The Fog // [Wolf Tears]

Aranica deliberately avoids drinking; it makes her too maudlin, too open, to be safe. It figures that the one time she desperately wants to is also the first event she's ever been to in this Ripred-forsaken city with no fucking refreshment tables.

That's low on the list of things she hates right now. It's a long one: Whoever required her attendance (along with the familiar faces she's managed to trade waves with around the reporters and socialites). Everyone who built this monstrosity. Whoever called it a museum, as if it preserves anything, when no one will ever know Dru or Anani at thirty-nine—or Zanita at twenty-two or, hell, Gabriel and Cassia with a few more days—and that's these people's fault. Herself, a little, for half-longing to hold her siblings' hands again when it would only twist the knife. Wearing shoes. Not being allowed to open her pretty little gem-studded umbrella in anyone's face.

She ignores the presentation as much as possible, in favor of scanning the crowd. She means to see whether Mace is here—or Lethe, shit, they better not have sprung this on Lethe out of the blue—but she lands on Colgate first, tucked in a corner looking even more miserable than she feels. Slowly, smiling warmly at strangers she passes, she scoots toward him, making a proper break for it once Atlas falls and the floor opens back up.

She lifts a hand to touch his shoulder as she reaches him, thinks better of surprising him, and lowers it. "Colgate," she murmurs instead, then pauses, trying to figure out how to make this an offer instead of a demand. She settles on, "They're less likely to talk to us if we look busy talking to each other."