Red, purple, golden gems

Rutile slammed his fists against the door of the room for the umpteenth time, disregarding his red and smarting hands. “Let me out!” he shouted at the top of his lungs, fully knowing that the guards posted outside of the door at all times had been given specific instructions to ignore everything he said. Maybe he could’ve given them a headache at the very least, but it would’ve been a meagre consolation and he didn’t even believe in it all that much. “Let me out…” he said, his voice cracking on the last word, pathetically begging at that point, leaning his forehead on the door and sliding on the frigid stone floor. Like everything else in that castle room it was magnificent and exquisite, paved with stones of different shades of blue in real royal fashion, but beauty had never felt colder. Maybe he hadn’t been thrown in the dungeons like Ametrine and Celsian, but that locked room bereft of windows was no less of a prison cell.

His glasses had been repaired and he had new elegant clothes, he had returned to his pristine perfection, but he had never felt more useless in his life and wanted to cry. The knights too had deemed him too weak to pose any kind of threat to them, so they hadn’t bothered too hard to restrain him or search for weapons. They hadn’t even checked what was the stack of papers he was holding, what he knew, but that had been a mistake. If he managed to escape and talk to the others, they could’ve turned the tables of their situation.

Just thinking about his unexpected companions, however, brought him back to a pit of despair. Opal had literally been engulfed by the stained glass in the Saintess’ house, that to anyone else remained as solid as ever, and try as he might he couldn't forget the scared look that there was on her face before she disappeared; meanwhile, Ametrine and Celsian were bound and awaiting their final sentence. He had been declared innocent and cleared of all charges, officially on account of having been kidnapped and forced to be an unwilling ally in their plan – all of his protests got just written off as some kind of brainwashing –, but the reality was that his parents had accepted to marry him off to the child of an aristocratic family with ties to the royal one, who had wanted to have its paws on the Titanias’ wealth for the longest time. In the end he was just being exchanged from a pretty prison to another, no more than a petty trophy to be exposed and forgotten on a shelf, and all the years he had spent dodging marriage proposals had amounted to absolutely nothing.

In his musings, his eyes fell on the lock of the door. If only he had the key he could get out, but even then there were still the guards outside and he wasn’t strong enough to win against them. They should’ve been distracted at least, or, even better, directly not there, but that was asking a bit much. Unless… He glanced around, struck by a sudden idea, and spotted a few things that could’ve been useful. He should’ve been careful, but, if everything went as he was picturing it… He opened his hands, and his soul stone obediently floated between them: he usually only transformed it into a shield, but it could become nearly everything he wanted.

He supposed that, from time to time, being underestimated came in handy: that way, he could actually try and help his friends.

*

Ametrine breathed in for three seconds, paused, breathed out for six and then repeated the process, precise like clockwork, her eyes closed, following exactly what she had learnt during her training. Her heart did not stop hammering in her chest, and her thoughts did not stop spiralling, but she persevered nonetheless. It would have worked, sooner or later, and in that situation it was not like she had something better to do anyway. Granted, she could have talked to the thief, who had been deprived of her soul stone – or, well, soul pebbles, she guessed, in her case – and chained to the wall like her, but that was one of the last things Ametrine wanted to do. The forced proximity was already bad enough on its own, without adding conversation to it.

Sadly for her, Celsian always did what she wanted, which, coincidentally, happened to always be diametrically opposed to Ametrine’s wishes.

“Hey buddy, you’ve sighed dramatically for the seventeenth time in a row now, are you okay?” she asked, unbearably chipper.

Ametrine could not stand her: if she could, she would have put even more space between them; tragically, however, they had already used all that was available. “Of course I am not okay, idiot, we are in a dungeon cell awaiting for death at best and life imprisonment at worst.”

“Shouldn't it be the opposite?”

She very pointedly did not want to think about that more than what she already had, so she simply ignored her reply. “Also, I was not ‘sighing dramatically’, I was doing breathing exercises.”

“Yeah, because those two are totally different things in your case.”

She refused to deign that with an answer. If that depended on her, that would have been the end of the conversation, but the thief had never been very good at staying silent or getting a hint.

“You know, there’s nothing undignified in showing when you’re worried.”

Ametrine opened her eyes to turn her head and glare at her – they were not having a talk about their feelings if she could prevent it, thank you very much –, but stopped when she saw the soft and honest expression on the other’s face, feeling suddenly out of her depth. When had the thief started looking at her like that? Where were the eye-rolls and veiled insults?

“They even took your Diamond” Celsian continued, without even blinking at the cheesy name that Ametrine had given her sword when she was thirteen. “It’s normal to be worried, it would be stranger if you weren’t.”

