A Girl in Black and White (Alyria 2)

But he wasn’t the same person anymore. The Weston I’d known wore western clothes; this one wore a costly black jerkin with silver buttons down the front. Black pants with a dagger on his right thigh and one attached near the ankle of his boots. I knew without a doubt there was one tucked in the back of his waistband as well.

As I watched him now, I couldn’t conceive how I’d grown so comfortable around him in my past life. He looked like a dark stranger. A Titan prince looking down on a commoner. I stared at him, the memory of my grandmother’s story hitting me in the face.

“Okay, he wasn’t an assassin; he was a prince. He was only pretending to be an assassin.”

“Oh! I bet the princess was happy when she found out.”

“She didn’t find out.”

“Why didn’t he tell her?”

“Because he wasn’t a good prince, but a bad one.”

Everything he’d ever told me had been a lie. And now the proof was right before my eyes.

He barely gave all of me a glance, his gaze staying trained, indifferently, on my face as if he were at a Kings’ meeting, instead of standing in front of me—the girl he dragged around the country for months.

For a moment, I wished he would look at me. He’d hardly ever seen me dressed as a woman without a boy’s haircut—and for some reason, I wanted him to see me. Me, with the long hair and white dress. Not as the girl he found as a nuisance, not as a solution to his problems, but as a woman. It seemed, though, that I wasn’t even going to get a lick of emotion out of him. Bloody hell . . . I was such a girl. Did I want him to cry? I paused. That might have been nice . . .

“Shall I curtsy?” The words tumbled out of my mouth in contempt.

“I see nothing has changed.”

He was referring to my attitude, it seemed.

“What did you expect, milord?” His eyes hardened only the tiniest flicker as I mocked his title. “A subservient me?”

“Truly?” His gaze narrowed. “I was expecting you to be dead.”

I responded before I could let that comment sink in. “Yes, well, not everything is as it seems, is it?”

“When it comes to you? Never. I’m sure you’ve realized by now that killing for coin would have been a tedious chore for me.”

“Yes, I’m quite aware you’re a prince, milord, and that you kill without charge,” I said with venom.

“Do not call me that.”

I blinked, feigning coyness. “I’m sorry. Do you prefer ‘Your Highness?’”

“It’s an honorific—you say it with scorn, which makes it worthless. Don’t say it again unless you truly mean the words.”

I faltered at his suggestion that I would ever consider him my lord. My lips turned up slightly. “Then I shall never say the words again.”

Before I knew what he was doing, he took a step forward; his hand was underneath my chin, raising my gaze to his face. Normally the action would have felt belittling, as if I were a child, but the brief contact stole my breath, and the meeting of our gazes melted all my ire.

Only with our eyes, there is most times a basic understanding—even between the most different of people. And he and I were at such a large divide, it was a wonder we had ever met. Him, battle-hardened prince; me, innocent farm girl he made not so innocent.

He dropped his hand the moment he had my gaze, his touch still burning my skin. “I hope you can keep that promise.” It sounded like he truly hoped I would never look up to him, or consider him more than any other ordinary man in my life. Why the statement made my heart clench, I didn’t know. It was as if he was trying to tell me something—something I desperately wanted and needed to hear. But he took a step back, and the moment was broken.

The silence stretched between us, and a panicked feeling rushed under my skin that he was already going to leave. The thought made my head reel with something to say. “Don’t you want to know how I’m alive?”

“Figured it out already.”

I paused at his calm response. “You have?”

He tipped his head once in a slow nod.

“Care to share your theory?” I asked.