POVs marked with an * include triggers some audiences will not agree with/be able to read through. If you cannot finish, just go ahead and skip to the next chapter.

JEZEBEL

October 16th

"Jimson hierba?" The shop woman repeated.
I picked at the lace of my fingerless gloves on top of the scratched up counter, nodding.
"Sí, cuatros tallos," I sounded more confident than I looked.
"¿Por qué?" She conspicuously asked. "¿Por quién?"
"Por mí," I flatly replied, eyes on the cyan ceiling and walls. "No me preguntes. Por favor."
She began to browse the shelf behind her, lined with cracked crates and glossy jars, and plants accurately lined up with prisms near the windows escorting more light into their petals and leaves.
"...¿Es un agente paralizante?" I dared to clarify.
She slowly took her hands out of a high-placed crate, looking me up and down as if i were a beggar child. "Más por humanos, sí."
"¿Qué de brujas?" I sighed.
She nodded with a very tiny twitch of a smile on the left corner of her red apple mouth. "¿Crees que puedes hacerles cualquier cosa que no puedan deshacer?"
"Ya veremos," I shrugged.
I pulled a decent-sized roll of money from my sleeve and set it in front of her expectantly.
"We don't take currency," she notified while eyeing me between my brows.
She stared and stared until I caught on.
"...Quieres comercio," I guessed, placing a hand on my hip.
"No lo dije. ¿Pero...a ver. ¿Qué podrías ofrecer?" She acted.
Challenging her gaze, I leaned forward and smiled mockingly. "Lo que quieras. Soy un ángel. Desde arriba, más o menos."
"Palabras muy peligrosa." She nodded at me and placed a diligently curved blade in front of me, a mosaic dragon on its grip. "Blood is valuable witch trade. Especially the blood of mixed breeds. A full pint. Slice horizontally, it's easier to stitch up."
A burly hand intervened between us and stabbed the knife into the counter on the shop witch's side of bargain.
"That won't be necessary," gleamed Klaus, putting a hand on my shoulder. "Unless, you're looking for a loss in income which I can assure you, you'll give what you can to our newcomer and leave it at that."
The witch looked between me and him, connecting us in imaginary or realistic ways in her head. She shut her mouth, turning away and looking at one dark-red tinted jar amongst all the other transparent containers. She didn't open it, or show us anything to do with it. It was there on the counter for taking.
She noted, "Water hemlock and castor bean will react to the natural toxins in any loose leaf tea; it should turn it red, like hibiscus sap. Grind these down until the liquid within is dried up. Sit it out for a while and then, keep grinding into a powder."
Her eyes maneuvered to the satisfied man beside me.
"And what did I say to you about coming in here again?"
"I'm already gone, as far as you're concerned. Get back to work," Klaus rode on her cynicism.
Disappearing into the back rooms of the shop, I turned to him in the quiet of the dusty shop. "What are you doing?"
"Rescuing you from making a rather idiotic mistake, I'd say. The witches have a well-spread out chain of bloodletting around the city. Whatever they do with your essence has a good chance of you reaping the result," he grabbed my wrist and tapped it condescendingly.
Taking it away, I waved him away from my personal space and picked up the jar.
"So you can see I'm desperate," I said, walking past him to the exit. "What are you doing here, I heard you can't come into this part of the city?"
Klaus hummed in affirmation, his shadow clinging to my back and his body temperature, too. "And who told you the incompetent doctor's aid who escorted you from the outskirts?"
I got a lot of attention from the commuters who lived in the same rural area as myself. That particular day a married man thought to show me to the place I needed to go.
"You were following me," I said, making a joke of it. "So, what say you about my elderly escort? Do you think he likes me?"
Klaus cocked his head a bit, moving himself to my right side to keep in time with my stepping. "He undoubtedly liked the back of your dress."
I released an amused sigh through my nose and rolling my eyes.
He proceeded to answer my question, "The witches have put in place a patent set of rules; none have been negotiated thus far, so why abide by them? This is still my territory."
Adjusting the slope in my dress shoulder, I put the jar away in the cloth bag I brought with me. "You make it appear as though we're in the wilderness."
"You'll come to adjust the animalistic manners of this place eventually. We'll see how ridiculous it sounds by then."
I look up at him and his smug expression.
"I believe you," I regressed my response.
Some places adopt a spirit with more of a psyche than any one of its inhabitants. I knew the second I crossed over its borderline, New Orleans was no different.
"So, then you're prepared for this next bit," he developed on his thesis. "My brother's found a woman he'd like to ordain into our family via one of our famous parties come this weekend. Seeing as I'll be the odd man out for dancing alone, I'm in need of company."
I crossed my arms, looking about the havoc in the street behind us aloofly.
"What if the incompetent doctor's aid has already held me to such plans?" I caustically rumored.
Klaus chortled, playing along with a foolish nod as he folded his hands behind his waistcoat. "I don't consider his wife to be a majorly open woman; not enough to let him break matrimonial code and visit a ball he wasn't invited to with a younger woman."
Lips sucked in, I stopped on the end of our busy road and looked towards the trees in the distance as I thought aloud, "If it's your brother's party, shouldn't he be the one extending me an invitation?"
Running a hand over his cravat, he ran with my questions as charismatically he could. "Chaperone or not, I am still the alpha around here, love. All my invitations are valid, whether he likes it or not."
I laughed, much to his visibly confused agitation.
He scrutinized, "Do I amuse you?"
I answered him with a parted smile, "I will go with you. But I hope I am not going with the alpha. He seems...like a stale broad."
His firm frown swiftly changed into a grin as we parted ways.
I lazily gestured my bag at him as I left him there, a horse and carriage passing between us. "Thank you for your intervention."

