Victoria gulped loudly, perhaps swallowing whatever emotion was choking her and continued.
“You know I never fully supported your training under Jerome, even though he was the best. Sure, that year of apprenticeship obviously suited you well enough. I looked you up, you are renown, sought the world over. The Book Savior. ButI feared what would come in that godforsaken place, and it did. You were so young, and that woman…”
Victoria trailed off, clearly at a loss of words. And what could she say that she hadn’t said back then? Goddess knew their fights had been overwhelming and over the top.
She laid her hands down and glanced at her aunt, the basket of bread between them, and played a role she had so rarely assumed in her life. A peacemaker. A lying one, but hopefully convincing enough to end this conversation.
“Victoria… It’s done. It’s been done for twenty-two years. I don’t know what to do to have it be more done than it is. As for the building… It’s just a building. And Prudence is just a woman. Some crows are better left sleeping, and you of all people know it all too well.”
“Alright then, Taylor Swift, you seem to have it all figured out. Again. You did back then too, how you rallied against anyone who stood in the way of you and that Belcourt woman. The greatest love of them all. Don’t look at me like that, those were your words. And now? Now Prudence is ‘just a woman.’ How the mighty hath fallen, Rhiannon.”
Victoria’s face was inscrutable when she reached for a saucepan one of the sous was handing her. She picked a tasting spoon from a large jar by her right hand and sampled.
“More garlic, and shallots too. Easy on the cream and butter.” When the man scampered away, taking the sauce with him, Victoria’s eyes pierced Rhiannon once again. “The lobster will be lost in all this dairy.”
“If you’re trying to weave a metaphor using your signature sauce, aunt, I’m not grasping it.”
“I wasn’t. And I wouldn’t use the lobster one to do so anyway. You’re more of a béchamel, finicky and capricious.”
“So you’ve always said.” Rhiannon got up from her stool. It was time to go. She had checked another box on the to-do list ofvisiting her family. It had been like paper cuts scoring her skin, every encounter more biting than the last, leaving her raw and annoyed. She knew returning to Crow’s Nest wouldn’t be even remotely wise, but why had she thought she could handle it?
“And so you’ve always denied. That’s par for the course, my girl. What else is par for the course is that you will fight all of this and all of us till you are broken and beaten and there is no need for it. There was no need for it twenty-two years ago and there is no need for it now. Also… You were younger then and you didn’t have the grief and the burdens you carry now.”
Rhiannon closed her eyes and let the words wash over her, like acid poured over every single one of those paper cuts her family had inflicted. Still, the hurt was proof she was alive.
“Be that as it may, it’s too late for this conversation now. Those burdens you think I carry are nobody’s but my own.” She saw Victoria’s eyebrows rise, but she wasn’t ready for more questions and even more lecturing. “As you said, aunt, twenty-two years is a very long time. Maybe all of you should move on.”
She turned, leaving a stunned Victoria still holding the dirty tasting spoon. When it clattered against the counter’s marble top, Rhiannon didn’t bother to look back, throwing a “the baker boy is indeed better than Jean, my compliments to the chef” over her shoulder before exiting the bustling kitchen.
She wanted silence. Her books, her cat, and her comforter. She hadn’t opened a book in ages, very much aware that her mood and her state of mind kept her from reading, from touching paper and leather, from doing what she did best. She had been in love with books since she was old enough to walk. With time, they had become her profession, her livelihood, and what brought her and Margaux together. And they had been her downfall.
The Crowhart manuscripts in her upstairs study beckoned, as they did more often since she had been on the island. Asthey never did in LA. Something to think about, something to consider.
Sleep certainly wasn’t anything to consider since Prudence was bound to be there, in her dreams, her kind features forgiving her, absolving her for sins Rhiannon had never even confessed. And yet under the light of those gray eyes, she wanted to open her chest and let Prudence reach in. Let her see everything. Like the woman from her dreams, who saw her, who listened, who forgave. Rhiannon wanted that so much. That blank clean slate of absolution. Of a new beginning. Of someone who looked at her like she was renewed. Like she was worthy. Like she was…good. She wanted it a little bit too much. And so sleep wasn’t an option, because Daytime Rhiannon couldn’t face anyone looking at her that freely. Unlike Nighttime Rhiannon, she wasn’t any of those things.
She walked through the empty first floor of her soon to be finished shop, rows and rows of boxes filled with ancient and often priceless editions of manuscripts lining the far wall. She would have to go through them all, display some, store the rest. She’d have to find an offsite storage facility with excellent climate control. Nobody kept all their eggs in one basket, especially not with something so easily ruined as age-old books.
One of the boxes lay open on the counter and Rhiannon took a detour, inspecting Christian’s handiwork. He had started checking the inventory, the laptop and the spreadsheet on it telling her as much when it lit up at her touch.
She ran her fingertip over the cracked spines. Some hundreds of years old. Some newer yet no less precious.
One in particular drew her attention, and she pulled it out of the box and then out of its shroud. She knew this book well; ironically, it was a gift from Margaux on the opening of their first auction house. She had given it to Rhiannon as a big joke. Theyhad even laughed about it, despite the aftertaste of the hilarity leaving acrid notes in her mouth.
Malleus Maleficarum, or the Hammer of Witches, a book singlehandedly responsible for thousands of deaths of innocents, lay on the unpolished wooden counter, small and raggedy. Even after twenty years, Rhiannon still had not begun its restoration. She had been offered a king’s ransom for this particular edition, appraised to have been among the very first batches ever printed.
Rhiannon had refused them all. She kept the book, in its innocuous beige wrapping, never displaying it, never commenting on how that gift from her wife tore her heart to shreds. Never once acknowledging what an insult it had been to hold the book that was singlehandedly responsible for the medieval European witch-burning craze, one that would travel across the ocean with the pilgrims and take root in the new lands, causing even more death and destruction. Ultimately destroying swaths her family as well.
Under the assault of the past betrayals, she stumbled out of the front room and into the kitchen. A note lay on the counter and Rhiannon reached for it—Lachlan and Christian were often leaving her scraps of paper with something that had come up while she had been away. Except the jagged edged piece contained only three words, and the moment Rhiannon touched it, the cold numbed her hands, stilled her heart.
Hang the witch!
Rhiannon dropped the note, her hand falling to her side. Behind the spell, behind the barrier, her magic was pulsing like a drum. Absently, Rhiannon wondered if that was how Gwendolyn felt in her cell. Cornered. Threatened.
Then she scolded herself for exaggerating. It was just a stupid prank. Someone was messing with her, and her own mind was letting them win. Well, spite had guided her back to Dragons,and spite kept her through the wretchedness of the first few weeks. Spite would keep her here no matter how many damned notes anyone left her. She’d keep her end of the bargain and serve her prison sentence. Twelve months.
Rhiannon took a picture of the note, refusing to touch it again. The energy emanating from it was downright foul. Rhiannon was afraid it might stain her, the malice in it too strong. She sent the picture to Christian.
A knock on the front door wrenched her out of her reverie. Rhiannon set the entire ordeal aside. There would be time to deal with that later. Christian would look into it, and he knew everything and everyone on the island.
