Aris
“You didn’t have to come,” Roman says. We walk side by side through the market that’s held in Ruby every weekend. It’s crowded with locals and summer tourists alike, but through the noise and bobbing crowd, I catch a glimpse of Posey’s reddish-blonde hair as she weaves toward a stall selling an incredible array of freshly cut flowers.
“I was either going to sleep half the day away or this.” I motion toward the market. “I had no other plans.”
“Well, we’ve been going a hundred miles an hour since we arrived,” he says with a sigh. “I’m kind of looking forward to a break this weekend; I’m not going to lie.”
“Are we getting old, Roman?”
He smirks, shrugging. “I suppose the fun has to come to an end at some point.”
“Hold this,” Posey says quickly before darting away, leaving Roman with the giant basket she brought, which is now full to the brim with vegetables, two loaves of bread, three bottles of wine from a local vineyard, and several small bags of herbs.
Roman adjusts the weight and smiles softly to himself. Posey returns to the flower stall. I watch her with interest as she drops into conversation with the young man helping what looks like his mother sell the flowers. She seems happy–smiling and laughing in a way she won’t do around me. I’ve noticed how quickly she shuts her mouth and curls inward when I’m around, especially over the past week of our vacation. It’s been a full seven days since everyone arrived, and it’s only gotten worse.
I’m not sure where or how I offended her, but the way she’s acting around me now makes me wonder if I owe her an apology for something.
“Posey has a garden back home,” Roman says while we walk aimlessly through the market, keeping Posey within our sights while she hops from stall to stall, filling her second basket. “She’s got a knack for it, honestly. No one had touched the old garden beds since my great-grandparents were alive, but she turned them around. Dad even made her a greenhouse. She grows mostly flowers and herbs for our alchemy, but you should see the cucumbers she has growing right now. It’s impressive.”
“I thought you said she wasn’t an alchemist?”
“I mean for me and Dad. We need some stuff. Tinctures, mostly. Posey started making them herself. I think she just needed something to do to pass the time, you know, since coming back to Sapphire Ridge.”
I pause, looking over at him. “She’s a teacher, right? That’s what she studied in school?”
“Yeah, she taught for about a year and then decided to join a different program, got swept into it.” He tapers off, looking suddenly pale. “Our parents are to blame. I keep telling myself that if they weren’t so shocked, so beyond upset about Posey not developing wolf gifts and her lack of alchemy skills, we wouldn’t be in this situation with her right now. They pushed her into this, whether they believe it or not.”
“Dude, what are you talking about? Isn’t she just going to grad school?”
Roman turns to me looking equally confused. “Grad school?”
“All the books she brought.” I shake my head, wondering where the disconnect is. Roman looks utterly lost as I continue, “She’s been studying most nights. She won’t go out with us, for one, and every time I come back to the house to check on her, she’s reading from those massive theology texts.”
“She’s joining the seminary in Sapphire Ridge,” Roman says. “She’s decided she’s going to be a priestess.”
“What?” I gasp, but Posey returns with the other basket and thrusts it into my arms. I nearly drop it. She’s gone again before I can even catch a glimpse of her this time, lost in a sea of shoppers. I turn back to Roman, and the look on my face must give away everything I’m feeling. Shock? Mostly. Disbelief? Incredibly so. Confusion? Regret? Grief? “What the fuck are you talking about?”
Roman heaves a breath before tilting his head toward a break between two stalls, silently commanding me to follow him to a grassy hill overlooking the market. I do, looking over my shoulder just once in search of Posey, but she’s nowhere to be seen.
“Look,” he says the second we’re alone and the noise of the crowd is nothing more than a gentle hum. “This is a new thing she’s cooked up.”
“Then you can put a stop to it.”
“It’s not my decision to make, Aris. Posey made up her mind. A few months ago, when it became clear she wasn’t getting a wolf, she had it confirmed, just like I said. She brought proof, records, blood testing back from the apothecary stating she was… not gifted with wolf powers or alchemy and then announced she was joining the Temple of the Moon Goddess as a priestess.”
“And your parents are allowing this?”
He licks his lips, struggling with how to word what happened. “Aris, it’s complicated. You know how these things go–”
“I don’t. Enlighten me.” The edge in my tone isn’t something I didn’t anticipate. Real anger burbles through my system, twisting like a knife in my chest. Posey? A priestess? No. No, this feels like an incredible waste. She always wanted to be a teacher. She loves kids. I thought she’d grow up and have a family of her own one day, and I’d be the weird pseudo-uncle who bullied them just like I bullied her when we were younger.
Right? That’s why I feel so fucking… furious right now?
“Alchemists only come from Sapphire Ridge, our family, especially. I–I have the family gift. She does not. I will go on to have kids who also carry the gift, and she will not, so–”
“Are you saying they–they pretty much agreed with the fact she thinks she’s useless?”
“It’s not about that,” Roman rushes out, but his eyes betray the truth.
“She’s joining the temple because she thinks that because she doesn’t have a wolf or alchemy gifts there’s no other option for her? Are you fucking joking?”
