"Finish the juice," Alouette tells Amina.

It's nearly been a week since the night she took Harry to the roof, but she still hasn't been able to forget about it. To forget about the way he looked at her, his scent, his smile when he answered, the essence of him that filled the atmosphere. Harry is like the tide; he's flighty and fluctuating, but when he is with her, he drowns her with his presence. It's inescapable, and the more time she spends with him, the more she risks letting the water close over her head.

That night, with half the city glittering in front of them and the moon shining over their heads, she nearly broke. She nearly grabbed him by the shoulders and shouted her feelings in his face, because the more time passes, the heavier the knowledge of that I love you in her chest becomes. But she stopped herself; of course she did. She and Harry aren't only on different planets; they're on different solar systems spinning in opposite directions. Just being next to him feels like breaking a fundamental law of the universe; what right does she have to tie him down with her feelings? As if he'd ever let himself be tamed. Like the tide, he's impossible to restrain, and the more she tries, the more he slips through her fingers. At most, she can enjoy his presence when he does sweep in.

But a sneaky, hidden part of her wants more, and it's not so fond of staying silent. And with every passing day she wonders what would happen if she let her truth slide through her lips while his eyes are open. Would it be as doomed as she believes, too fragile to survive the arctic gales of his frozen heart? How foolish of her to fall in love with a man carved out of ice and shattered dreams. She can't help but fear his words will cut like blades if she approaches him from the wrong side.

"Revolution headquarters to Ivenheart."

Alouette blinks her thoughts away, realising that Jesse is sitting next to her at the breakfast table, waving a piece of toast cut in the shape of a fish in front of her face. "What...?"

"Told you Mrs. Trout would bring her back to us."

"What...?" She looks around. Amina is sitting in front of her, looking at her seriously while Jesse keeps waving his makeshift fish in front of her. It has a bean for an eye, and it's judging her just as harshly as her sister. Elodie is drowning her complaints in a cup of coffee.

The baked bean travels down the bread and hits the table, only an inch away from Alouette's cup.

"Oops, my bad," Jesse mutters, biting the tail off Mrs. Trout.

Alouette blinks twice and looks around the dining hall, but she can't find Elijah. "Why are you here?" she asks at last, puzzled.

Jesse shrugs. "Elijah is busy, Owl is sleeping and Lark is on a date, so that leaves me. Sad and lonely, with no one to turn to like the sad and lonely man I am." He dips his toast in his cup. "Have I mentioned I'm sad and lonely?"

Alouette will never get used to the nicknames he's given to the two men on his team. Every time he mentions him, her head jumps up. Maybe it'll be the end of her one of these days. She rolls her eyes. "You can stay."

"Ah, what an honour." He cuts his second slice of toast into a fish and eats the spare pieces. "What do you say, will we have eggs for breakfast at the Palace? That would be nice. Eggs. Haven't had one in over a month, I can only eat them in the city since they're too expensive to buy for the whole headquarters." He hands her the new fish-toast. It takes Alouette a moment to realise he wasn't cutting his second slice of toast, but hers.

She takes it and gives it a long stare. This one has no eye, but she doesn't complain. At least she isn't feeling judged anymore. "You can have anything you want at the Palace," she replies. "It's different from here."

Jesse hums. "Yeah, these things are complementary, aren't they? If more than half of the country is poor, the riches have to be somewhere else."

He isn't wrong. Still, it's too early for Alouette to consider taking the bait.

"How's the planning going?" Elodie intervenes. "Do we already have a solid attack plan for the Shade?"

"What's the Shade?" Amina asks.

"Nothing's decided yet," Jesse replies. "We only know some general locations, we can only make suppositions. We'll only have access to the Palace's resources when Styles goes back." He sends Alouette a glance and lets out a chuckle. "Heard it's your fault he hasn't already."

She stiffens. "It was the best choice."

"At least the President's having a nice holiday, I suppose. Unless he ends up blowing up our generator."

