I wasn’t Girl in Black tonight. I’d given up on her for a while, being only myself. Calamity. A girl in a white dress walking through empty streets. Everyone must have been starting the festivities early, but I didn’t mind when I saw I would have the entire menagerie to myself. There were wooden posts blocking the street off so that no one got in without paying, but at this hour it was closed, and with no one around, I walked around the blockades.
Soft animal huffs, flapping wings, and the unmistakable sound of monkey shrieks reached my ears as I walked down the lantern lit street.
Wooden cages sat on platforms down the sides of the street, containing some creature or another. I passed close by a barred wagon, trailing my fingers across the bars and meeting gazes with a moment from the past: the amber eyes of a tiger looked back at me, a gravely purring noise leaving the beast.
From monkeys, snakes, tarantulas, to a giraffe, gazelle, and even a pinned off elephant made up the attraction.
I stopped in front of a giant net that encased, what had to be, a hundred butterflies. Some danced around, the orange glow from the lanterns playing on their colorful wings.
I laced my finger through the net; a butterfly landed right on my knuckle, flapping its wings gently—and somehow, it reminded me of home.
My heart squeezed painfully. I missed my grandmother. I even missed Alger, and the simple life we led there.
It seems we always want what’s out of reach.
How inconvenient that is.
I didn’t want to be a part of the Sisterhood as much as I didn’t want a Fate over my head like a hanging cloud I couldn’t control. But I didn’t get a choice, and that fact made resentment heavy in my chest.
I stood there for a few moments, letting my thoughts work themselves out. I wouldn’t let some order stop me from living a life that I wanted, that I chose. Sometimes life already has stones laid beneath your feet, but that only means you need a new path.
But I only had that thought for a second, because subtly, as if the breeze switched direction, the hair raised on the back of my neck.
I stopped breathing, all the air getting caught in my chest.
I didn’t know how I could’ve ever had curious, fanciful thoughts about the man I was certain was standing close behind me. This wasn’t paranoia anymore, this was real life. There was nothing more than apprehension rushing through me like I’d been injected with it directly into my veins.
A tingly, hot awareness danced across my spine and played down the back of my thighs. The butterfly on my finger flew away as if he sensed the danger as well.
Closing my eyes, I felt the hot, burning sensation in my palms—the feeling I got when I could fast-travel. I should take the offer because once it was gone, I couldn’t get it back. It came when it wanted, and I’d never been able to perfect the gift. I closed my eyes, about to accept it, but then, something clicked loud inside me: I wasn’t her, the farm girl. Not anymore. I didn’t need to run like her. And I wouldn’t.
With a shallow breath, I opened my eyes.
As if on cue, the burn dissipated until there was only a tell-tale ache in my palms. A sour taste of regret rushed through me, giving me the impression I’d made the wrong choice.
I made my bed . . . now I have to lie in it.
Maxim had promised he wouldn’t tell him . . . the lying liar. And when I said I needed a new path, this hadn’t been the one I was talking about. Anticipation rolled through me in hot and cold waves, bringing goose bumps to my skin.
Ping, ping.
Cold drops dripped from the sky onto my arms, making gentle pinging noises as they hit my cuff. The rain fell in an oddly-timed rhythm, while dark clouds rolled across the sky, consuming the moon until there was no silver light left.
The apprehension in my stomach twisted, tingling, and I knew—as the sun is bright—that I was causing the changes in the weather. It hadn’t been something I could do before—well, not in the current state I was in.
“Impressive.” The single word was flat, rough.
My heart faltered, and I closed my eyes. Hearing his voice for the first time in so long was nostalgic. Terrifying, yet somehow alluring. The deep timbre ghosted down my back.
I hadn’t been putting on a show on purpose, and he might have known that, but I was too proud to admit it. “It was too bright a night. Hurt my eyes.” I swallowed, congratulating myself for keeping my voice so even and indifferent.
