Do you understand?
That patronizing voice. Those piercing words. That stinging burn of her slap that coursed like poison through his veins.
Raising his head, Clairette came face-to-face again. Those emerald eyes that always flickered with jitter, even at the tiny flutter of his coat now, looked at him with loathe and hostility. His mind simply couldn't fathom her change.
"You humiliated me today, Clairette!" Twenty-year old Elvin's hand grabbed a fistful of her beautiful light-blonde hair, pulling it at the roots.
Pain surged in her head, blurring her vision.
"You dare steal my crown? You know very well that it was my coronation ceremony! But everyone saw an empty prism with the crown gone! I looked like a fool!"
"No, Brother. It wasn't stolen! It was the Zaffiroon! The window was open, and it took the crown away because it glittered with jewels. Zaffiroons like glittering things-"
A painful gasp escaped as Elvin released her hair, only to kick her in the chest. A thirteen year old Clairette was knocked backwards onto the floor.
"Huh? What kind of a joke is this? A freaking BIRD stole my crown? MY crown? Then you chased after that damn bird, and the crown just 'happened' to land on your head?"
"I-It fell from its beak-"
Clairette scooted back until her back pressed against the wall, watching a perilous light fill Elvin's eyes, as if he stood at a threshold of madness consuming him whole. The hysteria eased just a bit, watching his sister's lashes quiver and tears staining her cheeks wet. He relished that fear in her eyes. He knelt to her level, his voice dropping to a dangerously low whisper.
"Listen, Clairette. I'll become Emberlain's King one day. That crown is mine, so I feel hurt to see that you put it on your head. You cannot. It's mine. You're just a princess. Father will marry you off to some duke one day. So don't go around wearing the crown on your head as if you own it."
His hand reached to hold her trembling face - slowly tightening at her jaw. Tears fell harder with the pain, wetting his fingers.
"That's how you should always look like, Clairette. Eyes down and voice low. Don't ever talk back to me. If I say you made a mistake, then say you made a mistake and apologize like an obedient sister. If you try to defend yourself, you'll only make me angrier, and that's not good for you at all. Do you understand?"
Three words.
Just three simple words would evoke the fear he wanted in Clairette in the past. Those were enough to bring her in line. But those same three words were now spat back at him in his face. Insult didn't even begin to capture the plethora of emotions raging in Elvin's heart because the line was supposed to be drawn for Clairette, not him.
Where did the rebellion come from?
Where did the courage come from?
Did living merely a few days in Rudaheim change her that much?
No matter the cause, one and only one intent flooded within him - nip that repugnant boldness in its root before it could grow beyond his control.
With his arm raised, his fingers approached her neck, imagining how it would feel to crush it in his palm.
"Stop right there, Crown Prince."
Though against his own will, Elvin strangely stopped, but the frenzy in his expression deepened.
Undeterred, Vivia hadn't moved the slightest inch. Even Nethermoor's eternal winter paled in the face of her brutal iciness.
"I've come face-to-face with death, Crown Prince Elvin. That experience has opened my eyes to reality. The errors I made while living as my past self haunted me when I felt I'd truly breathe my last. That's why I've sworn to not repeat them. The kind and docile sister you thought you could press under your thumb forever is gone. If kindness doesn't get through you, then my resistance will."
Her words reached his ears that only further aggravated the pain throbbing across his cheek. Violence continued to pulsate in his trembling fingers, eager for her neck, yet they couldn't reach her.
"We don't have time for this, Brother."
Aeren's arm stretched between them, bringing a halt to Elvin's march.
"We need to come to a decision about the Crown Prince's proposition. The more we take time, the more we'll be seen as weak."
"...Did you not see what she did?"
Aeren's impassive countenance remained as it was. "This is not the place to deal with it. We need to handle the demons first."
"So you saw everything, yet you want me to…bear it all and do nothing?"
"You've accepted the crown on your head, Brother. No matter where we are, national matters take precedence over personal grudges."
Even from afar, his lord's ire sprang the hair on Xaviston's back straight, with cold beads of sweat trickling down the side of his ears.
Xaviston forced himself to step forward, bowing deeply. "Your Highness, please forgive me for rude interruption, but…I concur with the second prince. We must discuss what to do next."
Elvin trembled. Enraged, livid, resentful - he wanted to give a lethal form to these bubbling emotions by squeezing her neck, yet he stood at a place where he couldn't exercise his authority.
Vivia retracted her gaze from Elvin and found Xaviston's. "The only logical thing to do is accept the treaty."
"...You'll tell me what to do now?" The frost in his voice only deepened.
Her voice toned just a bit. "I admit I erred. It was a simple present on my part, but it turned out to be an important tradition for them. Yet…Crown Prince Zerath didn't stop me or warn me. In fact, he went along with it, which tells me that he had planned this entire flow of conversation."
"And you fell right into it!"
Her eyes narrowed. "What's done cannot be undone. It's in our best interests to sign the treaty. I see nothing wrong with it. It's too little a price to pay than going through a marriage."
"Of course you'd say that," his facial muscles flexed with bloodthirst. "I should sacrifice my plans to cover up for your blunder, is it?"
"How is it a sacrifice when Sir Xaviston clarified that those were just rumors-" her eyes then stretched wide upon realization. "Are you…really looking for freshwater sources in the Realm of Harmony?"
"You never had any right to question my decisions. Past or the present, so shut your lips before I sew them shut myself."
"Sew my lips shut? I'd love to see you try. Go ahead."
An even grimmer silence ensued. Her blatant questions only added fuel to the already burning fire. Every passing moment proved arduous to keep holding the lid on his exploding feelings.
"If I made a blunder by giving him the brooch, then you're not doing anything different. It's clear that venturing into the forest would unnecessarily provoke the demons. We can maintain peace if we back off and continue our trade as it has been going on. The treaty is the clear win here. No harm, no foul."
"NEVER!"
The remnants of his blasting voice took even Vivia aback, not expecting this range of obsession.
"Continue our trade? A humiliating trade that we had to bow to because the demons poisoned our water!?"
"And we retaliated by destroying their land."
"Of course we did! But enough is enough."
His voice dropped to an eerie low. "I'm not a coward like the previous Kings, including Father. I refuse to walk on eggshells. Emberlain under my rule would never cooperate with the disgusting demons, and the path to that is forging my way through to get that damn water by hook or by crook. I'd carve my own legacy. A treaty to keep my hands off the Realm of Harmony is the last thing I'd ever agree to, you fool!"
The madness in his dark irises was absolute. The contradiction between Zerath and Elvin felt like a different world entirely. Though Elvin's intentions served the betterment of Emberlain on face value, reality would hit them very differently if he continued down this path.
They looked like two sides of the same coin - one man who would never think of threatening the peace between their realms and rather continue the status quo, and another man who was ready to shed the cloak of fear and strike with his blade rather than bow his head.
"And? To what ends will you go to achieve this? Sacrifice your sister over a mere treaty?"
"Mere? I'll claw out your mouth if you dare call my ambitions mere. I want to stand at the top where I finally get to look down upon the demons, not look at them. So to what end will I go to achieve my goals, you ask?"
A menacing chuckle stirred the air with an unpleasant jitter.
"Yes, sacrificing my sister sounds good enough. Your only duty was to get married off anyway. Now that I think about it, didn't you always advocate for the demons, wishing for our realms' unification? You adore them so much, so go ahead and marry one. In fact a demon is much better. Your permanent relocation to Rudaheim would erase your existence from Emberlain for good. So between sacrificing my ambitions and you, I choose to sacrifice you, Clairette."