October 17th

The water hemlock generates a smell a lot like nettle when it is mixed into the steeped drink I'd prepared when Celeste barged in that morning. I set the teapot irritably in front of her, knowing better than to offer it to her or show her kindness. It was bad enough I was trying to kick her when she was nowhere near being down.
"You could sit down and listen to me," Celeste windlessly suggested from the desolate little dining table across the room.
"Or I could stand far away and listen as you try to explain to me why you are getting married to a Mikaelson! It's ridiculous and you know it!" I slammed the damp kitchen rag in my hands down onto the counter through the doorway where I could see her. "What is he for?"
"How do you mean?" she intoned, tipping the brown clay teapot over to release a few ounces of tea into her cup.
"I mean, what goal does he achieve if I'm all you need?" I clarified, aggravated.
Suspiring in the hostile spirit of the room, she planted her long hands into the top of the heavy table and rose from her seat to meet me. "I have a duty to the murder. It doesn't mean I've looked right past the world and what it has to offer. I get to pick the people I want to save and...Elijah loves me. Why wouldn't he need me?"
I still remember the way she made it sound, more one-sided than not. It somehow made Celeste seem more human in little ways; she loved to be loved but didn't know how to give it.
I spat, "You make it sound like I have a choice when you've given me none."
"Do you really believe that?" she tripped over my victimhood. "Then, what's this?"
Celeste flashes me the invitation that had come to my door that morning, inscribed with Klaus's perfectionist handwriting. "As it seems, you've been added to my list of guests at the engagement party tomorrow. How could that be? Since when does the hybrid reach out to a girl he doesn't know? Let alone, a witch."
I never said that and Celeste never asked, but there was no point in arguing with someone older and stronger. I pulled it out of her hand, only hoping I could have left her a paper cut and tucked it into the pocket at the top of my pale yellow skirt.
"I'm surprised you didn't somehow orchestrate this to keep an eye on me. It's your party, no? You're the one about to make a happy, powerful man miserable?" I hoisted my brows at her.
"Oh, you would think," she denigrated, nodding her head and wide in the eyes, "yet you're wrong. The heinous manchild, the filthy hybrid trying to get a taste of your helpless bones has motives of his own. You'd dare put the Murder's messiah at risk?"
My hands laid into the flat fabrics of my skirt between my knees on the West-facing redwood table chair as I lurched forward with irritation.
"Morirás sin importar lo que haga. Chingada cobarde," I insulted her under my breath.
Like the whip of a horse's tail, her hand fled across my face and drew a fine line across my cheek. I held onto the squealing wound, already dripping and puffy from provocation.
Celeste takes a step back, looking at me in a slightly relieved fashion to have acted on something she had held back on for a long time. "Es un riesgo honorario que tomaremos. No olvide que tú es la que muere de cualquier manera. Trata de no estar muy orgullosa. You'll go and you'll tell him not to trouble you anymore. You're a dullard to think Klaus Mikaelson can do anything to help you and you will do well to help them understand this."
She continued to strut out the foyer door without ever having taken a drink of the poison.
I threw the invitation from my pocket past me onto the armchair in the open den behind me, running a hand through my hair, distressed.
My eyes fell over the sharp fabric edge peeking out from underneath the elongated loveseat that was coming to be void of stuffing like I was of ideas. Collecting myself, I pulled the second half of Klaus's delivered invitation out from hiding, hesitantly opening the lid to have another look.
The dress had a slim skirt, purposely staggering its blood orange fringes that fell gracefully away from the black ribbon around the high waistline. The back was cut deeper than the front, the sheer satin ruffles at the sleeveless shoulders following its V-formation to come together at my middle back.
Putting my hair behind my ear, I left it sitting on the floor and went to throw out the castor-hemlock tea. Stalled in a crouch, my mind momentarily fuzzed over like a days-old fruit when I found myself sitting next to a bright red floor that was stealthily growing out of a crevice between two loose floorboards keeping me above the dirt foundation of the house. Its cone shape birthed a second flower right off its tongue. And another and another, until it was almost too heavy to stand upright on a thick stem. I hovered my face over it, a droplet of blood landing on the externally bred leaf attached to the lower part of the stem. Soon enough, that leaf was its own branch, and the blood from my fist coating the stem grew more and more stems.
I pulled the sapling of red flowers out of the floorboards before it could make them expand, heading for the kitchen's back exit.
I dug a hole in the dirt at the side of the house quickly and with my bare hands, backing up to watch the sapling grow into a meager, blood red ceibo tree.

