holly

It pierced her heart thinking of how that city had once been a sanctuary, the place where her youth had grown into purpose. Within those walls she had met Siuan, she had spoken oaths that bound her to the Tower, to her sisters. 

Now she returned an exiled, a stranger, with nothing but distance and silence lying between herself and the woman she had loved the most.

The Aes Sedai lowered her gaze, turning her eyes from the city. A boy stood beside her; tall, red-haired, his eyesight lost to the great city sprawling ahead. Moiraine watched him with the calm, steady patience of a woman who had seen people make the same wrong choice a hundred times before her eyes. 

The flicker in his eyes, the slight stiffening of his shoulders, the continuous tapping of his fingers over the railing; whatever path Rand believed he was choosing, Moiraine had already named it for what it was: love. She could see it in the reckless, foolish hope that burned within his eyes; force that had apparently also started to set his feet in motion. 

Moiraine side-eyed him just briefly, before her eyes fixed once again over the city beyond the harbour. “Do not think about it,” she warned him, sharply; her tone brisk and deliberate as a winter freeze. 

Rand halted mid-step, with one hand still clutching the boat’s railing. The young boy didn’t turn to face her immediately, he only stared across the break of dawn— serene docks and up toward the capital, where the White Tower rose, as gleaming, implacable and unreachable as always. 

“I wasn’t going to the Tower,” Rand muttered, absentmindedly. 

“I know,” Moiraine replied quietly, staring at the glowing building as well.

“I was going to look for her,” the boy explained. 

“I know.” Moiraine echoed, with a knowing, yet lukewarm smile tugging at the corner of her lips, as she turned around, finally setting her eyes on him. “But you can’t. The city is too dangerous, especially now that all of the Tower knows your name. There are Red Sisters everywhere,” she added, voice drenched in disdain. “And Darkfriends, Rand. They hide in every shadow, listen to every whispered word. Tár Valon is a hive of vipers, boy.”

The angry slam of Rand’s hand against the railing was a jarring, too obnoxious a noise in the quiet ship; a burst of rage that she should have expected, and still, the boy’s lack of restraint grated at her. Moiraine’s lips pressed into a thin line, her fingers tightening around the fabric of her cloak. “She wouldn’t have left without a word,” he insisted, his voice low, his eyes burning. “She wouldn’t have just... escaped. Something must have happened.”

Moiraine’s gaze flicked skyward for the briefest moment, betraying more tedium than she intended. “Something did happen, Rand,” she countered. “She saw what you both had become, understood what this life would entail… and a part of you, deep down maybe, knows she’s right to have walked away from it all.”

The boy sighed. “I… I just don’t think this is what she wants, not really.”

Moiraine tilted her head slightly, her eyes narrowing, almost cruelly so. “Want and wisdom are rarely allies, Rand. Guinevere is young, and you…” she hesitated. “You have a very important mission, a path that diverges too greatly from hers. And that is what matters the most.”

“It’s what matters to you,” he retorted, almost seething with bitterness. “Not to her. Certainly not to me.” Rand turned around, his back set firmly to her. Moiraine clenched her jaw, fighting the urge to slap the childishness from him. Was it really too naive of her to expect him to act like an adult? 

“You’ve been lying to us all this time, Moiraine.” The boy went on. “Hiding the truth, attempting to bend the Pattern to your will. What makes you think you know what’s best for her?”

“I don’t know what’s best for her,” the woman rushed to argue, tone hardening with authority, “but I am not so shortsighted that I can’t see where this path leads. It will ruin her, you of all people should know it best.”

Rand didn’t flinch at that, though her words clearly meant to wound him. Instead, the boy looked back to the Tower, as if it might offer some answer, though it provided none. “You think I hurt her.”

“No,” Moiraine said after a beat, and it was the first time her voice softened. “But… you will. You carry something that will hurt everyone you love, Rand. That’s what I fear.”

“The Wheel weaves as it wills, and you are the thread the Pattern bends around. And that weight was never meant to be borne lightly.”

Rand bit on his lips. “I never asked for this.” His voice cracked, calmer now, but no less fierce. “I never asked to be the bloody Dragon Reborn. And she—” the boy’s words faltered, his throat tightening in apprehension. “She never asked to be tied to me.”

“No,” Moiraine conceded, and this time her voice held no judgment, no anger whatsoever. “But she is. As surely as you are tied to Lews Therin’s shadow. As surely as you are tied to the Last Battle.”

“Guinevere is stronger than you give her credit for,” Moiraine continued, quieter, almost to herself. “But strength is not the same as safety. And if you love her, boy, truly love her, then you will not drag her down with you.”

Rand’s fists curled against the railing, in a weary, painful motion. “You say that as if I have a choice.”

“You do.” Her eyes finally shifted from the Tower to him, sharp as knives. “You choose every moment. Whether you master the power within you, or let it break everyone around you. Whether you let Guinevere walk the path of her choice, or shackle her to yours. You will choose, Rand. And the cost will be hers to bear.”

He laughed once; a bitter, humorless sound. “Funny. You speak of choices, but you’ve never given me one.”

The ship lurched as sailors cast lines to the dock. Voices began to rise, and the smell of salt and fish grew stronger. Moiraine drew her cloak tighter around herself, looking around, in the look for any eavesdropper. 

“You may despise me for it,” she finally said, her tone like steel, “but you will live to despise me another day.”

Rand stared at her, unflinching, until the gangplank thudded against the dock. Then he turned away without a word, his long stride carrying him to the bow, where the rest of the group had reunited.

Moiraine watched him go, the city’s walls rising high above them both.

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

Moiraine led the group into a secluded building tucked well away from the Tower, though still close enough to keep her informants within arm’s reach.

She left them with a few sharp instructions, stay inside, avoid newcomers, and speak to them only when necessary, before slipping back out into the city. Her path was a familiar one, a network of secret contacts she had cultivated over her years as a sister of the Blue Ajah. Her first stop was a small, dusty shop near the infirmary, filled with exotic spices and rare herbs. Inside, a woman with keen eyes and a quiet demeanor greeted her with a nod. Moiraine’s words were a low murmur, a rapid-fire exchange of names and places and information drawn from a dozen different sources. 

