Chapter 2070: Again…

Jocelynn found herself in the bridal chamber once again, glowing in the same soft candlelight with the scent of beeswax and rosewater in the air. She was wearing Ashlynn’s white gown again, along with the pearls and the Lothians’ antique ring, just as she’d been at the beginning of the trial.

"No," Jocelynn whispered. "No, not here, please, not here..."

The mark burned on her hip. The music drifted up through the floor. Her own voice floated through the window, slurred and spiteful. "...she’s a vile witch, Owain..."

This time, she didn’t sit on the bed and wait.

She ran for the door, desperate to escape.

It opened before she reached it. Owain filled the doorway, drunk and weeping and furious, and she skidded to a stop so hard that she nearly fell.

"So it’s true," he said. "You’re a witch."

Jocelynn snatched up the silver candlestick from the table beside her and swung it at his head with all her strength. This time would be different. This time she would fight back. For herself, for Samira, for Adala... For everyone this monster would hurt if he was allowed to live.

She would fight!

The candlestick struck his temple with a dull clang, and Owain staggered back two steps. For one glorious heartbeat, she thought she’d done it.

Then he laughed.

He tore the candlestick from her hands as easily as a grown man taking a toy from a child, and he flung it across the room. Then he seized her by the throat and slammed her against the wall.

Pain exploded in Jocelynn’s head when her skull struck the wall and stars danced across her vision, but she didn’t stop fighting. She clawed at his face. Her nails raked furrows down his cheek and drew blood. She kicked at his knees, his shins, at anything she could reach...

His thumbs found her windpipe and pressed. Cartilage creaked beneath them. Her breath stopped as though a door had slammed shut inside her throat, and the edges of her vision went dark and spotted. Her heels drummed against the wall. She clawed at his wrists now instead of his face, tearing skin, and he only squeezed harder.

None of it mattered.

He was so much bigger than her and so much stronger. He’d spent ten years killing Eldritch warriors with a sword, and she was a girl in a wedding gown who’d never thrown a punch in her life. She was helpless and powerless to break free of his grip.

Then the fists came again, pummeling her face and her body until he dropped her on the ground. The boots followed, and her bones broke one by one, exactly the same as before. Exactly the same. Except that this time, she’d fought, and it had only made him angrier.

Once again she was wrapped in a bed sheet and dumped in a cart. She was driven through the rain and carried painfully into the forest where she listened to Tommin and Broll as they dug her grave. Once again, the earth swallowed her whole and the world went dark.

Then a hand in her hair dragged her mercilessly from the soil, like a gardener pulling a weed from a garden bed, and she heard the distorted copy of Ashlynn’s voice speaking above her.

"Through olive’s deep and deathless root,

Knit the bone and bear new fruit."

The warmth came, and then the agony behind it. Every broken bone wrenched itself back into place at once, grinding and popping, and she screamed into the mud until it was over.

Jocelynn lay on the wet forest floor, whole and unmarked by so much as a bruise. She shook so hard that her teeth chattered, but even if she could have spoken, she didn’t know what to say.

"You failed," the Olive Seed said, gazing down at her with dark, empty eyes. "You may try again, if you like," it offered in a tone that said it didn’t believe the outcome would be any different.

"Wh-what happens if, if I try again?" Jocelynn managed to ask.

"You get another chance," the Olive Seed said simply. "This is your trial. It’s all about second chances. Chances to learn to be different. To do what you should have. What you couldn’t. What you need to do in order to move forward."

"I have all the time in the world," the Olive Seed said. "We can do this as long as it takes. But you... Your time is limited. Do you think you’ve learned your lesson yet? If you try again, will you succeed?"

"I, I don’t know," Jocelynn admitted. What lesson was she supposed to have learned? She had no idea. "But I have to try," she said. "I have to make it back to Ashlynn. I can’t... I can’t die here..."

"So be it," the Olive Seed said before the world faded away and Jocelynn found herself in the bridal chamber once again.

This time, she curled into a ball when Owain struck her, protecting her head with her arms, and when she hit the floor, she went limp and let her eyes roll back. She stopped breathing for as long as she could, and when she finally drew breath, she kept it as thin and shallow as possible so he wouldn’t see her chest rise and fall.

She played dead, and when Tommin and Broll threw her into the cart, she waited, and waited, until the wheels stopped and the knights climbed down to fetch their shovels.

Then she rolled off the back of the cart and ran.

She didn’t get far. Her broken ribs stabbed her with every breath. The ruined wedding gown dragged at her legs, heavy with rain and mud, tangling around her knees with every step. Her bare feet slipped on the wet, muddy road. She heard Broll shout behind her, followed by the sound of his heavy boots pounding through the rain, and then he hit her from behind with the force of a falling tree and drove her face-first into the mud.

"She’s still breathing," Broll grunted, kneeling on her back.

His knee ground into her spine. Mud filled her mouth and her nose, and she choked on it, thrashing beneath a weight she couldn’t move.

"Then make sure she isn’t," Tommin said, swallowing heavily and steeling his resolve. "She’s a witch; we can’t let her escape!"

Something cold touched the side of her neck. For a single heartbeat, it was only cold.

Pain blossomed across her throat in a searing, white-hot line as Broll dragged a blade across her neck. Warm blood flowed down her chest, and the last sounds Jocelynn made before darkness claimed her were wet, gurgling sobs.