Page 72 of Flames and Blood

“You look surprised,” Gideon says.

“I thought it would be a facility.”

“Everyone does, the first time.”

I peer around, taking it all in. There are things living here that are not entirely human. I pick up the scent of wolves. The prickle of magic. Entities that appear human but have more beneath the surface.

And then there’s something else. A woman is waiting where the passage opens out. Small. Blond hair loose. A man stands behind her shoulder with one hand near her back.

I know her face.

They walked her past my cell every morning. Each time, I got half a second of her from the side. Blond hair, hollow cheeks, a jaw held very straight. She never once looked frightened.

“You’re smaller than I thought,” I say.

She stops walking.

“Kalli?”

“Serenity Sangrey. You’re definitely smaller. You sounded taller through the wall.”

Her hand comes up over her mouth. Then she’s across the floor and into me. Her arms come around me. I hold her too, even though it doesn’t come naturally to be this close to someone anymore.

“They moved you,” she says into my shoulder. “I got out, and I told them everything I knew. Your cell number. The hallway. I gave it to Crowe the same night.”

“I know. He found me.”

“I kept thinking they’d move you again before he could reach you. Or that you’d fight them and they’d stop being careful with you.”

“I did fight them.”

“Of course you did.” She pulls back and looks at me. Her eyes are wet. She wipes at them hard with the back of her wrist, twice. She laughs. It comes out cracked. Mine isn’t much better.

The man behind her steps forward. He’s dark-haired and lean and better dressed than anyone else in the hall, and he moves like a man who has never had to hurry.

“Bastien,” he says.

I look at him. The man who came to see us in the hallway at the facility. Who came to choose one. He chose Serenity.

“You’re him.” My eyes narrow.

“I am.” He doesn’t apologize.

“You drank from her.”

The room around us stays quiet. Serenity doesn’t move.

“I did,” he says. Still not apologizing.

“I told her you’d get bored eventually. That you’d either drain her one night or hand her back down the pipeline when she stopped being interesting.”

“You told her that because it was the sensible expectation.” He holds my eyes. “You were right to say it. I’d have said it to her myself.”

“And?”

“And I didn’t do either of those things.”

“He didn’t,” Serenity says quietly. “There’s a lot more to it than what we expected. I’ll tell you all of it. But not right here. Not tonight.”