Free Assassin's Creed: Unity by Oliver Bowden

My heart grew heavy at the thought—the thought of somehow
losing
Arno. Yet it was do that or have Father do it himself. I imagined Arno, furious, confronting me at some unspecified point in the future—
“Why did you never tell me?”
—and couldn’t bear the thought.
    “I will do as we agreed, Father.”
    “Thank you.”
    We turned our attention to Madame Levene, who scowled at Father.
    “And make sure your behavior improves,” he added quickly before slapping his hand to his thighs, which I knew from years of experience meant that our meeting was over.
    The headmistress’s scowl deepened as instead of admonishing me further, Father stood and gathered me in his arms, almost surprising me with the force of his emotion.
    There and then I decided that, for him, I would improve. I would do right by him. Be the daughter he deserved.

8 J ANUARY 1788
    When I look back to the diary entry of 8 September 1787, it’s to wince with shame at having written, “I would do right by him. Be the daughter he deserved,” only to do . . .
    . . . absolutely nothing of the sort.
    Not only had I neglected to persuade Arno of the joys of converting to the Templar cause (a situation at least partly informed by me disloyally wondering if in fact there
were
any joys in converting to the Templar cause), my behavior at the Maison Royale had failed to improve.
    It had really failed to improve.
    It had got a lot worse.
    Why, only yesterday Madame Levene called me into her office, the third time in as many weeks. How many times had I made the trip across the years? Hundreds? For insolence, fighting, sneaking out at night (oh, how I loved to sneak out at night, just me and the dew), for drinking, for being disruptive, for scruffiness or for my particular favorite, “persistent bad behavior.”
    There was nobody who knew the route to Madame Levene’s office as well as I did. There can’t have been a beggar alive who had held out their palm more than I had. And I had learned to anticipate the swish of the cane. Even welcome it. Not to blink when the cane left its brand upon my skin.
    It was just as I expected this time, more repercussions from a fight with Valerie, who as well as being our group leader was also the star drama pupil when it came to productions by Racine and Corneille. Take my advice, dear reader, and never pick an actress as an adversary. They are so terribly dramatic about everything. Or, as Mr. Weatherall would say, “Such bloody drama queens!”
    True, this particular disagreement had ended with Valerie in receipt of a black eye and a bloody nose. It had happened while I was supposedly on probation for an act of minor revolt at dinner the month before, which is nothing worth going into here. The point was that the headmistress claimed to be at the end of her tether. She had had “quite enough of you, Élise de la Serre. Quite enough young lady.”
    And there was, of course, the usual talk of expulsion. Except, this time, I was pretty sure it was more than just talk. I was pretty sure that when Madame Levene told me she planned to send a strongly worded letter home requesting my father’s attention at once in order that my future at the Maison Royale should be discussed, this was no longer a series of idle threats and that her mind was indeed at the end of its tether.
    But still I didn’t care.
    No, I mean, I
don’t
care. Do your worst, Levene; do your worst, Father. There’s no circle of hell to which you can consign me worse than the one in which I already find myself.
    “I have been sent a letter from Versailles,” she said. “Your father is sending an emissary to deal with you.”
    I had been gazing out of the window, my eyes traveling past the walls of the Maison Royale to the outside, where I longed to be. Now, however, I switched to looking at Madame Levene, her pinched, pruny face, her eyes like stones behind her spectacles. “An emissary?”
    “Yes. And from what I read in the letter, this emissary