Alouette trusts Harry, but only by half. While she knows he offered her the only thing he could, she's all too aware that any of his belongings would be enough to alert the Palace if it fell in the wrong hands. She has no intention of bringing his entire personal guard to Dacran by accident, and so she picks out a city about two hours and half away from it—close enough to be reached in one day, distant enough to make sure she won't bring any guards back home with her.

Now, there's only the matter of leaving Harry alone for five to six hours. She doesn't like it. It's enough time for him to alert the Palace, escape and set the apartment on fire. But she does remember how he helped her escape from Jayden in Pans, and she does know he did it to make their deal fall through, but he didn't have to. He could've ignored their deal and brought her back to the Palace with him, and nobody would've trusted a word she'd say. But he hadn't done that, which makes her think that, deep down, he must've wanted to stay. Alouette hopes that, whatever it is that made him choose to be by her side for a while longer, it'll be enough to keep him from escaping now.

She twirls the ring between her fingers. She doesn't have an option. Her mother's apartment is the perfect place to hide, because the Revolution doesn't know about it, and neither does the Palace. But they can't stay without water and electricity, and she also needs money to pay for food and necessities. Her options are limited.

Harry has just fallen asleep when she slides out of the bed at six in the morning and gets dressed quietly. She gives him a wary look—she can only hope that, after having stayed up the whole night, he'll be asleep for some hours and will have less time to make trouble.

She leaves the apartment and gets to the car managing not to make odd encounters. The only thing she doesn't like about Dacran is that it's so close to the Revolution—the first thing she likes about it is that it's a very big city, and it takes nearly two hours to drive through it when there isn't much traffic—and she's on the opposite side of the Revolution, at the moment.

It takes some hours to drive to the city Alouette planned on visiting, and by the time she reaches it it's nine in the morning, and she wonders if Harry has woken up. She tries not to think of all the things he could be doing, and spots a jewellery store that seems right for her. It's small enough for her not to catch too much attention, but big enough for her to have hope they'll be able to buy Harry's tragically overpriced ring.

In the end she's correct, and it doesn't take her long to sell it for about nine thousand. She parts with the piece of jewellery with a little longing, but with her pockets full.

The drive back to Dacran takes a little less, and she gets back to the city at twelve. She stops to buy food and some necessities, and then drives to the apartment.

She enters the building and goes one floor down, selecting the number of her apartment on the machine and paying for her electricity, water and gas. Then, she takes the bags and goes up. She keeps her ears open as she goes up the stairs, but she doesn't spot any odd sounds, or anything that might tell her something is wrong.

Alouette steps into the apartment and closes the door. The lights don't turn on, not yet, but they will soon. "I'm back," she says, frowning when she receives no reply. She puts everything down near the couch and goes into the hallway. "Harry?"

The bathroom is empty, and so is the kitchen. The door to her parents' bedroom is still closed, so she walks towards the guest room.

"Har—" She immediately goes silent when she recognises his figure on the bed. She silently enters the room and kneels next to him, smiling to herself when she realises he's sleeping.

He's on his back, his head tilted towards her, his lips slightly parted. He's in almost the same position she left him at this morning—he must've been tired. It does make sense, Alouette thinks. She doesn't know what he did when they were in Pans, but she's quite certain he hasn't slept more than three, maybe four hours each night since they left—sometimes even less. And with her out of the way, the door locked and a mattress under him, he felt safe enough to sleep. Sleep properly, for once.

The blanket is a little low on his waist, but she doesn't dare pulling it up, not wanting to accidentally wake him up. She carefully stands up and leaves the room.

She half-closes the door and walks back in the living room, putting the food she bought away. The water turns on, now, and so does the heating system. Soon, the lights will too. She puts the bathroom necessities in their rightful place and then unpacks the new clothes, putting them on the couch. Then, she finds some cleaning supplies and cleans every room but the guest room—not to wake Harry up—and her parents' bedroom, because she has no intention of stepping in there anyway.

She tries not to think about her mother leaving—about the fact that she doesn't know where she is, now, but it's hard. It's frustrating to care, because she knows Léonie didn't, not really. Or, if she did, she only did marginally. Her mother didn't want anything to do with her then, and she isn't here now. She doesn't want thoughts about her to ruin this moment for her too, when she already has so many things to think about and has barely managed to get a break.

Harry wakes up about an hour after she got back home, and finds her sitting on the couch.

"You're back," he says, entering the room, and she jumps up and turns around. "You could've woken me up."

"I didn't want to," she replies.

He gives her a long look, and she knows he knows she couldn't bring herself to because he already sleeps so little. He doesn't seem to enjoy it but doesn't comment on it. "How did it go?" he says instead.

Alouette gives him a winning smile. "I sold it for nine thousand."

