"Aren't you going to thank me?"
"Thank you."
"That's it?"
"Of course not."
When Remesis answered him with an impenetrable face, Michel narrowed his eyes and let out a short, mirthless chuckle. Something like surprise flickered in his eyes — perhaps he had expected more from his unexpected role as a savior.
"What are you doing? Didn't I do this just to save you?" a note of feigned offense sounded in his tone.
"Did I ask you to?" Remesis parried, not even looking at him.
In the end, after they both had recovered a bit from everything that had just happened, a heavy, viscous silence once again hung between them.
Michel continued to smoke, releasing plumes of smoke into the darkness of the night, while Remesis convulsively, feverishly pondered what she should do next. But not a single sensible thought came to her mind — her mind seemed to be covered with a cotton blanket, leaving only a dull, throbbing pain.
She truly had not expected that something like this could happen to her tonight. In an instant, the place she had considered her safest refuge at the moment had turned into the most dangerous one. The walls that were supposed to protect her had become a trap.
And who would have thought that the cause of this would be the person Remesis had until very recently considered her closest, most reliable ally?..
With a sharp, abrupt movement, Remesis tore the necklace from her neck.
As soon as she removed the magnificent jewel-encrusted ornament, she threw it to the floor with force. A loud, ringing clatter sounded — metal struck stone, and the precious stones with chipped facets scattered in different directions. Michel's eyes widened in surprise.
The same went for her earrings and rings. Remesis pulled each pearl from her ears, tearing them off with such rough, almost fierce force that her earlobes reddened, and hurled the jewelry to the floor. The rings, one after another, flew after them, clinking and rolling across the stone slabs.
"What are you doing?" Michel exclaimed.
In an instant, the jewels scattered across the floor. There was no need to mention that these were things her brother Livius had given her.
Immediately after her arrival at the mansion, apart from her new luxurious room, her brother had also presented her with many expensive ornaments. He had probably done this to make amends in this way. It was all too well known how the duke's youngest daughter had been treated in this mansion before.
While her older sister Katrina had been immersed in luxury and jewels since childhood, Remesis in her childhood could not even claim a fraction of that. And so now that Livius had become the new head of this house, he perhaps decided to make up for what she had been deprived of for years.
Only… The truth was that Remesis had never really been interested in jewels or trinkets like that. And at the time, she had accepted them from her brother only as a token of appreciation towards him. But now… All of it no longer made any sense. Every stone, every ring reminded her of the lies she had been fed all these days.
"No, if you're going to do that, do you perhaps want to wake up the whole house?!"
"I don't care," Remesis's voice sounded frighteningly calm.
She didn't even snort, but gathered her tangled and disheveled hair with quick, focused movements. It was an incomparably calm movement for a person whose soul was engulfed by incomparable anger.
Perplexed, Michel asked her:
"What do you plan to do now?"
"...I don't know."
Remesis leaned against the stair railing, feeling completely empty. This was because right now it was difficult for her to even maintain sound thinking.
Her brother was silent for a while, as if assessing the situation and weighing his words, before cautiously speaking first:
"Honestly, I didn't know about this either. No, I didn't even suspect," Michel said, a bitter note sounding in his voice. "Who would have thought that idiot could actually do such a thing? It seems he's completely lost his mind!"
Remesis said nothing to him.
"Ha… This is truly absurd," he snorted. "All these days he kept me locked in a closet, wouldn't even give me a sip of water a day. He could have just let me go, but no. It seems he simply enjoyed tormenting me. He enjoyed feeling my helplessness."
Remesis remained silent.
"Every day, the room I was in was guarded by watchmen, so I had no chance to escape. So I had to lie low and wait. Wait until they let their guard down… These last days I behaved quieter than a mouse, and it seems it worked. They decided I had given up. So I finally managed to seize a moment, knock them out, and escape," he spoke quickly, as if afraid that if he stopped, he wouldn't be able to continue.
"...I see," Remesis said shortly.
"I don't know very well what exactly that bastard is planning, but…"
Remesis interrupted Michel's words with a wave of her hand.
"I don't want to hear anything more about him."
Remesis pondered Michel's words for a moment, but not for long. At least, her second brother's motives were more than obvious to her. It was obvious that this guy intended to establish sole control over the duchy by imprisoning his father and getting rid of his older brother.
Ultimately, these were just dirty internecine squabbles of a noble family over power. Remesis wasn't very interested in them right now. In fact, the affairs of the Carter duchy were the least of her concerns at the moment.
"I know. I'm not the person I should discuss something like this with. Probably, for you, as the princess of the North, it doesn't matter at all, right?" Michel grinned bitterly. "But ultimately, it's about that bastard Livius. I know you were close with him… That guy who was always supposed to stand behind the scenes and just quietly support our family from the side. Who would have thought that one day he'd pull something like this? It seems the folk saying is true. Still waters run deep…"
"Didn't I already say I don't want to hear anything more about him?" Remesis's voice sounded sharper.
"...Sorry," Michel faltered. "Anyway, I'm also grateful to you. Thanks to us working so well together, we managed to easily neutralize those bastards."
Remesis sighed heavily — as if trying to exhale all the pain and anger that had accumulated inside.
"You didn't have to tell me that. I was only saving myself."