REBEKAH

October 18th

The idea of an engagement party reflected as one that could be the best time for building bridges instead of burning them. Planning it wasn't easy, though, this family's forte lies in throwing parties even a Gatsby couldn't imagine. Gathering a crowd, presenting to them the best wines and entertainment, a few family squabbles and scandals, and the night would be over before it had begun. Living it somehow became the most difficult part. I realized I was celebrating the fact I'd be giving one of my brothers away to someone outside this family. I'd be the only one left to wrangle Niklaus, who hadn't listened to a thing I'd said since we were children. I hold onto the notion, still, that if I had not wasted my time and told Niklaus I was planning to turn Emil, perhaps we would have been where Elijah was then; I had the notion that a lot of things would have been alright if I had just said something beforehand.
For the first hour, I sat in sticky denial that I would ever walk out of this city holding the love of my life's hand without Nik detaching it from his body.
And then, I saw the face of this vision swimming in the obscurity of his own livid drunkness. Happily, he sung a vulgar song about the bride-to-be and her "poor son of a bitch" with the friends I made clear were meant to deny their pitiful invitatons. Emil nearly toppled over the stone mosaic table I had handcrafted and imported from Tuscany last year, but he caught his footing and made it to the wall beside the doorway I stood in with a disgusted look on my face.
"There you are," chirped Emil, coming to kiss me with the horrid scent of vomit and alcohol on his breath. "Oh, I've missed you."
Putting a hand between us for distance, I sighed hopelessly. "Emil, the party started but an hour ago. How in the hell are you this far gone?"
He laughed obnoxiously and then did his best to compose himself after another sip. "Oh, come now. You should join me! It's a special occasion, you know, for the—! Pretty lass on the street corner..."
They broke into song all over again, horrifically misremembering themselves in the presence of a lady.
With Emil's back turned, I take the chance to remove the whiskey-filled glass from his hand and throw it narrowly past his head, hitting the most tone-deaf of his friends and knocking him unconscious.
"If you aren't Emil, I'm going to ask you go and enjoy the rest of the party without him. We need a moment," politely, I announce to the remainder of the group.
They filed out like dogs called to lunch, Emil leaning on our green Persian sofa chairs.
"What's wrong with you?" he mumbled in vexation.
I scolded, "Why would you do this? In my brothers' house of all places. Do you even want a chance for us to make it to year's end or not?"
"That's odd, I don't remember you complaining this much about it last night," he moaned excitably, coming towards me again.
His head awkwardly falls into the crook of my neck, arm around me not for affection but for physical support.
"A party with three hundred guests is different. Get off me!" I hissed.
Limbo-ing away from me, he leaned back against the chair once more.
"You worry far too much, love...I am the next governor, an honest man. And I am going to help them make New Orl—"
"And they can replace you in a second's notice. You promised me...you were going to try harder than this. You promised," I bemoaned.
"I try hard!" he had an outburst. "I try hard to put up with your expectations, your rules, your lewd- Louis- Ludicrous family laws and what do I get? Horse ssshh—"
He coughed hard and devilishly as if he might regurgitate again.
Rules. All I had wished was that he be able to show a humble face in the presence of my family, to show a sober face, a happy face, a poker face— ...Enough faces to fool even me.
I had nothing more to say to him that night. I shut those parlor doors and let him grovel, hoping he wakes up in a pile of his own guts.
I almost walked into a familiar face as I turned. Surprise, surprise. It was the girl from the docks.
"I beg your pardon, but didn't I leave you to die a few days ago?"
Looking me over in disinterest, she answered me, "In theory."
"You know you're a lot less threatening when you aren't using the words 'white oak' and 'bullets'," caustically, I said.
She honeyed her voice and pitifully furrowed her brows. "I sincerely apologize that ambushing me was such a traumatic experience for you. You must hardly be able to leave your home without fretting someone will point an empty rifle at you."
She came off right away as a slippery one, her only rough edge being that tongue of hers. The expensive dress was a giveaway, just as well. She had to be the girl Nik thought he was discreetly beckoning into his lain trap.
"Estimating by that careless pout, you're the girl my brother invited," I guessed aloud. "I thought he was done with courting his meals, but I chance there's a relapse for every basis under the sun."
"What my sister means to say is you look ravishing and she's happy to be hosting us tonight." Klaus put a hand on her lower back as he approached, warning me with the tinge of enthusiasm in his voice to not so much as look at the veins in her neck going forth.
I dipped my head at her politely, though, she didn't do the same for me.
"Ceibo root," she interrupted my greeting, "If it gets into a vampire's system it can cause clotting and biochemical burns. You would have had an aneurysm at most if you swallowed, but if you had completely gone for it, your brain would stop working for days and your brother would be feeding you blood through a funnel to keep you alive."
The explanation she was giving for the burning sensation in my throat that night seemed almost harmless in the gorgeous way she spoke it, her pronunciation tempted by her Spanish fluency.
There were oceans more shallow than her smile. "Oh. My name is Jezebel. If you were interested."
My eyes went to my brother's. Ceibo root. Vampire Comatose. Jezebel. Of course, the first three things I learned about this girl screamed of a nightmare. Klaus simpered in response to my face, as if he was damn proud of his pick of the city's litter.
"Run along. I would go check on your junior governor. I hear he's lauded enough by a Merlot these days, he's lapping it out of a bowl," Klaus goaded me, gesturing with his hand to leave him alone with his young suitor.

