"What's wrong?" Rosy asked Adrian during their morning training session. Ever since their blood bond came to light, Adrian's martial arts had improved by leaps and bounds.
Rosy was starting to wonder if he was pulling the skills right out of her head, but at the end of the day, he'd struggle against her in a real battle even if he learned every single one of her skills, since the vampire power that had been making him stronger than a normal human lately originated from her.
Honestly, their bond had become an incredible boon for them. They couldn't read each other's minds, but they could sense the other's location and emotions with pretty good clarity. Hiding something from the other was rather difficult for them, especially Adrian with his lower experience with lying.
And on top of that, their bond alleviated Rosy's bloodlust almost completely while making Adrian about twenty percent stronger than he'd been before. Unfortunately, it also made Adrian's magic weaker and Rosy's physical strength and healing factor took a dive of close to ten percent-ish, but those were sacrifices that didn't matter too much at the end of the day. Rosy's back had already healed over the course of the last three days, anyways.
"I don't know what you're talking about. Nothing's wrong." Adrian told her, even though she could feel that something was wrong. Ever since their bond started notably revealing their emotions, she'd been capable of sensing that something was nagging at the prince. Since he was hiding it from her, she hadn't learned of his feeling yet, but it was only a matter of time.
Luckily, she wasn't able to press him any further, as they heard rustling in the trees and immediately stopped their training session. "Prince! Princess! The leaders of the Resistance are sending for you! It's an emergency!"
After the ceremony, the main force of the resistance had mostly accepted the two of them. Pinning Adrian as the reason behind Rosy's change had apparently worked like a charm, allowing the people to, while not forgive her, at least accept Rosy in a similar manner to Mana's.
They'd 'suffered through' one assassination attempt in the last three days, even though Chloe, Mana, and Rosy had all been under the suspicion that there'd be at least one assassin every day.
The attempted assassin in question had snuck into their tent with a sword while they slept. Apparently, the motion had half-woken Rosy, who had then tossed the nearest thing at the assassin's head. Adrian had woken up in the morning with a body splayed out on the floor on the side of his bed further from Rosy's. The body had a candle sticking out of its forehead, and the candle's jar had exploded against the poor attempted assassin's temple, killing him instantly.
Meanwhile, the general soldiers of the resistance had begun the habit of calling Rosy 'Princess,' and Adrian 'Prince.' This was probably due to the fact that they actually were a prince and princess pair, but while Adrian wasn't bothered by it, the formal way of addressing her still unsettled Rosy a little, since only people who considered her position as Noctus's princess important had called her that in the past. Those people mostly included her father's officials and generals, who weren't exactly morally upright people. Her enemies in prior years had either called her 'Rosemary,' 'Rosy,' 'Miss Hecate,' or 'HELP!!!' after all.
"What's going on?" Rosy asked the soldier, tossing Adrian a towel. Since Rosy's body was used to being amplified by her status as a Royal Vampire, lowered amounts of effort like this wasn't quite enough to make her sweat, but Adrian's strength was growing by the day due to their bond. All the effort that he needed to put in in order to learn Rosy's martial arts caused him to sweat like a pig.
"I'm not sure. All that I was told is that we're moving camp early, and to find you both and bring you in." The messenger told them.
"Moving early? Weren't we going to move tomorrow?" The resistance's main camp was nomadic in nature. They moved at set intervals, along a path that they preset every year in order to ensure that their workers, suppliers, and soldiers could connect with them at the right place and time. Moving early meant that certain scheduled meet-ups that were supposed to happen today were going to be forgotten instead.
A whole day of supplies would inevitably go missing in the ensuing chaos. That was why the resistance only moved early in cases of extreme emergency. The original plan was for Rosy and Adrian to leave with Doma and Reese on their way to Griffin Mountain during the move tomorrow, but apparently, that was being moved up instead.
...
"What's going on?" Adrian asked Chloe the moment that they saw her in the center of camp, directing the clean-up efforts. She spun around for a moment, registering their presence, before turning around "Hurry up with that barrel! Don't you date drop that tent!" she shouted, before addressing Adrian's question. "We ran into a squad of Marker trackers. It seems that Mana's wards were too close to camp. The Markers must have managed to follow you, now they're scouting the area."
"Oh..." Adrian exclaimed, feeling guilty.
"It's not that big of a deal, so long as we break camp soon. We need to send a team out to deal with them, though." Chloe reassured them.
"Want me to lead it?" Rosy asked. She'd known that they were being Marked, but she'd figured that the camp would move long before the Markers managed to sweep the area and find it.
To her, Markers were irritating, but a team of trackers wasn't any real threat. If the resistance ended up sending other, normal fighters, though, they might suffer losses. Since they were on the same side, Rosy offered to lead the team that'd go deal with the trackers herself in order to avoid that fate.