#pandaemonius

☁  five times my muse has thought about yours, and the one time they do something about it.

Megaira hates Demetrios. Hates, loathes, despises. She tells herself the same thing every night, repeats it like a prayer. Over and over. In case she forgets, for even a moment, that he is anything more to her than competition, a usurper. Certainly not a brother, it had been years since she had known him as that, or had spoken the word without venom. 

She doesn’t need him, nor her sisters, or parents. She is strong now, raised only by herself. She has others who care for her as you should care for a sister. She doesn’t need them anymore.

Yet this disconnect is one of the many things that leaves her at such a disadvantage. And it is so lonely.

They are here, finally. The two competing children of the great King, under one roof for likely the longest time they have been together in years. And all she can think is that she hates him, hates her father for sending him to lurk behind her too. This was supposed to be her time, to prove herself, all by herself. And he had ruined that too.

The next day, there he is again, at breakfast. Charming them all, her nobles, her possible alliances and she wants to strangle him there and then. But, she thinks, she also wants to cry. As children, he’d never have done anything to hurt her purposefully. He was the one she went to when she was afraid, when she cut her knee, when the boys had been cruel to her. Now he was one of those very boys, so she didn’t go to him, instead she flees to her room to have breakfast alone. He wins again.

The third time she thinks of him, she’s watching men train in the courtyard. Training swords ringing together, the sound of steel on steel echoing against walls. Another thing she hates him for. Megaira is good with a dagger, and she has Artemis to rip an enemy limb from limb, but she was never given the chance to learn how to really fight. Another thing she was never given the chance to do. Even as a bastard, Demetrios had so many more chances than she did, and he had stolen hers.

She sees him again. Because he’s always there, wherever she is, he arrives. To steal whatever effort she had made that day. She thinks she’s secured an alliance, or at least begun to, all for herself. All by herself. But he shows up, once again, and greets them so full of charisma, that she is all but forgotten. It doesn’t matter that he offers empty promises, he has them. And she thinks that it would have been better if their father had never met that horrid Venetian woman. Or if she had been born a boy.

It’s been a week, and Megaira has made no progress. And her father’s letter has no problem reminding her such. A failure, she’s failing. And she thinks that it is all Demetrios’ fault. Not her lack of warmth, or knowledge, it’s all his fault.