Ashlynn crossed back to her chair and sat down. The wood creaked beneath her, familiar and solid, and she rested her forearms on her knees and clasped her hands together while she took a moment to gather herself.
She'd said more than she'd intended to. The words about Jocelynn had come out of her the way blood came out of a wound, not because she'd chosen to let them but because the pressure behind them had become too great to hold, and now they were out in the room, hanging in the candlelight alongside Cerys's tears and the fading echo of Cian's sobs, and she couldn't take them back.
She didn't want to take them back. But she needed to move forward.
"We don't have much time," Ashlynn said, and her voice carried the first traces of the steadiness she would need for the conversation waiting below. Not the cold composure she'd worn when she first entered the room, but something warmer and more honest that had been forged in the crucible of what happened in this room.
