CHAPTER 1090: IMPENDING CONFRONTATIONS

"Lord Owain," Gilander said firmly as he squared up his shoulders to stand before the grief-stricken young lord. He could accept Owain’s hurt, and he could accept his anger, but Gilander had served Bors Lothian for almost his entire life, and he couldn’t accept someone disrespecting him so blatantly, even if the person doing it was Bors’ own son. "Your father did everything he could to..."

"Did he?" Owain interrupted as he took a step forward, glaring at the aging knight and radiating menace.

For a moment, both men stood chest to chest in the cold before the gates of the manor while Owain’s clenched fist dripped blood on the cold flagstones of the courtyard. Around the courtyard, voices stilled as all eyes fixed on the knight and the young lord, waiting to see which of them would back down, or if matters would come to blows.

Gilander was still a powerful knight, despite his advancing years. He was a veteran of the War of Inches, and he’d served as Marquis Bors’ personal guard ever since the end of that bloody war. But standing across from him was a demon-slaying prodigy, a young lord heralded as one of the greatest swordsmen of the current generation, and he was fueled by the grief, rage, and loss of learning that demons had just destroyed the Summer Villa in order to capture his wife. Against that force, facing Owain’s rage directly and feeling the heat of the young lord’s breath in his face, despite his desire to stand up for his lord’s honor... Sir Gilander took a step back. There was something in Owain’s eyes in that moment, something cold and cruel and utterly without mercy, that made even the veteran knight’s blood run cold.

"Did my father really do everything he could to keep my wife and our child safe?" Owain asked, stepping forward as Gilander stepped back and refusing to give the older knight even a moment of reprieve as he unleashed his fury.

At some point, without entirely realizing it, the fury had become real as he thought about his delusional father sicking a monster like Percivus on Jocelynn, his Jocelynn... And hearing Gilander standing up for his father, as if Bors Lothian were some kind of righteous man, crossed a line that Owain couldn’t tolerate.

"Because from where I stand, Sir Gilander," Owain said, loading up the man’s name with scorn and derision as he vented the rage that had been brewing in his heart since last night when he learned that an Inquisitor had captured his woman. "It looks like my father’s decisions cost me my wife and my child. And now, I can’t even mourn for her because there are DEMONS attacking our HOMES, and I have to be the one to fix his mistakes. AGAIN!"

"Take me to my father," Owain spat. "He owes me an explanation for this, and I’ll hear it for him now. And then..." he started to say before he clamped down on his anger and dragged himself back into the performance he still needed to sell to the onlookers. He was supposed to be grieving for his lost wife... and no matter how furious he was, he couldn’t forget the role he had to play.

"Then, I need to know what’s being done to honor Ashlynn..." he said, allowing his voice to break as though he couldn’t bear to think about the arrangements for a funeral. A funeral that wouldn’t even include her remains.

"Captain Albyn," Owain said over his shoulder, hating that he had to hand off a moment like this to the would-be knight from Blackwell but having no other choice in the matter. "You know what’s important," he said vaguely. "See to it."

Behind him, the weathered former ship captain nodded slowly in understanding. His mind was still reeling from learning that Lady Ashlynn had been taken by demons and was likely dead. But then, more than the loss of Lady Ashlynn, his mind had been filled with thoughts of Lady Jocelynn.

Did she know? Albyn wondered. She’d been taken prisoner by Percivus before the news had arrived, so she might not have heard, in which case it fell to him to break the news to her, assuming that he could force his way past the Inquisitors that held her captive. Owain had promised to protect him from any backlash that came from confronting the Church but that assumed that Albyn was able to survive a confrontation with the Inquisitor and his acolytes.

A heartbeat after he confronted the notion of having to inform his lady that her sister had fallen to demons, an even more horrifying thought struck him. That, if Percivus was the sort of monster that Owain had called him, a man who took a perverse joy in breaking noblemen who ran afoul of the Inquisition, the Inquisitor himself might have been the one to tell her, using the information to break down a woman whose only crime had been to attempt to protect herself from the predatory politics of the frontier.

The thought that Jocelynn had to face a man like Percivus alone, trapped in a dark cell for days on end while Albyn tried to get help to rescue her already tormented him. The notion that she’d have to grieve for her sister while being tortured by a deranged Inquisitor only made matters worse.

The sound of Owain and Sir Gilander’s boots ringing on the polished stone entryway of Lothian Manor shook Albyn out of his daze, spurring his body into action as he rushed toward the entrance. Within a few steps, he was moving at a run, and his hand rested on the heavy bell-guard of the sword that never left his waist.

"I’m coming, Lady Jocelynn," he said under his breath as he ran. "Just hold on..."

He didn’t know what he would find when he reached the dungeons under Lothian Manor, where the sole surviving daughter of Count Rhys Blackwell had been imprisoned, but if she’d been harmed and the Inquisitor and his lackeys were there... Albyn would be putting the strength of Lord Owain’s protection to the test.