I was glad for the interruption of my thoughts.
Not at all about what I saw.
“No, no, no . . .” I said while I shook my head in accord, “you’ve absolutely lost it. No, no, no . . .” I repeated with a terror I had never felt before. Weston ignored me and kept walking us forward. “We’re not going on that!”
“Yes, we are.”
Panic crawled up my back while I looked at the cliff in front of us, and the thin, translucent bridge that ran to the other side.
“You can do whatever you want, but I’m not going on it.” I tried to jump down, but he held me tight. I had never known I was scared of heights, but I’d never been around them before. This was by far the scariest encounter so far, and I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t.
“Please, Weston. I can’t. Let’s just go around,” I begged. The bridge didn’t even look wide enough for a horse. How he would get Gallant to walk across it was a mystery to me. He was brave, but not that brave.
It felt as though fear was a real substance and it filled up my lungs, making it difficult to breathe. A cold sweat covered my skin. I tried to jump down again, but Weston held me tight.
I looked up into his eyes. “I’ll do anything you want . . . but please don’t make me do this.”
He smiled. “Ah, so that’s all it takes to get you to be compliant. Threaten to take you over the Glass Bridge.” I could barely understand what he was saying and what I said as we got closer and closer to my doom.
When we took the first full step onto the bridge, I was going to vomit. I imagined I would puke, and Gallant would slip on it, and we’d fall to our deaths. I was too overwhelmed to even chastise my imagination.
The hole was dark and so deep, I couldn’t see the bottom. All I would have to do was slide right off and to my death with my sideways position.
Please, fortune teller, anything but this.
All of a sudden, I was spun around so I faced Weston. The motion was so fast that I didn’t realize what happened until it was over. I wrapped my arms around him, and I didn’t think I had ever held onto something tighter. If I was going down, so was he.
“Don’t look,” he said while I buried my face into his chest. I imagined the glass breaking every few steps and only took comfort in believing Weston could probably fly.
He chuckled. “Sorry to break it—”
“You can fly if I say you can fly,” I mumbled against his chest.
After a few minutes, my breathing slowed down until it was in sync with Weston’s. I didn’t open my eyes until I heard the clop of Gallant’s hooves on the glass soften to the sound of soft earth. I took a deep breath and let go of Weston to stretch out my tense muscles.
Now that I wasn’t on the verge of death, I realized how close we actually were.
And it was close.
My eyes traveled up from his chest to his eyes. He wasn’t looking at me, and when I followed his gaze down, I noticed what he was focused on. If my dress were an inch shorter, he would have seen everything. Propriety had taught me that I should have excused myself immediately and fixed the indecency.
But I believed I was miles past that, considering my ankles showing in Alger would have been indecent. And I might have tried to burn my grandmother’s copy of The Ladies Book of Etiquette when I was seven. Triumph fluttered in my stomach as I looked at his eyes that were nowhere near my face.
“You’ll have it with many more women, Weston. Don’t try to make it into something special,” I mocked. His smoldering gaze locked onto mine.
I didn’t know how I would dismount Gallant without exposing something much more private than my ankles . . . But I only gave it a few seconds thought, because I had decided it was inevitable. Only because I loved to get under Weston’s skin. He deserved it after all he had put me through.
I tried to swing my leg around him, but he grabbed my thigh in a firm grip.
I was mesmerized while I looked at his tan, rough hand wrapped around the smooth skin of my upper thigh. I hated what this man had done to me . . . but I couldn’t stop my body from reacting to him. It was like standing on the road in front of a fast-moving carriage, knowing that it would hit you, but being enthralled by the horses’ silver harnesses.
Carnal thoughts ran through my head unwillingly. And he probably got some good images of him on top of me, those rough hands roaming everywhere on my body.
“Don’t play games with me,” he growled.
He believed I thought it on purpose.
That’s okay. We’ll go with that.
“You’re the only one here who plays games,” I said.
He gave me a dirty look before he grabbed my dress and tugged it down as far as he could. The movement only pulled me closer to him, and an image of him pushing me against a wall and kissing down my neck entered my mind while his hand traveled down my stomach and—
“Stop.”
The image disappeared, and I looked up into angry eyes.
That time might have been on purpose.
“Do you want to lose your virginity on the back of a fucking horse?”
He was bluffing. I knew he wouldn’t touch me like that. He had ample opportunities and never took advantage of them. I wouldn’t lie and say it didn’t sting just a little.
I sighed. “I don’t know, that might be an interesting exper—”
“You have these crazy ideas in your head of how you’re going to die. And yet, you’ve never thought I would do it. Maybe you should be more concerned,” he growled.
“You won’t kill me; I’m too valuable,” I said smugly.
“No, but I could compel you to have your mouth shut for the rest of this trip.”
I swallowed hard and looked at him with wide eyes, but he only lifted my leg around him, keeping his eyes on mine. I hopped down from Gallant and walked in the tall grass.
I really wasn’t sure if I’d won that round or not.
