A Girl Named Calamity by Danielle Lori

CHAPTER ELEVEN

HANGOVERS AND REALITY CHECKS

Iwoke from a dead sleep with an ache in my head pounding in sync with my heart. The rising sun sent light in through the cracks in the shutters. I couldn’t get up because if I did, I was afraid I would hurl and I didn’t want to make a slave girl clean it up. I rolled over while the night before came back to me. The omen, the men’s weird behavior, and especially Weston’s actions flooded my mind. There was too much to process, and it gave me a bigger headache than I had before.

The most enticing smell hit my nose, and I looked down and saw I was still wearing Weston’s shirt. No, I changed my mind, the smell was horrible.

I put my nose in it and took a big whiff. I fell back asleep with the smell of cedar, sage, and leather surrounding me.

A deep voice disturbed my dreams. “Get out of bed. We need to get moving.”

I sighed and rolled over. I was too sick to go anywhere right now. “Go away,” I mumbled. A hand grabbed my ankle. “Don—” I started, but Weston pulled me off the bed. I landed with a thud on the floor, the sheets twisted around me.

“Ow!” My voice hurt my head, and I groaned and glared up at Weston. “Was that necessary?” I asked and then winced at the splitting pain in my head.

“Be ready within a quarter of an hour. Or I leave without you,” he warned before he walked out the door. I sighed and scrambled to my feet as I rubbed my butt. The light had shards of pain shooting into my eyes while I moved around the room to get dressed.

My Sylvian clothes were dry, and I slipped them back on before I realized I couldn’t ride a horse in a skirt. So I took it off and threw it across the room, and then slipped on the shortened pants. I huffed while I went and picked up the skirt, thinking I might need it.

I wasn’t a morning person.

Especiallyafter a night of being in my cups.

I shuffled out of the inn blindly, as the sun was so bright, and met Weston at the stable. He took one look at the leather wrapped around my arm and ripped it off with one tug.

“Ow.” I scowled. “Do you have to manhandle me?” I snapped as I rubbed my arm. I had forgotten the leather was even still on.

His eyes were hard. “I don’t have time to deal with the attention you cause flaunting yourself.”

My head hurt and his words only sent irritation down my spine. “I don’t flaunt myself,” I grumbled.

He scoffed and held up the leather in his fist. “Do you even know what this means?”

“Yes I do, thank you very much,” I sighed.

“So you are flaunting yourself.”

My brain was too foggy to think correctly, and I was confused, but not confused enough to believe I was flaunting myself. “No, I’m not. All women have to wear the leather to the festival.”

He laughed coldly and tossed the leather to the side. “Who told you that?”

I frowned. “Why do you care?”

“The leather means you are actively looking for a new lover.”

I shook my head. “No . . . you’re wrong . . . That isn’t what Rosa said. She said every woman had to wear one.” I thought about the night before, and I couldn’t remember if all the women wore the leather.

“Well, Rosa lied to you.”

I scrunched my forehead in confusion. “Why would she do that?”

I thought about the dance and realized that they had probably been going to do much more than ‘get to know each other.’

“Probably the same reason someone had you wash with olian soap.”

“Why would someone want me to stink? What was the soap?”

He looked down at me with an unreadable expression. “Sylvians are sly. You can’t trust any of them. I’m surprised the soap and the leather were your only problems.” He gave me his back and started to get the horses ready. It took my muddled brain a few minutes before I realized he didn’t answer my question.

* * *

As we headed out of the city and onto the dusty paths, I thought about the fortune teller. Her omen left a bad taste in my mouth, and I became even queasier than I was before. I thought about all the different ways I could die. Most were impractical, but my imagination was far from reasonable.

Falling onto a cactus and one of its thorns piercing right through my heart.

Asphyxiation by a dust storm.

Falling off Gallant and breaking my neck.

Falling off a cliff.

A lot of fallings. Premonition, maybe? I hoped not . . .

The ridiculous list went on and on until Weston looked at me with distaste. Perceptive much?

It was midday, and my headache had passed when I watched Weston slip his cloak on. I looked at him with a grimace. It was blazing hot out, and he was putting on a cloak?

We had barely said anything to each other, and I wasn’t going to start now. He would only ignore me, and it really made me feel like punching him when he did that. I would rather live, so I kept my mouth shut. His behavior was odd, but it usually was so I didn’t let my imagination go wild this time.

