tw: vomiting, intense secret-keeping
As it ended up, the visit of Prince Fogado of Solm and his retainers really was a friendly one, where they were stopping in Brodia for a few days to get to spend time with Prince Alcryst and get to see the nightlife scene in the country for themselves. When Jade had approached Lapis about keeping tabs on that, Lapis had immediately called it for what it was, but had decided that she'd go for it anyway simply because, in her words, any excuse to get to spend non-working time with the prince was something she wanted to take advantage of. She'd ended up getting to go along with them when they were going out to see what sorts of parties and cuisines the people of Brodia were putting out into the world, and she seemed like she'd had a good time when all was said and done.
No one had suspected a thing about the actual intentions for why she was going with the guys, which Jade had been thankful to hear in the days after the folks from Solm had gone home. Diamant seemed relieved that his brother hadn't come asking for clarification, nor had Fogado stopped by to see why there was someone extra on their adventures, and with him feeling at ease about things, that meant that he wasn't talking their ears off about what all could have gone wrong. "All's well that ends well," he declared about a week after everything had returned to normal. "There's no sign of that being an attempt at breaking the peace, and that means that, for the moment, we can focus on bigger things."
"What sorts of bigger things?" Amber asked, his head tilted all the way to one side as he looked at his king. "Are you thinking of taking a trip of your own now?"
"No, that's far from what's on my mind." His reply was said almost immediately after the suggestion had been spoken, as if he'd expected that to be where Amber went. "I was more referring to the task I've put on your shoulders. I know that Jade has been hard at work beginning to compile a list of—"
"I wouldn't call it a list," Jade interjected, standing a bit stiffer now that she knew her slacking was about to be made public. "In fact, it's two names in total as of right now. I may have spent a lot of time recently polishing a final draft of a story, instead of doing what you'd asked of me."
"—two names is two more than I expected you to have ready to provide, so good work." Cracking a smile, Diamant nodded toward Jade, beckoning for her to elaborate on who she'd chosen so far. "Please, tell me who you've considered so I can decide if they would be worth the effort of inviting to the castle for a meeting."
Still as solid and tall as a statue, Jade shook her head. "I'm afraid you will be disappointed in the names I've selected," she admitted, a genuine fear the moment she'd realized who where the two in question. "One is the Divine Dragon, who I know you shared a connection with on a much different level during the war. The other, against my better judgment, is Queen Ivy of Elusia."
Diamant looked at her with a completely blank expression for a moment, before closing his eyes and nodding again. "I anticipated their names would come up in the early stages of this endeavor. Both of them are quite lovely in their own ways, but both carry with them so many responsibilities that I feel them playing the role I want to ask of them would add too much to their workload."
"I did anticipate you saying that, but a start's a start." If she hadn't thought that it would be at least worth a little bit of time, Jade certainly wouldn't have put either of those names down on her page. "Perhaps you could reach out to one of them on a diplomatic level and see if they'd be interested in working with on a personal one as well?"
"Whoa, I don't think I want to be sharing King Diamant with either of them," Amber said, crossing his arms in front of his chest. "They're too big, too important, too powerful, they'll steal him from me and then what will I have? The alpacas back home, sure, but what else?"
Blinking several times as she debated on actually answering that or not, Jade decided to play it safe and not say a word about who he'd still have in his life. "Anyway, I chose not to put Lapis on the list, even though she's lovely, due to her…fascination with someone else. Beyond those three, I haven't done too much thinking. Perhaps looking into the Firenese royalty could be something as well?"
While Amber grumbled about not wanting to share his king with any other royals, Diamant at least gave it some consideration. "I think they would be more realistic than the Divine Dragon, at any rate, but still on the level of Queen Ivy to some extent. I'll see what I can make happen to start on those leads, though, if you think it could be worth it."
"Anything would be worth it," she replied, glancing at Amber who seemed to disagree but didn't say so out loud. "But that's all I have on the matter so far, so I'll be taking my leave. The two of you, have a lovely rest of your evening, but I have a new story I've been working on sorting through in my mind and I'm ready to get it started."
She gave no time for arguments before she was trudging through the castle to her little dungeon room, feeling a weight on her shoulders that hadn't been there before the conversation. Jade hadn't expected Amber to exactly appreciate the fact that she was openly working to find someone else for Diamant to romance, but she hadn't expected him to act so cold about it that he completely forgot that if the king had someone new to love, he'd still have her waiting for him. By the time she'd gotten to her room, the weight on her shoulders had moved into her chest and she felt like she was going to cry, something that she rarely ever did for any reason.
She wanted—no, needed—the king to fall in actual love with someone else and cut ties with Amber in a romantic sense over it. Sharing him wasn't good for her health, but she knew that finding someone else to love her wasn't going to be as easy as it would be to find someone to love the king. That was what her new story was involving, her main character stumbling into a foreign region where the queen in charge fell in love with him and he had to reject her advances because he had someone back home waiting for him. There was drama, there was intrigue, there was going to be a scene where the Amber in her story sustained a head injury and forgot all about home and started to fall for the queen's advances, but eventually came to his senses right before their royal wedding.
Of course, there was a fair bit of plot and writing that she needed to get through before she would be at that scene, so there was always the chance that something would happen to keep her from committing to it. As it stood, however, she was definitely including that plot line and running with it for as long as she found it funny; she knew that when she shared the draft with Diamant inevitably he'd get the reference and get some chuckles from it as well, and seeing the king get a moment of happiness from her writing drove her to make sure that it was worth his time. "No, I can't be thinking about what Diamant gets from this," she scolded herself, looking at the blank spread of pages she had in front of her. "What am I getting from it, that's what matters. I need to write for myself."
Jade managed to get a small handful of pages into the opening chapter of the story, setting the scene and the beginning of the quest that her hero was embarking on, before she was interrupted by the real-life version of that hero. "You're upset with me," she heard Amber say from the doorway. "I know what I did to deserve it, but that doesn't mean I have to like it very much."
"Maybe you should consider my feelings on the matter," she told him, not turning around but closing the book for her manuscript so that what she'd been writing couldn't be spied on. "I'm simply doing what the king asked of me, nothing more and nothing less."
"You don't have to do it, you know. Things are fine how they are, why do you want to change them like that?" She knew that, if things worked out how Diamant wanted them, that there was nothing but benefits for everyone involved, but if they worked out how she wanted them, then everyone would benefit except Amber, who would lose one lover and still have another. He was dense, but he knew that was a potential outcome with things, and he didn't want that happening. "Why would you even want that, anyway? Don't you like seeing me happy? Seeing King Diamant happy?"
