Aris
Four Months Later…
It never snows in Veiled Valley, even in the winter. At least, it shouldn’t be snowing. Rain, yes. It rains often. So often, honestly, that I can tell what time it is just based on how the storm clouds begin to roll over the mountains with the promise of our nightly thunderstorms.
But snow?
I stare out the window at the silver landscape, narrowing my eyes at the guards posted at the gate. They’re just as confused as I am, but at least they’re enjoying it.
“I think it’s a ridiculous name, but Soren has his heart set on it,” Maeve says from somewhere behind me with a deep sigh. “Can you imagine naming a child after a fruit?”
“Is he particular to clementines?” Brie asks with a small laugh.
“No, he doesn’t even like oranges. I have no idea what’s gotten into him lately, but when we found out we were having another girl, he pitched the name, and I immediately laughed at him and told him over my dead body, but he’s been calling her that, and now Fallon is calling her Clementine, too.”
I look at my sisters over my shoulder. Brie is packing her things, and Maeve is waiting patiently for the herbs Brie has to take to travel to kick in. They’ve been here for the past week, and their only agenda, it seems, was to harass and pester me. In Brie’s defense, she was worried Grandpa Ryatt was keeping me locked in one of the towers against my will, honing my Shadowsynger skills. Maeve, on the other hand, was disappointed that that wasn’t the case.
“I think Clementine is a perfectly nice name.” Brie neatly folds one of Kieran’s sweaters and tucks it in her suitcase.
Maeve groans. “And what’s next, then? A daughter named Watermelon?”
“Well, what would you name her otherwise?”
“Something tough, like Elektra.”
“That sounds like a new electronic device for home security," I quip, and Maeve scowls, the pregnancy in question barely even beginning to show beneath her thick wool sweater and matching skirt.
“Well, no one gets an opinion on the matter because fate decided Fallon’s name. Her long-dead Firestone ancestors will be the deciding voices in the end.” She rests her hands on the swell of her belly and fixes us both with a look.
“Just be grateful you get to name another girl. Boy names are ridiculously hard to settle on. Lexa and Kaleb couldn’t decide for nearly two months.”
“Oh please,” Maeve scoffs, rolling her eyes. “They named him Ian, for Goddess’s sake. I was expecting something more exciting, like Darragh or Ronan. I know Kaleb was trying to convince her to name him Magnus for a while.”
Brie wrinkles her nose.
Maeve smirks, flipping her thick mane of dark brown hair over her shoulder. “All better options than Clementine.”
Brie shakes her head, amused but slowly starting to get annoyed. I recognize this little dance. Normally, by this point, they’d be at each other's throats, but some distance and different living situations has apparently turned them into calm, thoughtful beasts.
“Logan and I had a whole list of girl names,” Brie sighs wistfully. “I was, of course, thrilled Griffon was a boy, but still, girl names are cute. We really liked Lilly or Lilac.”
“Lilac?” Maeve arches a brow. “What is she, shampoo?”
The corner of Brie’s mouth twitches. “Posey was Logan’s favorite, but I explained we already have a friend with that name.”
I haven’t heard the name spoken aloud in months. It’s like a knife twisting in my gut. I look down, half expecting my entrails to be scattered across the pristine emerald carpet.
“That’s… one of the Sapphire Ridge kids, right? Alpha Farrow’s daughter?”
I can feel both sisters looking at me, but I turn to the window to hide the pained expression spreading across my face.
“Roman’s sister, yeah.” Brie zips her suitcase with a nod. “Goddess, how much of the tonic did you give me this time?”
“Enough to knock you out cold.” I can still feel Maeve’s eyes boring holes between my shoulder blades. “What’s up with you, weirdo?”
“Tired,” I lie. My sisters exchange glances before Brie bows her head to aimlessly fluff a pillow on the couch, and Maeve moves in to pry, but Logan’s presence in the second floor den immediately halts her progress.
He’s holding both Griffon and Kieran, the former bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, excited to his see mother, and the former slumped over Logan’s back like a sack of potatoes, fast asleep after a day spent terrorizing the castle to the point even the spirit of the house made himself scarce. “Are we ready?”
