Aris
Morgan’s long fingers trace over the top of my hand, her red painted nails shining in the firelight as she smiles at me, cat-like, her dark eyes giving away nothing. When I don’t react to her touch, she leans away to refill her glass of sparkling wine, clicking her tongue. She rises and turns around the room, that smile angling into a frown.
I bring my glass of scotch to my lips. I’ve been drinking more than I’d like. I feel sluggish, and the booze is doing nothing to fill the creeping void spreading in my chest with every hour that ticks by.
“My maids have been saying this place is haunted,” she says with a small disbelieving laugh. “Idiots. It’s just an old castle. I keep telling them that.”
Her guard is asleep in an armchair by the fire, sprawled out and snoring. She passes him without a glance but comes to a stop near one of the windows. Icy silver lights fan over her skin, washing her out. What am I thinking?
“Was there a reason you chose to announce an engagement that hadn’t happened yet?”
She looks at me over her slender shoulder. Her velvet robe falls over the shoulder in question–bare, her skin oiled and gleaming. “I thought, based on our correspondence over the past few weeks, that things were already set in motion. My father is proud.”
“Your father jumped ahead in line without so much as speaking to me.”
“You have to understand,” she says in a low, seductive purr, “my father is merely the brother of an Alpha King. He doesn’t even have his own pack anymore. No sons. No standing outside of his name and his familial relations. I have always been his greatest asset.”
“Something to marry off?” I take a giant gulp of my drink, wincing and baring my teeth as the scotch burns down my throat.
“Prescisly.” She flips her hair over her shoulder and moves in my direction like a wolf stalking its prey. Silent, but sure. She sits beside me again, her hand resting on my upper thigh. Her touch has none of the warmth I need or want. It does nothing for me, but she’s trying. Maybe I should try, too. “Look, Aris. You and I both need something out of this. I need status, and you need an heir. They’re no details to work out.”
“You hate this castle.”
“I’m sure everyone does.” She wrinkles her nose and looks around but then leans closer, nearly draping herself over my lap. “But we can change some things.”
“No.”
She recoils. I bring my drink to my lips again, staring into the fire. “Aris. Don’t be like this. I want good things for us.” Her hand moves higher. “You’re a lonely man, aren’t you? You seem like it. Imagine me here, warming this castle, bringing color back to your life.”
I grip her fingers before she reaches my groin and move her hand away.
“I need to set something straight. First of all, this visit was meant to be just that–a visit. You’ll return to Celestoria in four days’ time.”
She yanks her hand away and scowls.
“Then, I will make my decision.”
“We’re already engaged!”
“I do not see a ring on your finger.” My voice is as bitter cold as ice. This isn’t me. This seething, steely tone belongs to a man I’ve never met but apparently lives inside me. “Anything that has been announced is just rumor. It doesn’t mean a thing unless it comes from the royal family directly. From me directly.”
She rolls her neck, her perfume of roses and lilac heavy in the air between us. “Don’t do this. This is what you wanted. You agreed.”
“I agreed to a visit so you could see where you’d be living and meet the people you’d be ruling over as Luna, and so far, all you’ve done is complain about the castle.” I rise as a breeze ruffles the curtains. An uneasy feeling drifts through the room. I told the house spirits to leave Morgan alone, and so far, they have. Now, however, the female spirit's presence is thick and alarmed as she rattles the chandelier to get my attention, but outside, the wind is howling, carrying thick snow. Morgan probably believes the constant rattle is just the wind against the spires.
“It’s an adjustment, to be sure.” She places her hand on my chest, toying with the buttons. “But… remember when we met, Aris? At that ball? How much fun we had together? It can be like that again.”
The glass is suddenly ripped from my hand by the spirit. It bounces off the rug, spilling ice.
Morgan frowns but doesn’t move away while I scan the room, watching as the breeze skitters through the curtains in warning.
“This is about the church mouse, isn’t it?”
“What?” I look down at her.
“Posey, that little ghost that haunts your castle. Why is she even here? The way you look at her makes me wonder if she’s your paramour or something. I doubt the temple would like that.” There’s a warning in her voice, a silent challenge that immediately enrages me.
“Do not,” I growl, “say her name again.”
Morgan scoffs, but the chandelier rattles violently, and her grunt of displeasure shifts to a gasp of alarm.
“Excuse me,” I say under my breath and whirl toward the door. Behind me, Morgan murmurs some curse under her breath, but the door closes with a snap, and then every sconce in the hallway flickers to life like a heartbeat.
My chest is in knots. I watch my powers flare in each bulb. My shadows beg to stretch, to seek.
A jolt of awareness has me moving before my mind can catch up, and then I’m in the dining room, the table still laid, wine glasses half empty and food uneaten.
“Where is she?” I shout at the room, and the door to the kitchen and old servants’ quarters rips open. Now, I’m running.
I skid to a stop in the entrance of the kitchen. The fawn is still asleep, but a bowl of bread dough overflows, expanding over the kitchen counter. With a hiss, I search every room, ignoring the house trying to pull me in the direction of those ancient stairwells because… she better not have taken them down into the deepest levels of the castle. I told her to stay out of there.
Fucking Posey. This woman will be the death of me.