She pursed her lips together, noticing a distinct lack of someone else being mentioned there that she wasn't going to ignore a second time. "I like seeing myself happy, actually," she said, a coldness in her voice that was there to prove the point that she was not a fan of being neglected in these situations. "Something that I don't think you even want to see right now, given that you're so focused on how this affects you and how it affects the king, but nothing about how it affects me."
"Wh-what? How could you say that and mean it?" His eyebrows furrowing as he came into the room properly, closing the door behind him, Amber came within a few steps of where Jade was still sitting before she told him to stop coming closer. He did heed her demand for a few seconds, before his desire to make things right got the best of him and he came up right behind her anyway, hands slamming down on her shoulders to get her to look up at him, her cold expression now visible to him and making him flinch. "Oh wow, you really are upset about this, aren't you?"
"Always an observant one," she replied, her eyes matching his in intensity as they stared at each other. "Your behavior here is why I can say that you don't care about how I feel about any of this, by the way. No mindful man would be less worried about his girlfriend than everyone else around them."
"But one of these people involved is a king, Jade! I can't ignore what King Diamant wants!" Bringing his head down toward her, Amber intended on putting his forehead against Jade's, but before he had the chance to do it she moved her head so that his forehead hit her high ponytail instead.
She gave him an opportunity to keep talking, but when he stayed silent with his head against her hair, she rolled her eyes and spoke. "You can definitely ignore what he wants in this situation. He knows what's best for him as the Brodian king, and that isn't being entangled with us. We're his retainers, we should be committed to that job and that job only, instead of...whatever you think your role as retainer is meant to be."
"I don't think what you're trying to help him with is part of the role of retainer either," Amber pointed out, lifting his head so that he was no longer experiencing a face full of blonde hair, even though he could have sworn a few stray strands were now in his mouth. "And what difference does it make if I'm with him and you're with me? As long as we're all happy, right? Isn't that what matters here?"
There were not enough words available to her, in all of her years of creative writing, for Jade to be able to reply to that in a way that was both kind and true. "I…suppose that would be what matters in a normal situation, yes," she conceded, "but this is far from a normal situation. You're the retainer to the king, filling that duty should be your top priority when it comes to…" She trailed off as she realized that she'd already said that, more or less, and there was no way that Amber would suddenly be grasping it on a second pass-through. "Never mind. I'm going to continue doing the duty I was assigned by the king I serve, and you can continue doing whatever it is you see fit. We're allowed to follow our own paths on this one, and I intend on doing just that."
"I guess that makes sense." After picking a hair off of his tongue and grimacing at seeing just how long it was as he pulled it away, Amber tossed it aside and came to crouch down next to Jade, looking at her until she looked back at him. "I don't really want to get in your way, though, but I don't want to give up my time with King Diamant. Do you see my problem?"
"Perhaps I do," she said, trying not to get lost in his big, pleading eyes as she stared into them. "But perhaps I also see nothing but my own problems and how to solve them, and those two situations might be going up against each other whether we like it or not."
Amber opened his mouth to speak, then let his jaw hang wordlessly for a few seconds, only to scrunch his face up so that he was squinting at Jade. "You know what? I'm getting tired of talking about this without really knowing what I want to say, or what I want to have happen, or any of that. I know you're still upset with me, probably, but…" He didn't need to finish what he was trying to say, because Jade was used to him making that request in the strangest of ways.
It wasn't typical for a retainer to be the bedfellow of the person they served, but for the retainers to take each other to bed instead? That was fully accepted and understood. Their biggest problem remained that neither of them were seeing eye-to-eye on the situation they'd wrapped themselves up in, and no amount of trying to change that intentionally was going to do a thing. If there was going to be change, it was going to be an accidental one, and no one was going to have any say in what happened.
There wasn't going to be a storybook solution to the problem of Amber romancing the king and his other retainer at the same time; in fact, only the exact opposite could possibly happen to them all.
Over the following months, multiple different storylines seemed to begin coming together and breaking apart in Jade's quest to find someone suitable for the king to take on as a public-facing significant other. At Diamant's request, she'd first put out a plea to the Divine Dragon to come to Brodia and meet with the king, not mentioning in the slightest that there was a romantic angle being explored. There was no response for quite some time, which led her to reach out to her other top choice in the interim. Queen Ivy of Elusia did respond in a timely manner, and was open to coming to visit with the Brodian king, but she made it very clear in what she'd written that she was coming first and foremost in the name of diplomacy.
"I should have replied immediately that if that was the case, she should've stayed home, but I figured perhaps you could change her mind?" Jade explained to Diamant while telling him about the fact that a meeting had been arranged to begin with. "If she has no interest in romance, then her being here is nothing more than a meeting between rulers of two neighboring countries."
"Perhaps that is the truth, but look at it this way. There are much worse places to be building diplomacy with than Elusia right now." If Diamant was fine with the meeting being useless for the purpose it had been called for, then there was no reason for Jade to argue with him about it. At any rate, when the day came that Ivy stepped onto castle grounds with her retainers by her side, meeting Diamant at his door with his retainers right behind him, just based on the look she was giving the king it was apparent she meant business with it being a diplomatic trip.
That didn't sit right with Jade, but it seemed perfectly fine in Amber's world. He knew that they were guarding their king because someone had been invited for him to try and romance, and as Amber didn't want that to come to fruition, he was more than happy to see things being nothing more than a summit between leaders talking about what was best for their respective lands at the time.
Soon after that had taken place, Alear did write back that she was flattered to be invited to visit Brodia and meet with the king, but she had other duties that needed attending to currently and she was going to be unavailable for a little while. Tacked onto the end, after several apologies for her slow response and even more apologies for having to turn the offer down, she wrote that she would come to Brodia the second she had the chance.
"That's more hopeful than hearing nothing at all," Diamant remarked after being shown the letter, "but something about what's keeping her away has me curious. Do you think the Divine Dragon is plotting something of her own?"
"I wouldn't put it past her," Jade replied, shaking her head as she re-folded the paper to tuck it away with the ones exchanged with Ivy previously. "It would be fitting if she was planning something to counteract what she thinks you're planning, but I'm not entirely sure what she might think you're planning in this situation."
