I may not always know what's right, but I know I want you here tonight.

Something was off with Croe. Usually, she watched him with an expression which somehow combined catlike detachedness with doglike intensity; right now, she wouldn’t even look at him. Was she annoyed with him for teleporting them both away from her ‘friend’? Impossible. Sandro was objectively annoying. Also, Croe always made it known when she was annoyed with barbed comments, or by simply walking away.

Alvarez inclined his head politely at her and, accepting her words as a dismissal, exited the foyer a little stiffly via a door to the left. Mallos glanced at Croe, quirking an eyebrow slightly.

“That would be my other mansion.” He corrected with a slight gleam in his eye. “This one is reserved for work and fucking around with mistresses.”

He led the way up the staircase, unquenchable energy lending a bound to each step. The staircase opened out into a balcony-landing above the foyer area with polished wooden floors and pale amber walls. Mallos pushed open the third door on the left, taking them through an empty billiards room and out of another door on the far side. This one brought them to an interior corridor lined with abstract artwork. Natural light bulbs and pastel walls not only prevented the enclosed space from feeling too claustrophobic, it also enhanced the kaleidoscope of brush marks on the canvasses. They ascended another staircase on the far side of the corridor and went through yet another door, this time into a drawing room.

Unlike all of the previous rooms, the drawing room was occupied. Two women, both wearing tastefully simple dresses but bedecked in an array of fine jewellery, paused their gossiping to stare avidly at the newcomers. One, a woman of indeterminate age whose face barely moved, was wearign a moss-green gown which clashed horribly with the baby blue and silver theme the room was sporting. Her partner, an elegant blonde in her late twenties, had been reclining on the chez longe but sat up straight when Mallos and Croe entered. She started to say something – one of Mallos’ more long-winded epithets, from the sound of it – but fell silent again when he took Croe’s hand and led her past them, ignoring them both pointedly. The two noblewomen’s gazes swivelled from him to her and lingered for the few seconds it took to cross the room and exit via another door on the far side.

The door brought them out into another, shorter corridor, this one lined with windows on one side and doors on the other. Mallos moved two doors down and pushed the last one open, bring them, at last, into his office.

The simplicity and personality of the relatively small room was a departure from the cold, expressionless grandeur of the rest of the palace. Easily the most splendid feature of the room was the mahogany wooden desk, a close cousin of the one he’d had on Shaman, which curved in a gentle horseshoe shape before the window on the far side of the room. With the exception of an in-tray and an out-tray, both stacked neatly with papers, it was clear. A series of wooden filing cabinets lined the wall to the left, while two small sofas sandwiched a coffee table to the right. The warm, off-white walls were adorned with the most personable of artwork: mounted drawings of charcoal, pencil and the occasional watercolour, recognisable as Mallos’ by the distinct style. The majority of the drawings were of people and nearly all showed motion: flowing robes, twisting bodies, flying limbs. Aura, Arthur, Morgana and Tristan, among others, smiled down from numerous pictures. An unfinished pencil sketch on the coffee table portrayed the vague outline of a small child and a more solid adult woman who was clearly meant to depict Croe. Her face wasn’t filled in but it was obvious it was her from the body shape, clothes and pose. The attention to detail, even in the loose sketch, was marked. A semi-deconstructed clock acted as a paperweight on the corner of the paper.

Having released Croe’s hand, Mallos had gone straight to the filing cabinets and was rifling through one of them, brow slightly furrowed. The orderly nature of the filing system was apparent when he swiftly located what he was looking for and transferred the desired papers to the in-tray on his desk.

Mallos
I've learned enough to know I'm never letting go