Posey
After telling me everything he knows about his Shadowsynger ancestors, which is very little, and the strange caves beneath Veiled Valley, which are immense and guarded by some kind of creepy spirit, Aris tears himself from the cabin like being in my presence is painful.
It sucks. I don’t know how else to describe it. The knowledge that my scent is suddenly overwhelming to him, like I’m some beckon of fertility and everyone in the nearby vicinity knows it, has me cringing. I assume that’s why he brought me here–to the middle of nowhere, miles and miles away from anyone else and trapped on a small island.
Aris left his clothes on the warped front porch in an untidy pile. I missed seeing him in his wolf form, but I gather his damp clothes and hang them to dry in front of the woodstove, using a length of twine I found in the kitchen strung between two sturdy, obviously handmade wooden chairs. I explore, running my fingers over every surface, every touch like an electric shock–all wrong. Too hard. Too cold. Too rough.
Upstairs in the loft, I find a bed. A single, full-sized bed on another handmade frame that took time and skill to produce, I bet. Whoever built this place and furnished it… they did it completely by hand over the course of many years, and it shows.
I pull the dust cover off the bed and find the mattress clean and protected from the roof leaks, but I can’t find sheets or blankets anywhere. I can’t make a nest without them, can I? That’s what I’m supposed to be doing, right? Stealing anything cozy, soft, and warm? To build a nest like a little mother bird?
Annoyed and frustrated with myself, I jog out to the boat, which is rocking in the uneven surf coming off the lake. The storm is funneling in the distance, turning the landscape gray and black, the midday sun completely lost to the thick clouds. I find sheets and a few blankets in the cabin of the boat, but they smell sterile, like a harsh detergent. I wrinkle my nose while I search through the cabinets and snatch the few thin pillows off the couch that I believe unfurls into a bed if needed, and then walk back to the cabin with my horde just as the rain starts again in earnest, thundering against the leaky roof like a pounding, relentless fist.
I make the bed. I walk around, examining every inch of the cabin again. I mend some of the metal strips in the window seams, turning the rusted lengths to shiny… steel, I believe. I find out the cabin does, in fact, have running water while exploring the plumbing under the sink and burn my fingers on the copper pipes, my magic recoiling with silent curses of displeasure.
But I keep looking up at the roof, my skin itching to try it. Meld the metal back together. Flex the powers I’ve kept secret from everyone but the man currently romping around in his wolf form somewhere on the island. I need a ladder, however.
On my way back to the cabin after fetching the sheets, I noticed an outbuilding tucked in the trees. I race into the rain, squealing as fat drops hammer the top of my head, and find the wide door unlocked by the grace of the Goddess. It swings open with a groan, and I step into dusty shadows, coughing at sawdust lifting from the ground, disturbed by an inrush of outside air.
A single dusty sconce lights the space, swirling with Aris’s powers. I was right when I came to the conclusion that someone with woodworking skills built this cabin and its furniture by hand. Saws and other tools are neatly arranged around the room. Several finished projects line shelves, coated in dust. On a wide wood table at the center of the room, a smaller project lays unfinished.
It’s a rocking horse meant for a small child. Whoever lived here was still chiseling the details when they abruptly left it behind. Small tools rest in piles of gray, aged sawdust, untouched for… decades.
I turn the rocking horse on its side and find a name etched on the very bottom. Granger. Beside it, another name, etched sloppily, like the woman who carved it wasn’t practiced in the art. Amanda.
“My grandparents on my father’s side.”
I whirl toward the door. Aris darkens the doorway, shirtless, wearing nothing but a pair of damp jeans. He steps into the light, his body wet with rain. He smells delicious–like the storm, the wet forest, and sweat. It cuts through the smell of sawdust and makes me so dizzy I have to grip the worktable for support, but he’s not looking at me and doesn’t notice the way I’m struggling to find my breath again.
His silver eyes scan the room before settling on the rocking horse with a small, knowing smile. “Granger and my grandpa Ryatt were best friends back in the days of King Kane. Granger was Ryatt’s second in command, his Beta by all means, and Amanda… took care of Grandma Ella when Ella arrived from Crescent Falls. They’ve been in each other’s lives for… fifty or sixty years now.”
He steps forward to run his fingertips over their names.
“This was their house?”
He nods. “When the war was won, and Ella and Ryatt came to live in Veiled Valley while Moonrise was being built, the old palace repaired, Granger would spend weeks here with Amanda. She needed–she wanted privacy.” He bites back what I can only describe as some deeply guarded secret. It flares behind his eyes regardless, and his unease is palpable. “They didn’t come back very often after my dad was born. I have five aunts and uncles on that side of the family. They had kids one right after the other after that.” He smiles again, shaking his head. “But this… I believe my grandma went into labor while he was working on this, and they returned to Veiled Valley and didn’t come back for a while. Everyone moved to Moonrise after that.” He finally looks at me. “What are you doing here? Better not be looking for a ladder.”
I purse my lips.
He hums with delight at having read my mind. “Honestly, I’m kind of curious. Fine. Mend the fucking roof. Be my guest. But if you fall off the ladder and break your neck, I’ll never forgive you.”
“If I broke my neck, there’d be nothing to forgive. I’d be dead!”
He brushes past me, lifting an old, gray ladder off the wall, and carries it like it weighs absolutely nothing. “Do you need anything else to complete the task?”
“Just my fingers.”
He looks at my hands, which are still curled around the edge of the worktable. His gaze lingers there for a moment before he slowly meets my eyes, and it’s almost like he’s in between forms–on the cusp of shifting again, maybe involuntarily.