Ametrine glanced away, her mouth becoming a thin line. She did not even remember being without her sword before: it must have obviously happened, when she was a newborn and her soul stone had to attune to her magical wavelength, before being nestled in the blade that would have become hers as per the Calchedonius family’s tradition, but her first memories already had Diamond in them, even though she only officially received her about a decade later, when she started the Academy. She was not used not to feel the weight of her sword at her side, comforting and familiar like only an object that held a part of her soul could be, and she was even less used to feel defenceless. She clenched her fists, knowing fully well that neither her actions nor her emotions would have changed anything in that situation. She would have explained all that to Celsian, perhaps, but she feared that if she voiced even a fraction of those thoughts she would have shown too much, so she stayed silent.

The thief, however, had never had problems with filling the quiet with whatever she pleased. She got closer – moving laterally on her four limbs like some overgrown crab, instead of sliding on the floor like any other normal human being, and making the chains attached to her wrists and ankles tingle in the process –, and sighed, sitting next to Ametrine with her legs crossed and leaning her head on the cold stone wall behind their backs. They were so close that their shoulders and arms were touching, which was less than ideal. “By the way, Ametrine, I wanted to thank you” she said, unprompted.

Ametrine raised an eyebrow, vaguely doubtful. “For what?” She did not remember doing something worth being grateful for.

“For being on my side when the knights stormed your great-great-something-aunt’s home.”

“Ah, I see.” Ametrine shook her head. “You do not have to thank me for something like that. We are allies, are we not?”

Celsian, without apparent reason, laughed, filling for a few precious seconds that upsetting place with warm light. When her bout of happiness tapered off, Ametrine found herself wishing it lasted longer. “Of course we are, but I’ll still thank you. You know that I’ve never listened to anything you said, anyway.”

Ametrine sighed – light-heartedly, for once –, indeed knowing that very well, and for some time it was quiet.

After a few moments, however, Celsian spoke again, sounding lost in thoughts. “Hey, Ametrine…”

Nothing good ever came from that. “What.”

“… I also wanted to tell you that, well, I’m sorry. For, you know, ruining your apprenticeship. Thrice.”

That was just about the last thing Ametrine was expecting that the thief would have said, so she immediately turned to her with a more than surprised frown on her face. “And what brought this up, pray tell?”

Celsian rolled her eyes, shrugging. “Maybe the fact that it’s just the two of us in a cold sad prison cell, awaiting judgement with nothing better to do” she said, accompanying her words with the air of amusement that seemed to envelop her at all times. When she turned her head in Ametrine’s direction and looked her in the eye, however, her expression seemed regretful. Ametrine very pointedly did not think about the fact that in that situation their faces were unbearably close. Her heart was hammering in her chest, but she rationalised it away as a consequence of being in the dungeons and everything. “Maybe it’s just the fact that I’ve been thinking about it for a while now.”

Ametrine sighed, glancing away, even though there was a part of her that was undeniably pleased. Most of all, she felt somehow lighter. “If you put it that way, then I am… sorry too, for withholding important information from you and Opal.”

For a few heartbeats there was a strained lull in the conversation, that was collectively spent thinking about the young Saviour, her well-being and her whereabouts, but then Celsian replied. “It’s fine. After all, you told us when it was really important. I’m sorrier about your family.”

Right, her family. She did not want to think about that, it made her way too furious, so she took a deep breath, acknowledging Celsian’s last sentence with a small sound, and focused on something else. “… In any case, I would say that now we are finally even.”

“We are.”

At that point, Celsian invaded her space even more and leant her head on her shoulder, somehow managing to ignore the discomfort of her armour. Ametrine, after freezing for a few shameful seconds due to that unexpected display of not-hostility, let her with a sigh and tried to relax. They had not forgiven each other with words, after all, so they might as well do that with actions. They had finally turned the page, after years of enmity, and were on the same one at last. It felt good.

*

Celsian sighed contentedly, feeling like a heavy weight had just been lifted from her shoulders. She let herself just enjoy the moment for some time, and then got to work again.

“Oh, Ametrine, also…” She slightly turned her head and blinked her eyes at her. “Could I make a proposal to you?”

The knight’s expression, or at least what she could see of her expression from her point of view, twitched. “… yes?”

She smiled, and, before Ametrine could react in any way, took her hand in hers, bringing it to her own chest. “How about we get out of here in a dramatical escape?” she asked, holding one of her soul pebbles between the fingers of her free hand and showing it to the knight. “Don’t you like the idea?”

And Ametrine, whose face was doing something very complicated and extremely funny after Celsian interlaced their fingers, finally smiled back, her eyes shining with interest. “I do.”