Chapter 23 #4
“She left everything behind to be with me. And then a few years later we both realized I had been too young and hotheaded and just…stupid. So damn stupid. And I couldn’t give her what she wanted. She wanted to be happy.”
Rhiannon took a deep breath. This conversation felt just as painful as unleashing her storm.
“She left her husband for me…to be happy. That was all she wanted. Goddess knows I tried. I tried so hard. Years of couples therapy. Years of trying to do everything to be the person who could give her the world and I failed, only to find her in the bloody bathtub. Years of closing off my magic because she was so afraid of it, after what she saw it do to Fowler. I am sorry for that, you know.” She threw Prudence a sideways glance only to find determination and sternness on those beautiful features.
“I don’t care about that, Rhiannon. I only care that you truly believe that you are somehow responsible for the death of a weak-willed, evil woman who took advantage of you at eighteen, manipulated you through your entire marriage, made you believe you were somehow defective and your power was a dirty secret to be locked away, and worse, she made you genuinely think you were responsible for her happiness.
You weren’t, you know. Nobody ever is. You weren’t her therapist, her doctor, her nurse.
You were her wife. From all you’ve told me, you were faithful and loyal.
You cared about her enough to leave everything behind and sacrifice whole parts of yourself to her whims. She was unhappy? Boo fucking hoo.”
Rhiannon smiled and then, unable to hold back, laughed even if it made her dizzy.
“But tell me how you really feel, Prudence.”
“How I really feel? I feel that everyone around you your entire life let you down and yet made you believe that you were the one to blame. Your wife, your family, my father.”
Rhiannon closed her eyes for a second, Prudence’s words suddenly too much. Her mother’s face swam up again in her memory, and she gritted her teeth and willed it away. It was a story for another time, a time when she’d hopefully have more strength to confess to her biggest sin yet.
Prudence frowned and then looked away from Rhiannon before speaking.
“He’s been coming over every day, trying to excuse the things he has done, the things that have transpired.
He knew it was an accident, what happened between the two of you.
He said so himself. Did he blame you and use that to hate you and the Crowharts?
Sure. But in these past days, it feels like I am meeting a brand-new person who has been my father all along, and I can’t say I am enjoying the experience.
Bigoted, callous, governed by greed and fear. And wrapped in sanctimony.”
Prudence lifted Rhiannon’s hand, playing with her fingers absentmindedly, and Rhiannon felt gratitude that in this heavy moment, she was reaching for her, drawing strength from her.
“Victoria clocked it right away, you know. Guessed it in one. Back at Crow & Cat. He did pressure Margaux to get old Jerome to write a will—in fact, that was what he was hurting her for. For her to make Jerome mention her specifically by name so that even if anyone ever discovered that their marriage wasn’t legal, the building would still be hers by right.
That’s what you walked in on and lost your control. Can’t say I blame you.”
Prudence sighed, and Rhiannon felt teardrops on her skin. She lifted a trembling, weak hand and traced a finger down that soft cheek, wiping the tears away.
“These aren’t tears of sadness, Rhiannon. He’s not a good man. I don’t even know what and who I’m crying for. I wish I could say he did what he did for love, out of some sad tragedy. Something romantic. Something dramatic. Not that those would excuse him. But at least I could try and understand.”
Prudence sniffed and Rhiannon heard overwhelming derision in the sound.
“He wanted the building. It was that simple and that craven. Just greed. It had been the former courthouse, you see. They moved it to the town hall a few decades after Gwendolyn’s trial, because it was too small and they had bigger plans.
These awful men, who hanged women, who threatened and blackmailed and made them live their lives in fear.
And so he wanted the building to erect some kind of museum to the first ‘enforcers of law and morality.’”
“Damn, why is it always the men with gazillion divorces and out-of-wedlock children—no offense, love—who claim to be the paragons and standard-bearers of said morality? Does he really believe it? Is he that much of a zealot?”
Prudence shrugged, the gesture dismissive, but Rhiannon knew it wasn’t that simple. Prudence had genuinely loved her father once upon a time to simply shrug it off now.
