"What's your deal with her?" Blaize pressed on after taking another slug. "Speak now or forever hold your peace."
The fact that he suspected he might soon be doing just that was the only reason he even sought Blaize out. She would be able to catch tells on Zory his lack of eyesight would still leave room for him to misinterpret. As finely tuned as every shade of Zory's poker face was when she was in real trouble, her body language often spoke for itself in subtle ways instead.
"I just need you to be my eyes tonight." Vitale asked as a preface to what he really wanted to ask of her most.
"Tell me why you lost them then." Blaize asked between a few more slugs before slamming another empty down. "Our medical personnel have made enough new advancements in the last decade, there's no reason they couldn't heal you now if you didn't clearly want to live with whatever you did."
She couldn't stand Vitale on a good day, so having to force herself to tolerate him on a day such as this one was obviously reason enough to make her down more than the usual amount of liquid courage. He wasn't going to push his limits with her intake rate until he was sure she was officially exceeding some of hers. She was a bad drunk and it had been years since she had even risked it in public like she was on the fast track to doing for whatever reason.
"She's my friend, Blaize." He remarked softly.
She wasn't the type to fire shots when it came to most, but her perceptions of Vitale and his slew of womanizing behavior wasn't something she fully knew how to let him live down at a time like this. Him making a secret of who his big date is this year made it quite obvious that was probably another one of Trixxie's surprises. Of all the things she could tolerate when it came to any of the generals doing Trixxie's bidding in ways her parents often didn't approve of, the fact that their new arrival probably knew the answer to that question wasn't one. As an honorary aunt, Blaize desired to protect Trixxie from as much of fallout with the other mystery woman on all possible fronts. Asking what the deal really was felt more than fair.
"She really is my friend." Vitale sighed.
"Mhm, mhm." She nodded begrudgingly. "Yeah, we all know how things tend to go with women who made the mistake of thinking you were their friend."
Vitale had let more than a few assets he let play his fake girlfriends from time to time sell mostly exaggerated tales of their break-ups to the press. Almost all of them weren't just contacts, they were foreign spies who were visiting or former ones with agendas about how to find their fit here. Some were just genuinely ethical escorts he actively employed to keep up with the lies about what kind of person he really was on his own accord. Some of the ridiculous ways they agreed on how to word certain details of their whirlwind affairs with him were comedic gold if you knew the truth.
"She's Ozzy's friend too." He affirmed brazenly.
"What?" Blaize hiccuped around the sting of the liquor.
Now that sounded like some fascinating tea indeed.
"He's back in the city, Blaize. I saw him." Vitale recounted with careful selection of which domino he wanted to tip first when choosing subjects he owed it to Blaize to cover at least in part. "I know you didn't really approve of his suspension any more than I did and that's worth more than you think."
Was it? She couldn't be sure at this point.
Ozzy Noiré had not bothered to show up to any of the hearings that had decided all of that nor had he bothered to come home when some filed for appeal either. While Blaize's husband was not the king Ozzy served, no one besides Blaize had been even half as devastated as Vitale was when Ozzy up and went awol without any explanation in the slightest. He wasn't even the only one who was on the chopping block for falsified reports in recent years, he was just the only one who never offered up nor allowed anyone else to make a defense for his case either. He had reamed Vitale for even suggesting he just be honest about how much of that he only did for Zory.
Whether mentioning Ozzy was an ace in the hole or a double edged sword? Vitale wasn't quite sure either.
"He'll come around eventually, Blaize." He said softly.
"And you're bringing all of that up why?" She snapped.
"It's complicated." He uttered lowly.
She waved a single finger in the air to simultaneously make Vitale pause and signal to the bartender she was in the mood for another. She knew her husband wasn't going to be all that pleased if she was more than just a little buzzed by the time she walked back over to the chief royals, but she really didn't care. King Pierce was almost too perfect in several regards and although he had never been controlling in almost any way, he did really hate when she was clearly upset over this, that and the other and unwilling to talk to him about it. The vibrations that would roll off of her with just enough chemicals in play for the right kind of buzz would keep him off her trail.
"Blaize?" Vitale coaxed as he swiped the drink that had just been set on the counter. "He's here because he doesn't think that there's enough security. The fact that he even got in here already without anyone who should have noticed him doing so does in fact prove it, Blaize. Yuri's not going to be able to stall Ozzy for much longer."
Her deep burgundy colored hair flitted about as she turned to whirl and face Vitale more directly. As Ozzy's most staunch defender time and time again, Blaize couldn't even fathom on what grounds those two names had even landed in the same sentence, let alone why they had. As far as they knew, Vitale had made no progress in trying to woo the Yin-Yang dynasty and the other surprise guest was no longer a mystery.
"Yuri as in Lady Mayuri?" She sought to clarify with blatant disbelief. "The Lady Mayuri?"
"Believe it or not, she's my date." He smiled in a way that made it clear he was far too pleased with himself. "I haven't been the worthless playboy I let our people write me off as in a very long time, Blaize… I have every intent of declaring my desire to marry that woman tonight whether I can get a proper blessing from her cousin or not."
