Rosalynde quickly filled the distance, her boots clacking against the stone path. She hadn't seen the boy in a long time, for the boy, per Cleia, had been adopted weeks before. But there was no way she was going to forget his devil-like hair.

She crouched down, brushing her gloves over his forehead as gently as she could. His head slipped from her grasp, her hands barely grabbing him before he hit the ground again.

Grey's footsteps were soon heard. He told her to stay aside and scooted beside her, seizing the boy's limp form.

"You know him?" He asked, whispering in the darkness.

He made out her nod, her lips pulled in a thin smile. Her eyes never left the boy's body. They didn't move him before making sure he was still breathing. Checking for any external injuries, they finally rolled him over.

Too many were the questions swirling inside Rosalynde's mind.

The boy shouldn't have been here, laying in an imperial greenhouse, unconscious and barely able to breathe. He should have been home, enjoying the warmth of the hearth close to his new family, shopping for new clothes that would have fitted him nicely, and trying dishes whose names he maybe couldn't even pronounce. All this close to his new mother.

He'd finally had the chance to truly start living his life. So why was he there?

Where was his new guardian? Close by? Had she followed his same fate? Was her body lying somewhere around there, still fresh and warm?

Even so, there was one that Rosalynde was sure of.

It was her fault. Her fault if the boy had been found there that night. He'd been noticed talking to her; this was no coincidence. It couldn't be one. Not this time.

The greenhouses around them seem to get darker. The feeble lights hanging close to the exit dimmed as a figure stepped inside, their appearance covered by a long, dark hood.

Rosalynde left the boy to Grey, who kept him close, hands under his armpits and knees. Ready to lift him up and run whenever the occasion would have presented itself.

"I wouldn't bother anymore if I were you. He's done for anyway. Whenever you like it or not."

Grey tightened his hold on the boy, bringing him close to his chest. He looked at Rosalynde from under his lashes, marvelling at how still she'd become. Her breath hitched, uneven.

"What do you mean?" He went for a distraction. Something to facilitate Rosalynde's hit. But she did nothing. Nothing at all.

She didn't drag her eyes away, nor did she move. Her body locked within something greater than physical restraints. The glasshouse dome seemed to grow brighter as the moon peered down at them, fighting off the shadows.

The hooded figure chuckled from under the hood. Staring at Rosalynde's indistinguishable expression as they got closer, footsteps resounding gentle against the cold stone.

A hand materialized from under the vest, sliding up before going to rest on both of Rosalynde's cheeks. Fingers threading lightly against her porcelain skin, red patterns appeared as the cold air bit against her cheeks. The hooded woman started lulling her, just as a mother would console her child after waking up from a terrifying nightmare.

"Look at you. Still acting like a child. It appears you need more lessons." The hooded woman sighed with resignation.

Shaking her head. She gave one last look at Rosalynde from under the hood before stopping her lullaby. Red polished nails pinched Rosalynde's cheeks until a smear of red tricked down her cheeks.

"Not even a wave of hand? My, how you've grown cold. To think it's all thanks to me that you grew up strong enough to survive the oh-so-cruel schemes of the court."

Rosalynde's knees buckled, giving in as she slumbered down, lifeless as a doll. Under Grey's gaze, who was silently keeping the young kid close to him, he tightened his hold. The figure bent down, gently brushing Rosalynde's hair from her face, unresponsive, lost in a world built for her, and her alone.

It was then that the figure let the hood slip, revealing a woman of growing old age with streaks of white and hazel falling down her back. But it was her expression that made chills travel down Grey's spine. One eye a deep hazel, the other a sickening white.

"I was wondering when you were going to come and see me, dear." The woman clicked her tongue as she took a quick look at the unconscious kid. "Out of all the pupils I've had, you and Katherine are the only ones who could keep up from a young age. I had a good feeling about this one here, but at the end, he too didn't last much."

Only then did Rosalynde avert her gaze, her eyes filled with abhorrence as her smile grew wide, her cheeks hurting enormously.

The gesture did not go unnoticed.

"Oh, don't be so surprised. I was so sad when Sternstorn took you and Katherine away from me. I may be of inferior rank. But I'm an apostle myself, nonetheless." At that point, she finally turned around, casting a quick look at Grey, extending her gloved hand. "I believe we've never met, Gilded Phantom. I'm the VIII apostle, Vivianne Hestor."

Vivianne Hestor, he'd heard her name before—many in the Underworld had been aided by her phantom hands before she'd offered her services exclusively to the crown.

The greatest poisoner of the century. The undead crafter. Nobody knew how exactly old she was, years had passed since she'd first appeared, entwining her threads in the spiderweb of the Underworld. A close friend of the Azure Admiral, she had been once in the past.

He shook her hand, counting the number of protruding veins and every dark spot old age had brought on her hand.

"What did you mean when you said there was nothing to be done with the boy?" The question had been eating his mind from the inside.

Vivianne pursed her lips, debating whether to share the information before making up her mind. "I've been exploring some interesting materials in the last few months. I have already passed the first two phases with animals and corpses. Can you believe that not a single person stepped forward to help me with the research."

Silence fell thin.

Hestor's smile widened in an unforgiving grin as the man connected the few dots at his disposal.

