"Alouette." Harry's voice breaks the deep, rolling silence between them. Two days have passed, and they're now in the car, heading to the Revolution. Alouette has never felt so agitated before. "I wish you would talk to me."

Alouette's gaze stays to the barren ground outside, speeding past the window so fast she can barely make out the few, trembling trees scattered here and there. Over the past month, she'd forgotten how dead the world can look out of the main cities. "I don't want to talk." Her mouth moves and she hears her voice say the words, but she isn't certain she is the one speaking. Her mind is far away, a ghost wandering the desolation outside.

His head tilts in the reflection in the car window. "Why?"

She shrugs. "I have nothing to say."

"That's a lie."

Alouette sighs and turns to look at him. He's sitting in front of her, his arms crossed, one knee draped over the other. He looks oddly defensive, and she can't blame him. She has been a little sensitive over the past couple of days—not that she means to. It's just getting a little hard to deal with everything that's happening and its dangerous implications. "What do you want me to say?"

"The truth, for instance."

As if that's easy. Her head moves to the side, uneasiness washing through her, but then she remembers Jayden, on the other side of the separation behind her back, can't hear their conversation. She suddenly feels a little less agitated, foolishly so, as if Harry being the only one hearing her words would make a difference on her perception of them. "I just feel..." A wave of her hand, as if he could understand all her meanings from her body language alone.

His gaze dips to follow her movement. "Are you scared?" he asks quietly.

She frowns. "Heavens, no." A pause. "I don't think so? Not in that way, at least." She bites her lower lip worriedly. "I guess I keep thinking, what if something bad happens tomorrow? Not to me, but to the ones I care about. What if they..." Her voice dies. "What if I'm not enough to keep them safe? What if something happens that..."

"You shouldn't think of it that way."

"I know, but..." She looks down at her lap. "I keep thinking of it. What if something happens that requires me to be cruel, and I can't do it, and someone dies because of it?"

Harry looks at her for a long moment, at the skin she's worrying around her nails, at her nervous biting on her lips. When he speaks, his voice is slow, careful. "You once told me doing bad things for good reasons doesn't make you inherently evil. I don't believe it's something you should worry about. I know you'll do what is required of you." His eyes travel up to hers. They're that lovely shade of silvery green they only get in the late afternoon light. "But you don't have to go."

She looks back out of the window. "It's not like I can back down, now."

"You can always back down. I'll make sure of it. Do you want to?"

"No." Her reply comes fast. "Yes. I don't know. I don't want to do this, but I have to."

"You don't have to do anything." His assurance takes Alouette aback. "We don't have to do this now. If you wish so, we can turn the cars around and go back to the Palace. We can come up with a better plan, one that requires less danger."

She chuckles. "You want to infiltrate the Shade like I've infiltrated the Palace?"

He stares her down, fingers tapping against his arm. He seems restless. She doesn't think she's seen him this jumpy many times; it feels weird.

Realisation dawns on her. "You don't." There's surprise in her voice, though she can't tell why. She's known it unconsciously for the past few days—it's been the source of that dissonance that has been wrecking her from the inside. She can't keep a faint, disbelieved laugh from escaping her mouth. "I knew it was weird you were following Ezra's orders." She'd found it weird that Harry, the meticulous person she knows, would agree to go forward in a matter of days without a foolproof plan just because the Revolution suggested it. "You want this."

There's another side of Harry, one it's been so easy to forget over the past few months—the one that makes him truly dangerous. He is, by essence, an unpredictable creature. His long-term scheming is matched by erratic, fickle moods that make him a near-perfect antithesis. Even though he's never made a secret of it, it's the side of him that takes her aback the most. As he once told her, he occasionally likes to step in during the interlude and change the instances of the set without anyone knowing, behind the safety of a thick velvet curtain. This decision is no different.

"You want it to be over quickly," Alouette continues, "because you're tired of the Shade. You want to get rid of them in one go, and don't care much about how it happens. Like what you did with those warehouses, when you found out they'd betrayed you." Her eyebrows furrow. "Like what you did last February."

Harry's eyes narrow, though he doesn't deny it. "Last February?"

She stares him down. "Why did you kill Asher, Harry?" she asks, more as a way to prove her point, realising that she's genuinely curious about it only a moment later. It's never made much sense, to her. She hadn't expected him to, no one had—that's why that meeting happened in the first place. It'd been yet another of his unpredictable behaviours.

"Asher Markberg?" Harry tilts his head and glances out of the window. His position relaxes a little. "Isn't it obvious? He was the second leader of the Revolution. He had to go."