Her second visit was to a quiet tavern, where she met a man with a scarred face and a nervous twitch. He spoke of the Hall’s increasing suspicion, of the political unrest growing within the Tower’s walls. Moiraine thanked him with a handful of coins and a sharp look, and he was gone as quickly as he had appeared.

It was long past midnight when Moiraine finally returned to the inn, a tired sigh escaping her lips as she closed the door behind her. The inn was a ghost of itself now, its common room empty and quiet. Lan turned to Nynaeve’s chambers, as she made her way up the creaking stairs, her feet tired against the worn wood, and turned down the long, dim hallway. A sliver of light escaped from beneath her door. A breath caught in her throat. 

Lanfear.

Her hand instinctively went to her pouch, her fingers wrapping around the hilt of a hidden knife. With a slow, deliberate motion, she pushed the door open, and lunged herself forward at the shrouded silhouette awaiting for her. Moiraine fiercely shoved the intruder against the wall, pressing the bitter edge of her knife hard against their throat. 

The woman’s grip tightened around the meddler’s wrist with an iron grip, her eyes narrowing in fury as she lifted her gaze. But instead of hostility, she was met with wide, gentle eyes; startlingly blue, pools of moonlight that mirrored her very own. The girl’s lips curved into a faint, almost teasing smile, even as a thin crimson line welled where the blade had grazed her skin.

Moiraine’s breath caught, not in relief, but in disbelief. The knife then slipped from her grasp and clattered to the floor, the sound shattering the quiet of the night. The young girl leaned against the wall, her expression veiled under a pale silver light; pain tempered by wry amusement.

“Guinevere…” The name was half-breath, half-curse, and Moiraine’s voice was low, guarded, almost strangled. She took a step forward, her eyes fixed on the gleaming ribbon of blood tracing Guinevere’s throat. “I thought you were someone else. I-I feared you were… Lanfear.”

Guinevere’s smile faded, replaced by a look of unease. She reached up and touched the wound, her fingers coming away stained with her own blood. “I figured,” she said, her voice still soft, eyes still fixed on the crimson staining her skin. “And you’re right to fear so, she is in the city… looming around, somewhere…”

Moiraine stared at her with wide eyes, unblinking. Her lips moved, just faintly, yet no sound came out of them. 

“You seem surprised,” Guinevere commented, a mask of vague shock over her features.

“You vanished,” Moiraine said at last, her voice sharp and cool, though the faint tremor beneath it betrayed her more than she wished. “A month of silence. No word, no trace. And now you appear here— bleeding under my knife.”

Guinevere simply drew the pale blue fabric of her cloak tighter around her shoulders, the moonlight tracing fragile silver lines across her face. 

“I didn’t break in,” the young girl finally explained without looking up, as she took a seat next to the fireplace, action that Moiraine mimicked. 

Moiraine exhaled. “I never accused you of doing so.” She answered simply, placing her hands over her lap. “Did anyone see you?”

Guinevere chuckled at the fireplace, softly. “No,” she grinned, “they’re too busy fighting each other to notice an intruder, I’m afraid.”

“That they do,” Moiraine sighed. 

Guinevere curled into the armchair, shawl of pale blue silk wrapped around her. Her face was turned away, bathed in the firelight’s amber glow, that made her hair look more auburn than it was, and her eyes deeper a colour than they already were. In the curve of her cheek, the slope of her brow, Moiraine was reminded of him. She does hold a resemblance. 

“You knew where to find me,” Moiraine finally said, removing her gloves with precise fingers.

“You’re not difficult to track,” Guinevere murmured. “Not when you’ve raised half your spies in Tár Valon.”

That earned the barest flicker of a smirk from Moiraine, quickly extinguished. She would’ve done well as a Blue. But Siuan did well by indifferently pushing the Yellows to get her; it was a far less political, less dangerous Ajah, after all. 

The girl eventually raised her head towards her, their gazes finally meeting each other. Her eyes looked older than Moiraine remembered, more fatigued. The cape fell from Guinevere’s head, and her eyes fixed on the scarred skin over the young Aes Sedai’s collarbones, on the silver, cruel scar on her neck. 

“How long have you been here?” 

“An hour. Maybe more.” Guinevere moved her gaze. 

“I was informed you’d returned to the Tower almost a week ago,” Moiraine said, moving to pour herself a cup of tea. Her hands, though steady, betrayed a faint tremor at the wrist. “You went to Anvaere.”

Guinevere nodded slowly. “She told me about Barthanes,” the girl added after a pause. “I didn’t know… Light, I didn’t know what he had become.”

“What do you mean?” Moiraine asked, in an all too prying manner for her taste. Letting others glimpse what she knew was dangerous enough; letting them see what she didn’t know was unthinkable. But she was tired, her head hurt too much, and seeing Guinevere had finally shaken all the restraint she had so arduously worked on. 

“That Barthanes is a Darkfriend,” Guinevere replied, too quietly, too soberly, an accusation of sorts, almost. “That he’s a prisoner in the Sun Palace, that my mother found him working for Lanfear—” she kept on going, and so Moiraine understood. 

She’s accusing me of keeping this from her. 

Moiraine couldn’t blame Guinevere for presuming such a thing, as she had hid her fair share of things already. She would’ve hidden that too, of course. 

“Y- you didn’t know.” 

“No,” Moiraine said, her voice soft but firm. “He hid it well. And I was gone too long.”

“Oh,” the girl opened her mouth as if to say something, then closed it again. When she finally spoke, Guinevere was holding back tears. “W-well, my mother told me as soon as I arrived in Cairhien. I went to see him by myself. It’s true, all of it. He…” her voice almost broke, “he confessed everything to me.”

“That he did it out of love, that he did it to protect us, to help our house back to what it used to be,” the girl shook her head, “but that doesn’t change what he had to become.”

“I’m sorry,” Moiraine offered, sincerely. 

