart like the lance of a charging knight, tearing away her ability to hide from this question for even a moment longer.
Just the day before, she’d still entertained hopes of helping these sisters reconcile, but now, those hopes felt feeble and thin once she came to understand what Ashlynn had endured in the past half year. When she left Lothian City, she felt like she’d come to understand how the past six months had been a slow, ever-increasing torment for Jocelynn as Owain revealed more and more of his cruel, true self to her.
Jocelynn understood that she’d made a terrible mistake, one that had cost her a person who truly loved her and bought her the ’affection’ of a brutal man who wouldn’t hesitate to do the same to her or worse if she ever crossed him. Now, Isabell stood before living proof that Jocelynn’s mistake, as horrible as it was, hadn’t torn her sister away from her forever. It should have been a joyous moment of revelation that would precede an even happier reunion.
But Isabell had seen for herself just the night before how Ashlynn responded to betrayal after what had happened to her, and the things she’d heard from Heila today only made it worse.
From the betrayal of Elder Paulus and his grandson Torsten in the High Pass to the ancestral spirits who had possessed young lord Hauke to attack Heila and Ashlynn, Heila had told Isabell everything that her lady had endured to reach the place where she was now. After hearing all that, Isabell understood that Ashlynn had learned all too well the feeling of a knife in the back, clutched by a hand she trusted to be at her side.
Now, months of pain and anguish turned Ashlynn’s gaze murky even while a fierce anger, bordering on pure hatred, simmered beneath it, churning up a maelstrom of boiling emotion that the young woman could no longer contain.
"Ashlynn," Isabell said softly as she gathered up her courage to at least make an attempt at paving the way for the two sisters to reconcile. "I, I won’t lie to you. I know. But, are you sure that you want to know? If it’s someone who loves you..."