Tales are meant to be carved up shells of memories long forgotten, bringing them back to life in the most spectacular of ways. But not all tales are meant to be remembered.

Her eyes were closed as she heard the door shut close. The shuffling of footsteps got close, sending her muscles into overload as she waited. The scraping of a chair being dragged close made her crack an eye opened.

He was right in front of her, leaning on the chair as he watched her. The walls around them seem to close on Rosalynde as she quickly stood up, back straight before spotting the familiar door that led to her private restroom. Her footsteps quick as she slammed to door behind her, locking it up as she stepped closer to the oval mirror sitting over the marble basin.

"Do you know what happens you're taking in under direct orders of the Crown?" She started, eyes taking in her hollow appearance.

She heard him stand up again, footsteps getting closer as a light thud came from the door. Grey's back slowly sliding down until he hit the floor. His silence an invitation to continue.

"Children taken in stop existing. Our pasts, whatever evidence of who we'd been before, erased from this world. Set to walk paths not chosen by ourselves. Shadows serving our masters, satisfying every little whim, every articulated lament, even their joy is ours to share." She started tracing on the mirror the outline of her sharp features. "I was brought here by Lord Regulus after the murder of my parents, and left to the care of the woman you met tonight."

She heard more shuffling on the other side of the door before silence came back biting.

"At the time, Lord Regulus was not as influential as these days. Peace run thin. And the paranoia of her majesty after the birth of the twin heirs had only but grown. Me, Katherine and a handful of other kids with similar backgrounds. All brought together under her care."

Her hand stopped tracing the mirror, falling back to her side.

"I was one of her favourites."

Something started dragging itself from within her venter, like a corpse crawling out of its fresh tomb, long fingers grasping the freshly moved dirt.

"She loved playing with us. Any kind of game – you name it. Any at all, as long as she would win at the end," her throat felt on fire, the tips of her hands cold as ice. "But there was someone that she loved more than winning those games. It was what came after that."

Grey cleared his throat. "And what came after that?"

"When you're a child," she started, gaze absent, filled with memories. "You think that crying will give you everything you want, and that smiling will make the ire of your parents go away. After all, who could ever resist the sweet gaze of their own child beaming down at them?"

She forcefully tore her gaze away from her reflection, looking at the door, imagining the body of Grey on the other side. With his head resting against the wood, his dark hair falling effortlessly over his forehead.

"Each time she caught us, we had two options to choose from. Either get on with it, or apologize."

Once again, her gaze fell on the mirror, rocking her body left and right as she reminisced every single second spend there.

"And how did you apologize to her?"

Rosalynde's smile grew wicked.

"I smiled."

She came to a halt, fingers grazing skin as she forcefully started tugging up her smile, widening it till her cheeks started hurting.

Smile. If you smile I promise I'll pardon you. Are you going to be a good girl for me and apologize, dear? You know I love your smile. So, smile, smile harder, I want to see all your pretty white teeth. Smile and I'll stop.

Smile for me, Rosalynde.

And so, she'd start smiling. Grinning, even, as Madame Vivianne would bow down, knife in hand as she started craving small letters on her palms, travelling up till her wrists.

The more she smiled, the quicker she would be forgiven. The more she smiled, the quicker she would have saved herself.

Like a prey escaping from suspected danger, she'd been no different, smiling at her butcherer as the latter kept carving words of apologies on her petite hands.

"She loved seeing me smile, and with time I became the only one she wanted to be apologized too. 'Madame Vivianne, sorry for being caught so early, sorry for not hiding better.'"

Smile, Rosalynde, smile if you want to live.

A crack resounded, her reflection disappearing as the mirror shattered, trickles of blood ran down her arm as she started blank at the scene playing in front of her.

She hasn't realized what had happened until she finally look at her hands. Beige gloves now corrupted with a dark crimson. At the mercy of her emotions, she'd shattered the mirror, her fist breaking the glass as it fell in the basin.

Rosalynde blinked, eyelids fluttering before letting out a choked laugh.

Greys' fists started hammering the door on the other side. Voice distant as if someone had thrown her body at the bottom of the ocean.

She dragged her feet, one bloody hand hoovering just in front of the handle, the other clutching a shard of broken mirror.

