“Penhallow,” she said, and it was her voice, but another one underneath it, Welsh accent lilting, and it was in Welsh that Rhys answered.
“That’s me.”
Vivienne’s lips tilted upward at the corners. “You look like him. Like Gryffud.”
Touching the bridge of his nose, Rhys frowned. “Dammit all.”
“Are you as feckless as he was? As cruel?” she went on, rising to her feet. It was the strangest thing, seeing Vivienne’s body, a body he knew as well as his own now, but without her familiar gestures, her posture completely different. And she was watching him so coldly. He’d never seen that look on Vivienne’s face before, not even when she hated him.
“Feckless, possibly,” he answered now. “Cruel? I certainly hope not.”
Moving toward him, Vivienne spread her arms wide as behind her, Gwyn and Elaine watched, ashen.
“Gryffud wanted his magic to build this town,” she said. “Wanted it to be his legacy. His own private kingdom.”
“That does sound like the men in my family.”
“But there wasn’t enough. He was not enough,” Vivienne went on, so close now that he caught a whiff of ozone and earth, nothing like Vivienne’s own sugary sweet scent. “And so he asked for my help.”
The eyes fixed somewhere over Rhys’s shoulder, and he somehow knew she was seeing the caves, the ley lines. “I meant to blend my magic with his, but he took all of it.”
Her gaze fastened on him. “All of me. He drained me dry to build his town, and then erased my name from it. Built shrines in his own image. No thanks for my sacrifice, not even acknowledgment. It was as if I never was.”
Rhys could hear the hurt underneath all of that, and even though he knew it wasn’t Vivienne speaking to him, the words still lodged somewhere in his chest like a stone. “If it’s any consolation,” he said, “Gryffud did die of smallpox which I hear is pretty awful, so—”
“There can be no consolation!” Her voice rose, the wind whipping higher, Vivienne’s hair blowing back from her face as overhead, the trees swayed and groaned.
“My descendant called on me to curse you, and so I did. And you in turn have cursed this town. My revenge would be complete, watching you both turn to ash.”
She tilted her head, watching him, and Rhys braced himself for . . . he wasn’t sure what, exactly. A smiting? That seemed likely.
But then, she said, “Except that this woman, this sister of my blood, asks me to spare both. To lift this curse from you and the town.”
Rhys took a slow, deep breath. “She does.”
“And why should I?”
Rhys thought for some reason, some completely unimpeachable argument to save both his life and Graves Glen, but all he could say was, “I love her.”
Those eyes didn’t blink. “You love her,” Vivienne/Aelwyd repeated, and Rhys nodded.
“I love her, and I hurt her, and I deserved to be cursed. But Graves Glen is her home. Her family’s home. I can’t let it be destroyed because of me.”
The moonlight spilled down into the graveyard, and for the first time, Rhys noticed a sort of shimmering veil around Vivienne, could see her heart pounding in her throat. Was she still in there, his Vivienne? Could she hear him?
“And if I were to spare the town but take you, what then?”
Gaze dark, the witch pressed even closer, and Rhys made himself stand his ground. “Then take me,” he said. “It’s a fair price for what was done to you.”
“Rhys,” he heard Gwyn cry, but Elaine stilled her with a hand on her wrist, and Rhys gave her a wobbly grin.