Alouette glares at Jesse just as Amina gasps. "Harry won't do such thing," she scoffs. "I preferred you when your main point of conversation was hiding in Ezra's wardrobe."

"Oh yes, hiding in closets is my specialty," Jesse replies. He picks up a baked bean from his dish and throws it at her. "Should I keep talking about how you went bang bang when we first met, then?"

Amina jumps up in interest. "How did you meet?"

Alouette blanches instantly, but Jesse gives her sister a mischievous smile.

"Oh, it was a one-of-a-kind encounter. Her beauty was so dazzling it nearly pierced my heart. She needn't say a word, and I knew I was a goner. As effervescent as a bullet to the chest, this one is."

Amina's eyes glitter, but then she crosses her arms. "Harry is already her boyfriend."

Alouette freezes. "He's not." The word sends a tingle down her spine, but she knows that, no matter how badly she wishes it were true, it isn't. Harry could never be caged by such a small word, and she'd never dare to bring it up with him.

Her sister shrugs. "You sleep together."

Elodie spits out her coffee and coughs loudly. Jesse bites into his toast looking at them half-heartedly.

Alouette glances around, but no one at the nearing tables seems to have heard. "We're just friends," she says in the end.

"Friends, yeah," Jesse mumbles between a bite and the other. "For the pleasure of everyone involved."

"Then you're all ready to go back?" Elodie asks, desperately trying to change topic before they start treading more dangerous waters. "No more preparatory missions and all?"

Alouette nods. "Thankfully." She sends Jesse a quick glance. "Not that I didn't have fun going on that one mission with you, of course. Speaking of, I was never told if what we discovered was important?"

Jesse clears his throat and looks away. "Probably."

"Where can I find the information?"

He tenses up. "You can find all the information you need in the folder Mr. Styles was given. I have training now." He stands up and leaves the dining room in a matter of seconds.

Alouette and Elodie exchange a confused look, but they don't risk voicing their thoughts while Amina is sitting right beside them.

Alouette pushes the half-empty glass towards her sister with a finger. "Finish it all, school is starting soon."

Amina crosses her arms. "I don't want to go. My classmates are rude."

"Well..." Alouette jolts in the second a hand lands on her shoulder. The grip is firm but not painful, and she recognises it instantly.

"You're late." The sentence is spoken into her ear, softly enough to split a heart in two. Its vibration runs down her spine, making her bones thrum.

"Harry!" Amina says excitedly.

Alouette turns around; Harry is regarding her sister with a long look, seeming to be deciding whether he should acknowledge her presence or not. In the end he gives her a slight nod and turns his attention back to Alouette.

"We should be in a meeting right now, Lark."

She scrambles to her feet. "I got distracted," she says apologetically. She kicks her chair away and turns to the table to say her goodbyes, realising only in that moment that all the people in the dining room are looking at them. A second later she realises it's because Harry has never been in this room before, and her cheeks get hotter. He's come to fetch her. "I'll see you later, have a good day at school!"

"But Al—"

"Oh, and don't kick your classmates."

Amina scoffs and looks away.

Alouette chuckles and looks at Harry. She left when he was still sleeping—which isn't a rare occurrence, since he's gone to sleep well into the night for the past week—and wants to greet him, but she's all too aware of all the eyes on them. He, on the other hand, doesn't seem to be bothered by being the centre of attention.

He pulls her closer to him by her arm. "Let's go." He walks to the door and pulls her away with him, not sparing a second glance to the observers. He only lessens his hold on her when they're back into the corridor, allowing her to walk next to him. "I'd appreciate it if you told your sister not to talk to me directly in public ever again."

Alouette stiffens. "What?"

Harry doesn't notice her reaction and keeps walking down the corridors speedily. It's concerning to see how quickly he learnt his way around the buildings of the Revolution. "You have no idea of the amount of enemies I have—they'll stop at nothing to uncover my weaknesses." He sends her a faint smile over his shoulder. "So, unless you're willing to teach your sister to use a gun, make sure she doesn't speak to me directly again."

