A Girl Named Calamity (Alyria Book 1)

by Danielle Lori

  As the man talked to me about his ailing grandmother, I couldn’t even stop to think about my healthy one. Because I was being hunted . . . and was backed into a corner.

  My captor walked into the camp, his hood darkening his face. The way he walked, the way he held himself, the shape and size of his body—all the alarming details, told me it was Weston.

  But I would have known it was him if I were blind because his presence almost snuffed out the fire.

  The man sprung to his feet and stared at Weston with unease. He looked back and forth at us and probably noticed how I wasn’t standing and wasn’t alarmed that there was a large man in the camp. Though, he couldn’t see my heartbeat.

  When Weston stepped forward, and the fire lit up the angry storm in his eyes, I realized then, the terrible mistake I made of involving someone else. Without another thought, I stood up and grabbed my bag while they both watched me.

  “Listen . . . the woman doesn’t want to be with you anymore. Just be a man and let her go.”

  I cringed at the man’s words. The tension in the air almost suffocated me while I looked at Weston with pleading eyes. He kept his angry gaze on me, and I was sure it was because if he looked at the man, he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from tearing him apart.

  Whatever needs to be done to keep the demons at bay.

  There was an evil glint in Weston’s eyes when he held his hand out to me. His body was tense, and I imagined there was a tiger under his skin pacing to get out. Barely contained.

  He wasn’t hauling me over his shoulder. He was giving me a choice. I shivered as I read his eyes and saw what he really wanted. He wanted me to defy him. So he could kill the man for taking his prisoner.

  His. The word had my blood heating with anger.

  “You don’t have to go with him,” the man told me, with some kind of impressive courage behind his boyish appearance.

  He was so wrong. I was trapped between two silver cuffs on my wrists and an assassin.

  The cuffs were the side of me that everyone wanted, the part the assassin wanted. I had never truly despised them until this moment. They were supposed to protect me, but instead, it felt as though they were shackles I could never remove.

  “Sorry for wasting your time. I made a mistake, that’s all,” I blurted while slipping my hand into Weston’s rough one. If I got this man killed, I couldn’t forgive myself. When he shook his head in disgust, I felt disgusted with myself as well. I had to appear as a weak woman who wanted to stay with her abusive husband. I felt pathetic, even if it was a guise.

  We held hands on the way out of the camp like a loving couple, when in reality, I wanted to stab him in the heart. When we walked far enough away, I ripped my hand out of his grasp.

  “Why don’t you just go ahead and hit me? This disgusting charade might as well be real!” I shouted and shoved him. When he didn’t do anything but look at me, I shoved him again.

  I was so angry with myself for feeling what I felt.

  So angry that I felt relief when the enemy showed up; relief that I didn’t have to travel this scary world alone.

  So angry that I threw my knee up to hit him in the groin, but he blocked it with a knee of his own.

  So angry that I punched him in the rock he called a stomach.

  So angry that I threw my knee up, just to have it blocked again.

  That was when he had enough. He grabbed my wrists with one hand, while his other spanned my throat to tilt my head up to look at him. “I told you I could find you anywhere.”

  Emeralds looked back at me. The stones of truth and tranquility.

  Those two things hit me with force and I stopped fighting. I was sucked into his green web, which I was sure he often used to trap his victims. I was too tired to care that I was just another fly.

  Tranquility was easy; the relaxation of muscles and mind. Truth was harder for me to swallow.

  The truth of my life. My mission. And my failure.

  All I wanted was to do the right thing. The right thing for Alyria.

  “There is no right thing, Calamity.”

  “There’s good and bad, Weston. Opening the seal . . . it’s bad,” I breathed.

  “No one in Alyria is innocent. And if they are, they won’t always be. They don’t need you to protect them.”

  Maybe good was never supposed to win. Maybe humans . . . and non-humans were never meant to exist. Maybe we were only killing Alyria, and it would be better off without all of us.

  Maybe opening the seal would do it a favor.

