The second person she found, or rather — the second person found her.
She was aware of the approach before she saw him. Thread-sight, she was learning, had a texture — the specific warmth of it when something was worth noticing, the way attention felt different from different kinds of sources. This one felt like —
Deliberate. Measured. The approach of someone who had decided to make this approach and was executing it with intention.
She turned.
He was — she processed him with the same flat attention she processed everything and then spent slightly longer on the processing than usual because there was more to process.
Dark. That was the first word. Not in coloring only — in quality. Dark hair that fell past his shoulders, straight, the kind of dark that absorbed light rather than reflecting it. Dark eyes — almost black in the candlelight, the color of something deep rather than simply brown. A face that was striking in the specific way of things that had been assembled with precision — sharp jaw, defined cheekbones, the whole arrangement suggesting someone who would be beautiful conventionally but had decided to be something more unsettling instead.
He was wearing black, which in a room full of evening colors was its own statement.
And he was smiling.
The smile was the thing. She registered it with the thread-sight and the thread-sight registered it back with an interesting warmth — not danger, not quite, but attention. The concentrated attention of something focused.
"Lady Elowen," he said. His voice was low. Pleasant.
She looked at him and said nothing.
He seemed to find this acceptable.
"You don't know me," he said. "That's fine. I know of you. Most people here know of you." A pause. The smile doing something that was not warmth and not coldness and was located in the interesting territory between. "May I?"
He gestured toward the space beside her. Asking permission to simply stand there, which was unusual in a room where people generally stood where they chose.
"You may," she said.
He moved to stand beside her and they both looked at the room for a moment in the companionable way of people who had both decided they were at this event in an observational capacity.
"You're counting them," he said.
"Am I?"
"The ones who are afraid of you." He said it conversationally. "Versus the ones who are curious. Versus the ones who are running some combination of both." A pause. "Different expressions. You've been taking note of them. I find that fascinating."
She looked at him. He's weird.
"Emric," he said. His name, offered without the family name — a specific choice, she noted. "You'll learn the rest eventually."
"You say that with confidence."
"I say most things with confidence." The smile again. "It's rarely warranted. It's almost always useful."
Was this one of the Count's lackeys sent to watch her? She thought it would only increase more when she went to the academy.
This was not the academy. But the quality of his attention, the calculation behind the pleasant voice — she filed it and set it beside what she already knew about him.
"Why are you talking to me?" Her tone serene.
He looked at her with something that was genuinely amused.
"Because you're the most interesting person in this room," he said. "And because I have a habit of introducing myself to interesting people before someone else does."
"Before someone else does," she repeated.
"Information about a person is more useful when you get it first." He said it without apology. The honesty of someone who had decided they didn't need to pretend they weren't doing what they were doing. "You know this. You've been doing it since you walked in."
She had.
She looked at him. At the dark eyes and the smile and the black coat in a room full of colors.
"What do you want?" she asked.
"Tonight?" He considered. "To dance. To have a conversation worth remembering. To see how you handle Lord Fenton when he tries again — he will try again, he does at every event, it's become a local entertainment." A pause. "And to tell you something that might be useful to you. Depending on whether you want it."
So the old man's name is Fenton. A baron perhaps?
She held his gaze.
"Tell me," she said.
"After dinner," he said. "When we dance."
He moved away from her side with the same deliberate ease with which he'd arrived.
She watched him go.
Emric, she thought. No family name. Black coat. Dark eyes. Smiles like something sharp.
Noted.
Dinner was a choreography she had read about and was now inside of.
The seating arrangement communicated everything it was intended to communicate — rank, alliance, aspiration, warning. She had been placed mid-table, not dishonored but not distinguished. The Draveth name carrying its weight without more than its weight. She sat between a woman of fifty who was the wife of a lesser baron and seemed genuinely pleasant, and a young man of perhaps twenty who had decided before she sat down that she was not worth his full attention and spent most of the meal proving this to himself.
She let him. Though it was fun to him squirm under her gaze like prey.
She ate and listened and watched the table and catalogued.
Lord Arvane at the head — fifty-three, the face of a man who had been described as politically cautious and had the expression to prove it. Pleasant, careful, no edges. His eyes moved over the table with the regularity of someone who was counting things.
Isadora Arvane beside him.
She had been watching Isadora since the entrance hall and was continuing to watch her and was building a picture with each observation. The girl managed the table — not the food, the dynamics. A quiet word to a footman here. A redirect of a conversation there. She did it with the invisible efficiency of someone who had been running this household for two years since her mother died and had stopped needing anyone to notice.
She was also watching Zolani.
Not constantly. Not obviously. In the way of someone who had identified something interesting and was checking on it periodically rather than staring.
We'll talk, Zolani thought, at her across the table. Eventually.
The food was — Lady Voss had been correct — excellent. She ate it with more genuine appreciation than she had managed for anything at the Count's table and filed this as information about the cook's quality rather than her own comfort.
She watched Lady Voss watch her food etiquette from across the table. She has been watching her since tonight. Always close but not too close for inconvenience. Like a shadow of some sorts. Zolani already imagined what kind of report the Count would receive from her. Hopefully she didn't hear the slip up from her when she told Pip her real name.
She pinched herself under the table. Couldn't afford to start mentally spiralling yet so she grounded herself, watching other nobles who were also studying her.
The dancing began at the ninth hour.