Her face tilted to follow the lines of his profile as it shifted. She did not once look away.

"Curses. Prophecies. Fortune tellers." There was something unfinished in her tone, the words precise and clipped. "It was foretold when was a mere seven years old that I would become the lover of a king. I fell into my mother's ambitions and accepted them as my own. I dutifully accepted every lesson, even those my mother had no right to give. I practiced and excelled and truthfully can imagine no other life but this. But you must forgive me if I am weary of it now. I am done living other people's expectations and dressing it up as my life. Even yours, Jack. I find I cannot accept this notion that I would be cursed for you."

There was a brief smile, but it was there.

"I will die one day Jack, and it will have very little to do with your presence here. It will be sooner rather than later if this body has any say in the matter, but we are currently in negotiations. As for hurt, or broken?"

She thought about Louis. About the Doctor. About a great many things.

"Are we not both that already? Let us distract one another, even if only for a while."