Starlight Manor

Never in Lise’s life has she seen a house like this.

Every inch of it, from the arched doorway all the way down the front hall, is intricately drenched in an aura of uncompromising wealth, a wealth of the likes she’s never seen. The floors, vast and cold and unyielding, are a polished white marble, and the loud, slapping sound of Lise’s bare feet echo against it throughout the hallway. She glances this way and that, attempting to take it all in as the old man, a platter with a couple of fancy looking beverages balanced expertly on one hand, guides them down the long, winding hall. White, thick candles glow warmly in golden sconces all the way down the tall black walls, the warm glow of them reflecting faintly off the marble floor. Alois is quiet and serene beside her, the candlelight flickering off his sharp, pale face, failing to warm the coldness of his eyes.

“How have you been, Alois?” the man asks her friend, looking down at him. His wrinkled face is warm and kind.

“I’ve been well,” is Alois’ blunt response. “Thank you, Gideon.”

“And your friend?”

“I’m Lise,” Lise says to him, offering him a wide, happy smile. “Thank you so much for having me, Mr. Gideon.”

“Of course, Miss Lise,” Gideon says, his head turning back to face her. “It’s very nice to make your acquaintance. We do not get very many guests here.”

“With a place this huge?” Lise asks, her eyebrows shooting up. “What a shame.”

Gideon does not respond, nor does Alois. Lise’s words hang in the silence in the dark, empty hallway, the chill of the air around her seeming to ripple with tension. When she meets Alois’s eyes, he shoots her a glance, his eyes flashing with inscrutable emotion.

“My mother isn’t a fan of… having people over,” he says shortly. “She’s selfish like that.”

In front of them, Gideon is almost deathly quiet. Even his footsteps are nearly imperceptible, so light they seem soundless.

“Don’t speak ill of your mother now, Alois,” he says. His tone is still friendly but with an odd air to it, something like fear coating his timid words.

“You don’t have to be afraid of her, Gideon,” Alois tells the man dryly. “I know she’s away.”

Gideon lets out a short, tremulous breath. “Right you are, Alois,” he murmurs, his voice barely higher than a whisper, “Right you are.”

“How do you know she’s away?” Lise questions him.

“My sister told me,” Alois says simply.

Lise gawks at him. “You have a sister?”

“I just said I do.”

“Is that who you’ve been writing to this whole time?”

“That would be her.”

“Is she older or younger?”

Alois is clearly holding back a smile. “Younger.”

Lise slaps him hard on the arm, the sound making Gideon flinch slightly in front of them. She winces apologetically in the old man’s direction before whispering furiously to Alois, “You never told me you had a little sister!”

“Well, I’m telling you now.”

“You’re the worst.” Lise crosses her arms, glaring across at Alois as they walk. “Is she cute?”

“The cutest.”

“Is she home?”

“Probably,” Alois says. At Lise’s murderous glare, he really does smile this time. “I’ll introduce you.”

“You better.”

Gideon hoists the tray higher upon his shoulder before he leads them into a bright, white and gray room—the kitchen. Cabinets adorn the walls by the dozens. The tile floor is so clean that Lise can’t even bring herself to look down at the kind of filth she’s trekked in with her. She could run laps in here, it’s so large. And the wide ceilings are strangely high, so high Lise has to crane her head to see them.

“Thank you, Gideon,” a voice rings out to their left, and Alois automatically tenses beside her.

At the kitchen table, a long, wooden surface that stretches across a large expanse of the room, a man with long hair delicately plucks a pretty green cocktail from the tray. He takes a small sip before looking up at them and smiling thinly, placidly.

He’s kind of freakish looking, as bad as that sounds to say. He has the same pallid skin as Alois, the same snow-colored hair, but something seems off about him. He’s beautiful, Lise thinks, but in a cold, almost robotic sort of way. His face, even as his lips are turned up in a smile, is devoid of any real emotion. He’s older, as well as massively tall and slender to the point of boniness, and his large brown eyes are so dark they look almost black; they assess Alois in one long, judgemental sweep.

“Alois,” he greets, inclining his head. “You’re… still alive.”

