Paralyzed (Tboah!AlbeCale)

20) The moment you've all been waiting for

Alberu swiftly started pushing through the crowd of people. It was more difficult than he thought it would be, since most of the ladies kept flaunting their chests at him and most of the men kept requesting to speak with him about their trades or business deals.

"Excuse me... Excuse me."

It took a good thirty seconds before he had cleared his way through the mass of people. It took extra long because of the drink in his hand which he did not want to spill. But as he walked past the last person who obstructed his view, he realized Cale was no longer at the snack table. Venion was nearby, talking to a different noble, but Cale had disappeared.

'What? Where could he have gone?'

Alberu discretely glanced in all directions, but he could not find the one person who he had to keep tabs on the most. This was not good at all.

Cale Henituse was the biggest variable in tonight's events, and he had evaded Alberu's keen vision.

___

'What is he doing?'

Cale Henituse was stationed on the floor again because his legs had grown tired of walking.

A couple minutes before this, the crown prince had begun to get swarmed by people, and they were making a lot of noise, all talking at once. Cale had started to get a headache, and walked over to the group to tell them off, but he had no need to do so. Only seeing his approaching figure was enough to send a lot of them away. Since the noise had dissipated, Cale had simply walked behind the rest of the group and sat down, staring daggers at the loudest ones.

That had made them shut up nicely, and now he was leaning against the wall, watching the crown prince escape the people and then start looking for something or someone.

Cale was feeling nice today. That, and he was curious as to who or what had managed to catch the crown prince's eye. So, he started glancing around the room as well. He didn't feel like straining his eyes to search for something far away, so his range of vision was the floor in front of him.

For one minute, Cale looked over the floor. Then he got bored.

'Haaa. I wish I had a pillow.'

The ground was hard but all the available seats had been taken up. Of course, he could demand someone get up and move for him, but he was too lazy to do that.

As he sipped a glass of wine, something shiny caused him to glance upwards at the floor farther away. It looked like a fuzzy glowing dot in Cale's vision because of the distance and size of the object, but it probably caught the light which made it seem to glow gold.

That meant it was metal or something similar.

Perhaps it was a coin.

Cale looked at it for a few more seconds before deciding to go get it. But as he stood up and dusted himself off, he saw another noble walking towards it. Suddenly his legs didn't feel tired, and he found himself walking faster than usual to beat the unfamiliar noble.

He was successful too, as he reached down to pick it up just as the noble reached his position. The mediocre-looking noble spoke first.

"Sorry, I dropped that earlier. That belongs to me."

"Bullshit, it's mine. Don't say it's yours after you walked across the room to retrieve it."

The man immediately shrank back at Cale's challenging tone. He was more skittish and wary than the average noble, so he simply nodded and walked away quickly.

'What a pussyfoot.'

Cale smiled victoriously as he collected the now in focus object. It was a simple silver ring engraved with blue-ish green gems or mineral rocks on the top. He recognized it immediately as the ring the crown prince fiddled with often. Because he was never close enough to take a good look at it, he hadn't noticed the tiny gems before.