Page 94 of The Warlord's Princess
“Truly, I wish not to say this, but if the women are to survive, we must return them to Penticar.”
Araelya gasps. “You can do that?”
“We can, if?—”
“Do not speak carelessly,” Grixis growls, his lips quivering as his chest rises and falls in short, angry bursts.
Murmurs rise from those gathered, but I speak more to Grixis than anyone else. “During my travels, I have learned something most grievous.”
“Are the Veriskans in our lands?” Grixis barks. “If so—why have you not told me sooner?”
“No, chieftain. Not that. It is worse.”
He takes a seat, his skin paling. “What could be worse than that?”
“I have found out that while the Penticari are most fertile, their bodies will not be able to bear our children.”
A hush falls over the gathered council members.
Finally, Grixis says, “But Elena?—”
“They can get pregnant. But will likely die during childbirth.”
A commotion erupts, and Elena’s fearful voice rises, her panicked words too chaotic to make out.
Grixis storms toward me, teeth bared, his face twisted in anger, stopping just an inch away from me. “Why would you speak such nonsense?”
“I know how much?—”
POW!
My head snaps to the side, the taste of blood filling my mouth.
POW!
Another blow lands on my cheek, but I block a third.
It is Ulof who pulls Grixis off of me, but even he is glaring in my direction. Perhaps it was wrong for me to tell them all at once, but I had to. I could not risk someone trying to silence the truth.
The room is full of shocked and angry faces, all staring at me.
“If I may speak, you will learn as I had what is to come.”
“How would you know anything about such deaths from just a simple day out in the forest?” Eddard snarls.
“When we were out in the greater forest, I learned much and more about Asha’s life, including that her own mother died in childbirth. If a Penticari woman will sometimes succumb to death from birthing a baby from a Penticari man, what hope would they have of surviving the birth of a baby belonging to a man of Tempest?”
Jaws drop, and worried eyes look to each other.
“That is most blasphemous,” Grixis says, though his voice has lost its edge.
“Yes,” Eddard agrees. “You have always detested the Penticari! And now you seek to manipulate us in a most underhanded way.”
“That is not true!” I argue.
“You, more than anyone, campaigned against them,” Ulof adds.
“And yet I cast a white stone and not a black.”
