A Girl Named Calamity (Alyria 1)

Roldan’s eyes narrowed at the insult.

My shoulders were tense while I stared through Weston.

Weston set his cup down. “Go ahead, let’s get this over with. I don’t want to be sitting here all night.”

I felt he should be a little more concerned about whatever was happening. His brother made a nervous knot in my stomach. Not that Weston was a choir boy or anything, but he was the scary I kind of knew.

“I think I’ll stick around. Get to know your friend.”

“I think you’ll leave, and you’ll do it now,” Weston growled.

Roldan leaned back. “I think I’ll stay until I get what I came for.” How anyone could be relaxing during this was a mystery to me. I sat stiffly in my chair as every muscle in my body was tense. “Let’s not make this difficult,” he said.

I would have missed the subtle tells if I weren’t staring at Weston. I swallowed hard as I watched his fist tighten around his cup and a muscle tick in his jaw. He had apparently had enough of this.

His brother must have noticed it too because he slowly sat up.

I wasn’t sure whether I should feel better that this scary Titan was intimidated by Weston or worse. I decided at the moment it was a good thing. And hopefully, I wouldn’t have to reevaluate it in the future.

“Make me say it again, Brother. Make me say it one more fucking time,” Weston snapped. They continued to stare at each other for another moment, and I swore the temperature in the room sky-rocketed. Roldan leaped to his feet, and my heart was in my throat when he flipped the table over to the side. My plate and cup went flying across the room, landing at the feet of one wide-eyed serving girl. Weston’s mocking laugh didn’t ease the tension in the air—it magnified it.

I came to the conclusion they were both mad.

“I’m sick of this fucking game,” Roldan growled. “Remember what I said in Cameron,” he warned before he stormed out of the inn. My heart thumped in my chest as I watched Weston take a drink and lean back in his chair. Definitely mad. Or maybe that was normal Titan conversation?

I let out a breath. “What the hell was that?”

Weston’s heated eyes bored into mine. He was pissed, so apparently that wasn’t typical Titan talk. He wasn’t going to give me any answers, and the oxygen was still depleted in this room, so I left my table that was no longer in front of me and went up to my room to get some sleep.

* * *

The next morning I was up with the sun. I was eating breakfast when Weston came through the front door. Where had he been this early? He sat across from me, and I watched the maids behind his back, pushing each other to be the one who got to serve him. I rolled my eyes.

If only they knew he would kill them for money.

“Where have you been?” I asked. I sighed when he only gave me a look that said, You really think I’m going to answer that?

We left right after breakfast and around noonday, the temperature began to rise. It had been perfect for a while with the soft breeze and then all of a sudden, it was overwhelmingly hot. It changed within a second as if we had hit a wall of heat. It was a relief not having the heavy hair, but sweat still ran down my face and into my shirt. I was miserable in my long-sleeve shirt and pants.

Weston only talked to me to let me know when we were taking a break, and the silence was aggravating. I didn’t know how much I liked to speak until I couldn’t. I really liked it.

My butt began to feel raw from riding all day, and I shuffled around on Gallant, trying to ease the pain by sitting in different positions, but I stopped when it almost landed me on the ground. I didn’t miss Weston letting out a small breath of amusement.

When the sun set, we stopped and set up camp in the last part of the valley. Dirt hills stretched on from here, the grass sparse.

I settled down on my pallet, but the long sleeves of my shirt were suffocating, and it was impossible to get comfortable. There were sticks and rocks under me but every time I got rid of one, another would poke me in the back. When that was taken care of, the heat was too unbearable to sleep. I wiped some sweat from my face and pushed my long sleeves up all the way, but that ended up just being more uncomfortable. When I had rolled around for the seventeenth time, I was tugged into a sitting position.

“Wha—” My voice was interrupted by a loud rip. Weston had yanked the sleeve of my shirt right off. He grabbed my other sleeve, there was a loud rip, and the cool air on my arm announced it was gone as well.

“Now go to sleep,” he snapped.

How did he know?

Well, I guessed I was panting, but who knew heat would be this suffocating? I had never felt an uncomfortable temperature before, but within a few days, I had been too hot and too cold. The nice thing about Alger was that the temperature was always perfect.

With the sleeves gone, I thought I would be able to get some sleep. Although I would have felt so much better if I could take my pants off, too.

I smiled when I thought of my grandmother. She would be horrified if she could see me now, with my arms showing and thinking of taking my pants off in the presence of a man.