She responded to Michel's gratitude without any expression, in a voice devoid of any emotion. Her older brother sighed at these empty words, bleached by anger and hatred, and fell silent for a while, pondering the next question.
"Are you returning north?"
"No way. I will never return north again."
That's how Remesis could have answered if emotions had gotten the better of her, if she had allowed herself to be honest at that moment. But ultimately, she still didn't know. Should she really return north…?
No matter how you looked at it, and as regrettable as it sounded, it seemed that right now it truly was the only place she could return to. Yes, it was ironic, since the girl had always strived to leave the north and one day return to her homeland, the south.
But now… She was seriously doubting her plans. Could the south really become a comfortable and safe place for her? Where did she have a home? And did she even have one? Remesis had no answers to these questions. Everything she had known before had collapsed overnight, and now she stood amidst the ruins, not knowing where to go next.
In the end, Remesis just sighed and smiled weakly, almost helplessly. There was not a drop of joy in this smile — only tiredness and bitterness.
"Even if I tried to return north, leaving the capital in the middle of the night would be difficult. So in any case, I'll have to stay here a while longer."
Michel raised his eyebrows, genuine surprise reflected on his face.
"Are you really going to stay here…?"
Stay here? After everything that happened? That would be absurd. Mad.
"My brother betrayed me. The person I trusted most. Do you think I can stay here?" her voice almost broke, and all the pain she had been holding back until that moment sounded in it.
Michel shrugged when he saw that Remesis's heart was filled with these absurd emotions.
"You trusted a person you didn't even really know," he said, and there was no judgment in his voice, only a statement of fact. "Is it worth regretting that?"
"What about you?" Remesis frowned, a challenge flaring in her eyes. "Isn't Livius your brother too?"
"In the Carter family, the second eldest son is a burden. So… actually, I never really had high hopes for him. Family ties don't matter in such a situation."
These words, spoken by her older brother, sounded quite cold. No, even more than that. They were full of icy, ruthless rationalism. In the Carter family, family ties and affection were always secondary, giving way to the family's benefit and well-being.
So right now, Michel was speaking like a true heir of this family. He thought of Livius not primarily as his brother, but as a threat that had shaken the family's condition and his own position. As an enemy who needed to be neutralized.
But Remesis was in no mood to discuss the affairs of their callous family right now. She was sickened by this cold calculation, by how easily they were all ready to cast aside blood ties when it came to power.
"...I'm tired. Let's not talk about this anymore."
Michel fell silent without argument. He just continued to smoke silently, and his profile against the darkness seemed carved from stone.
Ultimately, they didn't have much time left to spend in peace and quiet. Soon dawn would break, and chaos would rise in the Carter mansion. She and Michel, of course, had to get out of here before that happened.
And yet… Remesis needed a little more time to catch her breath. To gather herself piece by piece. To try to figure out what to do next.
There was no further conversation. Remesis sat in silence a little longer, and then she vomited.
"Ugh…"
In the morning, Livius had begged her to eat a little — the girl hadn't eaten well in recent days, and her complexion was pale. But now Remesis truly regretted doing so.
Everything she had put in her mouth came pouring out. Her stomach twisted in a spasm, vomit and acidic fluid mixed with food residue flowed in a stream from her throat. Her body rejected everything it had received from the hands of a traitor.
The fluid splattered Remesis's nightgown, and she sank to her knees right into a puddle of her own vomit. She didn't even have the strength to hold her body upright. Her hands trembled, her knees buckled, and her vision darkened.
Michel stopped smoking and rose to his feet worriedly.
"Hey, what's wrong with you?" he took a step towards her, reaching out his hand.
He wanted to touch her shoulder to pat it. But Remesis stopped him with a sharp gesture of her hand. She didn't want anyone touching her right now.
So Michel just stood helplessly, lowering his hand, and watched her, not knowing what to do. Confusion and something else — perhaps sympathy — were reflected in his eyes.
Tears involuntarily welled up in Remesis's eyes.
Livius had truly betrayed her.
No, not that. He hadn't just betrayed her. He had destroyed everything that was between them. Every memory, every warm word, every glance she had thought was filled with brotherly care — all of it was now poisoned, distorted, turned into a dirty farce.
Who would have thought that her brother had actually had such thoughts all along?…
To Remesis, it seemed simply disgusting. Revolting. Nauseating.
Before, even when her second brother's behavior sometimes seemed strange to her, when his glances lingered on her a little longer than they should, when his touches became too insistent, she turned a blind eye to it. All because she couldn't even have imagined something like this.
Brother and sister, who, although not raised together, were bound by close ties. How could something like this happen to them? How could his thoughts have gone down such a path?
Remesis recalled the sensation of his kisses on her skin — there, where she least expected to receive them. She felt nauseous again. A sensation of cold rose up her arms from the stone floor she barely touched, but she didn't even feel that her hands were freezing. The physical cold was nothing compared to the cold that had seized her soul.
Remesis continued to shed hot, burning tears while Michel stood quietly nearby. The feeling of betrayal coiled inside her in a tight knot and constricted her throat. Like a demon hiding inside had suddenly emerged and spoiled the picture she had considered perfect, tearing to shreds everything she had believed in.
All she had had was her love for her brother, that very love she had cherished for so long, hoping she had finally found a kindred soul. And that love was now torn to pieces, trampled into the dirt.