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When you're gone

"I'm sorry love but I have to leave you for a little while. Business calls me away yet again," Rahl said to his wife as he came to say farewell.

It has been two weeks since her incident so natural, he was more than a little bit anxious about leaving her. She said she was fine and generally looked back to her normal self but every so often she had a look on her face that made him nervous.

"If you don't feel well, I am sure I can find a way to get out of the commitments," he added, studying her intensely.

"Where are you going?"she asked simply.

She was calm, deceivingly so, but she didn't want him to leave her, she never did. He must be doing something right for her to love him as much as she did. Honestly, he wondered how he had ever been able to get her hooked on him in the first place. She was way too good for him. Of course he was king so really no one was good enough for him but compared to the real Rahl, she was too good for him.

"Oh just to a few encampments, just to visit my mages and solders to keep up loyalty and moral and such," he said trying to come up with something that was plausible.

He hated lying to her but he had to do it. It was to protect her. He hoped that she realized that. He wasn't lying to be cruel or to leave her in the dark on a whim. He really hoped she knew that.

"You mean you can't or won't tell me right?" she asked, her voice and face etched with hurt and annoyance.

"Yes."

"Well then… you should go. Wouldn't want to keep you from your beloved duties, my lord," she said coolly.

It amazed them both that she could change her mood as quickly as it did lately. She was having mood swings to the extreme. Her moodiness was starting to annoy them both, which only made it worse for her.

He stood there a second, stunned, before his expression grew hurt then faded to cool calmness. With a little bow to kiss her hand, he stomped away. Well that really wasn't the greatest parting kiss and they both regretted it. Shara regretted her earlier mood swing and Rahl, his damned secrecy and stupid reaction to her mood.

Once Shara knew that Rahl was out of their apartment, she threw her pen to the floor and watched the ink splatter all over a ten inch perimeter. She kicked her chair under her desk and slammed her books into a pile. She winced as she heard her papers crimple and saw the fresh ink smudge. She knew that she would have to rewrite those few sentences and this made her even madder. She let out a cry of frustration and stalked about her room for something to throw or kick or rip to let out some pent up anger. She kicked over a basket full of extra bits of used paper.

The noise attracted the attention of her timid maid. The maid poked her head into the room and asked if there was anything that her highness needed. Shara glared at the young girl, nostrils flaring like an excited horse and her eyes held the heat of the flames of the fire in the grand heath in the study. The maid took a few steps back and ducked her head, realizing her bad timing. She watched her queen close her eyes and in a few moments, open them as calm and collected as she normally was.

"Yes, it would be great if you cleaned up this room. It is a mess and I must be getting to the hall for some appeals from the people," she said calmly and almost politely.

She smoothed up her hair and dress and left the privacy of her chambers to listen to a bunch of farmers bickering about who stole what from whom. Oh the joys of being left to tend to feeble affairs. This would also mean that she would have to face all of the court by herself. Oh….joy.

~*~*~

The days seemed to crawl by with her love gone. She regretted being so foul to him. What if he never came back? With him being king and all, that was always a possibility. There were so many people in the world that hated him, that didn't understand him and that wanted to kill him. Even with his squads and masses of guards, something could always happen to him.

She would feel horrible if her last words to him where ones filled with bitterness and the last kiss between them was cold and impersonal. It would kill her if that was the case. She would die just to follow him into the darkness that was the afterlife.

She absolutely loathed ever duty that she had to perform in his stead. She loved her people, don't get her wrong, but it was so unimportant to her without Rahl there, listening with her. At one point, she contemplated locking herself up in her room and not coming out until her lover came and made her re-enter her room on cloud nine. She was sure that her room up there was getting mighty dusty with her occupying it. She didn't even have time to check out properly.

She found that even her daily horse ride was hardly enough to console her. It almost made her miss him even more because he normally accompanied her. Now she was stuck with just a few boring old guards who didn't speak besides the occasional "yes your highness" and "no your highness". She soon gave up speaking to them at all seeing as she was basically just speaking into the void. There was no way to have a conversation with someone who just answered yes or no. Those tended to be a bit of a conversation killer.

She was really missing his company during meal times though. She had to sit there and listen to the senseless banter of the nobles of her court. She was excluded by the men because she was a woman so therefore knew nothing about the war or anything like that, though of course she did because she had to listen to the public complain about it every other day. The women's talk just bored her. Sure she was queen but the hardly ment that she cared at all about was the newest fashions were. She had a tailor to deal with that sort of silly, unimportant thing. Her tailor made her 'fashionable' clothes and she wore them. Simple.

She couldn't bare it when they bugged her about when she was going to produce an heir, like she could control that. She could hardly control what Mother Nature decided to do to her. It wasn't like she was wishing away the possibility of having a child, in fact she was wishing for one as hard as she could. She wanted to shout at them that she was trying, oh lord was she ever trying, and that she would get back to them on it. In her mind she blamed it on her husband's constant absence, seeing as he was always going away for weeks at a time this left them very little intimate time. What she would do to wake up tomorrow to know that she was pregnant.

She often found herself staying up late, reading old books on magic and enchants. Though she had significantly less power than she had had before, she still longed to master more and more complicated spells even if the side effects weren't always all that great. If she didn't faint at least once during her learning, she took it as a good sign. Rahl used to warn her from pushing herself too far but the hunger for power was more powerful than reason. He could go on his way and search for a way for her to regain her full power, but in the mean time, she would sit there and faint the night away if she had to.

Her studies led her down dark paths in the history of magic and she grew so engrossed in them that she had a hard time pulling away to get to bed. She continuously woke lying over her books, disorientated as ever, not knowing what time it was or why she was asleep on her desk. Only when Rahl finally came home did her habits change so she could spend as much time with him as possible, especially at night.

Something was different about him though, something she couldn't place. At first she just thought he was tired, or maybe a bit uneasy from some news he had gotten when he was away. After a week of his continuous brooding, she got up the guts to ask him.

"What's wrong?" she asked one evening letting her arms slide around his shoulders from behind.

She could feel his breathing quicken once she pressed herself against him and smiled. Actually, smiling isn't really the best way to describe it; she was more grinning and smirking all at once. She knew she was hot when...

"What do you mean?" He asked his voice husky.

"You've been off lately. I am worried. Talk to me, please?" She said slowly in his ear. Boy she was sure getting good at this whole sexual interrogation thing.

"I have no idea what you mean," he said obviously fighting to remain in control.

"Oh sure you don't," she said kissing his jaw line."But I know when my husband is off and you are, so just tell me what it is."

He sighed and spun to look at her. He kissed her hard and pushed against her body. He was obviously trying to distract her but that wouldn't work, not yet at least, not this time.

"Nice try sir, but you'll have to try much harder than that. It will be easier if you just tell me," she whispered as she pulled back.

" Fine! You win. I'll tell you. But you'll owe me, greatly," he said with a smirk.

"That is fine by me my lord," she cooed at him as he lead her to their bed chambers.