I wondered if anyone would notice that. She definitely was kind of channeling Morgause here. That will be a fairly infrequent occurrence for Bet’s sake. Outside of ol’ Oedipus, not too many people would find Morgause’s footsteps admirable to follow in.

Well, yes, it is. Sort of. There are several ways that Jayson could have played marrying Bet off. It’s not impossible to fake a hymen, it’s been done before. And there’s even someone in town who specializes in sex magic who could probably have magicked it back in place. (Though it’s anyone’s guess if Jayson knows about Madame Bones.) There are also men who like broken women–not that I see this incident, even had it played out exactly how Jayson envisioned it, as breaking Elizabet.

There’s more to this than just the alliance with Rance, though. Josh has definitely changed since Darin came into his life as something other than a tablemate in Loki’s class. Jayson doesn’t know enough about Josh’s life to know what’s changed, exactly, which keeps Darin safe(ish), but the changes are dismaying to the baron. Rather than bringing Josh more firmly to heel, Josh is drifting further away, actually finding true strength and confidence. For once he’s got something that Jayson can’t actually touch, which is great for Josh, not so good for Jayson.

If Elizabet isn’t the most important thing in Josh’s life, she’s damned close and as far as Jayson knows, she holds the top spot. There’s more than a little bit of “nothing you care about is safe. If I’ll do this to my own daughter, what might I do to something else?” in this for Josh. And that wasn’t lost on Josh, though we don’t see that because we’re in Darin’s head here, not Josh’s.

Plus there are a few things that Jayson knows that you, the reader, do not. (And won’t any time soon, probably. Jayson is more effective to me as author if we don’t know his thoughts as he’s thinking them.) He has plans and back-up plans, and plans in plans in back up plans.

This was simply a calculated risk on Jayson’s part.

Thanks, Winter!

Someone will find out many of the details, but I don’t think that anyone will be told, exactly. Josh has rank here and as I pointed out to Morgaine, Josh doesn’t trust people in authority. He would tell someone if Elizabet told him to. But Elizabet is not in a good position to look at this situation logically. Plus there’s the whole “rape stigma”, conventional wisdom dictates that “good girls don’t get raped.”

When Elizabet does decide she needs a confidante, there would be worse choices than Annette, though. Her authority to do something about it might be limited, but Annette has seen a lot and isn’t going to judge her or tell her, like Katherine would, that if she had been “better” she never would have been raped or almost raped.

The guards, well, you’re totally right about Delroy (the brown-haired first guard that Josh talked to.) Rance made it well worth Delroy’s while to look the other way and I hope he never sleeps and proceeds to rot in hell for it. As for Haynes, the dark haired guard, he is about as sharp as a rusty butter knife, though. He simply does not have the brains to put two and two together and get the right number. He knows something was weird about this whole thing, but applying logic to “the screams came before the lightning + Rance sent us away, etc.” is beyond his mental capabilities. And he was chosen for this particular detail because he isn’t bright enough to figure it out.

That is a lovely way to think of Rance’s afterlife! Thanks, Van!

The problem with telling Marisol is–well–quite honestly, though Marisol would kill Jayson on the spot with a pair of sewing scissors or an olive fork, whatever was handy and would take a good, long time, I don’t know that it would actually occur to them to put Marisol in their corner. Brandon’s mother is one of those idiots who believes that good girls don’t get raped or almost raped. She’d be fairly far down the list of people that Brandon would go to. And “Telling mother.” usually doesn’t even blip on Josh’s radar. His interaction with his father has left him with a deep distrust of parents and “adults” in general. (or rather authority figures. And given the authority figures in his life: Jayson, Masen, Miguel, Loki, even Dustin and Valen though they’re not necessarily bad people, I don’t entirely blame him.)

No, Hector would definitely not want a baron in his kingdom who would set his own daughter up to be raped. But at the same time, he has the word of a man who is now dead, given as he was attacking a twelve year old girl, as told to them by the girl who was attacked. That’s not the hard evidence Hector would need to nail Jayson to the nearest upright surface.

However, that’s not to say that nothing will come out of this or that the king won’t know something. *bats lashes*

Yes, definitely. Poor Bet, poor Darin, Poor Josh, Poor Brandon–having to make decisions like this and deal with the after effects because Jayson is fucked in the head.

Thanks, Morgaine!

I feel awful for poor Bet, but she’s nothing if not a fighter. The Orkney blood tells. As unlike Morgause as Bet is, bringing down lightning to fry this loser feels just like what the old witch would have done.

Jayson set up his own daughter to be raped for a political alliance… incredible. Van and Morganna have said everything I could about how disgusting he and that scheme is. It also seems incredibly stupid of him. At the least, it’s short-sighted. I’d think offering up Bet in a marriage would be worth more than this, especially if she’s not known as a rape victim. The only long-term play I can see is if Jayson was going to double-cross Rance and use this to get rid of him, banking on it being unbelievable that a father would agree to having his daughter raped. Even that seems too scandalous for Jayson’s taste, though. He doesn’t even beat his own son himself.

I hope that someone who can do something gets told. Not someone who will lay the blame on Elizabet or someone who will spread the news to everybody and their dog, but somebody who could do something. I like Morgaine’s idea of the king finding out. Elizabet is friends with Vivi, whose family is tight with the royals. I also struggle with the idea of a Pendragon allowing one of their noblemen to hand over his child to a paedophile just for an extra vote.

Or if Annette finds out, she’ll do something. I don’t know what, but it will be something.

Also, how brainwashed or fucked up or just plain awful do these guards have to be to stand around while their boss rapes a twelve-year-old? If either of them had a shred of decency, they would have found a way to interfere, even if they couldn’t have confronted Rance directly.

Poor Bet. And poor boys, and poor kids… but NOT poor Rance! I hope there’s a nice corner of Albion Hell waiting for his powerless, castrated ghost, with likenesses of all the kids he’s hurt just itching to beat the shit out of him forever.

You do NOT mess with girls who can call down lightning. I hope the Baron remembers that — not for his sake so much as for Bet’s.

And I really, really hope that Josh and Brandon tell somebody! Tell Marisol, for crying out loud. If Marisol doesn’t kill the Baron herself, I’m sure she’s smart enough to figure out a way to get Bet to the capital, have her tell her story to the king, and let the king take care of it. I can’t imagine that any king with a drop of Pendragon blood will stand to have a baron in his kingdom who would set his own daughter up to be raped. They will find something to nail the Baron’s ass to the wall with, I’m sure of it.

Still, poor Bet … and poor Darin, Josh, and Brandon, getting stuck cleaning up the Baron’s mess.

Please do not kill me over this post. This was all necessary. Lots of stuff comes out of this guy’s death and most of it is important to later things. And you’ll never find out what that stuff is if you murder me now. Sorry to start your new year off with such a cheery post.

…I’ve got to find a better way to do trigger warnings. Yeah, they warn people, but they also spoil everything for everyone else…

Maybe I’ll steal Winter’s idea and put together a page. Seriously, I want to warn people for whom an attempted rape will be hard to read about, that’s important. But not much of a shock if you can just read the trigger and know it…