Storm's Heart (Elder Races #2)(21)

Tiago’s gut also knew that anybody could be gotten to, through bribery or coercion, through family or lovers held hostage or through religious or political beliefs. That was why he followed so closely behind the doctor as the human entered the living room, knelt beside the sofa and introduced himself to Niniane as he opened his bag.

Like Tiago had said to Niniane, life wasn’t logical. It was often filled with uncertainties. At that moment he knew just one thing for sure.

That little manipulative sex kitten was not going to die tonight.

The fate of anybody else remained an open question.

Niniane huddled under the blanket and looked at her surroundings with a dull gaze. The hotel living room seemed unobjectionable enough. There were chairs, the sofa, tables, a flat-screen television, all the obligatory elements, but her exhausted mind seemed unable to absorb any details.

She had a weird kind of infection, she decided. Someone had tried to stuff an extra dimension in her head, and it didn’t fit. Too-loud noises came and went. Her vision flickered around the edges.

Her knife wound hurt. The light was too bright and her eyes hurt. Her skin hurt, breathing hurt—hell, even her hair hurt. She felt like she barely had enough energy to lie on the sofa and live.

But whenever Tiago was near she seemed to have plenty of energy for arguing with him. It must be God’s way of telling her how wrong he was.

She opened her eyes as three men entered the room. Hughes showed that he was a man of discretion, as he caught her eye and gestured that he would go to the kitchenette. She nodded in thanks to him. A slender human male knelt on the floor beside her, opened a medical bag and smiled at her. Tiago hovered just behind him, his dark face grim, and his murderous obsidian eyes tracked the human male’s slightest movement.

She turned her attention back to the man kneeling beside her. His intelligent face was creased with kindness. “I’m Dr. Weylan,” he told her. “It’s quite an honor to meet your highness, but I’m sure we both could have wished it was under better circumstances. I hear you’ve been having a challenging couple of days.”

“You can say that again,” she said. Exhaustion kept her voice faint. Then she glanced pointedly at Tiago and rolled her eyes at the physician as she added, “And somebody tried to kill me too.”

The doctor’s eyebrows shot up and he laughed, while over his shoulder Tiago glared daggers at her. “Okay,” Dr. Weylan said. “I’ll explain everything I’m going to do before I do it. The first thing I want to do is to put my hands on you and give you a magical scan. I want to put one hand on your forehead, and the other one close to where you’ve been injured. Have you had one of these scans before?”

She nodded.

“Good, then you know it might tingle a bit but it won’t hurt. It’s just going to give me information while you tell me all about what happened to you. All right?”

“All right,” she said.

He laid his hand lightly against her forehead, and after asking her, he placed his other hand against her side near the knife wound. The look in his hazel eyes grew intent. “Go on now, tell me what happened,” he encouraged.

She sighed. “If you saw that stupid viral video, you know pretty well what happened. My cousin said he wanted to take me out to dinner. Then he and my two other attendants attacked me, and I got knifed. I cleaned the wound as best I could, but it’s awfully deep. It must have gotten infected.”

The doctor nodded. The room fell silent as he concentrated. After a moment, he pulled his hands away and smiled at her. “I’m glad to say you’re quite a lucky lady, your highness. The wound is deep, and if the entry had been at a slightly different angle, your lung would have been punctured.”

She looked at Tiago. His dark gaze met hers. If anything, he looked deadlier and grimmer than ever, although his hand was quite gentle as he reached out to tug at a lock of her hair.

The doctor went on, “And you’re right, of course. An infection has set in. It will be simple enough to cleanse once we’ve gotten rid of some cloth fibers that are trapped in the puncture. You’re suffering from shock and blood loss, but otherwise, you’re quite healthy. I would like to set up an IV drip to help replenish your fluid levels—”

Tiago stirred. “No IVs,” he said. “No injections. Not without having all your medical supplies tested first.”

The doctor had frozen while Tiago spoke. Weylan continued, without having ever looked away from her gaze, “But barring that, I will strongly urge you to force liquids. Everything you need I can do in the privacy and safety of this suite. I can put a local anesthetic charm near your wound, and I have an extraction spell that will flush the wound and expel the fibers within ten minutes or so. It will feel strange, but it’s much less painful or invasive than physically probing into the wound itself. After that, I can either cleanse the infection with a spell or prescribe a course of antibiotics for you to take.”

“Which is better?” she asked. No matter how hard she tried to keep her eyes open, they drifted shut.

“It’s six-of-one, half-a-dozen of the other,” he told her. “The cleansing spell is quick and efficient, but it takes a system by storm. You would feel pretty weak and exhausted for a couple of days afterward. The antibiotics take more time, but they don’t leave one feeling quite so mowed down.”

She forced her eyes open again and looked at Tiago. “Maybe the antibiotics,” she said. “So I can get back on my feet faster.”