If someone was ever going to tell Rosalynde that one day she would have cross-dressed as a wealthy gentleman from the countryside in search of fortune, infiltrating into the paradise of the upper-class male counterpart, all while trying to undercover the secrets of a socialite group which roots had been apparently eradicated twenty years ago she would have simply scoffed before throwing the poor advisor into the jaws of the hungry beasts.
But things had changed, she didn't even realize when they had actually started changing.
The change had come like a lunar tide, or how Pharah would have said with her usual philosophical mannerism, as natural as the cycle of life and death.
She hadn't noticed it, she hadn't felt it creep inside her bones and mind. When she finally started noticing the change, it was too late for her.
She was not used to this- to someone actively watching her back.
Companionship curiously was something pretty unknown to Rosalynde. It was like walking on the same road for years without looking around to take in the scenery. While keeping the head down with the eyes fixed on the uneven stone people failed to take in the details around.
Rosalynde roughly knew what companionship meant but had never bothered seeking out what it really meant for the soul, to be bound by something more than mutual interests.
There was no bother lying to herself for once. The whole situation had unsettled her from the very start.
What she had established with Grey was different from what she had with Pharah, which in turn was different from whatever she and Katherine seemed to have.
They'd followed Heriom's advice, turning left right after their eyes had landed on the male restrooms. Sneaking around had proven itself more impervious than expected.
The problem did not depend on the actual level of the guards and attendants scattered around the clubhouse. The actual problem laid in the numbers. The attendants seemed to multiply on themselves, one for every member of the club, while the guards seemed to round every corner before they did.
Rosalynde had suggested the quickest way to deal with such tedious pests, reminding him that everything could have been easily resolved by dragging a few in isolated places before knocking them out, but Grey had been able adamant in his decision.
Unexpected deaths would have just arisen the suspicious of others, and that was the last thing they needed in that moment.
"What gruesome things are you thinking of now?" Grey suddenly interjected at her side.
They had arrived at the designated location. A dead-end no different from ordinary. With an iron umbrella rack in one corner, an exotic plant with its origins the overseas and an exquisite painting of a young dame hailing from a different time.
There was a problem tho, no matter where they looked, there was not a single pearl in sight.
"In your opinion, how much time would it take to burn this place to the ground?" She asked, casting him a casual as she tried cracking a joke.
"Depends on how much fuel you want to add and where you want to place it," for the tone of his voice has assumed, she knew he was not jesting this time. "We don't have much time," Grey then continued.
He got closer to the painting, careful to not touch the actual canvas he made his fingers slide around the golden frame.
"What are you doing?" Rosalynde had stayed far from the watching dame, keeping watch of the empty hallways.
"Come here." He gestured for her to come closer.
Cautiously she made her way closer to him. Standing by his side she cast him another long inquisitive look.
He moved again, stepping behind her, breath on the base of her neck as he gently pushed her closer to the painting.
"What do you see?" his voice seemed to come out as a whisper to Rosalynde, who pulling her punches decided to take without warning another step closer.
"A painting," she said dryly, before slowly starting to make in the details of the painted dame.
She'd seen the woman's attire before in an historical etiquette book years aback. The excessive layers had been a dead giveaway, no one nowadays- not even the elderly matriarchs with their only interest in life of preserving traditions went around with such extravagant dresses.
Her pale eyes then took in her hairstyle. How the ribbons seemed to had been effortlessly woven like thin threads of red and silver.
"A painting indeed. What else?" He edged again, a hand smoothly sliding on her back.
"A Rowlian dame stuck in a marriage of convenience, see the way she's posing? This was not done because of a request coming from the painter, nor from the husband. She wanted to world to see her torment behind the luxury of her daily life." she reached out to her posed hands.
"How do you know that?" He asked, as gentle as ever.
Rosalynde's chest tighten at that mere remembrance. "That was the pose Pharah begged her Majesty to not be painted with," she remembered that day all too well for her good.
She felt his hand slide around her back more, rubbing small circles against the hard leather of her waistcoat.
"What else then do you see? If you take out the actual meaning of the dame?"
Her gloved hand fell down to her side, her eyes roaming the canvas without rest.
Then she saw it.
"The frame." She uttered, and went to touch the wooden frame painted in luscious gold.
