Rhiannon counted to ten. The rain and the wind did not stop. Didn’t even slow down. She frowned, and as if mocking her, thunder rolled in the distance.
Defeated, she closed her eyes. This island always undid her. What was one more humiliation?
So, of course, because the universe was perverse and the Mother Goddess had a mile-wide cruel streak, Victoria took two steps before slipping and landing on her behind in the puddle nearest to the construction site.
Rhiannon cursed Victoria, cursed the rain, and cursed this entire godforsaken town before setting her coffee down and making her way outside.
To her credit, Victoria was sitting quietly in the rainwater, her face a picture of complete innocence. When Rhiannon, now drenched herself, took two steps and came to a stop right in front of her, Lachlan hot on her heels, Victoria lifted her head and made the fakest possible production of looking at Rhiannon.
“Goddess, Rhiannon Crowhart, as I live and breathe! You’ve hardly changed, child. I heard tell someone took over old Jerome’s place, but never in a million years would I have assumed my own kin?—”
“Can it, Aunt Vicky.”
Behind her, Lachlan’s gasp was loud and just as theatrically honest as Victoria’s earlier speech had been fake.
“Aunt Vicky?”
“You know that it is and always has been Victoria, never Vicky, if you please. Now be a dear, young man, and give me a hand. My tired bones cannot take this rain and this cold and the abuse they are suffering on these cobblestones since my niece here cannot be bothered at all to help her feeble aunt.”
Lachlan’s jaw dropped at the information pouring down on him along with the rain. He blinked then obviously swallowed a dozen or so questions before deciding that the best thing to do was spring into action.
“Oh, of course, ma’am, and may I just say that you are by no means old?—”
“My dear, I did not utter that ghastly word. Never have I ever spoken it out loud about myself. Feeble. That’s more my speed. Now, gentle, please.”
Rhiannon rolled her eyes at her aunt’s antics and led the way back to the building, fuming. Above her, thunder boomed stronger. Mocking her again. As she scowled at the sky, lightning severed the clouds and she exhaled in defeat, even as her body sang with the storm gathering speed and power around her. Inside her, her own storm was powerless to answer the call ofthe island. She had made sure of that years ago, and if she could control anything in her life, it was the craft in her blood.
Or so you think…
The voice laughed, and Rhiannon felt the skin of her palms tingle as she bit her cheek to refocus, to stop thinking… To stop the howling of the tempest. As she gritted her teeth, the wind picked up, lashing at her and at the unsuspecting, cheerfully colored buildings of Market Square.
Rhiannon curled her fingers into fists, her knuckles cracking, and willed herself to move. When she turned around, she caught Victoria watching her, tsking and shaking her head as Lachlan was carrying her up the stairs.
“Always had a temper, didn’t you, Rhiannon Elizabeth?”
Rhiannon chose to ignore Victoria’s words and her eyes lifting to the dark moody skies as she spoke. As Lachlan sat Victoria down on one of the overturned buckets the workers were using and hurried off in search of— presumably—something to use to dry off, Rhiannon finally turned and took a good look at her gossip-seeking aunt.
Time had been graceful to Victoria. But then the going cliché was that time had always been gentle with the Crowharts. With those who were privileged to age at all, that is. Rhiannon knew she herself was a testament to that.
Victoria allowed her the perusal and then stood up, as if she hadn’t just taken a fall in the rain and didn’t resemble a drowned chicken, and dished some of her own.
“I have to say, I am a bit afraid to approach the two of you now, ladies.” Lachlan had returned with a towel and was standing a few feet away. “You look like you are about to start tearing strips off each other, and while I’d pay to watch, I feel that it’s not my place.”
He shoved the towel into Victoria’s hands and was gone as silently as he’d come in, something Rhiannon always admiredabout him. His perceptiveness and his way of moving without disturbing the air, for such a giant of a man.
“Your boy is smart, Rhiannon.”
Victoria did not lift the cloth to her face and kept looking as if she was trying to catalogue the differences. Well, twenty years, while very kind still, had left quite a few of them. Her aunt had changed too. Rhiannon’s treacherous heart squeezed at the depth of lines on the older woman’s cheeks, at the brightness of her white hair. Crowharts aged gracefully, but they aged, nonetheless.
“It has been a long time, dearest.”
Victoria broke the staring contest and finally allowed herself to wipe the rain off her face.
“Am I still?” Rhiannon had no idea why she was asking things she had no desire to know the answer to. And honestly, after all this time, did it matter?
“My dearest?” Victoria lifted the patented Crowhart eyebrow and smiled. Rhiannon had pictured this moment often in the first few years of her self-imposed exile. She would return, triumphant and all-conquering, and they would all recognize how much they had wronged her. And Victoria would look at her with absolution.
Except, there was no absolution in her aunt’s eyes, so like her own. And since they were exactly like Rhiannon’s, there would be no getting over what had happened. A Crowhart never forgot and never forgave. It was, after all, their motto. Forged on their crest as a way of self-preservation at a time when they were hunted and haunted, and now it was just as heavy as the haunting itself. What was one more curse on their family name?
