As soon as the doors to the Great Hall opened again, Ashlynn’s world began to narrow. Cadeyrn had returned with her armor at about the same time Owain’s servants had returned with his, and it was time to make her final preparations.

"Stay strong for me, Jocey," Ashlynn said as she stood, giving her sister’s hand one last squeeze. "It’ll all be over soon. Laim, you’ll be my second," Ashlynn said, startling the young lord who’d had little to do since announcing her arrival.

"Me, your Dominion?" Liam asked in surprise as his eyes flicked to Ollie, Isabell, and Sir Elgon before returning to her. "Surely there are others who..."

"You’ve earned it, Liam," Ashlynn said, interrupting him before he could say more. By rights, she should have taken another member of her coven as her second, or, failing that, one of her father’s knights like Sir Elgon. But Ollie and Isabell both had their own missions tonight, and if things unraveled at the end, Ashlynn wanted Sir Elgon in position to command the Blackwell forces.

Besides, Liam really had earned a moment of recognition from her, and it would send a clear sign to the rest of the march that she remembered those who helped her when she needed help the most.

"Of course," Liam said quickly, falling in beside her as she strode across the Great Hall to a rough square of cleared, bare stone at the center of the hall.

The square was perhaps twelve paces on a side, roughly marked out by the servants who cleared the floor, and by the time she arrived there, Cadeyrn was already waiting with her armor.

"No trouble in the corridors, Cadeyrn?" Ashlynn asked lightly. "Or in the courtyard?"

"No, my lady," the young squire said quickly. "Word has spread through the manor. Everyone seems like they’ve fallen back to the servant’s quarters or the barracks and boarded up tight until someone comes to give them orders. There wasn’t any trouble with the carriages or your armor either."

"Good," Ashlynn said with a slight smile. Now that everyone had returned to the Great Hall, her world barely extended beyond the room, and soon, it would shrink to this small square of polished stone floor that she would share with the man she’d come to kill.

-CLANK-

The sound of Owain’s armor landing on the floor on the opposite side of the square felt far louder than it should have, prompting Ashlynn to look up at Owain as the servants began laying out the different layers of his armor.

"Did you make a mistake, Husband?" Ashlynn teased. "It looks like you brought enough armor for your horse. Or is all of that to protect you from me?"

Owain’s armor was among the best that had been crafted in the Kingdom of Gaal. If there were a dozen suits its equal, then half of them likely belonged to the royal family. Every piece of plate was smoothly articulated, from the sabatons that would cover his feet to the fingers of the gauntlets that would cover his hand.

The plates themselves were a dark, bluish black color, and they’d been covered with enough delicate, golden inlay to purchase a village three times over. It was armor befitting the hero Owain always presented himself as, and it was armor that would have made him all but invulnerable against the Eldritch hunters and woodsmen who served as protectors for most of the outlying villages in the wilderness.

"I thought a sophisticated lady from Blackwell would have standards," Owain said, looking down his nose at the pile of chain and plate that Cadeyrn had laid out for Ashlynn. "I know you crawled out of a grave to come haunt me, but did you dig that armor out of another one? It’s an antique," he snorted.

Of course, Nyrielle would never have chosen to send Ashlynn into battle with anything less than the best armor that could be crafted for her, and she’d already commissioned a suit of plate every bit as intricate and detailed as Dame Sybyll’s darksteel armor, patterned after Ashlynn’s sword, Water’s Edge.

Unfortunately, the armor took longer to complete than the sword, and without the full suit ready, it was unwise to cobble the finished pieces together with her existing armor.

And so, Ashlynn had brought the same armor she’d worn when learning from Thane and Sybyll. The surface of her dull, gray armor was scratched and dinged, and several of the plates showed signs of being hammered back into place. The gaps at her joints would be far larger than those on Owain’s intricate armor, and the fit wasn’t nearly as refined.

The difference in design wasn’t without its advantages. Even the best articulated plate lost out to a good coat of mail when it came to flexibility at the joints, and Ashlynn’s armor likely weighed half a stone less than Owain’s. She would move faster than he did. She would tire more slowly than he did.

But she would also bleed easier, and any thrust that found its way into a gap in her armor was going to find more flesh and less steel waiting for it than one that found a gap in his. Anyone in the hall who knew the ways of knights and armor could see it at a glance.

"You’d be amazed how much you can learn from those who are older than you, Owain," Ashlynn replied as she slipped into the emerald and midnight-patterned arming jacket that Cadeyrn helped her into. "You can learn a lot in older armor too," she said as her eyes roved over the elaborately articulated plates covering Owain’s knees and upper thighs before coming to rest on something unexpected.

"See something you like, Wife?" Owain said, smirking when he caught her looking.

"I see something," Ashlynn said evenly. "It’s just that I’m having trouble understanding what I’m looking at. I thought your armorer had crafted you a suit befitting the Marquis of the March, but it looks like he had some material left over and didn’t know what to do with it."

"Was it meant to be a second pauldron?" Ashlynn asked with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes. "Or are you so attached to what little wealth you have left that you needed a coin purse moulded into your armor?"