She would have never seen it if she'd stayed away from the painting. There was something going on with the frame. There was truly something amiss.
The sides were filled with dust, but the corners seemed to have been dusted regularly. That, however, wasn't the only peculiarity the corners possessed. There was a hollow space in the centre of the edges, a perfect cavity completely void of dust.
"Just out of curiosity: what do you know in regards of the House of Hastles?" He muttered under his breath.
"Not much, anything that has happened inside is strictly kept private. All the information I've gotten my hands on come from newspapers and old reports dating back to centuries, even." She replied without missing a beat.
"Then you know about the fire that hit the club a century ago right?" He asked her like a professor examining his pupil.
"I've seen the newspapers and periodicals regarding that," she finally conceded. "I believe the fire spread from the kitchen and damaged only a fraction of the actual club, the northern wing, to be precise."
He nodded, and if he was impressed he did not show it in the slightest.
"The fire was contained, but as any other force hailing from mother nature, it did some damage." He took a few step backwords as if too assess the painting with a new set of eyes.
Rosalynde, on the other hand, stayed exactly where she was. She kept on looking at him before turning back to watch the painting. Her eyes widening in realization.
"This is the one, isn't it?" She uttered, astonished by the sound of her voice as the realization hit her like an unforgiving wave. "This is the northern wing."
"The older senior members of the club decided to take away all the valuable items from this wing to protect then in case a new fire were to break out, leaving here few trinkets for decoration. But there was one thing they could not move, and that was the entrance to the archive rooms. Only the authorized valet enters the archive room at the end of the night and transcribes the numbers of attendants to keep track of flow. By the way, there's a story that circles around the club, would you like to hear it?"
"You're going to tell me even if I say nay, won't you?" She asked dry as a river in summer.
His small dimples showing was the sole answer she received at that.
"The gentlemen here say that the archived rooms is protected by a crown composed by four pearls."
Rosalynde's smile faltered a second as she finally turned back to look at him. There were no pearls here, nothing that seemed to seek her attention at all. The dame was without jewels adorning her neck and ears, and no pearl had been woven in between the threads styling her golden locks.
"You'll have to think harder if you want crack this enigma, sir." If she didn't know him Rosalynde would have thought he was taunting her.
But deep down she'd learned to know him, to understand him, even if just a small part of his own being.
He gently guided her gloved hand towards the right side, momentarily resting his palms over her own- a quiet invitation to follow after he made his own hands rest over the other side on the frame.
"You're ready?" He asked.
"For what?" She asked, struggling to keep her emotions at bay, or whatever was slowly crawling up throat.
"How about trusting me on this one, Silver?" it took everything to make the tension slide of her shoulders and away from her arms.
She gripped the fabric hiding her scarred hands with the pinch of her fingers tightly before nodding subtly.
"Push the pearls," his voice a gentle whisper all to pleasurable for her ears.
They clicked the hollow holes where once they both were sure had rested four oceanic pearls at the same time.
At first nothing seemed to have happened, and with neglect Rosalynde started sliding away from the frame, but Grey's gaze on her seemed to hold her in place. She cocked her brow and stared at him.
Wait. That was what his gaze was telling her, or what she seemed to make out under his astonishing smart gray eyes.
And then it happened. A faint sound coming from afar broke the eerie silence of that angle of the clubhouse. The sound of turning gears and mechanical locks breaking free anticipated the spectacle unwrapping in front of them.
The painting of the dame started going upwards, slowly disappearing into the ceiling. Which each second the dame took to disappear, another object had started emerging from the base of the floor. An iron door with an inscription Rosalynde had no idea what it meant.
Grey was the first to move, his fingertips grazing the inscription the same way it done with the frame of the dame before crouching a little to read it better.
"How surprising," he murmured. "I would've never guessed I'd find this here."
"What is it?" Rosalynde asked, turning her back at him as she went to make sure nobody was coming their way.
"An ancient language lost with time. A mix between the roots of my native language and yours. Between the progenitors of what I believe are Atrean and Rowlian."
"What does it say?" Rosalynde asked as she came back, clutching her guns stalled on her sides,
He pushed the door open with his shoulder, forcing the lock to give in with a bit of pressure.
"I have no idea." Grey didn't look at her as he uttered that.
