Starlight Manor

After that evening, Alois barely speaks a word after that. Lise doesn’t say much either. She doesn't quite know what to say, can’t formulate a single sentence in her head that’s worth saying. Her words won’t change anything.

They go to bed in silence. Weyah, after her bath, falls asleep instantly once she curls up between them, no doubt exhausted from her day. Alois falls in and out of sleep fitfully. Lise gives up on sleep early on and stays awake, staring at Weyah’s peaceful, sleeping face the entire night. Eventually she buries her own face into the pillow, the fabric absorbing the wetness of her tears.

When she finally raises her head, Weyah is gone, and Alois is standing and pulling his shirt on. The blood-smeared one from yesterday is gone, nowhere to be found.

“I want to show you something,” he says to Lise. Lise, pretending to blink sleep out of her eyes, fakes a yawn and nods. Alois gives her a look like he knows better, but he doesn’t say anything.

The something he referred to turns out to be a small garter snake, lying motionless in a small pool of crimson on the stone ground.

Lise’s bottom lip is wobbling already at the sight of it. She’s emotionally fragile enough at the moment; this is not helping. “Why is it hurt?”

“I stabbed it,” Alois says curtly. Weyah, standing beside him in a long white nightgown, nods fervently at his words. “It’s dead.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Just watch.” Alois points to Weyah as the little girl swatches a razor-sharp little piece of paper across her thumb, watching the red well up, and Lise gasps. She presses her thumb against the snake’s wound, and slowly but surely, the snake begins to stir. He writhes, as if confused, until the stab wound heals completely, and the moment Weyah pulls her finger back, he slithers away faster than Lise has ever seen a snake move in her entire life.

Gaping, Lise can’t help but throw her arms around Weyah. “That’s amazing!” she cries, shaking the little girl. She hears Weyah giggle into her chest. “You’re like a little goddess!”

Alois is smiling half-heartedly in the snake’s direction. “Sorry, little guy,” he says, and turns back to Lise. “She could kill you twenty times over and bring you back, each and every time. Like it’s nothing.”

Lise laughs and pulls back, petting Weyah’s hair. “She wouldn’t kill me,” she says. “She loves me.”

“You don’t want to see what it would be like to die?” Alois twirls a knife around his hand with ease, raising an eyebrow at her. Weyah smiles up at her, and the innocence of it makes it even scarier. “Danger free.”

Lise’s small finger reaches out to touch the knife, lowering Alois’s aim from her heart to her stomach.

“Not at all,” she says, and they both laugh. Weyah turns her big eyes at her brother, then at Lise, and laughs again along with them.

“What’s so funny?”

Lise’s head whips around.

Alois’s mother—Kwithra. Mayuri had named her that night that Lise had spied on him and Cami. She’s draped in a long red dress, but her skin is so deathly pale that it’s almost unnatural to see her outdoors. She moves with such an intense strangeness, a coldness that makes Lise wonder if it’s perhaps her magical aura she’s feeling. It’s as if the flowers around her should either wilt or freeze in her wake.

Remembering with a start that she’s supposed to be working, she immediately lunges for the rake leaning against the house and starts gathering leaves together with it at an incredible speed. She sees Weyah hold back a small smile out of the corner of her eye.

“Weyah was just showing Lise some of her magic,” Alois says, his voice clipped. “That’s all.”

Kwithra’s eyes flash, but only for a moment. “I thought Lise was supposed to be doing our yard work,” she says. Her gaze turns on Lise, stern and unyielding. “I am paying her for it, after all.”

Lise holds up her rake and smiles with all the confidence she can muster. “Of course, ma’am.”

“She was, Mother,” Weyah says. “It was only for a second.”

“Why don’t you participate too, Mother?” Alois’s words are innocent, but his voice is nothing less than venomous, vehemently so. “Show Lise your abilities.”

“Oh, no,” the woman says modestly with a sweet smile, but her eyes are threatening, warning Alois to stop talking. “I won’t bore your friend with my silly magic tricks.”

Alois shakes his head at Lise. “Mother is strong,” he says meaningfully. “Really strong. She says that practice and patience is the key to becoming a good assassin, but she doesn’t mean it.” He glances back up at her, his gaze like ice. “For someone who has powers like hers, she wouldn’t need any practice at all.”

—

“You’re an idiot.”

