Jocelynn's destination was Owain's private chambers, where she had been summoned to join him for an evening meal. Not invited, she noted with a bitter internal humor that she kept carefully hidden behind her veil. Summoned. As if she were a servant to be called, rather than a guest to be courteously requested. As if her time and her grief and her exhaustion were less important than his convenience.
But she would go, because refusing would create a confrontation she did not have the strength for, and because maintaining the appearance of cooperation was the only leverage she had left. She would sit at his table and eat his food and endure his presence, and she would do it with all the grace and composure that her mother had trained into her from childhood, because the price of doing anything else was far too high to contemplate.