Brie sleepily nods, but I can still feel Maeve watching me like a hawk. While Logan passes Griffon to Brie, Maeve takes a few more determined steps in my direction, tilting her head as she rounds me to inspect my expression.
“Is Grandpa Ryatt torturing you?”
“No,” I say with a soft smile, meeting her eyes. They’re so unlike mine. She looks like Ella, our grandmother, with her startling sea-green gaze. Her powers swirl within, visible in the right lighting, which this is not. The castle in Veiled Valley is dark, cast in silver, even on the brightest days. Tonight is no exception. It’s a new moon, barely a lick of light in the sky, especially with snow still spiraling down from the thick clouds hanging over the city like a wool blanket. “I’ve honestly enjoyed training with him.”
“He thinks you’re ready to be Alpha. He spoke to Mom about it.”
Caught only slightly off guard, I ask, “How do you know?”
“Because she told me.”
“Well, she never told me.”
“I expect there to be some kind of announcement about Mom stepping down as Alpha of Veiled Valley during the Solstice gathering in Maatua.” She turns to look out the window with me. “You know this is a long time coming for her. She’s been a part-time Alpha at best, not the Alpha King Veiled Valley really needs.”
I brace my hands on the windowsill, nodding. “I know.”
“She just wants to be a midwife, and with the Ghosts mostly stationed in Moonrise these days, it makes sense for Mom and Dad to move there full time.”
“I’m aware.”
“Which means… this is all yours.”
“I understand how it works, Maeve.”
She chews her lower lip for a moment before adding, “You’ll still report to me, technically."
“Hardly. Veiled Valley was never part of the Firestone domain, and that hasn’t changed. The only reason you’ve had access to the inner dealings of this territory is because your mother is the leader.”
“Well, I hope we’ll at least stay on good terms.” She squeezes my arm in a loving manner, which is unlike her, but then she takes a strained breath and looks over her shoulder at where Logan and Brie are preparing the boys to jump back to the Deadlands. “I heard a very strange rumor.”
“Oh?”
She turns to me, taking a single step to close the distance between us so she’s not overheard. “Are you… have you invited Princess Morgan of Celestoria to stay here?”
“For a week, yes.”
“Why?”
My ribs ache. I absently rub my hand over my chest and refuse to meet her curious gaze. “She’s single, a bit older than me but not by much, and her family has ties to ours. I met her a few weeks ago.”
Maeve’s brows rise with a disbelieving chuckle. “Ties? Her great-grandfather was the Alpha King who allowed Great-Aunt Maddy to fall into the hands of those breeder auctioneers. She’s the niece of the current Alpha King!”
“And our cousins wouldn’t exist had he not,” I remark, twisting to face her. Maeve is exceedingly tall, just like Lexa, able to look me right in the eyes. She steps closer, her lips parting in disbelief.
“What business do you have with the Alpha King of Celestoria and his family?”
“None as it stands, but again, I met Morgan at a ball and we… talked about getting to know each other better.”
“Her father is already boasting about a possible engagement.”
“Nothing has been said in that regard.”
“Maybe not on your end, but there’s been rumbles, Aris.”
“Rumbles about what, exactly?”
She shrugs, crossing her arms over her chest. “Well, for one, her father was in serious debt and had to be saved by the Alpha King, his own brother. It’s caused some discord in the packs in Celestoria.”
“That’s none of my business.”
“When you become Alpha King of Veiled Valley, it will be. They’re part of the Allied Kingdoms just like you.”
“Which is probably why her father reached out, trying to create a bridge between us.”
Maeve narrows her eyes. “What are you up to, Aris? You’re not considering marrying that self-righteous bitch, are you?”
“So you’ve met?” I smirk, and Maeve’s glare turns cat-like and cutting.
“No, but I’ve heard rumors.”
“Sounds like you hear a lot of rumors.” My tone has more ice than I anticipated. Maeve turns away, huffing a breath.
“Whatever you’re up to, I don’t like it.”
“You don’t have to like it.”
She looks at me again. Really looks at me. Sizes me up for several seconds before she angles her body toward Brie and Logan and walks off.
After brief, hushed goodbyes, the group disappears into thin air, and the castle groans all around me in silent triumph.
But when I reach the highest of the floors, just before the rooms above split off into the towers and spires, I realize I’m not alone.