That’s the first thing Alois says to her later that day when Lise is sitting in front of their room’s vanity for the first time in her life brushing her hair, trying to encompass the graceful aura of Alois’s elder brother as she does so. She bristles over at him, momentarily getting her hairbrush stuck in her tangled curls. “I didn’t even do anything!”

“You’ve never raked a day in your life,” Alois says with a grin, shaking his head. “It was so obvious.”

“You’d never done a single chore in your life before you met me,” Lise grumbles. “So I don’t know why you’re talking.” She points an accusatory finger at Weyah, who’s still holding back a huge smile. “That goes for you too, missy.”

“It was funny,” Weyah says, giggling.

“You really should do something, though,” Alois says thoughtfully. “Before they find a reason to try and kick you out.”

“I can go downstairs and ask for a broom to sweep the hallways,” Lise suggests. “I’m good at sweeping.”

Alois nods. He rises to his feet. “I’ll go with you.”

“I got it, Al,” Lise assures him. “Spend time with your sister.” He hesitates, and before he can argue, Lise slips out of the room.

Finding a broom is easy. She spots Gideon with one and has to run to catch up with him to see if she can borrow it. He looks relieved at her offer to sweep and gives it to her with a bow.

The dark halls are long and endless and irritatingly clean. Lise sweeps for ten minutes before she even finds a sliver of dust on those clean floors.

“Why Alois doesn’t…” a voice trails off, and Lise freezes. She knows that voice.

“Like you?” supplies another voice. Mayuri.

Three wide, quiet steps and she spots them both, standing in the corner. Cami is frowning at him, a slight downturn of his lips.

“Does it hurt your feelings?” Mayuri pouts at him. “That your baby brother doesn’t like you?”

“Of course not,” Cami says, flipping his long white hair over a shoulder. “He is just being a brat.”

“Children will be children,” Mayuri agrees smoothly. “One day he will understand what you have done for him. What the Starlights have done for him. But as of now, Alois wants his freedom. He does not want this life.” He raises an eyebrow at his friend. “There are many people who would not, dear Cami. Surely you understand why.”

“To not want it, he is a fool,” Cami says. “To have it is a blessing. A purpose.”

“He is too kind for such a purpose,” Mayuri says, inclining his head. His earrings chime softly. “He is too soft.”

“He is weak,” Cami corrects. “But he will learn.”

Mayuri’s smirk glimmers in the darkness, the lamplight illuminating his purple hair. “You truly think he will stay?”

“He has no choice,” Cami says dismissively. “What will he be if he leaves again?”

“Free,” Mayuri says. “By his definition.”

“He has embarrassed this family enough. If Alois wants to pretend he is anything but a killer at his core, he can live that lie. But he denies himself. He denies his family name. Until the day he can accept himself, he is nothing.”

He is nothing.

Her body moves first, leagues and bounds before her mind can catch up to it. The next thing she registers is the sound of the broom hitting the floor, a loud clack against the stone of the hallway.

Slowly, Cami turns to face Lise. He glances down at her hand, which is now clamped down firmly around his wrist. His face is a mask of calm, simmering annoyance.

“You think he’s useless?” Lise demands tightly. “That he must be nothing unless he’s a killer? That it’s his only choice?”

“Of course,” Cami says simply. “He is a Starlight. It is his destiny.”

“No,” Lise snaps. “He’s not just some tool. He’s your brother.” Her small hand grips even tighter around his wrist, and the slightly surprised twist of Cami’s face gives away his surprise at her strength. “And you don’t own him.”

The tall, gaunt ghost of a man just stares at her, his dead eyes unreadable. His little comrade with the bright hair and the makeup just watches from his place beneath the lamplight, a half-smirk curling his thin mouth, and doesn’t interject.

“Do not begin to think you understand what it is to be in Alois’s position, little brat,” Cami says tightly, looking his nose down at her. “You’re just a nobody.”

“You’re right,” Lise says angrily. “I am a nobody. And I don’t understand his position, not at all. But I also don’t understand how you can stand there and think it’s your responsibility to dictate his life for him.” She lifts a finger at him accusingly. “You’re a control freak, a suck-up, and a jerk, Cami. That’s why Alois doesn’t fucking like you.”

She snatches up the broom and sweeps up the tiny pile of dust and dirt angrily. Cami just gives her that flat, blank stare, even as his friend’s laugh echoes all around the hall surrounding them. Furious, Lise grabs her dustpan and storms away.