We stopped at the first tree I had seen in a while, and I sat under it to get a break from the sun’s heat. A stream flowed beside it, and the sound of the rushing water was calming enough that I almost fell asleep.

My eyes opened at the sound of many horses’ hooves hitting the ground. We had passed many travelers, so I didn’t find it odd that they were on the path. I found it odd that they were slowing when they saw us.

I glanced at Weston, uneasiness settling in my stomach. He was getting a drink from the stream, with his cloak still on while the men rode up next to our horses. There were four of them, completely covered in white material. The only visible part of them was their dark eyes. I jumped up when they began to dismount their horses.

“Weston,” I urged.

He didn’t turn around, not even when one of the men said, “My, my, what do we have here?”

“Weston,” I hissed.

He didn’t move, and I was perturbed but mostly scared, as terror crawled up my back. I felt for the knife in my sheath, and the white-clad men watched the movement.

“A fighter, huh?” one of the men said as he nudged the man next to him. “I always like the fighters, don’t I, Keistan?” He walked towards me, and I stepped back in Weston’s direction, but the man was faster than I thought and lunged at me, grabbing my wrist. He twisted it so hard that I thought he had broken it. I cried out, and the knife tumbled out of my hand.

“Weston!” I screamed while the man’s leather glove bit into my pained wrist and he pulled me over to their group. Fear snaked through me. What was Weston doing? Why wasn’t he helping me?

“We’ll deal with your beau later, but it looks like he’s pissing his pants over there with the thought of fighting Untouchables.” The men were so unconcerned with him that they had given him their backs. The breath was knocked out of me as the man slammed me to the ground. Even though I was fighting to catch my breath, I could still make out Weston’s taller form behind the man in front of me before a knife sliced the white-clad man’s neck open.

It felt as though it happened in slow motion as the man fell to the ground, and Weston snapped the neck of another before the other two could even react. The men hurried to take off their gloves, but a knife ended up in the crux of the third man’s neck. The last man had one glove off before his neck was cut from behind. He was so close to me that thick, warm blood sprayed across my face. It dripped down my cheeks as I watched the man fall to the ground with his mouth open.

My stomach rolled, and I wiped some blood off my cheek with the back of my hand. I blew out a breath, trying to calm my nauseous stomach. My gaze traveled to Weston, the metallic taste of blood in between my lips. He was watching me while he stood in the carnage. He had lost the cloak somewhere in the act, and he looked like a true Titan at that moment.

Bloody. Cold. Unstoppable.

I glanced away from him and down at my blood-stained body. The first thing that came to mind was a question. “What are Untouchables?”

“They kill with only a touch,” he said indifferently.

We stared at each other for a moment.

I got to my feet, calmly brushing the dust off my hands. “Are you saying that I would be dead if just one of those men had touched me?”

“Essentially.”

Red spots clouded my vision.

“Are you mad!” My heart thudded out of control. “They almost raped me while you kneeled at the stream like an innocent bystander! Did you want to watch? They could have killed me when they touched me the first time!” How could he have let it go that far? I didn’t think I had ever been angry enough that my hands shook because of it.

His eyes hardened. “They wouldn’t have killed you until the first man got his pants down. They’d want you alive as long as possible. They wouldn’t want to fuck a cold body,” he told me while standing in the middle of four bloody, dead bodies.

My blood ran cold at his indifference towards my rape and murder. He was an assassin, so why had I expected any different? I stared at a drop of blood running down his arm, and everything became clear to me in a rush.

“Why the cloak? You knew they were coming? Didn’t you?” I asked.

“Yes.”

I expected him to deny it. But why would he? He had no conscience.

“You’re disgusting for even letting it get that far!” I snarled.

“I saved your life. Have some respect. If I didn’t do what I did, you would have been dead. One look at the brand on my arm and not one of them would have put their guard down enough for me to do anything. So shut your fucking mouth. I didn’t have to save you.”

“You put that cloak on long before they came into sight! There was plenty of time to elude them, and you knew it. The whole thing was unnecessary!”

He didn’t answer the question, but I read the dark truth in his eyes. A shiver went down my spine as a storm of resentment and distress blew around me with the next breeze.

There was time to evade them. He didn’t want that.

He wanted to kill them.

And I was his bait.