matilde rollins couldn't walk through an empty field without tripping over her own two feet, but by the saints could she talk her way out of just about anything!
in which a runaway kingpin's daughter puts her etiquette classes to good use, and go...
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MATILDE ROLLINS HAD SPENT EVERY MORNING and every night of her seventeen years of existence dreaming of another world; a world where she could dance wherever she wanted, no matter how many vases she knocked over; one where she could sing to her heart's content, without fretting over deafening some unfortunate soul with her off-key attempts at her favourite sea shanties; a world where she could roll around in meadows, or eat summer berries till she felt sick to her stomach, or stay out and about till the smallest hours of the morning just to see the sun rise again, and again, and again.
The Barrell wasn't quite what she'd pictures, but she could make do with what she had.
As long as she steered clear of her father's establishments, she could go dancing whenever she pleased, and despite the laughter that would almost always erupt when she managed to fall off whichever barstool she'd managed to clamber onto never succeeded in disheartening her. Once she'd been booted out of her backstreet dancing club of choice, she'd head to the harbor to sing amongst nameless sailors who were either too drunk, or foreign enough to put up with the cacophony of noise that she insisted on calling singing. Of course, the city had no meadows to spare, and summer berries were practically impossible to find; but Matilde didn't mind all too much. She could stay up as late as she liked, and the sunrise was always waiting for her when she stumbled back into the shack of wooden beams she called home.
Within days of smuggling herself into the city, she'd set up camp in the attic of an abandoned warehouse in the Barrel, with a direct vantage point of her father's Emerald Palace. It had been a good three months now, and she hadn't heard a single word from him. The scum of the city didn't know of his respectable set up of a country estate and a trio of legitimate heirs waiting for him just outside of Ketterdam - he'd never risk putting word of her existence out. No, Pekka Rollins hated loose ends.
"Oi, Mattie! You better not drop my best mug out that window!"
Mattie yelped, the handle of the floral patterned mug slipping from her grip and crashing down onto the dirt ridden cobbled path below. A loud cry echoed out from behind her, and her hands flew to grip the window sill as the distraught Heartrender launched himself forward to stare mournfully down at the mess of china scattered across the street. "Oops," she grinned, rubbing the back of her neck, a slight blush rising to the back of her neck.
"Disappointed, but not surprised," Hal Groot sighed, resting his chin in his hands as he glumly leant against the window sill. "At this rate we eat off of the floor, Mattie."
Groot and Mattie made an incredibly odd, but strangle functional pair. Harald "Hal" Groot was a twenty-eight year old Ravkan Heartrender who'd somehow managed to survive a grand escape from the Second Army of the Little Palace. When she'd asked, he'd told her he was in search of a change of scenery, but after a couple of drinks he'd let slip that East Ravka was running dangerously low on opioids. Truthfully, Mattie suspected that Hal simply hadn't had the heart to fight amongst the ranks of the Grisha army - which was rather ironic given that he played with them for a living.
