Total pages in book: 157
Estimated words: 156907 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 785(@200wpm)___ 628(@250wpm)___ 523(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 156907 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 785(@200wpm)___ 628(@250wpm)___ 523(@300wpm)
But she could now function with much more energy, and much less misery.
She inclined her head to the man, moved out of the tent and several feet away.
She saw her lieutenants, Julia and Lucinda close.
Agnes was supervising the lining up of the Go’Doan bodies that had fallen to the Nadirii in battle the night before so whichever ones could be identified by whoever might wish to claim them would.
Also, the corralling of the prisoners which they very much took and very much intended to interrogate.
“Her prognosis,” Ophelia asked when they stopped.
“Frankly, I’m surprised she’s still alive,” he answered.
His attention was then taken, and Ophelia watched in some shock as his face softened with affection and his chin dipped to something over her shoulder.
She looked that way to see a Go’Ella, one of the acolytes of the Go’Doan, though this one not wearing the sheers of that caste, but instead, the same kind of apparel, though not see-through, and a lovely shade of pale pink, not white.
The woman ducked into the tent.
She was pretty, as many of the Go’Ella were.
She also had a certain serenity about her, which few of the Go’Ella had.
“My chosen one, Saira,” Liam explained. “And if I see the changes in the Go’Doan I wish to make, she will be my wife.”
At her age, there was little that surprised Ophelia.
But that did.
“I teach her what I know. She assists in my work,” he continued astounding her. “You can trust her. She is very good at what she does, has much knowledge and experience. And if she had not been at my side helping me work on your sister, all would have been lost.”
“She is a Go’Ella,” Ophelia pointed out.
Aversion shifted through his expression before he replied, “She was and perhaps officially she still is. I have five other women who work for me, and officially they still are too, even if they are not.”
Ophelia’s brows shot up. “Who work for you?”
“Administratively, in what I do for the Education Ministry of the Go’Doan. Or as nurses in the work I do at the hospital. I do not consider them Go’Ella. I consider them colleagues.”
And that astonished her most of all.
Thus, Ophelia studied him, perhaps his words, or the sense she felt that they were genuine, bringing to the forefront her realization if she was not as she was that day—her age, her condition—she would wish to lay with him.
More than once.
He was tall, handsome, self-possessed and unmistakably intelligent.
Alas, not only was she her age, and her condition, he was committed to another.
She brought them back to the matter at hand.
“And as Melisse is a miracle of survival at this juncture, you cannot say her prognosis.”
“I can say I would prefer to have her in a situation where I could control her environs and the possible poisons that could get into her wound, which, it is my feeling, some actually exist in the air and not just the dressings or instruments used on the wound.”
How fantastical, Ophelia thought.
“In other words,” he continued, “I would like to see her in a hospital. But I do not think it’s safe to move her now. Nor will it be tomorrow, if she survives. After that, I will reassess.”
“But as she is now still alive, you must have some feeling of what the chances are my friend will get to after that?”
“If you asked me before I worked on her what the chances of her still breathing right now were, I would have said nil. But by some miracle, he missed her trachea by but a centimeter when he punctured her chest. However, she lost a great deal of blood, the wound is large, the weapon was a horn which I can assume was not drenched in spirits to kill possible poisons. So, my answer to whether she will still be with us in two days is, perhaps not nil.”
Good goddess, she might like this Go’Doan.
On that thought, it was definitely time to move on.
“And your brothers who attacked my realm?” she queried.
“They are not my brothers,” he replied calmly, lifted a hand when she opened her mouth to retort, and spoke on when she did not. “They are Go’Doan, trained priests. Yes. And it’s my understanding some time ago, precisely thirty-seven years, a small faction of our kind approached the high priests, suggesting that the spread of our faith was not occurring fast enough. Peoples of Airen, Firenze and Wodell were doggedly worshiping their own gods, and The Enchantments and Mar-el would not even let our priests in to educate and heal. They felt more should be done.”
Ophelia nodded.
Liam carried on.
“This was decidedly not a popular suggestion and their ideas to facilitate their desires were not only refused, they were remonstrated for even suggesting them and warned if they should do anything further, even discuss this with other priests, they would be cast out. Regrettably, this only served to make them even more zealous in their cause.”