It was the smell that hit him first. Sickly sweet, like lilies left to rot in a room with no windows. The Vernhardt estate didn't just host a party; it staged them like theatrical sieges, drowning every guest in a forced laughter. Elric hated it. He hated the way the silk of his doublet felt like a layer of shed skin, tight and irritating across his shoulders. He hated the way the wine tasted like ash, no matter how expensive the vintage.
But mostly, he hated Rion and Zachren.
If it hadn't been for that ridiculous, half-drunken wager back at the barracks, a stupid argument about the effective range of a longbow in a crosswind that Rion had almost certainly rigged, Elric wouldn't have been there. He should have been in the North. He should have been anywhere but this gilded cage, surrounded by women who smelled of expensive jasmine and looked at him as if he were a particularly large piece of prize meat.
