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I stare flatly at her. I don’t know what she wants me to say. Sorry? Behind me, Abram is almost done putting his papers in his bag. “Listen, I need to go.”
“Wait,” Rosaline says urgently as I’m already backing away. “I’ve been trying to reach you. We have to figure out what we’re going to do. I know it’s not official yet, but you have to know that your dad talked to my dad…right?” She widens her eyes, seeming almost worried for a moment that maybe Idon’tknow. “We’re going to be engaged soon.”
Yeah, absolutely fucking not.
I glance back to where Abram was standing. Fuck—he’s gone. I press my lips together, and shrug my bag higher on my shoulder, impatient to leave.
Alright, this conversation needs to end. “Text me.”
Her eyes narrow. “I have. You don’t answer.”
“I lost my phone. I’ve got it back now.” I’m already backing away. “I really need to go.”
I know I should feel bad for leaving Rosaline standing there alone, but I can’t. Even if the stars hadn’t somehow just aligned for me, and Etta hadn’t miraculously thrown herself into my path without my having to lift a finger, I wouldn’t have wanted to marry Rosaline. But now especially, I’ll never be able to look at another woman and not compare her to Etta. Not now that I’ve tasted her. Not now that I know the little noises she makes when she comes, know how soft her skin is, or what my name sounds like on her lips. I’ve imagined her for years, but nothing could compare to the real thing, and I won’t give her up. I can’t.
Professor Abram’s office is on the ground floor at the end of a maze of twisting halls, nowhere near the classroom I’m used to seeing him in. His door is open, but I knock on the frame, anyway, more out of habit than manners.
He looks up from where he’s sitting at his huge, dark oak desk, and jumps. “Roman. I don’t think I was expecting you. Did you have a question about the lecture?”
“Hi.” I take a step into the room. “No, sorry you weren’t. Do you have a sec?”
Professor Abram is an average man in pretty much every way. Average build, average height, neither attractive nor particularly unattractive. He dresses like I’d expect a professor to dress, usually in tweed and carrying some sort of scuffed leather briefcase. He smiles as I walk in, and pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Sure, what can I do for you?”
I glance at the open door. “Can I shut this?”
“Allow me.” Abram draws a half-circle in the air, causing the door to swing shut, and frowns as I sit down. “Is this about your paper, because it was fine.”
“I need your advice,” I say slowly. “Or, opinion, I guess.”
He raises his eyebrows. “About school?”
“No.”
“What’s going on?”
I pause for a moment, wishing I’d planned better how to ask for what I want—what Etta and I agreed I would ask him.
I know that Professor Abram is in the Order. He’s not part of one of the founding families, but you don’t have to be to practice. In this case, his lack of ties to any of the founding families is exactly why I want to talk to him. Abram knows who we are. He knows who Etta is. He’s a theology professor and a member of the Order, so he’ll know how all the rituals work, and best of all I actually like him, which is more than I can say for 80% of the rest of this miserable damn town.
“Is Councilman Lawrence the only person who can perform a handfasting?”
His eyebrows raise. “Why?”
“Just, in theory.”
“No. Not if both parties were already members of the Order.”
My eye twitches slightly. This, right here, is the entire purpose of this conversation. A marriage ceremony—bonding, handfasting, whatever you want to call it—and an induction into the Order are not synonymous, yet they often get lumped together because, as far as I know, you do need to be pledged to marry another Order member.
It would be possible to have a bonding in secret and then announce to our families that it was simply too late to stop it, but not to have a secret pledging. The council would need to be involved in that.
“What if one or both of the…er…couple wasn’t pledged?”
His eyebrows disappear into his hairline. “Roman, what is this about?”
“Just, theoretically. What then?”
“Theoretically…” Abram considers, and I know he doesn’t believe this is hypothetical. “The handfasting would amount to nothing more than a spiritual marriage. Like a human ceremony. Which might be fine if that’s what you were intending.”