Amber, standing to the side listening to the two with a contorted expression on his face, sighed dramatically and raised his arms before folding them behind his head. "You know what I think she thinks you're planning?" he started, gaining the attention of the other two. "Something stupid and unnecessary. Which, really, isn't that the truth? Why do we have to change what we've already got going on?"
A pang of longing struck Jade's heart at hearing the question, her opening her mouth to speak, but Diamant took control before she had the chance to say a word. "Now, Amber, we've explained to you many times why this is necessary. You don't want to be responsible for the people to lose trust in their king, do you?"
"I don't see why they'd do that." Amber's voice was serious, which he often wasn't, and it was clear that he wanted to argue for the side of stopping the entire charade and returning their lives to normal. "You don't have to pretend to be in love with someone just to get away with being with me, I think that'd just make everyone even more upset when they found out the truth."
What Jade wanted to say was that there was an easier way to solve things that didn't involve needing to scour all of Elyos to find someone with just enough interest in Diamant to cover for his side activities. She never found the words to say it, though, because she knew that Amber would be too dense to realize that she was actively telling him to pick her over the king, and with good reason. "I'm going to let you handle this one, King Diamant," she said quietly, carrying the letter from the Divine Dragon away with her. "I have some other leads I'm going to pursue while we're waiting for this visit to take place."
She made it as far as her little writing room before she lost all semblance of control over her emotions, tears welling up in the corners of her eyes that fell in streams as she blinked. "This is beyond ridiculous at this point," she grumbled to herself as she entered the room, taking refuge at her desk to work on some of the other letters she'd thought about writing. "He simply will not listen to reason in any of this, and he…he needs to. Before he realizes that he's lost something important to him."
While pulling out parchment and getting started on writing friendly inquiries addressed to several others who'd been part of the war effort, Jade allowed for herself to openly cry, making sure than not even a single teardrop hit the desk in front of her while she did so. The tears stung as they rolled across her skin, but so did thinking about the emotions that were driving her to cry in the first place—she was angered by Amber's behavior, upset by how difficult the solution was proving itself to be, and saddened by the fact that she couldn't force herself to be the most important person in his life.
All of those things should have been able to be changed in some way, but the way that the latter of the three would change was inevitable and far from the way she'd have preferred for it to change in the first place.
Once she'd calmed herself down from the emotional outburst, she got to work on figuring out who was most important to write a letter to next, then who was still important but not nearly as much. She'd already decided that letters were going to be sent to Firene (to try enticing Princess Celine to fill the role needed) and to Solm (not to royalty there, not when they seemed to be getting frequent visits from their prince, but to some others). It could have been worth it to send another one to Queen Ivy, but she decided against it and chose to begin drafting one to a retainer of the Elusian princess instead, not finishing it because she wasn't actually sure how much she wanted to get Goldmary involved in things. The final letter she wrote wasn't finished, either, and had been hastily scribbled more to get her thoughts down on paper than anything else; she knew she'd be coming back to it sometime.
Like always, her writing time was ended when Amber came into the room, but unlike his usual entrances he came in silently and chose to sit down on the cot instead of doing anything disruptive or distracting. Feeling his eyes watching her every motion, Jade tucked away the unfinished letters and the unused parchment, folded and sealed the ones that were ready to go on their way. "Are you going to say anything to me?" she asked him after checking that every letter was suitable for sending, and the silence she received in return spoke volumes. "Of course. I take it that you are unhappy about your talk with the king."
"It's not that, not really," he replied, voice low and far less energetic than usual. "I'm just doing some thinking about it."
"Amber, thinking? Color me impressed." Rising from her desk, Jade held the letters in her hand as she looked at her boyfriend, his face contorting as he really seemed to be deep in thought about something. "Don't mind me, I have to go drop these off to be sent out. I must keep pushing forward to meet the king's demands, after all."
Once again there was no response, which Jade was thankful for. She made it as far as the doorway before she heard Amber sigh, which prompted her to turn and look back at him over her shoulder. "Come back in here when you're done doing that," he told her, giving her a glance to see that she was still there and still listening, before shifting his eyes up toward the ceiling. "I guess I probably should talk to you about things, even if I don't really want to."
"It might be for the best," she agreed, her lips pursed in a straight line after she'd spoken. There seemed to be no way that Amber had anything good to talk to her about, and she knew that she was most likely going to be faced with a reality that she'd been trying her hardest to avoid when she came back. Choosing to just disappear for the night and avoid the conversation certainly was an option that she could have taken, but Jade couldn't bring herself to do that to someone she cared immensely about, even if he was clearly about to tell her that he didn't feel the same way.
At that point, even the request made in those letters felt insignificant in the grand scheme of things, because she knew that if Amber was about to tell her what she feared—that he wasn't going to keep making life hard for Diamant by keeping her around—then what she was asking others to do didn't matter. The king would have a relationship appropriate for facing the public, there weren't going to be any weird situations that he'd have to dance and explain around, and she would be nothing more than the retainer he'd taken her on as, relegated to a life of serving the king and not her heart. But she'd taken the job to make it so that they could all be happy in their lives, and she wasn't going to give up on a possibility that she was about to be told she was doing something useless.
The letters were dropped off with the rest of the post, her smiling hesitantly at the postmaster when he asked if they were for a new novel or just friendly correspondences. "I would say they're just letters to old friends," she decided to say, hoping that her use of the word old would make the man not interested in delving further. "I'd love to reconnect with some of them now that we've all begun to find peace." While she couldn't say that it was the truth, she did notice that the postmaster didn't seem to want to open the letters and look for himself after that, something that she'd worried was happening with the other messages being sent out.
On her way back down to her dungeon room, she passed by the retainers for Prince Alcryst, neither of which seemed to notice her coming down the hall at first. It wasn't until she'd taken too big of a step and had landed hard on one foot that their eyes shot toward her, Lapis giving her a friendly wave while Citrinne merely looked at her with eyebrows raised. "Are you trying to make your presence known to everyone wherever you go?" Citrinne asked, obvious judgment in her voice. "Or are you really just that uncoordinated right now?"
"It was an honest mistake, I didn't mean to step that loudly." It was the truth, as Jade never intended on calling attention to herself in ways that she hadn't mentally rehearsed dealing with, but the venom in Citrinne's eyes made it clear she wasn't being believed. "Well, you can choose to think I came this way to ruin your day, that's fine by me."
"She doesn't think that!" Lapis yelled out, grabbing Citrinne's shoulders and shaking her slightly. "I can't say for sure what she does think, actually, but I know it's not that you're here to ruin our day!"
