Among Sinners: Chapter 7 – Time
Beginning of Short Story 2: A Forbidden Fruit
Short blurb: Longing for love and recognition, Sera searches for God in all the wrong places. When she turns to a forbidden power, the fruit she gathers promises power and control—while quietly poisoning her heart.
“She saw that the fruit was good for gaining wisdom . . .” — Genesis 3:6
Among Sinners (Table of Contents)
Every month, a new short story begins—and the previous story moves behind the paywall.
To keep reading the full series as it unfolds, become a paid subscriber and directly support the creation of the complete book: ebook, paperback, hardcover, and (if we reach our goals) an audiobook.
Paid subscriptions start at just $5/month or $30/year.
And here’s a bonus: refer a friend, and you’ll receive a complimentary subscription as thanks for helping grow this community.
Chapter 7 - Time
By the end of high school, Sera had all but given up on Alaric.
She told herself it had been a childish thing—an infatuation sparked by too much prayer and not enough sense. She stopped watching for him at church. Stopped dreaming of harvest balls and wedding veils. Moved her attention to other boys, other faces, other futures. She dated around, flirted like it was sport, and found it surprisingly easy to collect affection when she wanted it.
But Jonah was the first.
Not the first kiss—she’d given that away years ago to someone whose name she didn’t remember—but the first boy who made her hesitate.
He worked at Bellweather Stables—a horse farm that bred cross-drafted mounts and retrofitted old electric carts into e-carriages. He could name every part of an axle, every muscle in a gelding’s flank, and had a sunburned neck that never quite faded. His hands smelled like engine grease and cedar shavings. He laughed at her jokes. Never made her feel like she had to shrink to be loved.
It scared the hell out of her.
The more she liked him, the more fragile it all felt. He was kind without conditions, and every time he touched her shoulder or brushed hair from her cheek, she thought, This is too good. This is breakable.
One wrong word. One tired smile. One quiet week.
She started watching for signs. Measuring silences. Interpreting pauses in his texts like omens. And the longer things went well, the more certain she became that they were about to go wrong.
So one night, when the ache of anticipation turned to panic, she opened the drawer where she’d buried the book.
It was still there. Waiting. Of course it was.
She didn’t tell herself it was right. She just told herself it was precaution.
Not a love spell. Nothing dramatic. Just a charm of reinforcement—words to settle the bond, sweeten his affection, make the shape of their love a little harder to bend. A safety net.
That’s what she told herself, anyway.
Sera didn’t feel guilty.
She felt safe.
For a little while, it even worked.
Jonah started bringing her wildflowers and pages torn from old poetry collections. Texting her goodnight and good morning. Asking where she was, what she needed, what he could do to make her day easier. He wrote songs on a beat-up banjo and left them on her doorstep.
She told herself it was sweet. At first. Then tiring. Then oppressive.
It didn’t feel like love anymore. It felt like weight.
She tried to undo the charm. Just a soft reversal. A letting go.
But by then, Jonah had already memorized her laugh and convinced himself they were meant to last forever.
When she told him she needed space, he cried. When she tried to explain, he clutched her hands like she was air.
So she cast something else. Not to hurt him—never that—but just enough to dim the flame. She whispered forgetfulness into his tea. A cooling of devotion.
Three nights later, there was an accident at Bellweather. A spooked horse broke loose in the lower paddock, bolted through the barn, and caught Jonah full in the chest. They said he didn’t suffer—that it was quick, that he was doing what he loved. Sera stood at the edge of the funeral crowd, hands cold, breath shallow, telling herself over and over that it wasn’t the spell. Just a freak accident. Just a horse. Just bad timing.
But she didn’t open the book again for six months.
She cried. Once. Then slept for twelve hours straight and woke up numb.
What followed were years of repetition.
Not boyfriends, not really. Just … attempts.
She kept telling herself she wanted something simple, something real, but every time a man got close enough to make that possible, the old fear returned like a bruise coming back to the surface. So she reached for the book. At first only in moments of panic, then in moments of inconvenience, then eventually out of habit—the way some people reached for painkillers.
By twenty, she knew exactly which charms made a man attentive, which made him softer, which made him forget the jagged conversations that should’ve ended things. By twenty-two, she could lace a binding into a drink with the speed of muscle memory. Nothing heavy. Nothing dangerous. Just enough to make them stay when they should’ve left.
And they did stay.
Oh, they stayed.
By the time she was nearly twenty-four, there were half a dozen men in town who carried the ghost of her influence. Men who’d insisted they were over her, who’d married or moved on or sworn to their friends that they “barely remembered that phase.” But one snap of her fingers—one quiet invitation, one midnight message—and they would show up on her doorstep, breathless and ashamed, ready to leave their wives or girlfriends for one night in her bed.