“What is your problem, Aris? This isn’t about you. It’s about Posey and what she wants, and she wants this, apparently. She’s been driving us all fucking mad since spring when she decided. I don’t like it, trust me. Mom had a match for her, another alchemist from a weak line, yeah. Possibly related to us in some distant way, but an alchemist all the same.”
“So it was this or marry her cousin?” I snap, and Roman glowers.
“You know how things are. You’re a Shadowsynger, for fuck’s sake. Your ancestors wouldn’t have been able to keep Veiled Valley hidden and safe had it not been for mine!”
I take several steps away from him and turn, dragging a hand down my face. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me, Roman.”
“I wish I were. We’ve all tried to get her to change her mind, but she knows what’s coming. Dad’s old. He’ll step down from his position as Alpha soon, and I will rise to power. I’ll have to find a wife and start my line. She’ll have no place in Sapphire Ridge. Everyone will become aware of the fact she’s–she’s–”
“A lapse?” The word is like acid on my tongue.
“She’s the first one in our family who doesn’t have a single drop of power, and yeah, it would make us look horrible. There would be questions about my own validity.” Roman’s expression shatters as he stares past me, just over my shoulder. “Fuck, Posey–” Roman takes a step in my direction as I turn, catching a single glimpse of Posey before she darts away. He tries to run after her, but I stop him, pressing the basket I’ve been holding against his chest.
“You’ve said enough. I’ll talk to her.”
I walk off before Roman can protest, reeling, barely thinking past my elevated heartbeat drumming in my ears.
I walk the length of the market three times before deciding Posey is no longer here. I try to pick up her amber and dark cherry scent, but it’s lost in the crowd leaving the market, spreading out into the small town beyond. She wouldn’t go where people gather. I’m not going to find her hiding in a cafe or bookstore along the lakeshore.
I turn toward the woods, following a wolf trail until I reach the lake again, and keep going until the trail melds with a rocky beach overlooking a wide swatch of water and several small islands.
She’s sitting on a fallen log, her back to me, her long hair falling loose from a scrunchy and lifting off her shoulders in a breeze as she stares out over the water, still holding a bouquet of flowers.
“Posey?”
Her spine straightens, but she doesn’t turn around. I kick a few pebbles, unsure if I should even approach her or not. “Hey, listen, Roman and I–we shouldn’t have even been discussing that.”
“You’re right. It’s none of your business.”
I roll my lower lip between my teeth and let it go. “Can I sit with you?”
“No.”
“Can I talk to you, at least?”
“There’s nothing else to say. Roman covered it.”
“He was being a fucking dick, I agree, but I was trying to defend you. Pose, come on. Is this really what you want?”
She turns her head ever so slightly to the side at the sound of her nickname, and I notice her tear-stained cheek, her tears leaving a trail of silver.
I approach her like she’s a wild, skittish animal, and one wrong move will have her fleeing. “I understand why you feel like you have to do this–join the temple, sign your entire life away to the priestesses, but you don’t have to do it.”
“I am not interested in explaining this to you because it doesn’t matter, and you’d never understand.” She turns back the water and then further when I sit beside her, angling her body away from mine so I can’t see her face.
She’s been picking petals off the flowers until several are nothing more than stems.
“You’re not useless to your family because you don’t have a wolf, Posey. When Roman said–”
“When he said other people would know my little secret, he was right. What he didn’t say, what he was going to say, is that it would harm the family forever and ruin his prospects when it came to marrying.”
“Roman will find his mate–”
“He doesn’t care about that. None of them have. Our parents aren’t mates, Aris. You know that, don’t you? My father is an alchemist. He chose my mother because she came from a good, strong, local family who had alchemists in their bloodline–long dormant. It should have still meant strong, dominant power in my generation. That’s all. That was the reason. I don’t have a wolf. That directly affects my ability to use alchemy. If it gets out that I have neither, it’ll be a stain on Roman when he rises to power.”
“I will be Alpha King one day. I have Roman’s reputation in my hands.”
“No, you don’t.” She rises, but I catch her wrist.
“Why are you doing this? Really? I want a real answer, Posey. Joining the temple is for life. It means forsaking everything else. Is that really what you want?”
She pulls her arm out of my grasp and walks away, leaving the flowers behind. I know better than to chase after her, but I rise, saying, “This is why you came, isn’t it? Roman wanted you to come, to spend some time with him before you locked yourself away forever, right?”
She stops walking and turns to face me, her expression grim.
I take a few steps toward her and stop, holding out a hand in surrender. “He thinks he can convince you to change your mind, doesn’t he? You know that, though. You came anyway just to appease him.”
“I’ll be taking my entrance exam to join the seminary in a few weeks. If I get in, I’ll train in Moonrise for three months before being placed at a temple–anywhere. It could be a few years before I see him again, so… I agreed to come. Then Willow came to visit, and I thought it would be good for both of them to see me and come to terms with it.”
“So you’re really doing this?”
“Why do you care so much, Aris?”
“Because I think it’s a waste.”
“For who?” She laughs bitterly and cuts into the woods.