Alouette's eyes narrow. "You didn't need to. You could've killed him the first time you saw him. You could've captured him and done a public trial. But you killed him on the second meeting, and had the news hide the fact it was you. Why did you do that?"

His fingers tap on the seat next to him slowly, rhythmically. A faint smile turns up the corners of his lips. "Because..." He looks down, as if he's rethinking about that night for the first time in months. He probably is. "Because I could. Because it was easy." He leans forward, his elbows on his knees. "Because he was annoying me. Because I wanted to see how badly I could hurt the Revolution. And... because I was bored."

Alouette's eyes widen. "Bored?"

He sits back against the seat. "It's always been the same thing, with the Revolution and the Palace. It was getting tiring. I suppose I wanted to see what they'd do if I killed one of their leaders. You know, introduce a dramatic change to the chessboard mid-game. I thought it'd be fun."

Alouette stares at him for a long moment. She feels like she should be saying something, but she can't find the words.

"Is this when you get disappointed, at last?" Harry asks, his tone taunting. There's a smile playing in his face, but the look in his eyes is tense, like he fears it's the truth. "You know what I'm like." Alouette has the strong feeling he's trying to push her away because he fears he's let her in too much.

She looks back out of the window. "Yes, I know what you're like." She sighs. "I'm not. I'm just..." She doesn't know what to say. There are so many conflicting emotions inside her—her heart and her brain are in two different places. Her morals are battered and scattered, her feelings like silver threads decorating the barren earth they've left behind.

"Is it your turn, then?"

Alouette's gaze snaps up to Harry's. "What?"

"A secret for a secret, wasn't it?" His eyes glint, every bit dangerous. He leans closer. "Why did you agree to come to the Palace six months ago, Alouette?"

Her eyes widen again. "I'm... I don't..."

"Come on, you know it's only fair if there's an exchange." He's teasing her, now. "I can guess you either offered your services or they asked and you accepted. Either way, you made a choice. I want to know why you came to kill me." Harry smiles. "Call it a personal curiosity, just like yours."

Alouette bites her lower lip nervously. It feels odd to think back of that moment, so long ago. That day of eight months ago, soon after Harry killed Asher, when she decided to take matters into her own hands for the first time in her life. "I guess I..." She tries to find the right words, the pretty words, the ones she should be saying. But Harry is looking at her so intensely that her tongue ties, and the truth comes out instead. "I was tired of feeling useless." She closes her eyes as soon as she says it. It's easier to speak if she isn't looking at him. "Back then, I spent all my days hiding away in the Revolution, never doing anything. And it was fine, it really was, until one day it... wasn't. You know that feeling you get sometimes, comparing yourself to the others around you and before you, and realising you're nothing? That your existence doesn't matter, because you've never done anything to make it matter?"

She feels like laughing. Of course he doesn't. He was a few years younger than she is now when he took over the country. Still, it feels good to let it out, to let her worries see the light of day. It makes them seem less important.

"And then there was that meeting, and all of a sudden I had the opportunity to do something, and I..."

"So it wasn't about me?" Harry's voice is soft, only loud enough to be heard over the engine of the car. "It wasn't about killing me? About you killing me?"

Alouette smiles, leaning her head back against her seat. "I mean, it partly was. I really hated you back then. I was certain you were what's wrong with this country, that if someone could just get rid of you, then everything would get better."

The evaluative stare he gives her is unsettling. "Do you still think that?"

She blows air through her lips, thinking about it. But there's no point in lying to him, and the answer is quite easy, in truth. "Sometimes."

He doesn't say a word.

"But we've already established I'm not going to kill you. I might steal you away once more though, depending on how I feel about it."

Harry chuckles, a low rumble in his chest, and moves to sit beside her. "You want to hold me captive?" His question hits her, deep and suggestive, as he tucks a strand of hair behind her ear.

Her cheeks heat up. "Hadn't we established that already?"

His nose buries in her hair. "And what would you do to me?" he whispers.

"What do you want me to do to you?" Her breath hitches, and her voice breaks mid-question.

She can hear the smile in Harry's voice when he speaks. "Everything."

He's so close she can feel his heat on her skin, and she can barely breathe. Suddenly, all her worries are brushed away. Nothing matters but him, sitting next to her in the small space inside the car. If Jayden wasn't in the car with them, she wouldn't let him get to the Revolution in one piece.

She shrugs. "Careful, I might take you up on that offer the next time I'm feeling bored." She knows he doesn't miss the jab. His faint laugh confirms it.

"I'll look forward to it." His hand grazes her hair, nothing more than a feather-touch. She dares to glance at him from the corner of her eye; a serious look has overtaken the playful one. She lets him look at her side profile, at the way the dimmed sunlight hits her face. At the fabric of the shirt covering her shoulder. "Do you still feel useless?" he asks after some interminable months have passed.

