Colorless

by Rita Stradling

  Although, we had regained some semblance of constancy. Every day, the three Miller brothers would leave at daybreak to work, and return at high noon to lock themselves inside the cage. Fauve had taken to joining them, if he could slip away unnoticed by then. I suppose it made a sort of sense that it was only at the hour of Sun that the magicians could force the change upon the children of Sun.

  The magicians, however, chose random days to force the change, likely hoping to catch me out of my hiding spot.

  After giving John one last scratch, I pulled my hands away from their muzzles and through the bars.

  Immediately, Dylan’s eyes snapped open and a whine escaped John. Of the three of them, the magicians’ hold affected John the worst. If I was not within reach of the cage, John often rammed his head against the bars until I returned to him. Dylan said they had no urge to harm me, that simply having me close to them abated the compulsion to hunt me. As they could not fulfill their directive to deliver me, simply watching over their quarry was enough to appease their instinct.

  John’s whines grew louder as I stood and backed away from the cage.

  “You’ll be transforming within minutes now,” I said. These days, we always left the locks to the point where a human could unlatch them. Their imprisonment was voluntary.

  I headed toward my makeshift room that the boys and I had built on one side of the workshop. It wasn’t large, but it held Dylan’s former bed and had four walls that kept in warmth and offered some semblance of privacy.

  I ducked inside the pitch-black space and felt around for the satchel I’d hidden there. The strap of the colorless bag dug into my shoulder and across my chest as my enormous load settled unevenly at my back. Trying to find my balance, I stumbled my way back out.

  In the low illumination from the lantern, the three wolves stared at me suspiciously. With a whimper, John’s head pressed into the metal bars as if he thought he could push himself through them. Joseph and Dylan rose to their paws. A low growl rumbled from Joseph. From my dress pocket, I extracted my pocket watch, a recent present from my cousin. It was small and silver, gleaming bright against my colorless gloves. “In five minutes or so, you’ll change back to your human forms. Come find me at the Templum of Weire—”

  Before I had even finished the words, Dylan was shaking his giant head. Joseph growled and yipped at me as if he was trying to form irate words with his wolf mouth.

  As the bag threatened to tip me over, I caught my balance on the wall. “You can join me or not, that’s up to you.” Adjusting my satchel, I headed toward the ladder, leaving the wolves howling behind me.

  Every ladder rung was a struggle, my body unused to bearing this heavy of a load. I was stronger than I’d ever been before physically. In my spare moments, I worked tirelessly in the workshop. And in the past weeks, all I’d had were spare moments. If I did not have the work, I would likely lose my mind. Circumstances being what they were, I had been stuck inside the house or the workshop every hour of the day, every day.

  Joseph was right in saying that this was the time to lay low—this was the time for planning and plotting, not action. He was right in most ways, but today, I was finished hiding. As both the satchel and I wouldn’t fit through the stove at the same time, I had to use my strength to shove the bag free before clambering out behind it.

  I didn’t want to put the satchel back on, but with one heave, I situated its weight back on my shoulder. I glanced around at the newly ashen walls of the shack that was now my small island of refuge in a world full of enemies.

  Pulling my silver watch from my pocket once more, I considered the time. According to my calculations, on this day of the annos, this minute should be verging on the hour of Weire, dusk, the time when the dire wolves would again be forced into their human forms.

  My hand squeezed around the watch. This would only work if I timed this precisely.

  Taking a steadying breath, I lumbered over to the colorless door and slowly pulled it open.

  When I looked out the door, twenty dire wolves looked back at me.

  They crouched low on the colorless street, snarls forming on nineteen of their faces. At the back of the crowd, I recognized one distinctive wolf—Fauve. He was there, though I could see the struggle clear on his canine features. Even he, who had entered this house as a human at least ten times before, would not enter as a wolf. I did not completely understand what forced them away, but from Sophie’s letter, it seemed it had something to do with it being the house of the Miller boys—at least the two older ones. The other wolves, whatever form they took, gave the shack at least ten feet of distance.

  Twenty feet up, where the colorlessness of the street ended, stood two monks. They must have followed the wolves again. On the same day that I had leached the house of color, Dylan and I had measured out the exact amount of street I could leach color from without displacing any of the neighbors from their houses. It took us two days to cover the ground hand by hand, foot by foot. In the end, we had a small stretch of colorless street only, but it was enough to keep the monks away, even if they followed the wolves to the farthest reaches of the slums.

  Aside from my hunters, not a single other figure walked the streets.

  Hopesworth had changed on the day Sophie died and I survived. The entire world had changed. Dire wolves now prowled the streets of Hopesworth, their massive forms dwarfing horses and their carriages alike. In my frequent letters with my cousin, he told me that at the first sign of a wolf on the streets, all shops closed and commoners and lords alike wet themselves in fear—his words, not mine. He’d informed me that the donations to the Congregation aiding in the efforts to catch the iconoclast were now astronomical. He’d been forced to pay one himself.

  There was no doubt in my mind that the magicians knew where I was. However, for some reason, they allowed Dylan and his brothers to continue their lives unmolested. The only conclusion I had was that either the Congregation didn’t know or could no longer remember that this was the location of the Miller boys’ house.

  I glanced to the sky, finding the sun in its final descent toward the dual spires of the Templum of Weire.