He gives her a half-smile. "I knew you wouldn't disappoint me."

She hums. "You can shower, if you want. And then we can eat." She takes the first clothes her hand lands on from the couch and throws them at him. "New clothes."

"You spoil me," Harry replies, heavy sarcasm in her voice, and then goes into the bathroom.

Alouette waits until she hears the shower running, and then cleans the guest room and gives a quick swipe to the hallway as well. It's the first time she bothers to clean up an apartment they're in, and it feels odd. It feels domestic, even though Harry's presence alone makes it everything but.

Then she realises it's been about forty minutes, and Harry still hasn't come out of the bathroom.

She knocks on the door. "Harry? Are you done?" She knows hers is an irrational fear. After all, if Harry wanted to leave, he would've done it while she wasn't in the house. She knows enough about him to know that a locked door is a setback, not an insurmountable obstacle.

A hum comes from the other side. She can hear water running.

"Can I come in?" she asks him, wondering what's going on inside the room. Maybe she's just growing restless because she's barely seen him today.

"You can."

Alouette opens the door and lets out a gasp.

Harry puts his toothbrush down, sending her a mildly amused look. "Is something bothering you?" he asks, but she can't take her eyes off him.

He's wearing a dark pair of sweatpants that hung low on his hips, only a shade lighter than his tattoos, and nothing else. She knows she should turn around and pretend this moment never happened, but she still finds her gaze following the line of his spine, her cheeks growing hotter when she realises she's been staring at him for too long.

It isn't the first time she sees him shirtless, but he's never let her look at him before. Every other time she caught him undressed, he was either in the process of putting on his clothes or, if he wasn't, he sent her away. As if her gaze alone was enough to burn his skin.  This time, though, he doesn't shy away from her gaze—though that might not be the right word. He must know how attractive he is—she can see it in the winning look in his eyes, in the subtle enjoyment on his face at her reaction. But he likely knows that with looking at him shirtless comes curiosity, and when that happens, questions are not far away. Questions about why there are scars on his back, on his sides, old enough to be faded but deep enough to be still visible.

Alouette doesn't ask any of them. Maybe he'd like her to, and it's why he isn't chasing her away. Or maybe he wants to see if she'll step over the boundaries he set some weeks ago, yet another type of test.

"You said I could come in," she whispers, taking a step back. This situation is dangerous, her grip on things slippery.

"You can." He steps towards her. His hand reaches just above her head, and then she hears the click of the bathroom door shutting. She takes a step back and hits the door. The corners of his lips turn up in a lascivious smile. "What is it, Lark? Have you never seen a man before?"

Alouette would love to tell him to get over himself, and that she's seen shirtless men before, and she's been with people that weren't him, but they weren't like him. This is different. "Shut up," she mutters, and then presses her lips against his.

It takes him by surprise. He takes in a sharp breath and stills, and then the kiss is gone.

"You taste like toothpaste," she whispers, a smile playing on her face.

Harry cups her cheek with a hand and pulls her into another kiss. Her lips part and she pulls him into her by his waist, his skin is hot and unexpectedly smooth under her touch. Alouette wants to kiss every inch of his body. His hips collide with hers and she lets out a gasp, and then her hands are in his hair and he's lifting her up and setting her on the cabinet.

Her fingers graze his jaw, and then they tremble slightly as they trace down his neck and land on his shoulders. He slides between her legs and pulls her closer. He's so warm against her and the vapour from the shower is still in the air, and she can hardly breathe. She wants more—and she wouldn't be against going all the way with him right where they are. She just wants him. She wants to make him feel good, she wants to see his eyes glinting like that again.

There's no ocean anymore, no sky and no stars, there's just him. He's the only one in her mind, the only things she can think about are his touch and his voice and his body pressed against hers and the sparks he ignites in her every single time. This is past drowning, past falling, past crashing. She's fallen, deep through sky and earth and fire, and he is the one that caught her when she was so far down she thought she was the last living being around. He sank long before her, and if he's her fallen angel, they can build a new world together.

Her hand accidentally grazes a scar on his shoulder blade and he takes her wrist and intertwines their fingers together, pushing their joined hands down on the cabinet at her side. She traces the line of his jawline with her thumb, she kisses the corner of his lips, the one that always sarcastically turns up every time he finds something entertaining, and then his cheek, and then his jaw.

"You should get dressed," she finally whispers in his ear, taking the shirt on the cabinet near her and pushing it against his chest.

His eyes open, their shade is warm in the golden light of the bathroom. His lips are of a deep shade of red, and it takes all Alouette has not to kiss him again. His hair is almost dry, now.

"Careful, you might hurt my feelings if we go on like this," Harry murmurs. It's enough to nearly take her out. He presses one last kiss to her lips and then takes a step back and puts on the black shirt. His curls are ruffled, and Alouette hides her smile behind her hand. He looks cute, almost. She regrets thinking that immediately, because she knows he'll find a way to make her regret thinking that.

