Chapter 721: The Sister She Loved
"But Jocey isn’t a little girl anymore," Ashlynn insisted, rounding on Isabell as she gave vent to everything buried in her heart. She’d suspected for some time now, even feared it was true, but she would have felt so much better about the betrayal if it had come from her mother. Her mother had at least suffered because of Ashlynn’s existence, but what had Ashlynn ever done to Jocelynn to deserve this?
She’d tried so hard to be a good big sister. When Jocey was young, Ashlynn stayed up late with her, reading her favorite stories long into the night whenever social obligations kept their parents away, even if they were gone for days at a time. She’d shared all of her secrets with her little sister, holding nothing back because she thought that Jocelynn deserved a big sister who led by example.
As children, Ashlynn brought Jocelynn to play in her very first garden, digging in the dirt together without a care in the world for what ’proper young ladies’ should be doing. Jocelynn had looked up at her sister as if she were a miracle worker when Ashlynn showed her the sweet peas and marigolds she’d planted and carefully tended until they turned into colorful, beautiful flowers.
When they were young, Jocey had even insisted in wearing clothes that were the same color and fabric as her older sister’s, even when her parents explained that she was growing too fast to wear things that were as delicate as the refined dresses that Ashlynn was starting to wear as she began to transition from being a girl to a young woman.
Jocelynn used to idolize her older sister, and they seemed inseparable for years after she was born.
Things began to change when Jocey was old enough to attend more functions with other noble ladies close to her own age. After years had passed without any hope of an heir, Rhys Blackwell had begun making considerations for his daughters, and that included sending Jocelynn to the sorts of gatherings that were expected of young noblewomen that Ashlynn herself had never been able to be a part of.
Slowly, Jocelynn started drifting away from her bookish, cloistered sister. She started to dress and act more like her peers instead of imitating her big sister, but she still understood the cage that Ashlynn lived in and tried to make it easier for her. There were both growing up and a distance was forming between them but Ashlynn had never felt like Jocey was abandoning her.
"They gave out party favors at Young Lady Tise’s coming of age feast," a fourteen-year-old Jocelynn had said excitedly as she held out a slender, polished wooden case with both hands. "They didn’t have any extras, but you can have mine," she said, excitedly opening the box to reveal a metal-tipped quill pen with a lustrous blue-green feather.
"In the old countries, they say that ladies who keep a diary written with the tail feather of a blue jay will never have sorrows to write about," Jocelynn said, excitedly pressing the expensive ’party favor’ toward her older sister as she recounted the story that had been told at the party as though it was a solemn truth. "You write more than I do, so you should have it!"
Briefly, Ashlynn wondered if the quill pen was still among her belongings in Lothian Manor or the Summer Villa. She’d used it for years, and it had been one of her most treasured possessions.
Had Owain pressed it on Samira as part of her ’disguise’, the way he’d given the imposter her grandmother’s pearls? Had Jocelynn or Ashlynn’s family reclaimed the treasured quill as a reminder of their lost loved one? Or had it been thrown on a rubbish heap, discarded with the same rough treatment that Ashlynn herself had faced when Owain’s knights dumped her into a shallow grave?