For your own good

Someone please come and make it stop for I no longer have any control. I spent the night at his estate at the urging of the physicians and the simple insistence of Lucien, the Ubar. I found him in the main reception room with a small group of citizens, mostly women, chatting away. I used to be so jealous of the women that were forever surrounding him but I have come to realize how unlike those women I am and how much the Ubar appreciates that, maybe even needs that. I do not gossip or concern myself in mundane affairs, I keep to myself save for a select group of souls I might dare to call friend.

I had expected to be put into one of the first floor guest rooms, I expected to be treated as if I were a guest. I was, instead, brought to the grand and opulent rooms I had once occupied as Ubara. Those rooms were a gilded cage and I, shamefully, missed them. My tiara was still there, sitting on plush velvet square. The greater pieces I had once worn at important events and affairs of state, were locked away a floor above me.. but the tiara was left out for me to see. To remind me of all I have lost.

The next evening, still in those room, the physicians in and out all day, Lucien came to me. He looked tired and in need of something soft and undemanding. I was happy to sit with him among the fluffy furs and pillows of the balcony under the setting sun. I was grinning when he pulled my bare legs into his lap and ran his hand along them. He said we had to talk and I stiffened a little.

I... did not want to talk.

He handed me a tightly curled paper but I refused it.. I recognized it at once, our contract. I did not need to look at it, I knew it by heart.

"I want a new contract Xianthe. I want you to be my companion again." He quietly demanded.

".. No." I replied.

It was not so simple and he does not understand. I cannot make him see it either. I will not be the catalyst of his heartache. There are so many people in his life who dislike me. Mostly because they do not understand what I did for Cos, what I gave for Cos and.. what I lost for Cos. I wear scars on my body for Cos and.. for my Ubar. Tonight.. I would collect a new scar, on my heart.

And too, I would leave a scar on his.

I do not think another woman has ever so foolishly refused the Ubar. He is handsome and charming..if he were a fisherman there would be women falling at his feet to clean his nastiest fish. But I refused him.. because I love him.

There is no where I want to be more then here in his arms, in his bed, in his life. There is nothing I want more then to know I can climb a set of stairs to find him, or simply knock on the door to his study. I would be sickeningly happy to be that hostess he always wanted me to be, the role I refused to adopt.

But I refused him and I saw the break, the disconnect in his eyes. He shut down on me, severed the ties that bind his heart to mine. I.. died a little. I begged him to tell me more.. tell me why it would be worth the hassle to companion me. Tell me, Lucien.. why would you do that? Why me? Did he not see the danger such a choice created?

He had no answer for me, I had already.. lost him. I begged him to stay with me that night, to hold me close and let me sleep in the circle of him just one more time.

I knew tomorrow.. I'd have to leave and never look back.

Tomorrow.. I had to lose everything.

Because I loved him.