“Are you?”

“Yes, of course,” Moiraine insisted, as her eyes filled with something that weren’t quite tears, but a shy glister. “He’s my nephew, Guinevere. Had I been there, he may not have needed to retort to such affairs.”

The girl stared at her, teary eyed. “I won’t argue with you on that one,” she whispered, with a dry cackle, “but the damage is done, there’s nothing else to do now.” Guinevere looked away. That silenced them both again. The fire snapped softly between them.

Moiraine tried reaching for the girl’s fingers, that ought to be what she wants, right?, but her knuckles curled up, and she drew her hand to herself. Moiraine noticed the damaged skin all over her arms, new scars for sure, but she didn’t comment on them. 

“Word is spreading, as it so very usually does in this city,” Guinevere said after a while, clearing her throat in an attempt to mask the tremor of her voice. “Liandrin’s name is on too many lips. And now there’s talk of the Hall. Reds whispering about her innocence, Blues about imprisonment. And the Amyrlin…”

Moiraine’s gaze sharpened. “What about her?”

“She’s the one who called for an Audience,” Guinevere said. “Siuan. She’s the one pressing for Liandrin to be brought before the Hall.”

Moiraine sat back slightly, her lips thinning. “She must be careful. The Tower is not strong enough for what that accusation implies.”

“She is being careful,” Guinevere argued, “she already has called for a handful of Aes Sedai she deems trustworthy; Sitters, she made sure of it, and besides…”

“Besides?”

“One of the Sitters for the Yellow Ajah has vanished,” Guinevere explained, “she was called Marris Beldeine, a sister from Illian, mostly silent, always observant. She left the Tower three weeks ago on Tower business and never returned. No word. No warning.”

Moiraine’s brows rose for an instante. “You believe she’s dead?”

Guinevere’s voice turned flat. “They won’t say as much, but they’re treating her like she is. And with the Hall as fragile as it is, the Yellow Ajah cannot be seen as weakened. They need a replacement.”

Moiraine narrowed her gaze. “And they’ve chosen you.”

Guinevere nodded. “For now. Temporarily, at least. But I’ll be seated in the Hall for the Audience.”

Moiraine inhaled deeply, processing the implication. “You’re very young to sit among the Hall.”

“So was Marris,” Guinevere said. “She’d only worn the shawl for twenty-five years. And the Yellows are divided, more than they care to admit. Half of them don’t want to be involved in politics. The other half think this is the time to force the Hall into action. I was the only name both sides could stomach.”

“Then you’re voting.”

Guinevere nodded again. “Yes.”

“And does Siuan know this?” The woman asked, frowning. “Did she allow this?”

“She does,” Guinevere said. “She didn’t push for it, she didn’t need to. The Ajah made the decision on their own. I think… I think she just sees the Pattern forming around it.”

Moiraine looked away for a moment, toward the fire, where the coals had begun to settle into dull, warm embers. “You’re stepping into a den of wolves, Guinevere.”

“I know.”

“You don’t,” Moiraine said, sharply now. “You think you do, but you don’t. The Hall is not a forum for truth. It’s a battlefield.”

“She also wants Nynaeve to speak,” Guinevere added. “Says her words would carry weight, after what Liandrin did to her and Egwene.”

Moiraine exhaled through her nose, folding her hands in her lap. “It would be a strong case. If the Hall listens.”

“They will,” Guinevere said, and this time her voice held conviction. “They have to.”

“You’re placing too much faith in law,” Moiraine murmured. “And not enough in politics.”

Guinevere opened her mouth, and then closed it again. For the first time it seemed as if the girl had actually listened to what she said; as if she had begun understanding the sheer danger of the situation. 

“Then teach me how to survive it, Aunt Moiraine.”

Moiraine blinked. The words were not petulant, not thrown in a fit of youthful frustration. Guinevere was plainly and straightforwardly asking for her advice. 

She rose slowly from her chair and crossed the room, trying to refrain from pacing around, worried that her feet would follow her rummaging thoughts. Guinevere straightened in her seat but didn’t move as Moiraine came to kneel down in front of her. 

“I can’t teach you that more than I can teach you how to go fishing,” she grinned, mostly to herself, “you’ll have to trust Siuan can take care of it.”

“And do you? Trust her?”

Moiraine offered a half, terribly honest, smile. “I’d be mad not to.”

Guinevere smiled at that, though a grim look quickly claimed her features. “There are rumors,” she then whispered, voice tight, “rumors about E- Elaida…” She spoke the name as if it carried a living terror, her fingers tightening on her cloak, though Moiraine knew not why, “… Sedai being summoned by the Reds.”

Moiraine stilled, the name like a knife in her gut. Her lips curved in a bitter line. Of course. If the Tower seeks fire, they will call on the one most eager to burn.

“Aunt Moiraine you know—  if Elaida comes… Siuan will be eaten alive.” Her tone was quiet, but her eyes were sharp, measuring. “The Reds have wanted her head for years. Elaida won’t need much of an excuse to give it to them.”

Moiraine hummed in agreement. 

“She will need you by her side.” Guinevere affirmed. 

“You think that will make her less of a target?” Moiraine scoffed, much too hastily, a bitter smile on her face. 

“But—”

Moiraine was quick to stand up, and walked towards the door. “You think a hawk fears two rabbits? No, Siuan can manage on her own, she has to.” 

Guinevere was about to argue, but Moiraine opened the door to the bedroom in a nervous rush. The girl then pursed her lips, and slowly rose from the armchair, and walked toward the door. Moiraine’s gaze followed her every step, her own hands clenched tightly against her dress. 

The girl then paused at the door, her hand resting on the latch. She turned her head slightly to look at Moiraine, her eyes, impossibly deep and blue, searching the older woman’s face for some sign of emotion. Moiraine, however, remained a statue of composure, her face a mask of practiced indifference. Neither of them moved to close the gap between them. Neither reached out a hand.

“Please have Nynaeve come to the Tower, with the first light tomorrow.” Guinevere requested. 

