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“Oh, you’ve… On the mainland?”
Ceridwen laughed.
“Where there’s a will, there’s a way. I don’t live my life as a nun, darling, no matter what the island thinks. But enough about me. What are you going to do about kissing Seren some more?”
“There’s something to do about it?” Lark felt her mouth go dry.
“Of course. You need to seduce her!”
“What?”
“You heard me! Does Pru need to give you more lesbian sex books?” Lark gasped again, and Ceridwen laughed. “Small town, small island, and this is a very small family you are now a part of.”
Ceridwen kept smiling, and Lark’s chest swelled.
Family… Part of…
Ceridwen bumped her with her elbow again.
“Seren is respectful and kind, and yes, too nice for her own good, and so just like you kissed her first, I think you need to keep taking initiative. You did read those books, I bet you even took notes. And highlighted stuff. You strike me as very studious about everything. Hands-on experience is needed, though.”
Lark would rather have jumped in the stems and thorns bucket than keep talking about any of this. Though there was a strange naughtiness about it, whispering like this with Ceridwen, who was experienced and generous and funny and kind. And who made Lark feel so comfortable about something that had been taboo for so long.
“What if Seren doesn’t…”
“Don’t even go there. She kissed you back, didn’t she?”
“How do you know?”
Ceridwen let out a peal of laughter.
“Because our mother didn’t raise any fools.”
With that, she gave Lark a sideways hug and went back to sort the baby’s breath at the other end of the hothouse, leaving her with more questions than answers.
13
SEREN, CLIFFS & DAD JOKES
The Sky Blue was a double-edged sword for Seren. She rarely went there. And yet every time she did, it reminded her that, as places to die went, this one was magnificent.
Not that Seren wondered often. She had tried very hard to push thoughts of her mother as far away as she possibly could her entire life. She seldom succeeded, by virtue of everything on the island reminding her of Elizabeth Crowhart—from the house she chose to keep living in, to the flower shop that Ceridwen chose to keep tending to, to the island itself.
The cliff was simply a place. Just one more place where she had lost the last piece of her mother. It really wasn’t this particular Dragon’s fault.
Still, even if she chose to come here as rarely as she did, this time she sent a little prayer of gratitude to her aunt. And to the Dragon. There, at the top, framed by the pines and the stones, stood Lark, her hair escaping the Crew of the Brew beanie and her hands trembling in the cold wind.
In profile, she looked less resolute than usual, less like she was holding her life together by the strand of an old shoestring she knew was about to give any second. The slightly panicked yet stoic expression was gone. In its stead was a woman facing the tempest and letting her guard down.
The vulnerability took Seren’s breath away. She wanted to bottle the expression on Lark’s face. Set it aside somewhere in the Crow House to marvel at when she was alone.
But then Lark turned and Seren had run out of time. Out of time to document the tenderness in those eyes, out of breath to sigh, out of strength to hide.
She knew that the one emotion that she had been drowning in lately would likely escape her tenuous hold the second she climbed all the way up the steep incline and breathed the same air as Lark. And yet, in this space, adoration did not seem out of place.
And when Lark smiled upon seeing her, Seren felt that the aforementioned adoration might not be entirely unwelcome.
“Victoria said I might find you here.” She felt the ocean quiet down as she spoke, in reverence to her power. To her emotion. To her state of mind. It no longer frightened her. Not when here, of all places, it meant she would be heard.
