Adrian found him on the balcony an hour later.
Dante had expected it. The public humiliation in the ballroom demanded a private response, and Adrian wasn't the type to let a wound like that fester without addressing it. Pride was his weakness, always had been.
"That was quite a performance," Adrian said, stepping onto the crystalline platform that jutted from the building's edge. Below them, Umbral's twilight city spread like a map of shadows. "Everyone will be talking about how you made me look like a fool."
"I didn't make you look like anything. You did that yourself."
Adrian's mask was gone now, his perfect face visible in the bioluminescent glow. Without the social artifice of the Masquerade, he looked different: harder, more focused, the golden boy persona stripped away to reveal something colder underneath.
"We don't have an audience here," he said quietly. "No one to impress, no game to play. Just you and me, Dante. Two people who both know more than we should."