  How could this decision have been left to me? I looked away when I felt my tranquil state morphing into something much more hopeless. I was going to be a disappointment to everyone. To my grandmother. To myself. I didn’t know how to get out of this, and I didn’t believe that I even could.

  Tears swam in my eyes and one ran down my cheek.

  Weston wiped it away with a thumb. “The whole world doesn’t have to be on your shoulders.”

  Another side to him I’ve never seen.

  “I hate you,” I whispered.

  “I know,” he replied before he dragged me through the forest.

  Sometimes things aren’t always what they seem.

  The spider thought he trapped the fly. Little did he know, you can’t spin a fly with claws in a web.

  * * *

  Something disgustingly soft had passed between us. It was like the softness of a quilt against your skin before your grandmother ripped it off and told you to go clean the chamber pots.

  He made some good points in his creepy frame of mind. But he was wrong.

  The fate of Alyria was on my shoulders.

  Everyone might not have been innocent, but I thought of that little girl outside Sylvia. She deserved the right to choose.

  I never believed that opening the seal was the right thing to do. If it was opened there would only be death and destruction. The magic made human men insane. What Weston was trying to do was selfish. There wasn’t one good reason for opening the seal.

  I could only hope Weston would believe my act in the woods. I would take any small wins I could.

  Thank Alyria, I didn’t have Elian on my shoulders as well. The thought amused me. At least the whole universe wasn’t in danger of my failure. That would have been too much. Naturally.

  What I now found funny was an odd thing. I hoped I didn’t lose myself in the blood, in the lives of others and become tainted like the Red Forest. I knew there were already some things swallowed up in the red.

  But I wasn’t so much worried about the red as I was the . . . green.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  A WHOLE SPIDER’S WORTH OF TRUTH

  Colors fell from the sky. The rain reminded me of the watercolors I used to play with as a child. Grandmother had always bought me paper once a year, and we made our own colors from the roots of her plants.

  I was leaning against a tree reminiscing while watching the storm. Soft colors surrounded me in a veil. Pastel lightning shot across the sky.

  This. Right here.

  This was what everyone would be missing if I opened the seal. The beauty of it all lost to insanity, rape, and murder. I glanced over at Weston in frustration. He was leaning against his own tree, and I watched him through a shroud of colors. He must have felt my stare because his gaze came over to meet mine.

  Staring was an interesting act. Almost intimate in a way. At least with Weston it was because I could feel his gaze searing into my soul. Hopefully, it didn’t end up as char in the end.

  The past two days had passed in an irrevocable silence. I would never be getting them back to use my mouth for what it was made for.

  It was made to talk, right?

  Weston’s lips tipped up, announcing his presence in my head, and I almost smiled, except prisoners weren’t supposed to smile. I was sure that was a rule.

  I listened to the pattering rain and lay down under the cover of the willow tree. I frowned as Weston invaded my tree. “W
hat are you doing?”

  “It’s not your tree. And it’s the best cover, so I’ll be sleeping here,” he said as he lay down, taking up too much space with his unnaturally large body.

  I didn’t want to sleep so close to Weston because I might have stabbed him in his sleep and I didn’t want that on my conscience.

  Something landed beside me, and I looked down. A knife? I raised a brow at Weston.

  His eyes gleamed. “Go ahead, Princess. Stab me. Get it out of your system.”

  I hesitated, glancing at the knife and back up to his face. He knew I couldn’t do it and was amused.

  He laughed. “Come on. I’ve been listening to you think about stabbing me for long enough now. It’s getting tedious. So, let’s get this over with.”

  “You’re just going to lie there and let me stab you? You said you wouldn’t let me stab you again.”

  “Yea, well, I didn’t know your thoughts about stabbing me would annoy me to madness.”

  “You’re already mad—Ow!” I said as I felt a sharp pain in my calf.

