Albert didn’t scoff, but his nostrils twitched slightly like he smelled something bad.“When he could simply call in and have transport at a satellite temple within hours?”
“Perhaps communications were cut off.Do we know who his liaison is?”Sara now studied Liv, who tried not to fidget.
Much.
“Where’s Erik?”She couldn’t help herself.He was the only familiar thing in all this insanity, and they’d handcuffed him, dragged him away.“I want to see him.”
“Did he make that?”Sara leaned forward, one of her hands freeing itself to gracefully indicate the necklace.
“Yule gift.”And I’ll bet someone made yours, too.But he probably wasn’t as nice.“Erik’s all right, okay?I didn’t like any of them, but they didn’t deserve… that.”
“Fostering dependence.Not moving herorcalling in immediately.”Albert wasn’t ticking points on his fingers, but he gave a good impression of wanting to.
Liv had an answer for that one, but she was beginning to suspect it wouldn’t satisfy them.“Ignatius said they were supposed to wait until the days were longer.”
The man’s eyes flashed, those blue star-pinpricks like Erik’s showing for a moment before being swallowed.“Standard procedure for the last decade is to bring the potentialimmediately?—”
“Albert,” Sara said, softly.“Not helpful.”
Amazingly, he dropped his gaze, staring somewhere between the two women.“Forgive me, my lady.”
“Of course.We’ll approach the questions of the control liaison and Islington being shuttered as soon as our new sister has been settled.”Sara’s smile looked unforced, unfeigned, and completely magnanimous.What was it like, being so calm?She returned her attention to Liv, tapping thoughtfully at her pretty mouth with one finger.“So, Erik gave you anoneiros.And he brought you to the Flame?”
“Well, he pushed me into the, uh, the hole.”Liv’s entire body ached, and she couldn’t help but shudder.“I get it, you know?It’s not the sort of thing you can explain, and if he’d tried, I probably would’ve fought.”
Probably?No, she would have tried to claw his eyes out, escape—and run right up the stairs into the monsters, if she could have gotten past him.Which was a very bigifindeed.
They might both have died down there, if she’d tried.In the dark.And all this talk about “Control” and “being shuttered” didn’t sound good at all.
“Well, you’re taking it more gracefully than I did.”Sara’s slight smile held an edge of pain.“It took me a long time to forgive my betrayer.”
“Betrayer?”Man, these people had a whole new language, even if they were using English for the spare parts.
“That’s what they call it.Betrayed to the Flame.”Sara exhaled, harshly, and for a moment something like pain flashed in her velvety dark eyes.“A potential can still live a normal life, for some value of the word.Alirai?Not so much.”
He didn’t tell me about that.Still, it made sense.“So he dunked me in it yesterday—I think it was yesterday, at least.Something happened.We drove most of the night to get here, and now I can’t turn off the radio in my head and?—”
“Radio in the head,” Sara murmured.“That’s a good way to put it.”
Liv couldn’t help herself.She looked at the door to the sitting room, invitingly open.Maybe she could reach it before the older guy caught her, maybe not.
Should she try?
“The rest of my Flight are in that room.”Sara’s gaze was disconcertingly direct.“Except the Youngers; they’re probably in the hall past it, first line of defense.It took some fifty mortal years for the blind urge to run stopped tormenting me.”
Fifty years?And there was that other little word too.
Mortal.
“You don’t look a day over twenty-eight,” Liv said, numbly.
“My, you’re polite.I would have said mid-thirties.We tend to stop when the Flame hits, but I’ve been around a while.Experience shows in the eyes, I think.”For a moment the other woman’s mouth turned down, and Albert made a restless movement near the fireplace.
A snowy night like this pretty much called for a nice crackling fire, but maybe the chimney was blocked so something couldn’t get down it.The image of a monster Santa Claus was horrifyingly detailed inside Liv’s head, and she flinched.Outside the windows, frozen feathers were still steady.
It wasn’t the individual flakes.It was the accumulation that caused problems.It piled up on you, and Liv was already exhausted from carrying so much.
“Fifty years.”Liv’s voice was a dry husk.“Mortalyears.”