Alouette feels like she should complain, but he does have a point. A man walks past and she looks straight ahead not to be caught staring at Harry. "Have you had a chance to go through the folder Ezra gave you?" she asks him when they're alone in the corridor again.

"Not in full. Why?"

"I'm curious about a thing. I have a feeling I'm not being told everything."

Harry shoots her a glance; Alouette can only see a glint of green before he looks away again. "What is it?"

"I recovered something on my mission with Jesse. I didn't think much of it at first, but then Ezra—"

Harry shuts her up by lifting a hand when two armed men step into the corridor. They're chatting amicably, but immediately go silent when they spot him only a few feet away from them. "This isn't the right place to talk about this."

Alouette opens her mouth to tell him there's no risk to be spied on, but the memory of the look Jesse sent her at breakfast makes her words die in her throat. She waits until the men are gone and then grabs Harry by the wrist, pulling him into a minor corridor.

He doesn't say a word as she drags him away, but she can feel his eyes burn the back of her head. Just a few months ago she would've never dared to move him like this, but so many things have changed since then.

She opens a door and shoves him inside. "We can talk here." Her words come out in a whisper; darkness falls over them when she closes the door again. The room is small, barely more than a broom closet, and when she turns around Harry is standing so close to her she can feel his breath on her skin. He lets out a breathy laugh, and she frowns. "What is it?"

"I've been the President for over six years and I'm the closest thing to royal blood this country will ever have, and you've just shoved me into a closet."

"Come on, now. We both know this isn't the worst thing I've done to you," Alouette replies, but she lets out a laugh anyway. "Not everyone can have a fancy little studio away from prying gazes like you, Mr. President."

Harry hums. "Should I make them mandatory?"

"How about a law that makes spying illegal?"

"Now, why would I make things harder for myself?"

Alouette can see him in the sliver of light coming from under the door, now. His face is a canvas of deep shadows and suffused highlights and sharp angles over the curved, gentle lines of his lips and hair. He's much closer than she anticipated, and she isn't quite sure she remembers how to breathe anymore. "I thought no laws apply to you?" she whispers out.

"And that's true." A smile curves his lips. "But we don't want everyone else to find out, do we?"

She nearly grabs him by his clothes and kisses him right then, but then she remembers why they're here. "About the mission," she starts looking away to regain her clarity of mind, and her voice drops even lower. "I was supposed to retrieve something. Some kind of message, I suppose. I took pictures, but I still haven't seen them during our meetings. Ezra basically had me kicked off the team as soon as we came back, and when I asked Jesse about it just this morning, he seemed oddly tense."

She can see in the glint in Harry's eyes that she's sparked his attention. "What did the message say?"

Alouette furrows her eyebrows as she tries to remember. "Something about Greenside? And a letter... I think A? Then there was a mixture of numbers separated by slashes? I can't remember them."

"Greenside A is a district, the numbers are an address or a time."

"It didn't look like either."

"It could've been a code. It was likely a planned meeting. It wouldn't be wise to share information through paper, every code can be cracked with time."

Alouette frowns. "Do you think Ezra did?"

"Undoubtedly."

"But he's hiding it."

"Highly likely."

"I should find out."

Harry tenses up. "Wait until we go back to the Palace, it doesn't seem wise to snoop around now."

"But he's hiding something!"

"Which means he won't be happy if he finds out you're going after it," Harry replies. "I'd rather you didn't get yourself in trouble foolishly. We can look into it from a safe distance when we're under my roof."

Alouette lets out a sigh. "You're right," she gives in, "it's just..." Her hand is nestled in the fabric of Harry's shirt; she doesn't even know when she reached for him. "I feel like I'm missing something. There's something for me to understand here, and it's driving me crazy." She lets out a humourless laugh. "I keep thinking, what if everything's tied together? What if all these things that I can't understand have the same explanation, and I'm missing that one piece that will make everything make sense? Ah, I don't even know anymore."

Harry's hand closes around hers. His fingers sneak between hers and release her grip, and he doesn't let go. "We'll make sense of it together."

