Posey
I don’t deserve this for what I’ve done. This room. This dream of mine coming to fruition. I run my fingers over every surface, count the steps from one side of the room to the other, and stare out of the trio of windows along the curve of the wall for a long time.
The stars hang heavy when I finally ask the spirits of the house for help. The female is eager, pleased with the state of the room and the list I give her, which is quickly whisked away and disappears into the shadows of the highest rafters, where my footsteps echo as the male spirit moves things around and reorients the space for me. I only leave to change out of my pajamas in the adjoining bedroom, which is small but cozy and well furnished, when I realize there is no way I’m sleeping tonight, not with my thoughts so tangled and my heart wracked by guilt.
I try to call Willow in the earliest hours of the morning, when the nearly full moon is high, and the sky turns a milky violet, but the call goes to voicemail, and I can’t bring myself to even say, “Hey, I really need someone to talk to. There’s so much I need to say to just… anyone.” Then, I just walked around, weaving through quiet hallways, trying to still my thoughts.
The castle is dark and coated in shadows when I make my way back to my new rooms. My booted footsteps sound on the staircase leading up to my spire, where the door is still slightly ajar. I rub my eyes to make sure the scene in front of me is real. A basket of dried herbs rests on the worktable, which is now positioned under the windows, drenched in moonlight, and along the far wall, a table-top burner stove is seated on one of the counters running the length of the room, and pots and pans are stacked on the shelves above. Glass vials that glimmer in the starlight–empty and ready for the tonics I need to make–are also situated there. A rocking chair gently creaks near the roaring fireplace.
It’s cozy. It smells like metal and herbs. Outside, the moonlight flickers through clouds, and it’s dark again. Snow begins to fall while I spend the rest of the night, and the first light of morning, running my fingers over the mask, trying to figure out why it feels incomplete. It doesn’t make any sense. A mask like this was incredibly hard to make, I believe. It would have taken an alchemist of tremendous skill to meld the pieces and inlay gems as thick as this. They would have used a forge, I think. They would have had to. Unless… whoever made this is as powerful as I am, apparently.
I run my thumb over one of the thick prongs. The iron heats, glowing under my touch, and the jagged, bent edges of the broken piece smooth… almost too easily.
I set the mask down and step back, massaging my aching fingers and shaking my head.
I have no formal alchemy training, but I developed my gifts early, before Roman was even experimenting in our father’s alchemy room. My skill set wasn’t the priority–Roman’s was. No one asked; no one would have cared if I brought up the fact I was bending iron ore and knew nickel and silver were my alloys of choice by the time I was thirteen, so I never mentioned it.
Females of an alchemist line are never this powerful. At least, that’s what I was told. Our purpose was solely ensuring alchemy was passed down through the generations, and for a while, until I knew I was different, I figured my impressive skills would make my parents proud when it came time for me to marry and… breed.
I look at my hands. At my narrow fingers. My soft palms. I turn them over, inspecting them like they’re new to me, wondering what Aris sees in me that I haven’t seen in myself. What his family sees in me. What I’ve done that’s so impressive compared to my father and brother, who’ve worked with his family for years.
I finally snap out of it and leave the spire but take my time weaving through the castle. I don’t wear a watch, but I’m sure Aris means to fetch me soon to go to the archives, and that’s the priority right now, at least for me.
I must have taken a wrong turn because I end up in the western wing of the castle by accident, which I’m not familiar with. It’s a maze of small hallways until I reach the second floor, which is more open and modern compared to the rooms I occupy upstairs. An unlit corridor of red carpet and creamy white walls stretches into the darkest shadows–silent, and just as I begin to turn back the way I came, to descend the stairs again and backtrack to the eastern wing… a sconce lights at the very end of the hallway.
My heart jumps into my throat when it flickers. I’ve learned to tell the difference between the milky golden haze the spirit of the house produces and Aris’s silver light… and this isn’t Aris.
It flickers again, beckoning, and I follow on silent feet, creeping with one hand against the wall. Unease nearly chokes me as the stillness grows so thick I can hear my blood rushing in my veins, but then a murmured voice reaches from the shadows, then a girlish, pitched laugh, then a… moan.
My cheeks blaze as the moaning continues–shallow and rushed–like whoever it is currently in the final throws of ecstasy I know so well because I… I’ve felt that. With him.
“No,” I whisper, squeezing my eyes shut. Morgan’s resounding “Yes!” splits the hallway into pieces, my heart cracking so violently I shudder. “I don’t want to see this!” I whirl and sprint down the hallway, tripping, falling to my knees so hard the thud vibrates down the hallway, but I get up, tears blurring my vision as an awful, clawing jealousy and misplaced betrayal tears through my chest.
Aris isn’t mine. He’s never been mine. He can’t be mine, and I made that so completely crystal clear. My tears feel like acid on my skin. He has every right to fuck Morgan. She’s going to be his wife, for fuck’s sake. The mother of his future children. Maybe they’re getting a head start…
I stifle a sob and brace myself on a cold, dark stone column overlooking the foyer. My body shatters under the weight of my heartbreak. I’ve been doing so good so far, haven’t I? I’ve only cried myself to sleep… six nights out of the week on average so far. I’ve been eating again… just a little bit. Food still tastes like sand, like forcing Aris through my fingers took everything good and sweet out of my life.
