A calm night breeze shifted the air in the empty ballroom, making the crystal in the chandeliers shiver and sing. The glass doors to the balcony had been thrown wide, and Ophelia Servalis was leaning on the railing overlooking the courtyard, arms folded to her chest.

The room had been lazily abandoned after the party; empty glasses and half-folded napkins littered the tables, and a vitrola still crackled in an alcove. She had put on a lovely piece of music. Notes danced across the airy soundspace of the ceiling, slow and deliberate, though she seemed deaf to it. The machine was no substitute for a real orchestra, but she had always liked records more; it was the difference between reading a book for yourself and having one read to you.

Castor Devlin entered through the double doors, walking into the vast empty room with the unconscious effort of silence motivating his careful steps. Her head tilted to one side; some dark hair spilled over onto her white shoulder. The rare sight of her back caught him off his guard.

"Confidence is a word that seems to have many meanings," she mused quietly.

So long had they known each other that greetings and farewells seemed unecessary; introductions, too. She knew him by the resonance of his field alone. When he was not guarding it, it blossomed like a damaged flower, tattered and full of singed holes. He had been a Magister once, but now only she could sense him, all the way from the other end of the ballroom. And he, too, had known she was here. It was the benefit of age and familiarity.

"And in the absence of confidence, oddly enough, bold moves are taken in a new direction. No doubt you've heard by now that they plan to depose me."

Devlin approached the railing, unsure of how to respond.

"How I long for that," she said with an odd earnestness, turning towards him. In the shrouded light he could see every line on her aging face. "It makes me weak to have such a thought, I know."

"You must not think it, then," he said.

The Headmistress let out a sigh and looked down at the university grounds. The last light from the day was setting the red stone aflame, and soft lights were beginning to appear in windows. "There was never any time," she said, her voice so soft he could barely hear it. "I should have known how very close we were to this. I should have done more with the time I was granted."

He took her hand. Until he approached, she had been wearing gloves; he could feel the lace imprinted in her skin as he ran a thumb over her palm. There was a ringing in his ears.

After a long moment of silence, she said, "They do not have confidence that I can lead our country out of this terrible mess with the resistance. But I must show strength. As weary as I am, I must not let this office go to another...countless others desire the position, and they might do terrible things. I never aspired to be the lesser of a number of evils, but if that is my place in history, so be it." She avoided looking at him. "I've made so many mistakes, and so much depends on me - and sometimes I doubt I posess the strength of character to..."

She tried to smile when she realized they had been dancing for a full minute. Devlin's hand was on her waist; the movements felt like swimming or dreaming. He made eye contact.

Too much had remained unsaid for too long, he realized, and to say it all now would be like forcing a thousand people through a single door; whatever words sprang to mind needed context and introduction, and any conclusions he drew would need explanation, apology, and for him to redress his unwillingness would require still more words, useless words, words that would have clogged the silence between the notes of music.

He felt a subtle change in the way she was looking at him.

"You're leaving again," she said, before he could form a sentence. Her voice was resigned and tired; he reddened.

"Yes."

"You're not coming back." Softer, breathless. He sensed that she was torn between a desire to know the truth and a desire to be protected from it. So this was why she had asked him to meet her. It was his place to lie, to comfort her with things he could not possibly know stated as absolute fact. This time, he could not.

"No."

"You're going to help them. The humans."

His heart raced; she had reached the conclusion that he had been building towards, and all his carefully constructed arguments were undone in a single move. Her eyes told him that there was no retreat, no feigning confusion, and her hand on his shoulder felt at once like a welcomed embrace and a cold manacle.

"Yes."

No tears; nothing but a look of exhaustion, tenderness, and unless he was mistaken, something like exhilaration. She drew a millimeter closer.

They danced. His traveling clothes looked oddly out of place against her silk gown, the rainments of a Headmistress, and it amused them both. For a moment they were two up-and-coming names, young people enthralled with one each other's minds, ignorant of everything but the sound of their feet and the pattern of the marble between them, the curves of their ears, and the napes of their necks.

"Do you remember when we last danced?" he asked.