"While that's true, and certainly our day couldn't get any more ruined than it already has been…" Citrinne's glare softened slightly as she allowed for her eyes to pan over Jade from head to toe and back. "I can assume that your day's pretty shot as well, hm?"
"I wouldn't say that," Jade replied, knowing that she must have been standing in such a way to look defeated or annoyed. "It's mostly the same old things that keep happening to me. But, don't mind me asking this but what happened to the two of you?"
Realizing she'd said something she shouldn't have, Citrinne blanched, bringing a hand to cover her face, while Lapis glanced around before coming to Jade's side to whisper the answer to her. "We found out today that Alcryst wants to return the kindness that Prince Fogado has been showing him and intends on visiting him in Solm next time, and he wants us to go with him whenever he decides to do it. Not only that, but he wants us to play nice with the retainers there and…"
"I see, I see." Remembering who the retainers to the prince of Solm were, Jade fully understood why that would be something that the two ladies didn't want to subject themselves to. "Unfortunately that doesn't sound like much of a problem I could solve for you, but I do appreciate you telling me about it."
"It's also a problem you shouldn't be trying to help us solve," Citrinne interjected, before clasping her hand over her face a little tighter. "I...mean, you have quite the host of problems of your own that you're in need of solving, do you not?"
Her eyebrows furrowing as she thought about what problems she had, outside of the one that she was actively trying to go back and face, Jade ultimately gave the entire accusation a large shrug. "I can't really say that I have too much going on in the way of problems, now that I think about it," she said, watching as Lapis stepped back and Citrinne seemed just as shocked as she had been before. "Well, it's the truth. The only thing I can think of is what's going on between me, Amber, and the king, and even then, is that truly a problem that I'm dealing with? Maybe, maybe not."
Without so much as missing a beat, Lapis and Citrinne responded to that question in unison. "It definitely is a problem." That was followed with Citrinne being the one to come closer, offering a kind hand toward Jade's shoulder which she dodged the first time, only to fall victim to upon a second offering. "Jade, dear, I don't think you're realizing how much of a problem that really is for the kingdom of Brodia. Do you think that people outside of these castle walls haven't noticed your peculiar relationship?"
"If they have, it's not because of anything I've done."
"You literally write novels about these men and make it very clear that you're romantically entangled with one, while he's entangled with the other." Citrinne's fingers tightened on Jade's shoulder, making her realize how serious of a statement that was meant to be. "If I were you, which I'm thankful I'm not, I'd be looking at that as something to cut back on in future installments of your stories. The world reading them doesn't need to know that you and the king are sharing the same bed, so to speak."
Instantly, Jade wanted to retort that she and Diamant were not sharing the same bed, not most nights, and when they did it was with Amber in between them, but she knew that saying that would only drive Citrinne's point home further. "I'll keep that in mind the next time I write something worthy of publication, I suppose," she said, not wanting to deny things any longer because she knew that she was technically in the wrong at that point. "Anyway, I should be going now, sorry once again for ruining your-"
"You ruined nothing, Jade!" Lapis interrupted, stomping her foot louder than the initial step that had caused the whole conversation had been. Citrinne seemed to be in concurrence with her fellow retainer, and soon the three ladies continued on in their separate directions, but the entire interaction weighed heavily on Jade's mind as she went back to her little dungeon room.
She'd passed by those two so many times in the castle, living their separate lives filling similar roles for the royal brothers; she knew that she'd been much more disruptive to them in the past with talking to herself about writing, or clunking through hallways in her full suit of armor. There had to have been some other reason for why that had been the day that Citrinne found her to be a disruption, and she was almost worried to find out what the truth might have been.
As she returned to her room she found Amber no longer sitting on the cot but instead at the desk, his elbows propping his head up as he sat staring at the wall. "Excuse me, but have I given you permission to be there?" she asked him upon entering, doing a quick check to make sure no drafts were visible on the top of the desk. "I definitely do not recall doing it any time recently, so could you perhaps…?"
"Jade, I know that you don't want me sitting here, but it was a lot comfier than your cot is and I didn't know how much longer you'd be gone." Rising to his feet, and nearly taking the chair down with an errant hit from his ankle, Amber turned to look at her, an expression of longing painted across his face. "You can forgive me for that, can't you?"
"I suppose I could, with that explanation." The temptation was there to charge at him, to make him physically remember why they'd gotten together in the first place, but Jade knew that she needed to stand strong and not impact what Amber was about to tell her in any way possible.
She was opening her mouth to remind him that he'd asked her to come back down to see him in the first place when he seemed to remember on his own terms. "Right, uh, you could've had like a million other things to do while you were gone, but I wanted you back here to see me so that I can get this over with." He began taking a bunch of dramatic deep breaths, ones that Jade wanted to stop with a solid hand on his arm. "Okay, it's all okay, I can handle this. I can tell you exactly what's got me all bothered."
"It's because you don't want to lose me and Diamant, you'd prefer to keep us both but you've begun to see that it's just not possible," she stated, knowing that what she said was about as close to the truth as she could manage. Still, she knew that there was one element she'd left out, so she added that in right away. "Plus, you don't want to have to share him with whoever it is we find that will cover for him so that he can keep spending time with you while you're still spending time with me."
Amber's eyes widened as he looked at Jade, reading her level of seriousness to make the best judgment that he could. "A-actually, that's not really much to do with it at all," he admitted, catching her by surprise because she'd been confident it was indeed what was going on. "I need to talk to you about my behavior and how much of a big dummy I've been about everything. You and King Diamant, you've got the brains about all of this, and you're really working to make all of our lives easier, and I've been too stupid to really see that. I can't be selfish all the time, otherwise I'm never going to get anything I really want."
"That's not…quite how being selfish impacts you, but I see what you're getting at. You're going to assist me in trying to find someone for Diamant to have a public-facing relationship with, so that he and I can continue sharing your time. Exactly like it's always been." This wasn't the outcome Jade had convinced herself of, but it wasn't an outcome she'd been hoping to see either. She wanted Amber for herself, no sharing allowed, and she wasn't getting that in this current situation. "I suppose having your assistance in watching over conversations and listening to the relationships blossoming will be helpful. It's going to be nice to have your help."
