Chapter 2
No matter what the weather looked like outside, the inside of Penhaven was always dim.
Rhys’s father liked it best that way. Heavy velvet drapes covered most of the windows, and the few windows that were left uncovered were made of thick stained glass in dark shades of green and red, distorting the light that came through them, making strange shapes on the heavy stone table just inside the front door.
Rhys stood there in the entryway for a moment, looking up at the massive staircase and the life-size oil portrait that hung over it of Rhys, his father, and his two brothers. They were all wearing robes, all watching the front door solemnly, and every time Rhys saw the portrait he remembered being twelve and posing for it, hating how still he’d had to be, how sweltering and uncomfortable his robe was, how ridiculous it was that his father wouldn’t let them just take a picture and have some painter paint from that.
But no, Father liked his traditions, and sweating one’s balls off while sitting for a massive oil portrait was apparently right up there with cutting your own Yule log and attending Penhaven College in terms of Things Penhallow Men Do.
“Don’t keep me waiting.”
The voice boomed out from everywhere and nowhere, and Rhys sighed again, running a hand over his hair before jogging up the staircase.
His father would be in his library, the chosen theater for almost all confrontations between father and sons throughout the years, and as Rhys opened the heavy double doors leading to that room, he felt immediately transported back in time.
Not just in his own memories, although he had plenty of those from this room, but literally. His father’s library was somehow, impossibly, even more Gothic than the rest of the house. There was black wood, more velvet, heavy silver candelabras covered in years of hardened wax. Overhead, a chandelier made of stag antlers cast gloomy light on the parquet floor, and Rhys had never longed for the bright light of his flat in London more. The open windows, the white linen on the bed, the comfortable couches that didn’t dispel clouds of dust whenever anyone sat.
Not one velvet item—not so much as a fucking pillow—in the whole place.
No wonder he never came back here.
Simon Penhallow was standing in front of the large mirror he used for scrying and communicating with fellow witches, his hands clasped behind his back, wearing, as Rhys had predicted, his robes. Black ones, of course. His hair was black as well, although sprinkled through with gray, and as he turned around, Rhys thought he looked a little older now. A few more wrinkles around his eyes, more white in his beard.
“Do you know how long it’s been since you were last in this house?” his father asked, and Rhys bit back a sarcastic reply.
He had at least three of them, but his father was never the biggest fan of Rhys’s wit, so he just stepped into the room, mimicking his father’s posture, hands behind his back. “I’m not sure, exactly.”
“Half a year,” his father replied because why say a normal thing like “six months”?
“It has been half a year since you last visited your father and your family home.”
“Okay, but in my defense, that’s still got to be better than Bowen, right?”
Rhys offered his father a grin, but as always, Simon was the one person Rhys had never been able to charm. “Bowen is involved in something that actually benefits this family. As opposed to you, living the bachelor life in England.”
Rhys’s father had a tendency to say “England” as though he meant a sordid pit of debauchery, and not for the first time, Rhys wondered if his father’s idea of what his life must be like was not actually far more interesting than Rhys’s actual life.
All right, to be fair, there was a bit of debauchery, but on the whole, Rhys lived as normal a life as most young men in their late twenties. He ran his travel business, he watched rugby at the pub with his mates, he dated.
Nothing out of the ordinary except for the role that magic played in all of those things.
His customers always had a smooth and easy trip. His favorite team always won. And while he never used magic on the women he dated, he might’ve used the occasional charm to make sure he could get a reservation at the restaurant he wanted, or that traffic would never be a hassle.
He didn’t abuse his powers, but there was no doubt that magic made the path smoother, something Rhys had always appreciated.
“You are wasting your potential as a warlock,” Simon went on, “engaging in all this frivolity.”
“Warlock isn’t a thing anymore, Father, I’ve told you, we’re all witches now. Have been for literal decades.”
Ignoring that, Simon continued, “It is time for you to likewise do your duty for this family, Rhys. Which is why I’m sending you back to Glynn Bedd.”
Glynn Bedd.
Graves Glen.
Vivienne.
He didn’t think of her that often. It had been years; what they’d had burned hot but brief, and there had been other, more serious relationships since her.
But every once in a while, she came to mind. Her pretty smile. Her hazel eyes. The way she’d tug at the ends of her honey-blond hair when she was nervous.
How she tasted.
No, definitely not a helpful memory right this second.
Better to remember her angry tears, her arms crossed over her chest, the pair of jeans she’d thrown at his head.
Christ, what a wanker he’d been.
Shaking himself slightly, he stepped closer to his father and said, “Graves Glen? Why?”
Simon scowled at him, the hollows beneath his cheekbones deepening.
“It’s the anniversary of the founding of the town and the college,” Simon said. “A Penhallow must be there. Your brothers have other responsibilities, as do I, so it will be you. You should leave as soon as possible, and I’ll see to it that the house is prepared for you.”
He waved one elegant, long-fingered hand. “You are dismissed.”
“I fucking am not,” Rhys countered, and Simon straightened up. Rhys was over six feet, but his father, like Wells, had him beat by an inch or two, something Rhys felt profoundly in this moment. Still, he held his ground.
