After Esther promised to speak with her sisters, Ulrich returned to the room where he had left the older two confined.
Even though they were young, their innate potential and magical talent were simply too great to ignore. Placed in a high-stress situation, believing their youngest sister was in mortal danger, their emotions could easily cause severe damage to his property, or themselves. He intended to prevent that.
Stepping back inside, Ulrich swiftly pulled the door shut behind him. His cold gaze swept over the two girls still trapped within their respective crimson cylinders.
"Count Rubenhart…" Linnea stood awkwardly by the desks, wringing her hands, completely unsure of what to say or do.
Ulrich barely acknowledged her, his attention entirely focused on the two furious girls glaring daggers at him.
"Where is Esther?!" Hermione shrieked, her voice echoing sharply off the magical walls.
Airam, on the other hand, hadn't spoken a word. She was entirely consumed by her frenzy, continuously pounding her small fists against the glowing crimson barrier. Narrowing his eyes slightly, Ulrich noted that she was even raking her nails against the barrier. Her fingernails had splintered and broken, leaving her fingertips bloodied and raw, but she didn't seem to care, continuing her brutal assault.
"Leave," he ordered Linnea.
She nodded rapidly, bowing her head, and hurriedly slipped out of the room, clicking the door shut behind her.
In the newfound quiet, Ulrich slowly approached the prisons, his eyes briefly flicking toward their untouched notebooks.
"It seems you have no wish to get out of here," he said.
"I—If you have hurt Esther! I will—"
"You will what?" Ulrich cut her off, his icy stare locking onto Hermione.
She flinched under his stare.
"You will do nothing," he said, his voice devoid of pity. "Much like your aggressively stupid older sister over there, bleeding for no reason."
Hermione's eyes darted toward Airam, who was still silently slamming her bruised palms against the crimson magic.
"The eldest is the stupidest, and the youngest is the smartest, it seems," Ulrich said aloud. He casually strolled past the glowing prisons, stepping behind the main desk to take a seat.
"Wh—where is Esther…?" Hermione asked again. This time, the anger had drained from her voice, leaving it hushed and trembling with fear.
Hearing the tremor in her sister's voice, Airam finally stopped her assault. She lowered her bloodied hands, her murderous glare fixed entirely on Ulrich as she waited for his answer.
Ignoring their stares, Ulrich picked up one of the books resting on the desk. It appeared Linnea had been teaching them to read and write using popular novels, a rather effective and engaging technique. He casually flipped the book open and began to read.
"W—Where is Esther?!" Hermione shouted again, her voice breaking painfully for the first time.
Ulrich slowly raised his gaze from the page. The girl's ruby eyes had turned teary and swollen, much like her flushed cheeks. The arrogant facade had finally broken.
"P—Please… don't hurt her," she begged, her voice shrinking. "I—I will do anything you want."
Ulrich stared at her.
"I have already told you both what I wanted," he said. "If you want to see your precious little sister, you will do exactly as I say. This is my mansion. It is my territory, and I rule here. If you wish to earn your place within these walls, you will work for it. I do not grant privileges to disrespectful, stupid, or useless people." He paused, his gaze sharpening. "Is that how your mother raised you?"
At the mention of their mother, the fire instantly returned. Hermione recovered her hateful glare in a heartbeat.
"From what I have seen, only your younger sister seems to have actually learned something from that stupid woman," Ulrich added mercilessly.
"Don't dare insult our mother!" Hermione screamed, her fists trembling.
"And what are you going to do about it?" Ulrich asked, his tone hard and dismissive. "What can you even do?"
Hermione clamped her mouth shut, biting her lip hard enough to draw blood.
"If you truly care for your sister and wish to see her safe, you will obey," Ulrich said, before returning his attention to his novel.
For the next ten minutes, only silence filled Hermione's side of the room. Airam, however, resumed her violent pounding against the crimson barrier.
Ulrich offered her occasional side-glances, mildly wondering if she would ever stop out of exhaustion. She never did. She just kept shooting him those murderous glares as she hammered her fists against the barrier. If she continued at this pace, she was definitely going to fracture her wrists. Both of her hands were thoroughly bloodied now, and, in a fit of desperation, she had begun throwing her head against the magical wall as well.
"Stop it, Airam!" Hermione called out, panicking as she watched her sister self-destruct. Airam completely ignored her.
Hermione tightly clenched her fists, her teary gaze dropping to the blank notebook on her desk. She shot one last, resentful look at Ulrich, who remained perfectly absorbed in his book. Defeated, she picked up her pen, sat down heavily in her chair, and immediately started to write.
"Write, Airam! He said he will let us out!" Hermione shouted, her hand flying across the notebook as she wrotefast.
But Airam didn't listen. She remained fixated on Ulrich, her black eyes burning with hatred as she continued her assault on the magic.
Half an hour later, however, the inevitable toll of exhaustion, pain, and blood loss finally began to catch up with the eldest sister. The pounding slowed. Slowly, her legs gave out, and she slid down the glowing wall, collapsing onto her knees. Her eyes were half-closed now, but she still stared stubbornly at Ulrich through her dark bangs, refusing to look away.
Hermione noticed her sister's alarming decline out of the corner of her eye, but she knew she couldn't do anything to stop it. The only way to save them both was to write, and write, and write, exactly as Ulrich had told.
A couple of silent hours passed. Finally, Hermione slammed her pen down and stood up abruptly, hoisting her filled notebook into the air.
"I am done!" She said, her chest heaving as she shoved the pages filled with her meticulous handwriting toward him.
Ulrich casually glanced up from his novel, his eyes briefly scanning the offered work. Without a single word or gesture, the crimson barrier enclosing her suddenly vanished into thin air.
Relief washing over her, Hermione smiled through her tears and immediately sprinted toward Airam's prison.
"Nughh!"
Her face collided with the curved surface of another solid crimson wall. She stumbled backward, crying out as she rubbed her stinging nose.
"Why?!" She asked glaring tearfully.
"You may go see Esther. But this one hasn't finished," Ulrich said calmly, not even bothering to look up from his page.
"Y—You can't do that! She's hurt, and she is not well! Look at her, she's lost consciousness!" Hermione cried, pointing at Airam's motionless body crumpled on the floor, her bloodied fingers entirely still.
Ulrich lazily shifted his gaze toward the pathetic, battered sight of Airam lying on the wooden floor.
"No, she didn't," he replied.
"What?!"
"She hasn't lost consciousness," he explained, his voice conversational as he turned a page of his book. "She is perfectly awake. She is merely playing dead, waiting for me to drop the barrier so she can attempt a surprise strike."
At his blunt words, Airam's ears twitched slightly.
Hermione stood dumbfounded, her mouth slightly agape. She looked down at Airam, noting how perfectly still her sister truly was. There was no denying it, Airam was an expert at acting dead, an assassin biding her time for a lethal opening.
"I will come back, Airam! Just wait for me here!"
Somewhat reassured by the realization that her sister wasn't actually dying but rather executing a calculated ambush against Ulrich, Hermione hurriedly bolted from the room, leaving the Count and the young assassin completely alone.
A long silence stretched across the room once the door clicked shut.
Slowly, Airam lifted her head from the floorboards. She raised her dark gaze to look directly at Ulrich, who was still comfortably engrossed in his reading. It was painfully clear that her last plan had failed miserably. He wasn't a man to be fooled so easily by a pitiful display of weakness or blood.
Accepting her defeat for the moment, Airam simply dropped the entire act, dragging herself up into a seated position to resume her cold, murderous glaring.