Assassin's Creed: Unity by Oliver Bowden

“Not just yet. Not when the children are so young.”
    He looked from one protesting face to the other and appeared to soften. “You two,” he said with a smile. “Very well. Do as you wish for the time being. We shall review the situation later.”
    I shot a grateful look at my mother.
    What will I do without her?
    v
    She fell ill soon after that and was confined to her rooms, which stayed darkened day and night, that part of the house out of bounds to all but her lady’s maid, Justine, my father and I, and three nurses who were hired to look after her, who were all called Marie.
    To the rest of the house, she began to cease to exist. My morning routine stayed the same, spent with my governor, then in the woods at the edge of our grounds, learning sword fighting with Mr. Weatherall. I no longer whiled afternoons away with Arno; instead, I spent them at my mother’s bedside, clasping her hand as the Maries fussed around us.
    I watched as he began to gravitate toward my father. I watched my father find comfort away from the stress of Mother’s illness in being Arno’s guardian. My father and I were both trying to cope with the gradual loss of Mother, both finding different ways to do it. The laughter in my life gradually faded away.
    I used to have a dream. Only it wasn’t a dream because I was awake. I suppose you’d have to say a fantasy. In the fantasy I was sitting on the throne. I know how it may sound, but after all, if you can’t admit it to your journal, when can you admit it? I am sitting on the throne before my assembled subjects, who in the daydream have no identity but I suppose must be Templars. They are assembled before me, the Grand Master. And you know it’s not a particularly serious daydream because I’m sitting before them as a ten-year-old girl, the throne way too big for me, my legs sticking out and my arms not even long enough to reach over the arms of the chair. I am the least monarchlike monarch you can possibly imagine, but it’s a daydream and that’s the way daydreams go sometimes. What’s important about this daydream isn’t that I turn myself into a king, nor that I have brought my ascendance to Grand Master forward by decades. What’s significant about it for me, and what I cling to, is that sitting at either side of me are my mother and father.
    Each day that she grows a little weaker and closer to death, and each day that he gravitates closer toward Arno, the impression of them at my side becomes more and more indistinct.

15 A PRIL 1778
    “There’s something I have to tell you, Élise, before I go.”
    She took my hand and her grip was so frail. My shoulders shook as I began to sob. “No, please, Mother, no . . .”
    “Hush child, be strong. Be strong for me. I am being taken from you and you must see that as a test of your strength. You must accept it is God’s purpose and see it as a test of your strength. You must be strong, not only for yourself, but also for your father. My passing makes him vulnerable to the raised voices of the Order. You must be a voice in his other ear, Élise. You must press for the third way.”
    “I can’t.”
    “You can. And one day you will be the Grand Master, and you must lead the Order abiding by your own principles. The principles in which you believe.”
    “They are yours, Mother.”
    She dropped my hand and reached to stroke my cheek. Her eyes were cloudy and the smile floated on her face. “They are principles founded on compassion, Élise, and you have so much of that. So much of it. You know, I’m so proud of you. I couldn’t have hoped for a more wonderful daughter. In you, I see the best of your father and the best of me. I couldn’t have asked for more, Élise, and know now that I will die happy—happy to have known you and honored to have witnessed the birth of your greatness.”
    “No, Mother, please, no.”
    The words were spoken, spoken between sobs that wracked my body. My hands gripped her upper arm through the