Page 52 of Flames and Blood

I’m still face-down on the carpet with three men on me, and I can’t lift my head.

I smile into the wool.

Try that again, fuckers.

Renwick crouches down so I can see him. He isn’t angry. His voice stays level, and his hands stay loose. To him, tonight is a delay, and I caused it.

“That was expensive,” he says. “Take her back to her room. No food until she understands what’s expected of her.”

“I’ll die first.” It comes out slurred, and I mean every word of it.

“You won’t.” He stands and straightens his cuffs. “Do you know how long it takes a dragon to starve, Kallista? Months. Your body will eat your fire first, then your strength, then your will, in that order. I have watched it done, and I can wait. But it won’t come to that, because you’re sensible.”

They carry me back. The room is warm. The fire is lit. The closet stands shut in the corner with its row of waiting dresses. I’m dropped on the bed without ceremony.

Mrs. Nell comes in behind the men with a second bottle in her hand.

The men stand inside the door.

All four of them. They look at my cuffed hands, and at the burn one of them is carrying wrapped on his forearm. Nobody wants to be the first to touch me again.

“She’s down,” the first one says. “Look at her. She’s finished.”

“You saw her finished an hour ago,” says the burned one.

My dragon hears them. She drags herself up one more time. Heat crawls up my neck, and my eyes light the quilt gold. All four men take one step back from a woman who can’t lift her own head.

That’s as far as it gets. The gold gutters out. The heat dies on my skin.

But they saw it, and they’ll remember it.

I fight.

Cuffed and drugged and empty, I fight all four of them again, and I lose again. The second dose goes down my throat. Mrs. Nell strokes my throat after it, wipes my chin, and pulls the quilt over me.

“Sleep now,” she says. “It’s easier asleep. I promise you that too.”

The heaviness rises through me again, thicker than the first dose. The voices move to the door. The door half closes, and the words come through the gap while I go under.

“—if she won’t cooperate, it can be done while she’s under. The physician has confirmed it.”

“He’d prefer her settled. It went badly tonight.”

“Vex will come back. The money’s paid, and results are expected. And he’s not the only interested party. She needs to become productive quickly; there are others waiting on the second—”

The door clicks shut.

The room is quiet. The fire moves. I can’t lift my arms. I can’t move at all.

My dragon is still there, under all of it, muffled and raging. She isn’t pushing at the men, or the door, or the drug.

She’s leaning toward the wall. The same wall. The one that faces the road we came in on.

He’ll come, she says.

I stop arguing with her.

Chapter 12