CHAPTER 1062: BROTHER IN LAW (PART TWO)

Outside the second carriage, Hauke frowned as he felt the familiar power that Ollie had gathered in the blade carved from Frost Walker horn. But then, looking at the way Ollie glanced carefully over his shoulder at the figures of Rosie and Sionid, he realized the intention behind the gesture and made a similar move himself.

Both Hugo Huanrahan and Liam Dunn were surprised when Hauke’s looming figure moved protectively in front of them, but both men wisely said nothing as they realized that a meeting between a powerful witch like the Mother of Trees and three clergymen from a Church who considered her a heretic could easily become explosive.

At the same time, Kurtz moved in front of his daughter, Emmie, preventing her from returning to Heila’s side after she’d set out a footstool for the second carriage. Without Dame Sybyll’s gift of the Potence of Blood, he knew that he had no place getting involved in a confrontation between witches and the powerful sorcerers of the Church, but if that was true for the veteran champion of the arena, it was doubly true for his daughter who had only just begun her lessons in sorcery under Lady Heila’s tutelage.

Unlike Heila, the next man to emerge from the first carriage was far from unbroken. Loman had once been a dashing young lord, close in age to Ashlynn herself, and the soft chestnut locks of his hair had combined with his refined features and gentle gaze to create an appearance that set countless hearts aflutter among the women of the Lothian Court.

When Ashlynn had first arrived in Lothian March, she’d heard no shortage of young ladies bemoaning his adherence to his position as a priest, and even a few who boldly claimed that they would tempt him to leave the Church for the chance to wed them. Those very same women would likely be horrified at the sight of the man who joined Heila on the flagstones of the courtyard.

Heila might not refer to her healing as a miracle, but the scars on Loman’s face told a story that any healer would be horrified by. Dame Sybyll’s strike hadn’t just torn the skin of his face, she’d sliced through the muscles and tendons of the jaw, and without Heila’s healing, the left side of Loman’s face would likely have been frozen stiff or drooping and slack jawed with a tendency to drool.

As it stood, there was a clear difference in the range of expression on his face as his mouth opened wide in shock and his remaining eye stared at Ashlynn in disbelief. His jaw worked soundlessly and his lips parted several times, but no words emerged as he struggled to process the sight of the blonde woman in a simple green dress who couldn’t possibly be alive, much less in a place like this.

"Hello, Brother-in-law," Ashlynn said softly as she stepped forward to wrap her arms gently around the one-armed priest, pulling him close in a soft embrace that contained all the warmth she could gather for a man she’d once hoped to consider a part of her family in the same way Jocelynn was.

Even if her marriage to Owain had worked out the way she and her parents hoped, there had always been an element of fear in her heart that Loman would be the one to discover her secret. Once they’d finally met and she’d heard his genuine passion for helping the common people of Lothian March, she’d hoped that he would be like her parents, rising above the dogma of his faith to recognize Ashlynn for the woman she was.

She’d even spent several hours in the days before her wedding, hosting him for tea and speaking about the ways she hoped to help Lothian March as the next Marchioness. At the time, she felt like she’d at least found an ally she could work with, and one whose heart was open and eager to welcome his sister-in-law into his family.

Her simple hug contained all of the hopes she’d had for the relationship they’d started to form less than a year ago when she arrived in Lothian March, but it was also held back by everything that had unfolded since then. She couldn’t cling tightly to a man who had sacrificed his own acolytes in an attempt to kill her friend Sybyll or the members of her coven who were as close to her as any member of her blood family.

Nor could she look at him without seeing all the ways that he resembled the man who had beaten her to the brink of death on what should have been the happiest night of her life.

Still, she had to try to reach out to him with all the love in her heart that she could muster. Not because he deserved it, but because if she didn’t... If she allowed herself to close off her heart and turn completely away from Loman after the tragedies of a single battle, then how could she possibly face Jocelynn with anything but hatred in her heart.

"Ash-Ashlynn?" Loman finally managed to say in confusion as he pulled back from the embrace to look into the emerald eyes of the sister-in-law who should be dead. The last time he’d seen her, or at least, the last time he’d thought he saw her, had been the night that he ventured into the wilderness at the edge of the Vale of Mists along with Sir Tommin and Diarmuid to exhume her body.

He’d seen the battered, broken and torn flesh of her body, wrapped in a sheet from his brother’s bed and beginning to decompose after weeks buried in a shallow grave. Her face had been so badly broken by a series of heavy blows for most people to recognize her, but the pale blonde hair and the remnants of her remaining beauty made it clear that the woman Sir Tommin had buried in the wilderness was his sister-in-law, Ashlynn Blackwell.

That battered, broken face had haunted him for months, accompanied by memories of her gentle laughter and kind, emerald green eyes that glittered in the sun when she spoke about helping his brother bring prosperity to the people of Lothian March. And yet, those very same eyes were looking at him now, from a distance of only inches away... and there could be no mistake about who she was.

"H-how?" Loman asked, unable to manage more than a single, stuttered word to voice his question. How was it possible? And why? Why here of all places, when he was supposed to be greeted by the mysterious demon-witch, the Mother of Trees?

He might be missing an eye, but even he could see that the only demons in the courtyard were Lady Heila and the others who had come with them. The knight standing beside Ashlynn was clearly human, as were the pair of attendants waiting near the gate... So just what was happening here?

"I’ll explain soon," Ashlynn said as she pulled him to the side, making space for the other occupants of the carriage to exit. "But first, there’s someone else I have to say hello to," she said as her voice turned cold and her emerald gaze hardened.

"Sir Tommin," Ashlynn said to the blind man who had yet to move from his seat in the carriage. "It’s been a long time since you and Sir Broll left me in a shallow grave," she said. "We have unfinished business, you and I..."