JEZEBEL

I'd got through the first minute of him leading me through our first dance with complete reserve. In all fairness, I thought he might have been the kind to just keep talking or to hardly notice if I wasn't listening. He seemed to be genuinely unperturbed with just watching me while I stared at Celeste. I was trying to guess the words that were coming out of her mouth to two very familiar looking women; I could only guess they were the ones who had given me an unwelcome pelvic exam a few days ago. I'm sure based on what Celeste has shared with me thus far that the Seraphi's number was smaller in this house than in others because it was bad enough the coven Celeste openly bonded with was already occupying half the room. Or did the New Orleans coven already realize that she was delegating with this separate cultish group of women disciples? All plotting a hell of a demise for them.
Celeste couldn't have loved Elijah; or maybe she did and she believed somehow she could keep him exempt from whatever came next. I was clear on the position we were all playing, but why did it have to involve him?
"You're distracted," Klaus claimed.
I snap out of my train of thoughts, looking at him and then losing sight of the lady of the evening.
"I'm sorry if I was too impertinent earlier. I thought for future reference, she should know I'm a forward thinker," I excused, readjusting my slipping hand on his shoulder and warmer palm.
"I can't say she didn't deserve to have her feathers ruffled a little. And no better person to do it, really. Exactly how many vampires did you intend to clash with on this journey of yours?" Klaus talked above the orchestral music.
Truthfully, I replied, "I didn't. I've never met one until now."
He raised his brows with intrigue. "And?"
Disenchanted, I tilted my head with and furrowed my brows. A short-lived exhale of a laugh escaped me when I realized he was expecting some fantastic reaction story from me.
"And one bit me, so I would say the thrill is fleeting and I'm not overly snowed," I commented.
The tempo slowed, and so did the rest of the dancefloor.
"To be expected from one of the most fearless girl to walk these streets."
That seemed to be a common mistake people had made with me. Fearless was easy to mistake for pissed off. And even if he did mean "fearless", it most likely was to one of the compliments he'd tried on other women before.
I'd seen the way he looked at me when he first approached me. His eyes made a sharp "W" trail over my face like the pattern of the beauty marks that stood apart from the warm beige and brown in my complexion. He followed them down to the few on my neck, on my chest and arms without bending his head once.
His intentions were clear the second he took the lead, and I was more or less clueless of how to let him down gently. It wasn't something I'd had to deal with before. I didn't want to make too much conversation with him. I just had to thank him and disappear for eight months into the humid darkness of my stolen property.
I started it off, "The dress— You didn't have to do that. I could have—"
"You didn't sound entirely enthused the prior time I'd asked," he concluded.
I shook my head gently, despite my intentions to put it straight that I'd be returning it to him tomorrow.
"No, I wasn't," I told him. "I'm not the biggest fanatic of Celeste DuBois. We have somewhat of a history, apparently."
I counted every time I'd looked away from him by the number of times he delicately pushed in my middle back so we could be closer.
"Apparently," Klaus repeated, curious.
We were getting off track again. I didn't want to explain a two-year gap in my memory, only because it ended with the extremely vivid image of waking up to hundreds of witches waiting for me to step outside my realm of safety and put the immaculate conception inside me. I kept it brief.
"My memory isn't the best it could be; not in comparison to other people. Her name has only been mentioned to me once before in the case she was one of my mother's friends," I vaguely replied.
Celeste and Elijah introverted themselves from everyone else up on the second level overlooking their large celebration hall. At first glance, it did feel as though Celeste loved Elijah. I don't think I'd ever seen the man laugh as much, smile as much, or for the matter, forget there were hundreds of strangers in his home. Doubtfully, I slid my gaze away as she lovingly clung to his arm and whispered something in his ear.
"And should I gain reason to fret?" Klaus wondered.
I sucked in my lip at first and let out my honest voice on an exhale. "Aren't you already? It's so hard, seeing your brother become vulnerable to new people. You want to shield him, but—"
"You risk their resentment of you," he finishes my sentence for me, bowing his head in understanding. "You have siblings."
"Three adult brothers. Cada uno es más tonto que el anterior, por supues'... And more hopeful than I ever was. My only ambition was what I had."
The way he smiled at me told me he understood, even if only a single word.
"And has that changed?"
Lau, the oldest, wanted to take over the pack; he wanted the legacy more than any of us did. Marco wanted to be writer... Rejected enough times, he turned to the drink; another legacy in need of fulfillment. Matías, youngest, had been gone for some years when he became a devoted revolutionary. It seemed like all ambition did was waste us. So what will happen if my only ambition is to live? To figure out why ambition is so cruel?
"More or less," I mechanically answer.
Romperlo. Ahora es el tiempo.
"I'm saying I can comprehend what this feels like, but the whole point of getting to be a guest is to take advantage. It's a party, one where you can still enjoy your brother's company now. Doesn't that sound better than dwelling on the conditions?" I was practically begging him to strand me so I wouldn't have to cut him out cold.
That'd always been a problem of mine. As much as I'd like to play the bitch, altruism controlled me like night and day. Mierda.
He suggested, "I think it'd be ridiculous of me to abandon my escort, especially after less than two hours. We are still building that bridge, aren't we?"
He beamed his winning grin at me, the framing rose color of lips and shadowy green of his eyes all entertaining me with the thought of it only being for me.
"You're not going to make me carry you to your home again, are you?" I teased.
His hand had now traveled a clear three inches down towards my lower back.
Klaus purred, "I'm behaving myself so far, aren't I?"
