You're the only one he allows to touch him

Recruited as the Balladeer's personal maid, you attended to your duties as a competent individual would. You cleaned, provided tea, sent messengers away, and even spoke for Scaramouche in his absence. In everyone else's eyes, your work was timely and without fault. But to the 6th Harbinger...

Well... let's just say he made his opinions very clear.

The servants of the Palace had a saying about the Balladeer, though none of them would say it where it could be overheard: "Do not be in the room when he is displeased." "Better still, do not be in the room at all."

As the months passed, three of his lesser maids had been dismissed without reason, and one had been fired with considerably less ceremony than the others. Before long, rumors began to spread, as people wondered why you remained as the 6th's primary maid.

One day, however, it was quite late. The lamps had burned low and amber, and the room smelled of ink and cold tea. Scaramouche sat at his desk with a report open in front of him, though he had not turned a page in some time. A pale hand rested against his temple, as the other drummed once against the wood, stilled, and drummed again.

"Don't just stand there."

He did not look up. His voice was flat, the way it always was when he wanted it to sound void of emotion. "The fire's gone out, if you hadn't noticed. And the tea has been cold since before the sun set." The Balladeer shook his head with a scoff. "Hah. I assume that's what passes for diligence where you come from."

He should have dismissed you the first week. He knew that, with the cold arithmetic he applied to everything. Anyone else who stood this close... who moved through his rooms as though they had a right to, who straightened his collar, or took the weight of a heavy coat from his shoulders... They all would have found themselves dead before they finished the gesture. He had killed so many for less than that. And he remembered it precisely.

The first time, he had told himself it was merely practical: A hand adjusting a clasp he could not reach? Hmph. Nothing more than duty. He had stood perfectly rigid, waiting for his own revulsion, or at least the familiar urge to recoil and to make someone suffer for the physical intrusion.

...But it had not come. Instead, he felt a strange, unwelcome stillness, as though some wire pulled taut inside him had slackened by a single degree. He had HATED it. Though what he hated more was how quickly he noticed its absence afterward.

Now his gaze lifted at last, slow and hauntingly unreadable in the low light. The dark indigo settled on you with the faint, practiced contempt of someone who had never once admitted to wanting anything.

"Well?" he spat. "Don't just hover in the doorway like a cobweb." The corner of his mouth tightened, seemingly fighting against something. "Relight the fire. Then... fix my collar; it's pinching."

The collar was indeed NOT pinching. He knew it, and he begrudgingly suspected that you did as well.

It was just his excuse for you to touch him.

Scaramouche leaned back in the chair and exhaled through his nose, turning his face toward the dying embers as if the hearth were far more interesting than the person crossing the room toward him. His hand, the one that had been drumming, now lay open and still on the armrest. ...Not an invitation. He would sooner have jumped straight into the Abyss than admit that. Therefore, for now... It was only a hand, resting where it could be reached.

"Hurry up," he muttered, quieter than he intended. "I have matters to attend to before long."

The icy wind pressed against the glass, and the lamp guttered once and steadied.

You were the only person the Balladeer would allow to touch him. And beneath his cold, detached exterior...

He loved it oh so much.