A Girl in Black and White (Alyria Book 2)

by Danielle Lori

  I held the sheet around me as I stood on the terrace, watching hundreds of paper lanterns rising into the air across the horizon. Over the dark ocean water and across this city of heat and stone.

  My heart warmed when familiar arms wrapped around my shoulders, the warmth of his body at my back. I wondered if I made a terrible mistake being here with Weston. If just like the Shadows, I wouldn’t be able to make my way back—not from the dark, but from him. Though if that well had shown me the truth, then there was no other option.

  “Weston,” I started, “your . . . brother.”

  “What about him?” His rough voice ghosted down my back, and goose bumps overtook my arms.

  I cleared my throat. “His scars. What happened to him?”

  “My father.”

  “He beat him?” I asked, aghast.

  “Roldan always searched for our father’s approval. And so, he was an easy target and took the brunt of his anger.”

  “That’s horrible.”

  I felt him lift a shoulder, and I suddenly felt this heavy remorse for my murderer’s childhood, for my captor’s childhood. Especially for the fact that his indifference meant he didn’t know anything different.

  “And you?” I asked hesitantly. “What did he do to you?”

  “After fifteen? Not much.”

  “That’s because you were stronger than him,” I said, remembering how Maxim said that Weston got his strength with age.

  “You been reading up on me, Princess?”

  A small tug pulled at my heart. “Maybe. What about before fifteen?”

  Silence.

  “He’s dead, Calamity. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

  My stomach dipped, and I suddenly wanted to wrap my arms around him and protect him from the world. A strange feeling worked its way into my chest.

  I pressed my palm to his, languishing in the difference as I threaded my fingers through his own.

  I loved how rough his hands were. How much bigger they were than mine. How they felt against my skin. How I’d seen them snap necks, and yet how gentle they could be.

  I loved the way he smelled like leather and man, how warm his skin was, and how completely safe I felt in his presence. I loved all of it. And right now, I didn’t care that I shouldn’t.

  I swallowed thickly as I worked up the nerve to ask him something. A few lanterns floated right above our heads, and I glanced up into the night sky.

  “Weston . . . do you think the seal’s unnatural? That humans forced it on the land, and it only does Alyria and its people harm?”

  After a moment, he responded, “I think that without the seal, there would still be many saying the magic was harming them and the land.”

  I stilled.

  I never thought that’d be his reply. I believed he might try to push his past agenda on me. Even though he hadn’t shown me he was still interested in the seal, I’d still expected a last-minute effort to change my opinion and save his sanity.

  But his honesty pierced a hole through my heart, its pain burning the back of my eyes. He was right, though. I’d never thought of it that way; that there were two types of people in this world and both would never be happy.

  Lanterns blurred as a tear dripped down my cheek. Warmth and . . . desperation seeped into my chest, languid but heavy. It could have been a trick of the light, could have been the tears in my eyes . . . but the world settled down on me all at once, when one golden star shot across the sky.

  It was bright. I searched for darkness, rolling over, but when every muscle in my body screamed at me, the night came flooding in. My eyes shot open just as my hand reached over for Weston, but only touched a cold bed.

  Panic set in my chest as my gaze shot across the room. But when I saw a familiar leather jerkin hanging on the desk chair, the fist around my heart released and I sucked in a breath.

  He hadn’t left yet.

  The reaction shouldn’t have been that strong. And I knew that he must be leaving any minute, but I couldn’t help the relief that I would get to see him one more time.

  There was a shattered vase across the room, and one of his blades stuck in the wall. The sheets were on the floor, and I remembered kicking them there from having the hot Symbian air on one side of me and Weston’s body heat on the other.

  I was partly relieved that I didn’t feel much of the dark inside of me, that it hadn’t felt as if I was fighting off the darkness last night. Though, to be fair, I was sort of rolling around with it in bed. It was probably content with that.

  I padded to the table to pour a cup of water and chugged the entire thing before pouring more. My gaze shot to the door when I heard it open, seeing a serving girl enter. The one I’d run into on the stairs.

  She averted her gaze when she saw me. “Oh, sorry, my lady!”

  I scooped up my dress off the floor and held it in front of me. “It’s okay,” I told her. “I can get dressed if you need to come in.”

  “Oh, no. You have a visitor,” she said. “An . . . Isadora?”