"Mers," she replied, "in aught-seven." She smiled delicately. "I believe I was wearing this exact gown."

She was dancing with a murderer. A traitor. She had never had more than one gown at any one time. She had said they were fussy, useless things. He saw dust on her shoulder; the dress had been in her attic, untouched for years.

"I was the envy of everyone that night," he said. The notes of music crashed overhead, sounding for all the world like real strings and keys and not the tinned warbling of the vitrola's horn. He gazed at her as though memorizing every detail of her face.

"I wouldn't have stopped for the world," she said. He loved her voice - never timid, never weak, but strong and sure, even in distress. "Funny. In all our years, we only danced once."

"Why is that?" he asked.

"There was never any time."

The old record spun and skipped along with his heart. "There's time now."

It was not the first time he had wished for the ability to stop the passage of time, to live for a moment in a world of frozen people and silence, and have all the time in the world to think and plan and read and feel. The music swelled, and he touched her cheekbone. Her eyes had never changed, though lines of worry had trawled the skin of her face and grey had begun to creep into her dark hair.

"No," she said finally, and put her hand on top of his. "There isn't."

His feet had stopped moving, but the ceiling seemed to keep spinning.

"You have to go," she said, her voice quavering with urgency. He blinked as she led him backwards across the marble floor to the curtains on the far side of the room. "You have to leave. Now."

"What-"

"I did my duty," she said, voice breaking, and as he looked in her eyes, the pieces fell into place - she had always known, always understood why he had not danced with her...

He stumbled backwards and snatched at the wall to keep from falling. His bones were creaking like ancient timbers; he aged rapidly, all the suspension of the years falling away, and he felt like a lifetime passed between them. Her chest rose and fell in panic and guilt and defiance, full of love. Betrayal and accusation seared through him as though his blood had been replaced with acid.

"They're coming," she whispered, "Castor, they're coming now. You must leave through the servant's exit." Her voice was drifting away with the crescendo. Something pressed into his palm; it was her cool hand and a key. "Take the twenty-nine carriage through the forest, to the north gate. I'll hold them off as long as I can-"

He wanted to push her away, Headmistress Servalis, protector of Brunnhold - or pull her closer. Anger and confusion had frozen him in place.

"I love you," he said.

"That is why you must go," she said, her voice commanding and desperate. "Don't ever, ever come back, Castor, never. Please."

"Ophelia." He kissed her, and their fields clung to one another, joined for a single moment in a bruised patchwork, and where his was lacking hers filled the empty spaces.

He felt the door open behind him and she pushed him down the stairs; he stumbled back and caught the hand rail. For a moment he saw her silhouetted in the doorway, and he felt anguish radiating from her body. The music stopped. In the silence, he thought he heard footsteps coming up the wide entrance hall. The dark corridor in which he crouched was dank and deserted.

The door snapped shut, and Ceres took over, propelling him down the stairs three at a time, nothing but muscle and adrenaline and instinct. No time to feel pain now, or to wonder why she had done what she had, or to miss her, wish he had said more.

There was no time for Castor Devlin anymore. That man was gone, and would not return.

-----

In the ballroom, Ophelia pulled the curtains over the servant's exit, neatened her hair, brushed tears from her eyes and steadied her breath as the Seventen officers burst through the double doors. They spread out to every corner of the room.

"Where is he, Headmistress?" their leader demanded.

"Late," she replied, doing her level best to show annoyance. "I expect he's caught up in his work. But you mustn't go to his laboratory. He will be here. But if anyone were to know about this-"

"I understand, madam, discretion is key," said the officer, saluting. "But this is a matter of national security. Those documents you brought us indicate that this man has had intimate dealings with Jon Serro himself. He is dangerous."

"He had every reason to trust me," said Ophelia quietly. Behind her back, her hands were shaking. She made a business of putting on her lace gloves. The vitrola still spun, making a sound like wind-blown dust.

"I know that you're more than capable of handling him, but our intelligence suggests he was a gun runner. Difficult to defend against, to say the least. He might have made a break for it when you summoned him."

"He will be here," she repeated.

He wouldn't miss a dance with me.

(( Comments welcome, please use OOC format! ))