beauty can bite
The death of pleasure. She laughs at that. “They might have a good point.” With the right attitude, and the right participants, diplomacy could be fun... But mostly, it was dull as eating rocks. “Though I like to think I make it fun…” She trails off with a grin as another waiter passes by with a tray full of drinks. She takes one with a gracious smile. This was a decent party.
She doesn’t care that he looks disappointed. If anything, it amuses her. Did he think her some freewheeling trollop, setting ablaze the rife opportunities that Novus presented to her? No, she was smarter than that. She planned, and strategized, and analyzed the outcome of every move that was taken.
Each of them takes a sip of their drink. It's strong. Her eyes narrow as she sees him looking, but she lets him. Why not? He was, at least marginally, more interesting than everyone else she had met tonight. (Apolonia’s absence was noted with sour disappointment.) Her attention is drawn once again to the scar on his lip. She watches it when he says "Do something reckless with me tonight, Anandi."
The kelpie grins. “Fine.” She knew what she wanted. Dancing was boring. (More importantly, she was not particularly good at it.) She brushes past Torix with a simmering look, and she leads them through the crowd and toward the room of statues. “I want to destroy something, Torix,” she leans in close to confide in him with a giggle, then a hiccup, then another sip of the drink shakily grasped. Their shoulders brush, because she is not walking straight. She feels like a fuse lit by the heft of his gaze. It is a feeling she wants to trap, bottle, and savor for a long, long time.
The crowd thickens and she steps forward to lead him, single file, cutting through the room like a shark on the scent of blood. “Where's that scar from?” She asks over her shoulder, because she’s still thinking of the cleverness of the death of pleasure. "The one on your lip." Obviously. The drink is held closer to her chest as she politely (sometimes not-so-politely) nudges strangers out of their way. They’re almost to the hall of statues now, and to her surprise she finds she's excited by the thought of a little chaos.
@
some say the loving and the devouring are all the same thing
☾
