“Who let you in here?”
Eris cast a sideways glance at the intruder, her eldest brother, who had sauntered his way into her room without a single knock. The timing was suspiciously punctual, his entrance coinciding so exactly with the timing of her finishing her morning routine that she couldn't help but threateningly eye the maids near the door.
“Good morning to you too, dear sister.”
“...That doesn’t sound like an answer to my question.”
Her eldest brother, Himmel, tried to maintain his cheerful expression, but the awkward way he scratched at his cheek belied how uncomfortable he was.
“Well… I seem to recall that until a few short years ago, I was allowed to come and go from here as I pleased.”
“The key words in that sentence being ‘a few short years ago’.”
“...”
Himmel closed his mouth at the overly curt reply. He wasn’t used to being treated like this by anyone, let alone the sister who, although perhaps could be quite sharp with her words, had always previously been kind and caring to him.
Unwilling to let this be what beat him however, Himmel gathered himself and pushed on with his prepared reason for coming.
“I heard that my dear sister had a visitor come in a few days ago? And what’s more, they came directly to her room and stayed the night?”
For a moment Eris’s dulled, bored eyes flickered with light, only to be quickly and methodically snuffed back down, returned behind a facade of disinterest. Himmel, who’d been watching her closely, almost didn’t believe what he’d seen; The Eris he knew had never shown such a look before.
Catching the interest in her brother's eyes visibly increasing only served to make Eris become even more frosty however, despite Himmel's intentions.
“...And? Why do you care?”
“What? Why would you even ask me that? Of course I’d care if-”
But a loud, overly dramatic sigh from Eris mercilessly cut off his frantic protest.
“Really… What, did you believe that I would do something foolish that might tarnish the family’s reputation? Me? The one sacrificed to uphold it? This me?”
Himmel’s brow wrinkled incredulously.
“Sacrificed? You truly think we-”
“I’ve already passed the successor’s title to you, Himmel. I don’t know how you have the free time to be digging into my personal life when you should be busy with your successor’s classes right now. I’m sure you’re already well aware how behind you are, with the late start you’ve been given... If any of us should be worried about possibly tarnishing the family’s legacy at the moment, it should be you.”
“...”
Himmel flapped his lips, completely taken aback by her words. He felt angered by her rudeness, indignant that she’d dared to thrust such an unwanted thing at him one day and then admonish him over it later… and greatly saddened that this was what the relationship between her and the rest of the family had become.
“...Eris. Please... stop this. Why did things have to become this way? Father, Streiss, and I, we all-”
“Excuse me, but I don’t think either of us has the time for this.”
Eris suddenly got up, grabbing a few things from her room before coldly marching her way towards the door.
“W-wait! Where are you going?!”
He reached out instinctively, trying to grab onto her wrist so that she couldn’t simply leave like this. However, he was no match for his older sister who’d diligently been studying the blade all of her life; She’d easily diverted his hand with a smooth wave of her own, making him miss by such a wide margin that, were he not a very capable alpha, might have caused him to stumble foolishly.
Himmel’s wrist had been graciously spared any damage due to how controlled Eris’s movements were, but the way she was disparagingly looking at him hurt him more than enough to make up for it.
“...If you really must know, I have an appointment with the friend that you mentioned earlier to get to.”
Hearing such a foreign word come out of his aloof and unfriendly sister’s mouth, Himmel couldn’t help the way his eyes widened and mouth opened, immediately forgetting the mental damage that he’d just taken.
“Is that true?!”
To think that the cold Eris, who he’d never heard of having a friend in her entire life, and had barely deigned to speak with her family over the past few years, would have suddenly gained such a thing.
“That’s amazing!”
Eris, for her part, could only frown at his words.
“What part of that could possibly be amazing?”
But immediately after saying so her brows contorted, and realization seemed to flash through her eyes a second later.
“No… I suppose you’re absolutely right.”
Himmel grew quiet for a moment, taking in the slightly touched look that began to subtly grow in his sister’s face for a while, before hesitantly speaking up once again.
“Perhaps, won’t you let me see this friend of yours? I’d like to meet the person who could put such a look onto your face-”
But before he’d even gotten the last of his words out, Eris had already erased any such look from her countenance, leveling a disapproving glare towards him.
“No.”
And then just as curtly as her words had cut him off, Eris, too, swiftly and silently made her exit from the room, leaving him there to grumble alone.
***
“Miss, your things have arrived.”
“Wh- My what?”
Siffia abruptly sat up in bed, calling out in confusion, but the uncaring servant had already walked away, unwilling to say any more to her. Used to this kind of treatment by the staff, though still perfectly aware of how rude it was, Siffia rose out of bed with an annoyed huff, looking both ways out of her door to check if she could see where the servant went before deciding to simply go check the foyer.
-After all, if something had come for her, the aggravating servants of her house weren’t going to do anything about it without being directly commanded to.
As she scurried her way through the halls, Siffia couldn’t help but wonder for a moment what Eris would have done in a situation like this. However, she immediately burst out laughing at the ridiculous musing.
“How silly to think such a thing could ever possibly happen to her…”
The esteemed eldest child of the nation’s only Margrave would never be treated in such a way. And if she was…
Imagining Eris in a beautifully elegant dancing gown unsheathing her sword with demonically glowing eyes and wreaking havoc throughout the halls brought a goofy smile to Siffia’s face. She was so distracted by the entertaining thoughts when she turned into the foyer that she just barely managed to save herself from crashing into the large and luxurious box that had been left on the floor there. It was tall, perhaps even taller than the averagely heighted Siffia herself, glaringly white, and wrapped in a gorgeous and expensive looking giant ribbon that practically begged to be stripped off. At first she couldn’t believe that any such fancily presented thing could have possibly come for her, but when she looked around and saw that there was nothing else out of the ordinary in the room, she had to hesitatingly accept that this must have been what the servant had been talking about.
With a cautious hand, Siffia slowly peeled off the ribbon, carefully wrapping the precious thing around her arm so as to not let it get dirty, before opening the box. At first she was dazzled by the absolutely stunning array of dresses that she’d uncovered, but as Siffia unconsciously narrowed her eyes in recognition and began counting the dresses, she soon realized what was happening. She couldn’t help but bury her face in her hands, feeling like the world’s biggest idiot.
So much had gone on over the past few days that she’d completely forgotten that the dresses that Eris had ordered for her were supposed to be coming today.
A pained groan escaped through her lips. She wanted to somehow punish herself for ever forgetting about such an important thing, but Siffia soon straightened herself up, putting such thoughts off for later. Though she might have been mortified, this was an extremely important and expensive gift that she’d just been given, and she couldn’t possibly let such a thing languish in such a dangerous place as this, unprotected for even a second longer. She quickly put both of her hands on the box, trying to gauge the weight of it, when suddenly a voice spoke up from behind her, startling her.
“...What is that?”