Winter

Chapter Two: Obsession

"The library again?"

His voice is almost condescending, though not to the situation, just in general. You don't think he can say anything and not sound like a total prick even if his life depended on it.

"Hard at work trying to undo this curse!" Your cheerfulness drips with venom, and you wish it could burn him up on the inside so you could run away free.

"I see." The Sinner stares at where you hide, behind the wall of books you had meticulously stacked. "And I suppose this is some sort of way to categorize what you're studying."

"Oh yeah, very delicate operation I'm running," you agree in a sugary voice, placing a thick volume written in a language you couldn't hope to understand on the top of the structure to complete the tower, "you wouldn't want to muck it up, would you?"

He lets out a breath, picking up the closest book, a journal you've already looked over, and takes a seat in the nearest armchair.

Annoyance sparks inside your chest because you honest to god cannot enjoy yourself around him. It's been, you don't know, somewhere in between weeks and months since you've first had the unfortunate honor of meeting this twat, and the smallest bits of joy you've found have been swiftly squashed by his looming presence.

"You know," you say, crawling out of the tunnel you had carefully constructed, "I'm doing just fine by myself."

All he offers in response is a non-committal hum.

"You don't have to bother your busy self with helping me, a lowly human girl." He usually enjoys a good amount of groveling, though you can barely keep the sarcasm out of your voice.

No answer. You let out a huff, wishing you can give the Sinner a piece of your mind. Every time you think of words beyond sugary irony, though, you see him looking down at your sobbing body with those destructive violet eyes, his voice hard as iron as he says do not disappoint me. So you toe the line, barely getting away with sass and always jumping back if you sense any spark of frustration.

This is one of those many times where you roll over instead of fight, standing up and walking out of the library without a word, pulling your shawl closer to your chest. You are hungry, anyways.

A meal sits ready as your stride into the dining hall, the main table up on a pedestal almost overflowing with variations of breakfast foods. Everything that you could possibly think of or want is just a small percentage of what is available, there are some unfamiliar plates that you see the Sinner pick at, and a whole section full of wriggling things that you can't even look at while you eat, much less name.

"You could have told me you were hungry."

Urgh, he's behind you. "I didn't want to bother your Majesty, you seemed awfully busy."

"I wasn't," the Sinner responds, his voice almost clipped.

"Oh." You begin to pile food onto your plate, ignoring him.

After a few minutes of silence, the Sinner asks, "have you found anything worth my attention?"

"I haven't." You say, poking at your food to hide your frustration. "And it might help me out greatly if you'd tell me about what happened-"

"No."

You let out a sigh of frustration. It might help you if he talked about how he was cursed, or, for that matter, why, but every time you bring it up, you can hear the Kill Bill sirens screaming in his head as he shuts you down without even giving you a reason why. There's the Latin inscription, instructing him to learn how to be a decent person, but you can't get him to do that, either. What you're stuck with is trying to figure out how to circumvent that task, really just a way to break into the case with the jewel.