Rafail was in an immensely irritable mood.

As far as he could tell, he had been doing an excellent job seducing the younger of the two princesses. Each of his little quips had received a positive response and he'd even managed to flatten any rumours circulating around regarding just the number of women who shared his bed, and he would have fully believed that she was ready to succumb to anything he might have desired after she had been so accepting of his kiss (and kissed him right back, he might add). Father had been pleased with the news, and Rafail had felt far superior to his elder brother and the man's frankly useless wife.

So why then, when he had next attempted to approach Princess Emilia, had there been such rebuttal? He could not recall anything he had done to the girl that might have portrayed him in a negative light and he had no doubts that none of his other women would have dared spread any such gossip about him. Truth be told, the only person he felt he could at all consider traitorous in this regard was Princess Persephone, and with such a title to her name, there was nought he could do to punish.

Usually when he was in such a fit of pique Rafail would find himself a woman to distract himself with, someone who he could be sure would be interested in him and only him, and he could spend the evening working out his differences, so to call it. On this rare occasion, however, the root of his struggles was a woman as well, and he hardly wanted to spend time around them. He needed a place to take out his anger with the day and one sure way in which to do that, he had always found, was in the exploration of the Marikas family treasures.

It was amusing, one couldn't deny, that someone with such a dislike for filth and clutter and any activity that seemed less than sophisticated would find a source of entertainment in something so childish, but the truth of the matter was that Rafail was emphatically greedy and could not help admiring all the treasures the family possessed, not to mention all the delightful valuables that dated back to when they had held the throne. There was plenty to take for himself - he still wore the golden ring he'd stolen so many years ago - and it was hardly as though anyone would be stopping him or would even notice anything had gone missing. Really, Rafail thought everything in the family vault was his anyway, so there were no foreseeable problems.

With so many vault explorations already to his name, he would have assumed there was nothing new to discover that day. The usual golds and jewels and fanciful items that he glanced over with deserved disdain because they weren't anything particularly special in comparison to what he'd already seen and that meant they weren't what he wanted. What was the point of things that he didn't want? There had to be something worth having in here.

Running his gaze over everything in sight, his mouth hunched into the typical petulant pout, it landed upon a large stone chest carved with elaborate designs which had somehow gone previously unnoticed. Perhaps that would hold some treasures of interest. Leaning over it and bracing himself into a more efficient position, Rafail moved to push the heavy lid off the box. Gods, where were the staff when you actually needed them? It shouldn't have been so complicated to find good help. And help - or simply someone to do the entire job for him - would have been appreciated.

Successfully removing the lid enough to view the inside of the box, the pout on his face turned back to a frown, noting that it was full of nothing more than useless garbage. Urgh. He was about to leave it be and turn away to find something more worth his time when, in the corner of the box, he found a smaller package wrapped in linens. Clearly, something important if it was so carefully protected. Now that was something worth looking at.