He blinks, shakes his head like he’s trying to dislodge a thought, and moves into the rain. I follow, glancing at the little rocking horse just once before shutting the door tight behind us. Sheets of rain sweep over the grassy, sloping, and severely overgrown garden between the workshop and the cabin. Grass and perennials brush against my waist. I follow Aris back into the house. He pauses with the ladder slung over his shoulder, staring down at the makeshift clothesline I made for his discarded clothing, and sighs, but wordlessly carries the ladder up the narrow, slightly uneven staircase and sets it up in the loft.
The ladder itself nearly touches the ceiling, which is perfect. Aris grumbles but holds the ladder steady while I climb up, examining the larger holes in the rusted slabs and realize with a frown that it’s not steel like it hoped. I murmur out loud, “Tin. Great.”
“You sound disappointed.”
I look down at him, and he looks slightly amused by my frown. “Not that you’ll be able to understand, but tin isn’t the best for alchemy. It’s feeble, unruly, and prone to damage even if it’s easy to bend to my will…. I can fix it. I just need it to stay like that.” I reach up, pressing my fingers to an undamaged section.
“What are you doing?”
“Feeling for its resonance. Magic, technically.”
“Metal is magic?”
“No, not on its own, but it holds magic in different volumes depending on the chemical makeup. It’s like… teeny-tiny, damn near microscopic traces of our world's magic trapped within, and people like me can draw it out and manipulate it.”
“But you don’t like tin, huh?”
“It’s pretty worthless. I can manipulate it, sure. There’s just hardly a reason to bother normally. If we want to be dry in the morning, I at least have to try.” I grit my teeth as the metal warms under my touch. I slowly move my fingers, the tin stretching with the movement and regenerating, and the holes in the metal close like my fingers are a paintbrush, and the roof is my canvas, but just like I thought, the alchemized metal is thin. Too thin to be considered a long-term repair.
“What metal is your favorite to work with?”
“Iron, for sure. It holds the most resonance. It’s thick with it, and there’s a lot I can do with iron. I can turn it into gold and gems, for one. Copper is great for alchemy, but it hurts me for some reason. It burns when I touch it. Silver–” I pinch my mouth closed, but the damage is done.
Silver can tear a wolf to shreds.
“Silver?” When I don’t answer right away, Aris jiggles the ladder.
I hiss with annoyance and peer down at him before moving on with my task, my fingers reaching for the largest, most complicated rusted out holes. “I find silver the easiest for me to work with.”
“Oh, yeah? It doesn’t burn the fuck out of you?”
“I’m not a wolf, remember? That was part of the reason I started to wonder about it when my wolf abilities failed to show up. Not that silver is useful by any means.”
“I could use a few knives.”
“Silver knives? Are you planning on killing someone?”
“What else would a silver blade be for, Pose?”
I glare down at him. He shakes the ladder again, loving the way I squirm, and I realize with a start that I no longer have a headache, and my body doesn’t feel like it’s made of lead. I feel great. Completely at ease and enjoying myself because of… him.
Or the insanely powerful tonic I let burn through my system.
He says, “You know, instead of going into a convent, you can come live with me. I’ll put you to work making silver blades and all kinds of other things whenever the fancy strikes.”
“So we can spend a lifetime bickering with each other?”
“It almost sounds like a marriage to me,” he says with a shrug, his tone teasing but slightly heavy. “Hear me out–”
“No,” I grumble, wincing as I close the largest and most finicky section of the roof. My fingers ache to the bone.
“What if,” he says anyway, bracing himself on the ladder, “instead of joining the cloth, you and I get married.”
“Will you shut up? I’m trying to work.”
“Just imagine it, Posey. You can have a little workshop in one of the spires at my castle and make your little trinkets until your fingers hurt, and then we can fight over dinner and what to watch on TV.”
“Do I look like I watch TV in my downtime?”
“Well, you’d have to start, because I do. Sports. Scary movies. Movies about war. Shows about war. Podcasts–”
“Oh, my Goddess,” I whisper to myself, smoothing my palm over the ceiling to bridge the gaps of the smaller holes likely unseen by the naked eye.
“We’d have good looking kids.”
My heart falls into the pit of my stomach. “Aris, please.”
“I’m just saying… two birds, one stone.”
“And what birds are those, huh?”
“You feeling like you need to run away and me needing to prove I can settle down and be the Shadowsynger Veiled Valley has needed since my grandfather was my age. The stone is us. Platonically, of course.”
“And the act of making a kid is platonic?”
I know he’s joking. He wouldn’t ever consider someone like me for that role, but the teasing note to the conversation is making me feel light as air.
But then I meet his eyes. The way he’s looking at me is… undoing the fabric of my world as I speak, and I don’t even notice the way the ladder creaks, then cracks, and suddenly the slate beneath me, holding up my weight, gives way.
Aris shouts as I plummet.
I land in his arms, and he lands on the bed with me… straddling him, my hands braced on his chest.
He huffs a breath, laughs, and looks up at the mended ceiling. “Not bad, Pose. Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Do what? Marry you? Is that what we’re still talking about?”
“Give all this up?” He sits up and grabs my aching fingers like he can feel the way they throb, how hot they are, how much power lives just there, in the tips. Those silver wells of endless power meet mine and hold. “Are you sure the temple is what you really want?”
“It doesn’t matter what I want,” I whisper, pulling my fingers out of his grasp.