Chapter 22

ChapterTwenty-Two

She knew this generally wasn’t done. Most people from her city never entered Wildecliff, nor any other visitors. They were madly protective of their walled city, and everyone had to enter through the port. There were then interview questions to answer and a strict screening process. If the only reason to visit their city was to shop, then the people were turned away. That’s how it had always worked, at least.

Now, she was sneaking through a crack in the wall with a young man who lived here, but she knew this was more than against the rules. They were breaking every iota of how the cities were run, all so that she could see the house where he had grown up.

But there was a stiffness in him she’d never seen before. He held himself too rigid, with his spine stick straight. The Alistair she knew and adored always had a slight curve to his spine, as though he didn’t want to be as tall as he was. His height could make him intimidating, and he never wanted to make others uncomfortable. She’d always liked that about him. He was the unassuming son of a man who took up too much space.

The moment they reached the wall, all of that changed. He dropped the persona of the young man she knew and became someone else entirely. Someone who held himself with the presence of an Orbweaver, and Thea wasn’t sure she liked it all that much.

The crack in the wall was just large enough for them to slip through. He held her hand, dragging her further into the darkness as stones scraped against her chest and caught at her clothing. Browning let out a little croak of fear as a particularly jagged rock got a little too close to his head.

How thick was this wall?

It felt as though it were miles thick, capable of withstanding an army that could blast it with cannon fire for years and never get to the heart of the city. But when they slipped free onto the streets beyond, she looked back and realized it wasn’t that thick at all. Perhaps six feet, but nowhere near the hours it felt to slip through.

Alistair picked up a loose brick they’d knocked free and tossed it through the opening to the other side. “If someone finds that, then they’ll brick up the exit again. The city watch doesn’t want people to know this exists. It’s the only weak point on the entire wall.”

She didn’t care. Thea couldn’t focus on what he was saying when all she could see was the massive expanse of the city that unfolded around them with crisp, clean edges. If Waterdown was a many-colored quilt, then Wildecliff was the starched edges of a very expensive shirt. The cobblestone streets were perfectly clean, without a single dust mote that dared to disgrace the city. Every house was the same. She could see down the street that they might change to a different shade of gray now and then, but they all lacked color.

In fact, if it hadn’t been for the manicured hedges that bordered people’s property, she’d have thought she had lost all her ability to see color at all.

Thea glanced over to look at Alistair and realized he fit in here so much better than he did in Waterdown. Though his crop of colorful reddish blonde hair didn’t quite seem right, his black and white clothing was out of the same book. She looked down at her colorful blue skirts and the checkered vivid green sling around her neck and wondered how they wouldn’t get caught.

Anyone would look at her and know she wasn’t supposed to be there. She was an anomaly in a place like this.

Alistair held out his hand for her to take and gave her that little half smile that she now thought might be fake. “Shall we?”

“Where are we going?” She put her hand in his, though, hoping that she could trust him.

“My family home is still the plan, but I thought I could show you the rest of Wildecliff as well. If you have time, of course.”

Something ugly twisted in her stomach. She didn’t have time for this, in fact. Thea feared this dreary place might sink its claws into her, and she’d never be able to see color again. The rainbows of the world kept her going in the darkest of times. How was she supposed to survive here?

“Thea?” Alistair asked, his voice shuddering with hesitation. “Do you not want to do this anymore?”

“Of course I do!” The bright way she replied should convince him that she wasn’t having second guesses, but... she was. She really was.

Thea allowed him to draw her into the city. She counted every single house they passed but eventually thought they’d gone in a circle and stopped counting. Even the windows were the same. She saw curtains, but they were all the same drab colors. Why would anyone live without color? Everyone must be so sad here, knowing that the only brightness they ever got was in the flowers outside their homes.

She let her finger trail over a bloom when they crossed the street. The rose even felt sad. Its petals burst into dust at her touch, and Thea had the distinct feeling that she shouldn’t place any of these plants on her tongue. They were poison, not anything like what they actually stood for.