“I’ll tell her,” Moiraine conceded, “but I don’t know if she’ll listen.”

“She will,” Guinevere insisted. “You’ll make sure of it.”

With that, she stepped out into the dark hallway, a ghost of a figure disappearing into the night. Moiraine remained motionless by the door, a lone, cold and silent figure in the warm glow.

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

The rain fell in cruel, relentless torrents over Tár Valon, a drowning flood that felt like an omen, a warning of the darkness gathering upon them all. Moiraine’s clothes clung to her, soaked through, her hair damp beneath the hood of her cape. Her fingers, numb and trembling, dug into the rough stone of a crumbling alleyway wall as she stared toward the White Tower. As she stared at her.

Siuan.

Even from a thousand feet away, Moiraine could feel her presence, a pull as ineluctable as the tides, as intimate as a breath against her skin. So close she could almost touch her. So far she might as well have been a world away.

“She’ll be alright.” Lan’s voice was low, steady, as he moved to stand behind her.

Moiraine froze. Fear for Siuan clawed at her chest, but beneath it lay something darker… betrayal, fresh and painful as an open, visceral wound. She could still feel the ghost of Siuan’s oath twisting around her, forcing her to turn, her body, her very connection to the Source, so newly regained, bent to the will of the one person Moiraine could’ve sworn would never wield her words against her.

Her heart turned to stone at the memory. “Today is not about her,” she remarked, holding her head up, her tone dull and too deliberately indifferent to be true.  But Lan had served her long enough to question little, and obey much. So he offered nothing more than a stoic, composed nod of his head.

Siuan would manage just fine on her own, she had to.

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

The hut, 

9 years ago 

Moiraine kissed her. A soft, tender, loving kiss, to hopefully make up for the last ten months without seeing each other, but Moiraine knew better. They were never getting that time back. They had both given up that right long ago, when the Wheel decided they ought to give their lives to the mission. 

Siuan kissed her back. A fierce, vigorous, playful kiss, to hopefully get Moiraine to smile, which she did, of course. She felt the corners of her lips stretching past her lips, as the woman lowered her head with a quiet chuckle, making their noses softly brush each other’s. 

“I’ve missed you,” Moiraine muttered, her lips brushing against Siuan’s warm skin. 

“I’ve missed you too, my love,” Siuan whispered, her hand sliding along the nape of Moiraine’s neck, pulling her closer still.

Moiraine sighed into her touch, a shuddering breath escaping her lips. Siuan’s fingers moved lower, tracing the elegant line of her spine through the thin fabric of her dress, slow and teasing, and Moiraine’s heart stuttered erratically whithin her chest.

Without thinking, she pressed herself closer, her hands sliding up to Siuan’s shoulders, then higher, threading into those wild curls she loved so dearly. Their mouths found each other again; lips parting with a desperate, almost aching, need.

The kiss deepened, and Moiraine let herself drown in it, in Siuan’s warmth, her scent. They stumbled backward blindly, Siuan guiding her until Moiraine’s back brushed the bed behind them. Siuan’s hands framed her face, her thumbs stroking across her cheekbones as if memorizing her all over again. Moiraine could feel the restraint trembling in her hands, the aching need to have her, to love her, but Siuan waited, allowing Moiraine the choice.

Moiraine gave her answer without words. She leaned into Siuan’s touch, her hands falling to the hem of her own dress, beginning to pull it up and over her head. Siuan’s breath caught audibly at the sight of her, bare and unadorned under the moonlight spilling in through the window.

“You’re beautiful,” Siuan murmured, her voice breaking around the words.

Moiraine reached for her, trembling slightly, clumsy with urgency, laughing breathlessly when Siuan’s tunic caught on her elbow, sobering when Moiraine’s fingers lingered too long over a scar they had not seen before.

When finally there was nothing between them but skin and breath and too many years of wanting, Siuan pressed Moiraine back onto the bed with reverent hands. She kissed her everywhere; slow, savoring, as if she could map her body with her mouth: the hollow of her throat, the slope of her shoulder, the trembling pulse beneath her ear.

Moiraine arched into her, hands caressing Siuan’s back, feeling every scar, every freckle, every story written into the body she knew better than her own. She whispered Siuan’s name against her temple, against her collarbone, against her mouth, over and over, like a prayer.

The two of them lay in bed for a while, Siuan softly brushing Moiraine’s hair, but she could tell something was upsetting her. Her muscles were tense under the see through fabric of her linen dress, her movements rigid and cautioned. Moiraine could’ve asked her what was on her mind, but she knew better than rushing Siuan. Eventually, her words started flooding in, like water storming through a dam. 

“I’ve received a letter,” she began explained, “from Elaida.”

That name tensed every single muscle in Moiraine’s body. 

“Oh?” She replied, tentatively, as her gaze searched for Siuan’s eyes. Moiraine was waiting for the woman to continue, but she remained quiet, almost frighteningly so. “Siuan, what is it?” She then asked, sitting up, action that her lover mirrored. 

“Elaida wrote that she’s back from the royal visit to the Sun Palace,” Siuan continued, “she’s met with the court in Cairhien, and…”

“And?” 

Siuan inhaled. “She’s met Guinevere. Elaida wrote to the Tower, claiming that Anvaere’s daughter is strong with the Source, and that I should welcome Guinevere as a Novice as soon as possible.” 

“But she’s only eleven,” 

“She reminded me of course that Guinevere’s aunt herself wasn’t that much older when she herlsef started as a Novice.” 

Silence fell between them, heavy and as brittle as old parchment. Moiraine stared down at her hands, flexing her fingers without thought. Old memories flooded in, not of her daughter, but of herself. Of long, narrow hallways and a red-robed woman whose words stung more than her lashes. Of being hurt, quietly and repeatedly, under the guise of discipline.

A shiver ran through her spine.

“Do you think she suspects?” she asked, her voice barely audible.

Siuan shook her head slowly. “I don’t know. Probably not. But I wouldn’t put it past Elaida to sense there’s something about Guinevere she can use. Whether she knows the truth or not… she doesn’t need the truth to be dangerous.”

