I don't own emotion, I rent.

[Quartermaine]

Upon Asher’s death, I slip into a deep depression only known to our kind. The Allurists. The Feelers. We are naught but capsules for emotion that is not owned but leased in the greater scheme of eternal life. And I, determined to maintain control and relinquish nothing to the evils of the Shadow Realm, I absorb this grief and sorrow deep within the heart of me, where I process, package, and shed this heartache so that no one might know of what I have succombed to. I am the first generation Allurist. I am not afforded the grace nor glory of much. I control everything around me, and I must do the same for myself tenfold.

I might have loved him.

He had asked me for a home, for a sanctuary that I might have provided before he died and though they most certainly would have murdered him, it would have been in my arms and with my love that he would have met the Shadows. Without fear, without trepidation of the unknown he would have known that his return would result in embrace and acceptance that he could not find within his veins. I hesitated out of duty to my children, that I might deny them the possibility of an alliance with the Dragomir and sentence them to a war that was not theirs to fight... I could not stand the thought. Instead I asked them to choose for me, the precocious and inept leader that I am, and I know I am a selfish soul to hope, for a second, that they would choose the rogue Allurist I have loved over the protection provided by political gain.

I will sacrifice everything for the fate and family I have chosen to love, even if I meants I may lose the bond I did not hand-pick.

He will rise from the ashes soon. I know that he will blame me for my children hired to murder him, no doubt a final nail in the coffin of our friendship. Though some abstained, and all apologized for the pain driven into my heart, he will not overlook this. I could have done no worse than to raise my sword against him myself. Yet there is something worse than him rising to hate me. I fear, more than anything, that he will rise broken as I had. That he will rise missing pieces of the friend I loved so dearly, a husk and a shell who cannot cope with the constant masquerade of maintaining emotion and resisting the beast. That he will not know me whe he rises, and I in turn will not recognize him. The Shadow Realm is a tortuous place that has stripped me of the woman who I had used to be and that who I am is weak-willed and not as drawn to power as I should be. That who I am wars with she who I was and that who I am wins by a margin, though I know the Quartermaine would prosper if I were she who I was...

I am so fractured that often I long for the silence and darkness, and the torture I endured for so many years. For who could love a ghost?

I am prepared to accept that I have lost my only friend, and that I have deprived my children of the protection they deserve by my longing to accept Asher over his former vein. Though I have made no decision, I have, ultimately, made the wrong choice.

There will be no returning from this. And I, in all the pride I have for my control, have slipped. I relinquish she who I am and that which I was to the grief, if only for one evening, in hopes that it will bring me that much closer to enlightenment as to the severity of my situation.

In truth, I will more than likely find a male with more power, more kindness, more motivation and one whom has not a grudge to walk beside me. Yet I, the woman who has felt everything, cannot shake the belief that Asher had shown me some emotions of which even I was not aware.

When he returns, I will grant him the peace that he requires, for I had only made his deaeth more difficult, and I do not wish to do so for his life. For that, I am sure he will be grateful.

Rebecca Quartermaine closed her leather-bound book, and set it aside. Her eyes had squinted from hours of maintaining a modicum of self control which she excelled in, exhilarated in, and was most proud of. And yet her throat bobbed with the tension of a hearty lump, and her artery twitched with heavy strain. She could not help but feel guilt, responsibility, and such great loss that though she knew she could never have saved Asher, her inactivity was enough. She had failed him, and she would fail her family as well if she balked from an alliance based on the Dragomir's handling of the situation. Who would ally with the underdog, controlled by a meager princess who could not make a heavy-handed decision without regret? They required numbers, because Rebecca had failed to provide, and to thrive.

She turned to her side in the bed, and she allowed herself to weep. She made no noises, her body did not move, so that if any were to intrude upon her solitude they would never know of her sadness unless they observed her red-ringed eyes gone grey, or the salt-stuck lines trailing her cheeks. In hours, there would be no traces of her ineptitude, or her loss of control. She would emerge once more with a stubborn chin, and she would fumble through life as she had been since her rebirth from the Shadow Realm; fractured, unsure, and without anyone knowing it.