Chapter 24 Rhiannon
RHIANNON
I woke to Cassandra sitting on my bed. My head was bleary and my very bones were brittle, exhausted by the weight of simply being.
She was less corporeal than she had been the last time I’d seen her.
Her appearance flickered slightly, between the corpse-garbed malefic and the ways I’d seen her present other times.
The dressing gown, the various suits. She was struggling to keep herself steady now that her message had been sent.
I stretched my hand towards her, palm up.
Cassandra’s form solidified somewhat. Her smile was soft as she placed her hand in mine. “You are very kind, Rhiannon.”
Still exhausted, I shrugged. “Maybe once, but not now.”
Silently, she nodded. “Perhaps that is for the best. You have a visitor.”
Cassandra went to the window and opened it before fading away.
Lara’s dark head popped in through the open window. “Heya, Princess.”
I shook my head. “Don’t call me that.”
Her long, muscular limbs came crawling in with the grace of a boxer. She was in bed next to me before I could tell her not to. “Okay.”
She leaned against me, and I breathed her in. Lara always smelled like fresh air. It was comforting, familiar. And we’d be fighting within ten minutes if either of us got too cozy. There were some patterns that were doomed to repeat themselves.
“You always saw the worst in me,” I whispered, pulling the quilt up around my chest. It wasn’t an accusation. More of a question as I rested my head on her shoulder.
“And loved you more for it,” Lara answered. “If only your worst and my worst hadn’t been so diametrically opposed. I do love a difficult woman.”
Tears clouded my eyes as she looped an arm through mine. “You do.”
She pressed a kiss to the top of my head. “And I still love you. I always will. You know that, right?”
I nodded, knowing exactly what she meant. Somehow, hard as we both were to deal with, we’d managed to keep that. It had taken years, but we kept fighting for it. Fighting to stay for each other, to find a new way.
“You get that Eryx is falling in love with you, right?”
Her voice was soft, almost cautious. It was a version of her the world rarely saw.
To everyone else, she was the rough and tumble Maere who kicked ass and took no prisoners.
The parapsychs of Orphium had named her after mythological avengers of lore.
They called her the Angel, and I understood why.
But with me, she had always just been Lara.
My Lara, who never lied to me, who never tried to hide things so I wouldn’t be mad. So, when she said that Eryx was falling for me, I knew she wasn’t putting me on. But I couldn’t hear it. I didn’t answer, turning my face to inhale her scent of clean skin.
“Let him help you, Rhi. Let someone in.”
I glared up at her. “You’re one to talk.”
She smiled. “I came back, didn’t I? This, being one of the Maere again, for real—it’s what I needed. You’ve isolated yourself since the beginning.”
“Not from you,” I murmured.
“That was a disaster,” she replied with a wry laugh. “And then you retreated again. You always fall back. You have to let us love you, Rhiannon.”
Tears slipped down my cheeks. “What if I don’t deserve it?”
She shifted in bed, turning towards me, cool fingers cupping my chin.
“What if you do?” I shook my head, but she gripped me harder.
“Rhiannon. Saints spare me for saying this, but your mother is a fucking cunt. You have always deserved to be loved and respected. No one has worked as hard as you. That’s why you’re tired now. ”
I opened my mouth to say something. To protest. Lara shook her head, a mischievous smile lighting her face. “Nope. Not gonna hear it.” She shut my mouth. “Close your eyes and take a damn nap. I’ll watch for ghouls.”
The problem was that she was right. I had been fighting it since before we underwent the ritual to become immortal, but it was true. Nothing I’d ever done was good enough for my mother. She’d always preferred someone else’s behavior over mine, someone else’s sense of style, or way of speaking.
When I’d ask if she cared that I forfeit the throne to join the Maere, she’d only shrugged.
I could see her face perfectly in my mind’s eye, so much like my own.
She hadn’t even looked up from the scroll she examined.
It had meant so little to her one way or another.
Her only words had been, “It will not be difficult to choose a replacement for you as heir. Do as you like.”
It was the first time I’d allowed myself to really think of her in years.
To picture her face brought a bittersweet edge to my exhaustion.
In some ways, her dismissal had been a relief.
She’d said aloud what I’d always known—she had no use for me.
I meant so little to her that she could shrug off millennia of our line.
For so long, I’d carried that in my heart, believing that I had been such a bad daughter, such a bad princess, that she saw no future in me.
But the truth was that she was a bad mother.
On the island, in my first life, and all the years since, she’d been finding ways to punish me for not living up to her ideals.
Lara leaned against me. “Whatever you’re thinking about, let it go, babe.”
I sighed. “I was just thinking that maybe I wasn’t such a bad daughter. Or princess.”
Lara’s laugh was soft. Gentle for me in a way it rarely was for others. The sound of it warmed me. She really did know the worst of me. “Rhiannon, you were beloved by all. How did you not see it?”
I frowned. Had that been the way it was? All that was left was the exhaustion from how hard I’d tried. From how hard I was still trying, even now. “I don’t know about that.”
“I do,” Lara whispered. “The only person besides your mother who doesn’t know who you are is you.”
I considered that for a moment. “But if I let myself believe I am good, that I’ve done well, or even enough… what if I just stop trying?”
Lara’s snicker was dry, but not cruel. “What if you do?”
The thought perplexed me. I frowned.
Lara readjusted in bed so that we faced one another, her head on the pillow next to mine. “Are you afraid you’ll turn evil the instant you stop trying so hard?”
