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  A GIRL NAMED CALAMITY

  Danielle Lori

  A Girl Named Calamity

  Copyright 2016 Danielle Lori

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without written consent of the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages for review purposes only.

  This a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are used fictitiously and are a product of the author’s imagination.

  Cover Model: Clarissa Adams

  Cover Photographer: Nicole’s Picwork

  Interior Formatting: Champagne Book Design

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  PLAYLIST

  EPIGRAPH

  PROLOGUE: WELCOME TO ALYRIA

  CHAPTER ONE: THE TRUTH OF TWO SILVER CUFFS

  CHAPTER TWO: THE COLOR RED

  CHAPTER THREE: EMERALDS IN A MURDEROUS GAZE

  CHAPTER FOUR: ASSASSINS AND SONGS

  CHAPTER FIVE: TWO TYPES OF TAILS

  CHAPTER SIX: UNCERTAIN REALIZATIONS

  CHAPTER SEVEN: THE REFLECTION OF A TITAN

  CHAPTER EIGHT: DISCOVERY OF THE BREEZE

  CHAPTER NINE: POINTLESS SCRUBBING

  CHAPTER TEN: UNWILLING OMEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: HANGOVERS AND REALITY CHECKS

  CHAPTER TWELVE: DOUBLE REALITY CHECK

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN: SAD TRUTHS

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN: FLAMES OF MULTIPLE KINDS

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN: POOR LIFE CHOICES

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN: TRAPPED

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: PAST CATCHING UP

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: REFLECTION IN AMBER EYES

  CHAPTER NINETEEN: AN ASSASSIN’S AMUSEMENT

  CHAPTER TWENTY: MAGICAL PASSION

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: AN ESCAPEE’S DREAMS

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: A WHOLE SPIDER’S WORTH OF TRUTH

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: FOXES AND FEELINGS

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: INHUMAN ENCOUNTERS

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: A VIRGIN’S BLOOD

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: WHITE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: SERVICING A PRINCE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: LUST AND MAGES

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: BRIDGES AND BITES

  CHAPTER THIRTY: EMPTY CITIES

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: DEALING WITH MISTAKES

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: TRICKED AND BONDED

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: THE ICY RIVER OF BLOODLUST

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ALSO BY DANIELLE LORI

  CONNECT WITH ME

  This is for anyone with the passion for accomplishing something.

  Go for it.

  PLAYLIST

  Listen Here

  Dustin Tebbutt—Harvest

  Amber Run—5AM

  gnash—i hate u, i love u

  Bishop Briggs—River

  Melanie Martinez—Cry Baby

  RaeLynn—Love Triangle

  Hey Violet—Guys My Age

  Lana Del Ray—Carmen

  Novo Amor—Weather

  Låpsley—Falling Short

  Lukas Graham—7 Years

  Kygo—Stole the Show

  Post Malone—White Iverson

  Zayn—PILLOWTALK

  Little Big Town—Girl Crush

  SoMo—Ride

  Hayden Calnin—I Corrupt

  I had a lot of hopes. But the only one I truly desired was that my name wouldn’t become my fate.

  —Calamity

  PROLOGUE

  WELCOME TO ALYRIA

  My eyes widened as Grandmother came into sight of the cottage. No wonder she had wanted to go into town alone; I would have never let her buy such a thing. Where did she even find the money?

  “Why do we need a horse?” I asked.

  Grandmother led a chestnut gelding beside her. He was beautiful, with a white blaze down his nose and four white socks.

  “I thought a horse could help us plow the garden.”

  My brows pulled together. “The garden? Grandmother, our garden is the size of this horse.” All we had planted was a small amount of vegetables and potatoes for the two of us, and Grandmother’s healing herbs.

  She glanced at me, her expression of disapproval. I should have known she would ignore my question with the way I was dressed. “Do you listen to anything I teach you?” she asked, putting her hand on her hip. I’d been more focused on the horse when Grandmother came into sight of the cottage than how I had looked.

  “Of course.” Sometimes . . .

  “Then why do you look like a strumpet?”

  I sighed. The hem of my skirts was tucked into the girdle of my dress, allowing a breeze to my legs. Grandmother always had a way with propriety. One I never understood. We were peasants. Why did we have to act like the women at court?

  “Why did you buy a horse?” I asked, trying to change the subject.

  “I already told you.”

  A frown pulled on my lips. We didn’t need a horse to plow the garden. It had always been my job, and there was no reason that Grandmother should have spent a fortune on a horse to do it.

  I crossed my arms. “Where did you get the money?”

  “Girl, stop with the inquisition. It’s been a long walk back from town,” she said as she headed past me to the small stable we owned, which was more suited for a donkey than a horse.

  Worry began to gnaw at me, and I chewed my lip. Was this the first sign of her losing her mind as I’d heard of others doing with old age?

  “Have you thought about the blacksmith’s son’s marriage offer?”

  I paused. Was that why she had bought the horse? Because she thought I was going to leave her?

  “I’m thinking about it, Grandmother.” I was hardly thinking about anything else. It wasn’t even that I was thinking so much about him, than I was my future. I felt out of place as I looked at our small cottage; the shabby roof, the warped wooden door, and the dirty glass windows.

