Ch. 24: Paired Together

"Why am I in here with you?" Adrian asked drily.

After the conference between the Resistance leaders that actually mattered finally finished up, Rosy and Adrian were escorted to the tents that they were supposed to be staying in for the duration of their (likely short) stay at the Resistance's current headquarters.

Interestingly enough, they hadn't been escorted to separate tents, but rather a single tent with two cots. Adrian asked their escort where his own tent was, and received only a shrug as an answer, their escort only not capable of answering, but clearly not caring enough about him to answer, either. Though Adrian knew and accepted that it was because Rosy had worked hard for her reputation, and it was well deserved, it still irked him that people treated even her acquaintances with such naked hate when they didn't know anything about who she really was.

"What do you mean?" Rosy wondered, seeming to be genuinely confused by his question.

"We don't have our own tents?" He asked Rosy as she went through the motions to unhook her belt. It seemed to be a rather elaborate process.

"Of course not. There's no chance that they'll dare to leave me alone in the middle of their camp." She told him with a 'duh...?' tone in her voice.

"Two problems, though. One, why would they trust me to keep an eye on you? You could literally do whatever you wanted to me and there'd be nothing that I could do to stop you. My second problem with this is the fact that they have just as few reasons to trust me as they have to trust you, so I ask again, why am I here?" I reminded her. I had absolutely no past involvement with the Resistance at all, and my honest loyalty was currently more leaning towards Rosy.

For some reason, I believed firmly that I'd have a better chance of getting the Kingstone if I stayed by Rosy's side, even if she ended up betraying the Resistance herself. Something in me just couldn't bring myself to mistrust her, even if she was clearly a terrible danger to everyone around her, including herself. Below it all, it was pretty clear to me that she wasn't a bad person at all, just incredibly broken. But that was just my opinion, and even the person herself would likely disagree with me... with good reason.

"Because it doesn't truly matter." Rosy said nonchalantly, finally succeeding in freeing herself from the leather contraption covering her upper body. She shoved it under one of the beds before laying down on top of said bed.

"That's gotta be uncomfortable..." I winced. She was lying on a huge lump of leather and iron, after all. The beds in the room were already incredibly low quality, made in a rush out of wood, cloth, and low-quality stuffing. It made sense that they were made this way, since it allowed for them to be easily taken apart and transported when the Resistance inevitably moved spots, which it apparently did on a regular basis in order to stay one step ahead of the Noctian armies constantly searching for it.

"You're forgetting, Adrian. I'm a Royal vampire. Incredibly powerful and trained from birth. I'm a killing machine that's nearly impossible to stop using conventional means. Even my healing factor's monsterous enough to offset the pain that a normal person would feel from sleeping on this lumpy thing." Basically, she was telling him that there was little to no point in guarding her, because she'd just slip out and kill everyone when and if she wanted to, anyways. I didn't understand what that had to do with us sharing a room, though.

"What's that gotta do with us sharing a room?" I asked her.

"If they can't keep me locked up by force, what's the second best way to assuage the public's fears of my 'loose cannon' ways?" Rosy asked him. As a prince, Adrian immediately realized what Rosy meant. Honestly, it should have hit him sooner.

"Love, huh? They're gonna pretend that we're a couple, in order to assure the public that you have a reason to change."

"Bingo." She agreed with him, "That's what they were talking about when they decided that you and me would have to scale Griffin Mountain, you know. Sorry to break it to you, but we're in this together until this whole situation blows over."  She told him, kicking her boots off onto the ground sloppily. 

Honestly, Adrian wasn't against that. The more that he got to know Rosy, the more he realized that everything she did was for a single reason. Self-satisfaction. It wasn't that she was selfish or anything, but she did everything that she could in order to ensure that she could both live with herself and survive till the next day, even with all of the chaos in her head. When the two of those goals didn't agree, she'd never hesitate to prioritize the latter goal, but that didn't make her any more evil than a starving person stealing a loaf of bread. 

On top of that, Rosy was smart and beautiful. Both to a scary degree, in fact. He couldn't deny the attraction that he had for the girl, who could be so innocent in one moment, but so terrifying the next. Unfortunately, there was no future between them.

"I see. I look forward to partnering with you for the forseeable future, then. I'll play the part of the 'moral compass' in public, while you play the part of the 'muscle,' all right?"

"Works for me." Rosy agreed, "What's wrong, though?" She asked him, sensing his unease.

"I feel like this charade is wrong..." He admitted.

"We are tricking the entire Resistance, as well as all of its future allies, but it's for the greater good, you know." She reminded him.

"No... Honestly, I'm engaged." He told her. She cracked an eye open,

"So am I." She told him.