"How's it going now?"

Alouette lets out a sigh. "A bit better than before, thankfully. But I'm not where I'd like to be yet."

There's truth in her words, even though she feels a bit guilty. She's perfectly on time if she considers the extent of the task she was given, but she isn't that happy with it. She wants to know more about Harry, to find out more about him, and she won't be able to do it with the little time she has.

She knows it's a bad choice to get close to him and that she shouldn't waste her time like that, but she can't help it. She feels different when she talks to him, he's the most intriguing person she's ever met, and she isn't ready to let him go so quickly.

Nathan nods. "Is there anything I can do to help? If you need me to come up with another way to make you meet Harry, say so and I'll do my best."

"There's no need," she replies, "the issue isn't encountering him anymore."

"Then what's wrong?" He asks, sounding a bit confused, and she sighs again.

She knows that if she wants to get something back she has to tell him a little lie. "He's very closed off and relies on Evie a lot," she explains, and nothing is incorrect about that. "It will take a lot longer to get to a point where he trusts me with his schedule."

"You have a little over a month, still."

"I fear it may not be enough. If the Revolution wants this job to be done right, I need more time."

Nathan hums. "How long?"

"Two more weeks for now."

"I'll see what I can do."

"Thank you," Alouette replies. "I should go, now. It's still early, I wouldn't want to get caught down here."

Nathan asked to meet her at half past midnight, a bit earlier than usual, to get some more information on her progress before leaving to go back to the Revolution. He does so once every few weeks, to be able to fill them in on what's going on without the dangers of getting caught associated with letters, emails and phone calls.

She knows it won't be long before someone inevitably comes down or up the stairs and sees them there.

"Goodbye," he tells her, similarly aware of the danger. "By the way, I think this is yours. You forgot it at the Revolution, it arrived today," he adds, taking a book out of his coat and handing it to her.

Alouette's eyes widen a bit when she recognises it as her father's book and she takes it from him. "Thank you so much," she replies, and then she finally parts ways with the guard, going up the stairs.

As soon as she gets to the first of the upper floors she decides to take the lift, feeling a little too exhausted to even consider walking up ten or more sets of stairs.

She walks down the corridor quickly, not wanting to risk being caught by anyone, taking a deep breath only when she steps into the lift and presses the button corresponding to her floor.

Unfortunately, though, things don't go as smoothly as she planned.

The doors of the lift open three floors below, and Alouette finds herself face to face with a very angered Harry.

He storms inside and she holds her breath, side-glancing at him as he punches in the correct floor number. His demeanour is harsh and his jaw is tense, a dark look into his usually light green irises.

He looks livid, feral even, like he's about to explode and break something. He's terrifying, and Alouette hopes she isn't the cause of his fury.

The doors close, and they're suddenly alone.

The lights of the lift shine down on them of an aseptic white shade that's hurting her eyes a bit, the black panels all around them creating an odd game of luminescence and shadows.

Harry's scent fills the small space they're in quickly, almost giving to her head considering the late hour, and she can perceive his proximity without even needing to look at him. She can hear his breath, a bit quickened and short because of his annoyance, the fresh quality of his smell and even the warmth irradiating from his body, even though it might be her mind playing games on her.

"Is something wrong, sir?" She dares to ask him tentatively to taste the waters, and he shoots her a deadly glare.

"Everything's fine," he spits, clenching his teeth and looking away from her. "Fucking hell," he mumbles under his breath, passing his fingers through his brunette curls harshly.

Alouette only stares at him in reply. She knows he's lying to her, but she also doesn't think it's her place to ask more about it. But that doesn't mean she isn't wondering why he's roaming around the palace at one in the morning with rage etched in his eyes and restlessness in his every movement.

It takes her by surprise. Until now, he seemed to be a rather controlled person, and even though she's sure she's already seen him while he's pissed off, she's never seen him act like this. Usually anger is something that stays behind his facade, to him. You can see it burning right behind the glass, but it's never powerful enough to come through. Now, though, it's seething and boiling, threatening to burn everything in its path. He looks like he's seconds away from flipping out.

The lift stops, but the doors don't open.

For some instants they stand there, so close but so psychologically apart, waiting. Alouette can feel her heart beating loudly into her chest. It's like her entire being is vibrating to its rhythm, becoming more and more paranoid with every second that goes by.

What if he knows?

He can't know, can he?

But her and Nathan did meet much earlier than they usually do. What if he noticed, what if he suspects something? What if that's why they're both there in the first place?

The doors don't open.

All of a sudden the light goes off and a dangerous red tint paints the air around them, and now she feels sick. She knows what that means.

They're stuck inside.

"What's going on?" She asks quietly, her voice shivering slightly. Why is it that the first time she decides to use the lift at night, it breaks down? Someone must've put a curse on her of some kind.

