A Girl in Black and White (Alyria Book 2)

by Danielle Lori

  I shouldn’t have been concerning myself with Weston anyway because I had bigger problems. Like the Shadowed part of me I couldn’t force down any longer.

  Two familiar voices made me perk up, and I got to my feet and walked to the front of the home. I put my hands on my hips and looked down. “That was awfully inconsiderate of you to rat me out, you know.”

  Their narrowed gazes shot up to me.

  I took a step off the roof, and then fast-traveled to the ground.

  “The magistrate has men searching for you,” Tuko said, looking disgusted at my use of magic in front of him.

  “Yes, I’m quite aware. Though, he must have sent out his worst king’s guards because I’ve been strolling about all day.” I pursed my lips. “You two haven’t been in that search party, have you?”

  They both frowned at that, but then Steady let out a half-amused, half-frustrated breath and leaned against a column, lighting a cheroot.

  “It might take me a while to forgive you two,” I told them.

  Tuko only snorted.

  “You would have watched me hang,” I said, disappointed. “Well, I guess I’m not sorry about this.”

  They both raised a brow.

  Tuko started, “Sorry about wh—”

  But they both had already blinked before crashing to the ground while I clicked my ring shut. Farah had paid up after supper.

  “I hope you both wake up with the worst aching head you’ve ever experienced,” I said.

  I turned, seeing the magistrate come around the corner alone. He froze, his expression paling as he noticed the men on the ground who were supposed to be securing his home.

  I looked apologetic while I went to stand next to the frozen official, and considered Tuko and Steady on the ground. Beside me, the magistrate was stiff as a board, even though I stood a good five inches shorter than him.

  I let the tense air accumulate before exhaling a little, tired breath. “We’re good, aren’t we?”

  His hesitant eyes widened in shock. “Good?”

  “Yea, you know. When I see you on the street, I wave—you wave back. That kind of good.”

  He opened his mouth and then closed it, apprehension rushing across his expression like he didn’t know if this was a jest, but finally, hesitatingly, said, “Good.”

  “Good!” I responded with enthusiasm, walking away. “Oh, and tell Beatrice I said hello. She could use the boost. A little extra heavy on the,” I tipped an imaginary cup to my lips, “this week.”

  He swallowed, his Adam’s apple moving.

  “See you around, Gerald.”

  He didn’t respond, though I didn’t expect him to. I doubted we were “good” but I just wanted to clear the air. The magistrate wanting to hang me brought a stuffy atmosphere I didn’t need.

  This was definitely not considered lying low as Agnes had told me to do, but I didn’t follow those rules. Not anymore. I was more than a Sister.

  I was a Shadow, and I didn’t listen to anyone.

  My trek to the palace took me through the square where the root of the festival was taking place that night. Fire-breathers, music, and dancing filled the area. My eyes caught on Magdalena across the square who was leaning into some sailor from the west, being as suggestive as possible.

  I was sure the rest of the girls were dispersed throughout the revelry, deep in their cups somewhere, mourning their last couple of weeks as a single girl and not a pledged Sister.

  I squeezed my way through the crowd, sometimes pushing when a drunken man or woman would bump into me. It felt like I was in a sea of clumsy people, and it actually looked like a lot of fun. Why hadn’t I come here to drink a Titan away?

  My heart stopped when I saw a familiar woman in the crowd. The back of a dark head of hair. I knew this moment. You’re positive it’s someone, but when they turn around it isn’t. Even so, I couldn’t stop the urge to walk toward her, grab her arm and turn her around.

  The woman’s brows drew together, eyeing me with confusion. “Yea?”

  It took a moment before I could respond. “Sorry, thought you were someone else.”

  Her eyes narrowed a bit before turning back to the woman she was speaking to.

  I walked away, a numbness settling deep inside my chest.

  It was her.

  The potion shop woman.

  I swallowed hard, unease creeping into my chest as I pushed my way out of the square. A woman bumped into me, and I’d barely felt it, my mind was reeling so fast.

