Oath of Steel

27 |The Rope Towards Salvation|

The territory of the Barracks seemed to stretch endlessly, their blue tides a darker shade than usual thanks to the absence of the splendid sun.

Rubbing her gloved fingers to fight off the biting cold, Rosalynde swiftly freed her arm, making it slip in between Cleia's desperate grasp.

She stepped forward, savouring the air around them, basking in the presence of a refund sense of security. There was no one around as she assessed their surroundings, no fair maiden tending to her business, nor a single soldier on patrol.

And yet unlike her eyes were telling her, Rosalynde just knew they were still being watch, and so did Grey – and hopefully Cleia as well. The goosebumps playing on her arms raising the awareness in her body like a bell ringing restlessly to alert the soldiers of the upcoming attack. It hit silently yet left a sea of insecurity behind.

Grey seemed to care little of what just happened, his teasing smile had come back without much bother, his dimples feebly appearing as he gave Rosalynde one of his signature smiles.

"I believe it's time we part way for the time being, I'll be in touch." Without warning he went for his partners hand, gently caressing it before bringing it close to her lips but did not make his lips linger.

He just kept it close to him, barely finding the rightful reason to touch it. Just like admiring a the most precious jewel on the other side of an expositions showcase. Watching its reflections change with the change the shattered fragments of light brought with her.

So close, yet so very far away.

A sensation he would have paid the devil to feel again under his skill, eating his heart away, and not once would he have doubted his feelings regarding it.

They then parted, with Grey's figure retreating like a knight wounded in battle. He lowered his head, a clean and curt nod his parting gift, and then finally turned around slowly becoming nothing more than a speck of dust lost in the horizon. The sound of his footsteps a lulling rhythm smoothening Rosalynde's agitated state of mind.

And unlike all other times, Rosalynde did not even think of averting her hand, nor wipe it clean against her sides, she just left it there hanging in the void, an unfair sensation building up in her chest.

No, now that she thought of it, she knew what that sensation was. Or maybe she'd always known how to label it with the correct word.

A sense of longing, something that deep down she'd always felt in that chasm void of emptions. It'd been forcefully shoved into a cage, like a nightingale trapped inside a golden adobe since birth.

She kept her eyes on him until he was nothing more than a dark dot against the immensity of the capital. She kept watching him, afraid that he would have disappeared the second her eyes would have roamed astray.

She did that until she decided to bring Cleia back to her home, silently escort her through the street the latter probably knew better than herself. But that was the most she could do.

And yet, something in her chest seemed to burn like a novice fire making its way towards the sky in an alloy of colours.

꧁꧂

Rosalynde days seemed to grow long and inconclusive after that damned meeting, alternating her workdays in a repetitive monologue of life. The only time when life seemed to deviate her attention was when Pharah kept her busy.

After waking the apparent heir and serving her breakfast. Steel would shut herself behind the double doors of her office, battling against the flood of documents still in need of her signature. By the end of the morning hours she'd run out of two mouths of ink.