Notes: I suppose you're used to this by now; but melodrama ahead!


VIII.

He says he's tired and he's fed up. He thanks her for being her. And he says goodbye.

She stares at the letter, the flimsy piece of paper fluttering in time with her shaking hands. It's amazing how her grip on it, so hard that it hurts, hasn't still torn it into two.

They don't deserve us, he says. They don't deserve our life, our love, or our blood. To hell with them, and let me make my own way.

That's not the point, she wants to scream at him; but it's not like he'll be around to hear it. All that's left of him and his meager possessions is this piece of paper left by her pillow.

For the first time in a long time, she feels lost. Not scared, ashamed or powerless (all those things are hardly unusual), but lost. One thing in life she was sure of is her place. It is under her father, against everyone else. Scoffing at the world and sneering at the pathetic. Harsh and unyielding, perhaps, but always in the shade of her birthright.

And now Chris has taken that one solid thing in her life and thrown it at her face.

She crumples the letter in her hand, refusing to admit there are tears pricking at her eyes.

Clarisse La Rue may have been a bully of epic proportions, but she was not going to be a traitor.