Page 95 of Flames and Blood

Kalli gets out and looks up at the stairs.

“Four or five hours, I think,” she says. “I’ve always flown.” Her lips purse. “I’ve never taken anybody up it who couldn’t fly. Maybe I should shift and fly us both in.”

“No.”

“What? Am I offending your manly sensitivities?”

“My sensitivities are just fine. I’m just not allowing your dragon to make a long trip under load after all you’ve been through.”

“But—”

“I said no, Kalli.” I shake my head. “You’ve already dealt with enough.”

Fuck. And I drank from her on top of it all.

“Besides, you might weaken and drop me,” I add.

She gives an outraged little snort. “I’d never drop you!”

“Let’s not put it to the test.” I get the pack out of the back and look at the sky over the wall while I do it. Black, and no edge on it anywhere yet.

“How long until it’s light?” she asks.

“Six hours. Less if the weather turns.”

“And if we’re still on those stairs when it comes?”

“That would be bad.”

“No, it wouldn’t, because I’d carry you out of there inside a minute.”

“I know you would.” I’ve already offended her once. I don’t plan to do it again.

She starts up the stairs. We climb. The steps are worn down in the middle, and they’re wet, and there’s no rail on the outside. After the first hour, my coat is soaked through at the shoulders. Her hair has gone dark with it.

The rock smells of water and cold iron. Under that, faintly, there’s a burned smell coming down the stairs from somewhere above us, dry and old, and it gets stronger the higher we go.

They stop us at the fourth turning.

Three of them come out of the rock on both sides at once, which means they were there for the last twenty minutes and I never heard one of them. That’s a first. I stop moving my hands and let them see both.

The burned smell is all around us now, and it’s coming off them. Two men and a woman. None of them draws anything, and there’s no reason for any of them to.

“That’s far enough,” the older man says.

“It is,” I agree.

He isn’t looking at me for more than a second at a time. He’s looking at Kalli, and he’s looking hard.

“Name yourself,” he says to her.

She’s pale and thin, and she’s in a coat and boots off a shelf at Aurora, her hair wet and pushed back. I doubt she looks anything like the woman they remember. And it doesn’t help that she’s come up this mountain on foot in the dark with a vampire.

“Aldis,” she says. “You taught me to knap a flint when I was six.”

He doesn’t move. “Name yourself.”

“Kallista Ondrathe. Heir of the Aldrake, of the Eyrie Seat. Daughter of the line of Ondrathe.”