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Jamil was mid-strawberry tart slice when the tea party erupted.
Riddle, to nobody's surprise and everybody's dismay, was yelling.
"Riddle, please," someone was saying, and when Jamil turned his head to check, it was Azul, glaring stringently at Floyd. Jade stood passively by, hands folded over each other, and his expression was either one of mild concern or intense amusement. It was hard to tell with that one.
"I thought," Riddle fumed, loudly, "that I had made the rules abundantly clear."
"There's, like, a bajillion rules, Goldfishie," Floyd complained, but he was grinning, arm held high while Riddle tried in vain to reach the squirming thing in his hand. "Who cares about a stupid dormouse?"
"Who cares?" Riddle repeated at a volume and pitch that should not have been physically possible.
Kalim had, for whatever reason, decided to try and mediate. "I'm sure he meant no offence," Kalim said and was completely ignored. Jamil tried not to smile, and when the pull of it felt too strong, he busied his mouth with another bite to his painstakingly made tart instead.
He cast about for the only one who had any real chance of mediating. Trey stood a small distance away, hovering uncertainly, palms held out as though to placate a wild animal, his face doing something complicated, eyes darting between Riddle and Floyd with inhuman speed. Jamil tilted his head. He considered going over to Trey and telling him to get the hell over himself, to do something, to get this whole fiasco back under control.
Instead, across the table, he met Leona's eyes. Leona raised an eyebrow. Jamil glanced over again. The cameras were focused entirely upon the altercation, and Riddle had pulled out his magic pen, and Trey had finally gotten his shit together and was trying to intervene, and Floyd seemed to be taking delight in Riddle's reddening face, and it cost nothing at all to slink away and out of sight.
Jamil breathed in deeply, the yelling shrinking away in the distance. It hadn't started off too bad, hardly any mishaps with the plating and the decorating— even the roses, ridiculously strict though Riddle was on the proportions and distribution of red and white— and the arranging. Everything had been fine until Floyd had decided to filch the dormouse.
"Fuckin' nightmare, hm?"
"Anyone could have predicted this," Jamil said idly. The Rose Garden was an almost peaceful place, if one ignored the still-slightly-audible screaming. The rose bushes were perfectly round, the grounds mowed neatly, the roses perfectly vibrant, and if Jamil looked at it too hard for any longer he would probably find himself screaming just to disrupt something. There was something completely discomfiting about such strict regulation. "I did say this was a bad idea."
"Mm," Leona agreed, attention honing in on a particularly large rose bush. He made himself home in its shade, all but curling up. Jamil wouldn't have been surprised to hear him purr. "Not all bad."
Jamil huffed a semi-laugh. "Right. Again, might I ask what you're doing here?"
Leona blinked lazily up at Jamil, and head leaned back against folded arms. "Takin' a nap, hopefully."
Jamil raised an eyebrow, and let himself draw closer, sitting beneath the shade of the same rosebush. "That's not what I meant and you know it."
Leona's mouth twitched. His eyes were half-hooded. "I do?" At Jamil's unimpressed stare, he laughed. "Not a fan of your own medicine, huh?"
Jamil only just suppressed the urge to roll his eyes. It occurred to him that he had, for all intents and purposes, sneaked away from a party with the second prince of Sunset Savanna. Instead of dwelling on that and its potential international political implications, Jamil said, "It's strange seeing you in Heartslabyul colours. So pristine."
"What, Savanaclaw not pristine enough for ya?"
"Not the way you wear it," Jamil said unthinkingly. Leona barked out a laugh before Jamil had the chance to begin to panic.
Leona nudged Jamil's back with his tail, and it stayed there, curling lightly around Jamil's hip. Jamil tried not to think about it, feeling himself warm. "Strange seeing you like this, too. So honest."
Jamil did roll his eyes now, leaning back. Leona's tail winded more securely about Jamil's waist. Jamil was going to burn alive. "So insistent," he said. "When will you give that up?"
"When it stops being true." Leona was silent for long enough that Jamil thought he might have dozed off. "Looks good on you, though."
