Page 149 of Flames and Blood

“He wasn’t working alone.”

“No.” Gideon shakes his head. “I suspected it on that mountain. A body doesn’t get onto the north face with one pair of hands, but I was hoping I was wrong.”

Whoever Sereth was working with was sitting in this hall tonight. They knew what was coming. And they walked out before anybody thought to look. This isn’t over.

Aldis has helped my mother to her feet, and she’s come up beside me.

“We need to speak,” she says, and I nod, because she’s right. “Privately,” she adds.

Hesper has emerged from the group and is standing nearby, hands twisting in front of her. “Aldrake, your wounds. We must attend—”

“Not now, Hesper.” My mother’s back is straight. “I will call for you when I’m done.” She glances at me. “My chambers.”

I nod, then follow as she leads the way. Gideon and Caleb linger nearby, but I reassure them with a small dip of my head.

We reach the rooms that form my mother’s living area, and she opens the door and walks in. I follow.

She turns to me immediately. “Will you stay?” she says. “Please?”

I don’t think my mother has ever said please to me before.

She reaches for my hand. “There is a lot between us that still needs to be resolved. But I want this to be where we start. I don’t want to lose you again, Kallista.”

I swallow hard. “Yes.” I nod, because I never wanted to leave. “Of course.”

She exhales so deeply that her shoulders sag. “Thank you.” She reaches out to stroke my cheek, and I feel my eyes well. “I handled it wrong,” she says. “All of it. The months you were gone. Your return… I should have listened when you came to me. That’s what a mother does.”

“You behaved as a leader would, Mother. You are that first and foremost.”

“And that’s wrong. You deserve to feel loved, Kallista. To be heard. I didn’t give you that. But it’s going to change. There’s no excuse for how I treated you. But perhaps when you are in my shoes you’ll understand.”

“I don’t want the seat, Mother. I gave it up, and I meant it.”

“But—”

“I still plan to stay. This is my home, and those are my people. It’s all I’ve ever known, and I don’t want to be anywhere else.”

She waits a moment, then says, “What about him? The vampire.”

“That isn’t decided.”

“It is. You’ve decided. You just haven’t asked him.” She lets that sit, then pulls in a breath and carries on, “You know what it means to choose him, don’t you?”

“I’m ready to face whatever it brings.”

“He can’t give you children, Kalli. Not one, not ever.”

“I know what he is. It doesn’t change my choice.”

“Then know what it costs.” Her throat works. “What ends is my line. My mother’s, and hers, and every woman back to the one who cut the first room out of this rock. It ends with you.” She looks at me. “That’s what your choice brings.”

The room is very quiet.

She isn’t wrong, and being angry won’t make her wrong. Nine hundred years of women in this rock, and it stops with me, and I’m the one stopping it.

“I know,” I say.

“Then tell me why you’re doing it anyway.”