“Cami,” Alois mutters. At Lise’s pressing look, he sullenly says, “Lise, this is Cami, my older brother. Cami, Lise.”

Lise’s first instinct is to rage and beat Alois’ chest with her fists for not telling her he has a brother as well—but she doesn’t. Instead, she keeps her face pleasantly neutral and waits patiently for Cami to speak to her so she can introduce herself, as Alois had instructed in the forest. But Cami just gives Lise a wordless nod before returning to his dish.

“Hi, Alois,” pipes the man standing behind Cami, his long arms crossed over the back of the white-haired man’s chair.

Like Gideon, he must be one of the butlers, since he’s dressed in their identical black and gray outfits. Lise barely even notices it at first, because this guy is even more freakish looking than Cami. He has bright purplish hair and copious amounts of makeup caked on his cheeks and nose and forehead, and there's an almost malevolent smile on his handsome face. He wears large silver hoops on his ears, and under the makeup Lise can make out a long, deep scar jutting from his right eye to just below his cheekbone. His smile is vulpine.

“Mayuri,” Cami says, and for the life of her, Lise cannot decipher his tone. Whether he is amused at or disapproving of the butler’s words to his brother, she wouldn’t be able to even guess.

Either way, Alois doesn’t bother to grace this Mayuri man with a response, which makes Lise feel quite bad for him. She knows what it’s like to have Alois’ coldness directed at her, and it’s never a good feeling. This considered, she decides to wave at Mayuri cheerfully in greeting in order to compensate, still keeping her lips obediently sealed.

The man smirks at her and gives her a wave back, a little wiggle of his long fingers that Lise can only describe as sarcastic.

Embarrassed, and suddenly feeling very much her age, Lise turns away from him quickly.

“Where is Weyah?” Alois asks his brother. His voice is firm and cold, and his question is less so an inquiry than a command. “We wish to see her.”

Weyah—that must be his sister. Lise holds back a smile. What a pretty name.

Cami’s unblinking eyes don’t leave Alois’s face for even a moment. “She is away.”

Alois’s eyes narrow. “Away where?”

“Your mother hasn’t told you?” Mayuri pipes in.

Yet again, Alois pays him no attention, not even looking in the other man’s direction.

“Away where?” he repeats.

“Where do you think?” Cami responds coolly.

Brothers? Lise almost can’t believe it. With the way they talk to one another, they don’t seem like brothers at all. They don’t even sound like they like each other.

Lise’s head whips from Cami back to her friend as Alois’ brows narrow. “You can’t possibly mean—”

“You have returned,” a high, cool voice rings out, and Lise nearly jumps out of her skin at the sound of it. “And early too, from the looks of it, Alois.”

The aura of the room seems to change, to darken, as a tall, slim woman enters through the other side, her long strides like a slow, predatory slink. She’s the most beautiful person Lise has ever seen, and simultaneously the most frightening. She has long, straight black hair down the back of her navy dress. Her face is pale, her features delicate. Her cheekbones are high and proud, and her painted mouth is like a long, thin smear of red blood. For some reason, Lise finds herself peculiarly overwhelmed staring at her. She has to look away, daring a glance at Cami’s purple-haired friend instead as he watches the situation unfold, his snake-like eyes flitting between Alois and this tall, terrifying woman with amused intrigue.

“Mother,” Alois says, and Lise has to keep her jaw from dropping. His voice sounds flat. “I… thought you were away.”

“I’ve returned from my mission early, my son. And I see you have returned from your… excursion as well.” Her red lip curls. “What a pleasant surprise.”

Alois’s pale skin looks even more ghastly white than usual. “If you’re going to punish me—”

“I am quite done punishing you, Alois,” the woman cuts him off brusquely, and Alois seems to shrink in her presence. “As you never seem to learn your lesson, it is simply a waste of my time.”

Her gaze meets Lise’s, bright and piercing just like her son’s. Lise can see flecks of green and gold in her black eyes.

“Alois,” she says slowly, “who is this?”

“Me?” Lise echoes back at her. She feels Alois tense beside her, so she tacks on a quick, “Ma’am?”

