ndras does not often tell the truth, or at least all of it. He is blunt, yes, and mean, certainly, but he is more prone to lie by omission than most people he's met. The fact that, now, he cannot, is distressing in several titanic ways.

Adonai addresses Andras by his name, not 'Warden,' like his people (or Pilate) would, and he is catapulted headfirst out of his stupor and into the hall full of well-dressed debutantes and desert princes with gauzy robes and thick, heavy jewelry that swings in time with the music, and their bodies, moving in turn. Andras, himself, is chewing the inside of his cheek until he feels it as a dull sting through the haze of his intoxication, still wishing he were anywhere else-- which is easier, now that he is not trying to think it while staring at a prince with thin, sloping shoulders and a cloak so soft it makes his teeth ache to think of it.

He is watching the people, trying to see them as an Ieshan might see them, or at least a particular Ieshan: the overly zealous desire to both stand out and fit in, the loud voices and louder laughter, the girl that looks his way, sees the sharp angle of his brow bent low over his eyes, then turns away...

Until, of course, he isn't. It is not long enough to find any real answers, except for the obvious: he does not want to be here.

I am so pleased to see you, Adonai finishes. Andras turns to look at him, a full-bodied angling as he gives the man a tight-lipped, closed-eyed smile. "Adonai! I'm glad you are." The eyes open, a muddled, drunk gray against the black rock of his face. 'I would not have come if you had not invited me,' Andras then says, which comes out of his mouth as: "I was going to make an appearance, anyway, but I'm so happy you thought of me."

Andras goes cold, shockingly cold, so cold he almost cannot stand it, and turns away. 
If he has ever actually hated Pilate, he thinks that it's now, after he's had the drink pushed his way, and downed it, and then been set loose on the estate.
"How are you?" Andras asks, weakly.

he words fall out of him; Andras has no choice but to watch them go. In some capacity, he feels his mouth form them, feels his throat push them out, but they do not seem like his words. To anyone else, perhaps they would have been easy to see: this is the self, opened like a palm full of petals, and each petal is another true thing crushed into the mill of the crowd.

–But Andras has never known himself, not really, and if he has he does not know what it looks like, except the sharp pulse in him when Adonai says Pilate’s name. (That, he would recognize if he were deaf and he felt the words through the floor. It is involuntary, and violent, and his mouth trembles with the effort of holding it in.)

‘I’m so happy you thought of me,’ Andras hears and feels himself say, and still feels more than he sees the brief flash of disbelief, the uncanny stillness with which Adonai meets his statement. Andras feels it, also, only twofold.

Ah, of course, Adonai says, leaning close in a motion that has Andras reeling with the quickness of it, the closeness that’s left in its wake. This close he can see the blue strings of Adonai’s eyes, the light cast off the spear of his horn. The warmth, tucked underneath the thick fur of his cloak and trying its best to escape, is an almost palpable sensation.

’My brother is rather cold with his affections.’ “I’ve noticed,” Andras smiles weakly. “I don’t think he means to be.”

“Well, he obviously means it, but– anyway.”

Andras frowns, as fondly as he can. Across what must be an ocean, against the grating sound of a violin from the side of the room, through waves of voices that seem to pulse in and out of being, Adonai is wondering about him – what his brother sees in the cut of Andras’ cheekbone, in the white of his lip against the white of his teeth that makes each smile look too wide to be entirely real. Andras often wonders, himself, when he can bear to.

So far he has not come up with any good answers.

You’ve seen him already, I gather? Adonai asks, then looks at him like he’s waiting, and the Warden looks back at him, dulled and thoughtful, with a smile that does not hold an ounce of mirth. He nods, and the moment passes, almost as if it had not happened at all.

–except that Andras is watching Adonai when he coughs, not very hard but enough that it shakes the fur of his cloak and unsettles the pair of white-gold wings laid over his back. Andras watches with purposely dulled concern, turning his head to look out at the crowd, louder now that he’s focused on them. The sway of them is dizzying.

Adonai asks if he’s hungry. Andras grimaces without looking back. He should eat something, to soak up the drink and end this nightmare even one second sooner than it will end itself, but he looks at the thick oaken doors he had walked away from, and the prince wrapped in his fur, and he feels something like fear, but not quite, worm its way down his throat and into his stomach.

“No,” Andras says, which, because Pilate stands at the bar, handing drinks to–whatever he is–that peel back the ramshackle walls he’s constructed, leaves him as, “Starving.”