Jocelynn was glad to have something to do. Or, perhaps glad wasn’t the right word. Relieved came close, but it wasn’t right either. It was more like the pressure that sat on her chest had abated for a moment while she dragged one of the high-backed chairs from her private dining room over to the hearth, and the eels wriggling in her stomach settled down by the time she stepped into her bed chamber to retrieve soaps and a cloth for washing.

For a moment, she didn’t have to worry about her sister’s judgment... she just had to help her sister out of the last of her clothing and with a bit of washing up. She could do that. Everything else... it wouldn’t matter until later.

Jocelynn paused when she reached the collection of soaps she kept by her washstand. A few of them, like the lavender and honeysuckle, were local scents that she’d acquired since her arrival in Lothian. They were adequate, but they didn’t compare to the ones made at home in Blackwell.

Her fingers hovered over a bar still wrapped in waxed canvas that she’d used only for a few specific occasions. It smelled of the salty sea air, dried seaweed, and the slightly sweet aroma of the tall grasses that grew on the beaches in Blackwell. It always reminded her of home.

It was also Owain’s favorite scent of all the ones she used. For a moment, she could feel his fingers on her waist and his breath on her neck as the sensation of being held possessively closed over her. The feeling lasted for two heartbeats, and then a third before she managed to shake herself free of the ghost of Owain’s touch.

"I won’t let him take this from us," Jocelynn whispered as her slender fingers retrieved the soap along with a different bar for washing hair that smelled faintly of pear blossoms and bergamot.

When she returned to the sitting room, Ashlynn had slumped against the side of the sofa. The strength she’d displayed in the Great Hall seemed to have faded completely away now that there was no one for her to perform for, and she looked almost fragile as she sat waiting for Jocelynn to gather everything she needed.

"I, I’m ready," Jocelynn said once she’d set the soaps, wash basin, and soft cloths near the hearth. "Do you, do you need help getting up?"

"Please," Ashlynn said, holding up both of her arms like she was a child asking to be picked up by a doting parent. "I can stand, but I feel like the sofa is covered in glue. I’m stuck," she said with a slight smile.

Slowly, moving as gently as she could, Jocelynn helped Ashlynn from the sofa to the chair by the hearth where the warm glow of the flames cast gentle, dancing light over her sister’s body, revealing the places where her emerald green and midnight blue arming jacket and trousers were stained with blood and stiff with dried sweat.

Jocelynn’s fingers worked mechanically at the laces of the arming jacket, pausing when she saw Ashlynn wincing in pain as she started to remove the garment.

"I’m sorry," she said quickly, only for Ashlynn to shake her head.

"It’s fine. It only hurts when I try to raise my left arm," she explained. "If you can get the right side off first, it should be easier," Ashlynn said. Her voice was a little flat, and her gaze was distant as she stared at the flames in the hearth, as if she was sifting through memories of her own and barely paying attention to Jocelynn.

Once Jocelynn got the jacket off, however, and saw the state of the cream colored blouse underneath, she understood why her sister would want to focus on anything other than the present.

The blood stains on the arming jacket had been frightening enough, but the blouse underneath it was stained red all the way from Ashlynn’s left shoulder to her elbow, and the fabric was stuck to her skin where blood had dried. There was another dark red stain on the other arm, closer to the hollow of her shoulder, where the blood had run along her chest as well as down her ribs and arm, and from the way Ashlynn kept her breathing light and shallow, it wasn’t hard to imagine that the wounds hidden by the blood-stained fabric were every bit as bad as the stains suggested.

"Ash..."

"It’s fine," Ashlynn said softly. "You can keep going."

"All, all right," Jocelynn said as she set the jacket aside and moved to the laces of the blouse. Once that came off, however, along with the tight strip of fabric that Ashlynn had used to bind her breasts, she couldn’t help but stare at the mass of cuts and bruises on her sister’s pale skin.

For a moment, she didn’t even feel like she was looking at a person’s body. Rather, Ashlynn’s back, sides, and torso resembled a pirate’s treasure map, shaded in hues of purple, crimson, green, and yellow. Only the markings on this map weren’t the coastlines of hidden islands or warnings of hidden shoals...

They were a map to the edges of the plates of her armor that had been hammered into her flesh when they absorbed the impact of Owain’s blows and the places her armor had failed to protect her flesh from the point of his sword.

"Ash, you..." Jocelynn started, only for her voice to fail her as she stared at her sister standing calmly beside the chair, resting her hands on it lightly for support while she soaked in the warmth of the fire.

"How can you just stand there like this..." Jocelynn said, staring at her sister in a combination of wonder and horror. She’d seen sailors flogged on the docks who hadn’t looked so horrible after five or even ten strokes of the lash, but those men had to be carried away by their shipmates after the beating they’d received. This...

"The chair helps," Ashlynn said with a teasing smile. "And it’s not the worst I’ve suffered. The armor held for the most part."

"No, it didn’t," Jocelynn insisted as she knelt beside her sister to remove the padded, bloodstained trousers and the breaches underneath. This time, she was even more gentle as she looked at the bloodstains from wounds to Ashlynn’s thighs, and for a moment, she considered fetching scissors to cut the garments away before discarding the notion as impractical.

The quilted trousers were a layer of armor intended to stop swords from cutting the flesh beneath them. Even the best scissors would struggle to cut them cleanly, and any attempt would only produce more painful tugging against Ashlynn’s wounds as she struggled. Still... how could her sister stand with wounds like these?

"No, really, the armor did its job," Ashlynn said. "On my wedding night, it was worse. Owain broke ribs when he hit me, and maybe a cheekbone too," she said softly. "Broll broke more ribs when he kicked me to prove that I was ’dead’ before he dumped me in a grave. Walking after that, when I was still so weak and feeble... That was hard. This, this isn’t so bad." 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

"How did you survive that night?" Jocelynn asked as she took in her sister’s battered body, finally noticing the subtle changes beneath the wounds. A year ago, her sister had been soft with lush curves that drew the eyes of many admirers on the rare occasions she stepped out in public.

Now, while the curves were still there, the softness had melted away, revealing firm, toned muscles underneath, hardened by months of training that Jocelynn couldn’t begin to understand, and likely a number of hardships too.

She couldn’t understand, but she wanted to... Needed to understand, if for no other reason than to flog her spirit with the knowledge of her sister’s suffering as a precursor of penance for the pain she’d caused.

"The trees helped me," Ashlynn said as she took a seat at last. Her leg trembled from the effort of standing even though the wound in her thigh no longer bled, and she could feel herself approaching her limits, but she pressed on anyway. There were things she needed to say tonight, and things Jocelynn needed to know, and part of her was afraid that, if she didn’t say them now, she’d start finding excuses to put them off come morning when she had to engage with the Lothian court again and so many things would place demands on her time...

"I never really knew what it meant to be a witch before that night," Ashlynn said softly as she stared into the dancing flames of the hearth. "But a witch is a creature of desire, and that night, there were two things I desired more than anything I’d ever wanted..."

"I wanted to live," Ashlynn said as her voice gained a bit of strength. "I wanted to live, and I wanted to end the lives of everyone responsible for putting me in that grave..."