closed.

[exequy]

WHO: Caspar, Kostos, Lakshmi, Lexie, Marisol, Nell, Nikos, Petrana
WHAT: Coming into a Merchant Prince's house, on the day his daughter is to be married, and asking him and all his friends to quit with their stupid neutrality. Plus Truth or Dare.
WHEN: Mid-Harvestmere
WHERE: Antiva City
NOTES: Will update with CWs if needed.

Comments

me too

[exequy]

Kostos is looking aside, when the offer comes, at a candelabra several yards away that has a spot of extra brightness in its halo, unnoticeable to anyone who doesn’t know to look for it. Wisps can dim nearly to nothing if they’re asked nicely. And then they can wait, and they can listen. Kostos is not expecting to learn anything more useful than what a nearby pair of Antivan men think of the food (well cooked, but perhaps too daring, with exotic dishes that would have been better highlighted and complemented by a background of familiar staples, and far too much banana for this season—) but it gives him something to do and think about besides stand in a corner and feel out of place.

He’s been to Antiva in recent years, but only to kill people, or to stop people being killed. Nothing social. Before that, when he last visited he was eight or nine, and they stayed for a while, his mother was determined that her children would know her language and her home and not belong solely to Nevarra. It might have stuck, for him, if she’d had more time before everything went to shit. But as it is he feels like a foreigner who shouldn’t be a foreigner, an extra dollop of resentful misery on top of the usual mountain of it he would bring along to any extravagant party.

Being confronted with an uncle he last looked up at from approximately waist height doesn’t help, cake or no cake—but as soon as his head has snapped around to the source of the voice and he’s had a moment to recover, he takes a plate, reflexively.

“If you stand further from the food,” he says, sounding blessedly less awkward than he feels, falling back on his default quiet impassivity, “it will probably be waylaid before it reaches you.”

[champions]

A rumble of laughter, and sets a hand on Kostos' shoulder. "True enough. It's very good to see you."

He glances about to see if Constanze is lurking anywhere to swoop down to condemn his cake holding, and satisfied that his wife is not around, relaxes a little. "But you are hiding away from us. Do you prefer to observe, or are you trying to avoid awkward chitchat?"

Amancio isn't foolish, or oblivious. His daughter was in the Circle, and he has heard of the terrible things that have befallen mages. It could change any person. What happened to Keto would change a person as well; Amancio could think of little that would be more painful, than to have had an unintentional part in the death of a dear family member. His nephew seems— different than how he remembers him, in more than age.

[exequy]

However quiet and emotionally standoffish he might be, which is very, Kostos doesn't play to type by being shy about physical contact. Amancio's hand lands on his shoulder, and he doesn't tense or shift away from it. If anything it leaves him feeling more solid, more aware, and Amancio seeming more like his uncle, whose legs he once ducked behind to avoid talking to strange adults—a softer shyness than he exhibits now, though there were early signs of his sharp edges in the way he warred with Nikos and tried to rule over the girls once the strangers had left—instead of an enormous cake-dispensing ghost. But the only outward sign of any of it is a slightly more confident angle to Kostos' chin when he says, "Both," and begins making further arrangements for the plates of cake.

With the tiny fork accompanying the piece he's already taken, he scrapes another of the slices in Amancio's hands onto his plate, then takes the other plate to stack beneath it, leaving his uncle with a more reasonably single slice and himself with something that passes for one particularly enormous chunk of cake—overall, a slightly more dignified scene. He'll make Nell eat some, if he ever finds her again.

"We are here to represent the Inquisition," he goes on, still quiet in a way that forces people to pay attention to hear him at all, "and the last time I spoke to a nobleman without supervision, he wanted to have a duel."