“And here I thought witches danced under the moon’s light.” The voice was so close behind me, too close. A few feet, maybe. Every rough word was a heated awareness against my back.
“Naked,” I supplied, blinking the rain off my eyelashes as another random bit dripped from the sky. “After supping on a pot of children stew.” The breeze blew my hair, tickling the back of my bare shoulder blades—and every inch of my skin felt alive as if one touch would singe me. “He promised not to tell you,” I said quietly.
It took a moment before he responded. “There’s something you should know about Maxim. Don’t ever make deals with him.”
I slipped my finger back in the net, barely noticing my actions, but trying to remain in control of the situation. I could have laughed. Rain fell aimlessly from the sky, the moon was gone, and I didn’t have a clue how to fix what I’d done.
A butterfly landed on my finger, a brave one indeed. I tilted my head, blinking as I regarded it. Not now. My breathing was labored, the feeling in my stomach rivaling the hundreds of butterflies encased in this net.
I couldn’t blame what I saw on the dark night because I already knew that wasn’t the case: the butterfly on my finger lacked any color. It was black and white—duller somehow than all its surroundings.
“It calls to you often, does it not?”
He could see it too? I thought this dark and uncertain part of my life was only a product of my mind, but now that I knew things were changing around me that others could see, it sent a rush of uncertainty through me. And then my chest filled with frustration that he was here, witnessing this.
“I’ve no idea what you mean.” But I did. I knew. My stomach twisted, but I turned the butterfly on my finger indifferently, ignoring the slight cold sweat on my skin. I’d randomly seen things like this, in black and white, as if from a different world: books, paintings, vases—anything and everything throughout my normal routine during the day, but I dismissed them. Refused to acknowledge them, and I didn’t want someone—especially Weston—to come back and make me aware of it. I was happy in my ignorance.
“You never were a good liar,” he said. “Interesting place, the Shadows.”
I shooed the butterfly away and clenched the net in my hand. Anger rushed to the surface. He just had to say it. The Shadows of Dawn. A dark, dreary, and colorless place. It had its own society filled to the brim with the darkest of souls; but when the magic was sealed, it became closed off from the rest of the world. Nobody could leave, and if you ever chose to enter, you became a nobody.
I didn’t know why the Shadows had haunted me ever since I’d woken on the beach—no, scratch that. I knew, I only pretended I didn’t. Sometimes ignorance really is bliss.
I swallowed down my apprehension. Who was he to come back into my life after a year, and put himself deep into my issues without even a hello?
The anger heating beneath my skin gave me the courage to turn around; but then, it quickly evaporated, coming back down in warm raindrops on my head.
We stood there for a moment, only taking each other in for the first time in what felt like a long time. I thought there couldn’t be a way to forget how he looked. How could I? His likeness hung on every corner.
Sure, I remembered the basic structure of him: his square jawline; his hooded, strong gaze that would stop anyone sane in their tracks; his full lips that always seemed to be indifferent or in a slight frown, but rarely seen in a smile—if so, it was usually due to arrogance or amused deception.
But what I’d forgotten wasn’t that; it was the real-life bre
adth of his shoulders, the power under his skin, and the control in his stance. The effect was captivating. Breath catching. And utterly destructive. It had always been so for me.
It had led me right to my death.
But he wasn’t the same person anymore. The Weston I’d known wore western clothes; this one wore a costly black jerkin with silver buttons down the front. Black pants with a dagger on his right thigh and one attached near the ankle of his boots. I knew without a doubt there was one tucked in the back of his waistband as well.
As I watched him now, I couldn’t conceive how I’d grown so comfortable around him in my past life. He looked like a dark stranger. A Titan prince looking down on a commoner. I stared at him, the memory of my grandmother’s story hitting me in the face.
“Okay, he wasn’t an assassin; he was a prince. He was only pretending to be an assassin.”
“Oh! I bet the princess was happy when she found out.”
“She didn’t find out.”
