They deserve it all.

Chapter 60

I love silence. That I do. It's so quiet. It's so overwhelming. It's just what I needed. I hadn't realized these last few months that I was actually really down in the slums again. It happens, that it does, I get all happy and then one moment, suddenly out of nowhere, I break down. I'm happy that I didn't do it in front of anyone. Happy that it happened in an empty hidden room. So happy that I cried again. I haven't done that since I became Queen. That really crazed me, that I hadn't cried for so long. So sitting here, trying to push the tears away, failing over and over again, it feels good. It feels great. When I'm done, and my eyelashes are wet, drenched with tears, my cheeks are sticky, stained with tears, my throat is dry, although coated with tears and my lips are cracking, although caressed with tears, I can finally breathe. It's been a week, and all I can think of is how I spent this week. Over and over, waking up in the corner, crying as I realize. Then falling asleep due to the crying and lack of oxygen. Waking up, motivated, sleeping, tired. But mostly crying, crying so much.

"Willow ... oh my sweet dear Willow, please Willow, come back!"

"Please, Willow. I can't be without you. Willow, I am pleading here! Come back to me."

"I love you, Willow, I love you, I love you so much. I know I don't say it much, or at all, in fact I hate you more than I love you, but I do love you, oh I love you so very much."

"You're so very dear to me, you should know that, I hold you so dear to me, so close, you were always there, so please, please don't leave me!"

"Please, Willow, come back!"

That poison ... he poisoned me, he poisoned me and in the process made Willow fade away. But it's different this time. She's not laughing at me, not staring at me, not judging me. She's not ... she's just gone. She's no longer here with me. She's just gone. And I'm sleeping, hoping, adjuring, beseeching for the girl in my dreams to reappear again, hoping for a message, for some answer, for something I can do. But when I close my eyes and I go to sleep, I wake up to nothing. No memory of a dream, I closed my eyes just to open them again and that's all that happened.

"Willow- I demand you to come back to me!"

I had times where I would wish her dead, but now, no, now I need her, I need her to come back to me!

"Willow, please ... please ..."

A week later, a week of mostly sleeping, taking potions that would make me sleep, hoping I would see the girl in my dreams, hoping for a message, but never getting anything, I decided to go outside of this suddenly very suffocating room again. I was dirty, I had on the same night gown from the day I last talked to Alistair. And I had a robe for if I got cold, but my hair is completely tangled, I need to re-braid my locks and my make up is gone. If I go outside now, if anyone sees me, anyone at all, they'll see me. Even the makeup on my legs are gone, you can see the scars from all the scratching now, you can see the spots, you can see me.

So I wait for Larien, I wait to smell him, to hear his footsteps, wait for his voice or even his breathing. And when I think he's in the Hall I need him to be, I slip out a piece paper from under the door, for anyone else it would look like a piece of paper got through wall and slid from some hole maybe, or it just fell, or it was already there, but Larien knows better than to think it's just coincidental. I wrote in the letter that I needed him to clear the Halls for a few minutes and when he did, to knock on the wall which is actually my door 3 times and then walk away himself.