“She’s polite,” his mother says to Alois. Her voice is like a vocalized sneer.

“This is my friend Lise,” Alois says firmly. “I’ve brought her with me. To visit.”

“To visit,” his mother repeats. Those eyes return to Lise, scanning her scratched face, her unkempt hair, the filth of the current state of her body. She takes a seat at the head of the table and rests her chin on her palm, her long, curling nails like tendrils. “Where are you from, girl?”

Lise doesn’t want to tell her that she’s from Wobenn, not in this gorgeous house that’s worth more than her entire village. Nevertheless, she steels herself and holds her chin high. “Wobenn Village,” she replies honestly. “I don’t come from very much, ma’am.”

“I’m sure you do not,” the woman says simply. “Not many are as lucky as we are.” Her sharp gaze flits back to Alois before returning to Lise. “Just what business does a young lady from Wobenn have in my home?”

“Well,” Lise says hesitantly. She glances at Alois and quickly looks away, because Alois is shooting purposeful daggers at her from where he stands at her side. Like Lise is supposed to just magically know what she’s expected to say. “I wanted to meet you because—” She feels Alois’s tension beside her; it’s like he’s vibrating with it. “I wanted to offer you—your family—my assistance. I’d love the opportunity to work for you. I can do anything you need. I can clean. I’m good at it. And I’m strong, too.” She gestures to her good arm, tanned and muscled. “I know I’m young, but I can lift anything you need me to, ma’am, no matter how heavy. I swear it.”

His mother’s thin eyebrow is nearly in her hairline, it’s raised so high.

“So you’ve come all this way,” she says slowly, “to ask me if I want to hire you to do chores?”

Lise freezes. It sounds incredibly stupid, being summarized into words like that. “…yes, ma’am?”

The woman’s intense gaze doesn’t leave Lise’s.

“If you’re so strong, girl, as you say you are,” she says softly, “how should I be sure Alois hasn’t brought you here to kill me?

To kill?

A nervous, incredulous laugh bursts out from Lise’s throat.

To both her shock and her relief, the woman actually smiles at her reaction, her thin red lips spreading wide across her beautiful face. She glances over at Alois once again, and Lise is both surprised and unnerved to see the amusement fade from her expression the moment she meets her son’s eyes.

“This girl must be important to you, Alois,” she murmurs, almost to herself. Her thumb strokes her chin in slow, thoughtful movements. “For you to bring her here.”

Another bout of surprise goes through Lise as she watches Alois bow deeply at his own mother, his head hanging low. “Yes, Mother,” he says. She can barely even hear him, his voice is so quiet. “She is.”

His mother regards him carefully for a long moment.

“Show her to her room,” she says after a moment, her tone casual. “Use the guest room attached to your own. Mayuri will run her a warm bath.”

Mayuri straightens from his slouched position and nods obediently at the woman, his hand trailing down Cami’s arm before he sets upstairs.

“As for the chores,” Alois’s mother says, “she can start tomorrow.” She observes Lise, glancing at her up and down. “Pay her as much of our gold as you want.”

Lise almost gapes right at her. Was it truly that easy?

Just as she’d seen the butler at the door do, and just as Alois had done towards his mother, she ducks her head into a bow so low her head nearly knocks into her knees, her messy blonde hair falling over her face and obscuring her vision. She swears she hears a huff of laughter behind her, but she pays it no mind. “You won’t regret this, ma’am.”

“Be sure I will not,” the woman says. Her gaze flickers back to her son, and her eyes narrow into slits. “Will you be joining your little friend, Alois? Cleaning the house like a common servant?”

Alois opens his mouth, but fails to answer. He falls silent, his fists clenched hard at his sides.

His mother’s lip curls.

“Show her to her room,” she says coolly. “And then I wish to speak with you, Alois. Tonight.”

“Yes, Mother,” Alois says tightly.

She waves a dismissive hand, and Alois grabs Lise’s arm and pulls her around and up the golden staircase around the corner. The soft velvet of each stair is soft and plush against Lise’s bare feet, all the way up.