The last word

[igenlode]

Six years later, Philippe gets the last word, as scheduled... though I'm still not quite sure about the wording (already variously fiddled around with).

“He’ll go far, our young Raoul,” Philippe de Chagny said quietly, and she nodded. There had been a crack in his voice, and Christine was not entirely certain she trusted her own.

“Not too far, I hope,” she managed, turning with a smile to make a jest of it.

“My dear, he’ll come back home. While there’s breath in him, he’ll come back home. For that, I can trust in you.” The Comte’s mouth was a little crooked beneath the points of his moustache, but his grip was a benediction and a promise.

Current (unedited, unproofread) word count on the final chapter is 3,681, and the total for the novel is 126,162. Really not that far off the rough estimate of 124,000 words that I made three years ago...