Rise of the Phoenix novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: Quill's Price

I let the coal out slowly.

Gold light spread across the barn floor and up the walls, and Garth's head came up.

"Emmi."

"I'm saying when," I said. "It's now."

I gathered him into my lap, blanket and all.

He was so cold that my arms ached to hold him.

The heat went out of my palms and into his back, his neck, the white bones of his wrists.

His whole body went slack against me with a groan I felt in my teeth.

"You passed," I said into his hair.

"I didn't know it was a test."

"It wasn't, until it was." My voice shook. "A design would have crawled. You sat in the dark and told a wall you wouldn't knock."

"Maybe it's a better design."

I laughed, wet and furious.

"Then I'll take it," I said. "I'll take the best thing they ever built, and I'll keep it, and they can choke."

He turned his face into my throat.

"Eighty-four," Hedda said from the doorway, reading the thermometer in his fist.

"Rising. Good. Now both of you listen, because the cat wants to sell us a bear."

Quill had been brought up from the cellar with her hands tied in front and a blanket around her.

She sat on a hay bale in the middle of the barn with Hedda's shotgun pointed politely at her knees.

She took in the two of us, the gold glow, the man in my lap, and the corner of her mouth went up.

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