Page 57 of Flames and Blood

Think, Kalli. There’s always something you can do.

I can see. I decide I’m not closing my eyes. Whatever happens in this room, it happens while I’m looking at the men who do it. Let’s see how that sits on their consciences.

Probably won’t do anything. Bastards.

I can remember, though. I start on the names while they’re still in my mind. Renwick. Mrs. Nell. Hollis. The four men from the yard, and the one with fresh nail marks down his cheek. The doctor with the tape, back at the last place. Vex, now that I have his name.

I put them in order and repeat it to be sure I remember each one.

You’ll be sorry. All of you. That’s a promise.

The door opens, and the dry, stone smell of them comes in before they do. Two dragons. The room fills with their heat.

Renwick brings the old one in.

“She’s had the full evening dose, and another, to be sure,” Renwick says. “She won’t shift, and she won’t struggle. Her body will be receptive. You’ve got until morning before the sedative thins.”

“I don’t need until morning.” Ilmar Vex stands over the bed and looks down at me. Pale yellow eyes, dry skin, a thin healing line on his cheek where I opened it.

“Of course you don’t,” Renwick agrees.

“This is what we’ve been waiting for.” Vex doesn’t look away from me while he says it. “Second-last of my blood, Renwick. The last one is my brother’s boy, and he’s been held in detention for who knows how long. It comes down to me. It comes down to tonight, in this room, or the Vex line ends with two old males who never bred.”

“Then I’ll leave you to it. You have until the dose wears off. Don’t waste the hours arguing with her—she can hear you, but she can’t do anything about any of it.”

“I know how the drug works. Go.”

“Mind the fire. It’s high.” He says it the same flat way he’d warn a man about a step.

Renwick goes. Mrs. Nell folds a towel over the chair, touches my hair once, and follows him. The door closes behind them both.

Vex begins to undress. He does it slowly, and he isn’t rough, and he isn’t cruel. He’s an old man getting ready for a piece of work he’d rather have finished already. He sets his coat over the chair. He works at a cuff.

“This is a great honor for you, girl,” he says. “Keeping the clan line alive. Your name will be remembered.”

I keep my eyes open. I keep them on his face. “Fuck you,” I hiss.

“Unbecoming.” He shakes his head. “It will be a good thing that my child will be raised by those with respect for the true ways.” He unbuttons his shirt to reveal a pale, bony chest. He has to be millennia old. Dragons age so slowly that I don’t think I’ve ever met one who looks like him.

He stands at the foot of the bed and runs his eyes over my naked body. His nostrils flare and my skin prickles. But it doesn’t matter what that drug has done to my body. I’m sick to my stomach.

Get up. Get up, dammit!

He reaches for the front of his pants, and my flesh crawls. It takes everything in me not to squeeze my eyes shut and try to wish him away. But I won’t give him the satisfaction. I growl low in my throat and glare at him with every bit of disgust I can muster. Which is a lot of disgust.

And then my dragon comes up.

Not at him. At the door. She surges against the drug all at once, hard, her focus aimed at the wood. I don’t understand it, because I’ve felt this on the road and I’ve never once known what it means.

Something hits the wall outside. Heavy. Then shouting, close, and running.

Vex turns toward the door with his fly undone.

The door comes apart.

He’s in the room before the pieces of it hit the floor, and the smell of him comes with him. Blood, a lot of it; human, I’m sure of it. Cold night air comes off his coat. And under both, nothing; no sweat, no heat, no living smell at all.

He’s bigger in a doorway than I remembered. His mouth is red. There’s blood on both his hands and more of it down one sleeve, and his teeth are down, white and long. I have never seen anything move as fast as he moves across this room.