WHO: Lyra and Avery WHEN: Nighttime, 1st of January WHERE: Las Vegas WHAT: Putting some lucky powers to the test WARNINGS: TBD
Lyra wore the blue dress to hit the casinos, because the dazzling neon lights of the strip (the densest in the country!) and towering shining hotel casinos (so many!) and plush carpets (so thick!) and overbearing crystal chandeliers (so sparkly!) and gold lions (so golden!) were no place for jeans. Because she liked the way Avery looked at her while she was wearing it, too. Because even though the dress had been Dannielle trying to press her neatly into a box, Dannielle and all her intentions and all her poison were eighteen hundred miles away, so far away they might as well have been on another planet entirely.
She felt like she was on another planet, and was pretty sure Avery felt it too. It wasn’t just the warm air blowing in off the Mojave Desert, ignoring winter entirely. The rush of being here when they were supposed to be being miserable in Tennessee felt like bunking school. The contrast was dizzying and the feeling of getting away with something made her feel devious and wily and very sexy (though that, too, coulda been the way Avery looked at her.)
Also, staying in a hotel room that was supposed to be his brother’s, while his brother was back at home being all dumped and miserable was deeply satisfying. Neither of them were getting over that in a hurry. Or each other. Neither of them could get over each other, right now. New Years Eve in their hotel room last night had been bottles of cheap wine and watching and cheering the fireworks display from the window and making good use of the biggest bed Lyra'd ever used in her whole life. It'd been fucking magical.
All of these things added to the thrill that was shining back at her from every over-bright flashing light in the casino. The roof here was high and elaborately decorated without a single window to the outside world, every colour in sight was rich and deep and if it wasn’t glittering it was velvet, there were crowds and crowds of beautiful people with yearning, intoxicated, predatory, hungry looks in their eyes, and right at the back of her mind, a comparison suggested itself; no place she’d been since May felt more like a faery ballroom.
Everything was lining up so beautifully. The answer to Avery’s trapped-with-my-family problem and the answer to Lyra’s rent-is-going-up problem had been presented to her on a silver platter so echoes of ballroom or no echo of ballroom, saint’s blood was gonna guide her through this one, as well.
The nerves bubbling away in her stomach as she exchanged what money she had for casino chips wasn't loud enough to influence anything. This was gonna work, this was gonna be amazing. Shut up, nerves! Shut up, warning voice that sounded maybe a little like Rosario's, maybe a lot like Jocelyn's.
Lyra grinned at Avery, bright as the lights, and held out her hand for him to take, chips in her other. "Ready to be dazzled by my powers?"