[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/fp2QHJH.png[/img]
[color=#4C93C2]Location:[/color] Grand Ballroom
[color=#4C93C2]Time:[/color] Evening
[color=#4C93C2]Interactions:[/color] Olivia [@potter], Charlotte [@princess]
[color=#4C93C2]Mentions:[/color] Kazumin [@samreaper], Alexander Deacon [@FunnyGuy]
[color=#4C93C2]Outfit:[/color] [url=https://i.imgur.com/Mr1xTEl.png]Bro Be Looking SO DAMN GOOD oh maw gawd[/url][/center]

[hr]

[color=silver][color=#8FBC8B]”Just call me Liv, I don’t give a shit what title you give me.”[/color]

Cassius’s mouth quirked with appreciation for her bluntness.

[color=lightsteelblue]“Liv it is then.”[/color] he replied, voice low with amusement. [color=lightsteelblue]“And feel free to simply call me Cas. No lord, no Damien… Just Cas.”[/color]

Then she started eating, like [i]really[/i] eating. Not the delicate little pecking that noblewomen did at events like this because they were scared to mess up their ridiculously over-caked makeup or get a little on their gowns. No, she was doing it right. Liv ate like a person who unfortunately knew what it was like to go without food at all, let alone the fancy little delicacies these peacocks left half-eaten on gilded plates. She appreciated every taste, every bite. That much was clear. And as a spectator, Cas fucking loved it too. 

A laugh slipped out of him. Quiet at first, then warmer when she turned away with her cheeks full like a chipmunk. It was amazing. 

[color=#8FBC8B]”I'm sorry.. This food is really fucking good.”[/color]

[color=lightsteelblue]“Do not apologize.”[/color] Cassius said casually with the faintest glimmer of genuine ease. [color=lightsteelblue]“That may be the most honest thing that gets said in this entire ballroom tonight. Besides…”[/color] His eyes flicked briefly to the flock of nearby nobles pretending not to stare. [color=lightsteelblue]“If anyone here judges you for enjoying food, I’ll take their plate as punishment and give it to you instead.”[/color] He offered a friendly wink to accompany his words.  

Cas appreciated Liv’s presence. Especially there in that moment where her candor, and her lack of giving a fuck genuinely helped him feel more at ease. She had not come to him with a polished smile or some trite compliment or bullshit manipulative tactic like half of the people in the room would have. Instead, she simply came up, cursed, stuffed her face, and asked him how he was doing like she actually gave a damn about the answer.

[color=#8FBC8B]”What about you - how are you? This is a lot for you isn't it?”[/color]

Cassius looked down at the glass in his hand. For a moment, he considered lying, but before he could even answer, the herald’s voice cut across the ballroom.

Lady Charlotte Vikena.

[sub]And as his eyes found her… the world changed forever.[/sub]

Cassius had always believed that romance novels existed as fairytales to push the naïve notion that love existed in some perfect way that could sweep someone off their feet and fix every single thing about the lives of the protagonists in the stories. It was escapism and that was all. Not unlike the ways he had always escaped from the world with the booze, the women, the men… and every other bit of beauty and pleasure he could find along the way. He knew escapism well, but his way had always been [i]real[/i] whereas the books and stories that pushed such silly notions such as true love’s kiss had always been nothing more than fantasy for the innocent and the lonely. It was not real life, well… not until the moment [b]she[/b] walked into the room. 

The gold of the ballroom dulled, the painted stars on the ceiling above blurred, and the bodies between them, the gossip, the perfume, the bullshit beneath all that finery. It all fell away until there was only the woman stepping through the doors.

Charlotte.

Gods…Charlotte.

For one foolish second, Cassius forgot how to breathe.

He had seen her beautiful before, every single time his eyes had met her form she had been stunning. He had thought her beautiful in ribbons and plainer dresses, beautiful with grass beneath her and sunlight in her hair, beautiful soaked through and shaking by firelight, beautiful even when frightened, angry, exhausted, or trying desperately to hold herself together when everything around her seemed as though it were breaking piece by piece.

Her beauty had never needed adornment. It had lived in the melancholy of her eyes, in the careful way she held herself, in her kindness, the intelligence behind every witty little comment, and in the strange, lonely gravity that seemed to draw him to her no matter how many times he tried to step away.

[b]But this was different.[/b] 

Tonight, Charlotte Vikena did not enter like a girl hoping not to be noticed. She entered like the greatest secret the world had ever tried to keep. Cassius had seen the fire in her that very first night they met, but she might as well have been ablaze there at the front of the ballroom stealing the breaths and attention of all in attendance that evening. The mild mannered, sweet girl that deserved better than everyone in that room was there, center focus, and for a moment she owned them all. 

