The Atonement of a Writer

6. Living Up to a Name

He couldn't believe he almost drank that. There he was, a water elementalist--not a bad one, at that--and he couldn't detect a foreign substance in his drink.

And it was all her fault.

He knew she probably got framed, but the poison wasn't what he blamed her for. She was just too distracting. He was so captivated by her that checking his drink was the last thing on his mind. If it hadn't been for Killian, he probably would've been dead by now.

As Killian once told him, there was no cure for his stupidity.

~*~

Lili was terrified.

Logically, she knew she had no reason to be. She wasn't hurt anywhere--if you didn't count the small cut on her cheek. It had crossed her mind before--even if her attempts didn't work, and Arielle was still blamed for the assassination attempt, her name would be cleared in the end. After all, Killian would persuade Clovis, and pretty soon they'd realize there was no way she could come into contact with a jellyfish of all things.

But her heart refused to listen to reason, and Lili was still terrified.

She wasn't Arielle Dumont, who kept her chill all the way, and used her time in the dungeons creating a network of friends, this time within the palace. Arielle, who had suspected her family's deaths to be related to the royal family--after all her parents had died in a fire, and there were only two known fire elementalists in the country, one of whom was Colette--had no time to be concerned over the potential prosecution. Arielle trusted Killian, and in turn, Clovis.

She was Lilianne Marineau, who had no chill. Every day of her life, she worked herself to the bone, but faced failure everywhere she turned. She was a student in business school with no aptitude for business, but she was stuck and had to do everything she could to graduate, trying to make herself as small and invisible as possible. Every night after classes, she dragged herself home to write.

Writing had been her escape--it didn't matter that she wasn't good at it, all that mattered was it allowed her to escape from reality. It was one aspect of her life she had control over, and when she was writing, it felt like she was finally doing something she loved, even if she had to stay up past midnight to do it.

Now, not only was she not writing, but she was stuck as Arielle, when she was nothing like Arielle. Their lives, and personal relationships, were too different, because she had intentionally made it so. In a way, Arielle was who she longed to be, but now, even though she was her, she wasn't really her at all. It was a fact buried deep within her.

Not to mention the world she supposedly created was spiralling out of her control. She absolutely hated its unpredictability. How could she expect to live like Arielle when she didn't have her guts?

Bitterly, she wondered what it would be like if she and Arielle switched places. She, of course, would still be stuck in this situation, but Arielle...Arielle would look her problems in the eye and say screw you. Arielle had never let her powers or looks define her--take away her powers, change how she looked, and Arielle would still be there.

Simply put, Lili was not equipped to live through this story. She had no knowledge. She had none of the qualities the male leads loved Arielle for. She was not brave, honest, sassy, or smart. She didn't stand up for herself. She was just a normal person living in the heroine's body, with all of the drama and none of the plot armor.

Lili sank onto the ground, utterly defeated. The dark and dreary dungeon did nothing for her mood. How much longer was she supposed to withstand this pressure? She was one hit away from crumbling into dust.