  Peeling off my gloves one after the other, I looked back to the wolves. “I’m not your enemy. They are.” I nodded to the monks. “They’re all our enemies.”

  Their growls only grew louder.

  The sun lowered to the level of the spires, and as I knew they would, the dire wolves squealed and collapsed in pain at once, their spasmodic limbs splaying across the colorless road.

  Grabbing the strap of my satchel, I sprinted through them as fast as I could with the heavy weight of the satchel pounding against my back with every stride. My hands heated when I was within ten feet of the monks, two smoldering coals within my skin. I let go of my satchel’s strap and held out my hands to my sides as if I planned to embrace them both.

  The moment my hands connected with their crimson cloaks, they blew back, flying through the air before tumbling end over end. Dust billowed out in their wake. I didn’t break stride, running straight through it.

  Three streets on, I couldn’t keep up the pace.

  At a jog, I weaved through the streets, always keeping the spires in my vision.

  The crowd around the templum was larger than I’d ever seen in my life. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, gathered close to the great portal as if they thought that if only they touched it, they would be saved from this treacherous world. There were many monks, too, standing over bins where people piled offerings. I walked into the crowd, grateful to my servant’s garb which covered my arms to my gloved wrists.

  As I headed up the steps, people stepped out of my way, shifting only slightly, but enough that I could squeeze through. It was slow going, but I lumbered my way to the top of the steps and turned to survey the crowd before me. So many faces, so many people I would never know, who believed me their greatest enemy.

  My whole life, I thought I took after my father. I believed in my heart that if a
man twice my size had come after me to kill me; I would not have picked up a rock to bludgeon him. I believed my mind was stronger than my heart.

  I knew now that I was wrong. It had taken me some time to realize that I did hold that rock, and I had every intention of smashing my enemies with it.

  Reaching back, I maneuvered my satchel to the front of me and pulled my gloves back on. From within the satchel, I grabbed out a stack of prints, and I threw them into the air.

  A breeze lifted my hair. “Yes,” whispered into my ears. A great wind whipped past me, carrying the prints up only to release them to rain down on the people below. I threw more and more, moving through the crowd as the monks descended to wherever I had just been. I kept throwing, and the wind kept taking it up only to scatter it down.

  This print had been my favorite of Fauve’s pieces, a new print run that was direct in its message. It was a portrait of my parents standing before Hope Manor. The manor itself was destroyed by a giant sword bearing the insignia of the Congregation stabbed through the west wing.

  My father held the scepter of Weire, and my mother’s hair blew out in a breeze that touched only her. Beneath it all were written the words: The gods will judge their murderers.

  When my satchel was empty, I dove out of the way of a monk, leaving him grabbing at nothing.

  Blue eyes caught mine as I turned. At the bottom of the stairs, Dylan and his brothers were trying to rush forward, but a familiar man held them back.

  Fauve held up his hands, clearly attempting to talk them out of storming up the templum steps after me. I almost smiled when I noticed that Fauve was clearly wearing one of the Miller boys’ servant uniforms.

  They must have listened to him, for though they didn’t look happy about it, they halted to watch me.

  And then Fauve turned, and as if he somehow knew what I planned to do, he smiled and nodded.

  I returned the smile and spun back to the templum. As another monk rushed in my direction, I pulled off my glove, reached up, and hit him in the chest. As he flew away from me, I took off my other glove, dropping them both in my empty satchel. The remainder of the crowd shifted out of my way as I ascended the final stairs.

  At the top, when the crimson walls consumed my vision entirely, I reached up my hands, splayed out my fingers, and pressed my palms against the templum walls. Just as every time I pressed my fingers into a dress or letterbox or blanket, ashen gray spread out from my fingers. The screams started then, screams and cries. I looked up as torrents of crimson rained down from the sky to wash over the streets of Hopesworth.

  THE END.

  Acknowledgements

  I’ll be the first to admit that I lean heavily on my friends, family and support team in the making of these books. To paraphrase an amazing poet and friend who I was lucky enough to grow up alongside: a writer is a painter, and all of their life is their palette. Well, I have an amazing paint palette and it’s made up with incredible, intelligent, and wise people who are generous with their intelligence and wisdom. So, I’ll get to it.

  First and foremost, I want to thank Anne and Gretel—I almost cannot fathom how kind, supportive and generous these two women are. Thank you.

  Thank you to my editors, Monique and Cynthia, who both went above and beyond for Colorless. Thank you also to Jazzi, who edited Hazel. Victoria Cooper Art made the beautiful covers, and she bore with me as I asked for far too many edits. She’s an amazing digital artist. Thank you. Thank you to the team at Genrecrave for working so diligently on behalf of us authors!

  Thank you to my mother who helped me develop aspects of the plot.

  Thank you to this book’s beta readers: Anna, Anne, Gretel, Jacqueline, Lakshmi, Lisa, and Melanie.

  Thank you to the many authors who helped me with the release of this book!

  About the Author

  Rita Stradling is the author of Ensnared, Making Bad Choices, The Deception Dance series, the Dakota Kekoa series and The Fourteen Day Soul Detox Novella Serial. She has a BA in Art History and a particular love for modern and medieval art.

  Rita lives with her husband and son in Northern California.

  She has an insatiable novel addiction and mostly reads young adult and adult: romance, paranormal, urban fantasy and high fantasy.

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