The Vampire & Her Witch

”My sweet temptation,” Owain said, walking across the office to wrap his arms around her before she had a chance to refuse him. As always, the scent of the sea that clung to her body, mixed with sweet, floral perfume to produce a heady scent that belonged only to her, and Owain relished in it just as much as he’d relished in the aroma of of their morning meal.

”You poor thing,” Owain added as he looked at the high-necked blue dress she’d worn for their first meal together since he returned from Hurel. ”The cold of the dungeons must have seeped into your bones,” he said, holding her close for a moment, as if to share his warmth with her before he pulled her towards the breakfast that was waiting for them.

Unfortunately, the stiff corset she’d worn that sculpted her figure from bodice to hips made it impossible for her to mold her body to his the way he wanted her to, and the thick layers of fabric, wrapped around whalebone stays, prevented him from feeling the warmth that her body had to offer, no matter how tightly he held her.

”Percivus is a savage beast,” Owain said, his expression darkening as he led Jocelynn toward the feast. ”If I’d realized that my father’s madness would result in summoning a monster like that, I never would have left you alone with him.”

”There’s no way you could have known, my Lord,” Jocelynn offered sweetly, doing her best to imitate the naive, besotted woman she’d once been. ”You were doing what a loyal son should, helping your father investigate a crime against the lord of an important village. The people of Hurel needed your wisdom, and your father needed to rely on your strength to dispatch the villains who set the fire once you discovered them.”

”Besides,” she added as she rested a hand delicately on his broad, muscular chest, looking up at him through her long lashes. ”There’s no way you could have known your father’s illness would cloud and twist his mind so severely. You couldn’t have foreseen this.”

”True,” Owain said, gently stroking her cheek before running his fingers through her soft, golden tresses. ”I never would have thought my father would succumb to the Spider Demon Venom so quickly. It should have taken another month or more for his mind to fall apart to this extent, and I never would have imagined he’d lash out at an innocent woman of all people.”

”Spi-spider Demon Venom?” Jocelynn asked hesitantly, frowning at Owain’s response to her overly flattering offer of understanding. ”You mean he really was poisoned?”

”Of course he was,” Owian said bluntly, as he left her side to drop into the large, overstuffed chair behind the desk while he waited for Jocelynn to prepare a plate for him. ”He threatened to give you to Loman, along with the throne that’s my birthright! I could never let that sort of insult stand. You belong to me, my sweet temptation,” he said, smiling as he looked into her seafoam green eyes.

”No one is allowed to touch you but me,” he said as his eyes grew dark and hard. ”Not my fool of a father who wanted to give you away, not a lunatic like Percivus who locked you in the dungeons... No one.”

”I’ve already dealt with my father for what he did to you,” Owain said, shaking his head at how close things had come to a tragic ending. Thankfully, Jocelynn didn’t seem to have suffered too much under Percivus’s fiendish hands. It looked like the Inquisitor had vented most of his hatred on the troublesome Confessor instead of Jocelynn, which was a relief, even if it was still absolutely unacceptable.

”I promise you,” Owain added when Jocelynn seemed too overwhelmed by his words to speak. ”Percivus will pay for the indignities you’ve suffered. This morning, I sent Gilander with twenty men to Maeril to drag him back here in chains. He went too far when he killed your cousin,” he said, though something about his tone felt strangely off when he did. There was no remorse or anger there... his voice was much more casual than it should have been.

”Albyn told me that the Church gave her the funeral rites of a noblewoman,” Owain added, smiling in satisfaction. ”I’m glad they did. If Percivus had only killed a Confessor, it would be harder to demand his head for the crime, but since he killed a noblewoman, I can hang him for the crime of magnicide.”

”You, you’ve already sent men to arrest Percivus?” Jocelynn said as his words finally broke through the shock that had gripped her.

Her mind had gone almost completely blank when Owain admitted to not only poisoning his father, but using a poison that caused the very madness that had led to Bors’ attacking her with a knife and sending Percivus after her and Eleanor.

All of the tragedy she’d endured, including the loss of her cousin, flowed from Bors Lothian’s madness. And that madness wasn’t a cruel twist of fate; it was a deliberate scheme by Owain to punish his father for daring to consider marrying her to Loman. Or perhaps he was punishing his father for stripping him of his inheritance, and offering her to Loman had only added insult to injury.

Either way, the madness she’d prepared herself to accept from Bors, to forgive because it was only human frailty in the face of sickness and fevered delirium, was actually the result of Owain’s scheme.

That revelation alone had been enough to stun her to her very core. By the time Owain confessed to killing his father ’for what he did to her,’ it was all she could do to stay standing, and even then, she had to support herself on the sturdy oak desk to keep from collapsing as she felt her world crumbling around her.

But then, when he mentioned hanging Percivus, the world snapped back into focus, and she could finally speak again, even though it was only to ask a simple question.

”You don’t need to worry about a thing,” Owain said, giving her one of his most dazzling smiles, as though he were a hero returning from a great victory, simply because he’d sent men to arrest a wayward priest. ”Just put your faith in me, Jocelynn. I’ll take care of everything...”