Pure Magic ✨

Gentle no-pressure tags (for visibility and for in case you'd like to also take part 💖):

Bonus me picking eye colors for my OCs

The great doors open with no particular violence. They do not need it. Some arrivals command attention by noise, others by spectacle; the Dekarios family manages it by consequence alone. A footman announces them, and the name travels faster than his voice, passing from fan to fan, mouth to mouth, eye to eye, until every conversation in the ballroom seems to bend toward the entrance as grass bends before weather.

“Lady Morena Dekarios.”

A woman enters first, or near enough to first that the room receives her as such. Morena Dekarios is not young, though neither age nor society has yet succeeded in persuading her to diminish herself for the comfort of others. She wears deep blue silk and pearls of such quiet quality that they shame every louder ornament within twenty paces. Her dark hair is arranged with Waterdhavian precision; her expression, though warm by nature, is presently occupied with the civil endurance required of any woman forced to be admired by strangers.

Beside and behind her come relations. Cousins, perhaps. A widowed aunt with a neck like a swan and eyes like a magistrate. A young gentleman with Dekarios colouring and the cheerful vacancy of a man who has never once been asked to survive on charm alone, though he clearly believes himself overburdened with it. Two ladies of some distant branch whose smiles hold the exhausted brightness of persons determined to be pleased at great personal cost. A silver-haired uncle, or cousin, or some other hereditary arrangement, who bows to the host as if permitting the honour rather than receiving it.

Then comes Mr. Dekarios. The room, already attentive, sharpens. Deia is still looking at her wine when it happens, and yet she feels the alteration as plainly as if a hand has passed over the flame of every candle. The air grows more deliberate. Young women arrange their shoulders. Mothers cease pretending not to watch. Fathers, less subtle and less practised in the art, assess him with varying degrees of calculation. Even the musicians seem, for one brief and unforgivable moment, to remember that their instruments are mortal. Lune makes a sound. It is very small. It is also unmistakably the sound of a person attempting to swallow an entire exclamation and failing to kill it before it escapes. Deia turns her eyes upon her.

“Do compose yourself.”

“I am composed,” Lune whispers, with the pallor of a woman who is not.

“You sound like a kettle in distress.”

“Look at him.”

“I am occupied.”

“With what?”

“Not looking at him.”

Lune presses her lips together so tightly she may bruise them. It does not prevent her from leaning, by some tragic accident of anatomy, slightly to the side in order to improve her view. Deia does not immediately follow. It is not reluctance, precisely. Reluctance would imply interest resisted. What she feels instead is the tired caution of a woman who has seen many beautiful doors and learned that most of them lock from the outside. A handsome man, a wealthy family, a room full of expectation; none of these things is rare enough to demand her reverence.

Still, curiosity is an undignified creature. Eventually, she looks. Gale Dekarios stands near his mother beneath the magnificent foolishness of the chandeliers, bowing to their host with an ease so practised it ought to appear false. It does not. That is the first irritation. His courtesy has polish, certainly, but not that brittle gloss so many gentlemen wear when they wish to seem generous while offering nothing. There is warmth in the inclination of his head, wit already threatening the corner of his mouth, and a weariness kept so neatly behind his eyes that most of the room will mistake it for refinement.

He is handsome. That, Deia admits, is unfortunate but not damning. Many men are handsome in the same way knives are polished: brightly, and to no moral purpose. Mr. Dekarios possesses a darker elegance than the portraits of him whispered over by tavern girls and merchant daughters had suggested. His hair curls with irritating softness about his temples. His beard is trimmed with taste enough to imply vanity and restraint in equal portion. His coat is of deep indigo, cut exquisitely, embroidered not with gaudy thread but with subtle silver constellations that catch the light only when he moves. No gold. The detail is small enough to be absurd. Deia notices it all the same.

“Well?” Lune breathes.

“Well what?”

“Do not be cruel. You have eyes.”

“I possess them under protest.”

“Deia.”

“He is pleasant enough to look upon.”

Lune nearly chokes.

“Pleasant enough?”

“Do lower your voice. I should hate for him to suffer from excessive encouragement at such an early stage of the evening.”

The host is speaking to him now, gesturing broadly, presenting one dignitary after another like costly dishes at an overlong feast. Mr. Dekarios responds with civility. He smiles when required. Bows when necessary. Allows a priest of Mystra to clasp his hand a fraction too long and does not withdraw it with the impatience Deia would have considered reasonable.

His mother watches him. That, too, Deia notices. Not as the room watches him, with appetite and ambition, but with a kind of guarded tenderness that sits behind Morena Dekarios’s eyes like a candle cupped against wind. It is quick, almost hidden, yet unmistakable. Concern, perhaps. Pride. Fear. Mothers, Deia has found, are often complicated creatures when they have not been reduced to memory or absence. Then Mr. Dekarios laughs at something the host says. It is a fine laugh. Low. Brief. Polite enough for public use. It does not reach very far. Deia turns back to her wine.

“Do you suppose,” Lune whispers, “that he heard you?”

