A wide smile spread across Illi's face as her sister tried to scold her. Dahlia just wasn't intense enough for Illi to take her completely seriously. She listened to her words and advice, of course, but Redly saying the same thing would have had much larger of an impact.
Lifting her cup up into the air, Illi laughed and replied, "If you mean in the literal sense, then I suppose I did fail at keeping my drink in my cup. But in terms of getting drunk, well, I haven't drank anything yet tonight! I've been too busy." With Davishire. "It's these heels—they're ruining my balance." Then again, all the Treyburns knew that she had some balancing problems. Unless a book was in her hands, Illi was just about the clumsiest Treyburn there was.
Illi reached and gave her sister a quick hug before continuing on her speech, but a little more seriously. "I'm twenty-eight now, Dahlia. I'm not stupid. And the only reason I wasn't telling you the whole story was because I didn't want you to overreact... like Braxton and Cherie did." She moved to lean against the railing and took a deep breath of the air. It was a lot stuffier inside, so the fresh air felt nice and cleared her head some.
"Anyway, here's the whole story. Since I get the feeling that you will pester me and won't let me go until you know it. I met Davishire, the Wolf, and we had a brief conversation that ended with me spilling wine—which I also hadn't drank, I might add—onto his costume." She paused and then sheepishly added, "You probably saw the stain... Continuing on, he was obviously upset. I mean, I got wine on his costume. And he made a comment about how life isn't a fairy tale—ah, that was related to something else. You wouldn't get the reference." After all, she doubted her sister knew the story behind the Queen and the Wolf. "But, anyway, I couldn't let him believe that. I mean, no wonder he was so sour."
With a mischievous smile, Illi continued with her hands getting more animated, "So I went to the library to search for some fairy tales. But not just any fairy tales, of course. I was looking for real fairy tales. Stories that seem like they couldn't possibly be true, but are. Well, I got a huge pile of those. They're still in the library, if you're interested in checking those out. I found Davishire, or, rather, he found Avery and me, and the mood kind of darkened. I don't know why. But I showed him one of the books and he started yelling at me."
She took a deep breath and her smile completely vanished. "At first I thought he was upset over the fact that I was touching some antique books. Which he was, but that didn't seem to be the main reason. It turned out that the first story I told him about was actually connected to his family, and he took personal offense at it. I felt horrible. After all, how could I not notice that? He even introduced himself. Heck, the character in the book has the exact same last name! Nonetheless, I was ignorant and he was obviously offended. I couldn't help but cry—I honestly tried not to—and that's when Braxton and Cherie came in." She laughed before quickly adding, "Well, you know what followed."