  I pulled up my pants leg and wasn’t surprised to find a small black spider on my leg. I brushed it off. It had been a common thing when sleeping on the floor of a cottage in the woods. Besides this spider was small, but that bite had really hurt. “It’s just a spider bite,” I said and grimaced as I rubbed the red spot. Weston sat up and leaned over me.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I asked as he was too close for comfort. He cursed as he looked at the ground.

  “Well, I’ll be taking this,” he said while he grabbed the knife next to me.

  “I thought you were going to let me stab you.” My tone was disappointed. Truthfully, I was relieved.

  “Once. Not seventy times.”

  I blinked. “What are you talking about?”

  “How much do you hate me, Princess?” he drawled as he leaned back and watched me with amused eyes.

  Weston, amused?

  I don’t like where this is going . . .

  “Are we talking a number scale here, or if I would pull you up or step on your fingers if you were hanging off a cliff?” I asked.

  He smiled. “Considering you couldn’t pull me up if you wanted to, let’s go with the number scale.”

  I mulled it around and decided to answer truthfully. “Probably around a seven.”

  He nodded as if he was in thought. “Not as bad as I expected.”

  A wave of anger overtook me and I narrowed my eyes. “Why don’t you take yourself over to your own tree?” I snapped.

  I blinked in confusion. What the hell was wrong with me?

  Weston tipped his head back and laughed.

  How dare he laugh at me? I’m going to kill him.

  “Stop laughing,” I growled. He didn’t stop, and I imagined clawing his face. My blood heated, and I wanted to draw his blood. I paused in confusion trying to figure out my severely raging thoughts. But then, Weston’s smug face was in view, and the rage bottled up inside me exploded. I couldn’t stop myself from lunging at him.

  “It’s good to know you really do hate me,” he laughed as he grabbed my wrists before I could scratch him. Red consumed my vision and I straddled him trying to do any damage I could. Rage swept through me. He was going to pay. With blood.

  “Of course I hate you! I loathe you!” I shouted at him while I put my knee forcefully right where it would hurt the most.

  “Shit,” he coughed and let go of my hands to move my knee. I took advantage of his distraction to rake my nails down his bicep. Blood dripped. It satisfied the red haze.

  “Enough,” he growled.

  “I say when it’s enough!” I shouted before my palm cracked against his face. I was thrown onto my back before I could blink. Weston pinned my arms down while his heavy body covered mine. I bucked, furiously trying to get him off.

  “You don’t have any sense, do you?” His body lay on me heavily, almost cutting off my air supply.

  “Get off me!” I screamed. The red in my mind boiled, hating being trapped.

  “Take a deep breath and calm down. I’m not moving till you do.”

  “Then you’ll be here forever! Because I will kill you when I get the chance,” I growled, and I meant every word that I’d said. The red consumed me, and it needed blood.

  “I have time,” he said as if he was getting comfortable.

  I squirmed and struggled for many minutes, but made no progress.

  Without warning the red dimmed, becoming overtaken with something . . . something softer, something itchier as I became aware that I was only rubbing against his body, instead of making any headway in moving him.

  Rubbing against the entirety of his hard body.

  The thudding of my heart beat to an entirely different drum as the red receded into the dark corners of my mind. My breathing hitched as a blue haze swept in, bringing heat with it. His body pressed against mine had every inch of my skin tingling.

  I involuntarily arched my body against his, needing to rub against him.

  Feed the blue.

  Weston paused, his gaze taking in my change of heart, before his eyes darkened. “Rage isn’t all you got pent up for me, is it, Princess?” His deep voice only sent a pulse of heat between my legs. I needed to hear more. Needed to hear his voice again. He went to push away from me but the blue didn’t want that. Couldn’t handle it.

  I ran my hands down his sides and rolled my hips against him in some kind of instinctual dance I had never been aware of, begging for him to ease this itch.

  “Fuck. Stop.”

  That dirty word only sent another pulse of heat through my body.

  “Say that again.”

  “Say what?”

  His husky voice was music in this blue haze. I rocked my hips against him and moaned when a hardness met the juncture between my thighs. Right where I wanted it. Needed it.