  It had always been home, but I’d wondered what would come next. Surely this small life in Alger wouldn’t be my only future. And then when men began to show some interest, a new door opened. A door I didn’t necessarily want, but a door nonetheless. Guilt sank like lead in my stomach. I was itching for something else in my life while Grandmother might be losing her mind? What was wrong with me?

  “I just want you to be happy, Cal.”

  I forced the guilt down. “No, you want grandchildren.”

  She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “That, too.”

  “No matter what happens, I will always be here to help you,” I said. We only had a small farm with a few chickens and one dairy cow, but it was still a substantial amount of work. And I supposed now a horse to take care of . . . “Grand—”

  “Go get some Elderflower from the garden, please,” she cut me off.

  “What for?”

  “Someone in town is having an allergic reaction. They will be here in a little bit.”

  Grandmother was the healer in Alger. Some villagers were wary of her unusual practices, but when they were bleeding out, or their skin was rotting away from the Pox, many quickly changed their minds. It wasn’t as though Grandmother’s practice of magic was unusual. It was that she was doing it in Alger; the city known for a quiet magic-free life.

  In truth, it was nothing special compared to the rest of Alyria. It was said the land had whispered its name into the first people’s ears who settled here. Many families traveled from Elian, the neighboring country to the new and exciting Alyria. The magic used to be free for everyone to use until it had swum around in human men’s heads whispering thoughts of insanity. But since the magic had been sealed into the land, only those with
the innate ability could use it. Grandmother had a little magic, something that hadn’t been passed down to me.

  I sighed and walked up towards the garden, leaving my skirts tucked into my girdle and my sleeves pushed up to my elbows. The sun glinted off the two silver cuffs adorning my wrists like expensive metal shackles. They were big enough to slide up and down in the bath, but I never took them off. The children whom I had played with in the past always assumed I had a wealthy father, as there was no other reasonable explanation for me to have them.

  The truth was, I had no father. And I knew of no reason I had to wear them either. But Grandmother was stern, insistent on the fact that I should never take them off. Instead of feeling special for wearing such expensive cuffs, it felt as if they were grounding me to a life that wasn’t meant to be.

  Whenever I spoke to Grandmother about them, she evaded the question or she got defensive. The only words she’d ever shared with me were to never take them off. I’d come to my own conclusion that she had put an enchantment on them to keep me safe. I was the only person in her life, and I believed she was only trying to protect me.

  Although, after this new purchase of hers, I imagined I would have to sell them so we could get by, regardless of the way she felt about it.

  I shook my head, not believing she had spent so much money on something as trivial as plowing the garden. I hoped she hadn’t spent all of our small savings. I swallowed, while worry eased its way into my chest. What would I do without her if she was sick?

  I didn’t know. I could handle anything but that.

  Though, I might have spoken a bit too soon.

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE TRUTH OF TWO SILVER CUFFS

  A draft and a tug on my wrist woke me from a fitful sleep. I sighed, rolling over on my pallet while expecting the morning sunrise and my grandmother’s berating voice. But no light shined through the small window, and the sight I saw instead, sent an icy chill down my spine.

  A sick woman stood over me. Long blond hair, similar to mine, but stuck to her sweat-soaked face. She looked familiar as if I should have known her, but I was sure that I’d never seen her before. She would have been beautiful if not for the pallor of her skin and her thin body.

  I let out a breath, trying to calm my drumming heart and scooted back a foot. She must be here to see Grandmother. I was about to shout to wake her, but the woman’s agonized moan did it instead as she hunched over in pain.

  “What’s going on?” Grandmother hollered from her pallet in the corner. I looked the woman over, wondering what could be causing her so much pain when I realized she had one of my silver cuffs in her hands. My eyes immediately shot to my wrist, to check if what I saw was actually real. It felt as if I were naked as I stared at my bare wrist graced with a tan line. The sensation of having it off was freeing, and yet had apprehension rolling in my stomach.

  The woman backed up, knocking a book off the table she was using for support and eyed the door. I wanted to tell her to take it and run, but after a second of deliberation, I changed my mind. Grandmother would be furious, but in reality, the woman didn’t look like she could walk let alone run.

  I got to my feet to stand before the door. I glared at Benji, our black shepherd as he napped in the corner. He was a terrible guard dog.

  “What in Alyria is going on, Cal?” Grandmother yelled, bothered enough that she got off her pallet to take in the scene. Her annoyed expression shattered into disbelief when she noticed the woman. Her horrified gaze moved from the cuff in the woman’s grip to my bare wrist.

  Grandmother moved faster than I had ever seen before and ripped the cuff out of the woman’s hand. She slapped it back on me with so much force that I grimaced and rubbed my pained wrist.

  “You idiot!” she screamed at the woman. I almost took a step back at her tone. Never had I seen her react like that. The woman was silent as she clutched her stomach, her eyes wide in agony.

  As I watched Grandmother rush around the small cottage, grabbing different items on her tables, a nervous pit grew in my stomach. “Grandmother, what’s going on?”

