The Vampire & Her Witch-Chapter 1220: A Short Blade (Part One)
Owain felt the exact moment when the tension in Jocelynn’s body changed. It was subtle, a shift in the way she pressed against him, a change in the quality of her desperation. She was no longer pulling away while forcing herself forward. She was leaning into him, seeking him out, turning to him as her only hope in a world that had grown too dark and cruel to navigate alone.
The grapes were finally ripe.
"You’re right," he said softly, his hand coming up to cup her veiled cheek with a tenderness that would have seemed genuine to anyone who didn’t know him as well as Jocelynn did. "You’re absolutely right, my sweet Jocelynn. He can’t be allowed to leave here. He can’t be permitted to spread his poison anywhere else."
A satisfied smile formed on his lips as he felt her sag slightly in relief, her forehead dropping to rest against his chest for just a moment as though his agreement had released some terrible weight she’d been carrying. Perfect. She was exactly where he needed her to be, vulnerable, desperate, and completely dependent on him to do what needed to be done.
"As for you, Percivus," Owain said, once again refusing to use the man’s title as he turned his attention back to the man hanging from the chains, his voice hardening into something cold and dismissive. "Did you really think I would accept your pathetic offer? That I would stoop to using secrets and blackmail like some petty, powerless schemer? I’m not weak like you, Percivus, and I’m not afraid like you either."
"How many years have you been running about the march, gathering your secrets like a squirrel gathering nuts?" Owain sneered. "Storing them all away until they’ve grown old and musty because you’re too weak and too frightened to ever put them to use. You’re a sad, pathetic excuse for a man, Percivus, who can only bully weaker women because you lack the courage in your so-called convictions and your faith to stand up against an opponent who could hurt you back."
He released Jocelynn gently, taking a step toward Percivus with the kind of confidence that came from absolute certainty in one’s own power. The mighty Inquisitor was nothing but a short, frail man once he’d been stripped to nothing but his loincloth, and Owain had no fear of him at all.
More than that, this was his moment. His moment to be strong in front of Jocelynn, to be the hero she’d always claimed he was, and Owain savored the moment as, for the first time, he saw a flicker of uncertainty in Percivus’s eyes. Uncertainty and even a hint of fear.
"I am the Marquis of Lothian March," Owain declared, his voice ringing through the dungeon cell with the force of absolute conviction. "I am the man who will lead the greatest Holy War against the demons that this march has seen in a hundred years. I am a man of great destiny, Percivus," he said, reaching out and grabbing the man’s short red hair to pull his head back painfully as he whispered directly into the other man’s ear.
"I’m the man your own Church has chosen to purge this land of demons and their darkness," he said softly. "Not you, Percivus. You’re nothing to your own Church, and they’ve already signed a Writ of Excommunication for you and your men. In the grand scheme of things, you don’t matter to them at all. But I do."
Owain gave the Inquisitor a light shove when he let go of his hair, knocking the man off balance and letting him swing from his chains as the shackles around his wrists finally bit into his flesh. The appearance of invulnerability that Percivus had maintained with his carefully controlled posture and breathing crumbled in an instant as he lost all dignity while trying to stop the swaying.
"Men like me have no need of your little notebooks filled with petty secrets," Owain continued, his tone dripping with contempt. "I don’t need blackmail to move against my enemies. I don’t need justifications and trumped-up charges when I rule here by right of birth, but that’s something a commoner like you would never understand," he said.
"When I choose to destroy someone, I do it openly, and I do it with my own hands. I don’t have to starve women half to death until they’re too weak to fight back," he said mockingly, though his words were only partially for the Inquisitor. The rest was for Jocelynn as he methodically dismantled the fearsome aura that the Inquisitor had cultivated in her mind. "I don’t hide behind whispered accusations and stolen secrets like a coward too weak to act on his own."
He paused in front of Percivus, meeting those hardened hazel eyes with a smile that held no warmth, no mercy, only the absolute certainty of a man who knew he held all the power in this moment.
