Page 8 of A Touch of Royalty
And then the door opened and Shana crept in. He’d given orders that he was to be alerted when Emryn had rested, no matter what he was doing.
Shana looked terrified at intruding, but she had a royal order and he was out of his seat and over to her before any of the councillors noticed she was there.
“Shana?” He stopped in front of her.
“Healer Emryn is awake.” Shana said with a curtsy.
“Will you please tell her that I will be there as soon as the council ends?”
“Yes, Highness.” Another curtsy and she was gone back out the doors, shutting them behind her.
Cas turned back to the council, who had stopped arguing and were looking down at him from their ranks of seats. “My healer is awake, my lords, and I have some questions for her.”
His mother nodded. “You are dismissed, Highness.”
He smiled, bowing to his mother to hide it. “Thank you, Majesty.”
He left the council chambers and took a deep breath. He would speak to Emryn, and clear his mind so that he could get back to his duties.
But when hereached the rooms he’d given her, she wasn’t there. Shana was there, looking perplexed and then worried as she opened the door for him.
“She said she could sense an illness.” Shana said slowly. “I don’t know what that means, but she said it.”
“Did she say where?”
“The garden, Highness.” Shana curtsied again.
She was still weak. She shouldn’t be healing anyone in the state she was in.
“I will go and look for her.” It wouldn’t be hard to find her. That flutter in the back of his head would take him right to her.
He left the room and took a right, walking through the corridors and paying attention to the way that the flutter waspointing. He couldn’t think about it too hard, which only led him to trying to figure out what Emryn was doing.
She was dedicated, that was certain. And the head had decreed her his finest. His mother had honored her with her own hands and had tried to elevate her after healing Cas.
Cas stepped out of the palace doors and into the garden, still following the flutter while he tried to find a place in his mind that was calm.
There was a commotion that he could hear coming from the roses and Cas knew he would find Emryn at the center of the noise.
He’d thought that he would find Emryn among the gardeners, not in the middle of a knot of nobility that were all looking her as though she was half rubbish and half a miracle.
“You are not to stand, my lady.” Emryn was saying in that tone that said she was used to being listened to. “For the sake of your child. The next two days are critical while the healing takes.”
Cas nudged his way through the knot of nobles to stop short at the sight in front of him. The lady in question had blood everywhere, lying at the foot of a series of stone stairs. But there were no wounds that could explain the blood. She was also quite heavily pregnant.
“Thank you healer,” the man hovering over the woman said with tears on his face.
“It is my duty,” Emryn staggered upright, face as pale as her hair again. “Take her and put her in bed, if the bleeding begins again, call for me immediately.”
The Lord lifted his Lady and the couple left, dispersing the rest of the nobility and leaving Cas and Emryn to stand there and stare at each other.
“Emryn?”
“Your Highness,” Emryn curtsied, but couldn’t quite get back up, falling to her knees, breathing strained and shaky. “The head healer is going to be furious with me.”
“What did you do?” He went and knelt at her side.
“She fell down the stairs and was going into labor.” Emryn looked up at Cas. “The babe would have been far too early.”
