Anton couldn't help but stare blankly at Fareeha for a moment. That... had not been the reaction he was expecting. Nonetheless he quickly reassembled his composure and again flashed his winning smile. 

"I suppose that judgement may have been a bit hasty, I will give you that, Ms. Amari. But no, the truth of the matter is - as I have learned from many, many commercial interactions with a good number of the individuals here - people are predictable. And that is why I have found my way over here. If you will pardon the bluntness, you three are not a group I would have predicted becoming acquaintances."
===================
Liv cast around the ever-building throng of nobles, searching for Edwin, panic rising in her as she scoured the crowd and still came up unable to find him. The rational part of her mind told her to relax, he was probably just being fashionably late. She had sensed he must have a distaste for crowds and loud venues. To be quieter honest, she couldn't blame him. She didn't much care for it either.

As she cast around the crowd her gaze came to rest again on Mai and Niklas and Fareeha and... another individual, whose back was turned to her. She hesitated for a long moment - was it worth the breach of etiquette to go butt into their conversation?

She noted the tense lines of the stranger's body, Fareeha's confident smirk. Seemingly the stranger was not having a perfectly civil discussion after all. Maybe he would be glad for a rescue.

Liv wove her way through the groups of beautifully-dressed nobles, murmuring apologies as she went. As she approached her friends she put on a bright smile, sliding into the group between Mai and the newcomer, though she ignored him for now.

"Ave, friends. You all are beautiful this evening." She froze as she realized that she'd called Niklas, of all people, beautiful, but after only a small pause attempted to roll with her mistake, giving a small lopsided smile. "Even you, Prince Niklas. The lack of a fedora suits you quite well." 

With that she turned to the newcomer, an apology on her lips that died as soon as she properly glimpsed him. Instantly her body tensed, her hands at her sides clenching into fists. "Andronikos." Her voice was curt and sour, and she did not offer him the grace of a curtsy. 

"Ave, Liviana. I trust you are feeling well? You certainly look it." Anton's stance was easy, his voice light and smooth, a pleasant smile on his face - a perfect counterpart to Liv's clear belligerence.

The girl's mind was racing as she tried to parse Anton's English - he spoke fluently, with only the barest accent. Her words felt clumsy and thick by comparison, so she kept her sentences as clipped as possible. "I am. And what of you? I trust you are coping in your grief well? It is not too much of a burden for your duty to be fulfilled here?" Blue eyes sparked with satisfaction at Anton's brief flicker of alarm and discomfort.

Well, she'd certainly gotten more bite to her since the last time they'd spoken. Of course, that "last time they had spoken" had been two and a half years previously when she'd still been a sniveling little girl eternally in mourning grey, eternally silent and unwilling to interact with anyone. 

Well. There was one way to test that. He turned to her, stepping a bit closer than comfortable, and hissed, "you will be silent about matters that do not concern you!"

She stared up at him, still belligerent, for a moment, then turned away. Her eyes stung as she fought to hold back tears. Then she looked back at Anton, taking a step closer to him, and brought her right hand up quickly to slap against his face.

He gaped for a moment, his mouth open as his hand went to the faint red mark that was already forming. Liv, her face turning slightly pink, took a few steps back, finally offering a proper curtsy and a mumbled Latin apology.