Page 117 of Flames and Blood

“Yes.”

I stand there with my hand on the wall.

All right.

He took the money, and he went. That’s all there is to it.

But there’s so much more.

He waited alone for me after I promised I’d be back. And then finally, he gave up.

He waited in a room below a banqueting hall where I was being toasted by the man I’ve been promised to.

Oh God, he heard it.

He must have. He told me this mountain was quiet, but last night, things were not quiet. And he would have heard every bit of it. I remember laughing. Sounding happy. And he would have heard that too.

Why didn’t you tell him?

My hand comes off the wall. One sound gets out of me—half a breath, bitten short—and I stop myself before another one can follow it.

Aldis looks at the far wall until I’m done.

“Thank you,” I say when I can do it properly. “That’s all I needed.” I turn and leave him standing there, not saying anything.

My mother is in the small room off the council chamber with the door open, which she never leaves open, and I understand as I come through it that she has been waiting for me.

“Sit down,” she says.

“I’ll stand.”

“Then stand.” She puts her pen down and caps it. “You went down to the stores.”

“You knew I would.”

“I knew you would days ago.” She folds her hands. “Kallista. I’m going to say something, and I’d like you to let me, because I’ve been trying to find a way to say it carefully, but if you interrupt me, it will come out wrong. Neither of us wants that.”

I still don’t sit down. “Okay.”

“Every young woman is allowed one piece of madness,” she says. “I had mine. My mother had hers, and hers was a lot worse than mine. Yours is a strange one, and it’s over, and no harm has come of it. Nobody died. Nobody is talking. That is a better outcome than most of us get.”

“That’s not what this—”

“You said you’d let me.” She waits. I let her. “He is not of your standing. He has no bloodline and no house. He is a useful man, I have no doubt, but in this clan, he is the help. That is not me being unkind. That is the arrangement of the world. I did not build it, and neither did you.”

“You don’t know anything about him.”

“I know what he is. I know what he did. He was very good at it, and I paid him for it.” She doesn’t raise her voice. “And I know what happened to you. You were taken, kept in a terrible place, and treated badly. Then a door came open, and the man on the other side of it was kind to you.”

“That’s not what it was.”

“You know what I mean, and you know that I’m right.” She says it gently. That’s the whole trouble with her. “You were frightened, you were alone, and he was the first thing that came to help. Every woman who has ever been rescued has felt what you’re feeling. It’s the most ordinary thing in the world. It isn’t love, Kallista. When you have been that frightened for that long, the one who seems safe feels exactly like love. That’s all this is.”

“I never said anything about love,” I tell her. Because I haven’t. The word has never been part of it.

Suddenly, it is.

“You didn’t have to,” she says. “I was once as young as you are now. I know how the heart works. But it’s not love. It’s gratitude. Maybe a little adventure.”