“This is my favorite spot in the city,” Alistair said as they climbed a small stairwell in a back alley.

“Here?”

“Yes. This back alley is one of my favorites.”

She thought he was joking because surely there were better places for him to enjoy than an alleyway behind two buildings. But he didn’t laugh. He didn’t even add anything else, so she had to imagine he was...telling the truth.

How horrid.

She looked around them and surmised that the alley had more character than the rest of the city. There were footsteps worn into the stone stairs from years of people walking this same street. And the dampness that was trapped in the small space gave the air a bit more of a scent rather than stale air.

If she made herself think about it, then this alleyway felt like the most real part of Wildecliff so far.

“I can understand why. It’s not like the rest of Wildecliff, is it?” She peered up at the small sliver of the sun above them and slipped her hand into the sling.

Browning wrapped a webbed hand around her finger. That was the only support she’d get from her friend because she absolutely would not let him hop about beside her. Someone in Wildecliff might kick him. She’d never forgotten the way his siblings had reacted when they saw her familiar the first time.

“We’re going to step out onto a crowded street,” Alistair murmured, then squeezed her fingers. “Just walk next to me. Keep your head held high and don’t look anyone in the eyes. You’re going to do fine.”

Fine? That didn’t sound fine?

She nodded firmly as though she were well prepared for such a thing to happen, and then they reached the top of the stairs.

While the back streets they had previously crossed were empty and devoid of life, she now knew that was because everyone had come to the center of the city. Hundreds of people were here, and each one looked as though they had spent hours getting ready in the morning.

A woman walked past her with a pressed pencil skirt on and a billowing white shirt. Her coiffed hair was wrapped so tightly to her skull that it lifted the skin on either side of her eyes and gave her a rather pinched expression. The moment the woman looked at Thea, however, that look tightened even more. She surveyed Thea as though she’d never seen such a creature in her life.

Thea was reminded that her skirts had dipped into the water as she got out of the boat and there was likely mud on her hem. Not to mention that her wild hair still hung around her face without a tie, and Alistair might very well have missed a few twigs in the dark locks.

She tucked a strand behind her ear and then noticed another man staring at her in shock. The businessman wore a suit that probably cost more than Thea’s house was worth, and he leaned over to whisper to a lady beside him in a gown that would have befitted an opera. The emerald dress was dusted in a fine coating of expensive jewels. Immediately upon hearing him, the woman craned her neck to see where Thea was standing and then laughed.

Laughed.

The sound carried even through the murmurings of the crowd to Thea’s ears. Her cheeks burned. She never should have come here, and damn it, Alistair should never have brought her to this place. She wasn’t prepared to be in Wildecliff.

Or maybe she just wasn’t like him. Being here reminded her that they were very different people from very different places. Even though he was quite happy to walk through the throngs of people, this wasn’t the place for her.

“Is that a toad?” someone hissed as they passed through a particularly thick grouping of people.

She lost her grip on Alistair’s hand, and suddenly, she was swallowed up by the crowd. Someone touched her hair, tugging at a curl or maybe a stray leaf that had been caught in it. Another person tapped her shoulder where the sling started.

They were all talking at the same time, so she couldn’t quite make out what they were saying—only snippets of the conversation that continued as though she weren’t there.

“What a wild little creature.”

“A toad? You saw it correctly!”

“Monstrous, isn’t she?”

“I didn’t think we were still taking in the poor? Shouldn’t we direct her to the poorhouse next to the harbor?”

Thea lost control of her breath and started heaving air in and out of her lungs. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see straight. This was all too much, and she wanted to go home to her warm little hearth and to the family that would hold her in their arms.

She wasn’t some monstrous, poor person who had wandered into their city by accident. She was happy and well off with her family. Colors existed in her world, and they didn’t care about the latest fashion trend or what earrings another person was wearing.

But she couldn’t move. Her knees locked in place, and trembles vibrated through her entire body because she didn’t know where she was. She didn’t even know how to get back to the small crack in the wall so she could escape.

