Ariana awoke the following evening to the constant clickety drone of a sewing machine in the next room. At first she didn't recognise her surroundings and for a moment she panicked, but then the events of the previous night came back to her and she let out a sigh of relief.
As she rose and stretched, the young Kindred glanced around her. She'd been so tired that morning that she hadn't really paid much attention to anything. With curiosity getting the better of her, she wandered around the room, drinking in everything she saw.
She had expected extravagance and beauty everywhere, but the room was surprisingly bare. A small, non-descript desk sat in the corner with a handful of papers on it and imposing mahogany bookshelves lined one wall covered with old, dusty volumes, with a simplistic single bed against the opposite wall. A clock above the doorway told her it was just shy of five o'clock.
"Wow, the sun must set really early here," she thought to herself. She groaned as the familiar demands of the Beast began. She needed to feed, but she had no idea where or how she could feed here.
She was so lost in her own thoughts that she hadn't noticed the background noise of the sewing machine had stopped, nor the slender young woman standing in the doorway.
Clairesse seemed a little alarmed. Maybe Ariana's hunger was too obvious? She cleared her throat nervously, avoiding the older Kindred's gaze.
"Nice place you've got here," she muttered, gesturing through the room. But Clairesse only raised an eyebrow in response and this served to make Ariana even more anxious. "I guess I should get going. Um, thanks for letting me crash here I guess?"
To which Clairesse chuckled. "Ma cherie, you are not going anywhere. Sit," she commanded.
Much to Ariana's surprise, she felt compelled to obey, her eyes widening as she sat on the edge of the bed. "What the fuck?" she thought wildly as Clairesse strode into the room, arms crossed over her chest.
"Give me the letter," she demanded, holding out her hand. Again, Ariana found she could not refuse and she reached into her pocket, removed the envelope and passed it over.
Clairesse looked on the verge of Frenzy as she examined the seal on the back. "I knew it. I fucking knew it!" she raged, tossing it aside. A stream of angry French fell from the impassioned woman's lips and for a moment Ariana remembered why she had once been scared of her. It was almost ten minutes before Clairesse showed any sign of calming down and she leaned up against the bookshelf, closing her eyes.
Finally Ariana was brave enough to break the uneasy silence. "Is something wrong?" she asked timidly, shrinking back a bit as Clairesse opened her eyes and gave her a look.
"Everything is wrong Madame. Why did he send you here?" she demanded. Ariana was taken aback.
"Nobody sent me Mademoiselle. I..." she began, but again Clairesse interrupted.
"You think me a fool, that I do not recognise my own Sire's seal?" she shouted, causing Ariana to jump. "Well? Why have you come here?"
"For your information he didn't write that letter. I borrowed his seal. I... I ran away." Ariana's voice went from defensive to timid as she confessed to leaving of her own accord. "I didn't know you were here, okay? Everyone thought you would have gone back to Paris! No one's heard a peep out of you since you left and you were always going on about how marvelous the Parisian Court was! I thought I would be safe here!" she then shouted herself.
Clairesse looked shocked at first. Her eyes widened as Ariana continued her rant and then she took several deep breaths. "Forgive me. I... it would not be the first time he'd sent someone to track me down. I could not think of any other plausible reason for you to be here when you don't even speak the language."
She sat at the desk with a sigh, burying her face in her hands. "You were the smart one ma cherie. You did not wait for him to have the means to dispose of you."
Ariana blinked a few times, not quite understanding what the other woman meant. "When you say 'dispose of'..." she began.
"...I mean exactly that. I held Praxis, a fact of which he claimed to be proud but when my rulings were no longer convenient to him he forced me to step down and leave the country. I returned, and he quickly found a reason to have me removed from the Invictus. I tried to see my childe's rights upheld, and he rewarded me with Banishment in spite of my Recognition by the city. I brought my childe with me, and he responded by sending someone to have me killed," Clairesse explained, her voice cracking.
The pair sat in uncomfortably tense silence for several minutes. Ariana drank in Clairesse's words, allowing the full gravity of them to sink in. Finally, when she spoke, it was so soft that a feather falling might have drowned it out.
"I'm sorry. His Grace is a complete arsehole," she said.