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C rimson wasn’t sure what she thought the castle would be like, but it most certainly wasn’t this. The ivory towers that turned into dome peaks, covered in gold, silver and bronze. It was stunning, an absolute work of art. There were no other words to describe it as West carried Cobalt through the halls. He pointed out certain areas to her, including the Empress’s chambers and his co captain, who mostly occupied the Empress’s chambers.

Osira Talon was a lover of all things beauty.

Sex, included.

There was no one that she wouldn’t have in her bed if she found them beautiful. Currently, it was Satori Marx, a buff female that held no fear when it came to strategic battle plans for an Empire that hadn’t seen war in centuries. Most nights, they were tangled together in her rooms, instead of in their own.

West was quiet for most of their walk through the castle and in the absence of speech, she took everything in. It was all so colourful, vibrant, alive. There were woven tapestries depicting all of the Saints hung on the walls, carpets with garden scenes unfolding on them laid about everywhere, and glass creations with flowers all over. There wasn’t a single drab inch to be found in the array of light and life.

Crimson loved it all, as much as she could love anything.

He turned down a corridor and she had to run to catch up after staring too long over the second floor that overlooked a courtyard. The floors were even painted, a wonderful display of all the Saints together.

She found him.

But he was easy to find, because even in a group of radiant immortals, he stood out. He always would. There, in the back left corner, he stood behind them all. Muse and Dream took the front center, on display for all to see in lavish gowns of seafoam and lavender. They were the exact opposite of each other, in perfect reflection.

Muse, with her slightly darker than West’s skin, and her golden hair that pooled at her feet. Her eyes were painted in an almost exact same shade, save for the hints of brown that stuck out every now and then. Dream was made of silver and aquamarine, and nothing but that. Her hair was nearly as long as Muse’s, if not a few inches shorter. Her eyes were molten steel, and her skin was that of the moon.

Imp was next, followed by Grimm on the right side. Grimm with his shoulder length blonde hair and tanned skin that suggested a life spent outdoors. A healthy glow, not a burnt one. But Imp was the darkest of them all, with curled brown hair that rounded their ears. Their face was painted half white and half black, a frown and a smile shown on either side. Green eyes that seemed to glow with madness, even within the painting.

Then she saw Heartache .

Exactly as she remembered him.

With her same shade of hair, down to the colour and broken glass eyes that represented heartbreak and heart power all in one. He was both sides, the good and bad of the world’s strongest emotions. His scarlet clothes were tattered at the edges, suggesting that he could always become unravelled at the fastest second. He was breathtaking, as she always remembered him being.

But none of them could compare to him.

To West.

Because he wore a simple navy tunic, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and there on his right arm, was a tattoo of constellations. Many of them, all woven into an intricate pattern of golden ink that wrapped from his wrist to his shoulder, she assumed. He was stunning, alluring in the way that the others tried too hard to appear as.

It took more than she expected to pull away from his piercing gaze of sapphire and stars, to catch back up with his physical form instead of getting lost in the painted portrait of them all.

West motioned for her to open the doors in front of him and she did, allowing him to pass through without a single word as he tenderly carried Cobalt’s wrapped form through. There was no sign of his strength tiring, or any formal complaint regarding her brother’s weight. He set him down gently upon the first of the many rows of cots, all empty save for two at the very end.

“Leysa, are you here?” He called into the room, untucking the blanket and adjusting the pillow so that her brother would rest more comfortably. “I have need of your skills!”

“Westley?” A feminine voice sang out from around the screen. “Is that you?”

“It is.” He confirmed and draped the blanket over the metal bed frame at the end. “I have someone for you to grace with your healing skills, unparalleled to anyone else’s.”

“I’ll be with you in just a moment!”

Crimson remained quiet as a woman stepped out from the wall, a few bottles in her arms. She wasn’t as tall as Crimson was, but almost the same height. Her hair was spun into a bun at the nape of her neck and her eyes appeared to switch between grey and black, darker than any other shade she’d ever seen before.

Leysa laid them out on a close-by table, wiping her hands on her white smock before heading for them and adjusting the spectacles perched on her nose. A chain connected to them, wrapping around her neck for close proximity.

“Now, who do we have here?” She asked as she examined Cobalt with an intense gaze that could only belong to a medicinal professional. “Hello, little one.”

“Hi.” He said meekly, diving under the layers.

“This is Cobalt Bard.” West introduced her brother to the woman with a smooth voice that was like melting chocolate. “He’s the brother of my… partner, and he requires the utmost discrepancy with the most care you’re able to provide.”

“Partner?” Leysa looked up at her, and Crimson felt the wave of heat wash over her once again. It ran along her shoulders, washed over her stomach and tingled in the tips of her toes.

“A recent development, I assure you.” He looked as though he almost rolled his eyes at her expression and sudden interest. “If it had happened sooner, you would have been told sooner.”

“I just never would have guessed that you’d be the sort to bring a girl back with you.” She continued to study Cobalt, checking his temperature, pulling back his lip to see the colour of his gums and observing his eyes. “Must be serious then.”

“I care for her, so I care for the wellbeing of her sibling. Do whatever it takes to make sure he lives, and if possible, heals completely.” The lie rolled off his tongue too easily, but she couldn’t focus on it. All she could think about was the idea of Cobalt never returning to this ill state ever again.