For a moment, I forgot that we had stopped moving and that the morendo in the music was already upon us. The guests go above and beyond in demands for an encore just as I'm noticing the cold material that grazes off my palm with Klaus's hand. He's wearing a ring that is close in detail to the one I took off the vampire boy I'd killed.
"Did you ever find out who that ring belonged to? The one the Millers found?" I hinted.
He caught my bouncing glance on and off the ring and his face.
I followed him off to the side of the room, underneath the grand stairway of the second level.
He illustrated, "There were four of us in total once. It's one of the rings made to share between us brothers."
My heart jumped so high, it could have flown over a fieldstone.
Continued Klaus, "I can't say I'm astounded he took it off. Kol always was the least reliable, regardless, he was the only one who would never say no to helping me paint the town red. I must've been fooled to think we'd reached a good place."
When my thudding heartbeat came down from a soaring 170 beats per minute, it slid all the way back down into my throat and then ball-dropped into my stomach.
"Your brother," I repeated quiescently. "He was your brother."
Suddenly, I couldn't remember what I had to tell him anymore. I could only see the boy's face. He had the same round eyes, matching waves of shoulder-length hair; his voice was only a tinge higher than Klaus's, too.
I had never thought I'd be killing someone's brother. I was just afraid for myself, for what I saw when the boy, Kol, touched me.
Feeling ill again, I kenned that I had nothing left to discharge since that morning.
Had I held back, though, Kol would have put me in danger. Right?
"But to hell with nasty sibling behaviors. We should act on your advice, and just enjoy the night," he evaded the subject.
Mechanically, I took the offered glass of wine from Klaus's hand and stared at its dark red color scheme stiffly.
"Did you ever think it was him, not you?" I couldn't help but try to find some justification for what I was feeling.
Maybe I was right, doing what I did. I could get Klaus to remember all the horrible things that had transpired between him and Kol and then he wouldn't feel so harmed by his absence. I could do that, but by then, I'd practically be Celeste.
He continued, "An identity crisis suggests he has the time and space to relax on a riverbank in the French Riviera and contemplate if today is the day he shifts his eating habits to animal blood only. And if you knew the half of it, you'd understand the sheer paranoia a lost ring could bring to this household."
An onlooking Celeste on the dancefloor watched me carefully with my noxious glass in hand. To that, I took the entire thing down my tense throat in one fluent motion. Klaus himself watched with the full intent to goad me for it. "Now who's carrying who back home tonight?"
I kept on the subject. "Did Celeste know Kol?"
"I tend to think Elijah would be glad I'm here and Kol isn't. The only person who loathed her more than me was him."
"Why is that?"
His tone was more careless than before in regards to his missing brother. "Some bloodless trial regarding a tyrant and his heir. Without any doubt, Celeste had something to do with the antagonistic number of heretics on his back. He must have gotten over it, found a new damsel to bother with his tricks."
O tal vez ella esté aquí, preguntándose si enterró a un amigo y no a un enemigo.
The sound of glass ringing in repeated patterns gathers everyone's attention except mine.
"I'd like to thank you all for coming to this glorious event that I thought was beyond my reach," Elijah's voice rejoiced from our far right side.
I watched Celeste taking his hand like a warm, submissive wife.
"Ideally, our brother Kol would have been here to complete the wedding party, but he remains abroad for the time being. Nonetheless, my lovely sister Rebekah and ever so...enduring brother, Niklaus, do complete my content that my family is present to witness my marriage to the love of my life," Elijah toasted, eyes descending upon Klaus and I. "I understand some of you have expressed your concerns on Celeste's behalf. I'm hoping you will see an opportunity, as I have, for you to give my family your pa—"
When I peered over at Klaus, an engaged twitch of mischief defined his body language.
"Cheers!" Interrupted Klaus, raising his glass.
Every guest in the room turned their head to him as he came forward on one velvet-booted foot.
He called out, "Not only to the happy couple, but to all of you. Of all the wedding parties happening in the coming month, you chose to be at the least-anticipated and the most unlikely to succeed."
"Niklaus, that will do," managed Elijah.
"Oh, noiselessly trying to wrangle me, are you? I'd save the demands for your wife, eh, brother?"
Elijah wouldn't let him turn this into a melodrama. He reached to make it appear as a gag, instead. "Please, pardon him, he's a fanatic of the merlot we've chosen for tonight."
"Actually. I'm quite sober! Which means I'm thinking straight, thinking ahead of morning's consequences. Are you?" chirped Niklaus.
Celeste was visibly seething. Elijah's hand was so tightly wrapped in hers it was whiter than a burning star. I don't believe she'd blinked the entire time.
Somehow, Elijah was able to wriggle himself free, fixing his handsome red coat of velvet and silken purple embroideries around the buttons. He came a few steps down from the extended open hallway on the second story, his guests watching him in apprehension.
Klaus met his brother at approximately the center of the room, Elijah scooping up his neck and putting his lips next to Klaus's filtered ear.
Merrily, he mumbled, "There are three daggers in this room, Niklaus. Seeing as I'm the one who prepared them for such confrontation, I'll be able to get to one long before yourself. What will it be? Will you go quietly into the long night ahead of us, or will you allow me to cut it short for you?"
Rustled Klaus, "And that would take care of me. But what will you do when I'm the only one left to tear the one out of your back when things go south?"
Celeste lifted her reaction, ironing out the wrinkles in her forehead and the fixed purse of her lips to reflect a more jovial woman that everyone except me could recognize. "Let him be. Finish your toast, Darling."
Klaus pushed past Elijah, finishing off his drink and setting it on top of the piano where a stiff musician sat posing as if he were veiled from sight.
"Yes! Please finish! Let's see if I can 'endure' it," Klaus spat. "I wish you both the best. Celeste, remember!"
Celeste regarded his call to her, tilting her head down at him slowly and waiting for him to finish.
He warned her, "When you're prepared to die for him, well, that's what my little engagement gift was for."