Grandpa Ryatt moves from one side of his office to the other. It’s a mid-sized room, a place he’s laid claim to since he returned from Moonrise when Maeve came into power. The dark emerald walls and rich wood floors make the room look smaller than it is at first glance, and the dim lamplight casts long, inky shadows across the floorboards as I close the door behind me and sink my weight against it. He doesn’t even look up from the papers in his hands. “Did they leave?”
“Yeah, just now. You didn’t want to come down and say goodbye?”
“I spoke to the girls earlier today, when I arrived.” He sits behind his desk and looks up at me, his dark hair and sharp, chiseled features looking decades younger than he is in the shadows. He was a startling handsome man once. There are a few photographs of them–him and Ella, as well as Isaac and Maddy, in their youth scattered around this castle. But he looks like something out of Grandma Ella’s paintings now as he scans my face and bends his neck to scan the papers again before folding them neatly and tucking them in a drawer.
“I’ll be in Maatua for the next two months, at least until after Solstice,” he begins, motioning to one of the regal armchairs in front of his desk. He reaches for a bottle of the fine whiskey Isaac sends him and fills two glasses while I take a seat, sinking into the plush fabric cushions. “Are you planning on joining the family for Solstice?”
“Of course.”
“Good.”
I sip lightly, catching his gaze, waiting for him to confirm what Maeve brought up earlier.
“And what will you be doing with your time otherwise?”
“What needs to be done for Veiled Valley, I suppose.”
He leans back in his chair to inspect me, his silver eyes, identical to mine, firm and inquisitive. “Blake has extended an invitation for the men to gather at his house before everyone leaves for Maatua.”
“Blake is throwing a gentlemen's evening? That doesn’t sound like him.”
“It’s likely something he and Soren cooked up. Those two have been attached at the hip lately.”
I immediately think of Roman and banish his image from my mind. It’s been a few weeks since we’ve spoken. It’s all very formal when we do. His father is in the process of stepping down. Roman is engaged, getting married on Solstice to a woman from his pack. Tate and Miles are off in Tarsian with the Ghosts. Willow is on the air with that million-dollar smile in Crescent Falls, and the few times I’ve tuned in and seen her face, I wasn’t able to tell whether or not Roman has grown a set of balls and rejected her.
But every time I think of Roman, I think of Posey, and I’d rather forget her entirely if I’m able to.
“Aris?” Grandpa Ryatt says to drag me out of my mind, and it works.
“Yeah?”
“You’re aware of your mother’s plans, I assume?”
I nod, but it’s tight. “It’s never been a secret that she longs to leave Veiled Valley and return to Moonrise to run the clinic.”
“It’s been her dream since she was a little girl,” he says under his breath, a flash of grief lighting behind his eyes. “Being Alpha of Veiled Valley shouldn’t have fallen on her, but we–” He halts, takes a slow breath, and continues, “we couldn’t have more children, and she was enough, always has been.”
I know for a fact Ryatt did everything he could to make sure Ella never went through another pregnancy. Not because it wasn’t what they wanted, but because of what he had to witness the day my mother came into the world several months early, not breathing, dying beside her mother, his mate.
I used to not understand. My parents had the three of us. The house was always loud and busy. Mom loves babies, and I think she would have had more had Maeve not been breathing fire and getting herself lost in the aether before age one, but I digress. The look in my grandfather’s eyes while he thinks about that time of his life, when he nearly lost his mate, I get it, for some odd, unreachable reason. Like I’ve felt that way before but can’t place when or where.
“She’s going to make the announcement during Solstice,” he says, holding my gaze. “You’ll ascend to Alpha of Veiled Valley and its territories. We’ll hold the ceremony after the new year, so you have another two or three months to prepare and hone your skills.”
“Sounds good to me.”
One of his thick, dark brows twitches. “Does it?”
“I’m ready. I’ve been ready.” I lean back in my chair. My phone buzzes in the pocket of my black slacks. I’m in the habit of ignoring it, finding every notification comes with a heavy dose of anxiety, of impending heartache.
“And what of the girl from Celestoria?”
“Who told you?”
“Your sisters.” He arches a brow. “Is there anything you want to tell me, or is this going to be another damning surprise for the whole family?”
“I’m the last person you need to worry about, remember?”