꧁꧂
More than an archive, to Rosalynde it felt and looked like she'd taken a leap in the past. Gone were the remain of their current era. Gone were the electrical lamps, gone were the trinkets used to decorate the various monochromatic rooms they'd seen tonight.
There were only two things present in the room in large quantities: darkened wooden shelves, which in return were filled with thick ledgers. While standing in the middle of the room was a small desk, and beside that a small hand-carved wooden lectern.
There was not a single window, the sole light they were going to get was the remaining fuse present inside the lamps placed on both sides of the entrance.
Unlike the rest of the clubhouse this room had low ceilings, no rugs warming the pavement and not a single ounce of warmth enclosed inside its wallpapers. But Rosalynde had expected nothing less.
This was not a room thought to entertain the high aristocracy, but one used to keep track of history, to keep tabs on a time long gone that would have not come back.
But most important of all, to take note of all the gentleman that had become, even briefly, a living member of the hearth of clubhouse.
"I wonder if the appearance of sir Rodolphus is going to be written down somewhere," Rosalynde mused out loud, taking a quick look around the room to assess better their new surroundings.
Grey took out a couple of matched from his pockets. "I would be flabbergasted if Charles would not do it, especially since you came as a guest of mine." He snickered, lightening up one of the two lamps hooked over the entrance.
"So that's why you brought with you those matches. I guess that burning this place down will be postponed for another time," Rosalynde said, taking his lamp before she started assessing the room better than before.
"Sorry to delude your expectations, Silver. But that will have to be postponed for the next time we come down here with you dressed like a man," he replied.
"Are you resorting to excuses, Lord Grey?" Rosalynde asked.
She then moved closer to the first line of shelves, wiping the dust off the metallic plates with her sleeve to see what exactly was written on it.
"Dates," she murmured, tracing the number with her gloved finger. Each plate contained the ledgers of the corresponding year.
The original Verity had been founded over twenty years ago, but neither Rosalynde nor Grey had any idea regarding the actual founding date. They had a rather rough numbers in terms of timeline.
Rosalynde made her mind conjure the words on the pamphlet that the Black Judge had thrown at them. She focused on the date and year.
"What are you doing?" Grey asked from behind her once he finished checking the room.
"Here." She pointed at the plate, "We know Verity was active twenty years ago right? If so we ought to start checking the ledgers related to those times."
They did just that, with Rosalynde sliding on the floor inside the small space between the bookshelves while Grey took the lectern for himself, a dozen of leather-covered ledgers beside his feet as he quickly skimmed the pages.
They had no idea how much time passed since they started they improvised incursion inside the archive room.
If the sun had already rose over the land, or if the bakeries had started taking out of their ovens the daily breads was completely unknown to them. All their minds were focused on was to find something- what exactly too, was unknown to them.
Everything had gone quiet inside those four walls. It was as if time had stopped completely for them to search in peace. The only sounds breaking the neat silence being the fluttering of pages full of over-pompous names and the feeble sound of their breaths merging as one.
And for the first time in what seemed to be years, Rosalynde did not feel any type of discomfort at all.
Her body was relaxed, or as relaxed as it could be. And her mind, usually a storm of thoughts this time seemed to lay calm and at bay with only one thought in mind steering her clear of any possible conflict.
It was Greys' voice that broke the endless silence passed flipping pages. "Silver, come here," he said, urging her to come to him with an extended hand eagerly waiting for her.
She was quickly by his side, the ledger that until a second ago was resting on her lap now laid on the floor.
"Look here, the date goes back to twenty-six years ago. These six aristocrats kept on meeting inside the club" He showed her a couple of pages with the same names repeating on and on. And then went to grab two ledgers dated nineteen and eighteen years ago. "Notice that out of the six members of this small circle, only two kept on appearing after this year." He took another ledger out and showed it to her.
Emilia, Tares, Iris, Verbena, Rue, Yarrow.
Those were the names that the ledger held.
"Aren't these?" She turned to him, a spark of realization hit her as her features started to transpire her obvious surprise mix with a dauting wave of realization hitting her at full force.
"Name of flowers? I dare say so, but that's not all. Take a better look at the names. Look at the first letters, Silver, look at those," he tore her gaze from his face and had her examine the ledger's page. Grey leaned into her slowly, head posed over her shoulder as he watched her gloves slide over the words, over those first letters.
