Page 132 of Flames and Blood

Somebody brings food I don’t remember asking for. Somebody else takes my bag away. Caleb starts giving instructions to people who come in and go out again, and there’s work happening all around me. None of it is mine to do.

“All right,” I say. “I’ll wait.”

Serenity looks relieved.

I don’t tell her how long.

Chapter 31

Crowe

I drive too fast the whole way from Branna’s blue house to the gates of Aurora, and it still takes two nights.

The gate opens before I’ve stopped. A guard waves me through without stopping me. I get the same treatment as I head through the main entrance, and that should already tell me something’s up.

Faine meets me in the hallway before I’ve reached the admin section.

I’ve known Ysabelle Faine for my entire Turned life, and I have never once seen her meet anyone without some sort of ceremony. She’s in a coat she hasn’t buttoned, and her arms are folded. She watches me walk up to her without saying anything, which is worse than being yelled at.

“Go on,” I say.

“Oh, I’m going to.” She takes two steps forward. “You closed a job and vanished off a mountain in the middle of the night, and nobody in this building has had a straight word out of you since. I have stood in a room and told the Court I knew where you were. Twice. Both times I was lying. I don’t lie to the Court, Crowe. That’s a thing I don’t do.”

“I’ll take all of that. Later.” I widen my stance. “Right now I need Viktor awake, and I need a Craven on that mountain before tomorrow night. Kallista Ondrathe is in danger up there, and she doesn’t know it.”

“Crowe.”

“Listen to me—”

“She’s here.”

I stop. “Say that again.”

“Kalli is here. She came in at dusk.” Faine doesn’t move closer. “She walked off that mountain, and she’s been on the road since. Serenity brought her in from a gas station in a place called Danby.”

I’ve spent two nights preparing what I was going to say. It doesn’t have anywhere to go now, and neither do I.

“Is she hurt?”

“She’s tired, and she’s filthy, and she’s been sleeping in a chair since ten o’clock because she wouldn’t go to a bed until somebody promised to wake her if you called.” Faine gives a small smile. “She’s fine, Crowe.”

“I want to see her.”

“You want to stand in a doorway and look at her, which isn’t the same thing, and you can do it in a minute.” She turns back the way she came. “Come with me. You’ve driven a long way to tell us something and I’d rather you told it sitting down.”

They put me in a room with a long table. Viktor Parlance comes in first, then Caleb Craven behind him. Bastien follows them and stands against the wall.

I sit down. It’s the first time I’ve sat in anything that isn’t a truck seat in days.

Viktor sits across from me. “What have you found out?”

“There’s been a plot to assassinate the Heir of the Ondrathe Aldrake. A year ago, her death was staged, and she was sold into the blood trade.” I look around the table. “I know how they did it.”

Caleb straightens. “Go on.”

“There’s a woman two valleys east of Marchand who creates bodies for people who need to disappear. A man paid her to build one that would pass for Kalli. It took her three weeks. That body was staged to look like she’d fallen. In reality she’d been sold.”

“You have her name,” Viktor says.