“Why didn’t he tell her?”
“Because he wasn’t a good prince, but a bad one.”
Everything he’d ever told me had been a lie. And now the proof was right before my eyes.
He barely gave all of me a glance, his gaze staying trained, indifferently, on my face as if he were at a Kings’ meeting, instead of standing in front of me—the girl he dragged around the country for months.
For a moment, I wished he would look at me. He’d hardly ever seen me dressed as a woman without a boy’s haircut—and for some reason, I wanted him to see me. Me, with the long hair and white dress. Not as the girl he found as a nuisance, not as a solution to his problems, but as a woman. It seemed, though, that I wasn’t even going to get a lick of emotion out of him. Bloody hell . . . I was such a girl. Did I want him to cry? I paused. That might have been nice . . .
“Shall I curtsy?” The words tumbled out of my mouth in contempt.
“I see nothing has changed.”
He was referring to my attitude, it seemed.
“What did you expect, milord?” His eyes hardened only the tiniest flicker as I mocked his title. “A subservient me?”
“Truly?” His gaze narrowed. “I was expecting you to be dead.”
I responded before I could let that comment sink in. “Yes, well, not everything is as it seems, is it?”
“When it comes to you? Never. I’m sure you’ve realized by now that killing for coin would have been a tedious chore for me.”
“Yes, I’m quite aware you’re a prince, milord, and that you kill without charge,” I said with venom.
“Do not call me that.”
I blinked, feigning coyness. “I’m sorry. Do you prefer ‘Your Highness?’”
“It’s an honorific—you say it with scorn, which makes it worthless. Don’t say it again unless you truly mean the words.”
I faltered at his suggestion that I would ever consider him my lord. My lips turned up slightly. “Then I shall never say the words again.”
Before I knew what he was doing, he took a step forward; his hand was underneath my chin, raising my gaze to his face. Normally the action would have felt belittling, as if I were a child, but the brief contact stole my breath, and the meeting of our gazes melted all my ire.
Only with our eyes, there is most times a basic understanding—even between the most different of people. And he and I were at such a large divide, it was a wonder we had ever met. Him, battle-hardened prince; me, innocent farm girl he made not so innocent.
He dropped his hand the moment he had my gaze, his touch still burning my skin. “I hope you can keep that promise.” It sounded like he truly hoped I would never look up to him, or consider him more than any other ordinary man in my life. Why the statement made my heart clench, I didn’t know. It was as if he was trying to tell me something—something I desperately wanted and needed to hear. But he took a step back, and the moment was broken.
The silence stretched between us, and a panicked feeling rushed under my skin that he was already going to leave. The thought made my head reel with something to say. “Don’t you want to know how I’m alive?”
“Figured it out already.”
I paused at his calm response. “You have?”
He tipped his head once in a slow nod.
“Care to share your theory?” I asked.
“No.”
“I see nothing has changed,” I said, hinting at his refusal to open up about anything. A corner of his lips tipped up, but that was the only reaction I got.
I began to walk around him. “I shall just have to guess, then.” He stood still while I played his part: examining him like he was beneath me. He let me, only mildly amused at my blatant perusal.
“When did you have this realization of how I’m alive?” I asked, trying to put it all together.
“Roughly two minutes ago.”
I paused behind him. “So, you really did think I was dead all this time . . .”
The Titan brand on his forearm drew my attention—the one thing that not long ago I’d overlooked with naivety. If I could only go back, do it again, I might have lived this time.
The thick, black rings circled his arm with a T in the center on the underside of his forearm; the one red ring slightly thinner and higher than the others. I’d always wondered what it could mean. And had known he would never tell me, but as this prince stood there, letting some commoner walk circles around him, a rush of bravery overtook me, and I reached out to skim my finger across the red ink.