She didn’t even enjoy it.
Not really.
They’d sit at her kitchen table, hands trembling, calling her beautiful, extraordinary, irreplaceable—words she had practically spoon-fed them, words she’d once longed to hear. But now they sounded tinny, preprogrammed, like a song stuck on repeat.
She’d tell them to go home. To forget. To move on.
They’d promise they would.
And they’d break that promise the instant she crooked a finger.
Eventually she stopped thinking of them as lovers at all. They were more like … accessories. Something she could take off and set aside. Something she could replace with ease. Like choosing a different pair of shoes.
And yet, with every one of them, after the charm wore thin and their devotion tasted flat, she was left with the same hollow ache—an emptiness she convinced herself was loneliness rather than consequence.
After all, she wasn’t the problem. She just hadn’t found the right one yet.
That all changed one morning with a TV announcement.
Sera woke to the sound of someone else’s chewing—the wet, open-mouthed kind that made her want to fling a pillow at the wall. The man beside her—Bruno, or Eric, or something ending in an o, she genuinely couldn’t remember—had decided that 8 a.m. was the perfect time to sit cross-legged at the foot of her bed with a bowl of cereal and the TV blaring loud enough to shake the windowpanes.
She groaned, dragged her robe around her naked body, and shuffled toward the bathroom.
“Can you not?” she muttered, waving a hand toward the screen.
He didn’t look away. “Big news day,” he said through a mouthful of whatever sugary trash he’d bought at the corner market. “One of the Vyrell boys is getting married.”
She froze mid-step.
The bathroom blurred. The cereal crunching faded. Her pulse thumped in her ears.
“…Alaric,” the announcer said.
That name hit her like a door slammed open inside her chest.
Sera drifted toward the TV, the way a moth moves toward flame—slow, dazed, inevitable. Bruno-or-Eric shuffled aside to make room, but she barely noticed him. Her eyes were locked on the screen.
The ceremony was already underway.
The camera panned across rows of seated guests—vineyard owners, town officials, wealthy families in pressed linens—before settling on the groom.
Alaric Vyrell stood at the altar in a tailored black suit, crisp white shirt, sun lighting the edges of his hair like a halo. He looked older, yes, but better for it. Broader. Sharper. Handsome in a way that made her feel sixteen again and full of longing.
Her breath caught.
Oh, she thought. I’d forgotten… no, I never forgot. I just pretended to.
All her old fantasies rose up like ghosts—dancing with him under lantern lights, his hand on her waist, his mouth whispering her name like a vow. She’d pushed all of that away in the years since, burying it under men and magic and mistakes.
But it had never stopped glowing inside her.
Never.
On the screen, Alaric smiled at his bride—some delicate, lovely thing in lace Sera didn’t bother to register—and something inside Sera twisted. Not with jealousy. With certainty.
She stepped closer, the hem of her robe brushing her calves.
Bruno-or-Eric chuckled. “Man, look at that turnout. Wild how the whole community watches these things. Guess it’s symbolic or whatever.”
“Leave,” Sera said.
He blinked. “What?”
“I’m done with you today.”
His confusion lasted all of half a second before his eyes softened, unfocused—like fog frosting over glass. He nodded, obedient as a puppet.
“Right,” he murmured. “I should go.”
He stood, gathered his clothes, and dressed in a daze. He didn’t even finish his cereal. Just slipped on his shoes, mumbled something like thanks, and walked out the door without looking back.
Sera didn’t spare him a glance.
She was too busy touching the screen—her fingertips brushing the curve of Alaric’s cheek as the camera closed in on him, the picture so crisp she could see the flecks of gold in his eyes.
“I had forgotten about you,” she whispered, stroking the pixelated line of his jaw. “But I never stopped loving you.”
Her voice went soft. Reverent. “You will be mine.”
On the screen, Alaric took his bride’s hands.
Sera smiled, slow and certain.
She knew where she kept the book. She knew what she was capable of.
She knew what she deserved.
As the congregation rose and the music swelled, she whispered:
“I’ll come find you.”
And somewhere in the house—the drawer where she’d buried her magic shuddered faintly, as though the book already knew its time had come again.
Copyright & Use Policy
© [2025] Angela Merlo. Among Sinners (working title). First serial publication on Substack at Embers of Incense.
All rights reserved.
Sharing: please share the public Substack link rather than reposting the text.
Translations / audio / adaptations: not permitted without written permission.