Jamil swallowed thickly. He didn't look at Leona. "We should get back," he said instead. "Don't want our absence to be noticed."
Leona hummed, and his tail brushed a feather-light path up Jamil's arm. "Sure. Go ahead, then. Think I'll take a nap." Jamil did not turn to see it, but he felt the stare Leona levelled at him. "Weirder if we return together, don'tcha think?"
Jamil's throat felt tight, restrictive. "Mm," he managed, passable agreement. He didn't move an inch.
"They won't have calmed down Riddle already," Leona mused, but he sounded amused. "You could sta—"
The ground rumbled, gurgling at their feet, and Jamil frowned down at it. The tremors were slight, but undeniable. An earthquake? That seemed unlikely, although Jamil struggled to think what else it could possibly be. A noise followed, guttural and piercing and loud, and Jamil looked up to find a thin curl of rapidly darkening smoke streaming from the approximate area the tea party had been, gathering into a cloud. Jamil could already hear the clamour beginning to arise, high-pitched and panicked and—
Jamil shot up to his feet.
"We should probably leave," Leona noted mildly. "Looks like a whole lotta not my fuckin' busine—"
"Kalim," Jamil hissed through clenched teeth, and followed it up with a harsh curse he probably shouldn't have let loose in front of the second prince of Sunset Savanna. It was too late to worry about that. Jamil was already rushing back to the tea party, taking the same winding path he had followed to escape. Kalim, the fucking idiot, had been trying to mediate the last time Jamil had seen him, which meant he would no doubt be at the centre of the danger, and Jamil should have known better than to leave him unattended, Jamil should have just swallowed down his boredom like too-sticky cake and—
The tea party was utter chaos when Jamil reached. The tables were upended, the pristine grass littered with wasted food and broken crockery, and there were, for whatever ungodly reason, a bunch of hedgehogs scurrying about, and some of the rosebushes had caught fire, and in the middle of it all, sat Floyd Leech, uniform singed and throat throttled by a heavy, red, heart-shaped collar.
Kalim was on the ground, looking as though he'd been knocked back, and his eyes were wide.
"Kalim," Jamil said again, quick steps and a quicker eye. Kalim looked unharmed. The white-and-red of the Heartslabyul uniform he was wearing had seen better and cleaner days, and his hair had certainly been combed far neater that morning, but there was nothing to suggest a cut or a burn or a break. "Kalim. Are you—"
Kalim blinked owlishly up at Jamil, and then he broke out into a smile. "Jamil! Where've you been?"
Jamil breathed out in relief. Nothing serious. "Around. What happened?"
Kalim shrugged. "Riddle got mad."
Jamil looked around again. There was an unexplained scattering of rose petals. Riddle was clutching at Trey's arm with a death-grip, eyes trained on Floyd, looking ready to tear into Floyd again at the simplest of provocations. The cameras were still, for whatever reason, rolling. "That's… one way to put it, for sure." He would figure it out later. For now, he took in another calming breath. "Okay. Kalim. Next time, I need you to stay away from active blast risks."
"I did say this was a bad idea," Jamil said, later.
Azul looked up from the camera, one eyebrow raised. "A bad idea?" he echoed, like he truly had no idea what Jamil was talking about.
Jamil waved an arm at the remains of the obliterated tea party by way of explanation.
Azul had the nerve to laugh. "Oh, Jamil. Please. That was perfect."
Jamil stared blankly. The tea party had been so far from perfect that Jamil entertained the notion of brain damage having gotten to Azul.
"Reality television thrives on drama, Jamil," Azul continued, looking back down at the camera to assess his footage. "Thrives, you understand? This was a success."
"You're insane," Jamil told him helpfully.
"And speaking of drama," Azul said in a way that Jamil did not like, "I noticed you and the second prince of Sunset Savanna vanished for a good while there."
Jamil felt every single muscle in his body try to lock up. Carefully, deliberately, he kept himself relaxed, did not let so much as a twitch show on his face. He raised an eyebrow. "What?"
Azul's grin did not bode well. "Oh, nothing. Nothing at all."