  The seal was playing with me, and that thought left my heart beating in anxiety waiting for the next time it would strike. As if it were a monster under my bed and I never knew when it would grab my foot next.

  I practically ran through the palace courtyard, somehow getting past the Untouchables who only watched me, even though it was closed at this hour.

  Some servants stopped to see me rush across the hall and down the corridor to the dungeon stairs. But before I could reach them, I plowed right into something hard and wet, the breath whooshing right out of me.

  It took me only a couple of seconds to realize what it was. My cheek was pressed against a sweaty chest. I pulled back, my nose wrinkling in disgust while I wiped my hand across my cheek dramatically. I looked up at an amused Untouchable prince. “Really?” escaped my lips.

  He let out a laugh. “Why is it you’re always sneaking around my palace?”

  “It’s not yours, but I can see that you’ve been trying to make it your own,” I said, glancing at his bare chest meaningfully, but then a frown pulled on my lips. “Why are you sweaty anyway?” My eyes ran to the doorway he’d been exiting when I’d run into him, something dawning on me. “Please tell me that’s not your . . .” harem, I finished in my head.

  He chuckled, running a hand across the aforementioned chest. “No.”

  “Then what were you—” I cut myself off when an equally sweaty man exited behind him. Roldan. “Oh, how nice. Brawling. Because you both need to learn how to be more violent,” I said wryly.

  Roldan eyed me like I was a bug beneath his feet, but never said a word. His stare crept under my skin, and I itched to leave his presence. But when my gaze dropped to his stomach, I faltered. I imagined I left a good scar on him, as I did his brother ages ago, though I’d never know because scars crisscrossed his entire torso. It looked like he took the brunt of severe beatings. I imagined this was the proof of why he was the way he was.

  I cleared my throat. “Well, I’ll leave you to it, then.”

  Maxim grabbed my arm before I could walk around them. “What are you doing here? Weston’s room is not in this direction.”

  I pulled my arm out of his grip. “I’ve business here. And it’s not with Weston,” I bit out. I didn’t like the way his tone insinuated that I was Weston’s whore.

  He shook his head, letting out a breath of annoyance. “With whom?”

  “The palace’s true prince.”

  His eyes narrowed in thought. “Who?”

  Did he not know about Talon? Symbia’s prince with his own room in the dungeons? A wrinkle of suspicion went through me. Maybe no one had told Maxim of his presence. But surely Maxim would know . . . right? My chest tightened. Had Talon somehow been another trick of the seal’s all together?

  “Fine,” he said. “I don’t care what you’re up to. But stay out of trouble.” Then he walked away, muttering, “I do not envy him.”

  Roldan watched me for a moment, while I returned his gaze, before tossing his shirt over his shoulder and heading down the hallway.

  I let out a breath as he left, my heart beating heavily in my chest. So heavily that I was worried he could hear it. I couldn’t do anything to protect myself from him as a Sister. And I couldn’t deny the man’s presence sent a shiver of fear down my spine every time he was near. I shook it off, heading down the stairs, but with the curling suspicion building about the Mad Prince, I stopped a servant girl rushing up the stone steps. “Miss?”

  She halted, her
eyes wide. “Don’t ask me to go back down there, missus.”

  I let out a relieved breath. Talon’s existence must have been kept from Maxim for whatever reason. “What’d he do now?”

  “He just gives me the shivers, that prince. Going on and on about time, and then when I gave him his food, and there wasn’t a fork, I thought he would kill me.”

  “Yea, probably best not to give him that fork.”

  She did a small curtsy before running up the stairs.

  I pushed open his door, closing it with a quiet click behind me. He was working on his clock with a full tray of food sitting on the table beside him. Relief filled me and my suspicions dissipated.

  “How do you know what is real and what is illusion?” I asked, leaning against the door.

  “Everything is an illusion.”

  My brows knitted. “How so?”

