She did not run.
Running was for people who had not yet decided what they were going to do when they arrived at the destination, and Elara had decided. She walked with the specific quality of someone whose decision had been made and whose body was simply covering the distance between the making of it and the acting on it, through the corridor and past the east wing and toward the temple with the focused energy of a woman who had somewhere to be and was going to be there.
She had left Kaelis with Madame Tilda.
That had been the first thing — getting someone she trusted into the room with him before she left, someone whose hands would be steady and whose eyes would not panic and who would send for the physician without being asked because Madame Tilda did not need to be asked about the things that needed doing, she simply did them with the efficiency of someone who had decided a long time ago that usefulness was its own form of love.