Moiraine dropped the blanket she had been holding, her white-knuckled grip loosening its grip on the fabric. Her heart felt like a clenched fist. The idea of Elaida laying even a finger on Guinevere filled her with a silent, helpless rage she didn’t have the words to name.

“Light, Siuan!” She exclaimed, hastily getting out of bed, “How did you let this happen? Elaida is a Sister under your watch now, you could’ve prevented this! How didn’t you foresee she would eventually meet the girl in Cairhien? Do you even realise how gravely this can endanger us, how it could endanger the mission?”

Siuan remained quiet, seemingly apathetic of Moiraine’s lashing. 

“For the Creator’s sake Siuan, say something!”

The woman remained silent, until she finally spoke. “You’re afraid she’ll hurt her the way she hurt us,” she said softly.

“Oh, Siuan—” Moiraine threw a dismissive hand around.

“I know you, Moiraine.”

“Of course I’m afraid,” she scoffed, her voice shaking. “Do you remember what she did to us? The punishments? The girl… Guinevere…” the name was spoken as if reluctantly dragged from her lips, “she’s still a child.”

Siuan stood and crossed to her, gently placing a hand on her shoulder. “Then we bring her to the Tower,” she said, voice as soft as the river flowing outside, “now. Not a year from now, not through distant summons. I can claim it was Anvaere who seeked me out. We bring her under our protection, where I can watch over her myself.”

Moiraine pulled away abruptly, turning toward the fire. The flames danced, mocking her with their warmth.

“You don’t understand,” she said, her voice brittle. “I cannot— I will not let her become entangled in this. Not with the Tower, not with the mission, and certainly not with Elaida.”

Siuan’s expression was unreadable now. She’d tried patience, she’d tried reason. “Then what do you propose? If we refuse her entry, Elaida will only grow more suspicious. If we allow it, we can at least keep an eye on her.”

Moiraine’s hands clenched at her sides. “She is not coming to the Tower.”

“Moiraine—”

“No.” The word was final, sharp as a blade. “We left her with Anvaere for a reason. She is to have a normal life, away from all of this. Away from us.”

Siuan exhaled through her nose, frustration flickering in her eyes. “And if she channels uncontrollably? If she hurts someone? If the Reds find her before we do?”

Moiraine flinched. The thought of Guinevere alone, terrified, with no one to guide her, Light, it was too much like her own nightmares.

“Then Anvaere will find a way,” she said stiffly. “She will keep her hidden. She has resources.”

“And if that fails?” Siuan pressed.

Moiraine whirled on her. “Why are you doing this to me?” Her voice cracked, raw with a pain she’d sworn to buried long ago. “You know what it cost me to leave her. You know I cannot—” She broke off, pressing a hand to her mouth as if she could force the emotions back down.

Siuan’s face softened. She stepped forward, but Moiraine recoiled.

“Don’t,” she whispered.

For a moment, neither of them moved. Then Siuan sighed. “You can’t run from this forever, Moiraine. She is our daughter. And whether you like it or not, the Power in her will make itself known.”

Moiraine closed her eyes. Daughter. The word was a knife.

“I should never have had her,” she said quietly.

Siuan’s breath hitched. “Moiraine—”

“It was a mistake.” The words tasted like ash. “That night was a mistake, that man was a mistake. A distraction we could not afford.”

A heavy silence fell. When she finally dared to look at Siuan, she saw something in her lover’s eyes that she couldn’t bear: pity.

Without another word, Moiraine turned and walked out of the hut, and stood at the edge of the river, the cold night air biting at her skin, her breath coming in sharp, controlled bursts. She had spent years building walls around the part of her that still ached for Guinevere, years of discipline, of focus, of forcing herself to believe that detachment was the only way to keep the girl safe.

But Siuan was right, as per usual.

She heard footsteps behind her, familiar, steady. Siuan did not speak, nor did she reach for her. She simply stood there, waiting.

Moiraine closed her eyes.

“...If she comes to the Tower,” she said at last, her voice barely above a whisper, as she turned to face her, the moonlight casting roving shadows across her face, “she is never to know the truth. Not about us. Not about the mission.”

Siuan hesitated. “Moiraine—”

“Never.” The word was set in stone. “If she asks, if she wonders… she is Anvaere’s daughter. That is all.”

Siuan studied her for a long moment, then nodded. “As you wish.”

Moiraine’s throat tightened. She had spent so long pretending Guinevere did not exist, so long burying the memory of her, the weight of her as a newborn in her arms, the scent of her skin, the way she had clutched Moiraine’s finger with surprising strength.

When Moiraine left the Tower the next morning, she cast one last lingering glance over her shoulder, for she doubted she would return soon, or stay long if she did.

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

An explosion. Moiraine rushed to the balcony. The White Tower was crumbling under a wave of power, just like she had feared. She looked up towards the sky.

Light, let Siuan be alright. 

Let Guinevere be out of reach. 

But Moiraine couldn’t take the chances, she had to find them, she had to make sure they were fine. 

Moiraine turned, her cloak whipping behind her as she flew down the stairwell and out into the streets. The city roared with panic. Aes Sedai channeled in broad daylight, unmasked, the colour of their rings nothing but a second thought as they struck at one another. 

Everywhere she turned, she saw ruin. Warders locked in brutal combat, their swords clashing in desperate attempts to protect their Aes Sedai. Sisters hurling fire and air at each other in the open, mindless of the smallfolk screaming as they scattered. Bodies lay broken across the cobblestones, some still, some groaning, trampled by the chaos.

When she finally spotted them, Moiraine nearly choked on her own scream. There, not twenty paces ahead, stood Siuan and Guinevere.

Two figures flanked them, one dressed in White and the other adorned in Yellow, though both Black Ajah sisters by the malice etched in their faces. Weaves shimmered around their hands, while Siuan and Guinevere struggled against invisible bonds. Moiraine felt it even at a distance: the snap of a shield stretched taut.

