"You—! Honestly."
Elos's words cut off short.
She shot Ella a sidelong look and turned to leave.
She had no intention of granting Ella's wish. Since she wanted to eat, let her go hungry.
If she wanted to sleep, make her stand. If she wanted water, let her thirst. If she wanted food, let her starve. In short, nothing was to go the way she wanted it.
The girl's malice was simple and direct.
"There's nothing to eat tonight," she said.
The moment the words landed, Ella's expression shifted.
"Hey, you're joking, right? Who bullies people like this!"
Wasn't she supposed to be a wife?! The script didn't go like this, surely?
"This is domestic abuse."
"Oh."
She said it flatly, and left.
Ella went after her to catch her hand and was shoved away.
"Don't follow me."
Elos glanced quietly back over her shoulder.
Ella's eyes had lowered, and she was holding the sleeve at her right forearm lightly, as though she wanted to touch the arm underneath and didn't dare.
That careful, gingerly expression gave Elos a private thrill.
She quickened her pace. Once the hunger became unbearable, she would get to see this one beg, wouldn't she?
***
Elos left, and Ella went into her own room.
The decoration was plain. The consoling part was that all the furniture was there, and the bed was large and soft.
At least a bit softer than her bed back at her discount dad's house.
"Haah..."
Sighing softly, Ella sat down on it.
In this life her father was a minor noble too, but the family had come down in the world and held almost no land.
Her discount dad was a stubborn old man who insisted on maintaining what he called a noble's bearing. The taxes on his people were low, the territory sat near the border, and holding off magic beasts and guarding against bandits were both considerable expenses, so the household had nothing to spare.
Ella had to work the fields herself. Still, they got by.
Until her mother fell gravely ill. Ella's discount dad couldn't produce the money for treatment and wasn't willing to squeeze his people for it, so he sent Ella here, to this "matchmaking meet."
You could call it a matchmaking meet, anyway.
"Feels a lot like being sold..."
Ella touched the jade pendant she had hung on her new dress.
She had found it in a field at three years old, and from then on she had been certain she was the protagonist.
An Eastern object turning up in a western fantasy world had to mean something, no matter how you looked at it.
"It hurts... Ngh..."
The wounds on her arms still burned. Who had invented the whip, anyway?
Holding the sleeve, Ella wanted a proper look at them, but she didn't dare pull the fabric up for fear of dragging it across the cuts.
"And I'm so hungry..."
The confidence drained away for the moment, and what stood in front of her was a predicament.
The wounds needed treating, her stomach needed filling, and she had to find some way to make her life here more comfortable.
Milady and she were, by any reckoning, enemies.
"It'd be nice if I could just bail."
She stood up and drifted around the room.
She wandered about and saw neither food nor medicine.
She pushed the window open and was met with distant peaks and a cliff below.
House Beaumont's castle was built on a mountain.
Reasoning that Elos hadn't actually forbidden her to leave, Ella ambled out of the room.
She would go find something to eat herself. Standing on your own feet was always the better way.
"Tch. All that talk about the young Duke taking a wife, and I'm treated worse than an ordinary maid. Ridiculous."
She complained as she walked, naturally.
The girl carried a great deal of grievance.
***
Wandering slowly down the stairs and drifting about, Ella found her way into the kitchen.
There was nobody there. Her gaze roamed the wooden shelves, and she spotted flatbread in a basket.
"Food!"
Her eyes lit up, and she reached for two of them.
She turned her head, and Elos was watching her, expressionless.
"Uh."
The smile dissolved before it had finished forming. Ella was a little embarrassed.
"Did nobody tell you stealing is against the law? Little thief."
"..."
Ella rubbed her nose.
Fair enough in principle, but... wasn't she arguably the young mistress of the house here? She couldn't even have a piece of bread?
Elos looked at her.
"Tsk. Fine, I won't eat it. What are you staring at me for?"
Guilty under the stare, Ella put the flatbread down.
She thought of the Elos she had seen in the corridor earlier, of the allure in her brows and eyes, the smile at the bottom of them.
She had seemed perfectly normal then. Infuriating.
"Then, medicine. Do you have any?"
"No."
"So stingy."
Ella went off with her cheeks puffed out.
Elos watched her go. Still no sign of the hurt and the tears she wanted to see.
"What a strange person."
***
Ella quickened her pace, and once she was well clear of Elos she let herself be furious.
"What is any of this. A ducal house. How can they be this stingy?"
The grievance deepened a few more degrees. Ella closed her eyes.
No medicine, no food. Were they trying to kill her?
She walked out of the keep and into the inner courtyard, her gaze passing over the soldiers patrolling the walls and the smithy at the courtyard's edge.
Nothing but strangers.
Elos trailed Ella at a distance, watching her wander with no purpose at all, curious about where she meant to go.
"Bare as a bone. Nothing here at all."
Ella had been hoping for fruit trees, or something.
Also, she didn't actually understand why Elos lived in the castle. Didn't great nobles like them usually have manors?
Not bothered to leave the inner bailey, Ella went back to her room.
Elos followed quietly behind her, without letting her notice.
As a duke's young lady she was vicious, but in magic and in arms alike she was, in the end, formidable.
"Haah..."
Back in her room, Ella sighed.
"What now? Do I go and beg her?"
Ella had the feeling it wouldn't help.
"Hoo. Calm down, Ella. It's fine. When Heaven is about to lay a great charge on a person, it first embitters their heart and wearies their sinews and bones."
Comforting herself, she felt the unbearable hunger start up in her stomach again.
"Ever since I turned into a girl I can't take hunger at all."
She used to work a full day in the fields without her stomach ever aching from it.
But now... how long had it even been since she ate? Her stomach was already twisting in cramps.
"Vicious creature."
Elos's face surfaced in her mind again. Someone like that, out looking for a wife? She'd die alone.
Pacing the room again, Ella's gaze went over the potted plant on the windowsill, again and again.
Outside the room, Elos couldn't actually make out what Ella was mumbling. In any case, baffling lines kept coming out of that mouth.
"What is she going on about?"
The only part she caught clearly was Ella calling her vicious.
The veins started popping at her temple again. Elos rather felt that ever since she had met Ella, her dignity and grace as a duke's young lady had been under continuous assault.
"You—!! ...?"
Elos shoved the door open, and then her eyes filled with astonishment.
Ella was standing at the head of the bed. She must have heard the door, because she had turned around, cheeks slightly bulging, a fistful of green leaves crammed into her mouth.
"??"
Elos went blank.
"Pff, pff! Ugh... disgusting."
After a few chews Ella spat the leaves out. The potted plant on the windowsill had been stripped of well over half its leaves and stood there bare.
"You—?!"
Elos couldn't believe it.
"There was nothing else for it, I'm starving. Milady, I surrender. I won't curse at you anymore. Could I have something to eat?"
Ella didn't think she could get out of here. Turning it over and over, it seemed the only way to live a little better was to get on Elos's good side.
She felt she had fallen far.