To You, Who Shines

The carriage ride home had been awkwardly quiet. Eris hadn’t shown any signs of being displeased with her, even going as far as sending her maids to help Siffia undress, but the way that she stayed in the carriage and didn’t come out to see Siffia off made her feel as if something had broken between them. Siffia couldn’t help but feel that she’d messed up somehow, berating herself for ever having broached such an apparently loadbearing topic, aware that it had been the cause behind Eris’s change.

And it was while she sat on her bed, biting her nails and trying to understand what she’d done wrong, that her mother suddenly appeared in her room.

Though she’d been the one to barge in without even knocking, the way that Siffia’s mother seemed to be cautiously deciding on what to say before she finally spoke was very uncharacteristic of her.

-And the way that she hesitated to get right to the point, instead opting to make small talk with Siffia as she’d never done before, was even more so.

“So… How have you been?”

“Me? Uh… I’ve… I’ve been fine...?”

“I see. …You’ve been keeping yourself busy?”

“...I... have? Um, y-yes. In fact, I’ve b-been learning new magic lately...”

“Good good. And how was the banquet?”

“It… It was okay.”

Though there were quite notable good and bad parts, Siffia wasn’t willing to talk about any of it with her mother, quickly realizing that almost everything that had happened would be a sensitive topic to discuss.

“Ah yes, well... that’s better than nothing, I suppose. …And, hmm…”

Her mother made an expression that Siffia had never seen on her before, one that seemed to speak of a subtle yet terribly uncomfortable awkwardness.

“You and Lady Mescal are… er… You're still close?”

With the topic of Eris suddenly coming up, Siffia’s eyes quickly squinted towards her mother, her distrust growing. Her mind raced with possibilities. Could it be that her father had pressured her mother? Had he sent her here in the hopes that she could somehow convince Siffia to speed up the ordered attack on Eris’s brothers?

-But her mother’s next words quickly blew such thoughts out of the water.

“Siffia… All alphas are wolves, no matter how much they might try to hide it. You know this, right? Don’t trust them just because they might act nice to you for a little while or send you gifts to win you over! They’re wolves, Siffia, wolves! And once they have you, they won’t put on such nice acts with you anymore!!!”

The serious and worried expression that her mother was making was so strong that Siffia couldn’t help but mirror it, although with a hint of confusion mixed in. Although she didn’t know what was happening and couldn't connect why her mother had brought up such a thing out of the blue, Siffia could only quietly nod along to appease her. This brought a shallow sigh of relief out of her mother, although the look of worry didn’t seem to want to leave her face.

“Well, as long as you understand, then…”

And like a storm, her mother left without another word. It was so abrupt and quick that it almost felt like a dream. Siffia stared at the door, dumbfounded.

“What… What was that all about???”

…Had her father perhaps finally found an alpha to sell her off to? But what about his plans to use her on Eris’s brothers? Had he finally given up on that for some reason? And why had her mother brought up Eris in the first place???

Yet more questions were piled onto Siffia’s already churning mind. That night, she went to bed with a fever, seemingly overloaded by it all.

~~~

The room was hot. Siffia’s breaths came out in short rapid huffs. A sweet, soft scent filled the room. It was hard to breathe. It was hard to think. Siffia couldn’t tell what was going on. All she knew for sure was that her body was burning. It needed something. Something.

Her mind wandered with fever, unable to focus for quite some time, until a tisking sound and the feeling of a cold hand against her forehead seemed to pull her out of her haze.

“...It’s a wonder that such an irresponsible girl could have possibly gone off to war without dying or coming back pregnant...”

Counter to the dismissive tone, the cool hand gently stroked across Siffia’s forehead, the touch filled with care. Just as Siffia was relishing in the feel of it, the hand suddenly pulled away, and she could hear the sound of footsteps walking away from her. She willed her eyes open, but could only just barely squint before they would force themselves closed again under the weight of her exhaustion. Turning her head was also of course out of the question. Thankfully, however, her ears had yet to betray her, and she was just barely able to listen to the conversation on the other side of her door.

“Take care of her properly. No slacking off as you normally do. You have my permission to go to one of my personal maids for access to my medicine stash. …Make sure to give her something high quality.”

The sound of footsteps getting farther away from her resounded once again, leaving Siffia feeling both unbearably warm and yet somehow chillingly cold. Her eyelashes fluttered, growing wet with the tears that she couldn’t help but shed. A sob tore harshly through her throat. Although her mother had often ignored Siffia in the wake of her father and brother’s cruelty to spare herself any trouble, she could still remember the few rare times that she’d fallen ill throughout her life that her mother had suddenly shown up just like this to offer her care. Each and every time it had happened, Siffia had always cried like this, feeling especially weakened and terribly confused.

However, this time the tears weren’t as thick, and the sobs not nearly as rough. This time, Siffia had someone even more gentle and caring to compare her mother’s rare attentions to.

“La-...dy… Err…ris…”

As the exhaustion took hold of her and she finally returned to the darkness, the one who held her heart appeared in her mind’s eye.

