2. Chapter 2
Iwalk face first into a parade. Yesterday, this stretch of block would’ve been a colorless slump of houses shaped like tinderboxes, with iron guardrails for balconies and doors carved out of ghostwood.
It’s certainly a stark contrast to the sweeping manors and egregious estates owned by the esteemed lords and ladies of Windspire and its surrounding escapades.
This block belongs to the mundane. The common folk.
Those who are forced to work meager jobs in order to make ends meet.
Those without excess bloodmagic to donate to the gods.
The fortunate of whom find work in the mines, excavating bloodiron from dawn until dusk, coating themselves in sooty ash and ruddy rust until the sun hardly recognizes them.
Others find job security forging swords from bloodiron for the God of War, who is rumored to pay quadruple a day’s worth of Vitalis for a single sword.
Or so they say. But it’s not like anyone tells the truth around here anyway.
Today, the block is illuminated in banners of gossamer silk that display the signature white and gold flag of the queen and her Divine Army—two halves of a broken heart.
Above me, garlands stitched out of rose petals weave along balconies and through lofty trees, coating everything in glitter, which trickles down in rain-like sheets.
Parade floats creak and hum along the streets like a brigade of ancient trees, beholding strange-looking people dressed in even stranger-looking animalistic masquerades.
The unexpected overstimulation nearly stanches my heartache.
Nearly, but not quite.
I dip around a kissing couple, duck under a vendor balancing a tray of roasted almonds, and then careen to a halt near the end of the block, where the word “queen” flutters about the crowd faster than a horde of fireflies flittering around a lamppost. Gasps echo around me as a sea of fingers point toward a float passing by, which is shaped like a celestial star and decorated in an incomprehensible number of diamonds.
Garbed in a tourmaline gown with skin brighter than a field of snow, the Goddess of Love shines like a winter’s first frost. She waves to her spectators with the composure of a practiced princess as her crown glints beneath the light of the setting sun, its pointed edges looking sharp enough to impale someone.
Plump lips form around a pearly smile that doesn’t quite reach her golden-speckled eyes, informing me that she’d rather be anywhere but here.
Well if that’s the case, perhaps she should return to the clouds.
Gods know that she’s pale enough to blend in.
“The queen, it’s really her!” someone shouts.
“More like crusty old witch.” I whisper my treasonous obscenity silently to myself as I recall the queen’s sweeping marriage act—the very thing that caused Eric to dump me, leaving me to fend for myself.
“I take it that you’re not impressed?” A stranger’s voice envelopes me like a shrouded cloak, causing me to spin on my heel and catch a man lurking in the shadows. My blood instantly runs cold.
“I don’t appreciate being eavesdropped upon,” I say.
“I couldn’t help but eavesdrop. You have a big mouth.
” The stranger unsheathes a dagger from his cloak and twirls its hilt between his fingers absentmindedly.
Its blade glints off the flickering sunlight, revealing specks of dry blood caked on its serrated edge.
Judging by his outward appearance and his comfortability with wielding that particular weapon, I imagine that whoever’s blood it was, is long dead by now.
“Perhaps,” I choke out. “But my mouth can’t possibly be any bigger than your overcompensating personality.”
“Overcompensating personality?” His lips curve upward as he steps out of the shadows.
His body towers over mine in height, his shoulders are broad and defined.
His dark clothing seems to repel light rather than absorb it, his entire ensemble in tandem with his ultra-dark hair, which curls around his bearded jawline in magnificent waves.
He’s a walking shadow, a very handsome walking shadow.
But people only dress like that when they have something to hide, such as mercenaries who smuggle illegal goods and sell them at the black market for the highest bidding price.
“That’s not what I was told last night,” he recalls fondly, removing the cowl from his head.
Suddenly, I’m jarred by a fleeting image that shivs me in the ribcage.
It’s a vision of him scooping me into his arms beneath the downpour of a thunderstorm.
The feeling of his bare skin pressed against mine as he carries me into a cavern decorated in wispy lights, where he warms my frozen body against his bulky, broody, naked form. I shake the intrusive thought away.
Am I losing my ever-loving, goddamn mind?
“She must’ve lied to get into your coffers then,” I grind out, glancing down at his boots, which are made of very expensive, very illegal leather.
I imagine he’s the type of dangerous man who carries around vials of bloodmagic as carelessly as one draws a breath, replacing them whenever he requires a fresh batch.
