Sibling Rivalry

Carina spent the rest of the night at the banquet being bombarded with questions from all of the other girls there, most of them wondering how she had managed to snag Prince Spencer and whether or not he was really as frightening as the rumours made him out to be. Some of the more confident girls would try and add in subtle snipes at her personality and background, claiming that she wouldn't be good enough to be partnered with a prince. Carina only smiled and ignored those comments, which had lead to many girls leaving in a huff when they didn't get a satisfactory reaction from Carina.

"Carina! What happened on that terrace?" Rosalie asked, when most of the ladies got bored at Carina's tightlipped answers.

Carina sighed. "I'm not so sure myself. We were just talking and then out of nowhere he asked to court me..."

"I would expect this behaviour from Gabriel, but not from Prince Spencer! It's so unexpected, he's never shown an interest in women before. Gabriel was telling me too the other day he thought his brother might be interested in men instead..."

Carina blinked at Rosalie, surprised, and then burst out into laughter.

The effect of her laughing was instantaneous, immediately the men surrounding the two women turned their gazes to Carina as if they were hypnotised. Rosalie noticed the reactions from her surroundings and had a suspicion she knew exactly what had driven Spencer to decide to court her.

"Carina, you know, you're probably the prettiest girl in the whole of Aecus."

The sudden compliment from Rosalie shocked Carina slightly, but she knew although Rosalie was exaggerating, that Carina was indeed quite pretty, so she merely nodded and accepted the comment.

"Thank you. I think I would have to be if I wanted to match Prince Spencer properly. He's by far the best looking man I've ever seen."

Rosalie nodded enthusiastically, agreeing wholeheartedly.

Both girls ended up discussing nothing but Prince Spencer's looks for the next few minutes, giggling and laughing to themselves as they did so. The sight of the two girls laughing and enjoying themselves made the atmosphere around them seem light and unintentionally lifted the moods of those around them.

In another corner of the ballroom, the two princes were conversing amongst each other as they looked towards Carina and Rosalie, though the conversation they were having was not nearly as friendly.

"Brother, are you sure you've thought this through?" Gabriel asked, eyeing Spencer warily as if he didn't recognise him.

Spencer nodded, smiling at the sight of Carina enjoying herself. "Yes."

"Don't you think you were a bit hasty in making this decision? You don't know anything about her."

"That hardly matters."

"I think that matters quite a bit, brother."

"I like what I see so far, and I sincerely doubt there's anything I could learn about her that would deter me from pursuing her."

Gabriel couldn't believe what he was hearing. He'd never once seen his brother so sure about anything other than his training regimen. Seeing him so determined for a girl of all things was something Gabriel never thought he'd be seeing.

The biggest problem, though, was not that it was unlike Spencer to be so interested in a girl, but that Gabriel had just been thinking himself that he was interested in Carina too. Gabriel was not one to give up on a girl he was interested in so easily, everybody knew that about him.

"You're sure you're serious about this girl?" Gabriel asked, observing Spencer carefully.

Spencer was beginning to realise Gabriel was acting entirely too strange about this whole thing. He had thought his brother would be happy for him.

"Yes. I'm sure."

"Then I'm afraid we're rivals from now on."