Dark blue shimmered over her like midnight given shape, the gown catching the light in tiny flashes that made her seem less dressed in stars than made from them. Her hair fell in loose black waves down her back, elegant and deliberate, no ribbon binding her into softness. The deep wine of her lips made her face look sharper, more mature, almost…[i]dangerous[/i]. The slit of her gown revealed the movement of her leg with each step, and Cassius hated every man in the room who noticed while knowing he was one of them.

But no… He was not like them. He was something else entirely. 

They looked because they saw beauty and wanted a taste of it. They stared because they were shocked to see THIS Charlotte Vikena in front of them when they were used to another version of her. 

Cassius looked like a man who had no other choice. He stared as though the goddess of his very salvation had just walked into the room…or perhaps the one who brought with her his doom. 

Because there she was, in all of her fire and glory. Something in her had awakened, and it was magnificent.

But he also knew it was wrong. Something was wrong, and that was the part that tightened around his ribs.

There was power in the way she moved, yes. A devastating sort of power. Enough to make the air shift around her. Enough to make people turn with parted lips and startled eyes. Enough to make even his father look shocked across the room.

Cassius saw that.

He saw all the beauty at her disposal, the command she possessed in this moment. But he also saw the dark, glittering certainty of every step and the shadow beneath it all. He saw the girl from the lake clutching a wrapped book that she had been willing to die for. He heard her voice again, soft and dreadful by the fire.

[i] [color=#D0B4EC]I presume I’m on borrowed time anyway.[/color][/i]

He saw the way she had leaned into his hand with tears threatening to break her apart. The way she had confessed to feeling helpless since seeing her mother’s body on the grass. The way she had spoken of witch hunters, the Black Rose, Alexander Deacon, and the terrible arithmetic of a girl who had somehow decided her life was the cheapest thing she could spend.

And now she walked through the ballroom like a woman who had made peace with becoming important…

The sight should have thrilled him.

And it did… Gods help him, it did.

It thrilled him so deeply that his chest ached with it. Pride sparked through him, bright and fierce, because some part of him wanted every person in that room to see what he saw. To see that Charlotte Vikena was not some poor, fragile thing to be pitied or judged in print and whispered over in corners. She was not a rumor, nor a scandal. She was not some tragic little line in a gossip sheet passed between the cruel hands of narcissists.

She was brilliant, and formidable, and she was so beautiful it hurt to look at her. And yet the hurt remained as he refused to look anywhere else. Not just because of how he felt about about this woman, but because Cassius could not tell whether he was watching Charlotte bloom or burn.

His fingers tightened around his glass.

[color=lightsteelblue]“Oh fuck…”[/color] he breathed under his breath, too quietly for anyone but perhaps Liv to hear.

The words weren’t even meant to be spoken out loud, but he was a man ruined by what he saw. He was a man that, little did he know, would never live for himself again a day in his life. 

Then Charlotte looked at him, and whatever remained of his composure abandoned him completely.

He knew that look. Or rather, he knew pieces of it. He knew the softness she tried to hide when they were alone. He knew the spark of amusement when she thought she had won some small witty battle of banter between them. He knew the guarded tenderness that frightened them both. But this was all of it made public, aimed at him without shame, without hesitation, without the careful little walls she so often placed between herself and the world.

She started toward him and Cassius straightened without meaning to. A man who had faced assassins, monsters, mercenaries, and the worst moral destruction of his own life suddenly had no idea what to do with his hands. He set his glass down so that he wouldn’t drop it. Then, he picked it back up because he was afraid he might need it.

[color=lightsteelblue]“Gods.”[/color] he muttered, and for once there was no charm in it. No performance. Just a man quietly losing a battle he had not truly known he was fighting.

She closed the space like it belonged to her, and honestly…perhaps it did. [i]Perhaps he did too.[/i]

[color=#D0B4EC]“Hi, [color=lightsteelblue]Cassius[/color].”[/color]

There were a thousand things he could have said. Something clever, witty, flirtatious enough to make her blush. That was what he did, wasn’t it? Cassius Vael, Cassius Damien, whatever name the room wished to give him. He always had something to say. Always in control. Always on top or at least pretending to be. But around her, even in that first moment of their meeting, that all began to crumble. Tonight, it was the foundation of it all that gave way. 

His mouth parted slightly, but whatever words had meant to form there seemed to die in quiet astonishment. She was close enough that he could see the details of her makeup, the dark blue of her eyes, the faint movement of her breath. Close enough that he could remember the taste of her mouth with cruel clarity. Close enough that every sensible thought in him scattered.