“He was at the door.”

“You were being rather unkind.”

“I was being accurate. There is a distinction.”

“Aye, and does accuracy often get invited to dance?”

“Only by persons with poor instincts.”

Lune opens her mouth to answer. A shadow, softened by candlelight and accompanied by the faint scent of expensive soap, old paper, and some subtle arcane trace like air after lightning, falls near them. Lune shuts her mouth so quickly her teeth click. Deia does not startle. She is proud of that, though pride is a vulgarity best enjoyed privately. She turns.

Mr. Dekarios stands before them, no longer at the entrance, no longer safely absorbed by the admiration of the room. Up close, he is worse. There is life in his expression now, curiosity brightening what courtly patience has dulled. The fatigue remains, but it has shifted aside, as if something in the evening has finally done him the courtesy of becoming unexpected. His gaze rests on Deia, and only then, politely, on Lune. He bows. Not as deeply as he might to a duchess. Not as shallowly as one might to a woman of uncertain place. The distinction is so exact that Deia cannot decide whether to resent or admire it.

“Forgive the intrusion,” he says. His voice is warm, cultivated, and exceedingly dangerous to a woman fond of intelligent sentences. “I fear I arrive under accusation.”

Lune makes another sound, this one very close to a dying squeak. Deia’s heel presses lightly against her shoe. Lune coughs. Deia inclines her head, and as she does, something in her changes. Not fear. Never fear. Arrangement. The dry ease of the tavern girl slips beneath the surface like a knife returned to its sheath. Her spine lengthens. Her chin softens by a fraction. Her shoulders settle into a grace that looks less practised than chosen. When she lowers herself into a curtsy, it is not perfect in the way of girls trained since childhood before mirrors and impatient governesses, but it is precise enough to make imperfection seem like a private preference.

“Mr. Dekarios,” she says.

His eyes sharpen, almost imperceptibly. There it is, then. He hears it too: the refinement. Not borrowed in haste, not crudely imitated, but shaped and wielded with care. Her voice has none of the uncertain softness expected from a girl lingering unchaperoned at the edge of a noble assembly. Nor has it the eager polish of a daughter raised to be admired. It is something stranger. Elegant, yes, but not obedient. A blade with a ribbon tied around the hilt. He finds himself, quite without permission, fascinated.

“I had thought,” he says, “to learn whether I possess any merit before the evening is entirely lost.”

Deia’s expression does not move. Lune’s does, but only because she has the survival discipline of a ribbon in high wind.

“Then I fear you have placed yourself at a disadvantage, sir,” Deia replies. “Merit is very difficult to demonstrate beneath chandeliers.”

“A grievous inconvenience. I had been led to believe chandeliers were the preferred instrument of social revelation.”

“Only by those with nothing beneath them worth revealing.”

A pause. Gale laughs. Not the polished laugh from before. Not the one given to hosts, priests, or ambitious relations. This one escapes him before he can dress it for company, and for that reason, several people nearby immediately pretend not to have heard it while listening with the whole of their souls. Morena Dekarios, from across the room, turns her head. Deia sees it. Gale does not. Or, if he does, he has already decided to endure the consequence.

“An excellent correction,” he says. “I shall endeavour not to confuse illumination with insight in future.”

“A rare ambition among gentlemen.”

“Rarer still, perhaps, when one is surrounded by mirrors.”

Her mouth threatens treason at one corner. It is so slight that any sensible man would miss it. Gale is not feeling sensible. His attention, though fixed upon her face, does not fail to gather what the room has already begun to misread. The gown, dark blue and plainly reworked. The silver pins in her hair, modest but chosen with an eye keener than wealth. The absence of gold where every other lady seems determined to glitter as if status may be purchased by ounce-weight. The horns, yes, though they are not what most interest him. There are tieflings here tonight, rare but not unthinkable. Baldur’s Gate has always possessed enough hypocrisy to tolerate difference when it arrives with sufficient fortune. No, what takes hold of him is not her strangeness alone. It is the fact that she appears less arranged than every other woman in the room and somehow more deliberate than all of them.

Other ladies have been polished until their own selves seem at risk of vanishing beneath powder, pearl, and maternal strategy. They stand in pale silks, beautiful and shining and hopelessly weaponised by families who love them, perhaps, but love advantage also. They look toward him with smiles rehearsed in mirrors. Some do not even see him, not truly. They see his name, his fortune, his talents, the old Waterdhavian weight of the Dekarios line, the rumoured brilliance, the rumoured disgrace, the rumoured vacancy beside him that might yet be filled. This woman looks at him as though she is prepared to find him wanting and would consider that outcome neither tragedy nor surprise. It is, absurdly, a relief.

“And you, sir?” she asks.

He realises he has been silent a breath too long.

“A dangerous opening,” he says. “I am not often invited to provide evidence against myself so early in an acquaintance.”

“Then your acquaintances are kinder than mine.”

“Or less honest.”

“Kindness and honesty are not sworn enemies, Mr. Dekarios. They merely move in different circles.”

