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S he’d stayed for the entirety of the fight, even seeing it break out at the start. She’d heard his order, the commanding roar in it that stirred a deep part of herself. And she obeyed, dropping to the floor and covering herself with the balcony railing as she firmly squeezed her eyes shut. Crimson listened to every part of his order, clapping her hands over each eye and remaining like that through it all. Even in her crouched, cowering position against the stone barrier, she could still see the magnificent white light that tore through the entire underground pit.

It was unlike anything she’d ever experienced before.

Crimson stayed like that, curled like a mewling kitten in a ball on the ground, the ringing of metal on metal halting at last. But there was still that overlying shield of ivory that blasted through her. She couldn’t open her eyes without the fear of losing her sight forever.

A gentle set of hands timidly landed on her shoulders. The scent of moonlight on water and stardust filtered into her senses. How she knew what those things smelled like, she had no clue, but it was pleasant and comforting.

“You can open your eyes now, Heartstrings.” West softly said. “It’s over.”

Crimson untucked herself from the ball-like form and beheld him. There was blood splattered on his face, over his arm, stained into his clothes and he was hurt, on his left arm, high up. But other than those things, and the slight dishevelled look to his messy hair from the fight, he seemed to be in perfect condition.

“Good job on following my orders.” He offered her a hand and she took it. He hoisted her up to her feet, brushing the gravel from her shoulders. “It wouldn’t have ended well for you if you hadn’t.”

“For some reason I can’t quite explain, I trust you.” She explained. “I’ve never known you, and yet I would put my life in your hands time and time again.”

It was the way a blanket wrapped round frost-bitten shoulders in the middle of a harsh winter that refused to let up, of the way melted chocolate heated ones insides to the point of a cozy steam. It settled into her like an old friend that she had no idea she missed and Crimson realised that she trusted this man- Saint, completely, without reason.

“It’s part of being a Saint. Humans were supposed to trust us, to worship us, to look up to us. I’m sure if you met another, you’d feel the same towards them.” He elucidated as he exhaled, letting go of her and turning towards the staircase that would take them out of the Pits.

“No.” She shook her head in disagreement. “My father was a Saint. A full one too, and yet I never trusted him. I never wanted to trust him. I’m glad I didn’t either, because he left us.”

West didn’t seem to have anything to say to that, other than a bend in his brow. “Let’s go to your brother, shall we? The longer we remain here, the less time he spends in the healing wards.”

Crimson almost leapt up the stairs at his suggestion, already ready to hand him over to trained professionals who could help him far better than she would ever be able to with the tinctures and small tasks that kept his fever at bay. There was a dollop of uncontained excitement that buzzed through her like a fast flying dragonfly on a summer wind and pond cattails.

Finally, she could get him the proper help.

“What’s he like, your brother?” West inquired as they passed through the nearly empty rooms of the tavern above ground. “I suppose it might be good to learn a thing or two about the two wards I’ll be taking under my wing.”

“He used to love swimming, and flowers. Every summer, on the few days that he felt good enough to be able to walk steadily outside, we’d go down to the riverbank and spend the entire day in the water. He loves the colourful fish that joined us, and the way the sun sparkled on the surface.” She told him everything regarding Cobalt, down to the way he looked when he first came out of their mother. The way that her heart felt as though it would burst when she held him for the first time.

“You must really love him.” He commented, sounding sorrowful for some reason. “To be doing everything you’ve already done in his stead. To risk everything for a fighting chance in the Blades.”

Even his features formed into dripping melancholy and she wanted to do nothing more than make them return to the glowing man she’d begun to know.

“I do.” She said without even thinking about hesitating, “He’s my entire world, and I would do whatever it takes to protect that. It’s only been him and I for eight years, and I’m not sure what I would do if I ever lost him. He’s a fighter, you see. ”

West grinned, “Just like his sister, it seems.”

A staining heat rose to her cheeks.

They began the upward climb to the Spinning Compass as buildings began to dull their candles and put out their sconce light for the evening. There was barely chatter in the streets as they continued. The shoppes were closing, with their patrons exiting after making last minute purchases, sipping on final drinks and shoving the last morsel of food into their gullet before heading out.

