A Girl in Black and White (Alyria 2)

“Mm hmm.”

“Do I want to know how?”

“No.”

After a moment, he broke the comfortable silence. “You need to stay away from my brother.”

“Your brother came to me. We had an amicable chat is all.”

“He handed me my bloody knife,” he said dryly.

“Oh.” Amusement ran through me. “I forgot about that. You’re not angry that I know your secret?”

He chewed the inside of his cheek thoughtfully. “I haven’t decided yet.”

“Well, by all means, take your time.”

He shook his head, a smile pulling on his lips.

Laughter trickled out of a hall just ahead, and stopping in front of it, I realized this corridor must have made up “the bachelor room” Clinton had been talking about.

I stopped, my brows knitting at the spectacle spilling out into the hall as one man chased a half-dressed, laughing woman from one room to the other.

“We just have to evade all that,” I told Weston with a wave of my hand.

He stood quietly by my side. “Scared that someone will mistake you for a working woman?”

I blinked, but then remembered my dress. I didn’t think of that . . .

“It’s all right, Princess. I won’t let you get swept away. Alyria knows you get too much of that living in a whorehouse.”

I grimaced but didn’t comment on his slightly bitter tone. We were, for the first time, completely cordial and I wanted to keep it that way . . . at least until he demanded something else nefarious of me.

He nodded his head forward to get me going, and so with a sigh and Weston at my back, I headed down the hall, drunken laughter coming from behind closed doors while I refused to look in the ones that were open.

A woman almost knocked me over as she stepped out of a room, playing tug-a-war against a man with her skirts. Cheap, floral perfume clouded the air as I brushed past her; and when I reached the end of the hall, I was only glad someone didn’t mistake me for a whore and pull me into the fray. But then, thinking I was in the clear, I glanced into the last open door, and instead of averting my eyes like anyone respectable would have done before quickly doing the sign of the cross, I froze.

Weston bumped into me, but he never stepped back, his gaze following mine.

There was a woman on her knees in front of a man, and she was . . . well, it was pretty self-explanatory.

I might have lived in a brothel, and seen things I shouldn’t have, but for this particular endeavor, I’d only ever heard raunchy jokes. Actually witnessing it, the act was so . . . obscene, filthy, that I was fixated in horrified fascination.

“Calamity.”

“Hmm . . .?”

“We gonna watch this to the finish or are you going to move?”

I swallowed. “Oh—um, is the first one really an option?”

“No.” The word was harsh.

A hot blush had stolen my breath, and so I didn’t even argue. Taking a right, and then all the way at the end of the corridor was a wooden door. I pushed it open, my heart pumping to an out-of-tune beat from realizing what I’d just witnessed with Weston at my back.

The room was small, shelves crammed full of dusty books lining each wall. Everything looked a little worn: the wooden desk, the round, red rug, and the heavy velvet curtains. It was my favorite room.

I found what I needed on the desk and then turned around to find Weston leaning against the closed door, his heavy gaze fixed on me.