Chapter 2083: Family Matters (Part Two)

~...How can I forgive what you’ve withheld from me all these years?~

Rhys’s pipe had gone out. He didn’t notice until he drew on it and tasted nothing but cold ash.

Maela’s words landed on him like a lash across his back. A back that already held many old wounds. His father had warned him that these secrets couldn’t be shared, even with his own wife. Rhys’s own mother had never known the truth of the family’s origins, and that had pained his father deeply.

He could still hear his father’s voice, rough with age and salt air, on the night he’d first escorted Rhys into the dark, briny caves that held the family’s most carefully guarded secrets.

"Not your friends. Not your knights. Not even your wife, Rhys," his father had said. "Your mother never knew, and I’ve had to love her across that silence for thirty years. It’s the price we pay to keep the family alive. One day, you’ll pay it too."

At the time, Rhys thought he understood. He hadn’t even met Maela yet, but he saw the deep love in his mother’s eyes whenever she looked at his father. As secrets went, it hardly seemed like the sort of thing that could strain a relationship.

But then he’d met Maela, beautiful, clever, pious Maela, and he’d sensed the rift that could form between them. Still, Rhys had paid the price gladly. He’d kept the secret that hardly seemed to impact their lives for the first two years of their marriage. And then Ashlynn had been born with the mark of the witch on her hip, and the bill for keeping this secret had finally come due.

He’d been paying it ever since, but like a bad debt, this bill came with interest, and that interest had finally become too much for his relationship to bear.

For years, Rhys had told himself that he had to follow in his father’s footsteps, and his grandfather’s before him. But neither of them had sired a Great Witch. His circumstances were different, and like a fool, he’d followed an old, familiar course without acknowledging that the channel had shifted.

Now he’d run aground, and Maela was right to resent him for what he’d done. He should have told her long ago... The love and care she’d given Ashlynn over the years should have been proof enough that she could keep secrets about witchcraft.

But every time she left for that cursed convent in DuCoumont, every time he saw her kneeling in prayer, or heard her telling Ashlynn that she could never touch ’dark powers’ if she wanted to reach the Heavenly Shores... He’d hesitated and ultimately turned away from saying anything for fear that she would reveal his family’s past to the Church in the hopes of safeguarding their daughter’s future.

~If I left you over the secrets you kept from me, no one would blame me,~ Maela’s letter continued. ~By rights, I should. I’m sure the Church would grant an annulment for this. That’s how cross I am, Rhys, so when I see you again, I expect a proper apology.~

Annulment. Rhys winced at the word, then caught himself very nearly smiling. That was his Maela. Threatening the end of the world and demanding an apology in the same breath, and leaving it to him to chart the course between the two.

~But Ashlynn says I shouldn’t be too harsh on you. She thinks that you were wise to keep the secret from her. She said she might have tried to use her powers if she’d learned the truth too young, and that would have been a disaster for all of us.~

~She’s forgiving so much, Rhys. So much that I struggle to forgive. She cooked for me when I arrived in Lothian. She took Jocey fishing on the river, and they made me Snow on the Sea. They did it all by themselves, working together in the kitchens... So how can I be mad at Jocey for betraying Ash when Ash is working so hard to forgive her? How can I be mad at you for keeping secrets when she says it helped to keep all of us safe?~

Rhys laughed despite himself. Ashlynn, he could imagine fishing. Despite the fact that she’d only accompanied him on occasional fishing trips, and only from the largest and safest of ships, she’d never been shy about getting her hands dirty. Jocelynn, on the other hand, had been a proper lady her entire life. The notion of her with a line in one hand and wriggling, live bait in the other was enough to bring tears to his eyes as he laughed.

But then, if it was for her mother... And for her sister, Rhys didn’t have a problem imagining her fishing at all.

~I’m cross with you, but I won’t leave you,~ Maela’s letter continued.

~Our daughters are hurting, Rhys. They try to cover it up, and they put on smiles when I’m around but... The things they’ve suffered are a hundred times worse than stealing from river bandits or escaping assassins. Jocey was tortured by the Inquisition, and Ashlynn was buried alive and neither of those are the worst things they suffered.~

Rhys’s hand tightened on the page until the parchment crinkled. Tortured. Buried alive. And still, not the worst of it... Just how much had they been through this past year?

~I don’t know how to help them, Rhys. I don’t know what to do, and when I say the wrong things, I’m afraid of making it worse. I’ll do my best, I swear I will, but it took both of us to raise them up to this point, and I can’t help them alone.~

In the hearth, the fire had burned down to a bed of dull red embers. The cold crept back into the study, slipping in around the edges of the rattling windows, and Rhys drew the lamp closer to read the rest of the letter.

~Ash wants you to meet us in DuCoumont or Keating in the spring. She’s going to try to press Argidir diplomatically. She has plans. I’m sure she’s shared them with you. I don’t care if you follow her plans or not, join her empire or not... You have a duty to your people, your vassals, and your ’crew.’ I don’t expect you to abandon any of that.~

~But you’re a father, Rhys Blackwell. I need you to act like one for them. I need you to act like a husband for me. I need your arms around me and your voice in my ear telling me it will all work out, because right now... Right now I’m afraid it won’t. So come to us. Come soon.~

~Because if you wait too long... I’m afraid our family might really fall apart...~

Rhys sat motionless at his desk with the letter trembling in his hand while the last of the embers dimmed in the hearth.

Three letters. In all of them, the person who had likely suffered the most seemed the most composed. Ashlynn was calm and stable, despite everything that had happened to her. She was planning, calculating, and fighting to build a future. She was winning her wars, and the success, hard-won as it likely was, gave her the confidence to press forward.

Jocelynn was cracked and maybe broken. She was fragile and headed towards dangerous, uncertain waters because she couldn’t see any other path. And Maela... Maela was storm-tossed and drowning. She needed help, and she knew it. She was begging for her husband to throw her a line.

It was just that she was so far away that Rhys had little he could do. The cost of rushing to her side, no matter how much he wanted to, was simply far too great. He needed time to prepare or else...

Then, against the window behind him, came a sharp, startling sound that interrupted his thoughts.

-TAP-