Everything. My eyes blur. My legs wobble, threatening to collapse, unable to hold the grief and rage and pain building in my chest, crashing down over my head. I’m going to lose everything.
But do I even want it anymore? Now that I had seen their true colors—seen how the nobility really are—do I even care about being a part of them, about making their kind of difference?
No, I realize, with a jolt like lighting through my chest. I don’t care. They can scorn me. They can call me a Cottar. They can say I’ll live an insignificant life.
But if I’ve saved one person with my choice, if—like Fazid said—I’m the rain that brings the tree life, the dirt that nourishes it, the unacknowledged cause of this miracle called the Elixir—then that’s fine.
They don’t have to know my name. It’s enough that, because of me and my sacrifice, they can go on living.
He opens his mouth again, but before he can speak, a shot rings out. It whistles by the right side of my face, tearing through the bushes behind me, imbedding itself in a tree with a dull thunk. Pain explodes in my ear. Ow. I collapse onto the bench. Ow, ow, ow. Clutching my ear, I wait for the ringing to go away, pray for the ringing to go away.
It doesn’t. I have a feeling this prayer will go unanswered.
Distantly, I hear the king shouting, hear the Entourage howling with delight, hear the bloodlust in their cry.
My own Lucre has began.
I curl into a ball and wait for them to tear me apart.
//
Another UCJ (UnCrowned Jewels) snippet. o.o My poor darling has completed his arc and is now suffering for being--or starting to become?--a good boi. >.<