  “Fuck,” I answered his question.

  “Ah, fu—shit,” he growled. He rolled over and took me with him. He shoved me off, but I only crawled right back in his lap. He made a frustrated noise low in his throat. “You hate me, Calamity.” He said it as if he was trying to convince me. How could I hate him? I needed him.

  I only wrapped my arms around his neck as he stood up. He pulled my arms off him and set me down by the trunk of the tree. He pinned me with a hard gaze; I thought he tried to intimidate me. Little did he know, the blue loved it.

  “Don’t follow me,” he warned before he brushed the willow strands aside and walked out into the pastel rain. I leaned against the tree, itching to go to his side. Until I couldn’t take it anymore.

  I didn’t feel the rain drenching me as my body was too aware of the man in front of me. He was sitting down, leaning against a tree trunk as he watched me with simmering eyes. He didn’t chastise me for following him as I sat in his lap, straddling him in a tenacious blue cloud.

  I was breathless as I ran my hands under his shirt, over the ridges on his stomach and up his chest. He only watched me with a serious expression. His hands were by his sides, not encouraging me nor stopping me. His abs tensed underneath my hands as I ran my fingers up and down the indentions. So smooth and hard.

  A raindrop ran down his cheek, and I itched to lean forward and lick it off. I knew he heard that thought because his eyes darkened before he shook his head.

  My hands roamed over him, trying to feel every inch of him in the least amount of time possible. Over his chest and down his biceps. His shirt was an annoyance, and I tried to pull it off, but he grabbed my wrists. “No.”

  “Yes,” I breathed.

  “No,” he repeated.

  Fine. I would just have to do the next best thing, then. I needed to feel his skin against mine. Needed it. I grabbed the hem of my shirt and went to pull it off, but his hands clamped around my wrists.

  He groaned. “Fuck me.”

  The blue grew excited.

  “Yes,” I agreed and pulled my wrists out of his grasp.

  �
��No, I didn’t mean it like that,” he said while trying to control my hands. “Nobody’s clothes are coming off,” he growled.

  “Just yours, then.” I tried to reason with him.

  “No,” he sighed. I stared at his lips while he talked and I had the worst desire to kiss them, lick them, bite them. I leaned down with the idea to do just that, but he stopped me with a hand against my cheek.

  “You don’t want to do that,” he said roughly.

  How could I want anything else?

  “Yes, I do.” I rubbed my cheek against his hand, loving how warm and rough it felt. I wanted his hands all over me. Ached for it.

  “Maybe now. But not when the magic wears off. You will regret this.”

  “Never,” I breathed.

  I thought the word stunned him because he dropped his hand and I leaned in further. I was an inch from his lips before he turned his head. I took advantage of the position and kissed his neck instead. I felt him swallow against my lips—heard him let out an uneven breath. It spurred me on and excited the blue haze so that I did it once more.

  He turned his face back toward me, and I moved to his lips, but he stopped me again. I stared at his mouth and had the desire to lick the small scar on his lower lip.

  “Look at me,” he ordered. His voice was soft and rough, and it was hard to pull my gaze away from his lips. When my eyes met his heavy gaze, his thumb brushed my lip and sent warmth straight between my legs.

  “If this ever happens, you won’t be under any influence. There will be no doubt you are willing.”

  His words disrupted the blue haze, and I looked away from him. That was when I saw the scar on his bicep, and a rush of memories came to me. Red memories.

  He watched me with smoky eyes while I ran my hands down his chest and around his hips.

  “I want you to teach me,” I whispered.

  A small smile pulled on his lips. “I’m not the best teacher. Remember?”

  The red fizzled uncontrollably.

  “You will be at this.”

  “Yea? And what’s ‘this?’”

  “How to please . . .” I whispered in his ear while I reached around towards the knife he always had tucked away in the back of his pants. “And especially, how it feels . . .” I brushed his ear with my lips, “to kill.” I brought the knife down toward his heart.