Page 28 of Tempting Death and Destruction

Quillion interjects from the seat next to me. “While I am not quite certain how to rate Ice Queendom on the chart, I would be more than enthusiastic if you would prefer to skip Court today and accompany me to the border, Elysia.”

“You?” I raise a brow.

“Yes, I am the blood bishop Neo is sending.”

* * *

“Quillion,”I reach over and touch his arm from the opposite side of the carriage. “You never told me you were a scientist.”

He shrugs and adjusts his ascot. “You never asked.”

“Did you just bust my chart?” I tease my lips into a smile as warmth curls into my heart.

Quillion shakes his head and folds his hands in his lap, a few chocolate brown curls tumbling onto his sienna brown cheek. “I don’t do charts.”

“And that’s why I love you. Why everyone loves you, Quill.” I get up from my seat and sidle up against him, tucking my head onto his shoulder so my curls cover his ascot.

Quillion weaves one arm around my shoulder and squeezes me in a tight hug as the carriage ascends to the causeway reserved for bishops. “Aww, thank you, sweet girl. It is quite irresistible tonotlove you, too.”

I sigh and settle against him as the carriage rolls onward. Though the Walls are still a few miles away, I can make out the hoard of homeless encampments and cargo trains in the distance spread out like moving barbs of figures to form a rippling black ocean along the snowy expanse. A deep weight settles in my chest at the thought of all those people. I balance on a tightrope of emotions that threatens to undo me—too reminded of every time I rescued children from the Underground, the soul-saving business. My Halo responds by forming the imagery of little golden birds fluttering out of my chest like it’s an open cage.

Quillion chuckles as he lifts a hand toward one of my little birds. Smiling, I tilt my head to the side, hovering one above his palm. She opens her beak to chirp. No true music, of course, but I imagine musical notes, and she obeys the direction of my mind, my heart. Just a little something I figured he’d appreciate.

“Chopin…” Quillion nods and presses his hand to his chest. “Thank you.” Then, he folds his hand into mine while my birds flap around the carriage. “Tell me about the Underground. How did you get involved?”

Pursing my lips, I study the scenery outside the window, but my mind is far away, wandering onto the footnotes of the past. “It started with me taking pictures and leaving gifts. I’d leave my home just before sunset,” I recall my history.

Even now, I can scent the familiar earthy Redwoods around my home. But it fades to the memory of smoke and flames of the human blood farms, the iron stench of leached blood, the salt sweat of so many bodies massed together, and even the feces of the elderly and children left unattended and not given fresh clothes or diapers.

Empath Elysia rattles her cage, and a tear rolls down my cheek, a whimper threatening my voice. “I remember the crack of the whip from the vampire overseers,” I confess the images of deep, dark brands in my memory. My golden birds turn violent from my rising emotions, their wings beating wild with flames flickering from their beaks.

Quillion squeezes my hand, rubbing his cold fingers along my knuckles, freeing me to continue.

Comforted by his gesture, I go on, “I remember how the blood masters would stand by and laugh when their overseers would lick the blood spilling from their backs. I remember babies crying when they were ripped from their mothers and bones breaking when those mothers would fight back.”

Unashamed of my emotion, I swipe at flaming golden tears, scattering their embers to the bottom of the carriage.

“You must have loathed our kind,” Quillion mentions, but I shake my head.

“Never. My father was a vampire, and save for you, he was the most honorable and kindest vampire in the world.” I cross my arms, holding my shoulders to protect my fragile chest, to protect the ache from the memory of Thanatos taking me to my father. “I hatedthosevampires, I lamented for the humans, I cried out in my heart for justice while capturing everything I could on camera.”

Tethering my birds, I draw them back into the cage of my chest before they risk setting the carriage on fire. “Nothing happened overnight, Quill.” I squeeze his hand while he tilts his chin to my hair. “It was a slow process. First, I sent the images to the Underground through anonymous internet messages. Dad helped me cover my tracks because I know how easy it is for the Tenth Court’s hackers to trace some messages. But it wasn’t enough.

“I kept going back, getting as close as I could. I covered myself in bone powder. I used my lesser powers to hide myself from the overseers. I started by bringing the children food, little gifts…whatever I could to lift their spirits.”

I recall the light in their eyes whenever I’d return—like pinpricks of haloes. Some eyes…I would never see again. I bury my face in my hands—full-on Empath Elysia, and sob. The children were the most precious of treasured light. Their thin, little fingers would curl toward the fence gaps, aching for my candy, for my trinkets—ones I told them to bury so the overseers wouldn’t see while I smuggled bags of canned items to their parents. All were Nora and Alice to me.

“And one day…” I sigh and touch my chest to retrieve my star-fire and spin it into the form of a young woman. “A teenage mother begged me to take her infant son because the overseers were going to brand him for a Court O’ Sevens’ blood master’s manor.” I show Quillion the golden image of the woman, who was barely older than marrying age—and the baby—no bigger than our fingers, a meager, little image of my snapshot of memories. “Something happened in me that day. I’d felt little twinkles before. But it was the first time I believe I truly felt my Halo. For years, my mother trained me, but I could never control my emotions. I could never unleash it like she wanted me to. But that night…I took the baby.”

I swipe at more tears because of how close I came to losing him. I pour out everything in the carriage to Quillion. “He felt so beautiful! Like holding a baby angel. He felt like…Moses!” I grin at the code name Jesula, our Underground Queen, and I adopted for all future children we rescued. “The overseers tracked my pure blood. They got so close. But my mother arrived in the nick of time and dealt with the overseers before they encroached into our territory.”

Quillion angles his head to the side. “But didn’t Father strike a bargain with the Phoenix Queen?”

“He did, but she agreed to let him have the world without interference.” I trace Halo light into the window, patterning threads into roses. “She still found ways to bend the rules but not break them.” With one flick of my wrist, the rose shatters into petals. I sigh, piecing my heart back together one bit at a time.

“So, she bent the rules for you that day?”

“Yes.” I feel a smile tugging the corners of my mouth. “We kept the baby. And she put me in touch with my uncle, who already had Underground connections. He brought me to my first meeting. And that was how I met Jesula.”

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