And then she reached up and her fingers brushed the corner of his lips.

Cassius went still. Utterly, painfully, absolutely still.

Because naturally, the woman who had just entered the ballroom looking like a moonlit omen had crossed the room to wipe a crumb from his mouth as if she had every right to touch him in front of gods, nobles, fathers, enemies, and anyone else who cared to witness his ruin.

His face warmed…and his cheeks turned red like some green boy receiving his first smile from a pretty girl at market. The horror of that realization almost saved him. Almost, but not quite, as he was barely human in that moment but at the same time more alive than he had ever been. 

[color=lightsteelblue]“Hi.”[/color] he finally managed.

One…Pathetic…Word.

He heard himself say it and immediately wanted to drown himself in the punch bowl. Cassius cleared his throat, the tips of his ears faintly red despite every effort of his body to pretend otherwise. His gaze flicked down to her hand, then back to her face, and the smile that formed on his mouth was helpless in a way he could not quite disguise.

[color=lightsteelblue]“You…”[/color]

He stopped. His eyes moved over her again, not with the earlier hunger of a man who had forgotten his manners, but with reverence. With worry, and something tender enough to frighten him.

[color=lightsteelblue]“You look…”[/color]

Beautiful was too small. It was not good enough. Ethereal sounded like something some perfumed poet would say, but even that word wasn’t worthy of her.

Cassius swallowed.

[color=lightsteelblue]“You look…Perfect, Lottie."[/color] he said at last, voice quieter than usual, rougher too.

Then Charlotte turned to Liv, touching her cheek with such easy tenderness that Cassius’s chest gave another uncomfortable pull. The affection between them was gentle, but there was something about Charlotte’s openness that made him wary.

Not because he disliked it, but because he liked it too damn much.

He wanted her to feel powerful, wanted her to feel adored, to feel like the world could stare and she did not have to shrink like he had seen her do before. But he knew what had been happening beneath the surface.

He knew the book existed.

He knew some voice had called to her across the lake, and there was something in the way she stood tonight, something bright and dark and intoxicating, that made the memory of her shivering by the fire feel less like a past danger and more like a warning.

He wondered if Liv saw it too.

[color=#D0B4EC]“You look so beautiful, Liv.”[/color] Charlotte complimented her friend. 

[color=#8FBC8B]”Oh! Um, me? Wow. Thank you.”[/color] The girl responded, almost as caught off guard as Cassius himself. 

Cassius’s gaze flicked toward Liv, and despite everything, a softness touched his mouth. There was a sweetness in the way she stumbled over the compliment, a vulnerability he doubted she meant to reveal.

[color=#8FBC8B]”You look beautiful too.”[/color] She responded. Soon though, Olivia spoke up with a question. [color=#8FBC8B]”Are you okay?”[/color]

There it was…The question Cassius had been too spellstruck to properly ask.

The question that had been pulsing beneath his ribs since the moment Charlotte entered. Liv glanced toward him, searching for an answer and Cassius did not have one. So, Cassius looked back at Charlotte instead. The softness in his expression lingered, but beneath it was the concern he could not fully hide. His voice, when he spoke, was low enough for only the three of them.

[color=lightsteelblue]“Really, Lottie…Are you alr...”[/color]

And then, another loud introduction stopped his words in their tracks.

[color=limegreen]Mr Kazoo…the Skip Meister![/color]

Cassius blinked as his gaze slowly shifted back towards the front of the room just in time to see Kazumin Nagasa descend into the ballroom with sunflowers in his hat and absolutely no concern for dignity, nobility, reputation, or any other bullshit most in this room coveted above all else. For a heartbeat, Cassius simply stared.

It was…a lot… especially moments after Charlotte had just changed his life forever in a way that he still hadn’t been able to process. But EVERYTHING about what Kazumin was doing was, in its own way, fucking perfect. Hilariously, ridiculously, wholesomely perfect. The whole display was a fever dream, one which Cassius could not help but enjoy. He smiled, genuinely smiled, as he watched the man dance, rejoice, and make a mockery of the formality of the entire evening in a way that he could not help but respect. There would come a time when Cassius would get the chance to talk to Kazu about all of it, but for the moment, his attention could only be won by the girl next to him. His eyes returned to Charlotte, and the humor softened back into the same concern he had before. Because not even Kazumin Nagasa, in all his bizarre and perfect glory, could hold Cassius’s gaze for long. Not tonight. Not when Charlotte was right there. 

The room had many stars.

And Cassius had found his.

[color=lightsteelblue]“Is everything alright, love?”[/color] He asked as his eyes studied hers for the same answers that Olivia had been searching for. 
[/color]