  “Everything you see is processed by your eyes to your mind. It’s only your illusion of what is real.”

  “Huh. So how do you know what an illusion is within an illusion?” That sentence was confusing to even myself, but I had to work with this prince to get any of the answers I sought.

  “Easy.” I waited for a response, and finally, “You don’t. Not if it is a good one.”

  I frowned. “So you just let this illusion run its course in your life? What do you do when it haunts you?”

  “Maybe this illusion has a purpose, and you just cannot understand it.”

  My heart beat at that, my stomach turning when the realization dawned on me: why else would the seal haunt me unless it wanted open? I’d been told since I was a child that the opening of the seal would be the end of Alyria. I read books by scholars on it. There wasn’t one person I’d met who wanted any differently until I’d met Weston. This was a trick. Some magic-user was spelling me, trying to convolute my thoughts with this idea.

  “I came here to look something up in your book. The library doesn’t have any journals on the Shadows of Dawn.”

  “Third book down,” he muttered, tinkering with his clock.

  Again, there was no stack of books like he’d suggested, but a mountain that I had to dig through until I found what I needed.

  I’d barely even made a dent in the book last time, but now I knew what I was looking for. I flipped through the pages, stopping on a profile drawing of a pale girl. The tips of her hair were ashen, her eyes gray and strange against her pale complexion. My stomach fluttered with unease as I read over the passage:

  ‘The Shadows is a choice many say, as though intoxicants are a choice to an addict. Months after their rebirth as a Shadow, if they do not use their magic the way they were created, their bodies will disown them. The illustration above shows the change. It’s said they can remain looking human with continual use of their magic, and only as their true selves without it.’

  My stomach twisted in dismay and I slammed the book closed. Bloody hell. I didn’t want to use my magic, but how else could I remain to appear normal?

  “That’s a thousand years old,” Talon muttered.

  “Sorry,” I muttered. “Any luck with your clock?”

  He only tinkered away without a response; so I got up to walk to the door, but before I opened it, I heard his voice behind me. “What time is it?”

  I frowned. “I don’t know. Eleven, maybe.”

  An inkling of déjà vu ran through me, but I shook it off. An awful lot of that was happening, and if I had asked Farah, she would have told me it meant something was coming. I didn’t believe in that stuff, though.

  Talon’s voice stopped me before I shut the door. “Calamity?”

  “What?”

  A long pause.

  “Tick tock.”

  Tick, tock. It’s what he had told me dozens of times, but for some reason, it repeated itself on a reel in my head all the way to the stables.

  I didn’t know what I would do now that I couldn’t even appear normal without using the magic. Turmoil turned in my stomach, and I let out a breath.

  When I saw Gallant’s head over a stall door, the pressure in my chest lessened.

  “Hey, buddy,” I whispered as I ran my hand down his nose. “I’ve missed you.” He butted my hand, and it brought a smile to my lips.

  “So much love for a grade?”

  I started at the voice but then turned to look at Will leaning against the doorway.

  A frown pulled on my lips when I realized what he said—as if Gallant didn’t deserve love because he was a mere farm horse. I gave him my back, running my hand down Gallant’s neck. “He’s smart, and he heard that,” I told him, sounding offended.

  “My condolences,” he said, amused. He stepped up beside me and offered Gallant some sugar from his hand.

  “You insult him and then you feed him? Is that supposed to make it all better?”

  “Usually does, yea,” he said with a small laugh.

  It did look like it was working . . .

  “You should know that grades have just as much courage as any destriers.”

  A smile pulled on his lips, but he shook his head. “No, that’s not how it works. If it did, we’d be able to use them in combat. A grade would get any soldier killed by throwing him at the slightest thing.”

  “Well, not this one,” I said. “He took me across the Glass Bridge.”

  “You’ve ridden the Titan prince’s horse?”

  I frowned. “He’s not—” Bloody hell, how was I going to explain this? “Um, I think I might have had a bit too much to drink.”

