as a man who will be king, i must find a way

Making sure that those who can spare the attention to listen to her are not a toe out of line, Sanaki casts a quiet Fire, as precisely as she can manage. With a sizzle and a burst of light, the five onlookers and the refreshments table are enclosed in a ring of ash.

"This is the neutral zone," she declares. All proper conflicts should have one, after all. "Step out if you wish to involve yourself directly. And I hope the combatants understand that if they violate the zone's sanctity, retrubution will be brutal," her eyes glow gold for a moment, "and swift."

'Understood' is conveyed through compliance.

Most of these faces he recognizes. There is familiarity when he looks at both Rowan and Innes, an itch in the back of his skull that only deepens with Sanaki's commentary. First punch, and Bruno pulls his lips into a thin line, but he tries to soften it at the murmurs from the beverage table.

In the end? It only took a glance at Innes’ snotty face and condescending tone for all that worry and low morale to evaporate into thin air. All those eyes watching them like it was some spar session at the training grounds didn’t matter, whatever sliver of embarrassment he might have felt at some point no longer mattered either.

The young king grit his teeth. “Nobles like you are pathetic because you do nothing but dress up like a doll and talk like you’re better than everyone!" Reaching the limit of his patience- or rather feeling like whatever threads of logic that had been holding him back had crumbled to dust, Rowan advanced towards Innes with the strongest right hook he could muster- straight to the archer’s jaw.

“If you don’t want your clothes dirty then go sit in a shelf and gather dust! You're just decoration!”

Innes holds his jaw for a few moments, stung. He works the muscles until the pain begins to fade. He can collect himself. He can patch up his ego and scrape his dignity off the floor. He can laugh and say look, look at how low the boy stoops.

He can do that.

Or he can grab Rowan by his shoulders and slam him against a wall.

He can't pull Rowan away from this, in the end he will have to make his own choice and Darios can't so easily interfere. As he stands and quietly guides Lianna to the beverage table, he hopes she understands his reasonings as to why.

"As the empress says," he speaks with a heavy tone for the other onlookers to hear. "We just happen to be here."

If someone else stepped in, he'd scruff them. There's no telling how much worse the issue would become if left to fester.

Innes could ignore all other voices; the chatter of the court is normal for a man like Innes. Ewan, however, has a certain voice that Innes cannot ignore. He looks over, only to find Ewan, Darios, Sanaki, Bruno, and that boy's sister. None of it is important.

"Only pigs and the despondent resort to fistfighting," Innes says, "and I am neither. Go on, lay your hands on me, and prove me right. You are more angered by me than I could ever be by you."

Would he react differently if eyes weren't on him? No, he very much doubts it.

Innes is not here to play games. He's here to - well, why is he here? To put on a good show, he supposes, for himself and for Frelia. It's not going terribly, all things considered.

His ability to keep himself kind and charming and normal is only taken aback a little when he sees there's some sort of game going on. It's not quite dark, but it's clearly tucked away from where any faculty can glance over and see.

Innes folds his arms in contemplation. Then, he sees L'Arachel - thank the gods, someone who might see sense.

She glances over to what caught his attention and sees a bunch of party-goers... well, she is not quite sure what they are doing; whether some weird dance practice, or a game she does not understand.

The one thing she DOES understand is that Innes is being a spoilsport.

Though, as she looks on, she cannot help but agree with him on this one; imagine if she were fully occupied with dancing, mind only thinking of moving her body in the most graceful of ways, only to trip over one of these people!

"Mayhaps instead of the faculty we can direct them somewhere else?" She offers a compromise. "If this is already being done rebeliously, our attempts to crush this rebellion may open us up to retalliation." She shakes her head.

He gestures to the twisted forms in the dark. Bodies are entangled together in a way a dance could not. Leave room for Seiros, unless they can get away with it in a darkened corner.

"Look at them. The way they are..." He shudders. "It's inappropriate. If we move them to another area, do you know what they could get up to?" Innes gestures, but he's not even sure what his gesture is supposed to be.

"Illegitimate heirs are a growing problem, L'Arachel. As royals, you and I cannot encourage this. We must put a stop to this, before worse can come of it."

Once more, an unfamiliar dance with an unfamiliar face. Once more, a social pleasantry simply for the sake of being pleasant. The princess glances over her companion's shoulder to observe other pairs--what the leader is doing, how the follower is moving. The steps are new, and yet familiar somehow. She is on the beach, celebrating the return of warriors from their journey across the sea. Ocher eyes begin to close as she relives a memory of salt spray filling her lungs. Her feet move intrinsically, following the measure of the music. She--!

