Chapter 27 · Stage or Slab

The problem with Vera's plan is she keeps forgetting Kai gets a vote.

She's pacing the length of Mossan's back room like she's measuring it for a coffin. Her coat's half-open and the lamp throws her shadow across the wall in jagged streaks. Every third step she checks the door. Every fifth she looks at Kai like he's already dead.

"They want you at the rite," she says. Third time she's said it. "Tomorrow. Noon. Red Heron's main hall."

Kai's sitting on the table edge. His ribs still ache where the mark flared during the last fight and his knuckles are raw. "Yeah. I got that part."

"Luca's not asking. He's staging it. You walk in, he puts you in front of the clans, and the second you can't answer a blood question or fail a lineage test, he cuts you open and takes what's under your skin."

"So I don't go."

Vera stops. Turns. "You don't go, he sends his people here. To Mossan. To anyone who's helped you. And he takes my sister."

There it is. The thing she's been chewing on since they got back.

Kai exhales. "Your sister's got nothing to do with me.