Chapter 10: Aurelius, Lord Warden (Part Two)

While Nathan read over the file, Lord Warden Aurelius just smiled without a word. Only when he'd finished did he speak: "This entrance is on Elderrow. Elderrow is one of our bloodborn residential zones—no human can walk in. All you need to do is come stay at the old compound there now and then; the rest of the time you can ignore it completely. Are you satisfied with the job?"

Nathan nodded and was just about to say he was plenty satisfied when Wren yanked him over, grabbed the bronze key on his behalf, and said with the utmost care, "Please rest easy, Your Excellency. I live on Elderrow myself—I'll keep an eye on him and make sure he does the work."

Before Nathan could get a word out, Wren was pushing him out of the office—and out of the Cloudhall.

Aurelius watched the two of them go and smiled faintly to himself: "Who'd have thought somebody would awaken the Yggdrasil Line? Looks like Greyhaven can open up one more residential zone. The bloodborn population has bred up too big these days—there aren't enough houses to go around! Pity he didn't receive a lineage inheritance. He'll need a few more decades of nurturing first."

Aurelius strolled back to his office, utterly at ease. A good long while passed before the few bloodborn on duty at the Bureau dared to move—and every one of them moved like they were walking on eggshells...

Once they'd left the Cloudhall, Wren patted her chest, heart still thumping. "You have got some nerve, talking to Lord Warden Aurelius like that!" Nathan, bewildered, asked, "Did I say something I shouldn't have? He seemed really nice to me—your textbook warm-sweetheart side-character from a romance novel."

Nathan figured he'd made a deadpan joke and cracked up—then turned to find Wren's pretty face gone white. The bloodborn girl clutched his face in both hands, viciously, and with brute force pinned him against the Old Palace's red wall, saying coldly: "If you want to die, go die alone. Don't drag me down with you. Do you have any idea who Aurelius is? And you've got the mood and the guts to crack jokes?"

Nathan could tell something was off now. "Who is Aurelius?"

Wren spoke one word at a time. "Nobody knows what kind of bloodborn Lord Warden Aurelius is, and nobody knows where he came from. All you need to know is this: ten years ago, he fought the most famous great bloodborn of Western Europe—the Deep Sea Lord—in a duel on the Indian Ocean. He raised a tsunami. The death toll from the fallout topped two hundred thousand."

A chill of terror ran through Nathan; cold sweat broke out all over him. A great bloodborn who could kick up a tsunami that easily was just too horrifying.

Wren stared into his eyes; only after a long moment did she let go of his face. She said coldly, "Now you know how scary Lord Warden Aurelius is, right? Try not to joke about great bloodborn like that, and do your best to keep far, far away from those types. When they go berserk, nobody can promise they won't get swept up like little bugs—dead as cheap as weeds in a field."

Nathan nodded—but his head was still full of the afterimage of Wren pinning his face between her hands, pressing him against the wall. The girl's faint fragrance still seemed to hang around him, and the feeling was so new to him that his cheeks went a little red.

With Wren leading the way, they rode the bloodborn subway again and got off at the Elderrow stop. Out of the station, they were right inside Elderrow—and only a couple hundred meters from Wren's home. Her home was a quaint two-story little building with a sign out front showing a big golden pretzel, plus wicker bread-baskets by the door. Of the people passing by, a whole lot of them were picking up fresh loaves; business was honestly booming.

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Wren said hi to her parents, dropped off her book bag, grabbed two pastries, and handed them to Nathan with a big grin. Her parents were super friendly too—you'd never guess they were a pair of bloodborn. It gave Nathan exactly that feeling of visiting a female classmate's house and finding her parents are really nice people.

Chewing on his pastry, Nathan followed Wren to check out the abandoned Between's entrance. Had to be said: her family's pastries were fantastic—flaky and buttery, rich but not the least bit heavy. He'd eaten two and still wanted more.

The entrance to the abandoned Between was at the tail end of Elderrow. The area around it was fairly desolate, with just the one compound.

Unlike Wren's place, this one had rows and rows of hedges at the gate. Through the gaps in the hedge you could see a very spacious courtyard, the surroundings extremely serene and elegant; you could just make out a little stream gurgling around the compound, giving the small courtyard an almost storybook charm.

Nathan loved it at first sight. He walked up and flashed the bronze key, and the rows of hedge parted to either side, revealing a garden gate just wide enough for a person to walk through.

Barely had Nathan poked his head in for a look when Wren gave him a shove from behind, pushing him inside.

Wren didn't stand on ceremony either—after pushing Nathan in, she followed right along.

The moment the two of them entered the courtyard, the hedge behind them closed on its own, becoming an elegant, tranquil wall—no door, no window, and no trace left of the garden gate from moments ago.

Only after walking in did Nathan realize the courtyard was pretty big—about three hundred square meters or so—not just with a fountain and a foot-wide little stream looping around the compound, but also a three-story timber lodge. The view he'd caught through the hedge wall from outside was completely different from the real scenery inside. Nathan got it immediately: the place was screened by some illusion, shielding the owner's privacy from outside eyes.

Nathan thought: "Bloodborn really know how to live. If you could put a courtyard like this on the market, it'd trade for at least ten apartments of the same floor area inside Greyhaven's inner ring. Too bad this place isn't mine—I'm just the watchman. I don't even get tenancy rights."

Wren let out a soft whoop of delight and ran a lap around the courtyard, then said with a grin: "When I was little I always wanted to come take a look inside, but I didn't have the key, and with my bond-power I could never open this watchpost. Can't believe I finally got my wish today."

A smile crept onto Nathan's face too, and he thought to himself: "How great would it be to bring Isolde here to study every day?" Just thinking of Isolde, the smile spilled out of the corners of his mouth.

Wren didn't know he was thinking about Isolde—she figured he just really liked the place. She snorted a laugh and said, "Now that you've got your sigil ring, you can apply for charter housing. Want to move to Elderrow too?"

Nathan was mildly surprised. "Any bloodborn can apply for free?"

Wren nodded. "Any bloodborn can apply. Our Concord assigns housing for free—but you only get residence rights. Move out or die, and it goes back. You can't even leave it to an heir, and buying and selling is off-limits. All eighteen residential zones in Greyhaven are packed to bursting and charter housing is way too scarce; a unit only opens up when somebody dies or moves away. If you applied now, you'd still be waiting ages for a shot."

Nathan felt hugely disappointed!