He offered me the world. I gave it up. I shattered his heart and mine and this widening void in my chest is what I deserve–
“Why are you crying?”
I shriek, covering my ears, startled by the noise that just tore from my mouth, and slowly turn to Aris, who’s standing with his arms crossed in the center of the foyer below, squinting up at me through the haze of chandelier light.
“Posey?”
“What–I–” I slowly lower my hands and grip the balcony, finding it impossible to fill my lungs. Adrenaline courses like a rapidly spreading wildfire through my body, and I know without a doubt my skin is prickling, turning from peach to a fiery pink. “How’d you get down here so fast?”
“What?” He steps out of the center of the foyer, his boots sending an echo up to the highest rafters. “I’ve been down here waiting for you for twenty minutes. I was about to go wake you up. I want to get to the archives before Arthur rises for the day. Otherwise, he’s going to pester us–”
“You weren’t–you weren’t with–” I pinch my mouth shut before I say something I know I’ll regret. It’s none of my business. His arrangement with Morgan is none of my business.
He scans my face. His eyes narrow for a moment before he sighs and motions for me to come downstairs. “Get down here.”
“I–” I should tell him, shouldn’t I? That his fiance is sleeping with someone else in his own house? Unless he… finished… and I blacked out again and have been wandering around for twenty minutes or so….
“Posey, for the love of the Goddess, get over here. If you’re wondering if I know that my fiance is fucking her bodyguard, yes. I’m fully aware. She’s not very good at hiding it.”
My lungs quiver. I almost laugh but choke instead. The corner of his mouth twists into a wry kind of smile.
“Can we go? Or do you need me to explain this to you in detail?”
“You’re okay with this?” I start down the grand, curved staircase but step at the center, looking down at him. “With the woman you’re going to marry sleeping with someone else?”
“Of course I’m not, but I’d rather not go into detail here. Her maids are shameless spies, which is how I found out about Morgan and Talon in the first place, on their first night here. Their first two hours in the castle, actually. I’ve been enjoying dangling this engagement in front of her, knowing I’m sending her home in a few days’ time and will never see her again.”
“Aris,” I whisper, shocked by his level, dry tone. He seems totally unaffected.
He shrugs as I reach his side. My cloak, which I forgot to bring with me, drops from thin air into his hand. He shakes it out and drapes it over my shoulders. “She’s after my money, Posey.”
“Isn’t anyone you marry going to be interested in that? Given your terrible reputation?”
His touch lingers on my shoulders, searing through my wool cloak and my equally thick gray sweater to warm my skin. “Morgan’s reputation might be worse, which is why I thought we’d be perfect together. As it turns out, she hates my house, which makes me hate her.”
I feel all toasty and off kilter when the doors open wide for us, revealing at least a foot of fresh snow and a landscape swept in silver. It’s gorgeous. The most beautiful morning I’ve ever seen in my life. “Was finding someone who wants to live here your only requirement?”
“I felt like I’d know for sure when I saw her here, against the stone and stained glass. I’d know she was supposed to be here with me, and so far only one person has walked into this ancient place and… glowed.” He catches my elbow, tucking me behind him as he carefully stomps through the snow, clearing a path for me to walk.
His words, however, linger in the air between us, booming through the vacuum of snowy silence as fresh flakes fall from the cloudy skin.
“Well, I’m sorry you’re not getting married.”
“No, you're not.”
“I am. I really am. You deserve to be happy.”
He places his hand on my arm again when we pass through the gate where the guards are actively digging out the security booth. He doesn’t say another word for what feels like an eternity. Five minutes, in fact. When we finally reach the wide doors to the archives, the building built into a cliff face overlooking the valley and city of bridges below, he hesitates at the door, his fingers curled around the brass knob.
I can feel him looking at me, his gaze boring into my profile. I know the second I look him in the eyes it’s going to break my heart all over again.
I was happy. For two days I was happier than I’ve ever been and will ever be again.
I roll my neck, wincing at the ghost of his voice invading my thoughts. I’m imagining it again. I have to be. I’m making things up to soften my own suffering.
“Don’t run off while we’re in the lower levels, okay? I don’t know what’s down there. I don’t really want to know.” He yanks open the door, and we’re sprayed with warm air.
The frost on my eyelashes melts. I blink the moisture away. Warm, golden light of the main levels of the archives expands all around us, but then my heart skips a beat, and I resist the urge to fold into myself at the sight of a trio of priestesses and their proteges, women I know from the training program.
Mother Maria looks up from a book and stares at me for several seconds. To my great surprise, she gives me a relieved smile and a sharply knowing nod.
I suck in my lower lip and smile in greeting before Aris whirls us toward the doors leading into the depths of the archives.
I immediately step into the shadows, but he’s reluctant to follow.
“What?” I ask, blinking up at him.
He glares into the darkness for several seconds before sighing heavily and running his fingers through his hair.
“You’re scared, aren’t you?”
“I’m not scared.”
I turn to face him. “You are!”
“I hate the fact you came down here several times without someone escorting you.”
“I’ve been fine. I like the dark, actually. It’s quiet down there. No one bothers me, hovers over me, which is exactly what you mean to do, so please, let me find the books I need without breathing down my neck the entire time, okay?” I step into the shadows, biting back a smile as he curses above me, and then there he is, directly behind me, his hand gripping my waist as we navigate the stairwell into the depths of the mountain.