Weiss sat in bed, wide awake. She knew she needed to sleep, especially with the next round of the tourney on the horizon, but the events of the previous day tormented what fragments remained of her waking mind. That fay… that boy… damn them!
Her hands balled into tight fists and battered her mattress while a growl rose in her throat. Damn them, damn them, damn it all! Those cravens had the gall to break into her tourney and humiliate Cardin bloody Winchester, all while one of them was a damn fay! Did they understand the repercussions? How it would affect her? Her dream of stringing brainless noble milksops along for the rest of her days was untenable, now! Never again would James Vicenzi host a tournament if it means a damn fay could get involved! Meaning it would be day in, day out, suitors upon suitors until she was finally shackled to one of the bastards!
She looked across her room, to her standing wardrobe where Myrtenaster lay dormant in its sheath. After a long moment of staring, she clambered out of bed. Her feet slapped against the frigid tiles.
She pulled the doors of the wardrobe apart. An entire rack of sleep clothes lined its interior, hiding her most treasured possession among them. She reached deep beyond the garments, then pulled her one friend free.
Myrtenaster sat in her palms like the memory of a familiar lover. She gently ran her fingers over the immaculately dyed sheath, its dark blue leather shining with swirls of silver filigree. Weiss' hand slowly moved up the supple leather, her fingers finding the handle by instinct. The navy leather hosted a criss-cross of silver studs, all protected by a tight, intricate webbing of steel that also came down over her knuckles. She pulled the handle slowly, gradually revealing each part of the blade. First, the ricasso— the first few inches of the blade that remained unsharpened, as was standard in Atlas— which bore beautiful, sweeping engravings, then the rest of the blade. Razor sharp, shining, and resplendent.
She held it close to her face, meeting her own icy gaze in the blade's reflection. This is what she would lose, she realized. There would simply be no time for it. Myrtenaster, her beloved, would sit in this wardrobe to collect dust. Her reflection trembled as her hands shook around the hilt.
They could fight. They could spend their days training and battling, going on adventures and creating legends, all while she languished in this godless mausoleum of a palace. Even that fay had more freedom than her.
She thought back to the tourney, to that cloaked lad with the cleaver and the belt of weapons. That boy frustrated her to no end. Who gave him the right to embody such freedom, even down to his wild combat style? He was clearly lowborn, judging by what Weiss had seen of his clothing under that cloak. A simple linen shirt with billowing black breeches- the garb of a peasant. Someone who spent their days toiling, laboring, suffering, but doing so in complete, abject freedom. An insipid life, lacking the finer things in life, but containing an undeniably broad experience.
Quite precisely the opposite of her own life, she mused with a hum. Perhaps that why why she found him so intriguing. After all, why would a lowborn shackle themselves to her? They would be thrusting themselves into a world they simply don't belong in, and for what? Riches? She couldn't deny she was rich, but what joy did that bring her? For the prestige? There certainly was prestige in the Schnee name, or more precisely, the Vicenzi mines that were under that name, though she couldn't see that rube grasping such an idea. So what was it? Her? She audibly guffawed. How bloody flattering, as if somebody would risk life and limb for her skeletal hide.
She caught her reflection in the mirror and frowned. Her ghoulish image scowled in return, clutching her perfect weapon in its bony fingers. She was a frail girl with a toothpick, too cowardly to join the Imperial Order like her sister, too ugly to draw a suitor that didn't make her want to trepan herself with a bread knife, and too weak to lift her sword against her gutless knave of a father.
The rapier shook in her hands, catching her reflection within its shining blade. She stared into her own eyes. Her breathing quickened. She could—
Weiss slammed the rapier back into its sheath, her lungs taking in too little too fast. She shoved Myrtenaster back into its spot with a mumbled apology. She tried to lay back down, but only found her mind torturing her with anxiety of the upcoming tournament. She was an idiot. At least, with her father's menagerie of boys, they were his age. Some of the fighters were easily thirty years her senior! Her insides twisted at the notion. She had thrown herself to the winds of fate on the thin possibility of a temporary freedom, and now she had to bear the consequences of her foolish choices.
She rolled off the bed and opened the door to her room. She peered down both ends of the hallway, checking for guards before she slunk away. Her bare feet quietly slapped the immaculate tiles as she wandered the palace, unsure of her own destination.
Before long, she found herself at the gardens. They were still getting the last dregs of the warm season, but the night air was pleasantly crisp, with a mild breeze tossing her nightgown around. Weiss aimlessly wandered the expansive garden. Her fingers drifted along the leaves of passing marigolds, petunias, hydrangeas, dahlias, and assorted flowers of every variety that would take to their soil. The stone-paved path wound through the whole garden, flanked by vibrant green plants and flowers of every imaginable color, and even some unimaginable colors that had been stolen from The Shimmer as trophies. She tried not to look at those too long, as they tended to cause headaches for humans who stared too long.
The path ended under a tall magnolia tree with wide, sprawling branches and thick leaves. The flowers had stopped blooming a month or two ago, and had shrunk to withered clumps of brown petals. Weiss reached up, standing on her tiptoes to pluck a leathery leaf from the tree. She felt it between her fingers for a second, then ripped it in half. She put the halves up to her nose, and took a deep breath of their sweet scent. She remembered clambering over this tree with Winter, perching among its branches while her father accosted them and her mother snickered behind him. Then Winter left. And now she was alone. The leaves fell from her fingers. She sighed.
She moved to leave, but spotted something in the corner of her eye, hidden behind the girth of the magnolia's trunk. A spurt of red among the greenery, struggling to rise under the tree's enshrouding canopy. Weiss looked over her shoulder, checking for any guards or fellow midnight garden-goers. Seeing none, she gingerly approached the plant.
It was a single shoot, rising from the dirt with deep green leaves and young prickles. If she weren't kneeling to analyze it, it would probably come just below her knee. It was a pitiful thing, clearly stifled by the greater tree above, but it stood out regardless. The petals were bright red and bundled in a tight bud, not yet ready to bloom. To Weiss' knowledge, roses usually bloomed earlier, but she supposed a warm nation like Vale could potentially host blooms for most of the year.
Weiss looked around again, because she was planning on doing something stupid. When she found no one, she checked again. The coast clear, she prodded the dirt around the rose. It wasn't soft, but it gave with some added pressure, so Weiss swallowed her hesitation and dug her fingers into the dirt.
The soil pressed against all ten fingers. She let her Aura pool in her hands, the energy of her very soul probing deep into the dirt. She felt around, searching for the rose's roots— she didn't want to kill the plant, after all. When she felt the plant's miniscule Aura brush against hers, she let out a small smile.
She sucked her Aura back into her hands, then spread it in a wide berth around the rose's roots. When she pulled up, the entire plant came free in its own soil, the loose material being held together by the shell of Weiss' Aura. She looked over her shoulder again, sighing when she found she was still alone.
Weiss snuck through the garden until she found a spare pot, into which she gently placed the budding plant. She filled the rest of the space with topsoil, granted it a sufficient amount of water, then carried it with her, all the way back to her room. There, she placed it on the windowsill. She would open the window before the tourney, and hide it on the alcove around the corner from her window. Hopefully Hulda wouldn't find it, she would just take it back to the garden. This would be Weiss'. Even if everything went wrong, it would be the one thing she could have to herself.
AN: very subtle, yes? jajaja