Rather than respond to that with any words, Amber proceeded to step forward, arms stretching outward, before wrapping Jade up in a hug that had her feet lifted off of the ground as he twirled her around a few times. "You're always so understanding, that's why I like having you as my girlfriend!" he announced, pressing his face against her high ponytail and knocking it back and forth. "And you know why else I like having you as my girlfriend?"
"Something tells me you're about to show me it whether I know or not," she replied, feeling slightly breathless at how she was being held, while a warmth was starting to fill her beginning in all of the places that Amber's arms were touching her body. "Shall we make our way elsewhere, or do you have other plans?"
"King Diamant said he needed to be in his own bedroom tonight, so I think we can make something work somewhere really close by." She was fine with him carrying her out of the room, she really was, but knowing that their tender time together was only because the king had other plans did sour the mood slightly. Only a little, though.
Even if Amber had said he was going to actually help with the project she'd been given, Jade could tell that he wasn't fully committed to doing as he said. It seemed that every time he'd be expected to actually do something useful for the cause, he'd turn it around on her by the end of the day and get her crawling back next to him in bed, whether he'd asked for her to do so or not. She felt weak under his grasp, something that was bizarre to her as someone who was proud of and had made a living with her strength, and yet she didn't do anything to try and get around his control. Perhaps it was that she actually liked the easy way to get the affection she wanted from him, or perhaps she was just thankful that all of that time was being spent with her and not someone else.
Either way, it was beginning to impede on her decision-making with Diamant's request, as she was starting to think of outlandish ways to get others to come visit the king, just so that Amber would get jealous and spend time with her again. It truly was like her life was coming from the trashiest of romance novels, and Jade wasn't going to be complaining if it meant she was the heroine who got what she wanted and got the overly dramatic plot to go with it.
She, however, was going to be complaining when that was turned back around on her like everything else was, and suddenly all of those nights of getting the attention she wanted without any care except feeling loved became a huge headache that she was now having to handle in a professional way. She'd known from the start of her relationship that anything beyond kisses and touches was a dangerous game that she, as retainer to the king, couldn't afford to play, but she'd thrived in those nights getting to spend time knowing Amber's body in ways that she felt no one else should have.
There was a difficult decision there for Jade to make, specifically regarding what she knew that she didn't want anyone else knowing right then—obviously she was going to maintain her post as long as she could, but now her mere existence was a detriment to so many others. This was one of the reasons that the task she'd been working on was so crucial, given that the relationship that Amber and Diamant shared was now going to be looked down upon even harder if news of it broke to someone who was aware of her own personal situation. She couldn't be the one to ruin the Brodian people's trust in their king, and she couldn't be the one to cause unjust labels to be slung at people who hadn't actually earned them.
While coming to decide on the best way to solve the problem she'd accidentally created for herself, there was still a job to do regarding the king's potential suitors, and she had to pretend as if everything was perfectly fine in order to make meetings happen. She'd managed to arrange quite a few visits to the castle that needed to go off flawlessly, with her and Amber both there to watch over them and make sure that nothing strange took place that could've ruined the country they were trying to protect.
Just about every single meeting turned into a reminiscing moment about the war efforts and how fighting under the same banner had felt. That was where most of them started, and where even more of them ended, but the ones that found pathways to other conversations were the ones that needed the most attention given to them. (There was, of course, one exception to this, when Panette and Merrin had come together despite only one of them being invited and had proceeded to spend several hours treating Diamant to musical renditions of everything he was doing. But that seemed to be done entirely to spite the fact that only one of them was meant to be there and they didn't agree with why they were there to begin with.)
It was during the long-awaited visit from Queen Ivy, who'd finally decided she could grace the Brodian royalty with her presence, that everything started to fall apart just a little. Ivy and Diamant were spending time together talking pleasantly in the gardens, sitting across from each other but actively talking when needed, while her retainers waited on one side and his on the other. Every so often, Jade would look away from the royals to see what Amber was doing, and he was clearly not focused on what his job was meant to be in that moment, given that he was pulling faces that the men across the garden were responding to in kind. "Are you really goofing off right now?" she asked him, a sternness to her voice. "I thought you were going to be doing your job, not playing around."
"It's not fair to expect me to work when they started it," Amber huffed in return, putting on a serious face so dramatic that it got one of the two men on the other side to double over in laughter. "See? I like getting to spend time with those two, but not like this. This is boring."
"No, this is professional." Rolling her eyes, Jade went back to watching what the king was up to, but the heat being created under her armor was quickly becoming a problem. She hadn't been told she needed to be fully armed for the occasion, but she'd been insistent that it was her duty as a retainer to the king to be as presentable as possible. A shaky hand reached up and touched the helmet on her head, grabbing it and tugging it off to try and get herself cooling down in some way without destroying the integrity of the rest of her armor.
It worked for a few moments, but the heat was starting to get to be too much, and she knelt down to attempt to collect herself, clutching at her chest as she ran through the quickest way to get herself out of the armor without looking indecent. "Hey, uh, Jade? Are you okay over there?" Amber asked her, not moving from his spot but at least glancing in her direction. "I thought you were supposed to be doing your job."
"I'm trying," she sputtered, swallowing down hard after speaking because she knew that talking too much could be to her detriment in that moment. "Could you go get me some water? I've gotten too warm and I feel faint."
"Sure, but wouldn't it make more sense if you, I don't know, went inside to cool down?" He wasn't moving, which irritated her to the point that she snapped her request at him a second time, him apologizing as he went to fill the demand.
The moment she wasn't being watched by anyone, as far as she knew, she was hunching over, her whole body convulsing as she began heaving, thankful that she'd been stationed over a rocky area in the garden instead of in front of flowers she'd be destroying. It felt dehumanizing, kneeling there in full armor while throwing up seemingly everything that her body held in it. Footsteps came running across the concrete of the garden paths, and at first she thought it was Amber coming back with water and seeing her in her weakest moment, but somehow the person there to comfort her was an even worse possibility. "Jade, what's going on?" Diamant's voice asked her from above, her unable to even lift her head to look at him to respond. "This isn't like you."
"Poor thing, she looks positively miserable. How would you make her come out in this heat in her full armor without so much as a drop to drink?" Queen Ivy's voice was a surprise, but not in the sense that Jade didn't expect it once she'd heard Diamant's; rather, she was surprised to hear a queen actually speaking about her, blaming the king for a decision she'd made on her own. "Has someone gone to get you water?"
"I…sent my fellow retainer to do it before I got to this point," Jade answered slowly, not wanting to speak too fast and sound more panicked than she was about anything. "I figured it would be better than the alternative."
