Several implied that they were going to be here a while, but fortunately she seemed inclined to ask them all at once, which would save them a bit of time, he supposed. The answer to the first was easy, but the second and third posed more of a challenge. This was so unexpected that he had focused his efforts so far on addressing the immediate problem that had arisen, not on measuring what the implications of this revelation might be for the future.

"I won't regret it. And..." he continued, hesitating. And what if the healers had been wrong? What if she was capable of carrying a healthy child to term? He had no problem choosing not to risk it in this case, based on the information that they currently had available to them, but if it kept happening... well, that would be problematic, he supposed. He couldn't just keep feeding her poison every few months for the rest of her life without ill consequences. Sooner or later he'd have to accept the risk of the pregnancy in the hopes that she really had been healed, but there was always the chance that he'd guess wrong, and they'd end up with another deformed birth — or that she wouldn't survive the birth.

"And we can have a healer come and look at you, after it's taken care of," he offered. They both needed more information before they could make real decisions about how to move forward, he decided. "So we'd know, at least, one way or the other."