Isaiah's smile wore sore on his face before even half the guests had arrived. The ballroom filled up like a rookery, a mass of rustling skirts and chattering voices that echoed off the high ceiling but fell muffled between the plant-bedecked walls. Navigating the crowd took nearly every sense in Isaiah's possession. In the hours before the clock struck four, he had paced the ballroom in anxious, almost frantic patterns, committing its layout to memory. This at least remained easy without Pekea. Much worse was this rising tide of people: people who could bump shoulders or accost him for conversation with or without his guide dragon. Pekea could help reorient him if he got lost in the crowd. She could ease the mental load of tracking where things were at all times. But unless she started hissing at people, she could not help with the most challenging part of the night, and either way, she wasn't here.

Posting himself at the doorway offered a compromise. Isaiah's smile became difficult to maintain after the hundredth greeting, but it kept him in place, let him identify familiar and unfamiliar voices, spared him an hour or so of dancing, and positioned him perfectly to catch Niccola if or when she came. He was thankful he had pushed his parents to cast their net so broad with invitations. Perhaps it was foolish to expect that Niccola would turn up, much less seek him out, but at least the option was there.

He had many things to ask her if they had another conversation. And something about her intrigued him. He couldn't pin down what.

Yet by the time attendance in the hall passed two hundred, Niccola had not shown up. Isaiah's excuse of staying at the door wore thin, then wore through. He moved to the dance floor before his mother could evict him, took up the hand of the first woman he fell into conversation with, and so the night began.

The enormity of his task soon began to sink in. Isaiah navigated the crowd alert to the conversation choice, method of approach, and intonation patterns of each woman who approached him, or who he approached. The crowd began to sort itself into categories. There were those too shy for him to find—he bumped into them on occasion—and those who approached but devolved into nervous titters when he returned their greetings; those so outrageously flirtatious, he could scarcely stomach their presences; and those who were clearly out to marry into royalty. There were girls too young to be more than teenagers, women twice his age, and every category in between. Isaiah found himself designing patterns of response for each, not to mention escape plans for letting each down as softly as possible when he moved on.

He felt no spark with any of them. Some were easier to talk to than others, and at least a few promising candidates passed across his dance card by the chime of the second hour. But as the response patterns became routine, then entrenched, doubt began to creep in. With it came the fear he had sought to outrun for moons now. That for all the women he could meet tonight, one he would truly want to rule beside may not be here at all.

Focusing on this, though, only snarled his dance steps and dimmed his concentration. Isaiah shoved those thoughts into a back closet of his mind again. This was his ball. His chance, his choice, and the last moment of true power he had in this decision. There was no point in worrying until he had met every woman in the hall.

His memory of Niccola still clung to the back of his consciousness. Perhaps it was the arm's length at which she had held their conversation in the market, he thought dryly, as one particularly determined noblewoman at least a decade his senior cornered him with conversation somehow both loaded and inane. Niccola, contrary to almost everyone he'd met tonight, had not shown a trace of hesitation in stating her opinions or countering his own. That alone was rare enough. "The curse of a pretty face and a royal disposition," his mother had called it, saying she saw the same at his age.

Or perhaps he was reading too far into their exchange. He had not, after all, given her any indication of his true identity, and suspected she hadn't known. As the noblewoman blathered on, Isaiah wondered with a sinking feeling whether learning the truth had scared Niccola off coming. Verde would no doubt have outed him, as the two seemed to know each other. His presence was well-known in the marketplace.

He set about trying to extract himself. He had only one night for this, and his time was wasted here. Yet the noblewoman proved resistant to his efforts to excuse himself. Isaiah had nearly despaired when an all-too-familiar voice spoke up beside him. "Your highness, there you are. Is it too late to redeem your dance offer, or do you have a moment to spare yet tonight?"

A grin threatened to break onto Isaiah's face as the noblewoman stopped short, taken aback by the brazen incursion. "Niccola, was it?" he said, seizing his opportunity and the lie she'd used to initiate it. "My dance offers stand indefinitely. I had almost given up hope of seeing you here tonight."

"If I could put words to how difficult it was to secure a carriage this evening, it might explain my tardiness. Shall we?"

She offered her arm, and Isaiah gladly took it. Niccola drew him clear of the noblewoman. When they were safely away, she dropped her voice. "Pardon my intrusion. You looked in want of assistance."

"You have no idea how welcome your intrusion was. If it's not too late to extend a real dance offer, I would like to do so. Do you have a moment?"

"All the time in the world for the next two hours."

