Warrior's Heart

Chapter Twenty-Six

Arielle closed her eyes as she lay in what had to be the most tranquil room in existence. White gauze draperies fluttered on the gentle breezes that wafted in through the open windows, and that breeze kissed her ever so gently. Amara, the Rivendell healer, was strikingly beautiful, with thick dark hair and wide blue eyes, and she smiled as she said, "I understand you are feeling poorly, Princess Arielle?"

"That would be an understatement, actually." Arielle swallowed hard against her rising nausea. It refuse to abate at all, no matter how many times she was sick. She stopped counting since they arrived at Rivendell. "I've never felt this awful."

Amara nodded, resting her hands flat on Arielle's belly. "And I understand you are pregnant by the dwarf? The handsome one?"

Arielle couldn't hold back her smile. "I am, yes. At least, I hope I still am. Do you think it could be because he is a dwarf and I am an elf?"

"It is possible," Amara nodded, gently lifting the edge of Arielle's tunic to fold back just above her belly, "but it isn't likely. Especially not if you are in otherwise good health."

"I thought I was, but the last few days, I've just felt so terrible." The brackish taste worsened and horror shot through her as she realized—"I'm going to be sick."

She never saw Amara move, but the healer was there with a basin and a gentle hand on Arielle's head. As her stomach emptied itself yet again, Amara murmured, "Easy, Princess..."

Arielle coughed, gagged, and then sank back into the pillow. She felt sticky and sweaty, wrung out and thoroughly exhausted. "It's growing worse by the hour."

"Worry not. We'll find the problem." Amara offered up a serene smile. "Tell me about how a Princess of Mirkwood came to be in the company of the dwarves of the Blue Mountains?"

As she spoke, Amara laid a damp, cool cloth against Arielle's forehead and Arielle didn't even mind when icy water trickled along her temples and into her hair. It was almost a comfort. "I ran out on my wedding."

The healer's hands were gentle as they moved over Arielle's belly, slowly going from top to bottom. "Your wedding?"

Arielle smiled, letting her eyes close. The respite from vomiting was short, but welcomed and she felt as if she floated on a cloud. "My father had chosen someone for me, a man I couldn't see myself with. But, trying to reason with either was impossible, so I let them think I'd go through with it. But I didn't." She sighed, remembering how miserable it was, out in the rain, tired and hungry. "I ran away the morning I was supposed to be married. But the timing was terrible—endless rains and Orcs and everything that could go wrong did."

"Did it?"

Arielle opened her eyes to look at the Healer. "It seemed to. But then..." She smiled, the image of the first time she saw Thorin coming into her mind. "Then it wasn't so wrong."

"Do tell."

"I met Thorin Oakenshield and his Company. I had given up, was just waiting to die or something equally dramatic and he appeared." A soft sigh rose to her lips. "It was pouring rain for the hundredth day or something equally as long, and then there he was, soaking wet, all this dark hair and heavy beard, looking fiercer than any man I'd ever seen. He approached me and I stabbed him for his trouble."

Amara's hands went still. "Stabbed him, Princess?"

"It was a reaction. I only nicked him. It was barely a scratch. I spun about to try again, and he grabbed my wrist in one hand, and with his other, thrust the tip of his sword into my throat."

"That doesn't sound terribly pleasant."

She smiled. "It wasn't, really. It stung. But, I didn't care. I hadn't eaten in days nor slept, and I just rather... collapsed into him." She lifted a hand to the cloth on her head to shift it slightly. "He thought he could use me as a bargaining chip with my father. That was why he agreed to let me stay with them."