The Vampire & Her Witch Chapter 2067: Household In Order

A woman screamed in the darkness of the dungeon.

It was a raw, hoarse, ragged sound, the scream of someone who had been screaming for a long time and had very little voice left to do it with. It rang off the stone walls and went on and on, until it broke apart into sobbing.

Jocelynn knew that voice.

She clutched Ashton tightly, and she ran toward the sound.

The gallery stretched out before her, twenty paces of damp flagstones lined with cell doors of thick oak, each one banded with heavy iron straps. The stench of the dungeon rolled over her in a wave. Rotting straw and unwashed bodies. Lamp oil and old blood and the sour reek of waste buckets that no one had bothered to empty.

Only one door stood open. Torchlight spilled out of it across the floor in a long, flickering stripe.

Jocelynn stopped in the doorway, staring in horror at the sight within.

Adala hung from the ceiling.

Iron chains ran from loops bolted into the stone overhead down to the manacles locked around her wrists, stretching her arms high above her head so that only the tips of her toes brushed the floor. Another chain ran from a ring in the wall to a cuff around her ankle.

Adala’s bright gown, the marigold silk she’d worn in the garden that morning, had been cut open down the back, and the skin beneath it was striped with long, raw welts. Some of them were still bleeding. Blood ran down her spine and soaked into the silk bunched at her waist.

Her dark braids had come loose. The silver threads trailed through them, tangled and broken. Her left eye had swollen shut, and her lower lip was split and crusted with blood.

And Owain stood over her.

He’d changed out of his feasting finery into a neat linen tunic, plain and clean, with the sleeves rolled up past his elbows. A coiled whip hung from one hand. The brass rings on his fingers were smeared with red, and his knuckles were split and bloody.

When he saw Jocelynn, he smiled. The same warm, charming smile he’d given her across the supper table.

"You shouldn’t have come," Owain said in a light, charming tone. "I would have been done soon. I was just putting our household in order..."

"What... what has she done?" Jocelynn whispered. "What could she possibly have done to deserve this?"

"You heard me at supper." Owain shrugged, as though it were a small matter. "She mocked Sir Rain in the stable yard this morning. In front of the grooms. A lady-in-waiting has to learn her place, my pearl, or she embarrasses her lady."

"Besides, what kind of lord would I be if I allowed my vassals to be mocked in front of the common staff?" Owain asked, as though he were truly helpless to do anything about the situation. "A lord is obligated to protect the people he relies on to protect him in battle."

He looked at Adala then, and the smile thinned.

"And this afternoon, she sent to the city for masons," he said softly. "To inspect my stairs."

Jocelynn’s wrist throbbed beneath her sleeve.

"I heard from Master Popalin when he came to visit that he was very concerned with how often the Marchioness had fallen down the stairs," Owain snarled. "He promised me personally that he’d rebuild them with wider steps and stouter rails. He said that his whole staff was quite distressed to hear the news," Owain said. "His. Whole. Staff."

He let the whip uncoil from his hand, and its tip slithered across the straw like a living thing.

"Owain, no," Jocelynn breathed. "Please..."

The whip cracked. Adala’s body jerked against the chains, and a fresh line of red opened across her shoulders. The scream the whip tore out of her was thin and hoarse and broken.

"There," Owain said mildly, coiling the whip again. "That’s the last one. For your sake, my pearl," he said, cupping her cheek with his bloodstained hand.

Adala lifted her head. It seemed to take all of her strength. Her one good eye found Jocelynn’s face in the doorway, and when she spoke, it was in the crisp, clipped accent of the Iron Kingdom, cracked and bleeding at the edges.

"My lady," she rasped. "You should not be here."

"Hush, now," Owain said, almost fondly. "Your lady’s come all this way to see you. Be gracious."

Jocelynn crossed the cell before she knew she’d moved. She reached up for the manacles around Adala’s wrists, and the chains rattled as Adala sagged toward her, and her fingers found nothing but cold iron and a keyhole. Locked.

"Looking for these?"

Owain held up a ring of iron keys. They swung from his bloody fingers, clinking softly against one another.

"Give them to me," Jocelynn said in a sharper tone than she could ever remember using with her husband.

"Of course." Owain held out his other hand, palm up. "Give me my son, and they’re yours."

Jocelynn’s arms tightened around Ashton.

She looked at Owain’s hand. Her eyes lingered on the split knuckles and the blood drying in the creases of his palm and smeared across his brass rings. Then she looked at Adala, hanging from the ceiling with her toes scraping the stone and the welts weeping down her back.

She couldn’t put her son into those hands.

She couldn’t leave Adala hanging there either.

"Don’t look at me like that," Owain chided gently. "I’ll take Ashton back to our chambers and tuck him in myself. You can see your lady to her bed," he said with a wide smile, as if they were an ordinary married couple dividing up the chores.

"But I expect you to come to me soon," Owain chided. "Don’t keep me waiting, my sweet temptation."

Jocelynn’s arms were shaking. Ashton made a small, sleepy sound against her breast, warm and trusting.

But when she finally moved, her feet carried her forward, and she placed her sleeping son into a monster’s arms.

Owain tucked Ashton into the crook of his elbow as easily as he’d held the whip. Ashton didn’t even stir. Then Owain dropped the ring of keys into her open palm. The iron was still warm from his hand. It was sticky with blood.

"There," he said, looking into her seafoam eyes with an untroubled hazel gaze. "Was that so hard?"

Owain bent down and kissed her brow. Then he strolled out of the cell with her son in his arms, a smear of red already spreading across the corner of Ashton’s white blanket, and she heard him humming the melody of a drinking song as his footsteps faded away up the stairs.

Jocelynn’s hands shook so badly that it took her three tries to fit the key into the first manacle.

It turned. The iron fell open. Beneath it, Adala’s wrist was rubbed raw and bleeding where the cuff had bitten into her skin. Jocelynn winced as her own wrists burned in dimly remembered pain.

Adala’s arm dropped like a dead thing, and Jocelynn caught her as the second manacle gave way. She fumbled for a moment to release the ankle chain after it, and then Adala’s whole weight collapsed against her.

For a moment, the two of them just knelt there on the filthy straw, holding each other.

"My lady," Adala whispered against her shoulder, so softly that Jocelynn almost didn’t hear it. "I didn’t let him touch me..."