Isabeau stood on a small hill, gazing out at Paris. The city lay almost a mile away, but that didn't feel like nearly far enough.

She and Jeanne had not made it out the night that Celeste and Renee died. It had been too close to dawn, and they'd been forced to return to the attic where they'd been hiding out when they smelled the Faubourg burning. There was no furniture in the attic, and they had curled up on the floor, holding each other, relying on each other to keep the barrage of grief at bay.

As soon as night had fallen, they had fled again, and this time they'd escaped the city. Isabeau had wanted to keep going, but once they'd put some distance between them and Paris, Jeanne had sunk to the ground and buried her face in her hands.

Neither of them had been able to wash, and their skin and clothes were caked with a grey sludge of soot and ash. Their hands were still blistered, slower to heal since neither of them had had anything to drink, and Isabeau couldn't get the taste of smoke out of her mouth.

She wanted to rip off her clothes and run from this place, run from what had happened.

She settled for tearing away her Revolutionary cockade and throwing it as far as she could, watching it spin through the air before landing in a dark clump of grass some way away.

Bastard thing.

She would be happy if she never saw those colours again.

Jeanne pulled off her own cockade and stared down at it, sitting limply in her hands.

"What did they even die for?" she asked.

Isabeau knew why the Revolution had been sparked. She'd travelled enough to understand the poverty that so many people lived in, but Jeanne didn't want to hear that, and Isabeau didn't want to say it.

Maybe she understood why the Revolution had started, but she would never forgive the people who had burned Celeste and Renee alive.

Paris had been her home once.

Now she had no intention of ever coming back.

"We should leave France altogether. A lot of people are fleeing to England; maybe we should too," she said.

Jeanne crushed the cockade in her hands. "No."

"I don't think it's a good idea to stay in France," Isabeau cautioned.

"I'm not. I'm going to leave this country and I'm never coming back. But I'm not doing it with you," Jeanne said.

"I . . . I don't understand. Are you angry with me?"

Jeanne didn't answer, and anger sparked in Isabeau's chest.

"Are you blaming me for Renee dying? Because that's not fair. She was too badly injured to save – you know that," she said.

Jeanne shook her head. "It's not about that."

"Then what?"

Silence.

"Jeanne, please." Isabeau's voice hitched on the last word. Darkness had rushed into her life so quickly, and Jeanne was the only thing standing between her and the shadows.

"Go to England if you must," Jeanne said.

"Without you?"

"Yes."

"But why?"

Isabeau dropped to a crouch in front of Jeanne, forcing the other woman to look at her. Jeanne hadn't cried since Renee's death, but the hollow, empty look that had replaced the tears was somehow worse. She looked like someone had ripped out her heart.

In a way, Isabeau supposed they had.

"Jeanne," she said, lowering her voice. "Please just come with me."

"I can't," Jeanne shouted, jumping to her feet. She shoved her fingers through her hair, then made a wretched noise when they got tangled in the matted knots.

"I can't," she said again, quieter this time. "Celeste and Renee were my entire world. I loved them. For a while you were part of that world too, and now . . ." She lifted one hand, then let it flop helplessly down again.

"Are you angry that I left? I thought you understood why I did it," Isabeau said.

"I do understand, and I've never blamed you for leaving. I always thought you would come back one day." A sad smile ghosted around the edges of Jeanne's mouth. "I didn't imagine it would take you so long though."

Guilt was a swift kick to the ribs.

Isabeau had only come back because of the Revolution, because she feared for her friends' lives. If that hadn't happened, she wouldn't have returned to France. How long had they hoped for her return? How much longer would she have stayed away?

She'd never know now.

But she could have stayed in contact with them. She could have written to them, or even visited occasionally, and she hadn't. She'd been too busy living her own life, and though she would never regret leaving them so she could forge her own path, she could have made sure that that path sometimes strayed towards theirs.

"Then why are you angry with me?" she said.

"I'm not." Tears glittered in Jeanne's eyes. "But I can't be around you, it's too painful. My world has just ended. The women I love more than anything are dead, and I feel like I abandoned them."

"If you had stayed you would have died too."

"I know. Of course I know that, but part of me still blames myself. I walked away from them. I left them when they needed me the most, and now I will never see them again. They died in agony, and I can't bear it. And that's why I can't be around you."

"I don't understand," Isabeau said again, feeling very small and stupid.

"I thought I would spend the rest of my life with Celeste and Renee, and a vampire's life is very long. Even in my nightmares, I never imagined losing them, but now I have. Now they're gone and I have to start again without them, and that's something that I am struggling to cope with. It's too painful to be around you, Isabeau. You remind me too much of them, of everything that we once shared, and I just . . . I can't."

"But we're stronger together," Isabeau said.

She'd lived alone for so long now, and mostly it didn't bother her. But in this moment it seemed unimaginable. Maybe this shouldn't have hurt so much, considering how many decades had passed since she'd seen her friends, but things felt different now she knew they were dead. The world had tilted, and everything was off-kilter and wrong, and the ground didn't feel steady beneath her feet, and she didn't want to navigate this on her own.

"I need to start again," Jeanne said. She waved a hand towards the distant city, and then stamped on the crumpled cockade, smashing it into the grass. "I have to rebuild my entire life, and I can't do that with you in it, and I know that's not fair, and I'm sorry, but this is what I have to do. I don't want to abandon you, but even looking at you is so fucking painful, and I have no idea how I'm ever supposed to move on and start healing from this, but I know that I will never be able to do that as long as you are in my life."

It wasn't fair, and it made Isabeau want to sink to the ground and weep, but she wouldn't because on some level she understood.

When she had wanted a new life, she had left her friends behind.

Now it was Jeanne's turn to do the same thing.

Crying about it would only make things harder, and Isabeau wouldn't put Jeanne through that. As hard as this was for her, it was so much worse for Jeanne.

Celeste and Renee had been Isabeau's friends, but they really had been Jeanne's world, for so long, and now that world was shattered and Jeanne had been left standing among the pieces, with no way of putting them back together.

Isabeau would not cause her more pain by making her feel even guiltier than she already did.

So she pushed aside her own grief, sealing it behind a wall until she was ready to deal with it.

"Please don't hate me," Jeanne whispered.

"I don't. I understand, Jeanne, really I do."

They stared at each other for the longest moment, two battered, bedraggled, heartsick vampires, and Isabeau realised that she would probably never see Jeanne again.

She held out her arms and Jeanne stepped into her embrace, and they held each other for the last time, and the hug wasn't nearly as long as Isabeau had hoped.

"Where will you go?" she asked.

"I don't know," Jeanne said. "You?"

"I think I'll head to England. It'll be safe there."

Jeanne nodded. "I hope you find a good life."

Isabeau's throat knotted up, making it hard to speak. "Goodbye, Jeanne."

"Goodbye, Isabeau."

The moon was a bright coin overhead as the two vampires parted ways for the last time. Isabeau watched Jeanne walk away, on and on, until finally she was too far even for Isabeau's sight, and the darkness swallowed her up.

Isabeau had no idea what she would do, but she hoped with everything she had that Jeanne would find a new life somewhere.

She hoped that, one day, Jeanne would be happy again.

In the meantime, Isabeau had her own new life to start.

It was time to head for England.

3/3

Next week, we're going to see Edmond's experience of the Revolution. See you then :)