She worries her bottom lip, thinking about it. "Sometimes," she admits.

"Will you feel useless tomorrow?"

The mention of what will come sends an arrow-like chill down her spine. "No." There aren't many things she's sure of, but this is one of them. She wonders if this is still her desperately trying to amount to anything. If Harry will see it that way.

"Okay." He's still thinking, Alouette can see it in his eyes. Over the past couple of days, he's been surprisingly quiet about it. He hasn't tried to change her mind about it, like Elijah and even Jesse. She wonders why that is. Is he certain she'll get back fine, or does he foolishly think he can still keep her safe, despite everything? Her throat closes up. "Tomorrow, when you come back," he starts, slowly, like he's testing the waters, "we'll have a celebration. A real one, this time. I sent strawberries from the Palace to the Revolution earlier this morning. And champagne of the highest quality."

The words tug at the knot in her throat. "I don't even like strawberries that much." Her voice breaks. Tears come to her eyes, but she doesn't notice until they're already streaming down her cheeks. She looks down, trying to hide them, but her shoulders shake. A sob unexpectedly breaks out of her throat, and she hides her face in her hands. She doesn't even know why she's acting so ridiculous.

"Lark?" Harry calls her, seeming unsure. His hand is on her shoulder, but it's hesitant. "I'm not sure..."

"Sorry, I don't know what—" Her voice breaks again. She can't stop crying, it's like a dam has been opened. All the feelings she's been hiding all this time, from the Palace and her father's hiding place and her mother's empty house and that night in the streets of Dacran and every night after it and her loneliness under Harry's roof and her insecurity and the past few days, rush to the surface, so violently there's nothing she can do to push them back down. She's never cried like this in front of anyone before.

Harry's stupid strawberries. It's all their fault, and she can hardly breathe. Why would he go as far as to sending them to the Revolution? That's so chaotic, it's so pointless. She can't stop sobbing. She hardly notices she's leaning into Harry until his arm wraps around her shoulders and he's pulling her into him.

"I don't know what's happening." His voice is deep and low, coming from right next to her ear, an innocent admission. She thinks she can nearly feel the vibration of the sentence through his chest. It just makes her cry harder. "You don't have to—"

"Don't say I don't have to go," she says, face mushed against his shoulder. "I have to. I want to. I need to go. I can't just let them..."

Harry hums. He's leaning against her seat, and Alouette only barely notices she's half-climbed on his lap. His fingers brush against the back of her head. "I know." She can imagine him frowning. "And I know you'll be back, too."

Alouette has to stifle her sons long enough to ask, "How do you know?"

He takes a deep breath. "You wouldn't let them win." A smile in his voice. "I pity those that will cross your path."

A chuckle breaks through her tears. "I'm not that good."

Harry's fingers tangle in the hair at the nape of her neck. "Be a bad girl tomorrow, my Lark. You know I prefer it."

She brushes her tears away and sits up, her thighs on either side of his lap. "But if I'm a bad girl with your enemies, doesn't it mean I'm being a good girl to you?" Her lips curl up in a smile at the absurdity of the conversation.

Harry glances up at her. "But good girls get good rewards, don't you know?" Alouette's cheeks go up in flames. He curls his fingers around her neck and tugs her towards him. "As a matter of fact, I also haven't got laid under the roof of the Revolution yet. We should change that, don't you think?" His other hand slides up her thigh, their lips are so close they're nearly touching.

Alouette's fingers wrap around the knot of his tie—that tie, she notices. He must've put it on to ruin her life a little more. "How about tonight?" Her mood swings are hurting her head. Minutes ago she was crying on top of him, now she's still on top of him, but her thoughts have taken a dangerous turn. There's always that spark of electricity between them, that makes everything more exciting.

"That would be—"

Alouette's head snaps up. The car has stopped, and steps are running to it. She throws herself on the seat next to him just in time.

The door opens, and Amina's smile nearly blinds her even though the sky is starting to turn dark outside. "We're here!" she says excitedly.

Alouette smiles and steps out of the car, searching for Jesse and Elijah. She spent days trying to figure out where her sister should stay while she's away—in the safety of the Palace, or the one of the Revolution? In the end, she chose the latter. Elodie is at the Revolution, and it's safer for Amina to be with someone she's familiar with. Alouette trusts Evie, but not enough to let her watch over her little sister for days.

She's standing in the middle of the yard between the buildings of the Revolution. She hadn't even noticed they'd arrived, that taken she was with her conversation with Harry. Harry steps out next to her, and Jayden drives the car away.