She isn't necessarily scared of being stuck in a lift, but being in that situation in the middle of the night is less than ideal. What if nobody notices and they'll have to stay there until morning?

For a split second she wonders if Harry would let her have tomorrow off if that was the case, but then pushes the ridiculous thought away. She has bigger problems at the moment, one of them being the thoroughly enraged, and eerily quiet, man next to her.

He hasn't said a word. Not even a whisper, not even by mistake.

She sends a glance his way.

His muscles are even tenser than before and he's looking away from her, so she can't see his face. She hates not being able to tell what he may be thinking about right now.

She lets her eyes travel down his body and frowns when she notices his hands are trembling. It's only in that moment that she realises he's shaking, so slightly that she wouldn't have been able to tell if she hadn't looked at him attentively.

Harry turns his head in her direction, feeling her gaze on him, and closes his hands in a fist to mask the fidgetiness of his fingers, acting like nothing is going on.

Is he scared of being stuck in a lift? The simple idea sounds a little ridiculous to Alouette. He doesn't look like the kind of person that would be scared of anything.

He doesn't comment on it, though, so neither does she, not wanting to anger him any further or act on a situation that she may have misread.

"Shit," he hisses, pressing the button a few more times fast, but there's no use. The lift is stuck, it isn't going up nor down, and it most definitely isn't opening its doors.

Alouette carefully reaches past him and presses the emergency button, hoping that someone will come help them. Over the last few days she's discovered that Harry is a quite interesting and sometimes even entertaining person to be around, but that doesn't mean she'd enjoy being locked in a small space with him for a prolonged period of time.

She fears he'll understand everything and more if they spend too much time together, so that night is a definite danger zone to her. Who knows what he's truly capable of? Ever since she came to the palace she's never seen him do anything particularly fucked up, but she knows he isn't a stranger to messed up things in the slightest.

But more than anything else, she doesn't know whether she'll end up hating him even more or liking him a little bit if they spend too long around each other, and that knowledge terrifies her.

Harry is equally as quiet as she is, and she wonders if he's thinking similar thoughts about the situation as well or if his mind is far away, still mulling over whatever happened that put him in such a bad mood.

The makeup around his eyes is nowhere to be found, probably smudged into disappearance by his fingers during the evening, but a dark pink lipstick is still covering his heart-shaped lips, just dark enough for her to see it in the red light around them.

There's a low buzzing in the air coming from the emergency light and there are only some inches between their bodies, enough for Alouette to feel a bit suffocated.

She's wearing a random sweater she brought from home and sweatpants and her hair is tied up in a ponytail, she wasn't expecting to spend her evening face to face with her task and employer.

Harry, on the other hand, is wearing one of his suits, the black jacket resting against the curve of his back so perfectly that it looks like he ironed it on. His white shirt is perfectly buttoned up, too, and the only thing that seems to be out of place is his tie. It's draped around his neck loosely, like a necklace, as if he received important news right when he was in the process of taking it off.

Alouette lets her eyes run up his figure, feeling her breath die in her throat when she meets his.

He's observing her as she looks at him, but he doesn't seem to be particularly concentrated in burning through her head. His gaze is distant, as if he forgot what he was looking at and let his mind wander, or as if he's only paying attention to her not to pay attention to something else.

Nevertheless, she feels her cheeks heat up, so she looks down quickly, catching a glimpse of the way he's scratching the side of his thumb with the blunt bail of his index in a stressed motion.

"May I ask what happened, sir?" She asks out loud, more to change the topic of the conversation than anything else.

If nobody comes to their rescue soon, she'll at least find a way to distract him and herself by getting him to talk about something else, in hope that if he does that he won't be wondering too much about her.

"The lift has broken down."

His answer is short, and Alouette sighs. He definitely isn't cooperating with her efforts, and while she'd be glad he isn't in another moment, she'd really, really like to have him say something, anything, that will get him to calm down and at least be a little more sociable. She has no intention of spending who knows how long alone with him while all he does is glaring at the opposite wall.

"I was referring to what pissed you off earlier, sir." She knows the last time addition of the word 'sir' doesn't do much to hide her very obvious curiosity.

He narrows his eyes at her. "I don't see how that's any of your concern, Lark."

"I'm sorry for overstepping." She can't deny she's a bit disappointed, but she doesn't know why. After all, she's not there to become friends with him - quite the opposite, actually. But it still hurts a bit to know that, even after their last encounters, even though it seemed like it, Harry hasn't relaxed his barriers around her in the slightest.

He ignores her words and presses the alarm button a couple more times, harshly, confusing Alouette with his lack of patience. It's the middle of the night and they have nowhere to go, and it seems pretty obvious to her that nobody will come help them anytime soon.

But Harry acts like a caged animal, pacing back and forth in the little space with trembling hands and a shaky breath, as if he was on the verge of forcing the doors open to escape.

