Page 137 of Flames and Blood

“He does.”

“But he was four days of road away when it happened. He didn’t come up that pass until the sixth day.”

Dark red hair, cut short. Tall. An easy laugh. Polite.

He found the body. He told me about the ring without being asked. He asked me questions that the others hadn’t.

And he went four levels down in the dark to ask a stranger what I remembered, when I was upstairs the whole time.

“Kalli.” Gideon hasn’t moved. “Say it, or don’t. Either one is all right.”

I say it.

“Sereth.”

Chapter 33

Crowe

Aurora is a different building today. Yesterday it was quiet hallways and a woman who needed sleep more than she needed a meeting. Now there are people moving with folders in their hands, and doors standing open that were shut last night. It stopped being her private problem sometime while I slept. Now it’s everybody’s problem, and everybody’s walking faster because of it.

They put us in a room with a long table and too many chairs. Viktor Parlance takes the head of it with Caleb Craven on his right and Ysabelle Faine beside him, arms folded, saying nothing yet. Serenity and Bastien sit on one side. Torbjorn is near the far end, silver through brown hair, holding still the way bears hold still. Odile comes in late and takes the chair nearest him, almost brushing his shoulder.

Viktor doesn’t waste any time getting to the point.

“Kallista. Our team has been briefed on your situation. Now we have an update. Last night you gave Mr. Crowe a name. Tell us what it is.”

She doesn’t hesitate. “Sereth Ondrathe. My cousin.”

Nobody says anything. They’ve all read the file. It’s different hearing a victim name her murderer.

Craven takes his time before he speaks.

“All of the evidence is circumstantial,” he says. “Somebody has to acknowledge this, so I will. A forger’s memory of a customer she saw three times. A cousin who asked questions a concerned relative might ask. Nothing there that proves anything.” He looks down the table at Kalli. “If we go to that mountain and accuse a man in front of his own clan, and we’re wrong, that causes problems. That family never trusts an outsider again, and the other clans watching will doubt us.”

He has a point. I’d have raised it myself if he hadn’t.

“I’m not asking anybody to judge him today,” Kalli says. “I’m asking to take what we have home and show it to people who need to know it. My mother. The council. The whole clan, if it comes to that.” She sits forward. “Let them draw their own conclusions.”

Faine hasn’t spoken yet. She does now, and she doesn’t soften it.

“You spent months caged and mishandled.” She says it to Kalli directly. “No offense, but how do you know that what you remember is what happened?”

Kalli’s shoulders come level. When she speaks, the words come slow and certain.

“Because I made myself hold on to it,” she says. “Every day in that place. Names, faces, what was said to me and who said it. It was the only thing in there that I had control of.”

Faine holds her eyes for a moment and then nods once, and that’s the end of the question.

Craven sets his hands flat on the table.

“The Cravens are in,” he says. “Formally. We go up that mountain as dragons, in the open, on clan business. Not a raid and not a rescue. A formal visit on official business. Your mother receives us because she has to.” He looks at Kalli. “Once we’re inside the Eyrie, the evidence goes in front of the whole clan, not just her council.”

“How soon?”

“Tomorrow night. I’ll have passage, numbers and the right people settled by dark.” He lists the details. “I won’t go up there without planning it properly.”

“Okay.” Kalli nods.