KLAUS

October 19th

The paintbrush exerted a blunt force to the easel that dripped a crisp warm palette all over my chaotically stained floors. I remember painting the same tide five times before it fell in line and looked separate from the others. Getting a watery background to look ablaze was the most difficult part. I was saving it for last.
I couldn't find a way to make a graceful exit; I'm not particularly known for such advanced techniques. Elijah knew well what my sentiments were about having to play the supportive brother in all this; still, he had to provoke me. I invited Jezebel for the purpose of distracting me from it, but perhaps, it only made me think harder about the future. She was in a position where being alone wasn't a choice she made; it was one made for her. By me, if not first by her family. It was a position I was digging for myself like a grave the tighter I held onto Elijah and Rebekah, and even Kol.
It wasn't that I merely required her isolation to justify my own. Invisible to the human eye, Jezebel had placed before me a challenge to kill her with the same amount of kindness as she had dared shown me. Not just a challenge. It was a lure away from this alpha male authority I had over every soul in town. It worked.
Because now, I was wrapped up in the thought of her. Her wit, her bittersweetness, the simple squeezes of her hand on my shoulder, her smell, the subtle ways she'd laughed at me or said my name. It startled the core of me that I might have just abandoned a chance to take it all for myself by leaving her out there without notice.
The door swinging open with the gray rub of noise, I heard soft feet sauntering across the floorboards behind me. My sister, I reckoned, had come to scold me in the spirit of the foolish bruises I left on the hour of our brother's party.
"She's a wreck. I heard her in the study," Jezebel's voice charged me with astonishment.
My blister-inducing paintbrush clicked once interfacing with the spilled palette next to me on the dresser.
She closed the door behind her to keep my privacy alive. "Rebekah told me where you might be; I just wanted to give you my thanks."
"For?" I questioned.
Sitting down on the armchair behind me and my bitter-scented canvas, she looked up at me with a touch of contentment. "I've had a poor week. I've felt lost and when I feel lost, I want to topple over right away. You gave me a few reasons not to."
I shared in the contagious smile she tried to fight. As if it would cancel out the hectic mischief she wished upon Celeste, she delayed to say, "And I got to talk to someone other than the Millers. Or a wall."
Wiping my hands of colorful oil, I held her glance.
"If pandemonium bleeds you of a lackluster existence, you best stick around. It's all these walls know," I marked.
The distracting gleam from the fresh coating and thick layers of my unfinished piece caught her attention.
"You're an artist?" she stood and muttered, coming closer to my work expanse.
"Only in my worst moments," I bragged.
Her lips parted and her brows relaxed themselves, her arms uncrossing themselves the longer she stood next to me in a silence I couldn't distinguish to be of awe or disappointment.
"I never liked learning with acrylics. It was too hard. Too many rules," she found. "You should consider yourself lucky to have a steady hand. Landscape requires a bit more patience than portrait or surrealism."
She was saturated in appetite when she talked about it, the heavy apricot color in her cheek slowly traveling into her eyes the longer she looked at it. I never omitted to remember how supportive she would end up being of me, especially when I disrespected my own abilities.
"You know your techniques," charmed, I simpered.
Her open eyes and forward tilt in her back returned to their standard positions of neutrality the longer she considered my hypothesis.
"Liberal Arts was a novice's requirement before I could enroll in university in Garrotxa," she recovered from a burst of enthusiasm. "It wasn't my most significant strength; I couldn't complete it, but it was one of my favorite things to study."
"What stopped you?"
Her novel-dense lips groped for an answer, but all I found was a white lie.
"I changed my mind. That's all," Jezebel settled. "What does it stand for? The painting? Or is that too vague a question?"
The moonlight casts the shadow of her lashes on her cheeks, the independent amber color of her eye caught in its fluorescent paleness. The glow of it could have been painted with the same brown and yellow tones I'd painted the flames with.
"What's your opinion?"
"If water could catch fire, nothing would be left to put it out. If we can't control it, what can you do other than watch everything else burn with it?"
"The technique is called a figurative. The artist paints it, but the meaning isn't one that he makes. You did it yourself. You should be able to give yourself credit for that."
"You just made me afraid of being wrong and then tell me it has no meaning. I'm surprised blood didn't come out of my ears," she playfully scolded me. "To hell with you."
I turned my chest as it vibrated with laughter in her direction as she rounded her step around me and my painting. I followed the dim lighting that bounced off her exposed shoulders and ribbed structure of the two braids that lost their way down the thicket of curls on her back.
"Perhaps, I'll just rob you of credit for your analysis," I proposed. "Or maybe I'll earn you the opportunity to get me back. Paint me something."
"I can promise if I did that it would be disappointing."
"Oh, come on. It would be another opportunity to avoid talking to walls."
She turned to me at my bedroom door, laughing quietly with a closed mouth.
"I'll try if that will please you. Now, don't be offensive. Walk me to the door," she ridiculed.
I wasn't familiar with my companions leaving on such short notice (the night of a party), but somehow, she made me feel alright with any amount of time we spent together. It never felt empty, but it never felt like enough.
Jezebel wouldn't let me walk her home that night. I was sharp enough to figure I would naturally be denied if I pressed her to stay any longer. I walked her to the door as a satisfactory substitute.
"There you are!" Celeste bursted out onto the moonlit front steps.
She began a motherly pat-down of Jezebel's face and arms, much to her illustrative countenance of confusion.
"Jezebel Zaragoza. Oh my goodness, how you've grown. I haven't seen you since your infancy!" cried the bride-to-be.
"Celeste," monotonous, Jezebel uttered with a polite nod of her head. "Salud. Yet another vampire falls for your overwhelming beauty. Let's hope he doesn't figure out the rest for another decade or so."
Celeste continued to pretend she didn't see me, her expression wallowing in a sea of different sentiments for a moment before she forced glee.
"Well, don't bare me all the miraculous tidings. How many months along are we?"
Celeste reached for Jezebel's stomach, but she took a step back and past me, faithful she could step back in time, as well, away from this conversation.
"I'm going home, good luck to you," Jezebel played it off.
Clasping a hand on my arm for a second, I found she'd lost the courage to look me in the eye. Celeste had made an embarrassing mistake, I conceived at first. Surely Jezebel, who not only spent the entire night entertaining my intentions, but who once willingly staked me as her foe and violently called my bluff, would have mentioned a child thus far.
Three steps away from the grand pillars Celeste and I stood between, Jezebel came to a stop as one of us kept talking.
"Oh, my word. I hope I'm not assuming, but the Millers informed me that you were pregnant!" Celeste said.
The girl with anxious hazel eyes leered at her family acquaintance over her shoulder, the inclement weather that night highlighting the clouds of breath she breathed faster than the gaslights on the front of my home could flicker.
"Clear the road. Make way, please! Official business of the constables! Make way!" a distant shout strung us all up with uncertainty.
"What's going on?" another exiting guest wondered at her date.
A forming crowd of people down the Western side of the road resembled a dark fog at first, but became sharper and sharper in picture as they came closer. There were three sheeted bodies, their discovered possessions being taken from their gurneys. One was a rifle, another a musket, and then, another rifle. The sight of a black and brown dog, one that scampered along like it was oblivious to the loss of its owners, struck Celeste as a clue faster than I.
"Is that who I think it is?" Celeste susurrated.
A pale hand slipped from the nearest gurney to Jezebel, frozen on place alongside the point where the Abattoir's tile floor turned to cobblestone.
The third set of party crashers whispered frantically. "Oh, my god. That one! It's Frankommen Miller."

