Only so many times
I can say I long for you
The lily among the thorns
The prey among the wolves..
Barely cold in her grave
Barely warm in my bed
Settling for a draw tonight
Puppet girl, your strings are mine
"Will that be all, Mistress?"
"Yes, Rose. Goodnight."
Arabella watched her employee silently depart the room. Rose had been summoned to report the lastest comings and goings of the Maison. Alone now with her thoughts, she allowed her rigid posture to relax. The day had been long and tiring. She was experiencing a lot of that lately.
Kicking off her high heels and unzipping her dress, she stepped out of the garment and tossed it over the back of a chair. Clad in her undergarments, she made her way into the bathroom and stood before the mirror. She looked as tired as she felt. Opening the medicine cabinet she took out a prescription bottle and scanned the label, making sure it was the correct one.
She was sick. There was no way around it, no need to hide the truth any longer. Time had caught up with her. Her game of spending the last two centuries on the brink of life and undeath had taken its toll. Her doctor had been puzzled, saying that from her blood tests that she should be an old woman. Her blood cells had become so fragile that they were breaking down rapidly now. She was going to die.
Warm brown eyes flicked up to the image of the young woman in the mirror. She didn't look a day past twenty-one. Yet she may as well be a reanimated corpse. Disgusted and terrified of what was to come, uncertain of what she wanted, she was a wreck. She held it together well in front of everyone. None of her employees had the least idea that she may even need so much as an aspirin. She been out to dinner with Fiona and Michele. She'd been by to see Byron. None of them had seemed to notice.
Maybe Byron had. He probably knew her better than anyone. He would definately know that she was keeping something from him, even if he didn't know what. In fact, he was probably the one person she should talk to. She just didn't know quite how to tell someone she had known for two-hundred years that she was dying.
Wiping a tear away from her eyes, Arabella finished stripping down and turned on a hot shower. Her skin felt so cold and clammy to her. She felt as if she were already in the grave, a corpse waiting to recognize its own death and she just wanted to be warm again. When the water was close to scalding and steam had fogged the enitre bathroom, she stepped into the shower and sat in a rumpled heap on the tile floor. The heat felt good, it was almost like a synthetic fix of life in her cold body..
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