"You've been experimenting on him?" He wasn't sure if to vomit or if he wanted to wake up from the nightmare that had swallowed him whole.

"How else could I gather my last numbers? And it's widely known that children's constitutions differ from the ones of adults. Their tissues, nerves, and muscles act in a different way when simulated to various kinds of stress." She turned towards Rosalynde once more. "Do you remember, dear? How much did you scream when we played The Little Doctor? You always liked to scream more than Katherine."

But Rosalynde couldn't breathe. She'd forgotten what it felt like having lungs that worked. A single memory had started playing in her mind again and again.

She remembered being kept still by strong bounds, tighter than the laces she used to tighten her dress around her waist. She remembered those long needles, much longer than the ones her mother used to sew up the clothes she tore up while running around in the forest close to her home. She remembered her nails scratching the bounds as she tried to get away, only to be gently scolded the second her keeper realized her intentions. She remembered her screams, lost in the night, as the syringe contents were released inside her veins.

At the time, she hadn't understood, or she'd simply stopped caring. All that was left from those days were memories engraved in her skin.

At some point, she'd forgotten why she wore gloves. The habit of sleeping with them or slipping them on before dawn arrived, all to make sure that her eyes would never meet with the many gifts Lady Vivianne had left for her.

Rosalynde hadn't even realized what she was doing before something inside her told her to look up and take a step forward. She'd started scratching her hands so hard that there was not a single cuticle left, only cuts starting to bleed.

She looked up, trying with everything she had to meet Grey's eyes.

What would she find in his eyes? Her reflection? The reflection of a monster so used to being beaten into obedience, or perhaps a younger version of herself, struggling to get out, like a caged animal fighting for survival?

Humans were the worst kind of animal, after all.

She slowly got up; mind throbbing as she took on the scene once more.

Raphael still lay unmoving in Grey's hands, and while she saw both apostles' lips moving, she couldn't distinguish a single word. It was like her body was there, but her mind had been thrown under the ocean.

The last thing she remembered before she was pulled over was meeting the eyes she'd so wanted to see, now stricken with fear. He dove towards her as if to catch her before she fell.

She barely had the strength to raise her arms to meet him halfway.

꧁꧂

She awoke in a moving carriage. The horses quietly pulled the coach throughout the silent streets of Lowen as she let out a breath. Her lungs had remembered what it meant to breathe in air and out.

It was dark inside, except for a feeble light hanging right outside, which barely illuminated half of her face.

Rosalynde felt like she hadn't slept for weeks straight. Her limbs ached, her forehead felt as if she'd been hit with a hammer and then slammed into the wall, and even her eyesight had grown suddenly worse. That was the only way she could forgive herself for not noticing the exact position she was in.

Her lower body had been covered with two different cloaks, but that was not what nearly made her soul leap out of her body. She hadn't realized that the firm first cushion under her head was not a cushion at all. She stilled as her eyes met with some familiar ones.

He looked tired, maybe not as much as her, but still unwell. A small smile formed on his face as he mouthed words of reassurance, his fingers tracing the redness Hestor had provoked on her cheeks. She moved little by little, settling down as she turned her head. His thigh under her head tensed at the gesture.

"Why aren't you asking questions?" She was starting to grow impatient at every silent turn the carriage made as she recognized the High Strands out of the window.

"What is there to ask?"

She turned her head again to face him in the eyes. "You don't want to know?" Everyone wanted to know these types of things. Gossip could make tides move, people talk and act accordingly to a rumor. She'd seen it while posing as Pharah's attendant. Everyone wanted to know something more than the other, to have a xard to play—to have recognition to give to the masses.

He seemed to think about it for a while.

"Will talking about it make you feel better?" She parted her lips, no words coming out as she closed them again.

No. She did not think talking about it would make her feel better. The more she thought of it, the more the idea of talking abhorred her.

But she'd heard that people talked about these things exactly to feel better and give their souls some peace.

"Then no."

He gave her another reassuring smile and proceeded to squeeze her gloves.

He then started talking, informing her of everything that had happened and of every sliver of information Hestor had given them before disappearing into the deepest part of the gardens, where the light of the candles could not reach.

She didn't comment on the fact that he hadn't mentioned the kid once. In fact, the less she knew, the better. They hadn't been close; she still remembered the little insults he'd thrown at her while hiding behind Cleia's skirts back at the orphanage.

And yet, in some twisted way, they had become connected. Their pasts entangled in something words wouldn't have sufficed in explaining. Something more had been planted inside of them. In Rosalynde's case, the seed had grown and had planted its roots deep inside her soul. If the boy were alive, she knew the same fate would have reached him very soon. That was the gift Vivianne Hestor loved giving her protegees.

They reached the Imperial Citadel, the golden tiles glimmering under the moonlight as Grey led her to her rooms, careful enough to avoid security and the prying gazes of the night servants. He didn't utter a word until she was at the foot of the bed. Dried blood staining her collar, has he checked for something amiss.

"I'll leave you now. I'll be in touch in a few days. Leave the rest to me."

He bent down, hesitating, before sneaking an arm around her waist, bringing her a little closer to him. They stayed that way, until Grey parted with a light kiss on her bloody cheeks.

His hand was on the handle of the door as her voice broke the silence all around.

"Stay, there is a tale I would like you to listen to. Hector."