The wind howled down from the top of the hill, making the trees that lined the road creak and sway, and honestly, Rhys knew his father was an incredibly powerful witch, but he didn’t have to be such a cliché about it.
Also a cliché: the Penhallow family manse, Penhaven Manor.
Rhys sometimes wondered how his family had managed to avoid being murdered over the five hundred years that they’d called the hulking pile of stone and obvious witchcraft home. They might as well have put signs in the front yard, here there be witches, for fuck’s sake.
The house didn’t so much sit on the hill as it crouched on it, only two stories tall, but sprawling, a warren of dark hallways and low ceilings and shadowy corners. One of the first spells Rhys had taught himself had been a basic illumination spell just so he could sodding well see things when trying to get to the breakfast table every morning.
He also sometimes wondered if the place would’ve been a little different, a little . . . lighter, if his mother had lived. She’d hated the house just as much as Rhys did, according to Wells, and had almost talked their father into moving to something smaller, something more modern and homier.
But then she died just a few months after Rhys was born, and any talk of moving out of this monster of a house had been squashed. Penhaven was home.
A terrifying, uncomfortable, medieval wreck of a home.
It always looked slightly crooked on first approach, the heavy wooden doors slouching on their hinges, and as Rhys climbed the front steps, he sighed, smoothing a hand over the air in front of him.
The Henley, jeans and boots he’d been wearing shimmered and rippled, transforming into a black suit with his family crest embroidered on the pocket. His father preferred they all wear robes in the house, but Rhys was only willing to go so far in the name of tradition.
He didn’t bother knocking; his father would’ve known he was there the second he set foot on the hill, possibly even when he’d gone into the pub. There were guardian spells all over the place up here, a source of endless frustration to Rhys and his brothers whenever they’d been even a little bit late for curfew.
As Rhys placed his hand on the door, it swung open, groaning ominously on its hinges, and the wind and rain picked up, gusting strong enough that for just a second, Rhys’s spell slipped.
Icy water slapped him in the face, trickling down the collar of his shirt and plastering his hair back against his head.
“Wonderful,” he muttered. “Bloody wonderful.”
And then he stepped inside.
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.