  My heart stopped, before pumping in anticipation. I threw my dress over my head, adjusting it, so I didn’t appear freshly bedded. I looked around. Brush? Anywhere? Ugh, no. She would know anyway. What else would I be doing this early at the palace? I wondered who even told her I was here. Maybe it was Mother; she did know about my feelings for the Titan prince.

  I rushed out the door, barefoot. A little inkling of wariness settled in my chest when I saw a flicker in the servant girl’s smile as I passed her. But the idea that my grandmother was finally here, it sent a rush through me, and I couldn’t stop from hurrying down the corridor to the hall.

  Something slowed my steps. As if feeling a breeze before it shifted, I felt the hesitation, a foreboding seeping down the hallway and brushing my skin.

  My breathing slowed, my steps becoming light against the carpet.

  The disquiet in the air grew stronger the closer I got to the hall until I only had to take one step for it to be visible around the corner.

  But I didn’t.

  Because I heard my grandmother’s voice. And the man’s I’d spent the night with.

  The nostalgia of hearing her voice, the relief that rushed under my skin, all of it sent my heart skipping, the backs of my eyes burning.

  But that wasn’t what stopped me.

  “The deal was never that you could bed her like some common whore!” my grandmother hissed.

  That’s what stopped me.

  The confusion of how they even knew each other, rushed me. The unease of the word ‘deal,’ split my chest in two.

  I could feel his agitation from here, and I kept my breaths so shallow, kept myself incorporeal so that he couldn’t sense me.

  “I decided I didn’t like your deal,” he returned.

  “I told you I’d give you what you sought because you would have no problem killing a woman.” I closed my eyes, my heart going ice cold. “I didn’t ask you to have someone else do it!”

  “It got done, didn’t it? You could have shared what she was with me,” he snapped.

  The ice hardened, cracking the rest of my heart into bits. Agony ran through my bloodstream. The black, it was crawling from the dark corners in my mind.

  It had all been a lie. He let his brother stab me, kill me. He hadn’t even known I would live through it. Maybe my grandmother did. But it didn’t matter—because she took my choice from me. I didn’t have to fight this monster in my chest. This feeling inside of me. She took my choice of normalcy. It was torture fighting this darkness now; it wanted to consume me—

  I already have . . .

  I stepped around the corner, the anguish visible on my face.

  The Shadows would always haunt me, and the two people responsible for it were standing right in front of me.

  Weston’s gaze shot to me, guilt crossing his face. He tried to clear his expression, but it was too late. Just like I could read his sincerity about our truce, I could see his guilt now. “Fail,” I whisp
ered.

  A flicker flashed through his eyes as if I saw right into his head.

  He did it, he really did it. That was why he felt indebted to me. Not because he couldn’t save me, but because he had me killed.

  “Stay away from her,” my grandmother said to him, her back to me. “You almost ruined everything . . .” she trailed off, having read his expression.

  Grandmother wore the same brown, long-sleeved dress she always had, her gray hair in one braid down her back. “Calamity,” she said softly, ruefully, as soon as she turned around. I could barely see her through the tears in my eyes, the anguish clouding my mind.

  My entire life was a lie. Betrayal seeped into my chest, filling it with a bitter burn. The darkness sunk its claws into me, itching, scratching.

  My grandmother’s eyes flicked down, widening in horror. “What happened to your other cuff?”

  I shook my head, resentment coming up to choke me. The one person in the world I thought would always be there for me, and that comfort was crumbling. Dark. Alone.

  “Dammit, Reina,” she muttered to herself. “How long has it been off?” When I didn’t answer, she yelled, “Calamity! Answer me!”

  Her expression paled when I said, “Months.”

  She shook her head. “We can fix this. Let’s sit down, and I’ll explain everything.”

  My voice was emotionless, not my own. “You’ve had twenty-one years to explain everything. It’s too late.”

  When Weston took a step toward me, my gaze shot to him. With ashen eyes, I gave him a colder look than I could’ve ever managed if I were still myself.

  I’d somehow grown to trust him, and I wondered if the entire time he was here had only been an act. That while I’d lain with him, he was plotting his next step to push me closer to the seal.

  “As for you . . .” My voice was unforgiving, his expression tight with regret. “I guess shame on me, right?”

  Naïve . . . how naïve . . .

  The dark clouded my mind, seeping into my thoughts until I lost my own amongst all the blackness.