"Do you promise?"

"Yes," he breathes out. "If there's something for us to uncover, we will uncover it. But for now—" He straightens his clothes and opens the door, pushing Alouette outside, "—don't do anything that will make things harder for us. I wouldn't want Ezra to change his mind about our deal, and even though he doesn't know, I am powerless away from the Palace."

"And here I thought you were indestructible," Alouette murmurs under the bright lights of the corridor, and Harry chuckles.

"In reality I'm just a man, as you've discovered yourself. My title is the only indestructible thing about me. We are not the same, but it's my aspiration to make everyone believe we are." He holds out his hand to her. "Join me, Ivenhart. Let's show them just what an arrogant, powerless man like me can do."

She takes his hand and smiles. "Ezra thinks I'm a disappointment anyway, so why not?"

"I told you you'd be mine, didn't I?"

Alouette covers her mouth with her hand in fake surprise. "You mean to tell me you actually meant it when you said it at the Palace? And here I thought you were just pining."

Harry looks away, but she catches a glimpse of the smile on his lips as he does. "Still as arrogant as ever, I see."

"I learnt from the best." She stops in front of Ezra's office and pulls Harry towards her by their still linked hands. "That's you, by the way," she whispers in his ear.

His head snaps towards her and she smiles, opening the door and walking in first.

Jesse is already in the room, and he raises his eyebrows when they come in. "Finally you're here."

Alouette glances around the room and frowns. "Where's Elijah?"

Jesse sends Harry a look. "Busy with other things," he says in the end.

Harry sits at the other end of the table and flips through the files on the folder on top of it, dividing them by importance. A moment later, Alouette realises he's scanning them quickly for her sake. "Is everything in here, Haldings?" he asks when he reaches the end and her picture is nowhere to be found.

Jesse nods. "It's not much, but it's enough to start an investigation worthy of its name when we're at the Palace."

"Very well." Harry raises his gaze, and Alouette sits down instantly. "The Shade..." he murmurs, tapping on the table, "I wonder if they've infiltrated the Revolution?"

Jesse suddenly sits straighter. "If you're thinking of conducting a thorough investigation inside the Revolution under the cover of our deal, Mr. Styles, I must tell you that is not allowed. The Shade isn't among us, and the Revolution ranks are not to be investigated. Orders from above."

Alouette jumps up. The two other people in the room turn to look at her; Jesse's eyes are confused, but Harry's are telling her to sit back down and let it go. "Uh, I need to talk to Elijah," she blurts. The words come out to save her, and she takes in what she said only a second later. But it's too late to back down, now.

Harry's face is telling her that he knows she said the first thing that went through her mind, but he jumps in to save her. "If you must."

"Yes." She steps away from the table and leaves the room. She closes the door and leans on the wall next to it; she waits for them to start talking again, but when they do, their voices are too muffled for her to make out anything other than the depth of Harry's tone.

For a few moments she stands there, letting herself breathe. She's drowning again, and this time it's for all the wrong reasons. It's a little hilarious that Harry's presence is the only thing that can calm the racing of her mind when he's the one that made her put the first foot in the water.

She can't stay there anymore—if Jesse comes out and catches her, she'll be in trouble. She walks back to the dining room, but her sister and Elodie are already gone.

She crosses paths with one of the men on Jesse's team that's having a late breakfast and asks him about Elijah's whereabouts.

She hadn't realised how much she actually needed to talk to him until she said it out loud. They haven't properly spoken since their mission, and it doesn't feel right. They've been friends since forever—he's the only person she thought would always have her back. She can't let things end this way.

She walks through the corridors of the headquarters like she doesn't know where to go, the need to set things straight and the fear of making it worse battling in her chest. She's in pieces.

When she reaches one of the minor gyms, she stops near the entrance, unable to step inside. It's a small thing—only big enough to fit a couple of punching bags on one side and some weights in the other. She's been here a few times, but hand-to-hand combat has never been her forte.

