Page 80 of Flames and Blood

“I’m sure,” I say.

“Good luck, my friend.” He claps me on the shoulder. “Let me know how that works out for you.” He turns and heads to his mate, leaving me staring after him.

Why must everyone speak in riddles around here?

I shake my head and stop thinking about it. I need to let Kalli know what the plans are. I find her in the passage outside the hall.

She’s standing with three people I don’t know, and she’s a different woman than the one who slept against my window. She’s answering an older dragon’s questions with short, correct sentences, and she looks completely at ease with them.

She’s royalty. She has a seat waiting for her. This is what she was raised to do. I watch her do it. For some reason, I don’t like watching it.

The older dragon says something about her mother. She gives him a nod and a phrase that seems to satisfy him.

Then she sees me over his shoulder.

Her whole face changes. Just for a second. Her shoulders come down an inch. Her mouth goes crooked, and it’s the face from the truck, the one she made when I told her I’m always this quiet.

Then it’s gone. The heir is back. She turns to the three of them.

“You’ll excuse me,” she says.

She comes over. The hallway’s noisy, and we have to raise our voices to speak to each other.

“Tell me you’re here to take me out of this building,” she says.

“We leave at nightfall. The road’s long, and I’d like to do it in one run.”

“How long?”

“Three days. More if the weather’s bad in the passes. There’s an Aurora house at the far end of the second night. We’ll lie up there through the daylight.”

“Three days.” She looks back down the hallway at the three of them waiting for her. “Three days without anybody asking me how I’m bearing up.”

“I won’t ask.”

“I know you won’t. It’s the single most restful thing about you.” She rubs her thumb over the new skin on her palm. “Everyone in that hall has been very kind to me for six hours.”

“And?”

“And I’d rather have been shouted at. Kindness has to be acknowledged. Being shouted at, you can just stand there and take it.” She glances back down the hallway. “Three days in a truck with nobody being kind to me sounds like a holiday.”

“I’ll be actively rude, if it helps.”

“Don’t overpromise.” Her mouth goes crooked again. “Nightfall, then.”

“Nightfall.”

She goes back to them. The chin comes up on the third step.

I stand there longer than I need to.

I’ve got three days of road ahead of me with her in the cab. At the end of it, I walk her through a gate, hand her to a clan that thinks she’s a ghost, and drive away.

Both my palms have healed clean. There’s nothing on either of them.

I put them in my pockets anyway.

Chapter 19