Embarrassment was not a complicated emotion. It seized any opportunity to strangle the poor sod who dared to rethink their actions with a tinge of regret and choked them with impressive tenacity. Embarrassment was not complicated but it was incredibly powerful.

A haunting and insidious emotion.

Topaz was relatively new to the feeling. It wasn’t that he hadn’t experienced searing moments of embarrassment but broadly, he was a self confident person who had neither the time nor emotional strength for regret. Or at least, not the sort of regret that led down the path of embarrassment.

However, Topaz also had very little in his life to feel embarrassed about. He lived his life under strict perfection and without the ability to step a single toe out of line. Rather than regret, Topaz was assured that it was perfection or death.

He had never, not once in his entire life, cried pathetically in the arms of a stranger. It was beyond comprehension and certainly beyond anything he could possibly endure.

Topaz pretended to sleep so as not to face the source of his embarrassment and felt the mortification creeping up from his toes and spreading throughout his entire body like an infection.

Luckily, it was easy to pretend to be asleep because apparently he’d sobbed himself to sleep in her arms.

Unluckily, the memory of doing so was giving him a stomachache.

“He woke up?”

Topaz stifled the agonizing feelings of regret that crawled through his veins to focus on the voices. This was a new voice. Whereas Sapphire had spoken with a soft and comforting voice, one that could lure anyone into a state of ease, this new voice was rough and aggressive even with a simple question.

Sapphire’s kind voice replied. “Only for an hour. He’s still in a bad state. I don’t think…” Sapphire hesitated. “Where’d you find a child like him?”

Topaz felt a bit offended. Sapphire couldn’t be that much older than him, at least judging from her appearance. Did his crying make him seem like an actual child?

“I told you before.” The new voice replied, gruffer and with more agitation layered into it. It was actually a bit odd to listen to. Topaz was used to women going out of their way to sound subservient and gentle. This woman clearly had a war to pick with the world and she’d rather bite off your ear than admit defeat. It said a lot that she was able to convey all of that with tone alone. “He was on the cobbles over in Caramel Alley.”

Strange.

Topaz was sure that he’d fallen through the floor in his fathers torture chambers. Which… should have led to some sort of underground area, if he were to imagine it. How had he made it out into the city?

And where exactly was Caramel Alley?

“You’re not telling me everything.” Sapphire’s voice was a bit sharp and there was the oof sound of someone having the breath knocked out of them.

The gruff voice replied, sounding a touch pained. Now that he thought about it, this person was probably the Emerald that Sapphire had mentioned before. “There were corpses.”

Topaz’s heart stopped.

His father.

It wasn’t possible to use simple words to explain Topaz’s feelings for his father. Perhaps that was why he’d never outwardly betrayed his father, despite working against him in secret all of these years.

In the same way that Topaz despised and resented his father, he also couldn’t ever bring himself to hate him. Couldn’t really ever want his downfall.

In the ideal world that Topaz imagined in his heart, his father and Ruby both lived were able to settle everything peacefully. Of course, he knew such an idea was beyond naive and bordered on delusional but he couldn’t help but want it.

The idea that his father was lying dead on the cobbles alone surged enough fear through his heart that he broke his sleeping facade and burst up in bed, hissing in pain as the motion sent searing pain through every inch of his body.

“Who’s corpses?”

The two women turned to him and his vision swam in front of him, nearly sending him back onto the ground as he attempted to climb off the bed. Sapphire hurried over and helped balance him.

Now that he was less out of it, he could recognize that Sapphire was probably a doctor. The room was covered in medical tools and she herself was wearing a familiar doctor's robe.

Strange, there weren’t any female doctors in the kingdom. It was forbidden by law.

The new woman, Emerald, watched him with sharp eyes that matched her tone. She really ought not have looked so intimidating. She wasn’t that much taller than Sapphire, who was quite short, and she actually looked quite effeminate if you ignored her warring voice.

Yet, she looked him down with a pressure that could easily compare to Diamond’s.

“Worried about your victims?” Emerald hissed darkly.

“Emy!” Sapphire chastised and Topaz was quite surprised to see the intimidating woman back down from merely that.

“Two bodies.” She said tightly, giving Topaz a look that promised she would have no mercy on him once he was outside of Sapphire’s protection. “City guard from the look of it. One of their heads was smashed in and the other one…”

Topaz didn’t care. The tension left him when he realized it couldn’t be his father. There was no possible way that his father, the duke of Edentus, could be mistaken for a grubby city guard. Even if his face was smashed in.

The trouble was that when the tension left him, his full weight fell onto Sapphire and she buckled under the unexpected load.

Emerald was quick to catch them both before they hit the ground. A lot quicker than Topaz could have expected and she sent him a disdainful look that made her feelings for him quite clear, as if they weren’t already crystal clear.

…it was the same sort of disgust…

Topaz pulled away from them both and regained his footing through grit alone. Now that he wasn’t on the brink of fainting, he was quite capable of ignoring the pain and forcing his body to move. It could be said that his most practiced skill in life was doing just that.

“My apologies for taking your time.” Topaz was sure to sneer, it was only appropriate to do so now that it was clear he was talking to commoners. If his father found out he’d done any different…

…where was his father…?

“I will have to excuse myself from this…” He hesitated, looking around the room disdainfully. “Delightful establishment.”

The reaction was predictable. They were predictable people now that Topaz had calmed down. Emerald was angry and wanted him out. Sapphire was worried and hurt.

People were easy once you understood them.

He could detach himself from the situation and act like the puppet he was supposed to. He could ignore the embarrassment that haunted him and the guilt that dragged him down like clawing hands.

Topaz would be fine.

He just needed to go home and apologize to his father.

He just needed to protect his fiance.

He just needed to be a perfect puppet.