While not spoken, the idea of her having to get water herself and failing to make it in time was fairly well understood by the two royals, who looked at each other with raised eyebrows. "Why don't you get out of that armor now, then when Amber gets back you can get the water you need and cool down properly." Diamant seemed concerned enough with what was going on, but the next thing he said proved that it may have been a little bit of an act. "Queen Ivy and I are going to go back to what we were doing, please don't make either of us regret that decision."
"She's lucky to have someone around who will go fetch things when she needs it," she heard Ivy saying as the pair walked away, leaving her hunched over there feeling like she was going to throw up again, this time out of the nerves her failure as a retainer had caused.
Thankfully for her, Amber was there soon enough with two glasses of water and a very determined look on his face as he came to sit down next to Jade. "The heat start to get to you too much even with me leaving?" he asked, seemingly oblivious to the fact that she was down on her knees for another reason. "I told you that you should've gone inside to cool down, it was really nice in there!"
"I…yes, the heat did get to me too much and I fell like this," she replied, ignoring the fact that there was clearly more to what had happened than what he was noticing. Adjusting herself so that she was now upright, Jade started to take off the upper portion of her armor but froze the moment she had her hands gripping it properly to move it. Without saying anything else, one of those hands reached over to grab a glass of water from Amber, dousing herself with it rather than drinking it—then she took the second, had a few sips to wash the rancid taste from her mouth before pouring it on herself as well. Once she was sufficient soaked, she returned to taking the armor off.
Getting out of that metal cage was an instant relief for her in many ways, but the water on her body had helped with the most important one. "Don't you think it would've been better if you'd just come out here in normal clothes like I did?" Amber gestured to the outfit he was wearing, which was far from professional and had alpacas sewn in several places. "Now you're wearing half armor and half undergarments."
Jade's eyes locked on Amber's face, her not wanting to acknowledge what he'd just accused her of by checking to make sure she had remembered to put a thin shirt on (even though she knew she had). "I wasn't anticipating the weather being this unseasonably warm. I've maintained my composure in full armor in much stronger heat, but for some reason today's weather hit me harder than ever."
"Well, maybe next time you'll remember this and dress better." Standing back up, Amber walked over to where he'd originally been stationed, turning his attention to the royalty out in the garden. "I'm getting back to work, you should do the same. King Diamant doesn't want to be interrupted, I don't think."
Knowing that she'd already done a great job at interrupting the king anyway, Jade didn't say a word, maintaining her stance on the ground as she continued looking at Amber. He really had no idea of what was going on, and didn't think to suspect anything outside of what he'd been told was happening. One of her hands curled into a fist, her shaking it very slightly toward herself, before she stood up and felt sick immediately upon both feet being flat on the ground. "I-I think I will be stepping inside to cool down after all," she told Amber, who nodded to show he'd heard her statement.
It felt embarrassing, having to pick up the armor she'd discarded and run back into the castle, but Jade didn't know what else there was to do. Amber had been right, it was much nicer inside than she could have imagined outdoors, but even the chilled air the castle had to offer wasn't enough to rid her of the feeling of being sick that she was experiencing. She'd made it through to the hallway where they kept their armor, weapons, and other supplies before she started gagging, and so she decided that she wasn't going to be putting her armor away right then in case something happened. That something did happen, right around the corner from her bedroom, the clanging of armor hitting the floor sounding a split-second before the sound of retching filled the air for the second time.
When she finished this time, horror overtook her mind as she'd just thrown up in a hallway that saw moderate use from people inside the castle. While there was the option to find a castle worker to come clean it, or even rudely leave it there to sit until a worker stumbled upon it themselves, she knew it would have been wrong for her to do that to someone. This mess was hers from the start, and she needed to be the one to clean it up, no matter how degrading it felt to do so.
It was at about the same time that she'd come back to the scene of the crime with a few old towels she'd hidden in a closet after using them to sop up water that had filtered into her dungeon room (mildewy but perfectly serviceable) that she heard someone else coming down the same hallway she was in. Panic began to settle into Jade's mind as she scrambled to get things as clean as she could, or at least covered up to mask everything, and it was perfectly-timed that she had just thrown down the last towel out of her hands that Citrinne came down the hallway behind her, a hurry in her step. "Jade, is everything okay?" she called as she approached, clear worry in her voice that hadn't been present the last time they'd spoken. "I happened to step outside and Amber had mentioned that you were feeling unwell due to the heat and—"
"Everything's perfectly fine around here," Jade replied, cutting off whatever Citrinne had intended on finishing her sentence with and stomping down on one of the towels to aid it in soaking up what it needed to. "Since coming inside I've felt much, much better than I did while I was out there."
Once Citrinne was close enough to tell that something was very much amiss with the scene she'd come across, she turned her nose up. "I feel that you might be lying about that," she said, trying her best not to look disgusted at what she'd clearly caught a scent of. "Tell me, why would you try and pretend things are fine when they seem to be anything but?"
That was a loaded question, one that Jade had no intentions of answering in any way except with the lies she was already working so hard to make into the truth. "Because I got overheated and sick and that's a bit shameful for someone like me to admit. You're probably…" She trailed off as she glanced downward, looking at her still-wet shirt and coming up with a plan of attack based on that. "I did get quite sick outside, after all."
"Jade…there is no need to act like nothing happened in here, I do have two eyes that work perfectly well." Scrunching her face as she finally turned it back down to find her normal posture, Citrinne gestured to the towels on the floor. "It would be unlike you to start doing the work of the servants, given your rather lofty role as retainer to the king, so I know that you are merely covering up what you did yourself. Still from the heat, I presume?"
Thankful that Citrinne had just given her the opening of a lifetime, Jade nodded. "Yeah, it's pretty shameful that it happened like this, but I was the foolish one, wearing full armor outside in the high heat. I could've prevented it in the first place."
"Right. Well, I would love to stay and chat but it would be a shame if I carried this smell back with me, so…" Citrinne took a few steps backward, before stopping to watch as Jade turned away and began properly cleaning the area. She sighed, watching the work as it happened, before cupping her mouth and asking, "Are you sure there is nothing more to this than a little heat?"