Elijah is punching the bag farthest away from the door, her back to her. Each hit makes her muscles jolt. He's alone, but that makes it worse. Deep down, she was hoping there would be more people. It would've been the perfect excuse to give up on the conversation. But she can't—not like this.

Elijah keeps hitting the punching bag, and Alouette watches him from afar. The clock at the end of the room ticks the minutes away, but she can't open her mouth.

Then, he stops and turns around. His eyes widen when he sees her. "What—"

"I won't let you do this," are the words that leave her mouth. They're unplanned and harsh, but they're so true that they feel like a breath of fresh air.

Elijah's arms fall at his sides. "What are you saying?"

Alouette steps into the room. "I know you're mad at me, and that you probably need time, but I'm leaving in only a few days, and I can't leave things like this."

The glare he sends her would be enough to make her turn around and leave, if it came from anyone else.

"I'm sorry I can't like you in the way you like me. But it was never in my plans to like Harry, and it's unfair that you're treating me like this."

"Are you kidding me?!" he exclaims. "You betrayed—"

"I haven't betrayed anyone." She crosses her arms and looks away. "I'm not like you, I've never been. I wasn't raised here, not in the same way you were, at least. I lived out there for years, and then my father brought me here for my safety." She frowns. "I liked to play the part of the perfect child, back then. It was what was expected of me, being an Ivenhart. But it was only a play—in truth, I was miserable."

"What are you—"

"I've never been the kind of person that believes in something simply because they're told that's how it should be. I understand if you can't understand that. I've been watching you for years. I know how dedicated, dependable you are, and I wish I could be the same way. But I'm not. I've never felt like I truly belonged here, there was always something off. I only realised what it was when I met Harry." She pauses for an instant. "I refuse to be a pawn. I don't belong to the Revolution, nor anyone else. I'm not made for following orders without questioning them."

"Al..."

"This doesn't mean I'm betraying the Revolution. I'm not—I fully support its cause, more than you know. But I want to support it while following my ideals, and that's what I'm doing now. I understand if you're disappointed, but I'm not sorry for doing what I believe is right."

Elijah frowns. "You're siding with Harry."

"I'm finding a different way to achieve the same things the Revolution wants to achieve. I'm just doing it in a way that's less..."

"Less?"

It takes Alouette a few moments to find the word, but when she does, it sounds so right it nearly takes her breath away. "Questionable."

A long silence follows. Alouette allows herself to look at him—at the dark eyelashes shielding his hazel eyes from her, at the frown curving his eyebrows, at the hair clip attached to the hem of his shirt.

"Questionable," Elijah repeats, letting it ring out in the silent room. "Questionable." He looks down and takes off his boxing gloves. "There's something I've never told you." The gloves fall on the ground with a silent thud. "I don't know why I didn't. I guess I didn't want you to worry, and it seemed nothing at the time. But now... sometimes I wonder."

Alouette's entire frame is tense. "What is it?"

"About four or five months before your father's death, I overheard a conversation between my parents. I wasn't supposed to hear it, they didn't know I was home."

Alouette flinches.

"I'm sure it was nothing. I've thought about it often, and I really think it's nothing. It was just a coincidence, but... I don't know. I haven't been able to get it out of my head, but I couldn't bring myself to tell you because it sounded more like a baseless conspiracy than the truth."

Alouette doesn't even notice that she's entered the room. "What were they saying?"

"My father was telling my mother someone asked him to kill your father."

Alouette's eyes widen. "What?"

"They offered him something valuable in return, too, though I don't know what it was."

"What did your father do?"

"He straight up refused right away, of course. He seemed to be surprised, but not too worried. He said he'd tell your father about it, just in case." Elijah frowns. "Nothing happened, so I forgot about it soon after. But then your father died and mine was blamed for it, and I..."

Alouette's heart drops. "You think someone might've killed my father and tried to frame yours for it? As payback for not doing it?"

"I don't know what I think!" Elijah hisses. "This is nonsense, the death was an accident. I don't even know why I told you."