Alouette spots Jesse and Elijah walking out of the underground parking side by side. Elijah says something and Jesse pushes him away with a laugh, and then he looks up and smiles at Amina. "Don't tell me you interrupted them, I told you to wait for us." Alouette widens her eyes at the implications. Jesse saw. Her gaze flies to Harry's, but he doesn't seem bothered.

"Elodie!" Amina shouts, running away.

The main entrance of the headquarters have opened, and a storm of people are coming outside. Elodie, hugging Amina with a smile on her face. Owl and Lark, making faces at Jesse and Elijah. A multitude of faces Alouette has seen around but doesn't know directly, looking suspiciously at them. Ezra, between them, a winning smirk on his face.

Jayden comes out of the underground parking with the rest of the guards, and for a moment, the two forces in the yard stare warily at each other. The people of the Revolution, weapons at their side, and the twenty-six guards of the Palace, just as armed. Mistrust rises from the ground between them like a heavy mist—it was one thing to have Harry alone under their roof; this is completely different. The deal was signed a month ago, but trust isn't easy nor quick to forge.

Ezra claps his hands, breaking the tension. "I hope your trip here was just fine, Mr. Styles," he greets him loudly, walking through his people and towards them. His gaze runs over the people around him. "And you've brought some new faces, too. Just in time for dinner." He stops in front of him. "We've had an entire floor of the headquarters cleared for your guards. Boys!" He glances back at the door. "Help them settle in. Mr. Styles and I have much to talk about."

Harry raises an eyebrow. "Not before dinner, I hope." Alouette notices his clothes are perfectly tidy even after what happened in the car. When did he fix them up?

Ezra laughs. "Of course not." He waves them towards the building. "I thought it'd be best to assign the room from last month back to you. Anthony, our doctor, can be a lovely neighbour." He glances at Alouette. "Your sister will be in your old room with Elodie, of course. You can choose where to go." His head snaps up when Jesse and Elijah walk past them. "Ah, there's two I haven't seen in a while. You can find your way, can't you?"

Alouette crosses her arms, watching him run after the two. She knows he doesn't like her much, but still. Her pride is hurt.

"That is Ezra Larson?" a voice behind them says—Jayden. Alouette jolts. He's been following them so silently the whole time that she hadn't even noticed he was there.

Harry hums. "Any considerations?"

"I thought he'd be taller."

Alouette chuckles. "He's not short."

"I'm taller."

"You look like you're over six feet, though."

Jayden shrugs. "Still, he's shorter than me."

She smiles. The smile vanishes from her face when she realises this is the first real conversation she's had with Jayden in months. Is he starting to forgive her? She wants to ask, but she doesn't want to piss him off again.

Harry's hand touches her shoulder as they walk toward the building. "Dinner, shower, then we settle what we were talking about in the car. What do you say?"

Warmth rushes to her cheeks. "Don't you have a meeting?"

"That can come after."

"Then I—"

Jayden clears his throat. "Before you get any ideas, I'm to stand watch at your door at all times."

Harry shoots him a glance. "You're released from that duty."

"I'm afraid that's not an option, sir. Your safety comes first."

"Very well." Harry's reply sounds like a threat. "But I have to inform you your standing on the other side of the door isn't going to affect my evening plans."

Alouette gasps. "But it does mine!" She tugs him towards her. "We are not fucking with Jayden out of the door!" she hisses into his ear.

Harry turns towards Jayden. She can tell from the way he's acting it's the first time he's in a situation like this—it would be funny, if she wasn't so terrified Jayden is about to lose his job. "There is no immediate danger."

Jayden tenses up. "I understand, but it's my duty to guarantee your safety—"

"There are other guards on our same floor and the only spot of entrance is a staircase. Keep watch there. Two hours."

Jayden blinks. "Mr. Larson mentioned a doctor."

"He's not a danger to me."

Jayden takes a deep breath. He's really considering it, Alouette realises. This must be the most ridiculous conversation she's ever witnessed Harry take part in. "One hour. I'm not taking any risks."

Harry stares him down. "Two hours, and that's final."

Jayden sighs, giving in. "Okay."

Alouette chuckles. She doesn't know if the whole exchange was very funny, or embarrassing, or a mix of both.

Harry opens the door to the building and goes inside.

She rushes after him and loops her arm around his, ignoring the odd glances some of the people walking past send her way. "Dinner first, though," she whispers, and then adds, low enough for only him to hear, "then I'll show you my lingerie, and you can take it off with your mouth."

Harry tenses up, and she smiles innocently, walking them to the dining hall.