the Eris/Kirsi potential with a young adult Kirsi asked to manipulate Eris, Eris playing along to get something out of her instead
i literally just inked!!! kirsi who really isn't very manipulative and honestly disdains such underhanded tactics but who has that deep sense of duty that draws her to do whatever it is she needs to in order to best steward her people. that same sense of duty that has her accepting her betrothal to carmine in canon verse. she thinks long about it. she already knows so much about the vanserras, about eris. she learns how best to ingratiate herself based on what he likes—a submissive female, of course, and a virgin; a female who will not challenge him in any way, not intellectually, not politically, not socially; a female who will do as he says how he says when he says it. that is what eris vanserra is said to prefer.
so the next banquet they attend together, that is what she is. demure. palatable. submissive. she lowers her eyes. she smiles soft. she laughs when she ought. yes, lord vanserra. of course, lord vanserra. if you think it so, lord vanserra. like eris has never seen her before. like eris doesn't know how much she hates him and his family. (males never pay kirsi any mind; why would she think he knew her?) he's amused! not mad. why would he be mad? this is what he wants, after all. she isn't wrong. it's what his father would want. it's what his father taught him to want. so it doesn't bother him. it doesn't annoy him. it doesn't enrage him, her feigned servility. he's amused.
kirsi is just so obviously out of her depth with it all. eris pushes her as far as he can for his own amusement, but she doesn't act without dignity even though it's such a thin artifice, and she doesn't ever break. she takes him in stride. she's SO wary of him, too. all he wants is for her to get her father to move his forces up closer to the summer border with winter so eris can have excuse to rearrange his own troops and get more males loyal to his father away from him without his father being suspicious. but oh my god she literally fucking won't. she feigns this submission, but beneath it, she's one of the most stubborn females he's ever met.
which he should hate. but he doesn't. it makes her interesting. it makes her fun to play against. it makes him HORNY. the next game he initiates is one surrounding her virginity. whether she will give it to him. because he 1) doesn't think she's a virgin 2) doesn't think she'll have sex with him besides. but kirsi's been clocking eris, too. kirsi's been monitoring the way he operates and with whom. she thinks: what is my virginity for the preservation of my people? and my god being this close to him feels like an entire bottle of wine is in her belly. his flame is like no other. it muddles her, dizzies her, blurs her and melts her. so hard to think about anything but his pretty face and his hand on her thigh and she wants him but she's so dizzy—
when she wakes up, she finds her virtue intact. eris vanserra has not touched her. eris vanserra has acted nobly. eris vanserra is everything she thought yet nothing she thought. and now she will figure him out.