~~~

A day had passed. True to her mother’s orders, the maids spared no amount of care in tending to Siffia. Her father was too busy to care about his failure of a daughter’s heat, and her brother found the whole thing ‘disgusting’ when it came to his sister, as he always had, and refused to get anywhere near her. With the help of the medicine from her mother’s stash working on her, Siffia had mostly come back to her senses enough to sit up, eat, and read with little to no effort.

If there was any concern for her right now, it had to be Eris.

Contrary to all of her previous worries, Eris had tried to visit her as usual yesterday. However, with how incapacitated she was, and how the maids were actually properly doing their jobs for her at the moment, visitors weren’t allowed, as Siffia was ‘deeply unwell’. From what she was told, Eris, knowing how Siffia was usually treated in the manor, had immediately grown suspicious and raised a fuss, but Siffia’s mother had come forward to reassure her and send her away in a rare dutiful display.

Siffia had found it quite impressive that her mother had managed to convince Eris to return home, knowing how domineering and unrelenting Eris could be.

Of course, now that a day had passed and Siffia had gotten much better, her mother would no longer be willing to throw herself in the path of danger like that any longer. With Eris in the front room demanding to see her, only Siffia would be left to handle the situation now.

Were this a normal occasion, Siffia would have of course welcomed Eris with open arms long ago. However, knowing how scandalous and possibly life ruining it could be for the both of them should they, two omegas, be caught meeting during such a time, deeply scared her. The possible rumors that could emerge might be as reputation destroying as if they’d been directly caught doing something.

Though Siffia believed herself to have no lower to sink, she wasn’t willing to risk harming Eris in any possible way just to see her a day sooner. And so, although Eris repeatedly demanded to be led to Siffia’s room, Siffia just as stubbornly told the maids to tell her ‘no’.

The pair had indeed grown quite close, but Siffia, wishing to look good in front of the person who held her heart, did not want to tell her something so vulgar as her ‘heat’ was happening. In polite company, one would simply refer to the afflicted person as being ‘quite sickly’, or perhaps ‘bedridden’, treating it for the most part as any normal illness to save face. Siffia had, at first, attempted to send Eris away with such mundane excuses. However, when Eris didn’t seem swayed by such words in the slightest, Siffia began to try using the more creative commonly known phrases, hoping that Eris might catch the hint.

Sadly, though, they hadn’t seemed to be working.

It was after Siffia’s fifth struggle to come up with a metaphor that she finally couldn’t help but stop and laugh at the crazy string of words that she’d created. Things had gotten to the point that perhaps it would have been less as embarrassing to have just come right out and explained the problem from the beginning. Eris had already been at her house for two hours now; Anyone that might have somehow found out about her heat would have already had plenty enough material to work with by now. She was literally sparing nothing at this point by keeping Eris away from her like this.

With how well she’d come to know Eris, she should have already known that she wouldn’t have left so easily.

“Hee~… Perhaps... I’ve been a fool.”

With a cheesy smile of acceptance, Siffia finally gave up her ridiculous game.