I am ill.
I have been bedridden for the last few weeks, my body wracked with disease. It seems there is nothing the healers can do, besides identify the cause.
It is poison.
Now, as I write this, my limbs almost too heavy to move, I can hear my niece, sobbing in her room. I didn't want her to know, but she heard. She heard everything and there are no words of comfort I can give her. She will now lose another parent. I have never known such guilt before. The poison is slow-acting, and, before the end, the healers say I shall have a few days of peace, as though I am cured, before finally passing.
There will be so much left unsaid. So much left undone. No way of curing Dieudonnae of her insanity, no way of reconciling her. In a way, it seems as though everything I have done has added up to nothing. I set out from Rohan to rejoin my brother, only for him to die. I joined the Order of the Elanor to fight the forces of evil, only to unwittingly assist one in her rise to power. I fought against her, sacrificing my eye, only to lie here on my bed, dying, while she holds the land my brother charged me with protecting in a tight grip, squeezing the life out of it.
I will leave this world no better than it was when I entered it.
It is enough to reduce me to tears.