His eyes shot down to me, his expression clouded, but I saw the flicker of . . . discomfort? . . . behind the hard exterior. The insight to some raw human emotion only encouraged me to trace the red ink on his skin with my fingertip. The smallest touch made my blood sizzle, my heartbeat picking up.
I let my hand drop from him as I reached his front as if it’d only been a touch out of the slightest interest in his brand. “I’ll take that as a yes—you did think me dead. You don’t believe I tricked you somehow? Made you think I was dead so that I could get away from you?”
“No.”
I raised a brow. “Why so certain?”
His gaze met mine for a steady moment. “Because I put your body on a pier, set it on fire, and pushed it out to sea.”
I faltered, my heart so heavy I thought it would fall right into my stomach. I spun around before he could see the waver in my cool expression. Clearing my throat, I slipped my fingers through the net. “Like a warrior,” I said simply.
He didn’t respond.
Bodies were never buried in Alyria; it affected the land, like the Red Forest. Instead, they were burned. The story being that souls couldn’t escape until the body was ash. Warriors, though, they were put on piers, and the water would carry their souls until they could be reincarnated. It was a tradition and honor among soldiers—not peasant girls.
My heart bloomed in my chest that he’d somehow held that kind of respect for me. I’d always wondered what he did when he found me but had never expected that kind of honor, not once.
I spun around, my fingers grasping the net behind me, rain dripping from the sky, soft and idle. “So,” I continued with trying to understand what he knew, “you only realized how I am alive right when you got here . . .” He watched me lazily as if he was content doing so until I’d figured it out. My thoughts filled with ideas, and then stopped, a black and white butterfly the only thought left in my head. My stomach filled with dread, and I almost tripped over my words. “Well, it doesn’t look like I’m going to figure it out, and I know you won’t lower yourself to tell me, so we shall just have to call it an impasse.”
His eyes narrowed, in almost amused suspicion. “You never knew what was good for you.”
“And you do?” I countered.
He stepped forward, raising his arms above me, and grasping the net—completely boxing me in. My heart thumped at the proximity, my skin vibrating with anticipation.
“I’d say I have a better idea, yea.�
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My arms were stretched out behind me, my backside resting on my wrists and my fingers interweaved through the net. I didn’t realize at first what a provocative picture I seemed to present with the rain matting my white dress and my breasts slightly pushed out, but when I did, a blush warmed beneath my skin.
“Just like many times before, I’d say you need my intervention before you walk yourself into a hole you can’t get out of.”
Why did he sound so put together? I could hardly breathe in his proximity. He smelled like sage and leather, like a man, and it made my thoughts fuzzy. I let out a noise of disbelief, trying to conceal my breathlessness. “I’m not a helpless animal. I can take care of myself.”
“Even so. I think I should enlighten you.”
“Can I change your mind?” I asked dryly.
“No.”
I sighed. “Very well. Then continue.”
“Are you familiar with why Roldan did what he did?”
“Murder me?” I asked with heat. “Yes, I’ve been told it was to save his daughter’s life.”
“Are you familiar with how and when the kings realized who you were?”
I shook my head, suddenly not able to look him in the eyes.
“Titan is located at a corner of Alyria—of civilization, anyway. Leaving only one more known area until the Winter Desert stretches westward to the ocean.”
“Is this a lesson of our land, then? I don’t really have time for—”
“Quiet.”
I frowned.
“Titan was built there for a purpose, to keep the Shadows of Dawn—”
I let go of the net to dunk under his arm in a quick move, but without even a glance in my direction, he grabbed my arm, slowly forcing me backward until I had to grab the net to keep from falling into it. Irritation burned in my chest.
“I wonder why only mentioning the Shadows offends you so,” he said like my act was amusing to him. “It seems you already know, you are only pretending otherwise.”
I focused my heated gaze on him.
“Haven’t even lost that insolence after death,” he said with a small chuckle as he went to rest his arms on either side of me, not trusting I wouldn’t make another escape attempt.
A Girl in Black and White (Alyria Book 2) Page 9
