She flopped onto the stiff mattress, already missing the gentle plushness of—
No. Nik’s home had not belonged to her. It was just another prison. A place where he’d betrayed her just as his mother had betrayed the people who needed her most.
Elara curled up onto her side.
A faded brown book on the nightstand caught her eye. Its dingy color and frayed edges didn’t belong here.
Mama’s recipe book. Just inside was the contest envelope.
But as the finale approaches, let us not forget those a Souverain serves: the people.
Acid burned her belly. The only people the Souverains served were themselves. They just hid it artfully behind glamorous châteaus and sycophants who delighted in the trickle-down of power.
… it is important to show our citizens that we are united in their pain, and they are united in our victory.
United and yet she felt more lost than ever. Nikolas had been content to mold her into a weapon to serve his father. She still wasn’t sure what Lafontaine wanted from her other than devotion. He wanted to create the title of Grand Souverain and bestow that honor upon himself, but what else? And why?
Elara crumpled the envelope and threw it.
Oh, Elara.Fernand had spoken to her like a child because she was one. He’d tried to make her see the truth about Lafontaine and Nikolas, that they were scheming together. Now she knew. But it was too late.
Elara finally released the scream that had been brewing in her chest since she’d learned of Gaetan’s death. The same one she’d swallowed the night her mother died and again after she’d degraded herself before the board of Directeurs.
She grabbed the closest thing she could find and threw it.
A lamp shattered against the wall.
It felt good to destroy something beautiful.
She threw a hand mirror next.
A perfume bottle. A chair. A brush.
She ripped the curtains from the bed and windows, toppled thefurniture, and danced amid the debris. Her feet burned against the glass, but she didn’t care. If she had no control over her life from now on, she would use every ounce of her free will to destroy whatever she could get her hands on.
So she tore through the room like a hurricane until she grabbed the only item left.
Her mother’s recipe book
When had it become so worn? There were oil stains on the front she’d never noticed, and the corners of the cover were nearly bald. She remembered when it was new, the spine uncracked and pages empty. When the world was filled with hope, as brittle as spun sugar.
Elara flipped through the recipes she’d allowed to guide her life.
Every single one of them had wasted her time. Her life.
She stroked her mother’s slanted lettering.Clafoutis.The dish that had started this hell.
Elara ripped it.
The page fluttered to the floor.
It felt good to destroy something beautiful.
Page by page by page by page.
Until the remnants of Corinne Rousseau fluttered in the air.
36NIK