Siuan fought like a trapped lioness, teeth bared, her hands clawing at the unseen net around her. Guinevere, pale and bloody smeared, had one hand hidden in her cloak, fingers wrapped around the hilt of a knife. She shifted her weight, ready to strike, even though the odds promised death.

Then Moiraine’s eyes lifted, and her breathing grew ragged. The tower above them groaned, its already splintered structure buckling under the relentless weaves of the two Sisters attempting to bury Siuan and Guinevere into their death. With a sickening crack, a rain of shattered stone began to fall directly toward the women below.

Moiraine flung her hands outward. Time seemed to break. Bricks and slabs of grey stone, each the size of a man, froze midair, suspended above Siuan and Guinevere like a wave held at the crest. Sweat sprang to Moiraine’s brow, her teeth clenched against the weight of it, every muscle straining as she held the ruin aloft.

“Now!” She heard Siuan scream, her voice carried by the One Power.

Guinevere moved first. She tore the knife free and lunged, her blade flashing in the water. One of the Red sisters gasped, staggered, then fell as the knife found her flesh. Siuan, freed by the sudden falter of the shield, struck like thunder: her weave ripped through the air, crushing the second sister in a torrent of air.

Moiraine exhaled sharply and released the stones, guiding them away to crash harmlessly against the street. 

Breathing hard, Siuan stumbled to Guinevere’s side. She caught the girl as she sagged against her, brushed damp hair back from her face with trembling fingers, murmuring words too soft for Moiraine to hear. Guinevere leaned into her without hesitation, blinking back tears, and Siuan cradled her cheeks tenderly in both hands, pressing their foreheads together.

Moiraine watched them through a haze of pain; a fissure cracking deep within her soul.

This... This was all she ever wanted.

To love their daughter openly. To stand beside her, to guide her, to cherish her. Siuan, who could humble queens and kings with a glance, wanted nothing more than this simple, sacred joy.

And Moiraine— fool that she was— had denied them both.

A hot, guilt soaked tear fell through her cheek as the realization struck: they had chosen wrong, all those years ago.

They should have fled. Should have turned their backs on prophecy and duty and pride. Should have taken Guinevere to the hut by the river, far from the Tower’s hungry reach.

The Pattern would have woven itself, with or without them in it. It would have been someone else’s burden to bear. Not theirs. Not Guinevere’s.

Moiraine’s hands trembled where they had clutched the weaving. A single moment of hesitation, and she might have lost them both.

When the haze cleared, Siuan was staring at her, breathless and astonished, her face streaked with soot and blood. 

For a moment, the world held its breath.

“Moiraine,” Siuan whispered, fearful, almost as if saying her name might make her vanish.

But before Siuan could move, before Guinevere could say a word, Moiraine turned, and became lost within the weeping streets of Tár Valon.

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

A/N:

Hello everyone! Sorry for the waiting... I've got no excuse whatsoever I'm just lazy. This chapter has no beta and I haven't proofread it yet (which is probably quite obvious if you've read it lol) so I apologise for that, hopefully I'll be able to edit it before posting the next one.

Anyway I hope you've enjoyed it! We're now properly entering season 3.

Her breath caught. The girl doubled on herself, pressing her forehead against her knees; skin stretched tightly over her ribs, over the knobs of her spine, over the sharp hollows where muscle had once softened bone. She felt fragile. Brittle. As though if she moved too quickly, she might snap in half.

Soon as she had arrived home, the question had spilled from her lips. “Where’s Barthanes?” She’d asked with the same caution found in a wild animal scavenging a forest.

“He’s… well…” her mother had muttered, struggling to find the words. “He’s simply…” the older woman kept fidgeting with her fingers, gaze fixed on her feet, throat tight in pain. 

“Did something happen to him?” Guinevere had asked, her voice caught somewhere between fear and hope. Not him too. Light, not him.  “Mother, where is Barthanes?” She insisted, and the words came out of her mouth with more violence than she had intended. 

And then Anvaere had broken, collapsed onto the bed, a tangle of velvet and grief. Her sobs came like waves, messy and loud and unrecognizable. Guinevere had never seen her cry like this. Not truly. She remembered the tears when Grandfather passed, quiet, controlled, a single handkerchief pressed to her face, posture unshaken. And again when Father died, when the sobs came, but even then, they had been tempered, dignified, her spine straight, her sorrow refined into something sharp and silent. But this... this was different. There was no veil of poise now, no mask of composure. This was raw, unguarded grief, stripped of ceremony.

“Darkfriend…” Anvaere had then choked, face buried in her hands. “The Sun Palace dungeons…” she blurted out, “it was me… I turned him in…”

The words had landed like stones dropped into a hollow chest. Nothing inside to cushion them. Guinevere simply felt the rot, blooming quietly beneath her ribs.

And so Guinevere left at once, straight to the Sun Palace, straight to the truth, without even bothering to ask for permission.

The guards at the palace gates bowed low before her, glass-eyed and serene. They parted without a word, the others within mirrored them. Even the Warden who guarded the cells, a hulking man with a scar down the length of his face, met her gaze and stood aside. His mouth opened as if to protest, but her weave had already sunk into him like a thread of warm honey and steel. Compulsion was not something Guinevere liked to use, nor something she used very often, but today she couldn’t afford caring about that. 

He’s a traitor, a voice from within accused her.

He is my brother. 

Guinevere reached the inner cells and whispered another thread of the One Power, this one far more intricate. The weave spilled from her hands like a cobweb, touching each prisoner she passed, lacing through their minds with quiet precision. Numbness. Silence. The gift of forgetfulness, if only for a time.

And as she did, a thought burned quietly at the back of her mind: Is this not an act of betrayal too?

She had been raised on the teachings of the Light. Taught to heal, to serve, to walk with honesty and compassion in her step. Taught that the Shadow deceived and coerced, that it bent minds and forced loyalty. And yet here she was, compelling, manipulating, forcing calm where perhaps there should be screams. She was supposed to be better. She had sworn to be better.

