[color=lightgray][center][img]https://i.imgur.com/YGxzxVR.png[/img]
[img]https://i.imgur.com/wA3P0IB.gif[/img][/center]
[color=D0B4EC]Time:[/color] Evening 
[color=D0B4EC]Location:[/color] Ballroom
[color=D0B4EC]Attire:[/color] [url=https://i.imgur.com/XgrtOQU.png]Outfit[/url] 
[color=D0B4EC]Interaction:[/color] [@Oso][color=lightsteelblue]Cassius[/color]  [@Remram] Nolan
 
[hr]
[sub][color=lightsteelblue]“My Lottie.”[/color][/sub]

Had he really called her that?

For a moment, Charlotte could not quite convince herself to believe her own ears, but then Nolan’s voice reached her.

[color=#B3EBC0]"[i]My Lottie[/i], huh? You've been busy."[/color]

Lottie looked at Nolan with dilated pupils, still digesting her own shock as heat rushed into her cheeks as his next question landed. [color=D0B4EC]"Well, we met-"[/color]

She began, though the explanation immediately tangled itself. Her mind circled back to the first night she had stood upon Cassius’s porch, exhausted, and in absolutely no mood to be told anything by a man who seemed determined to say every foul thing he could with the most infuriatingly handsome face she had ever seen. At the time, his words had nearly driven her to rage. It had not helped that the evening before that moment had already been terrible enough to leave her bare.

Yet now, if she were being honest with herself, some irrational part of her would have given quite a lot to hear him say those things again.

Perhaps not the exact things. Perhaps simply anything, if he said it in that velvety voice.

Charlotte glanced toward Cassius, her smile sheepish, and found herself quite suddenly tempted to defend herself where her mind had gone, even if there was no way he could possibly know.

The truth was Cassius had changed since then. A great deal, as one tended to do in such a chaotic few weeks.

And perhaps she had changed, too.

She opened her mouth, ready to regale Nolan with the tale, when a voice rang out across the ballroom.

[h1][color=#7D7FDB]“HEY! YOU!"[/color][/h1]

Charlotte blinked and glanced over just in time to see Princess Marina stomping across the ballroom with her hands on her hips and all the righteous fury of a raccoon in a tiara.

Toward—... Hafiz!?

[color=D0B4EC]"Oh no,"[/color] Charlotte said, already half-rising from her chair. [color=D0B4EC]"She certainly should not do that."[/color]

 [/color]