Emilia with the E. Tares started with T, Iris with the letter I, Verbena had V, while Rue and Yarrow had respectively R and Y.
"E.T.I.V.R.Y?" She let an unlady-like snore out of her mouth as she read the singular letters out loud.
"Don't these letters look familiar if placed in another order?" This time he didn't even contain his excitement, sounding exactly like a scholar who can't keep his hands off his new guided her finger over those first letters, rearranging it in another order.
Her guts twisted a thousand times, over and over again as Grey showed her the light at the end of that tortuous tunnel.
It was concise, so obvious to the eye now more than ever.
E.T.I.V.R.Y
V.E.R.I.T.Y
"You found it," Rosalynde breathed out.
"Wrong, I did not find it. We did, Silver. We did this together," he muttered into her ear.
Those words of his were enough to make a nerve-wracking shiver travel down her spine, leaving an unsatisfied bundle of emotions floating by.
It was a juggle of keys that brought them back to reality. They had no idea how much time had passed since entering inside the archive. Grey took out a small pocket watch and swore under his breath, quickly shoving it back before grabbing the ends of the ledger.
Rosalynde stepped backwards just in time as she watched Grey rip a couple of pages from the ledger, throwing them at her before placing back the ledgers into their respective places.
"It's probably Charles. The older valets have to record with each new dawn the attendants of the day before, they usually bring a list with them and stay down here for half-an-hour before coming back," he said, whispering each word as if were his last. "We'll need to sneak out as he starts recording the names down on the current yearly ledger. You think we can pull that off?"
And they waited. Rosalynde made her partner crouch down as the little figure of Charles appeared from the entrance, a long scroll neatly tucked under his left arm as he whistled his way to the wooden lectern.
Without looking back, the duo tip-toed out of the archive room the second Charles's figure disappeared behind a massive bookshelf. And run for the first door the second they emerged outside into the corridor where the painted dame was currently hidden.
"We'll get out passing from the kitchen. It's not far from here and it wouldn't be the first time a lord did it to get out undisturbed." Grey said.
And true to his word, not a single worker spoke nor even looked up at them as they passed through the working space, the smell of freshly brewed tea made Rosalynde falter in her steps for a second or two- how she missed having her daily morning tea before getting ready for the day.
She missed that deep down- the small gestures that made up her morning routine. Before every had started changing, before the shadow of Verity had latched itself inside her future.
Grey's hand was around her arm before she knew it, quietly tugging her away from the divine-looking ceramic used to plate the extract of leaves.
"We'll stop by Merchants Road and buy a couple of new flavours. There's one I'm sure you'll like," he promised her.
They got out passing from a small door, stepping on a couple of rotten planks to avoid what Rosalynde was sure were horse excrements, while Grey was set on that those were donkey ones. The second they were actually out of sight, a decent block away from the House of Hastles, Rosalynde tugged the wig and ripped it out of her hair, a cascade of silver locks breaking free for that forced cage.
Suddenly, she started laughing, her shoulders rising and lowering without rest as she watched the sun peek from the east.
She hadn't had so much fun sneaking around since a small child. She hadn't been so carefree, so liberated in terms of free will in so long that the mere thought had made it difficult for her to swallow at all.
It was like waking up from a nightmare, one of those horrible night terrors which eat her alive in the first months that followed her parents dead and her subsequential arrival at the Imperial Citadel all those years ago.
She kept her eyes on the rising sun, her eyes barely open as the first rays of the day nearly blinded her- it'd been so long since the capital had had an aurora like that during winter.
Behind her she felt Grey move a little, shuffling with something she had no interest in figuring out as a chilly breeze swept past them and into the alleys around, scurrying the dried leaves and perturbating the water lines on the streets.
That made her turn around, just enough to glance at the remarkably handsome face of her partner, who unlike her had not once glanced at the rising sun.
But at her, and her alone, from the very start of their adventures.
Unlike the other times, she didn't move from her spot. Her laughter slowly started to end, dying completely as he was bare inches from her face, with his breath fanning on her cheeks.
And for once, she did not shy away as he slowly brought his lips onto hers, latched with a gentleness completely unknown to herself. Shaking her to the core as she felt a string snap inside her soul.
All she did in reply was circle an arm around his neck, bringing him closer than ever before.