"Why would—yes, I'm sure there's nothing more to it!" Jade sounded annoyed at the question, but it wasn't until she was finishing up with the towels and having to carefully move them to the laundry bins that she realized why Citrinne had asked such a thing in the first place. As she dropped her dirty towels where they belonged, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in one of the metallic surfaces in the room, and merely based on her hunched-over posture, it seemed that she was faring a lot worse than she'd been letting on. Straightening up and standing like she would have in full armor erased any of those visual cues that something was off, but when she'd been feeling so sick and unwell it only made sense that she'd dropped her guard everywhere as well.
One cold-water rinse and a change into clothes better suited for the heat later and Jade fully intended on going back outside to rejoin Amber and the others, but she stopped herself from committing to that action when she heard Citrinne's voice down a different hallway, in the middle of talking to someone about their duties. Thinking to herself about how she should make sure Citrinne kept her mouth shut about what she thought was going on, if anything, Jade nearly walked into a wall rather than taking the turn she needed to, the fear of rumors spreading beginning to spook her a little. Everything was fine, there was no need for any sort of concern, and if for some reason Citrinne decided to use her noble blood to start drama then she would fight back however she could.
This, of course, heated her emotionally and when she made it back outside she was just about seething, only to be met with the heat of the still-hot day beating down on her once again. Amber had continued to stand at his post, and when he heard Jade coming he turned to give her a small wave before going back to watching something else going on. "Did I miss anything important?" she asked him after taking a calming breath with the intention of keeping herself from doing anything reckless or anger-based.
It took Amber a few moments to figure out how to answer. "Uh, well, after you left they just kept talking. And talking. And then they came back over here and talked to me for a little bit, mostly about alpacas and some heroic things I've done, then they went back and kept talking there and that's where they still are!" He gave a grand gesture toward the garden where the royals still sat, skin reddening in the direct sunlight they were both exposed to.
"I see, sounds like it's been fairly interesting out here then." None of that sounded promising to Jade's cause, but at the same time this was by far the longest any of these conversations had gone, outside of one with the Divine Dragon that had ended in Diamant considering letting her in on the truth. Remembering that, Jade looked at Amber warily. "Do you think he's asked her about it yet, then?"
"Probably not, she doesn't seem interested in him like that and I think he's just being nice about talking to her." The way Amber spoke reminded Jade that he may have been playing on their side for now, but he didn't want the same outcome as the others. "But I really don't know, I've just been standing here waiting for you to come back."
She nodded, finding footing similar to where she'd stood before, just not as close to the rocks as she would have been otherwise. "Thank you for maintaining watch even when I needed to step away. That's pretty heroic of you to take control like that."
"Thanks, I always try to be a hero."
She looked over at him and saw him beaming a smile forward, not in her direction but still visible from where she stood. "You have so many opportunities to be a hero," she mumbled under her breath, hands idly fidgeting in front of her as she thought about the biggest one currently occupying her mind. Jade knew she couldn't let that dictate how she acted, though, so she coughed once to clear her throat and her mind, then spoke loudly. "I would assume they would be wanting to part ways soon enough, given that they've been out here for much of the day."
"I'd say so too, but her retainers keep bringing them things and King Diamant's always too nice to turn them down. They could be here for the whole day and night at this point and I don't know if they'd even realize it!" Amber laughed. "I'd realize it, but then again, I'm really good at realizing things."
Completely unintentionally, one of Jade's eyebrows raised as she glanced over at him, before turning her attention to the royals once more. "I'd say you're fairly good at realizing things, but some things go completely unnoticed right before your eyes and you never know it."
"Ha, that's not true! With these eyes, I'm super observant and notice anything!" Turning his head so he could look at her straight on, Amber squinted and stared for a moment before going back to doing his job properly. "I notice that you're looking a lot less dead than you did earlier, and you're not covered in water anymore. Oh, and you're wearing normal clothes instead of your armor. Why did you even do that?"
So he was able to look at her and pick up on the broad details, but he wasn't trying to look closer than that. It was a good thing for Jade to know, even if it was infuriating to hear him list off everything anyone with eyes would get. "I already explained that earlier, it was a lapse in judgment about what being professional as a retainer should have looked like. If I could go back and change things, I would."
Except in order to prevent things from happening like they did, she knew she'd need to go back a lot further in time than just that morning when she'd chosen to dress in full armor.
On paper, the meeting with Queen Ivy seemed quite successful, given that the royals ended up having two meals together out in the garden before finally parting for the day, but Diamant was adamant that it had gone absolutely nowhere. As he recalled everything that had gone on during the extended talk, it really did seem like they'd just spent the time reminiscing about the war, about fighting together under the banner of the Divine Dragon, and how peace in the world was allowing their countries to co-exist without fear of war. He never once mentioned a thing about explaining to her why she'd been invited.
Therefore, it didn't come as too much of a surprise when, a few weeks after she'd been in the garden, there was a letter from Ivy asking for Diamant to come visit her in Elusia, to bring his retainers and have a repeat of their long day there at Brodia Castle. At first, he wasn't sure how to respond to the letter, since it was addressed directly to him and was looking for a regal return message, but he came up with a plan to have Jade come up with the words and him put the pen to the page, so that Ivy wouldn't suspect a thing.
Going down to her little writing room in the lower level of the castle was fairly standard business, and no one ever suspected anything weird when he did it simply because it was something he did often. Usually he was going down there to sneak peeks at her newest manuscripts, or try and wrangle her away from her writing, or even check and see if Amber was down there with her, but this time was unusual in that he was going to get her to write something for him. Likewise, Jade was used to hearing someone in the doorway, but it was almost always Amber there if she wasn't expecting their arrival, so when she turned around and saw the king waiting for her, she immediately turned back to her desk and covered up what she'd been working on.
"Let me guess, you have something you need me to work on," she deadpanned, listening as Diamant came into the room and stepped to the usual spot that Amber stood, next to her with eyes looking anywhere but at her. He silently held out the letter he'd received from Ivy, waiting for Jade to take it into her own hands, but she merely glanced at it and shook her head. "I…I'm not going to write a response to something written directly to you."
"I wasn't expecting you to. In fact, I want to be the one writing it, but I'm not sure I'll be able to word things as eloquently as you can. Would you do the honor of helping me with getting it written?" He pushed the letter further toward Jade, leaning forward on his toes to get it as close to her as he could. She glanced at him this time, before her eyes shifted upward and she sighed.
"When I agreed to help you with this, I never thought it'd get to this point. I suppose I can help you come up with words to use, if you're sure you're going to be writing the letter yourself. Could you just…" She trailed off, before nodding her head toward her cot. "Sit there and think about what kind of response you're going for? I need to finish writing something of my own before I help you with that."