“Da,” he said, reverting to the name he hadn’t used since he was a child. “You know their whole ‘Founder’s Day’s’ thing has nothing to do with us now, right? It’s basically a Halloween party. They sell pumpkins, for Christ’s sake, Da. Little painted ones. I think there are stuffed bats involved. It’s nothing that requires our presence.”
“And yet our presence will be felt because you will be there,” his father said. “Every twenty-five years, a Penhallow must return to strengthen the ley lines, and this year, that Penhallow shall be you.”
Bollocks.
He’d forgotten about the ley lines.
A hundred years ago, his ancestor, Gryffud Penhallow, had founded the town of Glyn Bedd in the mountains of North Georgia in a spot where the veil was weak and magic was strong. Naturally, the town had called to witches over the years, and the college there, named after the Penhallow family home, taught both regular classes to humans and the arcane arts to witches.
Not that the humans who attended the college knew that. They just assumed the Historical Folklore and Practice major was exceedingly hard to get into and also accepted a fuckton of transfer students.
Rhys had been one of those transfer students nine years ago, just for summer classes, and he had several reasons—well, one very big one—not to want to go back.
“How do you know that, by the way?” his father asked now, narrowing his eyes slightly. “About Founder’s Day. You didn’t stay long enough to witness it the last time you were there.”
Because I occasionally have one whisky too many and see what The One Who Got Away is up to and she still lives there which is why I definitely don’t want to go back was the truth, but, Rhys suspected, not the answer to give here.
“That town is our family legacy, Da,” he said instead. “I’ve kept up with what’s going on there.”
Rhys was certain the look on his father’s face wasn’t pride because he was equally certain that Simon taking pride in anything Rhys said or did would cause a rip in the fabric of space and time, but at the very least, his father didn’t look actively irritated with him, and that was something.
And he hated that that still mattered to him. The last time he’d tried to win his father’s approval, it had ended up costing him Vivienne.
All right, so part of that had been his own utter idiocy in not bothering to mention that he’d agreed to let his father find him the perfect witch bride, but all of it had felt so far away, and Vivienne had been right there, real and immediate, not some abstract concept of a woman, and it had been so easy to put off telling her.
Until it wasn’t and she had, quite rightly, called him every name in the book, including some he’d never heard of, and stormed out.
And now his father was asking him to go back.
“Do this for your family. Do this for me,” Simon said, coming over to lay his hands on Rhys’s shoulders. “Go to Glynn Bedd.”
He was nearly thirty years old. He ran a successful business that he’d started all on his own, lived a life he loved, was a goddamn adult and did not need his father’s approval.
And still Rhys heard himself say, “Fine. I’ll go.”
“I told you not to go to a Solstice Revel, I told you they were nothing but trouble.”
Head still on the bar, Rhys lifted a hand to give his brother a double-fingered salute.
He heard Llewellyn sniff. “Well, I did.”
“Yes, and I ignored your brotherly advice to my peril, thank you, Wells, very helpful.”
He’d made his way back to the pub after his chat with Simon, and this time, he’d actually managed to have that pint.
Which was probably the only reason he’d confessed all to Wells. Not just that Da was sending him to Graves Glen, but about that summer nine years ago.
About Vivienne and all the ways he’d mucked it right up.
Rhys lifted his head to see that Llewellyn had moved over to the taps, pouring another pint that Rhys very much hoped was for him. This was clearly a Two Pint Conversation.
“Did you love her?” Wells asked.
Rhys fought very hard not to squirm on the barstool. His family didn’t usually go in for this sort of thing, talking about feelings and such. Wells didn’t even have feelings, as far as Rhys could tell, and any emotions Bowen might have were reserved for whatever it was he was doing out there in the mountains.
“I was twenty,” he said at last, draining the rest of his lager. “And it was summer, and she was beautiful.”
So beautiful. And so bloody sweet. He’d felt like someone had hit him solidly in the chest when he’d seen her there at the Solstice Revel, standing under a violet sky, a flower crown crooked on her head. She’d smiled at him, and it had been . . .
Instant. Irrevocable.
A fucking disaster.
“I . . . felt . . . ,” he said now, remembering, “as though I might . . . have loving feelings.”
St. Bugi’s balls, that had been hard. How did people just go about talking like this all the time?
Wells folded his arms on the bar, leaning in. He had their father’s slightly austere features and a sort of resting glare face that Rhys had always found a little alarming, but his eyes were the same clear blue as Rhys’s own. “Maybe you won’t even see her,” Wells offered. “You’ll just be there for what? A day, maybe two?” His smirk turned wry. “That’s about the maximum you can give to one location, correct?”
Ignoring the jab, Rhys nodded. “I’m going to leave tomorrow. Founder’s Day is the day after. Get in, charge the lines, get out.”
“Easy-peasy, then,” Wells said, spreading his hands, and Rhys nodded again even as another vision of Vivienne’s tear-stained face seemed to float in front of him.
“The peasiest.”