Chapter 2071: … And Again

Warm blood flowed down her chest, and the last sounds Jocelynn made before darkness claimed her were wet, gurgling sobs.

She’d failed again. But at least this time it had been quicker. At least this time she hadn’t been smothered by the cold, wet earth.

It was a small comfort in her moment of failure.

Pain returned when warmth flooded through her body, pushing and twisting the broken bones back into place while the Olive Seed’s witchcraft knitted her flesh back together. Once again, she found herself lying in the mud while the wooden perversion of Ashlynn’s face looked down at her in disappointment.

"Again?" the Olive Seed asked.

"Again," Jocelynn spat. This time had been different. Next time could be different too. She just had to find a way...

This time, in the cart, she begged.

"Sir Tommin," she whispered with broken lips, speaking through the sodden sheet. "Sir Tommin, please. I’m alive. Take me to the temple. Please. High Priest Aubin will know what to do... please..."

The cart slowed. She heard Tommin’s breath catch. For one heartbeat, the wheels stopped turning altogether.

"Broll," Tommin said hoarsely. "Broll, she’s still alive..."

"Then she won’t be for long," Broll said, and spat over the side of the cart before hopping off and walking around to the back. In the stillness of the night, the sound of his dagger leaving its sheath was impossible for Jocelynn to miss.

"Wait, Broll," Tommin protested. "She’s right, High Priest Aubin will know how we should handle her. If she’s innocent," he started only to be cut off by Broll’s sharp retort.

"Don’t forget who you serve, Tommin," Broll said as he grabbed hold of Jocelynn and plunged his blade into her chest.

She felt it scrape across a rib before it slid between them, felt the cold of the steel turn to fire as it went deeper. Above her, through the sodden linen, Tommin’s face hung white as a moon.

"We follow Lord Owain’s orders," Broll went on, twisting the blade. "We’re not the Church’s lackeys. If you want to spend your life bowing and scraping to the Holy Lord of Light, you should have followed Lord Loman, but even he would tell you to kill a witch..."

It was the last thing she heard before the darkness claimed her again.

She tried again.

This time, she let it all play out as it had before, right up until they buried her beneath the earth. She held her breath the way Ashlynn had. She waited until the shovels stopped. Then she clawed upward through the mud, digging with her broken fingers, kicking with her broken legs. She reached the roots of the cedar the way Ashlynn said she had...

But she was too weak. Her hands found nothing to grasp, and the sodden earth pressing down on her was too heavy to escape.

Then the pain returned as the hand dragged her to the surface again.

"Again?" the Olive Seed asked.

"Again," Jocelynn replied. She didn’t know what else to say. This was the only way to escape the trial. She couldn’t fail.

She stopped counting after the ninth time. Or perhaps it was the tenth.

She fought, and she failed. She hid, and she failed. She begged Owain for mercy, on her knees, and he beat her anyway. She told him the truth, that it was Jocelynn who had betrayed her, and he laughed and beat her harder. She tried to throw herself from the window before he reached the door, and she felt the sill scrape the skin from her palms and the cold night air rush past her face, and the Seed caught her before she hit the ground and set her back on the edge of the bed, whole and unhurt, and the boots sounded in the corridor once more.

Every time, she heard the same healing incantation. "Through olive’s deep and deathless root..." The words seared themselves into her heart until she could speak them back herself if she’d ever dared to... but she wasn’t a witch yet. The words wouldn’t help her.

And every time the scene played out again, she remembered all of it. Not just the last death but every death before it, laid one on top of another until she could feel them all at once. The first time her cheekbone broke. The fourth. The seventh. The weight of the earth on her chest the first night, and the second, and the fifth.

Her mind became a grave full of graves. Every time, the memories piled up higher and higher, until she couldn’t remember a moment of her life that hadn’t been filled with pain.

She began to flinch at the verse itself. At the first word of it. Through. Because she knew what came after it. She knew that the healing only meant she’d be whole again for the next time.

And there would always be a next time.

That was the true horror of it. Not the fists, not the grave. The Seed could do this forever, just like it had said it could. It could break her and mend her and break her again a thousand times, ten thousand, and she would never die, and she would never escape, and it would never, ever stop.

The hand in her hair. The wet forest floor.

"Again?" the Olive Seed asked.

"No," Jocelynn whispered.

She was lying on her side in the mud, curled up like a child. She didn’t have the strength to lift her head.

"Please," she begged. "Please, no more. I can’t. I can’t take any more. Please..."

"Ashlynn took it," the Seed said.

"Once!" Jocelynn sobbed at the unfairness of it. "She took it once, and it nearly killed her, and I’ve... I’ve done it so many times I can’t even remember them all, and I can’t... I can’t... Please, make it stop, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’ll do anything..."

Her sister’s voice didn’t answer. There was only the rain, and the slow drip of water from wooden hair.

For a long moment, the Seed was silent as it stared down at the weeping, broken woman lying in the mud.

"Fine," it said at last. "A reprieve, then."

It crouched beside her. She felt its smooth, cool fingers stroke her cheek.

"What do you want, Jocelynn?"

"I just want it to stop," she sobbed. "I want to go home. I just want to go home..."

"Home," the Olive Seed repeated softly. "Of course. You can go home..."