The girl would not leave.
Rossetta had told her to—more than once. Yet each time she set her stride long and fast, Marian would stumble breathless after her, eyes too full of resolve to be dismissed.
It was foolish. Dangerous. But Rossetta had lived long enough to know that sometimes, the truly dangerous things were the quiet ones—like persistence, like hope.
So she let the girl stay.
That evening, the forest was kind. A clearing opened wide enough for fire, and a brook whispered nearby. Rossetta knelt, striking flint until sparks leapt, feeding flame with patience honed across centuries.
Marian crouched opposite, her expression intent. She mimicked Rossetta's movements, though clumsily, scraping stone against stone until sparks sputtered out uselessly.Rossetta sighed.
"You'll set your own hand ablaze before you set tinder."
Marian grinned sheepishly but tried again, more carefully this time. When a spark finally caught, she gasped with delight. The flame was small, pitiful compared to Rossetta's neat blaze, but her eyes shone as though she had summoned the sun itself.
"See? I can learn," Marian said, lifting her chin.
Rossetta's lips twitched—almost a smile.
"Barely."
Still, she nudged a bundle of dry twigs toward the girl.
"Feed it slowly. Fire is like pride. Too much, too soon, and it dies choking on its own smoke."
Marian's brow furrowed at the lesson, as though storing each word in the vault of her memory.
In the days that followed, the rhythm of survival became their language.
Rossetta taught with curt commands:
"Hold the knife higher."
"Boil the water first."
"Don't sleep with wet clothes—you'll freeze."
Marian obeyed with eagerness that sometimes tripped into clumsiness. Once, when she tried to gut a fish, it slipped free and slapped into the mud. She flinched, cheeks flushing, waiting for scorn.
Instead, Rossetta only handed her another knife.
"Again."
Marian blinked, then smiled, determination rekindled.
At night, when the fire burned low, Marian would sneak glances at her.
"Why are you helping me?" she asked once, voice quiet as drifting ash.
Rossetta stared into the flames.
"I'm not. I'm keeping you alive so you don't slow me down."
The answer was cold, but Marian only nodded, as if she heard the truth Rossetta would never admit—that mercy was not in her habit, yet somehow, she could not abandon this girl.
One dawn, Marian rose before Rossetta. She disappeared into the trees and returned with a bundle of wild berries and herbs, presented with both hands like an offering.
"I thought… maybe breakfast?" she said, almost shy.
Rossetta eyed the bundle, noting the mix. Some safe, some bitter, one or two deadly.
"You'd poison us both," she said dryly.
Marian's face fell. But then Rossetta reached out, plucking the berries apart, separating what was safe from what was not.
"This one you can eat. This one is for fevers. This—throw away unless you want to bleed from the gut."
Marian brightened instantly, committing each to memory.
"So I wasn't entirely wrong," she said hopefully.
Rossetta shook her head, but there was a softness in her eyes as she said,
"No. Not entirely."
The forest watched them, unseen but present.
The girl it had nurtured in secret now walked at Rossetta's side, her laughter tentative but real. And Rossetta, who had once sworn never to weep or trust again, found her silence filling with another's voice.
It was not trust. Not yet. But it was something that stirred like a seed beneath the frost.
Rossetta stepped away from the window. They had walked through too many storms together, endured scars that never quite faded. Both broken—yet in different ways. Marian's heart still pulsed with unyielding love, while Rossetta's carried only wariness, sharp as steel.
The Vice President of Moonlight entered the chamber, boots echoing softly against the stone. Rossetta guided him toward the drawing room, her expression unreadable.
"Where's the child?" she asked.
"There are no records," he replied grimly.
"It seems they never intended to keep their promise. We investigated their former guild, but the kidnapping was no sanctioned mission. It was personal—likely the family feared exposure, perhaps even ruin."
Rossetta dismissed him with a flick of her hand, shadows tightening around her eyes. Moments later, Marian entered, a smile brightening her face like dawn piercing the clouds.
"Are we staying here again?" she asked, hopeful.
"You know we cannot," Rossetta answered.
"If the nobles grow too familiar with our faces, it will be harder to find the next village willing to take us in."
Marian's smile softened into understanding. She only nodded.
With the Moonlight recruiting agency at their back, survival was never impossible. They moved from one noble house to another, blending into lives not their own. For a decade they lived this way—shifting, concealing, rebuilding. Their past remained hidden, their identities unquestioned, even as the weight of secrecy clung to them like a second skin.