Crimson avoided looking at him, at hating him for growing up in the palace. He wasn’t to blame for enjoying a life of ease, a life that allowed him to afford all the pleasures in the world. “Someone had to fight for us. No one did. I picked up that mantle as soon as he became my responsibility and I’ve been fighting for us ever since.”

“I can only imagine how lonely it must be.” West untucked his doublet, fingering the buttons until they broke apart and his coat swung open. A tan shirt lay underneath, with a low neck that she told herself not to look at.

“Not really. We have each other, you see.” Crimson insisted.

It hadn’t ever been lonely, except perhaps in the beginning of it all. When she’d awoken to Heartache packing a bag, her mother’s corpse not even buried a day before. Connor, that was the name he went by with them. The one that her mother loved to say and the one that belonged to the man that her mother loved eternally. The one that felt like it broke Crimson’s heart when he left, abandoning them to their own sake.

She’d fallen ill for a couple weeks after he’d left, sobbing relentlessly in the bed until the sheets became a puddle from her sorrow. Her chest had burned something fierce and it nearly swept over her like the skeletal hand of death. Crimson thought she had been dying, and if it hadn’t been for her newborn brother, she might have. His cries woke her from that state of despair, forcing her to look after him, take care of herself so that he wouldn’t be alone in the world.

So she’d mustered her heartbreak into anger.

And it fueled her to live, to fight for them both.

She hated Connor, Heartache, for leaving them.

There were many things she’d never understood about the male who created her, but why he left his precious knives behind was one of the ones that intrigued her the most. It wasn’t like that was his talisman, the one that could control him. It couldn’t have been, because for the next month and a half, Crimson pulled them out and begged for him to come back home. Her tears dripped into their smoky metal as she commanded him to return, her fury poured into the handles as she yelled at him to find them.

He never did.

And he never came back.

“I knew your father.” West said out of the blue. “And I find it very hard to believe that he wouldn’t have a solid reason for leaving you in the first place. I’m not excusing his rash behaviour of course, considering how young your brother was and the fact that your mother perished, but I think there may be more to that story than what’s on the surface.”

“For my brother’s sake, I hope so.” She almost hissed, as if her fury at him would burn right through her.

“Not for your own?” He asked.

She stopped walking. “No. I will never forgive him for leaving us. There were so many other options that he could have pursued, but abandoning us without a single word, reason or excuse was not the right way to do whatever it was that made him feel as though he had to leave us in the first place.”

“Understood.” He paused before the Spinning Compass and reached into his pants pocket, withdrawing the keys on a metal hoop. “But we don’t need to discuss it anymore if you don’t want to.”

Crimson made a disgruntled noise. “It’s not a hard thing to talk about, it’s just pointless. He’ll never come back, nor do I expect him to. If he did, why wouldn’t he have already come?”

“Unfortunately, that’s not something that I can give you the answer to.” West found the correct key before entering it into the keyhole and turning until a soft click sounded and the door swung open. He pushed it forward for her and she ducked under his arm and shut it behind them.

“We’re on the second floor.” She mumbled under her breath. This entire thing felt oddly intimate, as she let a complete stranger into her life.

“I know.” The barest of smiles from him slipped out as he tucked the keys away once more. “Record books, and all that.”

She’d never once had any sort of romantic partner before in her life, not one this involved anyways. Not one that she shared personal details with and invited into her home. Not one that invited her to stay with him, all the while tending to her brother. There’d always been that potential with Fitz, but he’d died before anything could have awoken from that besides flitting feelings.

Not to mention, the man that she led up the stairs wasn’t a man at all, but a Saint. It was a similar sensation to have a freaking god at one’s heels, following around and tenderly taking care of one.

It was strange, and slightly intimidating.

And intoxicating.

“Here.” She showed him their apartment and he unlocked the door again with his ring of keys, pushing open to peer inside. He stepped into the tiny kitchen space, taking in the entire room with one fell sweep of his head .

“Crimson? Is that you?” A boy’s voice called out.

“It’s me, Blue.” She let out a sigh of relief that he was still alive. West seemed to take note of it. “I’ve brought someone that can help you.”

“You’re all the help I need.” Cobalt responded, shifting over in the cot. “We don’t need anyone else. We’ve never needed anyone else.”

