Ally allowed anger to dig its jagged claws into her to escape this growing warmth she refused to acknowledge by naming it out loud. It was a soft heat that would warm up and up as it spread across her cheeks and chest every time she stole a glimpse of Jace while he wasn’t looking, and, strangely, impossibly it grew hotter when he caught her. These sensations were becoming a hinderance with each passing day and she was viscerally fed up with them all. Distractions lead to mistakes, and mistakes at baseline were unacceptable to her, her boss, and apparently Jace as well. His normally brooding demeanor turned downright insufferable on nights where those distractions took the mission off track, like tonight.

After forty six hours of monitoring their target, Lord Dumfry's, opulent townhome from the adjacent rooftop of the God of Malice's temple, tensions were rising between the pair at the unspoken nerves that they might have let him slip without realizing. Ally assumed if it would have happened, it had to be when she was caught tossing stray acorns at Jace's stupidly handsome body. She had noticed the acorns dropped from the trees above them at surprisingly frequent intervals over the last twenty four hours, and she just wanted one of them to hit him in the head for her own personal satisfaction. Tossing the first acorn was cathartic, the second was for fun, and the third led to her wanting to see how long she could keep this up until he caught on. She should have known making the seventh acorn hit him on the head would tip him off, but she wasn’t prepared for Jace to flip on his back and start throwing his stash of collected acorns back at her like a child. She called him such while she laughed and found cover behind one of the tall spirals shooting out of the metal rooftop they occupied and they kept laughing until the slam of a carriage door in front of Lord Dumfry’s home sounded, followed by the carriage speeding off before either of them could see who it was or where it went.

The first truce between them in three weeks since being assigned to work this mission together and it blew up in her face when she turned to Jace and was met with piercing blue, icy rage. Twenty hours of pregnant silence passed with their only interactions being Jace handing her food from his daily trips to the market several blocks away. She knew from previous stake outs he didn’t trust her evasive skills, which insulted her and fueled her annoyance with him. Ally would’ve exploded with the tension if they hadn’t noticed movement in the dark townhome they were anxious was empty. The movement came from the Lord’s master bedroom and continued through the house until three unidentifiable individuals emerged from the side door. Even a heavy rain pouring from the skies as the same carriage from the other night arrived and picked the three up wouldn’t slow Jace and Ally’s pursuit from above. Excitement and adrenaline raced with Ally along the rooflines in chase, her anticipation to see Clarissa, or hear word of her sister’s wellbeing from the tortured lips of Lord Dumfry himself when she got her hands on him was when it all went to hell.

A pained grunt just barely heard over the pelting of water against metal caught Ally’s attention. It was this moment she knew Jace would be the death of her and she didn’t know why it didn’t terrify her as much as it should. She subconsciously made the decision to take her eyes off the target and attention off her foot placements to look Jace’s way, knowing the risks and taking them anyway. It wasn't the sound that had Ally slipping on the slick rooftop but the sight of Jace clutching his side with a knife lodged in his abdomen and slowing his speed that caused her to stumble and slide along the downward slant of the five story building’s roof. Sacrificing her nails and dignity, she screamed for Jace as she dangled off the gutter, panic pounding her heart in her ears. Her name was a broken cry of a response and if she wasn’t dangerously close to death she might have dissected why he seemed so flustered.

“Hold on just a little longer Ally, I’m coming!” Jace shouted, sounding closer than before, she heard him mumbling to himself but couldn’t hear it over the downpour.

“I’m trying!” She couldn’t help but snap back, panic overriding her senses.

A crooked smile appeared over her head, trying to mask the relief she saw hidden beneath, “That’s my girl.”

Ally was more turned around over those three words and that smile than the last five minutes of chaos as she sat on the rooftop looking out toward the last location she saw the carriage speed off in. Defeat slumped her shoulders, and once Jace ensured they were both in one piece, he was back to his insufferable demeanor. Apparently ensuring a knife lodged in his abdomen didn’t kill him “wasn’t necessary” and was “detrimental to the mission” and “a waste of our time” now that we lost the target, “for real this time”.

