do they think her an idiot? do they think that she believes them, even for a single second, when they say balfour won’t readily take the glory for ending this blight, the same way he is usurping her crown? and she’d let him have that, too, if only he’d have left her to the throne. but as balfour walks away, she can feel everything she’s worked for slipping from her fingertips, can feel herself being shoved back into the corner, back into the shadows where she cannot do harm.
she’d warned him. she won’t go back into hiding. into obscurity.
grier approaches, and ophelia turns her head to look at her sister with a great sadness in green eyes. she reaches for her, squeezes her hand, swallows the words she wants to say. you will always be my sister. and when she lets go, she’s stepping towards her brother, trying to catch him before he goes. ❝ bal, ❞ she calls, and her voice is soft, so unlike herself, and that seems to be what gets him to stop.
ophelia takes the chance to close the distance, opening her mouth as if to say something, as if to apologize. but instead she takes a dagger from her belt and sinks it straight into her brother’s stomach. ❝ i told you, ❞ she hisses, twisting the knife, ❝ i told you the crown is mine. ❞
and then she pulls the dagger from him, lets him fall at her feet, and does not move to help.
for a moment, he almost keeps going, but ophelia sounds so gentle, and she’s his sister, and he thinks she might’ve had a change of heart. isn’t that all he wants, at the end of the day? for them all to get along, because they’re all each other has? she comes closer, and he waits there, not so certain of what it is she’ll say but more than willing to hear her out anyway.
it takes him a breath, maybe two to realise she hasn’t followed after him to talk, though. the pain seems to be delayed and, for a moment, he can only look at her with… such pain and sorrow and– and– and confusion upon his face. oh, he’s feeling something now, that’s for damn sure. balfour has seen people do any number of horrific things this past year and, truthfully, ophelia has begun to worry him of late, but he’d never thought her capable of slaying her own kin.
even he wouldn’t do that. even he knows where to draw the line before his own greed kills the person he is.
‘ no, ’ leaves him in a pathetic whine. not you, he wants to say. not this. please, not this. but she twists the knife and it steals his voice, steals his strength– or maybe it’s ophelia’s words that do it. what have they done to themselves? weren’t they so close once? wasn’t she the girl he would have done anything to protect?
as if he can guess her next move, his hand settles around the dagger’s blade in an attempt to keep it there. she wrenches it free all the same. his eyes find grier and his face is a silent plea– for help or for her to flee and save herself, it’s hard to tell– and he doesn’t look away as he slumps to the ground.
his hand presses over the wound inflicted by his own dear sister, but it isn’t doing him much good. he can barely keep his eyes on grier. and he’s thinking… he’s thinking he wanted to die once before, that he’d been ready when castle cousland was falling apart around them, but now, maker, he’s so scared. now death is the last thing he wants, and yet… and yet… there’s some relief there after all, he realises, as everything gets cloudier and more muddled.
this may not be a great and heroic death but… he’ll be with fergus now, and mother and father, and he’s missed them. he’s missed them. balfour screws his face up into a grimace and turns his face further into the floor. if the stone is cold, then he can barely feel it. but he isn’t thinking about that. he’s thinking about sword fights with his brother, day-long riding trips with his father, his mother stroking his hair… and grier’s face.
i’m sorry, he thinks he says. i’m sorry it’s just you and her now.
in the moment she catches balfours gaze, her entire world shifts. she has felt this feeling once before, when they were fleeing from their home and leaving their parents behind to their fate. she had never wanted to feel this feeling again but it seems fate has other plans. “ no... ” she struggles to get out at first while watching helplessly. “ no! ” she shrieks this time and pushes ophelia away as she darts forward towards bal.
she all but collapses beside him and her hands reach for his wound. in an instant it seems her hands are coated in his blood as she struggles to help him. “ bal, look at me. balfour -- don’t -- don’t die. please you can’t die. ” she tries to keep a hold of herself but her hands shake dramatically and her breathing grows erratic. “ balfour cousland i swear in the maker’s name if you don’t look at me -- ” eventually she looks up at ophelia with shock and confusion painted across her features.
“ how could you be so selfish? ” she questions, her voice strained as she continues to cover her brother’s fatal wound as best as she can. she glances back down at balfour and tears her hands from his stomach and up to cradle his face. “ don’t leave me like this, bal. ” she pleads softly, tears streaming almost endlessly down her face and staining her cheeks. “ not like this... ” but it’s no use and once grier realizes that -- it’s over. today will be the day she lost both her sister and her brother. as far as she’s concerned, she is all on her own.
she looks back at ophelia and slowly she rises to her feet and steps over balfour’s body. she will do no more harm to him. dead or alive. “ you foul, twisted wretch. ” grier spits at her sister’s feet. “ was it worth it? was it?! after all that we have lost you have the nerve to be so unjust and greedy? ” she has half a mind to pull her own dagger and give ophelia a taste of her own medicine. however, deep down she is still her sister and grier knows this. it’s what makes her hesitate. “ i hope your envy and your ego is the death of you. ”
it’s a terrible thing to curse upon your own sister but it is something she will never take back. “ whatever you become i will do everything in my power to make sure no one remembers the name of the mad queen who murdered her own brother. you are nothing to me now and you will be nothing to the people who will eventually forget you and all that you are. the couslands will surely go down in history for what we have done in this age but you are a cousland no longer! ”