In the weeks leading up to the ambassador's visit, Kit's challenge remains unanswered.

The wood has been reduced to ashes and the knocker's melted down, leaving no trace of the portal. But there have been no new doors to replace it, nor has there been any chimera coming to knock at the citadel doors to complain of property damage.

Instead, they find themselves burdened with preparing for the Antamery ambassador's visit. Her entourage will total roughly two dozen once all the advisors, secretaries, attendants, and guards are accounted for. She'll stop at the citadel for only two nights of rest before continuing east to the capital city.

When it comes to laying the foundations for this brief visit, it's Viveka who takes the helm. Besides Tai, she has the most experience with hosting-related duties given her family's status in Beledon. And if it's between her and Tai to take charge of making someone feel welcome, she knows she won't be able to comfortably leave it to someone with his manners.

Their instructions from the city council regarding the visit are brief:

Try to endear themselves to the ambassador and her entourage during their short stay. Make their gifts seem impressive and compelling, not intimidating. Slip in suggestions of the burden of the specters without seeming desperate. And most importantly, idolize Aedus Kade.

Viveka is well-aware that her stint as a host to the delegation is inconsequential in the long run: the ambassador has come to meet Aedus Kade; any little stops like Sunset Citadel won't tip the scales to any one side's favor. But she can't keep from striving to do the best job she's capable of anyway.

Viveka doesn't want to worry about the potential complications that could arise from a foreign delegation spending nights at the citadel (Would the chimera even let them stay? Would they be under an illusion? Too many risky questions), so she arranges for their lodgings to be prepared in the garrison town instead. To avoid appearing rude, she makes sure to extend an invitation to come to the citadel for an evening banquet, as a gesture of welcome on the night of the ambassador's arrival. Hopefully the night's darkness will mask the citadel's appearance enough not to raise any questions.

Before the banquet, Viveka agonizes over how to divide the citadel's residents into those who will mainly stay in the kitchens to prepare and serve food, and who will mingle among the delegation. For the latter group, she compiles a list:

1. Me - Because I organized this.

2. Tai - Accustomed to helping host banquets at his family home. Don't let him talk for too long though.

3. Nakoma - From Antamery. She'll be like a little piece of home to them.

4. Hilo - Lectures at the university, so he knows how to ingratiate himself to others.

5. Zahara - If we want them to like us, we'll do better if she's there.

6. Dalmar- Same as above. And since he's a physician, he's used to being personable.

7. Marikit - Makes us look competent. Also, she was a jeweler, so she knows how to talk to wealthy, important clients.

8. Skander- ?

The last one is more of an instinct; Viveka honestly thinks he'd do well if she can manage to pull him out of the kitchens. He has an elegant look, and he thinks before speaking. Even those few qualifications put him above most.

She begins to regret that decision once the banquet is fully underway.

They had spent the morning tidying the citadel's seldom-used formal dining room. The three long tables of dark wood have been polished to glistening perfection under the candles' glow. Colorful woven tapestries hang between the windows. They provide a small dose of whimsy to the room with their depiction of forest animals dancing in a glade.

They had unearthed the stateliest cutlery they could find, now in eager use by the ambassador and her attendants as they begin the first course Rian lays in front of them: a dish of spiced apples, expertly sweetened with cinnamon, cloves, and honey.

All the chairs are full of eager eaters, save for one.

Skander had ducked away shortly before the ambassador arrived. His excuse had been that he needed to make sure everything would be all right in the kitchens without him, but he hasn't been back since.

From where she sits on the ambassador's right-hand side, Viveka tries to gauge whether any of the guests have noticed the empty place at the table. The only other pair of eyes picking apart the absence seem to be Tai's, which Viveka is surprised to note. Meeting his look with her own, she tilts her head to convey her confusion.

Tai makes as if to stand, and Viveka gratefully interprets the gesture to mean that Tai will seek out Skander to settle his delay.

Tai doesn't take long to find him: he's not in the kitchen, but up the stairs in the western wing, pacing before the entrance to his room. His anxiousness is palpable in the fraught air and in the harsh sounds of his feet falling too-heavily on the floor as they track back and forth, back and forth.

"Why are you wasting time?" Tai asks. "Viveka's worried about you."

Skander turns to him. A faint glimmer can be seen along the edge of his left ear.

It's a silver cuff, fashioned in the twining shape of a vine. Tai can see it from several paces away. It matches the delicate embroidery along the edges of Skander's otherwise-dark blue clothes. Tai also notices that the laces on the sleeves of his elaborate jacket haven't been done up right, but that's secondary. Who gave him that cuff? Viveka has an extensive collection of jewelry and rich fabrics. Had she lent him this thing?

Skander's stopped pacing, but he still doesn't make any move toward the stairs that will take him down to the dining hall. "I'm a little nervous," he says.

Tai bites down his instinctual response of What's there to be nervous about? and tries some sort of gentler approach. "Should I get Lionel?" The silver on Skander's ear still gleams distractingly.

"Get Lionel? No. No need." He shakes his hands by his sides a bit. He looks down the hall, then quickly to Tai, then back down the hall again. Seriously, who had given him that cuff? Tai needs to know. "Do they need me now, or do I have a few minutes still?"

"Whenever you're ready," Tai responds. He doesn't think he's ever said that before. At Skander's persisting hesitation, though, he ignores his own words to ask impatiently, "Why are you being this way?"

Skander's voice wavers as he repeats, "Whenever I'm ready? I can't do it. They'll know right away that I'm not anyone noble like you or Viveka."

"They will if you don't stop tying your laces all wrong."

