The Twin Who Got The Ring And The One Who Got The Altar Chapter 02

The Twin Who Got The Ring And The One Who Got The Altar Chapter 02

Granger Hall sat at the deepest part of the hollow.

String lights glowed along the stone path on both sides. The wind kicked up, and their shadows swayed across the ground.

I walked slowly.

Not because I was hesitating. My head was just a mess, and I needed to untangle something before I got there.

My mind went back five years.

I was seventeen when Tate showed up as a summer volunteer. He sat on the steps outside the schoolhouse reading, the sunset gold against his face.

I’d never seen anyone like him—clean, light, like he’d stepped out of a different world.

Later, he asked me where the road out of the hollow led.

I told him it led down the mountain, to a town, and beyond that, a city, and beyond that, bigger cities.

He asked where I wanted to go.

Everywhere, I said.

He laughed and said, “Then go everywhere.”

I believed him back then. I believed some outsider’s pretty words.

He left, and we wrote letters, then texts once phones got common. Five years of it.

He said when I turned twenty-two, he’d propose and take me away.

I asked him how he knew I’d say yes.

He said I would, because I liked him.

I called him shameless.

But he was right. I did like him. Five years, and I never looked at anyone else.

I reached Granger Hall. Elder Granger was sitting on the steps, smoking his corncob pipe. He squinted when he saw me.

“You came.” He said. “Thought you might not show tonight.”

I crouched across from him. “Elder, I need to ask you something.”

“Go on.”

“The Keeper rule—does she have to stay in the hollow her whole life?”

He drew on his pipe. “Old ways say the Keeper stays, protects the hollow, guards the people. She doesn’t leave. She doesn’t marry outsiders. She serves until the end.”

I nodded. “What if she leaves the hollow?”

He paused, tilting his head at me. “Which Keeper would dare?”

“Just asking.”

He took another drag, let the smoke curl out into the string light glow.

“You made up your mind?” He asked. “You want to be sworn in?”

“Not yet.” I said. “I just want to understand the rules.”

He looked at me for a long time.

Then he said something I didn’t expect, “Willa, you’re the first one in your generation I got wrong.”

I blinked. “What do you mean?”

“You and your sister.” He paused. “I figured you’d be the one to stay. But I watched Sera grow up—her heart was never really in this hollow.”

Wind swept through, making the string lights sway.

“You, though,” he said. “Every time you come down from the mountain, you look back.”

I said nothing.

“Not because you miss it.” He said. “Because you’re memorizing—the road, the ridge, every tree and rock. The way someone looks at a place they love, and the way someone looks at a place they’re dying to leave—they’re not the same.”

I dropped my gaze.

Something thick lodged in my throat.

“But I’m not meant to stay,” I said, my voice rough. “I have my own road.”

“Go your way.” He knocked the ash out of his pipe and stood. “But Sera can’t walk hers. You need to know that.”

He pushed open the door to Granger Hall and disappeared inside.

I stayed crouched on the steps, watching his shadow fade into the candlelight.

Know it. I knew it.

Sera could never be Keeper. Not because she was bad—but because she couldn’t hide the wanting in her heart. And the old ways said the Keeper doesn’t just guard the hollow. She guards her own heart. You can’t hold the hollow together if you can’t hold yourself together.

I stood, brushed the dirt off my knees.

Night wind lifted my hair.

Footsteps behind me. I didn’t have to turn around.

“You’re really doing it?” Tate’s voice.

“Haven’t decided yet.”

“Then why are you here?”

“To get the rules straight.”

He came up beside me and stood there a moment. “Willa, if you take the oath, you can never leave.”

“I know.”

“You got into college. You have so many options—”

“Tate.” I cut him off, turning to face him. “Did you come here today for me, or for her?”

He shut his mouth.

I said, “Alright, we’re done.”