Page 73 of Flames and Blood

I look at his hand. It sits at the small of her back. It hasn’t moved once since he stepped forward. She hasn’t shifted away from it either.

I’ve spent a year reading people from the wrong side of bars. She isn’t simply tolerating him. They’re together.

Well, hell.

“All right,” I say. “Not tonight.”

“Thank you,” he says.

“That wasn’t for you.”

He smiles as if that doesn’t bother him at all.

“Come,” he says. “There are people who wish to see you.”

They take me further in, to a hall built for gatherings. Long tables have been pushed back against the walls. Today the room is full of people standing in tight groups, talking low.

Then I feel them. Dry heat that isn’t coming from the fire. Stone under it. More than one source, from three directions at once.

Dragons.

My spine locks before I’ve found a single face. The last room I was in with more than one dragon in it, I was drugged and naked on a bed.

I make myself breathe. Nobody here is looking at my hips. Nobody here is pricing me at all.

Two men come away from a group. Same height. Same dark hair. The same face, except one of them smiles on the way across the floor and the other doesn’t.

Twins.

“Caleb Craven,” says the one who reaches me first. “My brother, Dorian. That’s Ysabelle Faine by the window, of the Nocturne Court.”

The woman at the window doesn’t turn around. Tall and narrow, in a dark suit cut close, her hair pulled back so tightly it looks like it might give her a headache. She’s the only person in this hall who hasn’t looked at me since I came through the door.

“Kallista Ondrathe. Heir of the Aldrake, of the Eyrie Seat.” I announce it while wearing a vampire’s shirt with the cuffs rolled twice. Nobody laughs.

The room goes quiet.

“Say that again,” Caleb says.

“Heir of the Aldrake.”

“The Aldrake seat is recorded as fallen.” He says it carefully. “Two hundred years. There’s a story about it. The last of your line flying into a storm off the north face and never coming down. I heard it at a fire as a boy.”

“That isn’t what happened. We went quiet on purpose. We’ve been hidden for two hundred years.”

“I believe you. I’m telling you what every clan on this continent believes.” He doesn’t soften it. “They don’t think your people are hiding. They think you’re extinct.”

I knew we were hidden. Nobody ever told me the rest of the world had buried us and made up a story about it.

“Not everyone thinks we’re gone,” I tell them.

Caleb raises an eyebrow. “How so?”

“Gideon just pulled me out of a facility where they planned to breed me. They knew exactly what I was.” My jaw tightens. Someone pulls in a breath.

“What?” Caleb’s brow furrows.

Dorian hasn’t spoken. He’s gone still. His eyes have narrowed.