* CELESTE *

October 26th

Houseflies take to the bright red pile of cherries that sits in the middle of petite kitchen's only windowsill. They sit next to a cup of frozen cold water, the morning's fog coating the outside of the glass. The house hasn't been cleaned since she'd taken inhabitance of it, bored drawings on the walls and papers scattered about. She was either planning an escape or going stir-crazy living in such a desolate hovel.
"Jezebel," I called out expectantly.
The trot of my boots falls out of sync with two sets of others as I drive my step around the bend of the hallway. Kippa strolled ahead of me, Denaeja picking up her mauve calla-lily skirt to check the upstairs.
I sighed, "We know you're here, do not try to get out of this again—"
Kippa grips the doorway five steps in front of me, breathlessly looking into the dim washroom across from Jezebel's bedroom.
"Celeste," she panicked.
There sat Jezebel in her metal tub, the white skirt of her night clothes covered in a bloody arch. In her left hand was a paper, like a page of spellbook with horrific symbols scribbled all over its aged yellow texture. Her lips moved quicker and made more sound as we drew closer to stop her.
"Stop her," I cried. "Kippa stop her now!"
Kippa puts a hand over her mouth, but Jezebel still tried to speak her spell. She still bled like a river.
Denaeja and Alexis rush in, grabbing her arms and legs to lift her out of her bloody bath and take her to her bedroom.
She tried to fight and to threaten us by a continuous chant.
"Dormantes bosana!" Alexis shouted a spell over Jezebel.
Jezebel's throat choked up with a lack of words. She grabbed at her neck, trying to squeeze it, drain it of the words that were clotting her airways.
Arms and legs stretched in opposition, Kippa quickly took a cold amber gel and massaged it over her growing belly. My heart was leaping into the sky and then pit-falling back into my chest for every moment it took Kippa to fix her concentration against Jezebel's struggle. When Kippa's hands drew away quicker than they had touched down, my throat burned with questions.
"We're in trouble," she whispered frantically.
"What is it?" I demanded and waited for her strangely diminished response. "Kippa!"
Turning at the waist, she looked at me with disturbed pupils. "The placenta is weak. It's preparing to detach from the uterine wall."
Jezebel licked her dry lips, eyes pinned to the ceiling. My hearing entertaining a wider field as I whispered an incantation to raise its sensitivity. Her heartbeat was thirty beats faster than resting pace.
I snapped once. Jezebel's restraints fell from her wrists and ankles. She didn't move.
"Jezebel," I intoned. "Look at me. Right now."
Her sleepy curls sleekly fell over her face as it gravitated in my direction. The natural curl in her lips and absence of a blink vocal of her sin.
"How do you think this happened?" I sibilated.
Snapping my fingers, she inhaled harshly.
"I'm not a doctor," smartly, she panted.
I submitted, "Just give it a guess."
I groom the room with my eyes for the black-clothed Denaeja. "You, summon the rest of the Murder. Tell them further insurance for a flawless pregnancy is required. We need to organize a charm session t—"
Three heavy bangs. Reticence befalls us. Another three heavy bangs, accompanied by the smell of timber and wet mutt.
"First...Jezebel gets the door," irritably, I huffed.
Forcing her to her feet and throwing the late Mrs. Miller's robe at her feet, I watched her robotic and wide-legged walk. She looked ill, dizzy as she idiotically stood listening to the knock instead of answering it.
Furious, I took it upon myself to put the robe on her myself and tie it at her waist. She whimpered, pushing me away and gripping the wall.
"Well. You don't want everyone to know you're a murderer, do you?" I scoffed at her. "Now, go on. This is your home now, after all."
She watched to see if I'd follow her to the door, but Alexis and I held off on disturbing what could possibly be a constable or Governor Devereaux, responsible for the claim on the Miller's property.
"It's not even light out. What are you doing here?" I heard Jezebel begin the conversation with the solicitor.
"The Millers are dead, yet Goldilocks appears to still be looking for the right bed to lay her head on," I recognized Niklaus's sarcastic commentary.
I stepped to the window, moving the curtains back at a slow rate so as not to give my movement in the house cause for notice. Jezebel furrowed her brow, puzzled by his remark.
"You didn't say a word. You just let me and my family do as we wished. Why?" Klaus continued.
Her hands were an easier place to look than his face. "...Klaus, I didn't know that—"
If she wasn't going to tell her story straight, he was going to save her from wasted breath.
He obstructed her, "A charter comes tomorrow morning. Get on it, and don't come back. You're safer just about anywhere else."
His notice made her arms limply fly out to the sides in annoyance.
She resolved him of effort, "I can't. It's not my decision to go anymore."
He moves so quickly, it looks as though he's yearning to get away from her. He puts something in her hands, rectangular and dark blue.
"If I can't force you, the least I can do is stay away from you." No one expected it to come from him. Not even me.
He bid her farewell, "Forgive me, Jezebel."
She opened the box he'd given her as soon as his foot left the porch and he'd vanished faster than the following clap of thunder. In her hands, she pulled out a thick cloth made of white fleece, small shapes of animals embroidered around the sides and accented by small patterns of ribbon.