Petra's eyes jolt open as she feels a shoulder connect with her chest, forcing their air out. She blinks, and her visions of rolling hills, of bluffs, of open sky as far as the eye can see shatter. The burn of raw skin brushing up against her heels anchors her back in the ballroom, standing across from a noble gentleman whose name she hasn't caught. Her shoulders tighten.

He decides he should let his mind wander, too. It's not like it's any particular bother if someone has little interest in him; his only interest is forging political relationships. After all, he's never been good at making and keeping friends.

A brief thought flashes through his mind; thoughts of home. He yanks it aside.

She was coming over because she had spotten Darios after Rowan had walked away from her. Lianna's frustration at her brother hadn't faded yet, and was apparently to grow more. Her brother was being petty, that was what she was hearing. Still, she could only sigh in defeat at this point, Rowan had stopped listening to her the moment he got it into his head that Innes had told her.

Completely disregarding that maybe she had SEEN what he did.

"I am so sorry my brother is causing a scene..." she sighed. "I swear he knows better."

There are voices coming from the hallway around the staff room. Specifically, the spare one — inconvenient enough such that most faculty inherently avoid it in their day-to-day. But given the sudden disappearance of all the padlocks, Bruno is already pulling a face: it must be attendees, most likely students, who are trying to find their way in—

He turns the corner, and it is not. He blinks as his frown dissipates, the question in his eyes obscured as his gaze finds Darios first, Sanaki second, and an unfamiliar face third.

"Greetings." A little clipped and awkward. It sounds like more of a question than it is a statement.

He isn't surprised when he ends up in a room with that boy again. He would cross his arms, but the dampness on his chest is already too disgusting. Instead, his arms are at his side, hands balled into fists.

Only problem was that anyone he knew and could see was already accounted for at the moment. Thankfully that problem wouldn’t last for long as, much to his surprise, someone else approached him first. “..with me?” He pointed towards himself, blinking a few times. “If you don’t mind then.. I’d be glad to, thank you!”

"I am happy to teach you." Innes frowned. "Your stance is all wrong, however. Stand a little straighter - if you have no pride, fake it. How can you be taken seriously if you shrink in on yourself?"

He made himself available to everyone; commoners and nobles alike. It didn't matter in an event like this, not when most were dressed to the nines. He moved from person to person, offering each a turn. Some names he knew, a surprising amount of names he did not.

He would have to change that - starting with the boy in front of him.

If Innes had to guess, he'd say the boy was about fifteen years old. Regardless, Innes extended a hand out to him. "Would you care for a dance?"

It couldn't be so bad. If the boy couldn't dance, Innes could teach him - so long as his toes remained unbroken for the rest of the night.

[ OSTIA ] - An Ostian court dance where the leading partner wields a ceremonial sword as a part of the routine. This dance, meant to resemble a knight with his lady, is getting some attention from the students of Fódlan. It was strange for Sue of all people to want to ask someone else for a dance, but something about this dance was intriguing to her. The swords. While other dances mimicked a duel, they certainly didn’t have weapons— though in this case, they were merely meant to be used to impress. Nevertheless, she still wanted to dance to this one in particular. Now as for a partner… she has an idea of who to ask. Sue had seen a certain green haired man dancing to many different songs with many different partners all night, and he seemed pretty well versed in the art. Though Sue herself wasn’t too skilled at dancing, she was decently confident with a sword. He seemed to be quite the man of the hour though, she could see people start pushing their way towards him already! Sue shrugged, “The worst he can do is say no.” Grabbing one of the swords from a staff member, she quickly made her way over to the man who was about to be asked to dance by about 7 different people, “Please, dance with me. If you are not confident with the sword, I shall wield it instead,”

This was Innes’ happy place. It felt like being home, back in the courts, playing the delicate political games that came with it. For many, this would be their only chance to experience a taste of this life. For Innes, this was his life.

A girl approached him, ceremonial sword in hand. For a moment, he didn’t know what she would be asking for, until she clarified. She wanted to dance with him.

Innes took a moment to look her up and down. He didn’t know who she was, and her clothing gave little of her origins away. She was one of the few dressed for winter, and Innes did have to admire that, at least.

“I am confident in the sword, in lance work and in archery. I can assure you, dancing is but an extension of my talents.” He took the blade carefully - ceremonious or not, it was still a weapon.

Innes offered his arm to her. “Come, let us dance. I am Innes, prince of Frelia. And may I ask for your name?”

Was she new? Gods, he hoped she wasn’t a classmate he had overlooked; that would certainly be embarrassing.