“Something happened to him, Rhiannon. I can’t explain it.
He was my hero once. The fair one, the kind one, the one who told me stories and sat with me at night when I was sick as a kid.
And then something changed. Slowly. Me being bisexual never sat right with him, but I think it was the craft.
He never mentioned it, but Victoria and Ceridwen think the Fowlers, possessing the power themselves, could sense it in others and then used their craft to persecute the women who wielded it.
And that he must’ve had that family trait of sniffing it out and felt it in me all along. ”
Prudence tucked a stray hair behind her ear and dropped her hand, her shoulders drooping. “The Compendium does say that bird catchers and hunters will come for the power. And he is very much one of them.”
“The Compendium?” Rhiannon didn’t know what to make of Prudence’s knowledge of the contents of the manuscript.
“Oh, yeah, about that.” Prudence’s smile was sheepish.
“I might’ve snooped when you were out of it the last time?
Which is something you should probably stop doing.
All this exhausted fainting. It gives me too much time to do the snooping in your things.
Although this one is a good thing, since I knew the book existed and managed to drag it out of the fire along with Patches and Boleyn. ”
Rhiannon smiled and intertwined their fingers, grateful to this woman. For this woman.
Prudence smiled then sobered, her features filled with disappointment again.
“Back to my father, he is such a white-man cliché. Looking back, I should’ve seen it all along.
He got older, got deeper into conspiracies, into his misguided faith, into everything the fanatics spew these days.
And above all, he always believed he was righteous.
Maybe that’s what these people all believe, maybe that’s what is keeping them warm at night—that they are right, that they are pure and just. I don’t know…
But he has so much hate in him. We started to grow apart long before you returned to the island, so please don’t put this one on our shoulders as well.
Most of what you carry is not yours to hold on to in the first place. ”
Prudence placed a kiss on her knuckles, and Rhiannon felt like the light coming through the half-closed blinds was suddenly brighter.
She was so gone for this woman. So desperately in love with her.
She wanted to confess it, to shout it, and knew she had no right to do so.
There were more secrets and more lies and more darkness in her to let any of it touch someone as pure and as perfect as Prudence. Even if Rhiannon wanted her so much.
“You think me better than I actually am, Prudence.”
A smile was her only answer for a long while. Outside the window, rain was falling in steady rivulets. Rhiannon looked at Prudence’s hands and saw them glow steadily. And suddenly she wished for nothing but to stand outside and feel Prudence’s rain on her skin.
“Yes, this is my tempest, Rhiannon. Turns out I am Wind, just like you. Who’d have known?”
There was enough teasing in Prudence’s tone to make Rhiannon’s eyes sting with tears. They really needed to get a grip on all the waterworks, because there were too many of them today.
“I knew.” Two words. Two words were all Rhiannon said and Prudence’s magic flared, the wind howling outside louder, stronger, before slowly subsiding in an impressive show of power and control.
“Yes, you did. I think you did even when you were lying to me and walking around taking Lisa to task and ignoring my magic and fucking me senseless in an open bookstore. I think you knew back then that I love—” Prudence stopped, and Rhiannon’s heart turned heavy in her chest, her breathing shallow.
She knew what was about to be said. And she felt like her own nails were torn from her fingers the second Prudence cut herself off.
No, she didn’t deserve it, but could she be judged for wanting it?
She remembered the gaze of the dying woman from her vision, with the blaze surrounding her, looking at Elizabeth as if the world was better because she lived. Prudence’s eyes held that exact same look.
Prudence shook her head somewhat ruefully before taking Rhiannon’s hand yet again.
“Yes, you did know. You almost died to save my life. In fact, you fully believed you would die, and you broke the barrier spell and unleashed the storm anyway. I just hope you didn’t do it because you see me as another responsibility you carry on your shoulders, Rhiannon.
And had I died, I still wouldn’t have been on your conscience.
I hope you know this too. History does repeat itself, and I know now that another Fowler died for a Crowhart.
I hope you weren’t repaying that debt. There isn’t one.
Elizabeth needed to live. She deserved the world, just like you do. ”