“Do they? Then perhaps tonight might serve as an introduction.”

Her eyes narrow a little, bright as moonlit steel. Lune, behind her glass, appears ready to perish from delight. Gale glances toward her with mercy.

“And I fear I have neglected your companion.”

Lune straightens so abruptly the wine in her glass quivers.

“Me? No. That is, not neglected. I am quite well neglected, sir. I mean, not neglected at all. I mean…”

She stops, horrified. Deia closes her eyes for the briefest moment. Gale’s expression warms.

“A condition most elegantly clarified.”

Lune gives a helpless little laugh.

“I’ve never been accused of elegance, Mr. Dekarios.”

“Then permit me the honour of being first.”

Lune’s blush is immediate and catastrophic. Deia looks at him with fresh suspicion.

“You distribute honours very freely for a man under examination.”

“Only where deserved.”

“Flattery will not improve your case.”

“Then I shall abandon flattery.”

“How prudent.”

“And try sincerity.”

“How reckless.”

That laugh threatens him again. He contains it this time, though barely, and inclines his head as if acknowledging a worthy opponent across a duelling ground.

“Very well,” he says. “Sincerely, then. I overheard enough of your remarks to understand that you hold assemblies in low esteem, gentlemen in conditional suspicion, and myself in a category not yet dignified by evidence.”

“An admirably concise summary.”

“I am relieved to have passed at least one test.”

“I did not say passed.”

“No. But you did not say failed.”

“An omission for which I may yet repent.”

“I should hate to hurry you toward regret.”

“Most men do not possess such restraint.”

“And yet you have not fully concluded whether I possess merit.”

Deia’s gaze moves over him, slower now, though not quite indulgent. It is not the appraising glance he has received from countless women and their mothers tonight. There is no flutter in it, no coy retreat. She looks as she seems to do everything: with unsettling attention, as though he is neither prize nor threat, but a text written in a language she has not yet decided is worth learning.

“I must confess,” she says, “I am most particular in the distribution of my time and attentions. Do you believe yourself worthy of such standards, Mr. Dekarios?”

There is, behind Gale’s ribs, a peculiar and inconvenient stirring. Amusement. Interest. The sudden sensation of stepping out of a room too close with perfume and into cold rain.

“I should hesitate to make so bold a claim without the benefit of demonstration,” he says. “Though I am not opposed to submitting myself to fair trial.”

“Fair trial? In High Hall? You are ambitious.”

“I have been accused of worse.”

“By whom?”

“Those who wished to appear innocent of the same vice.”

At that, Deia’s mouth does move. Only barely. Only enough. Gale sees it as clearly as if she has set a candle in a window. He gestures, not broadly, but toward the floor where couples are already arranging themselves for the next dance.

“Might the court permit evidence in motion?”

Lune’s inhale is audible. Deia does not look at her. A mercy, perhaps. Or a threat postponed. Instead she follows his gesture to the dance floor, then returns her regard to him with one brow faintly lifted.

“Do you dance, Mr. Dekarios?”

“I do dance,” he answers. “Adequately, I am told, though my former instructors despaired of ever instilling true grace.”

“A tragic deficiency in a gentleman.”

“One I have laboured under with all possible dignity.”

Her eyes lower briefly to his offered hand. Around them, the room pretends not to notice, and in doing so becomes one enormous ear. Deia feels it. So does Gale. Lune certainly does, for she now looks one breath away from dissolving into either laughter or prayer.

“There are many ladies present,” Deia says, “whose evening would be greatly improved by such an invitation.”

“Undoubtedly.”

“And many mothers whose satisfaction would be improved still further.”

“An inducement of tremendous force.”

“Yet here you stand.”

“Here I stand.”

“Why?”

Gale looks at her then, truly looks, and for one suspended moment all the practiced phrases available to him feel too ornamental for the use required. He might say that curiosity has drawn him. He might say that her conversation recommends her. He might say any number of acceptable things which would please the room precisely because they mean very little.

“Because you appear to be the only person in this room not waiting for me to become useful to them,” he says instead, softly enough that only she and Lune may hear.

The words alter something. Not visibly enough for gossip. Enough for Deia. Her expression remains composed, but her attention stills around him. It is a small thing, that stillness. A door not opening, but perhaps ceasing to close. Then she tilts her head, and the danger returns.

“Careful, Mr. Dekarios. If you continue in that manner, I may be forced to suspect you of sense.”

“I shall endeavour to bear the accusation bravely.”

She considers him for another heartbeat. Then she places her hand in his. It is gloved. Proper. Nothing at all. Gale feels it through every cultivated layer of himself as if it is neither gloved nor proper in the least.

“Very well,” she says. “I fancy we might afford these vainglorious nobles some fresh matter for their discourse.”

His fingers close around hers with exact, gentlemanly restraint.

“A charitable impulse.”

“Do not mistake me, sir,” her eyes gleam. “I am seldom charitable without amusement.”

Gale smiles. For the first time that evening, it reaches his eyes.

“Then let us not disappoint them.”