He goes out of the bathroom and she hops off the cabinet, going to close the door and freezing when she notices he stopped in the middle of the hallway. He approaches the library and grazes something with a finger, and Alouette's heart drops.

It can't be.

She didn't check the house to ensure nothing weird was lying around earlier this morning, because she thought her mother had got rid of everything. But what else could it be?

She rushes by his side, and a wave of sickness washes over her when she realises she's right. There's a copy of her father's book in that apartment—one that Harry's now staring at. There's no doubt he's wondering what that book is doing here, in this flat. A shiver runs down her spine at the thought of the things he'd find inside if he opened it.

"How peculiar," he murmurs, sliding his finger down the spine of the book slowly. "I thought the Palace owned every copy."

"What do you know about this book?" she asks. She doesn't dare breathing.

Harry's gaze is on her for a long moment. "I've already told you everything I know," he then says. "It wasn't chosen by me, but by my father. Why do you keep believing there's more to it than I say?"

Because there is. Because a copy of it is in the Palace, and her father's writing is in it. Because it must mean something.

"What if there is something more?" Alouette breathes out. It's too late to regret it when Harry sends her a glance.

"There isn't." His tone is low, definitive. Not up for discussion. Does he not enjoy her meddling into his family's affairs, or is there something more?

He walks away without another word. She waits until he enters the bedroom before sliding the book out and taking it with her into the bathroom.

She wants to scream. She should've known. Not even her mother could get rid of something so personal as her father's book. She frown. But her copy of the book—her father's, the one he left for her, the one he always carried around—is still hidden in the Palace. Whose copy is this, then?

She opens it, and her breath catches in her throat when she reads the sentence written on the first page, right under the title.

To my dear Léonie.

It's unmistakably her father's handwriting, and something stills inside of her as she reads it over and over again. She wonders if there are more notes spread around the book, or if that's the only one. She turns another page, and her breath hitches.

There's a bright white piece of paper, cut out from another book.

Page 127.

Alouette understands. She had it all wrong, at the Palace. It'd never been about the poem written on the page. She'd been chasing the wrong lead.

Page 127—is this the page she's been looking for all along, the one that was removed from her father's copy? Her heart thunders in her chest. On it there are only five short sentences.

Things are wrong. He is getting closer. They're getting closer. Be prepared to take the girl and run.
P. S: Get rid of this page after you read it.

Alouette doesn't know how to feel. Her eyes slide down the page and find the poem—the same poem she read in another copy of the book, back in the Palace. It seems like a lifetime ago, now. To her surprise, this one is annotated as well.

The walls
are whispering

Walls is circled. An arrow points to a sentence scribbled on the upper side of the page.

How couldn't I see this before?

Whispering is underlined. A new line brings her to a new sentence.

Who is it?

A reply is written under it, in a handwriting she doesn't recognise.

Who isn't?

Chills run down Alouette's spine, and she forces herself to continue.

I don't trust
my own shadow

The entire sentence is circled. Next to it, just four words.

What have I done?

One sentence down.

the silence
is talking

This time the word silence is crossed out, and so is talking. Something is written next to the verse.

I don't trust anything Styles says. We're off balance—payback soon. Asher isn't answering.

Is he talking about the father, or the son? There's no way to know. The sentence written under it is in that other handwriting.

Where is he?

Pans, her father replies. The next line, written by her father's interlocutor, makes her still.

I don't like Ettie there. Bring her home.

Ettie. It's the way her mother used to refer to her—her mother. She's the person his father is sharing messages with on the page.

There's a reply, from her father.

Can't. She's safer here.

Her heart jumps. Her parents wrote about her, but not Amina. The messages on the page must've been exchanged before her birth—at least six years ago.

The rest of the poem is completely blacked out, and so are the sentences written next to it. Alouette turns the page and frowns when she finds out that even that word, run, that she remembers being so underlined in the other copy of the book, is now nowhere to be found. But there's something written next to it.

I'm sorry.

She doesn't recognise the handwriting.

She sits in the bathroom, rereading that page, over and over again, until she can quote every sentence written on it, until the words start to lose meaning.

Then, she stands up.

She'd like to keep that page, a reminder of her father, a hint of something unknown, but she can't risk it with Harry in the apartment. He can't know. There's only one thing for her to do.

She turns on the shower and sets the book on the ground, taking the page with her. With a pang in her chest, she closes her eyes and shreds it into unreadable tiny pieces over the toilet. With one last glance at what used to be an exchange of notes between her parents, she flushes.

Water swirls, and then it's gone.

Thank you so much for the 350k on Interlude! It means the world to me. I hope you enjoyed this chapter x
Miki