Not from his own veins, but from the veins of his victims.
Who is he, anyway?
Other than someone important.
He snorts at my expense. “That’s funny, considering I didn’t see her eyeing my coffers. She seemed far more intrigued with other… valuables, instead.”
I cross my arms over my chest before his defiant eyes have a chance to travel waywardly south. “Do you always talk to women this way?” I ask.
He tilts his head, as though he’s genuinely pondering this. “I usually don’t talk to women at all,” he finally replies.
“Good,” I grind out. “You should keep it that way, for all of our sakes.” With that, I whip my gaze back toward the parade, praying that the vibrant swirl of colors and sounds will wash over me like a downpour of rain, ridding me of his memory. Gods, he is irritating.
“Have you chosen a mate yet?” he asks as a gaggle of women walk past. They’re sharing a bag of caramels amongst themselves and laughing themselves hoarse. My heart pangs at the sight of them.
Friends… I’d love to have friends.
“Excuse me?” I spin back around once the women are out of earshot, delivering the man a feral scowl that I pray gouges his heart out. But instead, he tosses his dagger in the air and then catches it with ease, as though he’s inquiring about my favorite color… or season.
The answers would be black and spring.
His expression shifts with realization. “Wait. You don’t intend on following the marriage decree set forth by the Goddess of Love?” He points at me with the blunt tip of his dagger, his eyes full of delight. “I knew that I liked you.”
I don’t deign to answer, mostly because I’m too distracted by the two luminous orbs of golden light staring back at me amongst his breathtaking canvas of darkness.
Those pools of amber drink me in as he strides toward me, reaches for my forearm, and yanks back my sleeve.
For a long, painstakingly still moment, he stares at the raven spellmark embedded into my skin.
Then he raises my chin with a cupped hand, guiding my eyes back up to meet his.
As the world falls away, and the din of the parade wobbles out, all of the amusement wicks from his face faster than a dying star evaporating.
“Don’t ever show that spellmark to anyone. Do you understand me?” he whispers.
Rage roils inside of me like a tempest storm trying to barrel free.
Most spellmarks are bold, bright, gold, and beautiful, just like the Goddess of Love.
They are blessings from the gods etched onto the forearms of blessed babes the moment they take their first breaths.
An entry point into the body where magic seeps into the veins, becoming one with the blood until the mortal dies of old age, or until they bleed themselves dry in front of the Vitalis Repositories from too many blood donations.
Whichever comes first, really.
My spellmark is a defect. One that delivered me a swift boot to the ass on the morning of my eighteenth birthday, rendering me banished from the shadowy enclave that I once called home, and onto the streets to fend for myself with nothing but a canteen of murky water and a small sack of moldy bread. That orphanage had been my sanctuary.
Until it hadn’t.
Intermingling somewhere along this timeline is the romantic tryst of how I’d expertly connived Eric into falling head over heels in love with me, despite the fact that I’m a magicless abomination. But now? Well, he’s as useless as a festering wound that refuses to heal… just like my spellmark is.
“Let go of me,” I snarl at the stranger.
“Your wish is my command,” he replies with ease, his honed gaze remaining pinned on my arm long after he releases his grip. I may be fully clothed, but I feel naked, vulnerable, seen. How had he known what was lurking beneath my sleeve?
“Who are you?” I say, trying to keep my voice from shaking. “Other than someone who thinks that manipulating the sleeves of strangers in order to get a peek at their spellmark is a perfectly acceptable behavior?”
He nearly laughs himself hoarse at this.
I shake out my arm and fix my sleeve, a warm sensation bubbling up in my gut. Disgust. That’s what I’m feeling, surely. This man disgusts me.
“Don’t worry about me,” he says, tipping his head in reverence. “You have much bigger things to worry about. Like the queen’s marriage mandate, for example. I hope you know you deserve so much better than what the men of this realm have to offer.”
His voice buries into all of my raw and broken pieces as I try, and fail miserably, to ignore the glaring reminder of Eric’s treachery. I would already have someone to marry if my boyfriend of seven years hadn’t just dumped me.
“I would rather tie my own boots down with anchors and be thrown to the bottom of the sea than be swept up in some forced marriage arrangement with the likes of you,” I snarl. Then I dip back into the crowd, far away from the brain bleed of a man who irks me as much as he entertains me.