  I took my cuff off and tossed it with a clang at their feet. My grandmother’s horrified gaze shot to it and then me. A small smile pulled on my lips. “Something to remember me by.”

  I heard her pleas to put the cuff back on, for me to stop, and when I didn’t, for Weston to stop me, but as I walked down the hall, they eventually ceased.

  The dungeon stairs were cold against my feet as I hummed the Witch’s Lullaby like I would with the girls after mass.

  I pushed open Talon’s door, glancing around to see the room empty. I stepped inside, shutting the door behind me. Taking a step, I kicked something. A ringing bell sounded across the room. I took a breath, smelling the scents of Grandmother’s cottage. Like her fresh herbs.

  What a shame it was she betrayed me.

  My eyes caught on the table, at the clock that looked complete.

  Well, it wasn’t quite finished, I thought with exasperation as I stood in front of it. One of the hands sat on the table next to it, and with a sigh, I fit the little metal piece into place.

  Nothing happened.

  I frowned, but then turned around—

  Click.

  A pause.

  Tick,

  Tock.

  I spun around, eyeing the thing. Well, at the least Talon should be happy that I started his clock when he came back from . . . wherever he was.

  And then the clock faded into black and white . . . expanding, overtaking the walls, the floor, me.

  Tick,

  Tock.

  My heart pumped black and white. Not red like it used to. Not resentment. Not love. Nothing but the silence I heard during death. It was the most welcoming quiet I’d ever hear.

  I turned around to see Talon, dressed not in the commoner rags he’d worn, but in a costly black jerkin and pants. His long hair was pulled half up, the light in his eyes, mad.

  A little inkling of . . . something was working its way into my head, but the silence, the darkness, quietly pushed it back down. Rightfully so. I didn’t like it.

  The wall behind Talon blinked, before morphing into a palace hall of black and white, to a dais where three chairs sat.

  “Welcome home, Sister,” he said.

  Sister . . .

  He didn’t mean witch.

  That inkling tickled, but it was quickly squashed as I walked to the wall. Without hesitation, and the biggest sense of right, I took a step out of Symbia and into the Shadows of Dawn.

  My gaze ran to the black and white stoic faces surrounding the large hall, their eyes following me down the aisle.

  I walked up the steps, and sat down in one of the thrones, crossing my legs.

  Tick,

  Tock.

  The ticking sounded in my head like a persistent bug. I wanted it out. Knew what it was. Because you see, the well showed me all of this.

  Me, sitting in this chair.

  I saw myself count to three.

  “One.”

  I saw the land thrown into chaos.

  “Two.”

  And I saw my indifferent expression looking back.

  “Three.”

  The ground shook, the room plunged into complete darkness as a burst of magic seeped through the floor. My Fate was complete. And some time ago, I would have mourned it—but now . . .

  My name was Calamity.

  And, soon enough, the whole world would know it.

  There’s always so much I feel like I have to say in this section, and yet when I get here, I don’t even know where to begin. It took many months and many people’s encouragement for this novel to be complete.

  To my husband, who deserves the ‘Best Spouse in The World’ award. Thank you for believing in me and encouraging me when I needed it most.

  To my mother who kept pushing me when I thought my writing was the equivalent to a first grader’s. And especially for when I’d send you texts about how I was officially a writer of smut and you would send back a gif of Beyoncé smacking an imaginary butt. P.S. Calamity’s mother is not a reflection of you ;)

  To all my beta readers: Tawni, Maria, Jacqueline, Kristen, and Amber. And to my proofreader, Dominique.

  I seriously don’t know where this book would have been without all of you. Well, I do know—it would be a mess. And to Tawni Martin doubly, for sending all of your encouraging gifs and words! And especially for your beta work on my novel. It’s so much better because of you.

  To my friends and family who have taken the time to read my books, and even if you secretly hate them, you pretend you don’t. To Nicole, who took the awesome photo for my cover, and to Clarissa for being my model. You make the best Calamity.

  To bloggers and reviewers—you guys are awesome. Making it as a self-published author is a difficult thing, and you all make it possible.

  Last but not least, my readers. It’s not an exaggeration to say this book would be nothing without You! Thanks for investing yourself in Calamity and her journey. If you could take the time to leave a review—positive or negative—it would mean the world.

  Love,

  Danielle xo

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