Jocelynn had been awake since the fifth bell, sitting on the edge of her bed in the dark with her boots already laced.
She hadn't been able to get back to sleep, even though it would still be more than an hour before Ashlynn arrived. It had taken a full quarter hour for her hands to stop shaking this time, and no amount of cold water splashed on her face or ardent scrubbing with perfumed soaps could get the feeling of cold, iron manacles to leave her wrists.
"At least the nightmares were new," Jocelynn muttered to herself as she stared out the window at the soft, velvety night sky where the stars were beginning to fade.
In her dreams, she'd returned to the dungeon under Lothian Manor, cold, shivering, and chained to the rotting wood and leather cot. Only this time, it hadn't been Percivus who bound her there. If it had been Percivus, come to haunt her again, she could have struggled, could have cursed him for what he did, could have reminded him whose hands he'd died under…
