Devin followed Cecilia anxiously as she walked at a faster and faster pace, determined to find her way back without realizing that it could, in the same way, send her deeper into loss.
"Wait... a second," Devin gasped for air. "As a descendant of the Mordius family, I command you... Stop already!"
As he spoke, Cecilia's walking pace turned into a run, trying to reach the end of the seemingly endless, winding corridor.
Devin followed her fearfully, trying his best to catch up when he couldn't see her beyond the bend of the corridor. Luckily for him, he found Cecilia standing still in front of another dead end.
"If you had listened to me instead of running away, Your Highness, you would have known that I could summon you."
"Why are there so many dead ends here? It doesn't make any sense."
"As I was trying to sa-"
"There must be a mechanism here somewhere."
"Of course there is a mecha..."
"Maybe we should bleed again?"
Cecilia opened the wound that had not yet healed a second time and tried to smear her blood on the walls in a wishful attempt to stir something up.
"Would you listen to me for a goddamn minute?!" Devin reached his breaking point when he saw her ridiculous actions. "Of course there is a hidden door here! Do you think you can open it? Why would there be a hidden door in the first place if any idiot could smear blood everywhere and open it?! How bloody do you think the wizarding world is? How many scars you freaking see on my arm? We don't just hurt ourselves like suicidal 11-year-olds!..."
Devin had his stomach full of Her Highness's careless actions, but in front of his widing eyes, the end of the corridor slowly opened into a library.
Cecilia shot him an incredibly smug and annoying look and walked like a proud peacock into the room—quite a wasteful look considering the fact that Devin forgot to be annoyed in the rush of getting through the door as it began to close slowly.
"I told you so~ l told you so."
"There is literally no place and time when the definition of 'beginner's luck' would fit better than here." Devin sighed, trying to calm himself down, "You're aware of that, right?"
"But I still told you so~"
Devin desperately replays in his mind where the dynamic between them has started to rot. He was clearly so handsome and cool before, how did it turn into this?
He decided to take the reins back- as a scion of House Mordius, he could not disappoint his ancestors.
"Be quiet and take shallow breaths; stop singing! You don't know if there's already someone in the room, and we're definitely not supposed to be here."
"Come on" Cecilia didn't take his warnings to heart at all. "If there really was someone here, we would have been caught ages ago- you weren't exactly quiet, you know."
Devin suppressed the urge to punch a lady in the face and looked around: piles of books covered the walls and even slid off them, according to the books that were thrown on the floor without any concern for their condition.
"Take a look if you see anything useful, we probably won't get a second chance to come here."
Cecilia is lacking in life experience and has a has a generally whimsical personality, but she knows when to listen to people more experienced than her.
She quickly went through the books written in a variety of languages she did not know on the walls, soiling them with her blood in the process, and lazily flipped the only thing that cought her eyes—a fairytale book for children—that was on the heavy-looking, wooden desk in the corner of the room.
Devin, who was seriously inquiring, He didn't notice the bloody disaster she created and called her when he discovered something he didn't expect.
"You see that?" He holds an old book in an unfamiliar language. "This is an advanced-level ancient spellbook; chances are this library belongs to someone very important. I think we better leave now before we leave any more traces behind."
"You're so indecisive," Cecilia snorted, "and besides, with the wall outside covered in my blood, not to mention the books I already messed up, what other traces can we possibly leave? We're busted anyway."
Devin looked around in horror and amazement, considering whether to kill himself on the spot.
Cecilia's horrible giggles from his look brought him back to his senses.
Everything will be fine, he hypnotized himself; all they need to do is clean and go; no one would know it's them anyway.
"Shut up for a moment; all we need is to spell 'Patet' on the wall and the books and just return our paces; the owner won't notice."
"Actually, there's no way I wouldn't notice a sloppy spell like 'Patet' and frankly, it kind of hurts that that's what you think of me."
The unfamiliar voice made the two youths turn their heads so quickly that it wouldn't be surprising if they snapped their necks.
A long, white-haired man whose glasses softened his penetrating, red eyes asked in a friendly manner as he pointed a wand at them, "Hey guys! Would I have the honor to know why you two are demolishing my bedroom?"