He doesn't like the situation they're in and it's terribly obvious in the way he grows more and more restless by the minute as his very clear anger from before turns into something she has no familiarity with. She can't even tell what is going on in his head, his body is tense, he seems to be frustrated, or mad at himself. Neither makes sense, and now she's starting to grow impatient as well.

His behaviour is making her nervous as well and she retreats in a corner of the lift to leave him his space, understanding he's in no mood for socialising.

"For fuck's sake, where the hell is everyone?" He blurts out all of a sudden, looking around the lift as if he expects to find a secret door or anything that will allow him to get out of that place.

What she doesn't expect, though, is for him to actually find one.

"May I?" He asks, gesturing to her father's book, that she's still holding tightly in her hands.

Alouette is a bit reluctant at the idea of handing it to him but does so anyway, knowing there's no room to argue with someone like him.

Harry takes it from her and uses it to reach the top of the lift, hitting it forcefully a couple of times until it comes off. She stares at it in shock, realising only a second later that it must've already been loose beforehand.

He gives her the book back and she presses it against her chest, watching him as he jumps up and climbs out of the top.

"Come on," he tells her, offering her his hand to help her up, and she freezes.

She's never touched Harry before. It may seem stupid, but it does hold some kind of value to her. Touching him would mean forcing her brain to see that he's just as much of a person as she is, with all the connected implications of that realisation.

But she doesn't want to be stuck in there for the whole night.

She moves under the hole and hands him the book, making sure he puts it down to the side, where it's safe. Then she jumps up as well, but with no success.

It's nowhere nearly as easy as he made it seem and she isn't as tall as him, so she can't reach high enough.

Harry changes position and then offers her his hand again.

The second time she does take his hand and he helps her get out as well, and she ends up crashing right against him.

She pauses to catch her breath as soon as she makes it to the top, staring down into the lift, not believing she actually managed to do something like that.

There's a pause of a second and then she realises she's actually sitting on Harry's thigh and blushes wildly, inadvertently putting her hand on his chest to push him away and feeling her face get even hotter when she acknowledges the stupidity of her action.

She dares to look at him and discovers that there's a slightly amused look in his green eyes, that look unusually dark in the mild obscurity around them.

"Are you comfortable?" He breathes, a hint of irony in his voice.

Alouette gets off his lap quickly and grabs her book, feeling like her embarrassment could swallow her whole. Right when she was starting to feel more secure around him, enough to start teasing him. But that went right beyond all her boundaries, and she feels so awkward because of it.

But she also knows she can't let him know he won that one.

"So, what now?" She asks after clearing her throat, religiously avoiding his face and trying to act as nonchalantly as possible.

"We get off," he states, moving to the side and jumping off.

Her heart drops and she rushes to stand where he was, immediately feeling a little dumb when she realises there's a white staircase running all around the lift.

She gets off as well, miraculously managing not to fall flat at Harry's feet. She definitely isn't made for jumping on and off elevators.

She takes a few moments to inspect the area around her, not even realising that Harry is looking at her as she glances around.

They're on a large, white staircase, that's illuminated intermittently by some fluorescent beams built into the wall. They're on even though the power is off, which makes her suspect they're attached to a second generator. Is it supposed to be an emergency way out or down the palace? She didn't even know it existed.

"Is the architecture of my home to your liking, Lark?"

Her head snaps in Harry's direction as soon as she hears his whispered question. "I might be liking the stairs more than the lift if I have to be honest, sir."

He lets out a short chuckle at her comment. He seems to be much more relaxed now that they're out, his anger, even though not forgotten, hidden to the back of his mind, like an afterthought of some kind.

"Fair."

They walk up the stairs and get to the upper floor, and Alouette feels a little aggravated when she realises they were almost there before the lift broke down.

Harry pushes on a panel in the wall and it opens, revealing the corridor of their rooms on the other side. "Here you are."

The power is off there too, and the only source of illumination in the building seems to be the faint one of the emergency light and the one of the city coming through the windows.

Alouette walks through, but turns around and glances at him as he does the same and closes the panel again. "Are you going back to your rooms, sir, or should I expect to hear you screaming when you find the responsible of the power outage?" She asks him jokingly, perfectly knowing she's entering dangerous territory. She also knows that he likes to be challenged from time to time, so she really can't help it.

Harry hums. "I don't scream, Lark. I throw people in jail."

"I thought the Palace had no dungeons."

"Who said that?" He replies, playfulness in his voice despite the serious but somewhat amused look in his eyes. "No more wandering tonight, Lark. Go back to your room."

Alouette narrows her eyes at him, not liking the way his statement made her feel like a child caught doing something she shouldn't have.

If only he knew.

But there's no irony in his voice, so she knows it isn't up for debate.

"Goodnight, sir," she says, turning around and walking away, not expecting a reply. To her surprise, though, it comes anyway.

"Goodnight, little bird."

I hope you enjoyed this chapter x
Miki