Page 71 of Wateredge

Lark flinched so hard her arm jerked in Seren’s hold, jostling her as well.

“Some things really do happen for a reason, dearie.” Dagmar drawled smugly.

“No, some things should not have happened at all,” Lark said, blood roaring in her ears, memories dragging her back to hell. Dagmar stared at her unblinkingly, yet the ice chip eyes flickered with—emotion was too generous a word— something before going dead yet again.

“Be that as it may, Magnus never stopped talking about you.”

On these words, Dagmar turned on her very high heels and exited the coffee shop, the scent of pine and frost trailing behind her.

Lark watched her go, Seren’s fingers tightening on her own, and then the world went blank. Not black, not bright. Blank.

She woke in the dark, yet again. She seemed to be doing that a lot. Passing out. Waking at night in unfamiliar places.

Except this time, she knew exactly where she was. Not Victoria’s little cottage. No, she was in Crow House by the Viridescent. The Crowharts had brought the big guns. The biggest. The ancestral home, where generations of women, dead, alive, and in between, stood watch over Lark. She could feel the building swell as it inhaled, like a chest, its ribs expanding to let Lark’s pain in. Somewhere in the space between these walls, a lonely figure moved in silence, careful and caring. A protector in her own right. Lark knew she’d need all the protectors she could get right now.

Ten years, and the Rathcrosses had not let her go. Ten years. Everything she had sacrificed. Everything she had cut out and left behind. All for nothing.

“She can’t hurt you.”

Seren’s voice sounded muted in the darkness of the watchful house.

“She can. They all can. You don’t know what they can do, Seren.”

A hand reached hers, intertwining their fingers. The safe glow of light blue magic illuminated a tired and drawn face. Lark must’ve been out for a while now, judging from the way Seren looked.

“We already faced the Rathcrosses. Paloma basically ran against one of their figureheads for the town hall. She won. The town won. And what can she do to you, really?”

“Dagmar Rathcross can do many things. But the worst thing she can do is tell my husband where to find me.”

The fingers in hers were suddenly cold, the glow of the magic waning like an eye going blind. Lark swallowed around the lump in her throat. She knew this would happen. She knew once it was all out in the open, Seren would hate her.

Lark expected recrimination. Lark expected the doors in the attic to slam. Lark expected… She knew exactly what she expected, no matter how unfair she was being to Seren. To the Crowharts. To Crow House. They had the right to scream. To rage. To throw her out. Even if that would have been out of character for all of them.

Instead, she got silence. Not the cutting kind. The kind that wrapped itself around her like a woolen blanket, as Seren tucked it more securely. The room shrank around her, and yet no judgment came. Neither the house nor Seren threw anger at her. The walls shrugged, seemingly arranging themselves around this information. The ghost remained silent and careful. Seren leaned forward, first brushing her lips over Lark’s forehead, then simply resting her head on their joined hands in Lark’s lap.

“Can you tell me about the Lark Thibodeaux of ten years ago?”

Not Lark Rathcross. Lark Thibodeaux.

Lark wanted to scream. She wanted to howl at the injustice of it all. At the deep unfairness of the world. Of having met this woman ten years too late.

“Lark Thibodeaux was a preacher’s daughter. She hid in the barn and played with cats. She stole books from her neighbors’ farm and buried them after she read them in the back of the garden, where nobody ever plowed. Then she’d try to return them. She was barely fifteen when her father announced that a prominent Baton Rouge family, the Rathcrosses—a Southern branch of the mighty Massachusetts family—would be joining us for prayer and supper. And she was only sixteen when Magnus Rathcross became her husband. Her mother told her she had been blessed. That her life was preordained to that moment.”

Lark blinked, expecting tears, but her eyes were dry, painfully so. Under Seren’s cheek, her fingers were warm again.

“It… had not been preordained. But it had been predicted. My father’s entire little church had this practice well ingrained. Well established. Practically a conveyor belt of child brides. It was accepted. It was… tradition. The father-daughter balls. Little girls in those white dresses making their fathers purity promises. Pure in thought. Pure in body. Until sold to the highest bidder.”

A sound halfway between rage and disgust escaped Seren, and Lark could not blame her.

“I’m so sorry, Lark.”

“It’s okay… I got out. I did,” Lark whispered, her voice taking on adamantine quality to it. She had to hold on to something. Even if all that was left for her to hold on to was that.

“I was almost seventeen when I started having these terrible pains. Cramps. My periods were always horrible, but this was different. I kept bleeding for days, weeks. Magnus was very angry. All his brothers had children. Many children. I’d been chosen because my family was so numerous. He and my mother talked incessantly about sons and more sons. To carry the family name. I did not want to think of what would happen to my daughters.”

Lark closed her eyes. Ten years, and it still felt like she was back in that house. Rooms full of glossy golden-trimmed furniture. All that gold. And all that pain.

“When I told him I needed a doctor, he hit me. A sneaky slap across the face. One I was too slow to avoid, even though evading would’ve cost me more. It bruised.”