Chapter 5 Rhiannon, Sisters & Holding Up The Sky #2
“I always wondered what you remembered from our last conversation, what you thought of all these years—” Ceridwen began, but Rhiannon had no pity left for old hurts.
“Conversation? This is rich, coming from you. You cursed me in every way you knew how and then you slammed the door…” Heartache forgotten and only more insult added to the already open injury, Rhiannon laughed, the sound brittle and fake to her own ears, yet she reveled in it just the same.
“You wondered about me? Well, I haven’t thought about you at all.
About any of you. And had it not been for Marg—” She trailed off abruptly, even the beginning of her wife’s name tasting like poison in her mouth.
She expected Ceridwen to latch on to that dangling end of the conversation. Nobody like her older sister to press on the most infected of wounds under the guise of drawing out the puss.
Except when Ceridwen spoke, her voice held no rancor.
“You might not have thought about us, yet you still managed to support—”
“Don’t. How I soothed my guilty conscience is none of your business. You made it clear you hated me anyway.”
Ceridwen took a step, then two, and touched her hand again, letting go only when she was satisfied that the pain that seared Rhiannon just moments ago was sufficiently pacified. She traced the lifeline one more time for good measure, and Rhiannon closed her eyes.
The smell of flowers, all at once and none in particular she could discern, was familiar and comforting. When Ceridwen touched her cheek and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, Rhiannon almost leaned into the touch, just as familiar and just as comforting.
But when she opened her eyes, she saw her sister’s were calculating, and so she slowly pushed away while tugging her hand free.
“Thank you. You know where the door is.” Rhiannon turned to go.
Where? She didn’t know, anywhere really, away from here, away from Ceridwen, and away from that something that no matter how much comfort was applied, still lurked just under her skin.
The fact that her sister couldn’t feel it anymore, when it breathed and pulsed just beneath the surface, was surprising and something to think about.
Damn it to all hell, as if she had nothing else to think about.
“I do know where the door is. And you know where the coffee shop is. It’s been four weeks since you crossed the town line. If you think Seren didn’t feel it, you’ve lost some of those smarts of yours in Los Angeles. And if you don’t care? Well, then you’ve lost your heart.”
Rhiannon wanted to argue, to hurl insults, to drag them back to that last year just before she had fled Crow’s Nest, when all they did was scream and curse each other.
But that would solve nothing and that would not make Ceridwen leave sooner.
And so Rhiannon didn’t take the bait carefully laid down.
“I’m busy, Ceridwen. Look around. This place has languished for years—”
“I see just fine, baby sister. I see that you rode into town in that spiffy car of yours on a quest to rebuild something that maybe would’ve better been set a match to.”
Ceridwen’s fingers flew to her mouth, and she swallowed audibly. She shook her head and held out her hand, in supplication perhaps, but Rhiannon had had enough.
“These aren’t my ghosts to lay to rest. You were so hellbent on it not being my place to do so twenty-two years ago, Ceri…”
Rhiannon felt more than heard her sister’s gasp at her use of the childhood nickname, and she let her shoulders droop. This day was a lost cause.
“I will go see Seren. And I will visit Victoria at the Tavern. And I will restore this place and do what I must. I have my reasons, sister. Trust me to at least have that much. Then I’ll leave. We all will do what we must and then the cards will fall as they will.”
“You know exactly how those cards were drawn, Rhiannon.” But Ceridwen’s voice held no malice, just resignation.
Any other time, especially twenty-two years ago, Rhiannon would have fought her tooth and nail to wipe that resignation off the face so like her own.
Their younger sisters were twins, but Ceridwen and her looked more alike than Seren and Deryn.
Seeing her own eyes look back with so much defeat, hurt, no matter how much bad blood separated them, stirred a different emotion in her.
Before she could say what might’ve been the most foolish thing to ever cross her lips, Ceridwen waved her off.
“Be that as it may, I know where you stand. Prudence, however, doesn’t. And now that you’ve unlocked what’s in her, she is your responsibility, Rhiannon. You know this.”
Well, all the goodwill she held for her sister evaporated in one fell swoop of Ceridwen’s precisely crafted manipulation. Did Rhiannon really think her older sister of all people would let sleeping dogs lie? Did she feel that she wouldn’t use the one ace left on the table to wreck Rhiannon’s hand?
“I know nothing. And neither do you.”
Ceridwen smirked, and Rhiannon hated the way the sly lips arranged themselves with that air of superiority. Arrogance ran in the family and they both wore it better than anyone, but in this particular moment Rhiannon despised it.
“Well, if you do nothing, it will be up to me to pick up the pieces. But then I always do, Rhiannon. Prudence will not be the first or the last of your broken dolls that I have to fix, sister. And be sure that I will do so.”
The wound in Rhiannon’s chest opened up with malice and almost screamed “Stay away from her!” Except she could see the triumph already in Ceridwen’s eyes, bright and proud, and so she bit her lip and held her tongue, curling her fingers into a fist, the pain searing her palm yet again, the skin where it had connected with Pru’s on fire anew.
“So stubborn, Rhiannon.” Then Ceridwen’s features sobered, all traces of vicious victory gone, and she was her unflappable, serious self once again.
“I’m not goading you into embracing magic again.
I can sense you haven’t done so in some time.
However, that’s your business, tending to your power, to your storms. You know where to find the coven for help and a circle for payment, should you need them.
But don’t for a second think that I would abandon someone like Prudence, unaware of what is happening, to the devices of a witch who is torturing herself by denying her own craft.
I can’t do that. It goes against everything that I’ve been gifted. And you know it too.”
With that, Ceridwen stepped up to her and laid a tender kiss on her forehead before Rhiannon could push her away.
“You look like you’re holding up the sky all the while knowing it will crush you.
It’s painful watching you do so. I don’t know why you’re here, baby sister.
On the island and in this place where you’ve chosen pain again and again.
But whatever it is that brought you back, I am grateful either way. I missed my sister.”