The bones on the rushes of the Great Hall's floor cooled slowly.
Jocelynn could not have looked away from them if she had tried. The skull, charred black, lay near Ashlynn's right foot. Its jaw had fallen slightly open as though Abbot Recared was still screaming even now. The smaller bones of one hand were scattered farther out, where they had fallen when his arm came apart along the line of the burning blade.
A dusting of ash cradled all of it, giving the charred and cracked bones the appearance of burned-out logs in the hearth at the end of the night. Or it would have, if the open-mouthed skull with its empty, staring eye-sockets hadn't stood as a clear reminder that this pathetic little pile was all that remained of one of the most powerful men in Lothian March after the Marquis and the High Priest.