Guinevere had wanted to believe in purity. In Light. In the clear rightness of her path. But the Light had seldomly given her simple choices. Not when it came to Moiraine. Not when it came to Rand. And certainly not when it came to Barthanes.

And then she saw him.

He was crouched in the corner of his cell, knees pulled to his chest, hair wild, shirt torn and filthy. Yet he looked up at the sound of her boots, and his face lit up with something that might have once been hope.

“Winnie!” he croaked, rising suddenly. His fingers clutched the iron bars, white-knuckled. “You came. Light, I knew you would. I knew you’d understand.”

The girl said nothing for a long while. She merely stood there, studying him. His cheeks were hollow, his lips chapped. But his eyes, they burned too bright. Feverish almost. “I did come,” she finally said, her voice quiet. “I had to see it for myself.”

“Then you know. You know it wasn’t all evil, don’t you?” Her brother’s tone was urgent, desperate. He pressed himself against the bars, as if proximity alone could persuade her. “I did it for us. For Mother. For you.”

Guinevere stepped closer, close enough to see the veins pulsing in his neck. “Explain it to me, then,” she gulped, “help me understand.”

Barthanes sagged in relief. “It started small. Letters. Information. Nothing dangerous, not at first. They promised influence, Gwen. Power. Enough coin to erase our debts, elevate our house.”

He reached through the bars, as if trying to touch her. She didn’t flinch, but neither did she move to meet him. “You should have seen Mother’s face when she hosted the royal envoy last spring. That feast? The silks? The chandeliers? That was me, Winnie. I made that happen.”

Guinevere closed her eyes for a moment, she remembered that night. Their mother had looked radiant, proud beyond herself. And Barthanes… he had stood tall beside her, pouring wine, smiling that same proud grin. “And the price?” she asked. Her voice didn’t tremble. “What did you give them in return?”

He hesitated, just a flicker. “Names. Letters. Secrets from the court,” he said quickly. “But never yours. Never hers. I swore I wouldn’t let them touch either of you.”

“But you did,” Guinevere’s tone sharpened. “I remember just fine. Trying to force information about the Dragon Reborn out of me.”

Barthanes’ hands gripped the bars tighter. “It wasn’t like that. You don’t understand. They made promises. There was a plan. They told me we would be safe.”

She stepped back, just a pace. The light from the torch caught the edge of her profile, casting half her face in shadow.

“Who were they?” she asked.

He shook his head. “I don’t know names. That’s not how it works. But there was a woman, eyes like knives. She said the Wheel had a purpose for me.”

Guinevere’s stomach turned. Lanfear. “You were being used,” she said coldly.

“No.” His voice cracked, a manic laugh escaping his lips. “No, Winnie. I made choices. For us.”

Guinevere studied him in silence, feeling the pull in her chest, that fragile thread of shared history. Her brother. Her confidant. Her best friend.

She could still hear his laughter in the gardens. The way he’d splash her with cold water when they bathed in the fountains. The stories he told her when she couldn’t sleep. The way he had shielded her from the crueler whispers of the court.

And yet. She thought of the names he might have given. The Aes Sedai he might have endangered. The families he might have damned.

She thought of the Oaths.

Once sworn to the Shadow, there was no turning back. The bond ran deeper than skin and greater than soul. You either obeyed, or your soul consumed itself in darkness.

“I could free you,” she whispered at last.

Barthanes’ breath hitched. “What?”

“I have the power. I could make them forget. Walk you out of here like you were never here at all.”

His eyes widened, glittering. “You’d do that for me?”

She took a step forward. Their faces were barely a foot apart now, the iron bars the only thing between them. The girl looked at him long and hard. Her older brother, her best friend, her protector. 

“If I did,” she asked softly, “what would you do with your freedom?”

Barthanes didn’t hesitate. “I’d protect you. And Mother. I’d rebuild what they destroyed.”

“Not fight for the Shadow?”

“Never,” he breathed.

Guinevere stared at him. Her fingers tingled with the urge to channel. To undo the lock, to believe him. But then she saw it. The flicker, the slight twitch at the corner of his mouth. He was lying.

And so she remembered.

She had lied too. Bent the truth. Used her Talent to manipulate those around her. She had judged so many, and yet the taste of hypocrisy curdled on her tongue. What made her better than him?

Because I did it for the Light, her heart argued. To save lives.

But so had he, hadn’t he said as much? To save her. To save their mother. She felt dizzy with the weight of it.

Her faith had once been whole, glowing, unshakeable. Now it flickered, cracked and shadowed. The Light, she had learned, did not always look clean. And sometimes the Shadow spoke in the voice of love. Her stomach turned to ice.

Guinevere stepped back. “You would have let the world burn for our name,” she said, her voice hollow.

Barthanes’ expression twisted, frustration bleeding into anger. “I did it for you!” he shouted. “You have no idea what they promised! The future we could have had! We can still have!”

“There is no future in the Shadow,” she said simply, taking another step back. He slammed his fists against the bars. “Guinevere! Don’t you dare walk away! Don’t you leave me in this place!”

She hesitated, just for a heartbeat.

Because she wanted to. She wanted to pretend he was still the boy she once loved. She wanted to believe there was some light left in him, a sliver, a crack. She wanted to take his hand and believe it wasn’t too late. But she’d seen too much. Felt too much. Lanfear’s touch had burned away whatever innocence remained in her heart.

Her voice broke when she spoke. “You chose this. And I… I can’t save you from it.”

Barthanes screamed. Her name. Again and again until the words lost all meaning, dissolved into rage and panic and pleading.

Guinevere walked away. The guards did not stop her. The prisoners did not speak. The weave of Compulsion remained intact. The silence, thick and suffocating, followed her all the way to the exit. Only when she stepped out into the sunlight did she allow herself to breathe.

And now, here she was.

Back in the bath. Alone. The scars on her legs glistened. And still, his screams echoed in her mind. And beneath them, fainter still, her own voice, asking herself the one question she couldn’t silence:

What if I’m not so different from him after all?

The water had grown cold. Guinevere reached for the sponge again. Not gently this time.