My anger reaches a peak when I find an open door in the lowest level of the castle. I’ve never been in this room before, but I can see why she ended up here. Her fingerprints are everywhere. She went through every crate, touched anything that could be touched, totally ignoring the danger she was in with every step she took in those fucking satin slippers. A smear of blood on the edge of the hole in the floor makes my stomach tumble to my toes. Dread renders my senses useless. I nearly jump, but the male spirit catches me by the shirt, holding fast.
“Where the fuck is she?!” I bellow.
When I find her…. Fuck. Any anger I feel vanishes.
I use my common sense and follow the male spirit to a safer path. I step off the last step leading to the family vault, which rises above us in a wall of pure iron. She’s standing in the glare of two sconces, her gown in shambles, her body damp and covered in grime and small scrapes and bruises. Her hair is flattened against her head–wet, and full of shards of wood. She looks pitiful but uncharacteristically furious as she meets my gaze through her golden lashes, her cheeks crimson with a blush that's undoing me at the seams in real time.
I lean on the railing, giving myself a few seconds to collect myself, but it’s no use. I explode.
“What the fuck are you doing down here? What the hell were you thinking? Posey? You fell through the fucking floor–”
“I’m aware,” she grinds out, choked, her voice small but furious.
“You could have died. I warned you about this, didn’t I? Or did you not listen to a word I said about–”
She cuts me off by pointing to the vault, her body shockingly still. Her shoulders are squared, her breathing coming in deep, even pulls, like she suddenly fell into a trance.
I step off the stairs, glancing at the vault door before approaching her. “What?”
She says nothing, just points, her fingers steady and unyielding.
I cock my head, closing the distance between us, and then I see it, the way her eyes are glowing faintly enough for me to notice. Her fingertips are hot when I grip her hand and try to drag her toward the staircase, but she fights it, her slippered feet sliding over the tiles. “What is the matter with you? Are you concussed?” I look down at her bloody, swollen fingers. She has dozens of splinters, likely from clawing and then hanging from the floorboards before she fell into the… into the fucking caves.
I let go of her hand and tuck mine in my pockets to stop myself from picking her up and throwing her over my shoulder. I have it in mind to chain her to my bed to keep her in one spot… in a totally innocent way, of course. Not that I wouldn’t like to see her tied up in not much less than she’s wearing now.
Her gown is barely holding together as she steps to the side and puts her hand on the vault.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” I warn, but the inner mechanisms click widely as she uses her alchemy to undo the intricate, magically warded room. “Stop it. Right now.”
The door groans as the locks slide free–dozens. Some larger than others. I bite the inside of my cheek, torn between watching her use her insanely impressive magic and putting an end to this madness. In the end, I let her do it out of sheer awe.
“Posey.”
She licks her lips, her eyes still glowing, and draws her hand away as the seam pops. The vault opens just enough for a sliver of light to fan over my body. I grab her before she can slip into the room. “I don’t think so.”
She clutches one of my bracelets in warning, arching a brow. It’s so uncharacteristic of her, but I don’t think she’s totally in control right now. I guess I’m used to seeing this kind of behavior in people like Maeve and Blake–people with real, tangible magic that sometimes becomes too much. Magic that takes over and overwhelms everything else, and right now, Posey is thrumming with energy I can feel in my shadows, which shockingly, unnervingly, get excited at the prospect.
“What are you doing?” I ask slowly, reaching up to tuck a lock of her filthy hair behind her ear. “Snap out of it and talk to me.”
“Your mask is broken, isn’t it? It’s why you don’t wear it.”
“It weighs more than you, for one. Two, it’s ugly as fuck. Three, there’s no point–”
“It’s part of you. It calls out to you like it’s been calling out to me since I came here.” She doesn’t sound like herself, and it’s making the spirits dancing around us worried. The female titters nervously while the male shifts from one end of the room to the other like he doesn’t know where exactly to hover. “I need to see it.”
“No.”
“Yes.” She bares her teeth. I narrow my eyes, feeling suddenly uneasy.
“Posey, do you know where you are?”
She doesn’t answer. Her hand is still wrapped around my wrist, and the metal is starting to warm, but her grip is insane.
“Posey?”
“I need it. I need to fix it. I need–to–I need to fix it.” Her eyes suddenly roll back into her head. I catch her before she slumps backward. She goes totally, completely limp in my arms.
A great sigh of relief skitters around the room. The female spirit rushes around us.
“I don’t need this,” I tell myself. I carry her up the stairs, then more stairs, and more stairs, until I reach her bedroom. “This is the last thing I need right now.”
“The mystic,” the male spirit whispers against my ear, and I close my eyes, shaking my head.
“What is he going to do, huh? He’s not the same, you know. He gave all that up.”
“Impossible,” he replies in that ghostly, low tone that skitters up my spine.
“She needs an outlet for this power,” his female companion says on my other side, but she’s further away. “She’ll fade. She locks so much of herself up.”
“You know it freaks me out when we speak like this,” I remind them, and they go quiet. As I sit at her bedside, picking splinters from her heated fingers into the later hours of the night, I begin to wonder what exactly Posey has been hiding because–this power she has?
It’s going to be an enormous problem for both of us.