death is the only ending for the trash queen

Part 20

A silly first meeting that didn't mean anything.

It ought not have meant anything.

The woman so well known as a trashy lush drunkard wasn't quite what Alver had expected. Her incongruent behavior ignited his curiosity but it ought not to have anything more than that.

The more he searched for answers about her, the more his eyes drifted towards her. She was taciturn and cruel but there was a rhythm to her dance.

Or at least he'd thought there was. When it came to unraveling the mystery of Cale Henituse, it was rarely advisable to trust your own eyes. Sometimes she'd appear to be plotting something deviously entertaining but then it was just as likely that she was just acting on impulse.

Perhaps it was that mystery that first intrigued him.

He held his hand out to her for a dance, curious just how she would respond to the invitation. With a glare that was far too sharp for how drunk she ought to be, she spilled her own drink. Shamelessly staining her own dress beyond the point of rescue and smirking at the prince. "Your highness, it appears I have to leave early. What a shame that is."

It may have been his imagination but he could swear that he heard the hint of mischief and challenge to her voice. And then to make him question reality all over again, he watched her stumble drunkenly out of the ballroom.

Alver stared after her with a strange feeling growing inside of him. He was hardly able to focus for the rest of the event, his thoughts dancing back to the shamelessly arrogant woman. His instincts told him that there was more to her. That there was something beneath the surface that he wanted to see.

Yet all the evidence before his eyes was a reckless fool that doubtlessly caused no end to trouble. Alver smiled at a two-faced politician as he thought about the ball the following night.

Three nights of balls. In the first one, she flipped a table. In the second one she poured wine over herself to avoid dancing with him, just what would she do on the third day?

He found himself strangely excited to see what antics Cale Henituse could possibly be up to next. The real question was, how was he supposed to manage spending more than a moment with her without being exiled from her presence.

Cale taunted him with an acorn on a string and he was the foolish squirrel helpless hopping up and down for just a taste.

On the night of the third ball, he looked around expectantly to see where she might be after he saw Eric Wheelsman entering. She wasn't normally very far from her self-appointed chaperone.

Among the masks that announced the third night's masquerade, he found that any hint of her had been lost in the crowd.

A finger tapped his shoulder and caused him to look into the masked face of the woman he was searching for. She had an impish expression on her face and she wouldn't be recognizable. No, she shouldn't have been recognizable. Her hair had been dyed to be brown like her fathers, most of her face was concealed, and the only hint of her identity were those sharp brown eyes.

He recognized her immediately, an amused smile overtaking his face as he realized she'd recognized him as well. He had also decided to play a bit incognito at the ball, purely for the fun of listening into the current political direction of conversations without revealing his presence. It was a duplicitous act but he was a duplicitous person by nature.

He still found it interesting that a general who had known him since he was a toddler had shown no recognition of his existence but she'd found him so easily.