The Vampire & Her Witch Chapter 2054: The Bridal Chamber (Part One)

The first thing Jocelynn knew was warmth.

Not the cold, frozen earth of the Enchanted Grove or the burning agony of roots tearing through her wrists. This was a soft, golden warmth. The warmth of a fire crackling in a hearth and candles burning low. The scent of beeswax and rosewater filled the air along with something sweet that she couldn’t quite place.

Hesitantly, afraid of what she might find, Jocelynn opened her eyes to take stock of her situation.

Candlelight flickered across walls hung with tapestries in Lothian blue and yellow. A great canopied bed stood at the center of the room with its curtains drawn back and rose petals strewn across the duvet. A fire burned in a broad stone hearth, and a pair of silver goblets waited beside a flagon of wine on a small table by the window.

Jocelynn knew this room.

She’d never been inside it. Not once, in all the months she’d lived at Lothian Manor. But she’d stood outside its door more times than she could count, staring at the dark oak and the iron fittings, unable to make herself turn the handle.

The bridal suite.

Jocelynn looked down at herself, and her breath caught in her throat.

She was wearing a white gown. Fine silk, with delicate lace at the sleeves that fell in soft folds over her wrists. A string of pearls lay cool against her collarbone. On the third finger of her left hand, an antique ring gleamed in the candlelight, heavy and old and cold.

A ring that had once been promised to her. But before that, it had belonged to Ashlynn... and before that, to Owain Lothian’s grandmother.

"No," Jocelynn whispered as her eyes widened in horror. "No, no, no..."

She knew this gown. She’d watched her sister walk down the aisle of the Great Temple in it, radiant and nervous and so beautiful that half the guests had gasped. She knew these pearls. Their mother had fastened them around Ashlynn’s neck that very morning, with tears in her eyes.

And she knew what came next.

A sharp, burning ache bloomed on her left hip. Jocelynn pressed her hand against it through the silk, and even without looking, she knew what she would find there. The shape of an ash tree, its branches spread wide while its gnarled roots crept down her thigh. The mark her father had tried to cut away and burn off with a branding iron when Ashlynn was still a babe. The mark that had always come back no matter what Rhys did.

The ache sharpened into a burn. Heat pulsed beneath the silk, and for one sickening instant, she smelled it. Scorched flesh. The sour, greasy stink of skin seared by hot iron, a babe’s tender skin hissing beneath the brand in her father’s shaking hand. The silk clung to the mark as though it had been pressed into a fresh wound, and when she pulled her palm away, it came away hot and damp.

The mark she had whispered about to a handsome, smiling man in a dark hallway, with a cup of strong wine in her hand.

From somewhere below, music drifted up through the floor. The feast was still going on. The ball. Jocelynn could hear the stamp of dancing feet and the laughter of hundreds of noblemen celebrating, blending with the bright, cheerful notes of fiddles and flutes.

And then, faintly, through the window, she heard a voice she knew.

Her own.

It was coming from the garden, from the shadowed hallway beside it where the rain dripped from the eaves. She shouldn’t have been able to hear it from here, but the wind brought her every word spoken by a voice that couldn’t have been more familiar. It was slurred with wine and sharp with spite, and every word of it was a knife.

"...she’s a vile witch, Owain. She has the mark and everything. I’m sure that she’s been making a study of witchcraft all these years, hiding in that library. Father tried to cut the mark off, you know. He even tried to burn it with a branding iron, and it always came back..."

Jocelynn clapped her hands over her ears, but it didn’t help. She pressed harder until her nails bit into her scalp and her ears rang, but the voice wasn’t coming through her ears at all. It was coming from inside her skull, where no amount of pressure could shut it out. The voice went on and on, and she could hear every word as clearly as if she were standing beside herself in that hallway. Her own laughter. Owain’s low, coaxing murmur. Her own voice again, high and childish and cruel...

"I wish it were me you were marrying instead..."

"You’re so handsome. And brave. And perfect..."

"She doesn’t even love you. It’s all for the alliance with your family and the Church..."

"To her, marrying you is nothing but a heavy, burdensome sacrifice..."

"I’m not like her. I think you’re a great hero..."

She couldn’t hear Owain’s responses, but every word she’d spoken that night, drunken and slurred, reached her ears with terrifying, sober clarity.

The taste came next. Strong, dark wine, the kind she’d never been able to hold, flooded her mouth as though she’d just drained the cup Sir Kaefin pressed into her hand. It soured on her tongue, thick and cloying, and her stomach heaved. Jocelynn doubled over, gagging, and a thin stream of wine-red bile spattered across the hem of her sister’s white gown.

"Stop," she begged, wiping her mouth with a shaking hand. "Please, make it stop..."

The voice faded. The music faded with it, until there was nothing left but the crackle of the fire and the hammering of her own heart.

Jocelynn stood alone in the middle of her sister’s bridal chamber, in her sister’s gown, with her sister’s mark burning on her hip.

She knew what this was. Somewhere very far away, her body lay on frozen ground with roots in her veins and a seed in her heart. This was her Trial of Witchcraft. The Olive Seed had brought her here.

Even now, she could feel it, faint and distant, like pain remembered from a dream. The roots twitched in her wrists. Something in her chest throbbed in time with the burning mark on her hip, slow and steady, drinking.

And she knew why.