West’s handsome features fell into a painting of sadness, mixed with sorrow and a dash of rage that all mixed into one. His jaw flexed, as if he held something else back, something itching at the surface of his skin. His hand curled inwards, muscles jumping at his white knuckles.

“I know.” Crimson found him, checking his pulse and running a hand over his forehead, looking for any sign of a fever. It was warm, but not overly so. “But he has access to supplies that we can’t afford. We’re going to go with him now, okay?”

He peered up at her with concern. “Are you coming too?”

“I wouldn’t dream of separating the two of you.” West swiftly answered for her. “You’ll be taken care of, as will she. I promise that neither of you will want for nothing ever again.”

Her heart leapt into her chest at his sincere vow, the way he smiled down at her brother. Her breathing steadied out to a strange pace, one that she’d never felt before as her lungs constricted and her head spun like thread on a loom.

“Thank you.” She whispered up at him from her place on the bed.

He nodded as if what he offered her was nothing and knelt before Cobalt. “Hello, Cobalt. I’m West. Like a compass direction.” He took her brother’s hand in his and shook gently. “You’re going to come live at the palace with us now, alright?”

“You’re tall.” Cobalt giggled. “Crimson’s almost the same level as you.” His arms came up as he pretended to measure, squinting to gain a better view.

“I am, and she is.” His teeth peeked out from his lip. He swivelled his chin in her direction, addressing her. “Go pack whatever you wish to take with you. I won’t rent this room out to anyone else, but it’ll be a while before you can come back here. I’ll look after him until you’re done.”

She pushed off the bed and found another knapsack along the kitchen wall. Her hands trembled as she began to shove items into it, things they wouldn’t be able to live without. Clothes for both of them, mostly. A few books that she couldn’t live without, as books seemed to be her only saving grace in this terrible world full of miserable things and horrible people.

When she came back into the main room, her bag with Red Lyric’s items slung over one shoulder, and the other knapsack on her right, she stopped before West. He held Cobalt in his arms, carried like a babe fresh out of the womb. A blanket was wrapped around his frail body, keeping the chill of the night away.

“There’s one condition I need to make you aware of before you agree to coming with me.” He informed her slowly, as if he was unsure of her reaction. “I had to inform Altivar about our arrangement. Not all the details, but that you would be moving into the palace with me. I didn’t want him to stumble upon you and become the stupid twat I know him to be.”

“Stupid twat?” She raised an eyebrow.

His face almost became crimson, something that made him appear like a flustered mortal man. “He- He won’t try to make a move on you if he thinks that you belong to someone else. So I told him that you and I, were… romantically involved.”

Honestly, it was a passable excuse.

Especially when he looked like that .

West was the sort of beauty found in the rarest of gems, the most clear of waterfalls and the ineffable stars in the night sky. He was alluring in the way that one always wanted to look into the sun, even if it might blind them in the end. She could easily see herself falling for him, madly, deeply, eternally.

She might already be falling for him.

“I see.” Crimson pressed out. “Did he buy it?”

“A little too easily, in my opinion.” West abashedly admitted. “But that’s a good thing. It means that he hopefully won’t try to pry any further. But he is the Prince. Which means that people report to him, regardless of location in the castle.”

She thought she understood where he was going with this. “You want me to pretend that we’re together, whenever we’re seen together in public.”

“I do. I promise that I’ll never bring anyone back to our room, and if it’s such a desperate, primal need that I can’t seem to help myself, then I’ll stay in one of my rooms here for the night. Keep it out of the palace and anyone who could possibly report back to him.” He hoisted Cobalt even closer, not seeming as if his weight bothered him at all. “But I rarely take someone to my bed, so it shouldn’t be an issue.”

She didn’t want to let her mind even venture in the direction of imagining West in bed. Or the things he would undoubtedly do to whomever joined him. It was a treacherous path that would only cause her to spiral. If she found herself falling in that direction, then it would be a hard recovery to bring her back into the real world and not the one of her daydreams. Sometimes she feared falling, because there had never been anyone to catch her before.

Instead of letting herself fall like that, Crimson dared to ask, “Is Prince Altivar really that dangerous of a person?”

West looked her dead on, unflinching and unfaltering in his gaze. An unregistered shiver went down her spine, and not in a good way.

He was low, warning as he said, “Altivar is one of the most dangerous people I’ve ever had the misfortune of crossing paths with.”