"Do we have to walk in the dark?"
"Its for precaution."
"From whom? Wait! Don't answer that."
He sighed and said, "I can't trust anyone. Not even the servants. You know it." She nodded which he wasn't able to see it, but he was speaking the truth. Since the moment it was time to go to the parlor, Roy had himself taken the initiative to wake her up as she didn't show up on time.
"So you had to take me walking along in complete darkness just to be cautious," Ella couldn't help but mock.
"You for an instant were late! The moon was brightly up until an hour back."
"I apologize for not having enough experience to wake up at a designated time near midnight without an alarm," she said sarcastically then continued, "This place is not exactly built under open sky for us to navigate under moonlight! Wait, did you actually search in the sky for the moonlight?" She muttered lowly, "Can't believe I'm having this conversation with him."
"You could have told me to wake you up," he said while finding her hand in the dark and taking her along with him to prevent her stumbling again in front of a vase.
"I forgot. But you knew of that then why didn't you did it yourself." She kept on conversing with him while hurriedly freeing the skirt of her night gown that got caught in his hold as he grabbed for her hand. Thankful for the darkness, she patted her dress down to prevent it wandering around anything else!
"I thought you would have remembered!" He kept on saying unknown of what was happening in the dark.
She spoke after few moments when she realized that he himself wanted to let her know about what he had kept with him for years, "You could have left. Wouldn't you had wanted to annoy me for missing out the opportunity?"
"I should," he replied without any further explanation.
"But you didn't." He could feel her smile in her words.
Roy stopped suddenly leading Ella to almost crash on his back, he said, "Stairs. Careful." She obliged and put her foot one by one climbing each stair. Focusing in the present, she felt the way to be familiar. Of course it would be, since he told to meet at the parlor; and it wasn't like he was taking her to another secret parlor. There was only one parlor here but it could have a secret room for him to lead her to. Climbing upstairs and stopping at the top, she could look around the area with a bit of moonlight shining through the glasses. Being on the topmost floor which was the only floor above the ground, she followed him ahead.
"I thought you were planning to take me to an underground dungeon."
"You watch a lot of movies."
"I don't! I'm merely speculative."
"I hope you didn't loose much in this speculation of yours," he said not feeling any actual sorrow.
She just looked at his back, how much ever visible. They stopped again, meaning Roy stopped again and this time Ella did crash on him. Muttering about warning before giving crash courses, she folded her hands and looked ahead to where they stood. What she didn't expect was to look for his secrets at the last place possible.
"The Records Room?!"
"Mm. Hmm."
"Wha...? Have you perhaps kept your brain back at the palace?"
"This is no time for sarcasm Elle. We have to hurry up since you were late by an hour!"
Ignoring his statement she pointed, "Please tell me you are not keeping this grand secret of yours at a place which is easily accessible to anyone."
"It is not accessible to all. Only members and staff are allowed who have their IDs to enter."
"Thanks for pointing it out, I didn't know!"
"Why do I feel you are lying?" She had forgotten to use the sarcastic voice, thinking and imagining about the place where he could have kept such sensitive information in there. She was well aware of the place as she had spent most of her studying days in this place to research about behavior, decisions, consequences in the past. It helped her to be ready for the present, hence she was imagining all the corners and crooks of the room to be possible places of hiding.
"Just open the door Roy. We have to hurry up, don't we?" Impatiently still feeling his eyes on her, she didn't dare to change her stance, intending to look very engrossed in their mission. He finally left his gaze on her and transferred in accessing the door. Ella was silently and slowly keeping her heart rate low, which helped her think about the room in particular. Was it under the table? Or behind the book racks? Maybe they are hidden in the old records which no one bothers to check upon? Her thoughts were paused while he opened the door with the bio-metric access.
Carefully thinking she asked, "Is the CD player installed yet?" nonchalantly as though she wasn't aware of that.
"There's no need to incur such useless expense," he replied to her while stepping inside the room and holding the door for her to enter. He then closed the door with its click sounding in place.
"How is it useless when there are CDs stored here. They will rot if not used to watch!"
"Ah, and let you faint in here again. You were so scooped in your research that you didn't understand the basic physics of the room without any windows and door shut closed. That was the first lesson for you father to not make this place any comfortable sanctuary of yours." He said coldly as if couldn't believe that she could make such a stupid mistake. That shut her up and she fidgeted complaining it wasn't her fault that she was so engrossed in her studies! But she didn't say it out loud, afraid that he might think of dragging her away from the room resulting in her not able to see his theory. It was too costly for her pride.
She cleared her throat and came back to the topic, "Where to now?"
He stared at her knowing that she knew exactly what he was thinking. But he kept aside that matter for now and went ahead to the end of the room, while Ella scolded herself to ask wrong questions especially at the time like now. He was holding something in his palm, which he would have taken out of his pocket. Squinting her eyes closer to the shiny thing, she commented frustrated, "Why can't we turn on the light here? You might be having the power to walk and watch in the dark, but I am no vampire."
He chuckled and held the shiny thing up ahead of him and moved his arms. Ella wished she had sneaked in a lighter or torch for his blind excursions, but she noted to be prepared from the next time. He said after a few moments of dancing along the two sides of the end wall with his arms up above, "Well its my secret. Of course I would be the only one with the knowledge." She rolled her eyes at that.
Glancing at him to be engrossed in using his knowledge about his secret, she moved back slowly to find the light switch and take him by surprise. Thinking about that she should have done it while she stepped in here, but the mere thought of being caught for snooping here by 'borrowing' her friend's ID, was enough to stop her from making such hasty decisions.
Finding the switch she clicked it on, expecting to have light be flooded around. She tried clicking it off and on repeatedly. "It won't work." His voice was so close to her ear that she jumped and gave out a small shriek covering her mouth.
"I knew you would try something like this, so I had turned off the main switch of this place. That should explain why we were walking in dark till now," he stated in a bored voice as though expected her to have known by now. She glared at him and let go of her mouth, passing by him angrily in haste to go to this secret destination of his; Not without bumping her little toe against the edge of one of the long book rack wood leading her to curse at it, curse at the situation and curse him.