Chapter 389: The Snobbish Girl
Third Person’s POV
And in her timidness, she misunderstood their stare, resulting in her clinging to him with nervous rigidity, as her soft grip contrasted the stiff tension in her posture.
On the other hand, Velcy was as silent as ever as she walked a fraction behind him with her scarred face watchful as her ice blue eyes flicked warily across the hostile crowd.
At last, after threading through the sea of beings, they reached the space beneath the crimson banner decorated with a forest overcast by a bloody moon.
The massive cloth rippled faintly overhead, and its deep scarlet caught the light and painted the surroundings around it into a place that seemed to be perpetually stained with blood.
Beneath its shadow, the world seemed to grow quieter, heavier, and it seemed as if he had crossed an unseen threshold.
He instantly concluded that this was most likely a magical artifact, and to his surprise, it was empty, eerily so, save for one figure.
It was a young girl around his age with hair the color of freshly spilled blood and her blood red eyes bored as she sat alone with her posture composed yet radiating an astounding degree of arrogance.
She simply did not behave like an ordinary teenage girl who had come out to visit the world for the first time.
Instead, as her scarlet eyes swept across the gathering, they were only filled with an undisguised contempt that seemed to scream that each individual in the square was some lowly peasant beneath her heel.
In her oblivious and self absorbed state, she did not even spare Ethan a glance when he stopped beside her with his two companions in tow.
And only when his shadow brushed across her did she finally register his presence.
She gave a slight start, and the smallest tremble of her beautiful lashes betrayed her surprise, which she quickly masked with her practiced mask of derision.
She turned to him, and her lips parted to say something, yet the moment her gaze landed on Lucy and Velcy behind him, her words died mid-breath.
Her expression twisted, and her brow knitted in displeasure.
She pointed a pale, slender finger toward them and spoke in a sharp, cutting tone that dripped with snobbery and righteous accusation.
"Who are you, and why are you dragging two non-bloodlings here with you? Do you think such lowly people can stand among us?
Do you think they can join the Blood Goblet Society?"
Her righteous anger rose with every syllable, and her voice swelled as though Ethan had already committed some unforgivable crime.
Ethan was totally flabbergasted at her pompous attitude and tone that sounded like she was interrogating a servant.
In the next second, he frowned faintly in displeasure at her shrillness.
And when he finally spoke, his voice was level, dismissive, flat, and devoid of any emotion.
"I am Eryndor Sangrial," he said evenly.
"And these are my companions."
For the girls, he offered no names and no explanations, which she had clearly askedfor from him.
The content of his words and the tone in which he spoke alone dismissed her question outright, as though her authority meant nothing to him.
And like he predicted, it only stoked her fury.
A visible spark ignited in her scarlet eyes, and for an instant, Ethan could almost see a bloody radiance pulse within them.
"Y–You..." Her voice cracked with indignation.
Her finger trembled as she jabbed it toward him, and she clenched her sharp incisors so tightly her lips paled.
The righteous anger in her face was almost comical, yet the disbelief in her tone made it clear she thought he had blasphemed something sacred.
But then, just as suddenly, her expression faltered, confusion crept on her face, and her brows knitted together as though replaying his words in her head.
"Did you just say... You are one of the Sangrials?"
Looking at the variety of expressions flashing across her face, Ethan tilted his head slightly and watched her face shift between rage and doubt as if he were watching a comedy show.
The contrast in her behaviors was so stark it dragged a small, quiet chuckle from his throat though the sound of it, faint as it was, made her bristle with even greater outrage.
"What’s so funny!" she snapped, her voice rising with a shrill pitch.
"You call yourself a Sangrial, yet I have never seen you in the family castle.
And you didn’t even follow the proper family custom when meeting me!
You are nothing but an imposter."
Her lips curled into a vicious grin, and soon, the previous arrogance bordering on extreme overconfidence flashed bright in her crimson eyes.
She looked him up and down with open disdain as if she had realized something before casting a pointed glance at Lucy and Velcy behind him, whose stormy expressions betrayed their loathing of her behavior.
The girl, however, remained utterly oblivious and basked in her own delusion of superiority.
Hearing her words and analyzing her behavior, comprehension flickered across Ethan’s face as her words sank in.
He understood now—this haughty, blood-haired girl was undoubtedly a young mistress of the Sangrial clan who was truly spoiled rotten and indulged until arrogance had become second nature.
But the more he saw of her, the more the previous faint amusement in his crimson eyes dimmed.
In its place, indifference settled, and it was sharp and cold as he was not a jester who would entertain her arrogance and dance according to her wishes.
When he finally spoke again, his tone carried that same flat edge, like a blade hidden beneath silk.
"What custom?"
Her scarlet lips curved into a smile far too exaggerated, as she lost herself in her smugness.
She leaned back and crossed her pale legs elegantly while folding her slim arms across her chest, as though she were some judge presiding over a court.
"See?" she said, her voice dripping with mockery.
"You don’t even know the simplest custom, that when you stand before me, one has to bow and greet me first."