Taking a command from his retainer wasn't typical, but due to the fact that Jade was about to be helping him with something big, he wasn't going to argue with it. Her cot was uncomfortable, to the point that he felt somewhat guilty for it being the place to sleep on her own that she'd been given, and with how long it had been her solo bed he almost felt like apologizing. The words never came, however, and he sat there, reading over Ivy's letter and thinking about what it was he wanted to say to her in return, while Jade uncovered her papers and jotted down some more things on a page that she folded tightly upon finishing. She even went through the motions of pulling out new paper and getting it set up for the letter before stepping out of her chair, quickly moving to the side and telling him that the desk was his for using.
"Oh, and after you're finished with this, this is for you," she told him, handing him the paper she'd just folded at the same time she was taking Ivy's letter from him to read it for herself. "But save it for once you've finished here, it isn't important to this task."
"I assume it's a short draft of a new story? I do look forward to reading those."
Jade grimaced, but played it off as reading something she didn't like in the letter. "I won't ruin the surprise. This letter you got is certainly unexpected. A visit to Elusia, at the request of their queen. What a concept, given the relationship of the countries before the war."
"That's why I'm uncertain on how to word this. The idea comes from a place of kindness, but if the people of Brodia learn of this visit and find out that it isn't simply diplomatic, they may turn their backs on me." Diamant, settling in at the desk and rearranging how things were set up for maximum comfort, looked to Jade to see her looking back at him, a pensive expression on her face. "I see you're thinking about how to proceed."
"Turning her down would be uncalled for, but taking both myself and Amber to accompany you may give her people the idea that you're coming to try and cause problems where none are needed." That wasn't true in the slightest, and it seemed that Diamant picked up on that immediately given his narrowed eyes, but Jade continued anyway. "I think it would be safest if you made the journey with one of us alone, or brought one of us plus one of Alcryst's retainers, provided that this trip doesn't overlap at all with one of his visits to Solm, or one of Prince Fogado's visits here. Plus, if it does overlap with one such visit, having someone such as myself staying behind would give you some peace of mind, would it not?"
"Ah, thinking of all possibilities like that, I don't know where I'd be without you, Jade." His words were kind and genuine, and Diamant went back to looking at his blank page as he thought about those new options he'd been given. At the same time, Jade was quietly sighing, bringing a hand to pinch the bridge of her nose. "I suppose bringing only Amber along would prove that we are coming without any intentions of causing trouble."
She nodded, agreeing with that point. "I would tell her that, then. She really does seem like she wants this to be a completely friendly visit, and by limiting the number of people you bring with you, you're showing that you plan for the same peace you've always been working toward."
Diamant picked up a pen and began writing things down on the paper, occasionally asking for clarification on how certain sentences should have been worded or how phrases could be taken on their own. Jade was perfectly content with helping him, pacing around behind him for the first bit of their time together, before giving him back Ivy's letter and sitting down on the cot for herself, putting her pillow over her lap and resting her elbows on it as she continued to give advice when asked. After almost two hours of work, Diamant felt he had a letter worth sending and Jade felt that she'd done all she could to help him write something that was truly his own.
He'd shown it to her upon completion, and after she had given it a stamp of approval by saying that it was very similar to the ones she'd been writing on his behalf, but just different enough that it was clear she hadn't written a thing, she told him how she'd been sending them out. "I could even take it to the postmaster and get it sent out in the morning, if you'd like," she offered, something that he accepted without hesitation. Now that she had his letter in her hands, and he had the one from Ivy as well as the one he'd been given to start, they left the room to go their separate ways, one to return to his normal places he spent time and the other to do what she'd said she would do.
It was later that night that Diamant remembered that he was supposed to read what Jade had given him, and thinking that it was indeed a draft of a story he saved it for when he was tucked into his bedroom, a night spent on his own without anyone keeping him company. By candlelight he unfolded the paper and was met with a rather brief message, one that was written by the same hand that had penned so many lovely stories for him over the years they'd been working together.
King Diamant, I regret having to write these words, it started, and with just that part of the sentence he knew that what he'd been given was far from something positive. There is something that I have to handle, something that will prevent me from being able to maintain my position as your retainer for the foreseeable future. I know that you are in capable hands with Amber remaining in his position, and I hope that even with him being your sole retainer going forward you are able to find the answers you seek in the quest we've been working on for the past many months.
"Jade…what are you planning with this?" he asked, as if the message could speak to him beyond what was written on the page. There had been nothing he'd noticed that would imply her needing to take care of something more important than being his retainer, and a list of all the possibilities began to fill itself in his mind. The thought that it was something he'd done began to gnaw at him, but he forced himself to finish what she'd written before jumping to any conclusions.
As much as I would like to think that this is a temporary decision, I understand that by stepping down from my position now I am making a choice that has permanent consequences. Unfortunately there is no way that you can convince me to change my mind, even if I wish there was. This is not a choice I am making lightly. Thank you for allowing me to be your retainer for all this time, and thank you for not pursuing me in getting me to change my mind on this matter.
There was no further explanation, just a note that she would be vacating her position immediately and a signature that was unmistakably hers. He sat upright in his bed, considering going down to her room to check and see if she was still there, but he had waited so long to read the letter that he was sure she was already gone. A burning anger began to build within him, confusion at what had prompted this and what there was that he could've done different clouding his judgment. "If you'd told me of this sooner, I would have tried to talk you through whatever pushed you to make this decision," he muttered, crumpling her message in his hand before tossing it aside.
Right then, there was a knock at his door, followed by one of the castle maids coming into the room with a candle of her own in her hand, a grim expression upon her face illuminated by the flickering flame. "Your majesty, I was sent to inform you that—"
"That one of my retainers left without explanation, I assume?" he interjected, the maid nodding rapidly at hearing the correct guess. "Yes, she left behind a note of resignation on her way out. By chance, have you heard anything about why this happened?"
"—I haven't heard anything confirmed, no, but there have been rumors floating through the castle lately regarding her." The maid seemed panicked to be in a position of needing to speak to the king about such a matter, and Diamant knew that he was putting her on the spot with his questions. But, with that information, he had an inkling of what he could do to get more insight, and so he dismissed the maid and turned in for the night, not letting his thoughts get too consumed by the matter at hand.
After all, he had a castle full of people who may have known more than he did right then, and based on the fact that Amber was clearly left behind, he knew who didn't know anything at all.