Aris
The clock over the stove reads 12:57 A.M. Posey moves into view wearing a tankt op and shorts, her skin shiny with perspiration. She piles her hair in a bun on the top of her head. In the dim light of the kitchen, she’s all curves and skin, something soft enough to sink my teeth into.
I bite my lower lip instead, rolling the glass base of my half-empty bottle of beer against the kitchen island. She opens the fridge, scans the contents, and takes two steaks from the bottom self, already rubbed and salted, like cooking a meal in the late hours of the night was always her plan.
“You know you’ve cooked breakfast, lunch, and dinner like clockwork for the past two weeks. You were under no obligation to do that.” I fold my arms over my chest. Her eyes met mine in the hazy glow of the stove light. Thunder booms in the distance as a storm funnels over the lake, but inside it’s still warm from the heat of the day and cozy, like we hadn’t just spent several hours out on the town and at a concert.
She shrugs, giving me the smallest, tightest smile. “I don’t really have an opportunity to do so otherwise. We have cooks at home.”
“How’d you learn?”
When she reaches for one of the cast iron skillets hanging over the island, I beat her to it, stepping into her space to rest it on the stovetop. The flames click, spreading, casting a blueish shimmer through the shadows.
She grabs some herbs and chops them. “I used to go down to the kitchen as a kid. I was often hungry. Starving.. My mom was so strict with my diet–our shared diet. She’s as thin as a reed, you know. When it became clear I was… softer, was going to be shorter than her by a mile and not nearly as waif-like, she made it her mission to ensure my diet consisted of nothing but vegetables and lean meat. No butter. No sugar. Nothing a growing child wanted. The cooks used to pour me glasses of milk and make secret cookies for me. I’d sit on the stool and watch them work, fascinated.” She pauses with a sigh. “I understand where my mom was coming from. I don’t want it to sound like she was purposefully starving me.”
“Well, that’s exactly what it sounds like.” I press the steaks onto the skillet, the sizzle radiating through the kitchen.
“She just wanted me to be beautiful, graceful, and fit for marriage one day, but I never managed to rise to her expectations.” Another self-deprecating smile touches her lips. “She backed off after a while, especially when I started my garden. I was skilled enough with growing herbs that she allowed a witch to come and teach me how to make some basic tonics and tinctures, and with that, I had full access to the kitchen and needed to learn some basics there, as well, since those two skills go hand in hand. She figured my apothecary skills would be a selling point when it came to marriage, especially if my future husband had notable alchemy skills. Tinctures are so good to ease the burden of our powers in our fingers…”
“That lotion you use?”
She stills, her fingers curling on the handle of her knife. “Wild cherries are great for inflammation. I grind and soak the pits. It’s also good for coughs.”
“How often are you secretly practicing alchemy, Posey?”
I flip the steaks. She moves to my side with herbs and butter, wordlessly sprinkling them into the pan. The entire kitchen erupts in notes of butter and rosemary, and my stomach pinches, like I’ve been starving for my entire life, and it’s because of those skilled hands, those long, delicate fingers. Not the steaks. Not the promise of a good meal.
“Often enough to be better at it than Roman.”
“Why are you hiding it?”
“You know why.”
“Because of your lack of–”
“The powers go hand in hand.”
“Then there’s a chance you have a wolf after all, and she’s just taking her sweet time to show up.”
“No,” she replies simply, shaking her head. “I had it confirmed.”
“So then it’s wrong.”
“No,” she repeats more firmly, leaving no room for an argument, and I let it go.
Maybe it’s the hunger and the cozy feeling of the kitchen, but we eat in silence. She’s ravenous, like something about the night sweeping through Gem Lake has flipped a switch in her brain, bringing her back to her rawest form, even without a wolf inside her. I have the sudden, overwhelming urge to ask if she wants to come outside with me. If she wants to run her fingers through my coat, to ride on my back while I’m in wolf form. But she excuses herself and goes to bed, and the house falls silent once again.
I’m riding a fine edge between sleep and full awareness when a crash echoes from across the hall from my bedroom. I blink into the pitch black of the night, wondering if I’d dreamt the noise, but then I hear Posey crying out in a stifled whimper, and my brain isn’t fully awake when I charge into her room within seconds.
“Hey,” I rush out as she thrashes and then curls into herself. She’s in the center of her bed, which is damp with sweat, and she’s sticky and hot with fever. “Hey, Pose, what’s going on? What hurts?”
I clutch her face with both hands, smoothing her tears from her cheeks with my thumbs. They’re hot. Like she’s boiling from the inside out. “Posey, come on. You weren’t like this earlier. What happened?”
“My head!” she cries out, choking back a silent sob.
“I have some healing drafts. I’ll get them.”
She reaches out, clawing my bare shoulders with her fingernails.
“Posey? Listen, I’ll be right back, and then you can rest, okay? But you’re sick.”
