Re: Rooftop.
She spotted him after all. The closer she came, and the more detail he made out on that lacy strip of nothing at her thigh, the more alarm was injected into his questions about what was going on. She was all confidence all of a sudden, and that was entirely out of place. Did Brielle have some missing twin he'd never met?
But she recognized him, or at least she seemed to. He held back, remained cautious, and didn't get up from the ledge he was sitting on. The color of the dress was as odd as the cut, bright blue as peacock feathers and just as ostentatious. He didn't exactly care about fashion, but there was no way one could fail to notice the distinction between this and her clothes from before. His eyes lingered on the exposed bruises for a moment, and he remembered what Ivy had said, about the man in the library, and his eyes shadowed briefly with guilt.
"No," he said, with a faint smile. "No woman, and I'm not hiding. I suppose I'm just something of a wallflower." Even if he'd come for pleasure, throwing himself into the center of the dance floor wasn't really his idea of a good time. If anything, he was more likely to be on a stage behind the dancers, although that seemed very much in the past, impossibly far away. "You look...better," he said, searching for an adjective that didn't hint too heavily how strange she seemed.