A Girl Named Calamity (Alyria 1)

“Lust. You’ll have it with many men. Don’t try to make it into something special.”

I tensed, irritation flaring through me. “Do you think I’ve been pining over you or something?”

“I can hear your thoughts, Princess.”

“Yea, well, you didn’t hear my thoughts when I was sitting on Maxim’s lap with my tongue in his—”

“Enough,” he barked.

That nasty trick of his had my mouth involuntarily shutting and I glared at him. I should have never told him I felt bad about stabbing him.

Maybe if I did it again, he would forget what I had said.

That’s an idea.

* * *

The haze that clouds one’s mind. The dilated pupils. The racing heart. The erratic breathing. My grandmother would have looked me over and said, “You’re in lust, dear. I’ll make you some tea, and you’ll get over this,” as if it were a disease, and then she would have dragged me to the chapel to repent my sins.

I hated lust. It was irrational and didn’t pay any attention to my mind. It did whatever it wanted and—

“Stop. I can’t handle your thoughts right now,” Weston said darkly from across the fire.

I scowled. “Then maybe you should stay out of my head!”

“Fuck, you drive me crazy.”

“Well, you drive me crazier,” I retorted as I stood up and started to walk out of camp.

“You need to stay here.”

“You don’t know anything about what I need! Leave me alone!”

I walked further into the woods before I was pulled back against a chest hard enough that all the breath whooshed out of my body. I would have been yelling at Weston if I had been able to breathe and there wasn’t an older man in a black cloak standing in front of me. I pulled on Weston’s arm; he loosened it some, and I sucked in some air.

“Did you think I wouldn’t notice you?” Weston told the man harshly. “I let you sniff around because you’ve apparently gotten yourself into something you shouldn’t have. Leave now and I’ll let you live.”

The older man’s face flushed. “I’ll take the girl first.”

What am I? A sack of potatoes?

Weston laughed coldly. “You can have her if you can take her from me.”

Yea . . . just a heavy sack of potatoes.

The man’s eyes narrowed. “We can work together. I’ve been watching, and you apparently don’t know how to handle the girl. Let me do it and we will get the seal open as soon as possible.”

I tensed while I listened to this man. I didn’t want to know how he would ‘handle’ me. I shuddered, and Weston’s arm tightened a little around me.

“I work alone.”

“You cannot keep the girl! At this pace, the seal will never be opened. The others have allowed you to keep her only because we thought it would be opened soon. We won’t wait any longer.”

“Do you think I give a fuck what you want?” Weston said menacingly. “You aren’t taking the girl.”

Name’s Calamity, I grumbled internally.

There was silence for a moment, and I realized there was something else going on by the focus in the old man’s eyes. He was concentrating on something and then winced.