The Atonement of a Writer

9. Pushing Forward

"They genuinely care for each other," she noted, setting down her cup. "How rare."

He replied gruffly, "They know from the start only one of them would be getting the throne."

"Colette is powerful," she acknowledged, "But unruly. There is also no argument that she is smarter than her brother."

"There is more to being a ruler than being smart." He, too, set his cup down with a thud. "A ruler puts the people, the country, first and foremost."

"Colette cares a lot for the people and the country," she argued.

"She is a young girl," he waved his hands dismissively, "And will grow into a sentimental woman. She will bring the country to ruins."

She didn't try to argue. At this point, there was no convincing him.

~*~

There was no way Clovis would be interested in her after all that. Not without being at least a little twisted. While Lili was using Arielle's body, she wasn't actually Arielle, so there was no way he would be attracted after flaying him with words...right? Was that how protagonist relationships worked?

Lili made her way through the manor, searching for Killian's office. She still didn't know the layout as well as she should.

It was amazing what prison time and a weird dream could do to a person.

Killian, with Clovis's help, had of course cleared her name. When she woke up, a guard had come and released her, just like that. Lili had expected it. It was all kind of anticlimactic, really, with all things ending the way they did originally.

Or, well, almost all things. Unlike Arielle, who just let Clovis be, Lili couldn't just stand by and watch him get manipulated by Colette. Seeing her characters in real life and writing them on paper was just too different. In the original, Arielle had a hard time making Clovis see that his sister wasn't who he thought she was. One of the reasons why was because Arielle had suspected Colette too late. To her credit, she noticed far earlier than everyone else, but Colette was such a great actress she had made even Arielle doubt herself.

Knowing Clovis's letter was coming, Lili had decided the best course of action would be to provoke him. Though she wasn't personally comfortable with the idea of deliberately provoking someone, it had to be done if she wanted to leave a lasting impression and for him to start using his head. Since it would be just the two of them, it was highly unlikely Clovis would get her into trouble for offending him either--that was just the kind of person he was. So she spoke to him the way an angry Arielle would--cold, and ruthless.

Honestly, she hadn't noticed before, but the way Clovis doled out personal favors was dangerous. She could only hope he would remember her words, harsh as they were.

She was starting to get in-character--at least on the outside. She may have said all that to Clovis, but she was panicking on the inside the whole time. When she was released from prison and escorted back to the manor, it was as if she had woken up from a long dream. Arielle, in her dream, had mentioned Lili's "fire". She knew in her heart that, no matter what the situation was, this was her life now, whether it was temporary or not. She always had--it was just now that she was admitting it to herself. She could choose to continue to mope around, or take the initiative to live, and hope for the best. Lili, back in the real world, had lived through hurdle after hurdle--this time was no different. At least, that's what she told herself.

It was stupid. There had been no defining moment where Lili decided to pick herself up and fix Arielle's life, as it happens in stories--yet again reminding her she did not belong to this world.

It was when Lili had somehow found herself in the library again, staring at the words she couldn't read, when it all just clicked for her. This world used to be under her pen. It was fictional. Everything was fictional. No matter what she wrote--she owned everything, because they were things she made up. Yet, everything was slipping out of her hands, even though without her, there would be no "story world".

She needed to take it all back under her control, because that was the way things were supposed to be.

Being a writer, no matter a good or bad one, was all she had left back in the real world. She'd be damned if she let her creation run away without her.

She owned everything.

Where the story went, whether it matched with the original...didn't matter. Because, in the foreseeable future, this was her life now, and she couldn't spend her time moping around.

So she decided that she needed Clovis to be smarter--and to be more wary. In case she was stuck here for an indefinite amount of time, she wanted to live peacefully, so she had to get rid of Colette quickly before she got more dangerous than she was currently. The faster she went through the events of the story, the closer she got to the "happy ending", right? Finishing the story with as little "story events", as she called them, as possible was her only option, no matter where the ending led her. In the original story, Clovis was vital to Arielle's victory--at least, that was vaguely what she had planned for the very end, never having reached it. Logically, Clovis was the best candidate to fight his sister, but Lili knew that would be hard. After all, no matter what Colette thought of him, Clovis genuinely loved his sister. Still, Lili needed him to at least not get in the way, and one way to do that was to mold him into a more suitable king candidate.

Because their contact was limited--at this, Lili winced, since that had been her doing when she was still trying to avoid everything--the best she could do was provoke him at their first meeting. Most likely, this would end up with her garnering Colette's attention more quickly, since they were still at the point where Clovis told Colette everything, but there was nothing for it. Clovis needed to start thinking for himself, even if all she could do was plant a seed that may never grow, and if it required a rude noble lady he might hate later, so be it.

Her life just got a thousand times more complicated.

Lili came upon the intricately designed doors again. By now, all the doors just blurred together into one. Or had she been actually walking around in circles? Pushing open the doors, she was relieved to find Killian inside. So this was his office.

At the sound of the doors opening, Killian looked up. She just smiled sheepishly at him . "Sorry. I should've knocked, but..."

He frowned in confusion. "I thought you were with His Highness. Are you two done already?"

She gave a light cough. "Actually. How do I put this? I may have said something I shouldn't have, and walked out on him."

She thought he might've smirked, but she didn't get to see his face clearly as he reached out and patted her head softly. "It's fine. I'll take care of it."

Lili fought her blush as she remembered the last time he'd touched her in the cheek. Arielle was obviously very...dear to him. She'd known that coming in, but now that she was "Arielle", she just...her heart hammered at her chest. On one hand, she was proud, and on the other hand, she felt like she was committing a great sin for deceiving him. Plus, there was that inexplicable tension she felt whenever she was around him.

Killian grabbed his coat and opened the door. "See you at dinner?"

"Y-yeah...sure." Lili managed, trying to act casual. As Killian gave her a fond smile and closed the door shut, Lili wondered just what she had gotten herself into.

A few days later, a royal missive arrived, but it wasn't the one Lili was expecting. She was to go to the palace because a royal wanted to see her. When Lili saw the signature at the bottom, she shivered. Had she really changed things up that much? All she did was skip a meeting and change a few pieces of dialogue. Her fingertips traced the signature slowly.

Colette Lamoreux