The crowd parted around a tall young man who shoved his way through them. Alistair threw elbows into ribs and hissed out words that sounded like curses, convincing enough that people gave him a wide berth. And then he stopped in front of her with his hands on his hips.

For a moment, looking up into his angry green eyes, she thought he might go the route his brothers had gone. He would seem weak if he helped her, so he could easily offer to take her to that poorhouse, so no one told his father what had happened here.

He offered her his hand, though, with a slight bow following. “Please, allow me to escort you away from this immoral crowd.”

A few gasps erupted all around them.

“Immoral?” the woman in green hissed. “I’ve never been called such by an Orbweaver.”

“Actually you have.”

“I have not!”

Thea knew that he’d wanted to startle them. He wanted them to see that they’d been rude and that no one should forgive them for this. Even though it would come at a cost to himself, his father would never let him live this one down. She knew it, and he knew it too; Alistair had still chosen to be her hero in the most Wildecliff way possible. He’d offered to help her while insulting those that wouldn’t.

She slipped her hand into his and let him draw her away from all those people who didn’t know her. Alistair moved her down the streets with more purpose until only a few people were wandering the streets.

Then he drew her close to his heart and placed his chin on top of her head. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I had your hand and then it just slipped out of my grasp. It took me too long to figure out where you were.”

“It’s all right,” she replied. “You couldn’t have known.”

But he should have, some part of her screamed. He should have known where she was, and he shouldn’t have ever let her go.

“Do you still want to see my home?”

“Yes.” No.

Alistair gripped her hand in his again. Together, they skirted past crowds and eased through corridors until finally, they stood before a house that she hadn’t thought possible with all the pale buildings around them.

“This is Orbweaver manor,” he breathed, staring up at the dark building with her. “The house where all my nightmares came true.”

Understandably so. The house was too dark and too crooked. Everything about it was sharp angles and terrifying features. Even the windows were dark. And though it was warm outside today, the faintest edge of frost was on the bottoms of the windows on the first floor. This was not a welcoming home. It was not a home meant for children to play in or for visitors to linger.

The grounds were barely maintained. There were only a few hedges that had seen better days, and frozen in time, rose bushes she could feel were no longer growing. This building looked nothing like the rest of the houses that they’d passed. The sheer terror she felt in looking at it made her question why she’d come here.

She watched as the front door opened and a butler stepped outside. He threw what looked like black liquid outside. The moment that liquid struck the stones leading up to the house, it burst into a shower of sparks and then sank into the stones themselves. A curse, she could only imagine—more black magic to fill his family home with more cold and pain.

Alistair’s hand smoothed down her back. “You don’t have to come inside if you don’t want.”

What kind of person would she be if she didn’t go inside? She’d come all this way because he wanted to prove to her that she couldn’t be with him. Even after all that, Thea still had a small ember of hope in her chest that they could figure this out.

But the house...this was no place for people to live.

Browning poked his head out of her sling and let out a loud ribbit. When she glanced down at him, he shook his head in a vigorous no. He didn’t want to go in there right now either, and that was strange, considering he’d gone inside the home before.

She’d take his warning for what it was. Straightening her shoulders, she looked up at Alistair and politely replied, “I don’t think I’d like to go inside right now, if I’m being honest. Perhaps another time.”

The defeated expression on his face threatened to rip her soul out of her body. But it seemed as though he understood.

Alistair wrapped his arm around her waist and tugged her to his side. “We’ll follow the back roads back to the crack in the wall. How’s that sound?”

“That was an option?”

“Only if you didn’t want to get home before dark. But we’ve got some time now that I’m not giving you a tour of the haunted manor.” Though he jested, she didn’t hear any mirth in his voice. “We’ll make sure no one sees you.”

Though she didn’t respond, Thea was grateful she wouldn’t have to see those terrifying people again. She had hoped this trip into Wildecliff would make her want to live here. That maybe it would convince her life with him was possible.

Instead, all it had done was widen the gap between them.