Forty beinors passed. All around Princess Cara, the court buzzed with news of her pregnancy. A festive atmosphere filled the court sharply contrasting against Cara’s own ambivalence. Inside her heart a dark cloud deepened. What was she except for king’s official whore-wife? Isolated in the palace and cut off from every Ten-Arian except for Lord Knight Liam, Cara felt lost and hopeless, trapped into living her life with and for the person she hated most and forbidden from everything and everyone that mattered most to her. Against her better medical judgment as abbess of Ten-Ar, she started to drink, taking advantage of the court’s habit of never volunteering information to the king, not even to gain his favor and patronage.
At shir-or 8.45 Cara obligingly joined the king for the evening meal, Lord Knight Liam noticeably not at her side. Worried, Cara asked a steward to fill her chalice with nara berry mead, drinking deeply before a second steward filled her plate with the roasted meat of a young male konyn. As she started to eat Liam appeared suddenly behind her, “My liege a word, please?”
Rising, Cara acknowledged the king, “Excuse me, Your Majesty.”
Liam led her to an adjacent antechamber, “Forgive my absence; I received a coded message from the Ten-Arian monastery.”
“What?”
“There’s been accident in Nan-li. They need you there, Your Excellency. They command you to go there. We need your medical expertise. More than two hundred lives are at stake!”
“Prepare my shuttle and ask the stewards to discretely pack some clothing and other essentials for me. We leave within the shir-or.”