Page 130 of Flames and Blood

She drops me at a gas station on the edge of Danby with a pay phone bolted to the wall outside, tells me the number for a cab if I need one, and pulls back onto the road without waiting to see what I do next. She never asked my name. I never gave it.

I stand in front of that phone longer than I need to.

Serenity gave me her number the last time I saw her. She wrote it on a scrap of paper, closed my hand around it, and told me to use it if I ever needed anything. I said I wouldn’t. I’ve kept it ever since.

I lift the receiver and dial. It rings twice.

“This is Serenity.”

“It’s Kalli.”

There’s a pause, short, and then her voice drops the polite edge it opened with. “Kalli? Oh, my God! Where are you?”

“A gas station. A town called Danby. I left the Eyrie and the clan, and I don’t have—” I stop, because I don’t know how to say that without it sounding like begging. I’ve never been good at begging even when I meant it.

“You don’t have to finish it,” she says. “Danby, you said?”

“Yes.”

I hear her talking to someone in the background.

“Stay where you can be seen,” she says when she’s back on the line. “Somebody’s coming.” A pause, and when she speaks again there’s something warmer in it. “It’s good to hear from you.”

“You too,” I say. It isn’t enough, but it’s all I’ve got.

I sit on a bench outside the gas station because she told me to stay where I can be seen, and there’s nothing else to do with the hours.

The sun comes up. A few trucks pull in for gas and pull back out. Nobody looks at me twice, which, after the scrutiny at the Eyrie, is a relief.

I turn my grandmother’s ring once around my finger and put my hands back in my pockets. Just days ago, a woman was reading me the date of my own wedding. Today I’m a stranger on a bench outside a gas station, no title, no seat. And it bothers me less than it should.

This is better, my dragon says, quiet. We never wanted it anyway.

I don’t answer her. I don’t need to. She’s been right about nearly everything since the yard, and there’s no point in pretending otherwise.

It’s hours before a car turns into the lot, dark and plain and going faster than the limit allows. Serenity is out of the passenger side before it’s fully stopped, and she doesn’t slow down for the last ten feet. She gets both arms around me, and I stand there a second too long before I remember how to do this back.

“Hello, little wolf,” I say into her shoulder, and it draws a sound out of her that’s almost a laugh.

“You look terrible.”

“You look like you’ve been eating.”

“I have. It’s one of the many good parts of being out of that shithole.” She pulls back and holds onto my arms, turning me toward the light, looking me over from my face to my hands and back. “You walked off a mountain and gave up a title to get here. Do you know how that sounds, said out loud?”

“Like the only thing I could have done.”

“Like exactly that.” She smiles, and something in my chest that’s been tight since the road lets go a little. “Get in the car, Kalli. It took us eight hours to get here, and Bastien is already losing his shit.”

We arrive at dusk, and Aurora looks the same as it did the last time I was here. The room they take me to isn’t big. A table, a handful of chairs, and a window that looks out on trees and water instead of clouds. Viktor is already there, standing instead of sitting. Caleb Craven is against the wall with his arms crossed in a way that looks casual and isn’t. Bastien comes in behind us and shuts the door.

Nobody asks me to sit and wait for a briefing. Nobody hands me anything to sign. Serenity pulls out a chair, and I take it, because I feel too shaky to stand.

“You have a lot to tell us,” says Viktor. “Start at the beginning.”

So I do. I lay it out the way I laid it out for my mother, except this time I don’t stop when somebody’s face changes.

“And my mother knows,” I say. “She’s known since the first week. She’s decided not to investigate, because uncovering anything means tearing the clan apart to find who did it, and she’d rather keep the peace.”