“Why do–why do you smell like that?” Her voice is just above a whisper when she finally opens her eyes to fevered slits. Her pupils are blown wide, like she’s on the verge of shifting if she had the ability, but her scent is… undoing me. Pulling me apart at the seams. It hits me directly in the chest, blowing past my ribcage, splitting it into pieces. I feel like I’m on the verge of shifting now, either to run away or hunt down whoever and whatever did this to her. It’s confusing. The answer is… right there… but just out of my grasp, like I know what’s wrong but can’t put a name to it.
Her fever spikes. She groans, gasping. I lift her off the soaking wet sheets and carry her across the hall to my bedroom. I kick open the bathroom door so hard the hinges bend. It’ll never shut properly again, but it doesn’t matter.
Her heat seeps into my skin. I turn on the shower, stepping in fully clothed, pressing her body, draped in nothing but underwear and an old shirt… my shirt, for some reason, to my chest. The water is like ice as it flows over us, but after a few aching minutes, she grows quiet, relaxed, and then the fever breaks, and she shivers. I only leave the shower when her teeth begin to chatter.
I shouldn’t do it, but I have no other choice. I pull the soaking wet shirt off her as she slowly comes back to reality, her eyes still wolf-like but hazy. Without looking directly at her, I dress her in an old flannel and toss her in my bed, tucking her in, then collect several more blankets out of a linen closet in the hallway. I build her a pile of blankets and pillows. It’s instinctual. I don’t know why or how I’m managing it, but it works, and eventually, her eyes flutter closed, and she takes a deep breath before slipping into an even deeper sleep.
I change my clothes and then sink to the ground at the foot of the bed, my head lulling back against the mattress, and I fall asleep like that, waking to the first hint of morning light.
Posey isn’t in bed anymore.
I find her in the kitchen making breakfast, and for obvious reasons, it enrages me.
“No,” I bellow, and she whirls, clutching a spatula like a weapon. “Put it down and go back to bed. You’re sick, Posey. I’m calling for a healer.”
“Don’t.” She sets the spatula down. Her scent is so heavy today. It’s everywhere. It embraces me, makes me want to claw out of my skin and shift, but not into the form I would expect. I normally ignore my fox form until I can’t. It’s happy being dormant most of the time, but now? When it senses a serious threat?
I edge around the kitchen island, brows raised. “You were on the cusp of having a febrile seizure in my arms last night,” I growl. “What is happening to you?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t feel well all day yesterday, and we still–I shouldn’t have gone out. I overdid it.” She looks up at me with those doe-eyes looking so incredibly pathetic that I have no choice but to brace my hands on the counter so I don’t touch her. “Aris, I'm sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you up.”
“Are you in pain?”
“Not anymore.”
“But you were?”
“A little.”
“Don’t lie to me, Posey.” I fix her with a glare. “For fuck’s sake. What hurts?”
She turns back to the stove. I’m behind her in an instant, cutting the flames and snatching the skillet and spatula out of her hands.
She goes perfectly still, her back flush with my chest. We stand like that for what feels like eternity–touching ever so slightly, and it’s enough contact for my mind to travel somewhere so dark even I’m on the verge of blushing, which I never do.
“I had to take off your clothes last night,” I say into her hair, my heart thundering. I needed to tell you. You need a healer. If you’re ill, I’m unequipped to take care of you–”
“I’m going to go lie down,” she says shakily, and flees. “Don’t call for a healer. I’m just going to rest.”
I let her go. I don’t see her for the rest of the day. She does not leave her room, but she’s awake up there, because all I hear for the remainder of the day is scraping, like she’s moving furniture around.
But that night, when the moon rises, it happens again. This time, I don’t have to invade her space and carry her into my bed.
My wolf wakes me up, sensing something amiss.
I find her downstairs in a daze, trying to open the doors. Trying to get out of the house. Sobbing and telling me to go away when she sees me lurking in the shadows of the foyer, pleading with me not to hate her, and not to call a healer. “They’ll kill me if they find out!” she screams, completely out of her mind with fever, and there’s nothing I can do but hold her close.
I pull her into a cold bath, where I sit with her on my lap until she calms down and the fever breaks, but not fully like last time. I doze with her clutched to my chest.
When I wake, I put her in my bed again, curl my body around hers, and pray.
I don’t sleep. I watch her all night, sending silent prayers into the aether that she’s not going to die, but she recovers by the time morning light begins to trickle through the curtains.
When she wakes up, I pretend I’m asleep, and she slinks out of the room.
I roll over, inhaling her scent, which is everywhere, and it’s everything, and I’m… losing my mind, aren’t I?
I avoid her. I shift into my wolf form and spend the earliest hours of the morning running through the woods to try to clear my mind, and it works, at least until I return home.
She doesn’t want a healer, but something is wrong. Maybe with both of us.
There’s one person I can call, but if I do, I’ll never hear the end of it.