CHAPTER THIRTY
EMPTY CITIES
I couldn’t believe that Grandmother had spent all that time teaching me how to be a lady and not how to resist some mere compulsion. Maybe she’d thought if she didn’t teach me about magic, I wouldn’t be touched by it. I made a note to chastise her about it as soon as I saw her again.
I had been stuck in this room for over two hours now because Weston compelled me. Apparently, he didn’t trust me after what had happened in Latent City. That, and stabbing him possibly had something to do with it.
The room was small and needed a good cleaning. Just like the city. I snorted when I saw the sign that was blowing in the wind as it hung sideways. I had to tilt my head to read it.
Tanded City
Where all your dreams come true.
I could imagine that the rundown buildings, grass overgrown in the streets, and the black, sludgy-looking lake nearby was the last place all my dreams would come true.
Maybe one of my nightmares . . .
The frustration of my situation had hit me when Weston slammed the door in my face. I was trapped by four wooden walls, and it felt like they were closing in on me until all that would remain would be me locked inside a wooden casket. I tried to leave the room many times, but there was an invisible boundary across the door, keeping me in—a product of Weston’s stupid compulsion.
I paced around my room, trying to come up with a plan. Maybe I couldn’t use any magic because of the cuffs and if I took them off, I could. But then I remembered The Burning City and how a cuff had been off and I still couldn’t do any magic. Grandmother had said they both needed to be on to work. The thought of taking them off had my stomach rolling with the idea of that inhuman rider finding me anyway.
I felt claustrophobic, and my frustration was building until I let it out with a scream and a kick to the small wooden table near the bed.
I almost screamed again when a man appeared in the room. Out of thin air. I stared at Weston with wide eyes.
“Why did you scream like you were being tortured?” he asked,
his eyes narrowed. How the hell did he do that? And why did he look angry at me when I was the one trapped inside this stupid room for hours?
“Oh, was heartless Weston worried about me?” I taunted. I wanted to make him angry, something to get rid of this frustration.
He frowned. “I need you whole to open the seal.”
I narrowed my eyes. Liar.
He stared at me with a hard expression and I knew that he heard that thought. The silence was thick, and the walls were already closing in on me. The tension in the air was just too much.
“How did you just pop in here like that? Are you a Mage?” I already knew he was something much more than that, and he only raised an eyebrow to say, Another question you already know the answer to.
“If you can do that, why aren’t we at the seal right now?” I asked. “How do you even know where it is?” He hadn’t ever asked me where it was. I wouldn’t be able to tell him if he did anyway.
“Come on,” he said while walking to the door. “The princess can leave her tower.”
I scoffed. “If this is a fairy tale, I can only hope the villain gets killed in the end.”
He laughed. “Come on. Before I change my mind.”
“Where are we going?” I asked while I hopped off the bed.
“To get you out of that dress.”
I froze and stared at him with wide eyes.
He laughed at my reaction. “You’re all talk, aren’t you?”
“No . . .” I mumbled.
Not all of the time.
“Relax. Your innocence is safe.” He shook his head in dry amusement. “We’re going to the bathhouse.”
I took a deep breath and threw my cloak on before I followed him out the door.
“I don’t have anything else to wear because someone ripped them to shreds.” I looked at him pointedly.
He ignored me and we walked side by side down the street. People parted for us, and I imagined it was because of the Titan next to me. I was his prisoner, and yet I felt safe walking close to his side. Somewhere along the way, his presence had turned into some kind of safety net when it was far from the truth.
It was hard to even comprehend how I had gotten entangled with an assassin. But somehow I couldn’t imagine going back. I couldn’t envision marrying the blacksmith’s son because I never even knew what color eyes he had. That told me everything and scared me more than anything.
After I had spent too much time debating between two different shirts, Weston snatched one out of my hands and paid for it and the pair of pants I had picked out. I frowned at him. “If this is how you woo the women you are courting, I feel sorry for them.”
“The only kind of wooing I do doesn’t involve clothes,” he said dryly.
I walked right into that one . . .
When we reached the bathhouse, I looked at it hesitantly. The sloping roof looked like it would fall in at any moment. The wooden door was warped and didn’t even close properly, and there were no windows. It looked like a death trap.
I scoffed. “This is where all my dreams are supposed to come true? This won’t even be a dream bath.”
Weston laughed. “I’ve never been here once and had my dreams come true so I think it’s safe to say yours won’t either.”
“What are your dreams?” The question flew out of my mouth. Weston’s face sobered, and he looked at me with cautious eyes before he answered. I didn’t know why, but it really felt like I would finally get some insight into his reasoning.
“Right now? For you to go take a bath and hurry up.”
I sighed and hesitantly walked into the worn-down building. I ended up cutting the red Untouchable dress off because I couldn’t figure out how to get it off. Another woman in the baths watched me with wide eyes while I massacred it with my knife.
After I had scrubbed myself down, I walked out of the bathhouse and looked around uncertainly. Weston was supposed to be waiting for me, but he wasn’t here. The dirt streets were empty.
