"....What?" Matthew said, dangerously quiet all of a sudden. His enemy? Surely-- surely Stephen could not be serious. He knew how much his kid sister had meant to him-- had empathised, even, given his relationship with his own deceased sister. He stared hard at Stephen for a long, and equally dangerously quiet, moment, before balling his fists at his sides-- but he didn't throw a punch, not yet.
"Stephen, how-- how could you even say that?" he managed to say, his voice absolutely strangled with -- some indeterminate emotion that he was trying to fight back before it got the better of him. "I mean, she was my baby sister, who I raised up in my parents' absence! It's true, that I didn't approve of her profession, while she lived-- but oh, Stephen..." And now he let out a choked sort of sob, as if he were trying (unsuccessfully) to bite it back. "She was cleverer than I was, to see the folly in the Knights' cause...! To fight against us! And... now she's GONE!" Swaying just a little bit on his feet, he buried his face in his hands.