"Right," Alouette breathes out, "an accident." Because that's what being crushed by a falling tube in the generator room is, her mind says, just an accident.

"Yeah, so..." Elijah picks up his gloves and walks towards the chair where he put his belongings. "It was just odd timing. I don't know what to make of it. Maybe you do."

An accident. An accident. An accident. But it was a night of more than three years ago—why did her father go there at night? And the generator hadn't been reported to have any particular issues before it happened. And it might mean nothing, and there might be nothing to understand from this, and yet—What if?

"I'm sure it was just someone not being serious or something," Elijah continues, gathering his things, but she can only hear half of what he's saying.

"Who was it?" Her lips form the question before she can realise she's letting out a sound. "The one that approached your father."

Elijah looks at her. "He never said their name."

The next question stings even more. "Were they Revolution?"

"I don't know."

She nods. "Okay." Her fingers clench around the hem of her shirt.

Elijah takes a step towards her. "Al..."

"I need to go." She turns around and flees the room.

Elijah's right, it meant nothing, she tells herself. It was only an accident. It meant nothing. It was only someone playing around. But that nagging doubt is there, and it slithers and slides around her heart and pierces her conviction. And then a half-forgotten memory rises from the ashes of four years before.

Alouette is making a sandwich when her father comes into the small apartment they have at the Revolution. "You're back late," she says.

"Sorry, got held up." His tone is dismissive, and when she looks up at him she notices he seems to be shaken up.

"Is everything alright?" nineteen-year-old Alouette asks.

"All's good," her father replies. He looks around the small kitchen. "Where's the little one? Is she sleeping?"

"It's nearly midnight, of course Amina is sleeping," Alouette says, a little annoyed. "She looked for you for the whole day."

"Ah." He sits on a chair. "I was busy."

Alouette cuts the sandwich and offers him half. "Sorry, I'm just stressed. Mom's not answering my calls and... it's just a lot, I don't know."

Daniel Ivenhart munches on his piece of sandwich. "She'll come around." He frowns. He seems to be distracted. He's always distracted, but tonight it's more than usual. "How long has it been since you entered my office?"

Alouette shrugs. "You haven't brought me there since I was thirteen."

"Yeah, right." He clears his throat. "If you move the cupboard behind my desk to the side and lift the carpet, you'll find a safe. The code is nightingale, but in numbers."

Alouette frowns. "Why are you telling me that?"

"No reason," her father replies. "Just keep it in mind."

She could've believed her father. She really could've, if he hadn't died only four months after that night. She could've let it go, if she hadn't gone to his office a week after his death and moved the cupboard aside, lifted the carpet and put in the code, only to discover that safe only held one thing.

His book.

The book that nearly was her demise more than once. Four months before her father's death someone tried to get Elijah's father to kill him. He refused and told her father about it, and that same night, he told her the combination to a safe that held a book, and copies of that same book are all over the Palace, together with an empty file bearing her father's name.

It doesn't feel like a coincidence anymore.

"When I gave you permission to go, I didn't mean you weren't supposed to come back."

Alouette's head snaps up; somehow, she's back to the corridor that brings to Ezra's office, and Harry's walking towards her. "The meeting?"

"It ended."

"Ended?"

Harry raises an eyebrow. "You left an hour ago."

An hour? She must've been more out of it than she realised. "Oh."

He reaches her and puts his arm around her shoulders, as if he too can see she's shaken up. Maybe he can. "We're going back."

Alouette looks up at him, but she doesn't feel like she's truly seeing him. "Do you ever get the feeling that the world is slipping from your grasp?" she whispers out.

Harry's fingers close around her shoulder. "All the time."

Somehow, those words don't reassure her nearly as much as they should. The ground has crumbled under her feet and she's fallen into a bottomless pit, and she's losing her hold on all the things she's been trying so hard to control. She's powerless in front of a truth much bigger than she is, and she's losing.

Why do I want to let go so badly?

Thank you so much for the 450k reads on Interlude! It means the world to me.
I hope you liked this chapter x
Miki