The other woman in the bathhouse had walked out moments before me. And yet, nobody was in sight. A chill went down my spine as I drifted down the street. I jumped when a tavern door flew open with the wind.
The silence in the city was eerie as I took in the stands full of clothes and fruit, but with no one running them. The only sounds were of the wind blowing through the alleys of the rundown buildings and my heartbeat drumming as I continued to walk down the empty street.
Goose bumps covered my skin when I realized I was the only one in the city.
This was definitely a nightmare.
* * *
I didn’t walk around for long before I saw a familiar wooden building squished between two rundown ones. Like a vacuum, it beckoned to me. It looked out of place as it was sturdy and not falling apart like all the other buildings in this city of nightmares.
Bells dinged as I opened the door. The smell of home hit me in the face, and I sighed in relief when I saw the woman behind the counter.
I wasn’t alone.
“Hello, Calamity,” she said. It gave me the chills. I had never shared my name with her, nor had she ever addressed me so formally.
I swallowed. “Hi . . .”
“Are you here for something specific?” she asked as she walked out from behind the counter. Did she not notice the oddity of everyone being gone?
“Why are you and I the only ones in the city?”
“I don’t know . . . is everyone else gone?” she asked in a way that made me feel like she knew exactly where everyone was.
A shiver ran down my spine. “You didn’t notice?”
She sighed. “No. I’ve been . . . shut in for a while now.”
It felt like there was a lot of meaning behind those words. But I couldn’t think of anything to say with the thick tension in the air.
“Do you realize the trouble you are in with the man you travel with?”
My eyes widened. “What do you know of him?” I asked even though my legs were itching to leave. My body knew there was something not right about this, but I needed to hear what she had to say about Weston.
“I know that he wants to open the seal, and now he has your blood. He could make you do anything he wished if he chose to without compelling you. Compulsion can only be used so many times before its use is ineffective. Blood magic has no limit.”
I swallowed. Nausea was beginning to settle in my stomach. I chose not to think about this, having it said to my face was hard to handle.
“There is only one fix to this problem. You must ingest some of his blood. He could not control you anymore if you did.” She scrunched her nose up as if she hated the idea of someone controlling me.
That was all it took? I had drawn his blood before and didn’t see it being a problem again. But where was he?
“How do you know all this? Did you take it from my head?”
She shook her head. “I could never read your mind.”
I blinked. “Then how have you always known what I was thinking?”
“Because . . .” Her smile sent a shiver down my spine, “you’re not the only one thinking them.”
I jerked. “What are you talking about?” Goose bumps covered my skin, and I had the urge to start backing up to the door.
“Calamity, it’s time.”
My heart fluttered fast at those words.
“Time for what?”
“For . . .” Her smile was malicious, “all your dreams to come true, of course.”
Or all my nightmares . . .
I shivered and took a step back.
“And what are all my dreams?” I managed to get out.
“We can’t know that.” She shook her head. “No, we can’t. Not until you are . . . dead.”
I flinched and backed up, bumping into the door. “What?” I croaked.
“Oh, dear. Don’t worry; I’m not going to kill you.” She laughed. My heart beat out of my chest with fear and the urge to run, but my feet were frozen to the floor.
> “Although I want to more than anything, I couldn’t do it.”
“Why?” I asked, breathless as my lungs tried to keep up with my heart.
“I couldn’t kill myself.”
My lungs closed up as I watched the woman’s mouth disappear and then her eyes follow. I stared with fear clawing through me as her face began to dissolve, flesh-colored particles flying away. My hands shook as I grabbed the door handle in a tight grip.
A voice resounded in my head.
My voice.
“It’s time . . .”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
DEALING WITH MISTAKES
I woke with a start. My heart beat fast while a cold sweat covered my skin. I looked up at leaves and found that I was lying on the forest floor. The sun shone through the branches, and I blinked to adjust to the light.
What the woman had said flooded my mind, and I leaped to my feet. At this point, I believed it could all have been a dream. But how did I end up in the middle of the forest? I spun in a circle but saw nothing but trees.
Turmoil waged inside me, and I looked at the sun halfway across the sky. It had been later than this when I’d visited the woman’s shop. Did that mean I had lost a whole day?
The stars weren’t out so I couldn’t use The Star of Truth to direct me anywhere. I began to walk aimlessly through the forest while the woman’s words went through my head.
Time for you to die.
I shook my head. Thinking about that while I was alone in the forest probably wasn’t the best decision.
I couldn’t kill myself.
I shivered. I didn’t know how to interpret what happened. But I’d heard her voice in my head . . . and it was mine.
I walked for hours with her words running through my mind and creating more confusion than the first time I thought about them.
“How did you get away from him?”
I froze at the voice as my heart kicked into overdrive. I hadn’t even noticed the crystal growing red as I had been too consumed with my thoughts. It took me only a second before I took off running. I stopped short when the old Mage appeared before me. I tried to run around him, but he appeared in front of me again. I tried three more times before I gave up. He could move in the blink of an eye, and it was only a futile use of my energy.
A Girl Named Calamity Page 20