You’d think a person would appreciate someone caring about their wellbeing instead of leaving them behind and bleeding. Yet, here they were, sitting in a festering silence that did nothing but make her feel more irate and embarrassed with every minute that passed. She couldn’t even admit to herself that she would’ve left him behind if given a second chance, and that felt like an insult to her sister who’s counting on her to get her back. Ally had been doing too much caring for her own good recently, between Jace’s wellbeing and her growing concern for Clarissa’s safety with the target they just lost, she didn’t feel like herself and it was messing with her head. She didn’t have the mental and emotional capacity to care for more than one person at a time and tonight was the best example why.

Clarissa didn’t need saving, she was smart and capiable, even if she was handicapped by this lingering lung infection that left her more feeble and weak than she admits to Ally, but that didn’t mean Ally didn’t let her down by not being there when she needed her most. After their parents ditched them at five years old outside of a dingy orphanage, they both came to work for the same assassins organization. They made money completing missions, and lived relatively peaceful lives outside of the job until Clarissa’s illness hit her last year. Money became tight with only one of them working and the medical bills never seemed to go away no matter how much money they threw at the healers and apothecary. Ally was offering to complete more dangerous and more frequent missions to compensate the losses and didn’t mind it until three weeks ago. Finding out Clarissa was abducted out of spite for one of their last missions they completed together to expose Lord Dumfry’s sons’ child labor camps was hard to hear, but not as difficult as finding out he had orchestrated it to coincide with when Ally would be away. She didn’t have the headspace to break that down just yet, but she will.

It took three days for Ally to come home from that mission to find Clarissa went missing. Three days isn’t ideal but it would’ve been managable if the fresh trail hadn’t been washed away with the April rain storms plaguing their region. With each minute that passed now Ally felt wound tighter and tighter, and forced anger to take the forefront of her emotions or tears might start flowing incessantly.

She didnt want to cry, she wanted to finish this mission and bring Clarissa home and be rid of the man who’s occupied too much of her time and mental capacity since they first met. Tonight would’ve been that night, and Ally convinced herself if Jace hadn’t gone and got himself skewered during the pursuit they’d be on their separate ways by now. Anger flushed any lingering feelings of compassion for the man calculating a plan next to her, mapping out possible locations for the targets next hiding spot. She turned her gaze over to his unaware side profile, and chanted her annoyance with him over and over in her mind to rid herself of her appriecatative thought of his looks.

She could admit he was an attractive man, and knowing what lay beneath all the clothes and false bravado he masked his true self with on a daily basis since their first official meeting all those weeks ago didn’t help this festering infatuation. She had allowed herself one last night to drown her sorrows over her sisters situation at the towns quietest pub, where she met the man as another lone stranger needing company sitting next to her then, not knowing who he’d be to her now. Ally wanted a distraction, and he gave her it with hours of pleasant conversation down at the bar and the passionate hours up in a dark, locked room they booked after the third round of beers.

Paper smacking water redirected Ally’s attention to the man who’s constantly on her mind stunning grey blue eyes, “We’ll find her Ally,” Jace spoke too softly, too kindly for her liking at the moment, “I’m sorry tonight didn’t go as planned, but I’m here until this is seen through, so lets make it happen.”

Ally just stared back at him in shock, “I haven’t heard you talk this much since -“

“I know,” he was quick to cut her off, “there’s a lot of things we need to talk about, but Clarissa is our priority, then we can spend all the time we need to talk about us.”

“Us?” She sounded incredulous, “what us?”

“We don’t have time for this, and tonight just made me realize I’m tired of pretending that night at the pub didn’t mean something to me, that you don’t mean something to me, but I’ve been nothing but a standoffish prick to you since this mission brought us back together, so I know I have a lot of explaining to do before I expect you to realize how serious I am,” he gave her another crooked smile, “you didn’t think I just let a knife impale me on accident did you?”