Skander looks at his sleeves in confusion, clearly not seeing the problem. Tai lets out a long-suffering sigh. He gestures to indicate that Skander should offer his arm to him. Reluctantly, Skander presents it, and Tai begins, slowly and methodically, to unravel the previous mess and retie it accurately.

Still bent over his task, Tai says, "All anyone expects from a noble is decent matters and a graceful look; you're more than capable of delivering those."

"A graceful look?" Repeating again. He sounds like a parrot. A surprised, silver-eared parrot that may never echo back what Tai really wants to tell him.

Trying to navigate this small slip-up, Tai says, "I don't know why that surprises you. Everyone thinks so." He honest-to-anything will never tolerate another ear cuff in his presence again.

Skander looks up from Tai's careful work on his sleeve, but Tai's concentration stays on the laces beneath his fingers. His expression shifts to a more wistful one to be on the receiving end of Tai's attentiveness. Or at least, for his clothes to be. Whatever the specific object of attention, it's as heady as it always is.

Tai finishes with the laces. Finally, he meets Skander's warm eyes once before starting to walk toward the staircase. "If it scares you this much, that's all the more reason to do it sooner."

Reluctantly, Skander can admit to himself that Tai is right.

He follows him down the stairs and into the hall, where the spill of candlelight indicates the dining room. Before stepping inside, he hears Tai murmur, "Best of luck."

They're so far past punctual that everyone else is well into the second course of lemon- and herb-seasoned baked fish, prepared mainly by Araceli. Even above the clatter of utensils and a half-dozen ongoing conversations, Viveka's honey-voice can be heard rising above the rest to greet them in relief.

Their seats are far apart, but Tai watches Skander throughout dinner anyway. A stranger wouldn't be able to pick out his nervousness, but Tai can still read his tension. He sits between a guard and one of the ambassador's advisors.

When Skander speaks to the former, his gregariousness climbs to match the level of the guard's brash tones. When he turns to speak to the latter, whose speech is free from any similar animation, Skander's voice adopts a more mellow cadence. He isn't anything like Tai, who doesn't know how to follow any way of being but his own. And not like Lionel, who for all his flaws is forever unabashedly himself.

Skander adjusts himself, always. It makes Tai want to hold him in place for a moment, to watch him still and see what remains after his affectations fade.

Feeling unusually fidgety and frustrated, Tai stands to join Zahara when she volunteers to carry some of their used plates back to the kitchen and help with dessert. Really, for Zahara it's more of an excuse to shirk more hounding questions about her shield gift and to see Lionel. Tai doesn't care about the motive. He just wants to be out of the dining hall and away from watching Skander force himself to be charming.

In the kitchen, those tasked with food preparation assemble plates of honey cake and cream. Giada and Jasper work on the latter, with Jasper stirring the sweetened cream as Giada sprinkles nutmeg in.

Upon entering, Zahara places the dirtied plates into the washtub for Kalila and Fallon to scrub. She playfully tugs once at Giada's braid as she passes behind her, but moves on to Lionel before her friend can turn to share a smile with her.

"I have the best job, Zahara: testing the honey cakes to make sure they're the right level of sweet," he says, passing her a small piece of one.

After tasting their samples, Zahara and Lionel sit at the kitchen table together, her hands reaching out to close securely around his as she tells him about the ambassador's entourage. Lionel casts his own smile shyly downward to look at their linked fingers.

Tai knew already that they were in something approaching love (definitely far into annoying, at least) but something about the sight of it leaves him melancholic. Love transforms the ever-ebullient Lionel into a softer, adoring form. What has affection transformed Tai into? The silly, stupid agonies of biting his feelings down have done little to move him anywhere but inward.

Still stirring the bowl of cream, Jasper waits for Giada to drop more nutmeg in. It takes him a few moments to realize that she's no longer there. He looks around the entirety of the crowded kitchen, but the distinctive color of her hair is absent.

"Tai, finish mixing this," he says, pushing the bowl into Tai's rigid grip.

Giada wouldn't go into the dining room, and they hadn't needed anything from the pantry or cellar, so he checks the third door leading out of the kitchen: the one that takes him outside.

Sure enough, Giada is there, sitting so that her back leans against the wall and her head tilts up to welcome the November constellations. The air is chilled, so much so that Jasper is already suppressing shivers a moment after closing the door between him and the bustling kitchen warmth. The dark silhouettes of the garden in front of them are eerie at this time of year, here on the edge of winter. He can't tell if the gloomy ambience is from that same turning of the seasons, or if it's from the look on Giada's face: so singularly drained.

The half-smile she gives Jasper when she sees him is warped, self-mocking. "Isn't it amazing?" she drawls, voice quiet and cold. "A whole world outside of my own. And a third one too, counting the chimera's. When you think about it, who's to say there aren't more? There could be an infinite number of worlds out there."

Jasper approaches her cautiously. Why is she saying all this? But she doesn't wait for any prompt before continuing. "There might even be a world with another Giada like me. And another Zahara. Maybe in that one, we exist but have never met. Or maybe there's one where we meet when we're much younger, or much older than in my world." She lets out a long, slow breath. "And if there are infinite worlds, then there has to be one where she loves me back, and we're happy. There could even be a world where she loves me, but I don't love her. But I have a hard time imagining that one."

Jasper doesn't know what to say. He isn't good at picking up on these things; he never would have guessed on his own that she felt that way. He sets himself down beside her. The stars' silver light reflect dully in Giada's eyes, impersonal as a surface of glass. 

Eventually, she says, "Please don't tell anyone. Especially my siblings."

"I won't."

Another deep breath. "Thank you."

Jasper doesn't know how to comfort her. He's never felt the same as she does for anyone; his heartstrings don't tug him anywhere in that way.

He sits with her in silence under the cheerless night. 

Somehow, it helps.