The Lycat, Uptown
She was sorry her glass was empty.
Drezda called herself contradictory, and Niccolette smiled, faintly. She had watched without comment as the Hoxian drained a healthy mouthful of the wine she had praised; she wondered if the other woman had even tasted it. Contradictions and overlap, leading to complexity. Drezda finished her glass. Niccolette sighed, and brushed a strand of hair off of her face; her hand settled back down against her side, and her gaze lowered to the empty glasses on the table.
Niccolette did not look up as Drezda rose – she did not look up until Drezda addressed her, her tone sharp. Then, abruptly, Niccolette’s gaze jerked up, and snapped onto the Hoxian, suddenly bright and sharp. The feeling ran through her field; it was not the bright liveliness of a typical living conversationalist’s field, suddenly, but a sharper feeling, like a warning running through the air around her.
Do not, Niccolette thought, coolly, dare tell me what to do.
But the feeling faded, and the surge of anger too, and her field dampened faintly against her skin once more, politely contained for public consumption. Niccolette lowered her gaze deliberately to Drezda’s hand, and delicately set her own hand in the Hoxian’s, pale, slender fingers resting against the other’s skin. She felt it, the careful contact between them, in more than just her fingertips.
“I suppose,” Niccolette agreed. Her gaze skidded away, then, and she felt exhausted; beyond exhausted, drained, and empty. She wobbled as she rose; her legs were shaky and weak beneath her, and she held tight to Drezda with one hand, and pressed the other to the side of the booth. Her head was swimming, and the lights of the bar blurred dizzily around her; she could not focus on them.
Niccolette closed her eyes and breathed deep, trembling, standing there next to the booth. Her field flexed in the air around her – not to intimidate, as it had a moment before, but as if molding itself to her, as if offering her strength. Niccolette counted the seconds of her breath, the inhales and exhales, and Drezda was too close not to feel it, the way the mona responded to her breaths as if they were a spell. She swayed, her eyes closed, but did not fall, and never lost the rhythm of her breath.
After a few moments, Niccolette exhaled out the last of it, carefully. She opened her eyes, and mastered herself, carefully; she had her will still, she thought grimly through the haze, though it seemed little else remained to her these days. She turned her gaze to Drezda, and lifted her chin, more steadily than she’d done anything else since first trying to stand. “Shall we?” She asked, with only the slightest tremble in her voice. The tears in her eyelashes were gone, dried or blinked away; it would be hard to know which.
Niccolette knew she was fooling no one; not herself, and not Drezda. All the same, she took careful, deliberate steps, and her legs held beneath her as they walked through the bar, although somewhat grudgingly. There was an ache, somewhere deep inside her, which seemed to grow worse with each step. There was no placing it, quite; Niccolette knew it not for any injury, but for a sort of weakness in her muscles, a lingering gift from her duel with Ekain. She bore through it; she could do little else. She was conscious of eyes on her in the dimly lit bar, eyes other than Drezda’s; she did not look to meet them.
It was Hamis, and the evening air outside was cold. Niccolette shuddered; it seemed to cut straight through the red dress, straight through the cloak she had borrowed from Francoise. Her teeth were chattering, and she clenched her jaw to still them, swaying slightly. She could ask Drezda to take her – Niccolette wondered if the dinner party was still going on. She wondered what would happen if she walked back in – like this – she couldn’t bear it.
“I should not like to go back to where I am staying,” Niccolette said, quietly, directly. She looked at Drezda, and she was conscious again of a burning heat behind her eyes; she was conscious, too, of the memory of the other woman’s touch, not just against her hand, but somewhere else, somewhere she was not sure she could name. She swallowed, hard, and stiffened her back as best as she could, and let the other woman decide.