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Robin stared at the picture in his hands. Victoire and Yusuf had already left, and he didn’t have much time to get everything ready, but he couldn’t move. His gaze locked on the faces of the people he loved most: Rami, Victoire, Letty…
oh, Letty
He really would have died for her, she was his friend. Stubborn, dramatic, yet so sincere. Robin refused to think that any of it was a game, because Letty couldn’t lie, she was who she was—an open book.
She was the one who made them take this picture, she kept it by her bed, so how? How had it all come to this? Rami, his Rami, dead, left to rot forever in a place where he had been scorned. Griffin, Cathy, Ilse, Vimal, Anthony—all dead, unworthy of even graves, ghosts forever bound to the cursed land of the empire that had devoured them alive.
And yet, after all this, when Robin thinks of Letty, this feeling is not the hatred he longs for but pain, a terrible, all-consuming pain and sorrow. For there had been times when they had laughed together, forgetting the assignment on the table when the clock had long since struck midnight; times when they had shared lemon cakes, complaining about the university food; times when she had trusted him enough to cry on his shoulder over Rami’s rejection.
Rami…
Letitia Price is an admiral’s daughter, her hands are steady, and a shot is accurate—right to the heart. And yet, when she came to the tower, she had looked so small, so fragile, almost broken. And Robin wanted to hug her, as if she were the one who needed to be comforted, but wasn't that always the case?
Letitia Price might be a loyal daughter of the British Empire, but Letty was their friend, and they were her only friends. She truly believed she was doing the best she could, that she was saving them. They were her lost sheep, she was a good master who was guiding them on the right path.
But the truth was that Letty was selfish, as was her love. She didn't want to save them, she was just afraid of being alone again. Her love was spoiled, Letitia Price, like the whole British Empire, didn't see them as people, no matter how much she claimed to. They were like her pets, whom she loved, but whom she couldn't allow to have their own opinions and choices that contradicted hers. Her idea of saving them was to keep them in a golden cage, so that they would be alive for her, near her, and never be able to leave her. But everything was out of control. Victoire would soon be far away, thousands of miles away; Rami was dead and Robin would soon join him, taking the entire tower with him, and Letty…
Oh
Letty would be alone, as she had always feared, and Robin wanted her to remember them. Let her remember what she had done, what she had led to, let this be her punishment. Letitia Price did not deserve to rest, she would spend the rest of her life raking up the ruins she had caused, haunted by the ghosts of the people she had sworn to love.