To Swear by Apollo The Healer...

"No....no... I...can't....It can't be! Who...who would do this? Who would do such a thing?"

"Princess, you did..."  

                         ******************

Marlon had only meant to stay for a few moments, but he had gotten sidetracked with his own thoughts of her. Something other than what he saw was pulling him to her. He didn't like leaving her alone, even if she was unconscious. He felt she was already his ward.

Day was turning into night. He stood there looking out over the sea of desert as the sun set in the far off horizon, contemplating his next move. He was surprised she had awakened when she had. The damage that had been done to her body was almost completely healed up. He could see that her face, neck, and shoulders were still swollen and badly bruised.

She needed rest. The rest in conjunction with the healing potion he had given her earlier at his shop was worKing very well together. She looked a far cry better now than how she had appeared when someone had anonymously left her on his shop doorstep the night before. She had been wrapped in nothing but a smelly, brown, burlap cloak and had been drenched in blood. He had made the assumption based off of her lack of attire that she was a Royal courtesan.

One that the King had discarded for her immoral misdeeds, or simply because he had grown bored with her. He had always thought royalty were a strange lot, but this habit was quite common among them in these lands. Zuff law stated every discarded servant or Courtesan must never be acknowledged,touched, or helped in any way. To do so meant death for you and your household. Marlon was a man who believed in his healing techniques and abilities.

He believed every person deserved medical care, no matter their station in life. He aided her as he had the many others' before her. Treating them all with the same dignity and respect he used with his regular patients. After gently washing her unconscious body and dressing her wounds he saw that she was alarmingly beautiful, and he had to wonder what crime she committed to be hurt so mercilessly. She must have been a favorite of the King's, fallen from his grace.

Only a man in a jealous rage would hurt a woman like this, he thought.

 As a physician and healer, he had taken an oath to turn no sick or hurting being away.  He had had no formal training, but still took the oath seriously. Healing was not his given trade, but more so his cover. He was a skilled assassin, trained in the art of subterfuge and sabotage. He hailed from a secret order that once resided as the elite militia of  Zuff before the King dissolved it after the war with the SheHaalte’s, the enemy who had almost destroyed Zuff and the Kingdoms south of it as well as murdered the King.

Because of his father’s immediate defiance to the new King’s hand picked General he was sent to live the rest of his life in the Castle MeadowBrooke. Marlon had swore a blood oath that when the time was right he would rescue his father at whatever the cost it took. That cost at the moment was his life, a price he thought paled in comparison to his father.