He leaves in the autumn when the trees around Aydindril are turning to gold and flame and to your eternal shame no-one notices he's gone for over a day. There are many excuses of course. Your duties have been unusually heavy of late and you fall into bed exhausted. And sometimes you realise that whole days have gone by and you haven't seen him at all (and the realisation always makes you feel guilty because there was a time not so long ago when he was the centre of your world – and you know without asking that you're still the centre of his). It's not just you of course. Zedd is engrossed in rebuilding the Wizard's Keep. He can disappear for a week at a time and forget that any of you exist while he's working. And Cara is busy making sure that Aydindril is safe, is defended, in case Darken Rahl should manage to build an army and attack (although you don't really think he will because surely he would have done it by now if he was going to).
And so you wake one morning and find his side of the bed empty and cold and his pack gone. And you run through the hall in desperation, searching for any sign of him until you're finally told he left yesterday but you were so busy that no-one thought to tell you and so tired that you didn't even notice he wasn't there when you crawled into bed last night. And you wonder just when it was that he stopped holding you at night and when you stopped turning to him to be held.
Cara wants to go after him of course. But with a day's head start and no idea of the direction he went in, you reject the idea (making sure that your confessor mask is firmly in place so that no-one can see that you're dying on the inside). At first you think she's going to argue with you, to go anyway, but eventually she realises that you're right; that without knowing where he's gone you'll never catch up with him. And she decides to stay with you. After all Richard – her Lord Rahl – made her promise to protect you as if you were him.
So you do the only thing you can. You throw yourself into your work harder than ever, knowing that Zedd and Cara are watching you with concern, waiting for the mask to slip, for you to break down. And you wait (hope if you're really honest); wait for him to return (because you can't allow yourself to imagine for even a minute that he won't come back). And you wonder where it all went so badly wrong.
It took you by surprise the first time he asked you to marry him. You were here in your room. You hadn't been back long; had only just returned to your duties as Mother Confessor. He was lying in your bed (in the bed you shared you sharply remind yourself) with the sheets pooling around his waist leaving his chest (and oh Dear Spirits you could spend all day running your hands over that chest) bare. His hair was sticking up in all directions leaving him with that tousled little boy look he so often had when he first woke up, and you smiled fondly at him as you put on your white robe and prepared to face the day.
When he asked you it was every bit as sweet and romantic as you always knew it would be – as you'd always dreamed – and you longed to say yes; to marry him and lose yourself in the simple act of being his wife. But life has never been that simple for the two of you. You are not just Richard and Kahlan, you are the Seeker (and potentially the Lord Rahl – whether he wants it or not) and the Mother Confessor and you both have duties (although his were less pressing at the time). Duty – a word that has been drummed into you from childhood. You must not neglect your duty. And as much as you longed to say yes with every fibre of your being the time really wasn't right. So you said no, let's wait, you couldn't right now. And you watched the shock and pain flare briefly in his eyes – a look that you'd only seen once before when you'd told him you didn't love him. You'd have given anything in that instant to take that pain away from him, to explain how much you longed to say yes. But before you could say anything he turned away and told you that he understood and eased you both past the moment. And you wonder now if that moment was when it all started to go wrong. You see now that he's been withdrawing slowly ever since. He may have stayed physically but mentally he's been leaving for months now – saying a long goodbye.
He didn't ask just once of course. It became a regular thing. And there always seemed to be a good reason to say no at the time. You promised yourself (and him too even if it was just in your head) that soon there would be no more reason to say no; that the time would be perfect. But all those no's pushed him closer and closer to leaving, you see that now. For once he didn't know what you were thinking; didn't understand why the time wasn't right for you to say yes. And you can't help thinking that maybe, just maybe, you wouldn't be here now if one of those no's had been a yes.
Gradually he stopped asking you to marry him and no matter how hard you try you just can't work out, can't remember, when that happened.
You were just so busy; you both were really. You as Mother Confessor, symbol of truth and justice in the Midlands, and him as Seeker. He had appointed himself as your chief bodyguard (although you weren't entirely sure you needed a bodyguard) shortly after your arrival in Aydindril, and split his time between that and keeping half an ear open for any new of Darken Rahl and what he might be up to. So you let things slide that shouldn't have slid, and left things unsaid that should have been said.
And now it's all too late. He's gone and you don't know when (or if) he's going to come back. So you keep the mask of the Mother Confessor in place – serene, untouchable, unflappable. You hold your emotions tightly in place and only when you're alone in your room at night do you allow the mask to fall away and cry yourself to sleep for the dreams of what should have been.