“Would that be possible?” She dared to hope, to imagine, to dream of a world where he wouldn’t be confined to the cot, stuck between layers of blankets and subjected to his hacking coughs. “For him to get better?”

“Everything is a possibility here. We’ll see what we can do.” Leysa finished her assessment of him and stood. “For now, he needs rest. I’ll start administering various medicinal herbs and concentrated concoctions in the morning. You did a good job, for bringing him here, West. I’m not entirely sure how much longer he would have lasted without the proper care and attention.”

Her heart became a stone in her pocket as she sank to the bottom floor of the river.

“There’s only so much that people below the Bronze Gate can do, regarding health concerns, Leysa.” West sharply uttered under his breath. “She did the best she could with what she had.”

It was almost a compliment from him.

“Oh, I would agree. She kept him alive far longer than I would have predicted someone in his predicament would have lasted. Good job to you as well, my dear.” The healer turned her attention to Crimson. “I’m not sure what you did, but you saved him from an early grave.”

“Just save him, please.” Crimson almost begged the woman. She would have fallen to her knees, if that was what it would take. “Whatever you can do.”

Her tone was grim. “I’ll do my best.”

With one last, swift kiss to his damp forehead, Crimson left her brother in the healing ward. She whispered a farewell in his ear with a promise to visit him every day. He gripped her fingers once in his tiny hands before letting her go and falling into a deep slumber with the help of a lavender tincture.

West guided her to his room.

Their room.

“Here’s where you’ll be staying. I hope it’ll suffice.” He shoved his hands in his pockets, as if there was a flame of embarrassment that licked him raw. Even his copper skin seemed to hold a red hue to it as she took her surroundings in.

It was huge, at least compared to the two room apartment that she and Cobalt shared at the Spinning Compass. There were four rooms that she could see, with the potential for a fifth in a hidden curve towards the left.

She gaped at the amount of space that lay before her. “This is one of your rooms? What does the other one look like, if you consider this to be small?”

Crimson threw her bags aside at the sight of the bed that was twice the size of the one that she and Cobalt slept in together. Her mouth fell open even more, if that was possible and she ran towards it, tossing herself into the mountain of cushions and pillows.

They caught her and it was like sinking into a cloud. She let out a girlish laugh, glee sparkling over her skin like a tickling blade of grass. Clouds, she was floating on actual clouds. She never wanted to leave the bed again, to do anything other than rest and sleep and feel as comfortable as this.

“I told you that you wouldn’t notice us sharing a bed.” He chuckled at her joy, unbuckling the sword at his side and setting it by the door. “Welcome to my humble abode, one of two.”

“This is paradise.” Crimson sighed in delight as she sank even further into the mattress, feeling as if it were made of nothing but air. She knew it was feathers, but they were the softest feathers she’d ever felt. “How would you ever want to leave these rooms?”

“Because I have something called duties to attend to.” He began to list them off on his fingers. “Making sure that the Empress has everything she needs to rule over Tazali, watching over his royal smugness, helping to train new guards for the Watch as well as running it.”

She pulled her head up to look at him.

“As well as looking after you and your brother now.” He sheepishly added, rubbing at the back of his neck and looking anywhere but at her. “But they’re all tasks that I’m happy to take on.”

She noticed his right arm.

When he shrugged off his doublet, she didn’t know.

“Where are your tattoos?” Crimson pushed out of her lying position, shoving her feet towards the end of the bed.

“How did you know about that?” West interrogated as he ran a hand through his umber hair.

“The painting in the courtyard. You have them in it.” She gestured towards his right arm as he approached her and took a seat on the side. “As well as one of the hanging tapestries.”

West twisted his arm, pushing the fabric up to observe his own flesh as if he had never seen it before. “Dream set a glamour on us when we first came down to play alongside the mortals, so that we would appear like one of them. It’s probably one of the most obvious parts about me that would give away who I was, so she hid them as well.”

Crimson rose to her knees, trying to find any semblance of the tattoo, or the magic that wrapped around it to keep it hidden. She found nothing. “What else did she hide?”

“You’re full of questions, aren’t you?.” He lowered his head to hide his boyish smile. “She dulled the immortal glow of my eyes, and the way my skin shimmered beforehand. As well as a couple other things, but you get the gist.”

Crimson ran her eyes up and down his face, taking in all of his features. There was a temptation to cup his cheeks to study him even further, but she resisted. “I suppose you could pass for a human. But your eyes give you away. Even if she added something to make them appear less special, they still do.”

His mouth turned upwards and he fought a flush.

“I guess it’s hard to hide all the signs of immortality, even with a glamour settled over us all.”

He rose from his position on the bed and made his way towards an additional room. “The bathing room is here for when you need to relieve yourself or wash up. There’s a study one over, but it’s mostly for my duties and tasks as captain of the Watch. In the morning, I’ll show you the library.”

“Whatever for?” Crimson questioned as she tugged her boots off her feet and set them aside.

“Altivar wants to find Red Lyric because he knows that your father is Heartache. He wants to find Heartache.” West explained as he rested against the doorframe. “I don’t plan on letting him find him. But I figured that someone has to locate him. So why not you?”

“You want me to find my father.” She breathed out.

He nodded. “More than anything in the world, Heartstrings. We’re going to find Heartache and discover why Altivar seeks him.”