Page 1 of Flames and Blood

Chapter 1

Kalli

The van hits a rut in the road, and my teeth click together. We’ve been jolting along this route for long enough that my jaw feels like it’s rattling loose.

I run my thumb along the inside of the wrist cuff, the way I’ve done at every stop since they loaded me. Finding the join. There’s always a join.

Not this one.

The metal’s a single piece, cold enough to burn, and the chain off it runs to a ring bolted through the floor plate. I give it a short pull toward the wall. No give. Same at the ankle. Whoever fitted this van out knew their work.

Fine. Then not the cuffs. Something else.

There’s always something that might have a weak spot. That’s not hope talking. I don’t waste energy on hope.

My grandmother used to say every trap has a maker, and every maker has a habit.

I press my palms flat to the floor and try to pick up what I can about the road. The seams in the surface come evenly, every few seconds. Old concrete, not asphalt. The vehicle slows down through a pothole and then picks up again. Does the same a few minutes later.

He knows this road.

The engine drops a gear. My ears tighten, then pop. Climbing. The driver rides his brakes into every curve and holds steady coming out.

Slow man. Slow men are careful men. Careful men are told to be careful.

Told by whom?

I let that one go. I don’t have enough information to make an educated guess, and I’m not wasting energy on guessing games either.

My dragon moves within me.

She’s been doing it since the loading bay. Over a year I’ve held her down—every day, on purpose, teeth gritted, because a dragon in a warded cell is not a patient creature. She hated it. She never fought me for it.

In that loading bay back at the facility, she surged up before I could even reach for her.

I still can’t say what did it. My head was down. Boots, shouting, a gun somewhere behind me, doors slamming on the trucks ahead. I knew the rules: eyes on the concrete. But my neck turned. I never chose it. Half a second, maybe less, my chin coming up toward something, and then the truck was lurching forward, and whatever she found out there, she’s kept to herself.

What did you see?

Nothing. Heat, sitting behind my ribs where she’s been waiting. She’s not telling me.

“Great,” I mutter to the dark. “You pick now to keep secrets.”

The heat doesn’t move. Over a year of silence, and now she has her voice back, she won’t use it.

The van slows. Stops. Rolls forward a length. Stops again.

What—?

Rolls. Stops. Something under us, taking the weight in pieces.

Oh. A scale. I’ve been on one before, at intake, back when things were still new enough to surprise me. Onto the plate, wait, off the plate.

They’re weighing the truck. They’ll subtract the truck from the total, and somewhere in a ledger, the difference will be me. Cargo.

A voice outside, flat with boredom. Another answers it, shorter. The cab door. Paper moving.

I settle back and stare at the empty bench across from me. There should be people on it. I know why I do this: counting seams and doors and voices keeps me from thinking about how I got here.