Page 51 of Flames and Blood

It doesn’t take long to find out. Renwick comes in with another man.

Dragon. I know it through the drug, through everything—the dry heat off both of them fills the room. This one is old. Older than Renwick, and it shows in ways Renwick doesn’t let show: thin all over, dry-skinned, careful on his feet. His eyes are pale yellow. They run over me, assessing. It makes my skin crawl, even though it’s burning from the drug.

“Ilmar Vex,” Renwick says, “Kallista Ondrathe. Heir of the Aldrake seat.”

“She’s not what I expected,” Vex says.

“She’s within the range your people specified. Hip measurements are on file. She’s young; she’s proven fertile stock on the maternal line, and her bloodwork has been consistent for over a year. You’ve seen all of it.”

“Records are records. I wanted to see her.” Vex walks around my chair, not close. “The Aldrake line breeds true, and shares multiple ancestors with the Vex line. That’s the value. Two of my grandsires came off that mountain range.” He stops in front of me. “How soon can we expect results?”

“The first attempt can be confirmed within weeks. My physician will monitor her from the first mating.”

“And she’s fit? After a year in that pipeline?”

“She’s been fed and rested. The heat is chemically brought on, which shortens the timetable considerably. You won’t be kept waiting.”

They’re talking about my body. My hips, my age, my blood, my children. In front of me, over me, in flat voices, checking items off an order. Neither of them says one crude word. It might actually be easier if they did. Right now, I feel like equipment.

UP! my dragon says.

And she brings me with her. I don’t know how she does it. The drug has numbed my arms and my legs and most of my neck. But she comes up through all of it—through the runes, through the drink, through everything—and this time she doesn’t stop.

My eyes go hot. Gold light lands on my own knees. My hands change inside the cuffs, fingers thickening, black claws sliding out where nails were, and the cuffs bite down white-hot against the shift and can’t stop it. Scales run up both arms to the elbow. Smoke comes off my mouth with my breath.

I’m out of the chair before either of them moves.

I get Vex across the face.

My balance is gone, and my arms are slow, and it still takes him off his feet. Claws open his cheek from bone to jaw. Old dragon blood runs into his collar. He goes down against the hearth, and the fire roars up the chimney as I turn. The nearest handler grabs my arm and lets go with a shout, because my skin burns him through his glove.

“Down! Get her down; all of you, now!”

It takes all of them. They put me face-down on the beautiful carpet, one man on each limb again. Even then, I lift two of them off the floor.

“No!” I’m screaming at the top of my lungs. “Get off! Get the fuck off!”

Then the runes and the drug drag my beast back under. The claws pull back into my hands. The fire goes out of my skin. I’m just a woman being held down again.

The carpet under my arms is scorched through to the backing.

“She had the full dose.” One of the handlers, breathing hard, to Renwick. “Sir, she had the full dose an hour ago. That shouldn’t be possible.”

Renwick doesn’t answer him.

When the room settles, Vex is up, standing well back from me, with a cloth against his face.

“No,” he says.

“Ilmar—”

“No. You dosed her, yet I watched her shift through runed steel an hour later, and look what she did.” He takes the cloth away, looks at the blood on it, and puts it back. “I am the second-last of my line, Renwick. I did not survive centuries to be opened up during a mating by something your drugs cannot hold. When she is settled—properly settled—send word. Not before.”

“The contract—”

“The contract says a viable heir. It doesn’t say I bleed for it.”

He leaves. The doors close behind him.