Toujours Pur | Euphemia Black

Chapter 86 | Better Person

"EUPHEMIA! GET DOWN HERE NOW! WE HAVE TO LEAVE IN TWO MINUTES!" was the most unwelcome shout that interrupted Mia's fitful sleep on a Monday morning, a few days after Henry had just persuaded Charlus to not give up on his relationship with Euphemia (not that the girl in question was aware of this fact - she had been mostly cut off from all her friends, all of her contact with them had been terminated).

Letting out a groan that seemed to represent all of her emotions in that morning and also from over the course of the last few weeks, Mia lifted her messy head from her comfy pillow, looking around with bleary eyesight as her hands rubbed at her eyes before she reluctantly rolled out of bed...quite literally.

Euphemia landed with a thump on the floor and glanced up at the ceiling for a long period of time, wondering whether, if she just lay there for a long time with her head hurting and her eyes closed, she would just pass away and she would be saved from all the emotional trauma looming over her.

Death seemed like a welcome option, or at least some sort of unconsciousness that would leave her in a coma until the end of the summer, so that she didn't have to get married to Orion. This wasn't the first time that Mia had considered death, either. The fact that she would actually prefer death over her current predicament was just a clear show of how serious the situation was and how much Euphemia wanted to avoid it.

After lying there for around two minutes, there was a sudden thump outside of her bedroom door, followed by the distinct sound of loud footsteps thundering up the stairs and Mia instantly jumped up from the floor and dived into her wardrobe, quickly grabbing some clothes before hiding in the bathroom because Euphemia knew that, whichever one of her parents was coming up the stairs, she would be in serious trouble if she wasn't ready to go wherever they were going.

As she quickly brushed her hair, Mia looked in her bathroom mirror and noticed how pale and miserable she looked. Euphemia hadn't actually realised that her feelings would be obvious through her demeanour and it was rather scary to see the dark shadows under her eyes, standing out in their half-moon crescents on her extremely pale face, so pale that she almost looked ill.

Mia's hands shook as she started to plait her hair, her nails still bitten down to the soft pink padding of her fingers which just showed how nervous and anxious she had gotten over the past week, due to her only ever biting her nails when she was stressed out or feeling some sort of serious anxiety. Trying to forget about the nerves growing simply in her body, Euphemia prepared herself for the shout of her mother, which came in five, four, three....

Oh, she was quicker than usual. Cassiopeia threw the bedroom door open and, still hidden in the bathroom, Mia winced on behalf of her bedroom walls as they shook furiously after the impact of the heavy door whacking them. "Euphemiaaaa," her mother sang out in a rather maniacal fashion, "Why on earth aren't you ready?" she demanded harshly, her fake sweet attitude disappearing within a second.

Taking a deep breath to settle her whirling stomach, Mia emerged from the bathroom and shot a brave smile at Cassiopeia, who was standing in her bedroom doorway with her arms crossed, an unimpressed expression on her face. "Was I supposed to be ready within five seconds?" Euphemia asked mildly with the tiniest amount of sarcasm intertwining the words, the tiny amount that she could muster.

"Yes, I told you last night that you were not to sleep in, as we have places to be and a lady such as yourself is never late to scheduled visits," Cassiopeia reminded her daughter in a rather irritable manner and realisation dawned on Mia's face, the conversation coming back to light as her mother refreshed her memory.

To be fair to the girl, Euphemia was extremely stressed out and was constantly worried about the upcoming wedding so Cassiopeia surely had to make some exceptions - her daughter was about to be married and, on top of that, wasn't sleeping properly so wasn't really paying attention during many conversations.