Oath of Steel

35 |Miss me?|

"Of course, mine are all theories. But think about it. The morning after Clark died her warehouse had been emptied."

"Someone was watching her," the skin under her gloves started burning, her eyes closing as a new idea started festering her mind.

Because if she was right, then they had a greater problem at hand.

Rosalynde brought a hand over her lips, keeping her heart in check as she examined the evidence in her mind.

"What is it?" His lips met with her ear, earning an unravelling shiver down her spin, but quickly hid it before he had the chance to say anything.

"How did Verity do it with so little time at their disposal? The warehouse was anything but small. And no matter how big in size, if they had a large stock stored it still would have taken them hours to get everything out." The river below gurgled; the small flames enclosed inside the lampposts burned until their end as Grey seemed to grasp what this time she was trying to tell him.

Verity couldn't have done this alone. And the only people aware of the plan were the Apostles themselves.

They had a traitor among the midst.

But still, that wasn't the only thing Rosalynde had to tell him."

There is something I want to ask." She nudged him, taking him by the hand as she brought him on the other side of the bridge.

"You? Asking me something? Astonishing," he pinched her side jokingly.

She had half thought of throwing him in deep waters before shaking off that thought.

"Andros Aterium. Did you know anything about him?"

It was as if someone had jabbed a blade at his side and had twisted it until there was nothing left to break. And by the way his body stilled, Rosalynde knew that something had snapped inside him.

The pain in his eyes was something Rosalynde had never seen coming from him. The desolation, the surprise, the hatred that flashed in those seconds were enough to make both her hands shoot forward and rest on his cheeks.

"Grey?" for the first time in a long time, Rosalynde had no idea what to do to help him.

She'd learned with each passing day how to read his expressions, how to distinguish the tones he used when dealing with various situations. But what was happening in that moment was something foreign to her.

Her palms pressing against his cheeks seemed to help. A low sight came from him as his own hand overlapped with hers, trying to keep it as close as possible.As if a single slip, and she would have slipped forever from his grasp.

"Grey," Rosalynde said yet again, with warmth crawling up her cheeks.

He gave her an appeasing sound.

"Close your eyes, and don't you dare open them until I say so," she instructed him, dropping both hands as he did as he was told.

Then, with the same inexperience of a child in learning how to learn, she made her hands slip around his waist, looking up at him one last time before bringing his body close. Her head resting over his heart.

She didn't really know what to do. She'd seen people hug for a thousand different reasons: for joy, for acceptance, for rage, for sorrow. But never had tried it herself on other people.

Grey chuckled with bitterness.

"You really can't hug. Can you?"

"Shut up," she said.

It was in that moment that he made his own hands sneak around her sides, one hands paying with the ends of her hair.

"Hector. Not Grey. When will you start calling me by my name?"