KLAUS

November 1st, 1820

I never met the Millers, but I knew they were said to have had secrets; moreover, the delayed payments on their home was always a needle in the governor's eye. If Jezebel was their eventual end, she probably got caught up in their suspicious spider's web. I kept trying to justify the things I'd heard, though I was as biased as they came; I was never one to be scared off by a little carnage.
Elijah suggested my roulette gambling skills be saved for the calm hours of the morning and far from the Quarter to keep the peace. At least, if I was insistent on a round of ten-step duel, I had time to bury the evidence and forfeit a set of draft letters to the men's wives or children. To get to the clearing where I led my squad of feeble noble lads, I had to pass by the Millers farmhouse.
I remembered two days beforehand, walking up to that door and seeing Jezebel for the last time. The smell of blood, new and old, wafted out from her door and onto my clothes and the ride of breeze outside. It was so plentiful, I sent myself home to change my apparel because it seemed to cling to me like pipe smoke.
My lesser comrade who had tagged along for the fatal gameplay, Donnard Powell, was the richest man (though, blind and easy to fool) to have lived in our city thus far. "Somewhere around here," he began without any idea he was standing next to his topic, "is the house where the house girl killed the Millers. Apparently, she was one of them mestiza commoners they got on the market; thought she could get the estate that way."
"To think, she skipped over witnesses. If you had looking glasses, jolly Donnie, you could have been next," I lashed at him.
"Where's your sense of humor today, Niklaus?" the governor's favorite lad, Jean-Claude of Alsace, snickered.
His partner, a struggling cellist named Renald Graff of the Graff butcher family, answered him quietly. "Didn't know those Millers could afford a housegirl with such a sparse produce year. Have you seen anything growing in their orchards lately? Maybe they were hoping she'd latch onto that hopeless boy of theirs and there'd be hope yet for the working class."
Graff could never keep a lid on his targeting words. Apparently, he fancied to be the first to die that cheery morning.
My eyes couldn't help but graze the property and prowl for a sign of life, yet both unfortunate and fortunate, a head of long black hair was kneeling underneath a bright red tree growing amidst the humid morning dew. When she heard the march of our footsteps, her head rose and caught up with my stare.
I announced to the lot of them, "Meet me at the crest of the hill. Feel free to begin without me. Excuse me, gentlemen."
Jezebel breathed out through her nose upon my approach, sitting up on her knees to dust the dirt off her hands. There was a significant difference in her stomach size and the color of the flesh around her eyes over the course of two days.
I pulled her up, both to scold her and to my consideration of the strain she was already enduring doing things on her own.
"What are you doing!" I barked discreetly.
She gave me a funny look as if I'd been redundant. "There was a dead cat in the yard this morning, I'm burying it."
Walking past me, she wiped her hands on the black cloth of her skirt and walked up the back steps of the kitchen to disappear. I tried to follow her in, but with the Millers gone, her personal invitation inside was due. I bounced back and caught myself on the railing from the house's protective transparent barrier, sighing roughly.
"Yes, you're stating the obvious. Do you have no discretion for your own health?" I groaned against her random answer. "What about the ship I sent for you!"
The front of my face was met with something soft but blunt, and then a burning sensation I could only distinguish as a pair of eyes waiting for me to react. The object unfolds over one of my shoulders, the pale white colors and raw cotton smell of the gifted baby blanket falling all the way over into my hands. The stoop of the back entrance to the house made the tiny and agitated Jezebel seem a foot taller. But what did size have to do with anything when she aimed her words high.
She splintered, "I never said I was ready to go! I don't want your gifts. It doesn't make you seem giving or merciful, it's a cry for attention you already have. I don't need your support for my state, either. If you had stayed and listened to me, you'd be able to see things are more complicated than how they reflect."
The wide boots, made for a male, that she wore everyday paralleled to mine on the second to first step of the entrance.
I argued "Oh, I have the story, love. A better one than you can tell. You're with child and a rumored assassin. This isn't mercy, it's common sense. You don't belong here, and you put yourself willingly in danger by staying!"
"Fucking cabron. Who's fault is that!" biting back, she waved a tense hand at me.
I didn't speak to that, and she came closer, fixing the ill-fitted shoulder of her moss green blouse, embroidered with branch-like shapes. "I didn't kill the Millers. They were a very capable bunch who cared for me even if I meant nothing to them."
She pulled away her sheath of a fat braid that escalated down her back into a tail-like tip, she exposed a dark brown symbol imprinted on the back of her neck. She claimed, "This is my proof. My pack marks the werewolves who haven't awakened their curse. It will disappear when I turn– When I finally kill someone with my own hands. It was a full moon when they died. It couldn't have been me."
There was no summit of a reason for what had happened. Not even the doctor, who were with the very constables that came upon them, could diagnose what went wrong. They had all died at once, of the same cause, which could only be known then as old age. It didn't make sense, but it didn't do her any favors to be overly frantic about proving herself innocent.
"It was a brutal robbery during their hunt," I insinuated.
At first, she wavered on my counter of an account. "What?"
I pulled her in by the forearm, reinforcing the story I was going to tell. "Elijah confirmed it yesterday morning. I would save your breath."

"Klaus," the silvery tone that made chest harness a severe warmth. "You know that's not true. Something happened. Even I know that.""But you are the closest culprit to any further story. And if you're going to be stubborn and bull-headed enough to stay, you'll like to have an alibi to sustain yourself and your little one." My back to her, I couldn't see her face, and if I looked I was sure it would make me give away the blossoming caution I felt for her. She went on, "I don't wish to waste your efforts on me. So I hope you're as understanding when I tell you why I didn't say anything about...a child." Her last two words struck like she'd had the wind knocked out of her. "I'm not keeping it," Jezebel stopped holding her breath once the rest flooded out from her mouth. I couldn't keep pretending a literary classic I'd read four times or more was any more important than this discourse of ours. I stood from the armchair, setting the book down harshly and maneuvering around the table to put some compelling distance between us."You seemed to be confused. Usually, the father is the one with seniority over that kind of news," I stoned her intimate duo of discolored eyes soared up to the ceiling resentfully. "There isn't one."
She took a step after me, but I spun around in time to catch onto her arms, and keep her from following me into the next room. Grimly, I gazed upon her, but she couldn't be less submissive to my sharp and telling movements or the squeeze I put into my grip.
Through gritted teeth, I soured, "I am telling you not to waste your breath. I told you once, I will not tell you again. Conceive the idea or not, I am not the selfless person you interpret me as just because I've mimicked a few gestures of good will. It's my way of preserving my family and my home. Now, stay. Away."
Roughly letting her go, I turned my back on her, interpretively for the last time. I walked into a wall of thin air that kept me from going anywhere. Confused, I tried to walk forward again. I hit the same invisible obstacle that kept me from leaving the parlor.
Turning to Jezebel, I find her with an outstretched hand, pulsing with riveting orange spirals.
"You're a witch," I yelped mistrustfully. "You're a witch?"
Jezebel continued on, "I can't go away. I found someone who's going to take the baby. You should know who it is."