Southern Secrets: Book 2 in Southern Charms Series

Chapter Twenty-Six: Connections

Rose

Suddenly, the sorcerer's strange fixation on my grandmother made sense, but understanding brought more questions. Like, the fact that heterochromia was not a common trait and was often hereditary.

"Do many of your people have different colored eyes?" I asked.

"Chavi inherited it from her grandmother," he replied. "I know of no one else."

Malphas cast a meaningful look in my direction. We both knew why I asked, and I sent up a silent prayer that this was another misunderstanding, like the brother comment. Chavi certainly wasn't Clemmy. Beyond the eyes, the women were complete opposites, but there was a very small chance she wasn't connected to my grandmother somehow. Impossibly small.

"Mal," Chavi said, flinging her arms around his neck, earning disdainful looks from two men passing by.

In fact, that look duplicated itself on multiple faces as Chavi dragged him into the village. One mother grabbed her child and pushed him behind her skirts, and she continued to watch Chavi and Malphas until they crested the hill and disappeared from her view.

An eerie chill went down my spine. The road we travelled on looked nothing like the main strip through Black Brier. No red bricked shops lined the road or lanterns with flower beds around the bases. The street beneath my feet was little more than dirt, and goods were sold out of carts parked along the edges of the road. Vendors shouted their prices or held out their wares to entice people to look at them. The air was perfumed with unwashed bodies and stale blood from meat hanging in the sun.

But the people were the same.

The cluster of boys in the corner who sneered at Malphas. The ladies who gossiped by a well made no attempts to hide who they were talking about as we passed. The whispers reached our ears.

"Odd. Weak. Cursed."

"Malphas," I hissed in his ear as Chavi chattered on, "I thought you hadn't taken a form yet. Why is everyone looking at you like a pariah?"

"I found a nest today," Chavi said, her comment snagging Malphas' attention before he could respond to me. I didn't know if the dream forced him to respond to the girl or if he answered her to avoid me.

"That's amazing, Chavi," he said, his tone imbued with a fresh boyishness I didn't think he was capable of. "You've been searching ever since you could fly."

"You just wait. One day you will fly with me, and you can see it too."

"Let's not talk about the impossible."

Chavi covered his hand with her small, pale one and stared up at Malphas with an earnest expression. "You are Visian. We are as much creature as we are human, and I know your other half is just waiting to appear."

Malphas gave her a pacifying smile that didn't quite hide the doubt he felt. Then, the uncertain boy disappeared, replaced by the man I knew best. With a charming grin, he threaded his fingers through hers and twirled her in front of him before tugging her back into his chest.

"And what will you do if my other half is something terrible? Like a mouse? Or a dung beetle?"

Chavi's freckles merged into a large blot across her nose as she scrunched her eyebrows together. "My mother taught me we must be kind to even the lowest among us."

"If this woman really is a distant relative, I'd like to have a word with God about hereditary traits. He's gonna let those eyes pass down from generation to generation, but not the sweetness? How do you go from befriending mice to turning people into them?"