  She ignored me as she gave all her attention to a passage in one of her books, her finger traveling down the page frantically. She took some herbs she had in one of her jars and threw them into the fire. Her back was to me, and I heard her softly chanting, then silence.

  The woman’s short breaths and the crackling of the fire in the hearth were the only sounds, the thick tension in the air leaving a cold sweat in its wake.

  My attention was brought to the woman’s shivering form as she slid to the wooden floor.

  “She really needs some help,” I said to my grandmother’s still but tense back. I didn’t know as much about healing as she did, or I would have taken a look at the woman. People from all over Alger came to Grandmother when they were sick. I’d learned a little from watching her here and there, but she had never taught me much like I always wished she would. I assumed it was because I didn’t have magic. My grandmother had a purpose here; I wasn’t so sure I did.

  Grandmother treated anyone whether they could pay for it or not, and that was why my heart beat in confusion when she said, “I hope she dies for what she has done!” She finally turned away from the fire to glare at the woman.

  “What is wrong with you?” I looked at her as if she were the grandchild, instead of the other way around. This had to be a dream. The whole situation was too strange to be real.

  “I hope you are suffering, Reina! Because you have just put a death sentence on your daughter’s head!”

  My mouth fell open as I looked at the sick woman. She was my mother? The woman I hadn’t seen in the twenty years I’d been alive? My grandmother never told me much about her, and my questions stopped long ago when I realized she was never going to be in my life. As a child I imagined a hundred ways I would get to meet her, but this had never come to mind.

  What better way to say hello to your daughter for the first time than try to steal from her?

  I forced a laugh down as I didn’t believe that was the reaction you were supposed to have. Even if there was a rule book, I didn’t think that this particular situation would have ever been listed. So, I stood still, gazing blankly into the fire while trying to ignore the dull ache in my chest.

  My grandmother and mother only looked at each other for a moment, while unease seeped into my lungs. The silence was heavy and starting to suffocate me, but when I went to say something, Reina beat me to it.

  “I’m sorry. I just need some money, and I will leave.”

  “What, your fancy little job in the city’s not paying enough these days?”

  My grandmother had never said much to me about my mother. But finding out that she had lived right in Alger, a small ride from the cottage caused a sharp ache closer to my heart than I would have preferred. I pushed away the pain, clenching my teeth to replace it with resentment.

  “Mother, I’m sick. I can’t work anymore.”

  The anger in my grandmother’s eyes faded as she took in the news. “You don’t look sick to me. You look like someone who’s smoked too much Midnight Oil and then ran out of money to continue.”

  My mother tried to steal from me, so it wasn’t that unbelievable she was addicted to Midnight Oil. No, the unbelievable part was that my mother was a prostitute.

  Or had been. I supposed she couldn’t work now; no one would risk it.

  Midnight Oil was used in the brothels so the women could escape the reality of a strange man between their legs. It only had an effect on women, and I had never seen any villagers but prostitutes use it. I’d heard stories of it taking you away into a sunny field, where all you could feel was the warm sun and the long grass caressing your skin. The withdrawal was a painful experience; I had seen with my own eyes as Grandmother had treated many of the prostitutes from Alger’s symptoms.

  I had always known I was a bastard. But now I knew I was a whore’s bastard.

  That wasn’t exactly what had my
stomach turning. There had been many prostitutes seeking help to ease the withdrawal symptoms who came through our warped wooden door, and every one of them was sick in an entirely different way.

  There was no other reason for my mother to be out of work and coin unless she had the one sickness that put prostitutes out of business. The Pox. She didn’t appear symptomatic as there were no lesions on her skin. Those who showed symptoms died from them, and those who didn’t, lived.

  Was it too early to see the symptoms? Or was my mother one of the lucky ones?

  I watched her retch on the floor and felt as if I would be sick myself. Why would my mother choose that lifestyle? Was a whore’s life more exciting than a life of raising her daughter? Had my father just been another patron?

  My eyes widened as Grandmother grabbed a leather bag and filled it with bread and a water canteen. She was going to send her away? Regardless of the way I felt about my mother, she still needed help. We’d never turned someone in need away before, and we wouldn’t start now. Besides, considering her current state, my mother wouldn’t even make it down the road.

  “Grandmother, you can’t send her away.”

  She gave me a forlorn look, her brown eyes softening. “I’m not sending her away, Calamity.”

  My mother lifted her head, her brow furrowed. “You actually gave her that name?”

  “I didn’t name her. You did, Reina,” Grandmother replied while putting a small blanket in the leather pouch.

  My confusion couldn’t decide between why Grandmother was packing and what they meant with my name. I had always known it was strange. I thought Grandmother wanted me to be different; she had always been about teaching lessons. When one of the neighborhood girls had called me a tragedy, I shut her up with my fist. I learned a lot with the name; I wouldn’t change it now. I swallowed hard, my chest tightening. Knowing that my mother had named me after a tragedy was, surprisingly, the most painful truth of the night. I wanted to feel indifferent to it, but I couldn’t help but feel as though someone had just punched me in the stomach.

 
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