Page 36 of The Ballad of a Bard

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.”

Fifteen

West didn’t come to bed that night.

She knew because the bed didn’t dip with additional weight at any point in the night, nor did the soft snoring of a male body come from the left side of the bed. Where he went instead, she had no clue. Nor did she inquire about it since he told her from the start that he didn’t spend most nights in the additional rooms in the palace.

But there was a bedside tray on the nightstand closest to her with all the food she could eat for an entire week. He didn’t leave a note, nor did she ever think him the sort to do so. A chilled cup of water with ice, a bowl of steaming porridge which could have only been brought recently considering it was still piping hot, a peach with the sweetest juice that Crimson had ever tasted and a slice of toast with marmalade slathered on it.

She ate it all.

There was no thought to save it for the next week just in case she wasn’t able to provide for her and Cobalt, no inside monologue to take it slow. It was a sweet release that she hadn’texpected to hit her so hard, and yet it did. Her waterlines burned and her nose became sniffing, her throat clogged with emotion.

When she wiped the crumbs from her hand and cleaned her mouth with the cloth napkin added to the tray, she found her satchel still by the door. It hadn’t been unpacked so it was easy for her to pull out the trousers and tunic, slipping them on in a matter of minutes before West could walk in on her mid-change. His side of the bed was perfectly made, as if it had been untouched since the moment she stepped foot into his chambers inside the palace.

Crimson buckled her boots on, and as she rose to her sitting position, she contemplated what to do with her fighting gear. It wouldn’t be the worst idea to keep a weapon of sorts on her at all times, considering she was currently in one of the most dangerous places in Tazali, according to West. With some of the most dangerous people, too. But her long knives would be recognized by anyone who’d made it down to the Pits and seen Red Lyric fight.

They weren’t an option to carry around with her.

Maybe whenever she bumped into West next, she could ask him for another blade to keep in her boot, or at her hip. She didn’t see any reason why he would refuse her.

She stood to her full height and grabbed her second bag, checking to make sure everything was still inside of it. When she was satisfied that nothing was missing from their long walk up from the Bronze Gate to the castle, she began to search around his chambers for a safe place to store it. Anyone could just walk in and see the items laying about, so it was better for all their sakes to hide them. At least for now. Perhaps later, when she was settled into this life and there was no need for the secure backup identity of Lyric, she would burn the clothes.

The knives would be something else entirely.

She wasn’t sure that she could ever rid herself of them. They were the only pieces of her father that she had left, even if she despised him. For Cobalt, she held onto them. Then it became for herself, for Red Lyric. Maybe there was a deeper part of herself tethered to the idea of her father, not the realistic image of the one she’d been given.

It was a matter for later, not now.

Crimson took in her new surroundings, gazing up at the sapphire ceiling with golden trim, the yellow curtains that fell against the double paned window. There were diamond shapes pressed into it, creating an illusion of clear crystal. She could make out another courtyard as she peered out of it, a fighting arena but not for bloody competition that ended in carnage or coins.

A training area, instead.

There were four men in the middle of it currently, and she would recognize his head of hair anywhere.

Not to mention his golden brown skin.

But she paused as she went to turn away from it, realising that there was far more than just his forearms on display.

Oh, Saints be damned.

Her lips parted as she took him and all his glory in. He was shirtless, with low hung leather pants that fit perfectly around his trimmed waist. She wasn’t that far up, so she could see everything she needed to see as she watched their bout. He was fighting with no weapons, fist to fist with another tall male that had black hair.

They circled each other and she felt drawn in as West faced her side of the building. That was even better for her, because now she could seeeverything.

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