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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN. ━━━━━━━━━ How to kill someone: fill them with love and then leave.
ANONYMOUS ━━━━━━━━━
IT IS HARD, TO FORCE herself out of bed every day.
The effort it takes to get dressed and bathe herself tires her, and she floats through days only half-aware of what is happening around her. Oh, she behaves as courteous as ever, always a kind word for everyone, a question about someone else's life to distract the way her own is collapsing. She smiles prettily with thin lips, bright eyes feverish in their charm and all Clarysse can do is go go go, until it's night again and she falls into a fitful sleep.
Her heart has been misguided, embracing Aegon's promises, believing that he is a good man, the very best. The talk of marriage had scared her as always, but it is the prince who matters, and only the prince. The prince who will be king.
Love is blind, they say, and for almost six moons Clarysse had been smitten with him. Yet if she'd had a lick of sense, she'd not have been so obtuse. Every child knows that dreams rarely come true, especially for girls.
All good things end without warning for Clarysse, without a chance to prepare herself — first, her childhood, now, her freedom. She digs her nails into her palm to stop herself from trembling. This morning she watches herself being dressed. Watches how the chestnut hair falls down her back in soft curls, how her nose scrunches up, purses the red bow lips. Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful. Clarysse feels like tearing the brown tresses from her own scalp, feels like scarring her delicate ivory skin. A woman's true weapon is her beauty — Clarysse must use it. She must use every advantage that this body has given her. But she doesn't want to. Gods, she doesn't want to. She doesn't want her body, not her beauty, not her wealth, not her family, not her status, not anymore. But she is stuck here with all of them, and she may as well make the best of it.
When she leaves her chambers, Loras is already waiting for her. Since that fateful feast, her siblings make sure that one of them is always nearby. As if they believe she might throw herself from a tower in the Maidenvault. I may, she thinks some days. But not truly. She isn't even brave enough for that, she knows.
Clarysse tucks her arm into her brother's as he guides her to one of the smaller halls next to the Throne Room. They are to meet her betrothed and make the announcement to court.
How strange, she thinks to herself as she is brought to her husband-to-be, for my pulse to be so steady. She'd have thought she'd feel more in this moment but it is as if she has sunk inside herself and is watching herself from the bottom of a well.
