Page 42 of Flames and Blood

“That isn’t the question, and you know it.”

“You should try some of the gravy. It’s Mrs. Nell’s specialty.”

I put my fork down.

“Before I left the facility, a doctor came into my cell. A dragon doctor,” I say. “He measured my hips, checked my teeth, and spoke about my heat cycles. Then he said the word ‘match.’ So you can skip past the kind words. There’s something going on.”

“He shouldn’t have done any of that in front of you,” he says. “It was clumsy.”

That’s all he has to say? Not that I was inspected like a broodmare, but that it was clumsy?

“You’ll stay here,” he says. “You’ll be looked after, better than you have been. And in time, there will be a meeting with someone I believe you’ll approve of.”

“A meeting.” I don’t like the way he says it.

“Yes.”

“What kind of meeting?”

“That will become clear in due course.”

For fuck’s sake!

I slam my hand down on the surface of the table, then regret it when pain shoots up from my palm.

“I’m getting sick of all this cryptic shit,” I snap. “I don’t know where I am, or who you are, and now you’re talking in circles about some kind of meeting that you won’t tell me about.”

He sits calmly, as if I hadn’t just yelled at him. “I want you to focus on settling in right now,” he says. “Just be assured that you are considered to be very precious to us.”

“Why?”

“Because there are fewer of us every year, and there have been fewer every year since before you were born. Seats that were full when I was young stand empty now. Old lines have died out to nothing. Your family is one of the few that is still strong, and people have been searching for someone like you for a very long time.”

“People?”

“People.”

“How long have they been searching?”

“Longer than you’ve been alive. Eat something.”

I glare down at my plate, then spear a carrot and put it in my mouth, because a woman who won’t eat is a woman who might cause trouble, and because I’m hungry.

“May I go outside? Just the grounds,” I say once I’ve finished a few more mouthfuls. I figure if I look like I’m cooperating, I’ll get more out of him.

“Of course. Once you’re settled, you can go wherever you like. You’re not a prisoner in this house. If anyone tries to stop you, tell Mrs. Nell, and it won’t happen twice.”

He answers that one straight away, which bothers me. If he doesn’t care where I go, then he’s confident that I’m not going to find a way to escape. The wall I felt on the road in will stop me at any height, on foot or on wings. He knows it, and now I know it.

“Thank you,” I say, then go back to my food. He waits as I finish, then rises.

“You’ll be taken to your quarters now,” he says. “Rest well, Kallista Ondrathe.”

I watch as he leaves the room, and then Mrs. Nell takes me upstairs. The room at the end of the hallway is warm. A fire has been burning in it for hours. There’s a bed with a heavy quilt, a wash bowl, a chair by the window, and two dresses hanging in an open closet. They’re my size, which doesn’t surprise me, because it’s becoming more and more obvious to me that these people know all about me.

“There’s hot water in the jug,” says Mrs. Nell. “Wash the wounds again in the morning, and come to me for fresh cloth.”

I nod as I stare around at the room, then turn back to her. “How long have you worked for him?”