My chin shook, and I was tempted to shut my eyes against the intense vulnerability of this moment. “Maybe.”
Lara’s left eyebrow arched. “Seriously?”
I shrugged and she grimaced. “Do you hear how silly that sounds? Your theory is actually that if you stopped preemptively being there for everyone but yourself that you might suddenly turn evil?”
My cheeks flushed. When she said it like that, it did sound ridiculous. Panic rose up in me, all the webs of cognitive dissonance I’d woven around me over the years collapsing. “It does sound a little silly.”
Lara reached out for my hand, pressing a chaste kiss to my knuckles. “You aren’t silly though. You are brave and smart. Very good with the murders, which I adore about you.”
I rolled my eyes, but she tugged on my hand. “Rhiannon. No one loves you for what you do for us. We love you for who you are.”
“That might take some time to believe,” I whispered.
Lara’s smile was dazzling. “You take all the time you need, Princess. You’ve got a whole family here who loves you, and who’s going to keep reminding you.”
With her words, the last of the fight left in me died. My body lost all tension and a great yawn stretched from my mouth, deep into my soul. Lara knew me better than anyone in the whole world. I could believe what she told me. My eyes were heavy as she pulled the quilt up over us.
“I won’t let anything get you. Go the fuck to sleep.”
I laughed, warmth traveling from my throat, deep into my belly. Tears seeped from my eyes and I cried. Lara leaned against me, knowing just what to do. She didn’t shush me, or try to comfort me, but let the heavy weight of her dense body be a rock for me.
And then she hummed an old hymn, one from the days of our childhood. Windswept cliffs and alabaster hallways. Dragons on the wind, and monsters in the sea. Gardens, lush with magic. Gods, who would someday be Saints, still walked in the world.
Waves crashed on the shores of Otrera, the ocean’s fury no match for my own.
Wind whipped my hair around me, my feet bare to the rocky shore.
I turned from the familiar coastline to see my mother arguing with a cloaked woman.
From where I stood, they should have been able to see me, but of course they could not.
The wind carried their words far from my ears, but my mother’s face was twisted with a rage I felt deep in my soul. She had turned that anger on me more times than I wanted to acknowledge—her eyes narrowed in the belief that she had the superior opinion. I saw now what Lara had meant.
It had been so long since I let myself remember my mother as she actually was, as my mother and not my queen. But that cold rage, that fury she made into my responsibility, so easily brought everything back.
She was the reason I’d run myself ragged.
She was the reason I could not be at peace with myself.
My heart shifted with these thoughts. She was the origin of my problems. The place where my relationship with myself had shattered into thousands of pieces, so many times.
But I knew the way out of this, and I’d chosen not to take it.
I hadn’t been brave enough until now, and I thought I knew the reason why, though I couldn’t admit it to myself just yet. Not fully.
The wind changed direction, and I heard the two women’s words clearly. The cloaked woman was speaking. “... ever believe me? We must prepare ourselves.”
“I have said what needs saying,” my mother responded. “My decision is made. The scholomages were clear; the mists are the only way—and you shall go to the continent and await my orders.”
This was the past, not the present. I wracked my brain to do the math. If the idea of Otrera’s mists had only just been conceived, then I was barely out of infancy. The Maere were naught but an idea. This was no memory, no recollection of some long-forgotten incident, brought back in a dream.
This was something else altogether.
My heart raced as the woman screamed at my mother. “I don’t want to do this!” She lowered her voice when my mother drew back, as though she might slap her. “The Necrolines are not our enemies. We could just talk to Roman about this.”
My mother scoffed. “You are so quick to trust. Roman Necroline will never give us the portal key, he sees it as his failsafe in case he can never get Orphium back.” Silea sighed, some of the harsh lines of her face softening with what I knew to be exhaustion.
“Surely you see that we cannot let the humans know about the path here.”
I couldn’t see the effect her words had on the cloaked woman, but I felt them deep inside my own soul. If humans could find a way to the island, they would destroy magic forever.
The woman pulled on my mother’s arm. “If you make me do this, you will be dead to me.”
“Then I will be sorry to lose my sister.” My mother’s eyes were cold once more as she spun on her heel. “But you will still do as I say. You will infiltrate the Necroline organization, and protect Otrera. The gods have spoken, sister. This is your fate.”
Silea’s gown billowed behind her as she stalked back up the beach without another word. And I stood stunned, too stunned to think, let alone speak.
My mother had no family. That is what I had always been told.
The wind picked up, and the woman left on the rocky shore turned to escape its bite.
As she did, her hood fell back, caught by the gale.
Strands of her pale rose-gold hair broke free from the braid that crowned her familiar face, and she finally saw me.
She didn’t look as she had in the cottage, but then, she’d likely used some bit of magic to alter her features. A good Thaumas could have even altered her permanently back in those days. But the lines were all there. I saw her for exactly who she was.
Cassandra’s eyes lit on mine, and she frowned. “You should not be here, Rhiannon. Close the door between us. Close it now.”
I woke to Lara’s steady breathing. She had fallen into a deep sleep, but I had fallen through time. I sat up, cold sweat breaking out over my hot skin, fear coursing through me. Close the door between us.
There was only one place in the world that I might have had that vision. Here, in Oleander Cottage. I knew why Cassandra had kept the key from Magnus—and it had nothing to do with the dead.