  He laughed like he knew something I didn’t. “I missed you at the races the other night.”

  “Yea, something came up.” Like making out with the aforementioned Titan prince . . .

  “The Day of Fools is tomorrow. Maybe you’ll go with me?”

  I faltered. How had I forgotten it was tomorrow? A shiver of nerves went through me. “I think I’m going with my mother.”

  “Ah, I get beat by the mother you’re always running from.” He tucked my hair behind my ear. “How’d I begin ranking so low?”

  I averted my eyes, thinking about this situation I was in. It’d never been right to lead this man on, and now that I knew I could never have my own choice of husband, it was even more wrong.

  I realized how alive I felt when one unnamed Titan even looked like he was about to touch me, and how I didn’t feel even a zing with this man’s hands on me. I didn’t know why it had to be this way, but it was. And that wasn’t going to change.

  I drew my gaze up. “William . . .”

  He let out a sigh. “I know, Calamity. I know.”

  I opened my mouth to respond with something, but I didn’t know what to say.

  “It’s hard to compete with a prince.”

  My eyes widened. “What?”

  He let out a breath of amusement. “Everyone knows your connection to him. It’s why they are letting you freely roam the palace grounds.”

  Oh. That made sense. William knew that, and he was still standing so close to me?

  “You’re brave, aren’t you?” I said absently.

  He laughed softly. “Not really. He’s out. Saw him go down to the northern harbor to check on the ship for his journey tomorrow.”

  I swallowed hard. Tomorrow?

  “William—”

  “Calamity, stop.” He shook his head. “I get it. I’ve always gotten it. But now it makes more sense than ever.”

  “William—”

  “Say my name one more time.”

  We laughed, and he pulled me into a hug, resting his chin on my head. “Goodbye, Calamity.”

  This was the way closure was supposed to feel. Easy. Right. So why couldn’t I find the same with Weston?

  “Goodbye, Will.”

  A bitterness leaked into my chest as I watched Calamity smile and laugh with that stablehand I’d seen her with at the parade.

  I couldn’t stop myself from memorizing his every important feature even though I could practically feel their platoni
c exchange from here. I’d be able to pick him out of the hundred or so other stablehands easily. And then when I dealt with him, I’d make sure everyone knew just how mine she really was.

  Had she run from my bed and into his?

  Fuck, I was losing it. Could feel the separation of conscious thoughts from feelings. And this was exactly why I couldn’t be near Calamity for much longer.

  After the stablehand had left, I watched her rest her forehead on Gallant’s neck, whispering something that was too low to hear. And before I even knew what I was doing, I was walking towards her.

  Lantern light lit the stable, sending an orange glow throughout. She wore a slim-fitting, white dress, her hair loose down her back. I leaned against the stable doors, just looking at her for a moment. I could waste a lot of time watching this woman.

  She had asked me if she amused me. The truth was, she was the biggest distraction I’d ever come across. She didn’t amuse me—she captivated me as if I’d never seen a woman before.

  I’d read her list. Couldn’t really stop myself when I saw it sitting on her desk. My gaze had gone straight to the last number just because she had passed on the question.

  But while at first the words had given me some kind of dark satisfaction, I now realized she was playing me, or she meant something other than hate, like a lesser loathing. Because I was sure I’d never gotten such a carefree laugh from her as that stablehand had. If I tried to figure out this woman’s thoughts, I’d go mad a lot sooner.

  Some resentment crawled up my throat, and my words came out before I could stop them. “I thought it was a blacksmith you were aiming for.”

  She started, probably daydreaming about all the men she had hanging on her every word.

  Could I even blame that stablehand for trying? He obviously didn’t know her tie to me, was an idiot, or just entranced when he saw her. Maybe all three. What man wouldn’t try it, if he could get past those dark eyes judging him as if he was beneath her? It was the reason I started calling her Princess. She’d look down on me like she was one. And it’d been the first time I’d ever received that look, even from princesses alike.