Aisling Wilde (showmeonce) wrote in emillion, |
She’d managed to find the damn guest book, signed it with a flourish, and carefully made her way back to the dance hall without bothering to see who else had found it. None of her fucking business; she’d found it on her own, everyone else could do the damn same. Well, if Basil hadn’t found it, she could probably be persuaded to help him out, all in the nature of friendship and really good sex, of course.
That meant she had to find him first.
But the first person she noticed upon re-entering the hall was not her date, but one Altair Laurent. She’d recognize the hair anywhere. Didn’t even need to see his face. She hadn’t seen him since their run-in at Sapphire, but she knew that Cian had gotten a good sum off of him at the stakes. Best to play nice, she decided.
“Fancy seeing you here,” she said, appearing at his side.
Altair himself had made it a point to sign the guestbook as early as possible in the evening. He’d wanted to be one of the first names Reinholdt would see when he opened it (assuming the spymaster would even read it—there was always the possibility that he’d simply put it there to torture them all, and had no intention of doing anything with it at all). At this point, that had been hours ago. The ball appeared to be winding down. The couples who remained on the dance floor moved rather slowly, and most of the other party-goers lined the walls and occupied the chairs.
He turned when he heard a voice at his side, and was a bit surprised himself to see a familiar tiny blond woman. “I could say the same about you,” he remarked. He raised the glass of sparkling water he’d acquired after his last dance had ended and took a sip. “I enjoy balls quite a lot,” he said after lowering the glass from his lips, “and as a nobleman, I am a regular fixture at such things. If one of us is out of place here, I suspect that person is you.” Of course, he knew that Reinholdt had essentially dared every member of the Thieves Guild to attend, but that didn’t negate the fact that Altair hadn’t had to sneak in or hitch a ride on some dateless noble’s arm.
Now, that was just too fucking easy. “And whose balls have you been enjoying lately, Laurent?” She fluttered her eyelashes at him and ignored the jab about being out of place. Before she officially left the dance world, she’d been a normal sight at these things, the date that people wanted to bring to show off.
Before she’d cut off all of her hair and entangled herself more firmly in the organization. It was the right choice at the time, and she had little cause to feel bitter about it, but fuck if she didn’t miss dancing more seriously and more often.
She shrugged. “I’d say that roughly half the guests” and she used that term loosely “are out of place here.” One only had to look at the levels of dancing to see that.