A Girl in Black and White (Alyria 2)

After a moment, he responded, “I think that without the seal, there would still be many saying the magic was harming them and the land.”

I stilled.

I never thought that’d be his reply. I believed he might try to push his past agenda on me. Even though he hadn’t shown me he was still interested in the seal, I’d still expected a last-minute effort to change my opinion and save his sanity.

But his honesty pierced a hole through my heart, its pain burning the back of my eyes. He was right, though. I’d never thought of it that way; that there were two types of people in this world and both would never be happy.

Lanterns blurred as a tear dripped down my cheek. Warmth and . . . desperation seeped into my chest, languid but heavy. It could have been a trick of the light, could have been the tears in my eyes . . . but the world settled down on me all at once, when one golden star shot across the sky.

It was bright. I searched for darkness, rolling over, but when every muscle in my body screamed at me, the night came flooding in. My eyes shot open just as my hand reached over for Weston, but only touched a cold bed.

Panic set in my chest as my gaze shot across the room. But when I saw a familiar leather jerkin hanging on the desk chair, the fist around my heart released and I sucked in a breath.

He hadn’t left yet.

The reaction shouldn’t have been that strong. And I knew that he must be leaving any minute, but I couldn’t help the relief that I would get to see him one more time.

There was a shattered vase across the room, and one of his blades stuck in the wall. The sheets were on the floor, and I remembered kicking them there from having the hot Symbian air on one side of me and Weston’s body heat on the other.

I was partly relieved that I didn’t feel much of the dark inside of me, that it hadn’t felt as if I was fighting off the darkness last night. Though, to be fair, I was sort of rolling around with it in bed. It was probably content with that.

I padded to the table to pour a cup of water and chugged the entire thing before pouring more. My gaze shot to the door when I heard it open, seeing a serving girl enter. The one I’d run into on the stairs.

She averted her gaze when she saw me. “Oh, sorry, my lady!”

I scooped up my dress off the floor and held it in front of me. “It’s okay,” I told her. “I can get dressed if you need to come in.”

“Oh, no. You have a visitor,” she said. “An . . . Isadora?”

My heart stopped, before pumping in anticipation. I threw my dress over my head, adjusting it, so I didn’t appear freshly bedded. I looked around. Brush? Anywhere? Ugh, no. She would know anyway. What else would I be doing this early at the palace? I wondered who even told her I was here. Maybe it was Mother; she did know about my feelings for the Titan prince.

I rushed out the door, barefoot. A little inkling of wariness settled in my chest when I saw a flicker in the servant girl’s smile as I passed her. But the idea that my grandmother was finally here, it sent a rush through me, and I couldn’t stop from hurrying down the corridor to the hall.

Something slowed my steps. As if feeling a breeze before it shifted, I felt the hesitation, a foreboding seeping down the hallway and brushing my skin.

My breathing slowed, my steps becoming light against the carpet.

The disquiet in the air grew stronger the closer I got to the hall until I only had to take one step for it to be visible around the corner.

But I didn’t.

Because I heard my grandmother’s voice. And the man’s I’d spent the night with.

The nostalgia of hearing her voice, the relief that rushed under my skin, all of it sent my heart skipping, the backs of my eyes burning.

But that wasn’t what stopped me.

“The deal was never that you could bed her like some common whore!” my grandmother hissed.

That’s what stopped me.

The confusion of how they even knew each other, rushed me. The unease of the word ‘deal,’ split my chest in two.

I could feel his agitation from here, and I kept my breaths so shallow, kept myself incorporeal so that he couldn’t sense me.

“I decided I didn’t like your deal,” he returned.

“I told you I’d give you what you sought because you would have no problem killing a woman.” I closed my eyes, my heart going ice cold. “I didn’t ask you to have someone else do it!”