"Her cousin?" Blaize puzzled aloud.
He puffed up his cheeks and pressed his lips into a line before forcing himself to respond. "I don't think you need me to spell that one out."
"Mari…?" She concluded with growing bewilderment. "The Mari that Trixxie made friends with is really the acting Lady Ryomari everyone is talking about?"
"That's not even the half of it." He admitted.
It was no secret Blaize had already been more wound up about all of the guest of honor business than anyone else. It was a recipe for disaster with the siren courts more than most of the others if Trixxie's picks didn't make the cut by enough of the standards Blaize had been filtering options for. This year's recommendation for review among the other members of the Nine Crowns was supposed to come from Blaize. Vitale was playing with fire either way with everything he knew and left out and fully expecting to get burned by approaching Blaize directly. Zory truly wasn't safe here whether introducing herself under the alias Mari went off without a hitch or not.
"I need your help, okay?" He pleaded.
Ozzy was clearly going to be of real help to no one.
"Let me guess…" Blaize seethed. "I'm guessing Mari has every reason to not be one of your biggest fans either?"
"Not for any of the reasons you're thinking." He said with an open dismissal of every new insinuation that had just been implied. "I need you to rewind to when I said Mari has usually already made up her mind about someone."
"Whatever your point is?" She formulated. "Just get to it already… There's no way Pierce isn't ready to transformer into a full blown helicopter by now."
She was now officially running behind more than usual to come greet their friends and her husband knew that was often a sign the reason she was late was beyond the ordinary. Vitale had no interest in dragging any of this out any further than he really had to. There was still too many based to cover and too little time left to do it. All of the growing nastiness surrounding the massacre up in the mountains was bound to come up the second one too many people recognized Zory. Requiring Yuri to limit supplemental security measures was nothing short of inviting those assailants to finally finish what they had started early last spring. Once Ozzy got here any of them that had yet to connect the dots on who Zory truly was would start to.
"I've never directly asked you for anything." He laid out plainly hoping to spare himself the embarrassment of having to beg. "This is that important to me, Blaize, it really is. I know for a fact that Mari does happen to be a fan of you. I'm just asking you to greet her and wing it from there."
"Me?" Blaize practically choked.
It was not all that uncommon for Blaize to avoid shaking hands or kissing babies no matter who it was.
"Yes, you." He confirmed. "So all I need you to do is run cross-interference when things start to take a turn, which they definitely will at this rate."
Hearing confirmation regarding the bad feeling about all of this she had mentioned over and over did not award her the results she had hope for. It wasn't uncommon for her to be opposed from straying from any of the traditions more than they had to at societal staple events like this, but still. No one had taken her seriously this time and she now knew there had probably been Vitale's influence to thank for that. If anything, Blaize was now even angrier with him than she had been at first. His way of always trying to spin things in his favor was unbecoming for someone with his kind of gifts.
She locked a glare on him in a firm but mostly unspoken warning she knew he wouldn't heed. "I'm more than content to let you reap whatever you've sown with that girl, General Vizzario… So if you're not going to tell me what you did, then I don't have a way to gauge whether or not you even deserve my help on this one… Trixxie's parents are going to be livid if you swindled her into helping you too."
"It's not about what Mari thinks of me," He added in grim acknowledgement. "And please don't ever call her 'that girl' again either, okay…? I'm not asking you to do it for me, I'm not even asking you to do it just for Ozzy… The one you really need to worry about royally failing to get off on the right foot with Mari tonight is actually Nesterio."
"Yeah, okay." Blaize guffawed. "Since when does anyone not like Nesterio, Zenny?"
"My name is Zenobias." He corrected her as an icy wind began to ruffle his gold tipped pieces of hair and her auburn highlighted waves. "But I'm guessing that canary joke earlier means you already knew that was just a nickname."
"Zenobias?" She fretted as she noticed no one else was shivering or affected in the slightest.
"I pulled you into a private plane of mine awhile ago." He explained without even a single sign of regret for pulling a stunt that bold without telling her. "I can't truly talk to Mari out in the open right now any more than I was able to speak to you, Blaize… Actually hearing everyone call me Zenny at all for herself is going to be an entirely different ballgame than just knowing people do."
The Yin-Yang Dynasty's inquiries regarding whether or not the Luna-Sola monarchy was truly ready to make peace were handled entirely by Yuri. She wasn't even normally the one who even spoke to Zory with any degree of regularity among cousins, Yuri's brother or nephew handled that. All of the bad blood that had been festering between the real Zenny and Zory had only made it even easier for people to confuse Vitale for having never been as loyal to her as he very much still was.
"Do it for Nesterio." Vitale urged flatly.
And with that, he was gone in the wind again and Blaize was back into the regular open air of the unseasonably chilly autumn evening. Whatever storm was brewing somewhere in the distance, an ex-girlfriend swinging by was never enough to set Vitale on edge regarding Nesterio. Of all the things Blaize might have been able to make an educated guess about, the likelihood of the beef with Mari having a lot more to it than just not approving of a nickname was the most accurate one.