"You now realize, don't you?" she asked, her voice now clear as day.

The pounder on the door stopped, silence stepped forth.

They both stood on the opposite sides of the door.

"Let me tell you a story of my own, then, if you'll have it," Grey said, ear pressed against the wooden panels. He dared not speak until the sound of her back sliding against the door was heard. And proceeded to do the same.

"There once was a boy, born with everything a man could ever desire. Fame, wealth, a heritage that could have made the greatest poets of the old age praise his mere birth. But there was something many people failed to realize about him. His nature was not one of great kings, his patience easily ran thin, and few people could approach him without having their expectations shatter into a million pieces."

On the other side, the woman listened, clutching the shard tighter than ever, the only way she'd ever known to remind herself of the beating heart inside her chest.

He continued. "One day, a palace advisor was assigned as they boys personal tutor, and later decided to introduce him to his own son, a few years younger than him." His breathes grew wary. "He did not trust the other boy, and for many months he decided to ignore his existence. But then the younger boy was appointed as his personal servant by order of the boy's mother."

The speaking man did not know that on the other side of the door the woman was, slowly, loosening her grip over her ruined hand.

"Between belittled feelings from one part and continuous struggles from the other, a spark of a bond started forming. One becoming the shadow of the other, while the other became the anchor for the first. Peaceful days filled with conversation and studying under the watchful eyes of the palace advisor."

But they both knew how these stories were bound to end.

Her heart started to catch fire. "And what happened after that?" she managed to say.

"The prince had an older brother, both in character and appearance a perfect stranger to him. He didn't like how his mother ruled the country, and decided to waged revolution, slaughtered all that came in between his way and the piece of silver kept in the royal treasury. He didn't think twice before killing his family, and by the time the young attendant had realized what had happened. He'd winded up all alone, on a foreign ship with no money and identification to prove his identity as he was forced to cross the ocean."

She remained silent.

"Soon, the young attendant was discovered on board a ship he wasn't welcome onboard. It did not matter the number of pleas, or the assurance that the captain would have been paid handsomely as reward. The young attendant was robbed of his dignity, made a slave, and sold to one of the four Seekers of the Underworld."

The fourth Apostle closed her eyes, inspiring as much air as she could in fear it would have soon gone missing.

"The young attendant, however, did not give up. It took years, yes. But he used his wits, every skill at his disposal before buying back his freedom. Can you guess the first thing he did as a free man?"

She shook her head before remembering he couldn't see her.

With difficulty, she reach for the door handle, slowly fumbling with the key before cracking the door open, a delicate breeze hit her back as she slowly made her hand slide out of the room.

She fought for her own breath as his hot fingers slyly intertwined with her cold ones. Fighting off the chills creeping down her body.

"What about your guess then?" he then asked, gently taking care of her wounded hands. Casting her a quick glance, he saw her barely shaking her head from the other side.

Chucking, he kept on taking care of her hand. "The first thing he did was find the captain of the vessel who'd sold him as a slave, and made sure him and his precious vessel sank at the bottom of the ocean. After that, he set off, using the lessons his father had given him and his deceased master and forged a name for himself. His old name discarded; his likes replace with interest appreciated from the inlanders of that place. He was a nobody in that foreign country. And yet there was something he wanted to prove to them all."

He squeezed her hand gently, closing his eyes for an uncountable number of seconds.

"He wanted to prove that he was better than them. A particular form of vengeance, some would say, but in his eyes that was nothing more than a twisted kind of self-acceptance."

Rosalynde thought his tale had ended before she felt a soft pair of lips tug off the ruined tissue of what remained of her gloves. Lips staining as he pressed one last kiss against the palm of her hand.

"The young attendant, now a master of a kind himself, thought that vengeance against the usurper was the only thing that would have ever kept him going. But he was wrong, as he found something even more precious among his path."

She turned to face him, eyes wide, trying with all her forces to supress a smile she did not want to parade around with as some sort of death sentence hoovering around her like some kind of lurching shadow.

"Which is why I shall wait for the day you'll stop smiling. I'll wait for the day you find the peace you've being agonising to find."

"How do you know that's what I want?" She croaked.

"Because you told me. Or to be precise. Your eyes did, without you even realizing it."

How glad she was that her eyes had done that.