"Using secrets as leverage, relying on blackmail and manipulation. These are the tools of weak men, Percivus. Men who lack the strength to simply take what they want. Men who fear the consequences of direct action. But I fear nothing and no one. When I want something, I take it. When I need someone removed, I remove them. I don’t negotiate. I don’t bargain. I don’t compromise, and neither does Jocelynn, because even she is far stronger than you’ll ever be."
"That’s where you’re wrong, young Lord Owain," Percivus said as his eyes flashed in defiance. "Flames of purification, gather..." 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎
-CRACK-
The sound of Owain’s fist slamming upward into Percivus’s jaw was thunderous in the small confines of the dark cell as the Inquisitor’s mouth was forcefully closed with an audible -CLICK- of his teeth slamming together. Blood spilled from the Inquisitor’s lips, and for a moment, his entire world went white while his knees turned to jelly and his body sagged, placing all of his weight on the iron manacles around his wrists.
Owain bent down slowly, moving without haste as he reached for the leather strap and wad of cloth that he’d removed from Percivus’s mouth earlier, picking them up from where they’d been discarded on the floor.
"You’ve had your chance to speak," Owain said calmly. "You’ve made your pathetic plea for survival, offered your worthless secrets, and tried to bargain for your miserable life. And I’ve listened patiently while you wasted my time with your delusions of being valuable enough to spare."
He stepped forward and roughly shoved the wad of cloth back into Percivus’s mouth before the man could recover from the punch, ignoring the trickle of blood that flowed from the Inquisitor’s mouth as he silenced the man once and for all. Working with quick, efficient movements, Owain buckled the leather strap back into place, putting an end to the illusion that the man’s words had any chance of changing his fate.
Percivus deserved to suffer for what he’d done. No one was allowed to touch Owain’s woman the way he had, much less strip her naked to gaze upon the beauty that belonged to him and him alone. From the moment Owain had ordered Gilander to retrieve Percivus from the abbey in Maeril, the Inquisitor’s fate had been sealed, and now he’d provided his last bit of usefulness as his desperate pleas and bargaining tipped Jocelynn over the edge.
"But now we’re done with talking," Owain said, his voice dropping to something quietly dangerous. "Now we move on to more... instructive activities."
He turned back to the table of implements, his eyes scanning across the various blades and tools until they settled on exactly what he was looking for. The knife was small, barely more than an inch of blade, but unusually wide for its length. The edge gleamed wickedly in the torchlight, honed to razor sharpness despite its modest size.
"This," Owain said, picking up the blade and turning it in his hand so that the light played across its surface, "is a very special tool. Do you see how short the blade is, Jocelynn? How it’s designed to make a wide, shallow cut?"
He moved back to her side, holding the knife where she could see it clearly, his other hand settling on her shoulder in a gesture that was part comfort, part control.
"This blade cannot penetrate deeply," he explained with the patient tone of a teacher instructing an attentive student. "No matter how hard you strike with it, it can only inflict shallow wounds. It’s designed specifically to ensure that death comes slowly, that the one wielding it cannot accidentally deliver a killing blow. Each strike will cause pain, will draw blood, will add to the suffering... but it takes many, many cuts before the end finally comes."
He held the knife out to her, offering it hilt-first to the woman who would soon become his wife.
"This is my wedding gift to you," he reminded her. "Death by a thousand cuts."
"It’s actually quite difficult to kill a person, you know," he added as he placed the hilt of the knife in her hand, gently wrapping her fingers around it. "The human body is remarkably resilient, capable of enduring far more damage than most people realize. But this blade makes it easy to inflict wound after wound, to paint your enemy’s flesh with pain, without the burden of having to know exactly where to strike to end things quickly."
"After all," he said with a predatory smile as he looked through the lace of her black veil into her trembling, seafoam eyes. "You wouldn’t want it to end too quickly, would you?"