She steered them towards the dance floor. Isaiah knew from experience that it would be the emptiest part of the hall, and that breathing room could not come soon enough. The tension in his shoulders bled away as they stepped into the sound-calmed space. Niccola's hands fell into position. Isaiah matched her as she picked the dance. A tranquil melody wafted over them both from the musicians in the corner. The floor was not empty, but the pairs of women swirling around them were too absorbed in their own flirtations to pay the prince and his thirtieth partner of the night much mind.

"You're without your little companion today," said Niccola as soon as the dance got underway. She could keep conversation and activity moving in tandem, a balance Isaiah had noticed was lacking in many of his dance partners tonight. Only the highborn and any common folk particularly inclined towards dancing seemed to develop the skill.

With a moment's hesitation, Isaiah decided to answer honestly. "Yes, she got herself banned from all marriage-related festivities. She has not taken well to past suitors of mine."

"Oh?" Niccola's suppressed grin was audible.

"As it turns out, most nobles do not take well to a discriminating dragon relieving herself in the suitcases of their progeny. Believe me when I say she is well-behaved normally, but Talakova help those about whom she gets jealous or otherwise forms an unfavorable opinion. She also steals shoes."

Niccola's laughter broke through her formal mask, drawing a pause in a nearby conversation. Isaiah lifted his hand for a twirl that she took with tangible delight. They moved together to a clearer part of the dance floor.

"She sounds like a true friend," said Niccola. "Unless you take poorly to her discrimination, in which case, you have my condolences."

"Actually, it's been quite relieving." Truth on this was a risk, but the relief of being able to speak freely—let alone on this matter—was too great to leave Isaiah with many regrets. "Some of them were very poor company."

"If your parents pursue a formal courting process, I can only imagine. I have been fortunate to deal with little more than the usual pursuits of aspiring suitors in the streets."

Isaiah twirled her again. The song wound down and changed, and both of them paused for a moment before selecting the next dance with an unspoken agreement. Niccola's steps were different on this one than Isaiah was familiar with. He quietly matched them. "Did you have a temperamental Sanddragon to assist you?"

"I would have spoiled her rotten if I had. The would-be suitors made great target practice." She paused just long enough to twirl him in return, then finished, "With snowballs, of course. Though I'm told I was not opposed to getting my hands dirty in roadside puddles as a child if it netted me a handful of mud with sufficient structural integrity to do the task."

Isaiah could no longer hide his own grin. Niccola spoke the way she danced: smoothly and confidently, backed by a mind Isaiah could already tell was as incisive as her wit. He had little doubt she was enjoying herself. Already, her Calisian accent had softened at the edges, letting a different intonation slip through. It confirmed what Isaiah had suspected the first time they met.

"Should I be concerned?" he said. His parents would call it cheeky, but if they were listening in, they would find issue with much greater things.

"I suppose that will depend on your intention to woo me in the street. If that is not your intention, I would save my ammunition. I also admit to being quite fond of my shoes."

"Is the street a necessary prerequisite for retaliation?"

"I have been wooed in dance halls before, with better results."

A coy reply. Isaiah's senses returned to the hall at large. The tone of the ambient murmuring there had shifted since he and Niccola began their dance.

"You have the crowd's attention," he said, shifting their topic of conversation. Niccola's surprise was tangible through her hands. It was followed by her true reaction—an incremental tensing—before she caught herself and relaxed again.

"I am stealing their dances, I am sure," she said. The affected ease in her voice heralded a return of her Calisian accent.

"I've also no doubt you look beautiful tonight."

He'd caught her off guard again. She didn't reply this time, perhaps by choice, though from the sudden stumble of her footsteps, perhaps more likely from self-consciousness. She was not so immune to flirtation after all.

Isaiah dropped his voice to a murmur. "Or perhaps it is that they do not recognize your dancing, realm-neighbor?"

Niccola's steps snapped to a halt. Isaiah caught her hand before she could pull away.

"Keep dancing," he said quietly, "or you'll rouse their suspicions. It is not my intention to expose you."

He picked up where they had left off. Niccola followed. This time, Isaiah led her in a Calisian dance, the steps of which she quickly mirrored.

"Yet your intention is surely not to woo me in a dance hall, either," she said. Her suddenly guarded demeanor was writ large in her voice and hands even as her steps remained casual.

"Perhaps, perhaps not. But even if not, that makes two of us then, does it not?"

Niccola's arm twitched. She did not reply.

"I have a proposition," said Isaiah. "I suspect we both have questions for one another, otherwise we would not be here. I will answer yours if you will mine."

"You have my interest."

"Then you have mine. To start with, why are you here?"