Page 84 of Flames and Blood

“When did you last eat?” I ask.

He glances over.

“That isn’t a useless question.”

“No. But you’ve watched me eat twice, and you haven’t taken anything. I’d like to know whether that’s manners or whether you’re rationing.”

“There’s a cooler in the back.”

“What’s in it?” I know it’s a stupid question even as I ask it.

“Blood, Kalli. I drink blood.”

“Oh. Right. I knew that.” My voice is small. I feel like an idiot.

A mile goes by.

Then, without my asking again, he says, “I fed at Aurora before we left. I’ll feed again when you’re safe with your clan. In between, I make do. I’d rather you didn’t have to watch it.”

“I’ve seen worse.”

“I know exactly what you’ve seen.” He says it flatly. “That’s the reason.”

I’m not sure how to answer that, so I don’t say anything.

“Your turn again,” he says, after a while. “What did you actually want to be, before all this? Not what an heir is supposed to want.”

“A pilot who never has to land anywhere important.” I say it before I’ve decided to. “I liked being up on the boundary lines more than anything else the clan gave me to do. Nobody up there needed anything from me. I could just fly the line and come home.”

“Flying the lines was a job too, wasn’t it?”

“It was a job I chose. That’s different.” I look over at him. “What about you? Before the alley, before any of it. What did you want?”

He’s quiet long enough that I think he isn’t going to answer.

“I don’t remember wanting much,” he says finally. “I was thirty-five and tired and working for men who didn’t pay on time. I wanted better work. That was all of it.”

“That’s a small thing to want.”

“Sometimes, the small things are the hardest.”

We drive another twenty miles before either of us says anything else.

Hours before the sky starts changing, he turns off onto a service road.

“There’s an Aurora safe house at the end of the road,” he tells me.

We stop at a cabin with one room, a wood stove, a single bed against the far wall, and a chair that’s seen better decades near the door.

He does the windows first. Tape, and a folded blanket over the one that faces east, then he stands back and checks it.

Then he looks at the chair.

I look at the bed.

“I’ll take the chair,” he says, before I can offer to take it myself.

“You always take the chair.”