The entire time her mother had been speaking, Ashlynn fought to hold herself back, giving her mother the space she needed to work through the tangled feelings in her heart.
There had been a time, not that long ago, when Ashlynn feared that it had been her mother who betrayed her secret, motivated by the teachings of the Church, or perhaps trapped by them.
Ashlynn knew full well how much the Church mattered to her mother, but even she hadn't been prepared to hear that her mother had been preparing to take the vows of a Confessor. While she'd known that her mother returned to the convent she'd visited so many times before, Ashlynn had thought that it was just another visit.
She could understand her mother taking the time to grieve in a place where she felt safe and at home. But to become a Confessor would have meant leaving her father behind, and the thought that her mother had been so torn up by what had happened to their family that she would abandon her husband…