She scrubbed. Once. Twice.

Then harder. The bristles scraped against her skin like thorns, dragging over her arms, her collarbone, her thighs, already raw. Her breath came sharp. The soap slipped from her fingers, and she didn’t care.

She scrubbed until her shoulder bled. Until pink water swirled around her. She gritted her teeth and kept going.

Out, out, her mind chanted. Out with the stain. Out with the lies. Out with the shame.

But it wouldn’t leave her. It had never left her, not truly.

She remembered the flick of a lash across her knuckles; the smell of beeswax and parchment in the stone-railed room of the Sun Palace. The cool, bitter voice of the Aes Sedai from the Red Ajah, as cruel as the whip she was holding.

Guinevere must have been eleven, younger maybe. Her hands still small, still soft; immature, gentle hands that carried all the naivety and innocence she’d never get back. “The Light sees all,” the woman had sneered. “Even what you hide from yourself. Especially that.”

Then came the sting across her hand again. A switch, precise and unforgiving;  wielded by older hands that had grown so accustomed to the act that the swing came easy, almost idle, as though the pain it wrought were nothing more than an afterthought. “What is the first duty of an Aes Sedai?”

Guinevere had murmured something, but not fast enough. Another strike, pain sinking deeper, more brutal into her bones. “Speak up.”

“To serve—” Her voice broke, the words a ragged gasp, futile against the horror clawing up her throat. “To serve the Light.”

The woman paused, fingers tracing the whip’s length like a priestess caressing sacred steel. Then, softer, colder: “Louder.”

“To serve the Light,” Guinevere repeated, voice shaking, lips trembling despite her efforts to maintain them still. 

“And what does that mean?”

“To act without doubt,” she was quick to reply that time, “to live without stain. To be the servants of it all.”

The woman bent close, eyes glittering with almost delirious fascination beneath her hood. “There is no room in the Light for weakness. No space for vanity. You are not special. You are not cherished. You are a tool, child, and a tool must be sharp. A tool must be clean. Otherwise it wouldn’t serve its purpose, don’t you agree?”

Guinevere had only nodded, afraid to speak again. Blood had started to pool beneath her palms, but she didn’t dare lowering her eyes, petrified the whip would find her skin once again.

“Your body is not your own,” the woman then explained, “your name is not your own. Your life will belong to the White Tower. And the White Tower belongs to the Light. Do you understand?”

Guinevere had only whispered, “Yes.”

“Then bleed, if you must. Better to bleed now than fail later.”

That was her first lesson. She hadn’t cried, not then, nor on the many occasions that followed she had found herself once again with her knees pinned against the floor, harsh stone biting onto her skin, hands raised in what felt like a prayer, waiting to be stricken closer to purity. 

The Tower would teach her cleanliness. Composure. Obedience. The Tower would teach her that mercy was dangerous, softness suspect. That Light must be absolute, or not at all.

Guinevere had clung to it. Worshipped it, even. She had dreamt of being pure.

And now?

She had lied. Compelled. Judged. Walked the halls of a prison and left her brother in chains, screaming after her.

“The Light sees all”.

What would it see in me, then?

Her breath hitched.

She leaned forward, sponge in hand, and scrubbed across her chest until blood pooled in the center of her sternum, mingling with the scars on her legs. She didn’t stop until her skin stung so badly her fingers shook. Guinevere had once dreamed of being a perfect daughter of the Tower, just like Elaida Sedai had taught her within the rooms of the Sun Palace each time Queen Morgase visited Carhien. A beacon of warmth and truth. A healer. A servant of peace.

Now she felt filthier than ever.

She wrapped her arms around herself in the freezing water, knees tucked close. She wanted to be clean, she wanted to be good. But the Light had no place for fractured things. And she was no longer whole.

Guinevere bowed her head beneath the water and did not rise for a long, long time.

She didn’t hear the door creak open. Didn’t notice the soft clatter of slippers across marble. It wasn’t until a sudden gasp cut through the stillness that she stirred.

“Light!”

Anvaere’s voice, sharp with horror, filled the chamber. A flurry of motion followed, a towel ripped from its hook, water sloshing as she hurried forward.

Guinevere lifted her head slowly, strands of soaked hair clinging to her face. Her lips were pale, her shoulders raw and pink, almost scraped clean of skin in some places. Her eyes were empty.

“Guinevere,” her mother whispered, kneeling beside the tub. The towel slipped from her hands. “Light, what have you done to yourself?”

The girl blinked. “I was cleansing.”

“There’s blood.”

“I’m dirty,” she said simply.

Anvaere reached out to touch her, but Guinevere flinched away. The gesture was small, but final. “Is it the nightmares again, darling?” Her mother then asked, quietly, frightened to her core. 

Guinevere didn’t blink. “I need to go back,” she murmured.

“To the Tower?” Anvaere’s voice was careful now, slow, like one approaching a skittish animal. “Why?”

Guinevere did not answer.

But inside, her thoughts moved like iron through fog.

Because I’ve done too much. Because I can’t breathe inside this skin. Because I keep telling myself I did what I had to, but the Light is silent and I feel filthier with every breath. Because something inside me is splintering, and only the Tower knows how to grind it down to something usable again. Because the Tower taught me how to scrape the rot away. And I am rotting.

Anvaere was still watching her, trembling, as if searching her face for something she could recognize.

“What happened out there, Guinevere?” she asked again, quieter now.

Still, Guinevere gave her nothing.

“Where were you, those weeks you were gone?” Anvaere’s voice cracked, anger slipping through the carefully concealed fissures. “What did she do to you?”

Guinevere closed her eyes. A drop of water slid down her cheek, whether from the bath or her eye, she couldn’t tell. Her throat burned with everything she wanted to say, yet couldn’t. 

“She didn’t… do anything,” she said at last.

Anvaere’s mouth tightened. “Then what is this?” Her hand swept through the air as if to encompass the bleeding skin, the pale face, the silence. “What are you doing to yourself?”

Guinevere opened her mouth, and then closed it. Her eyes were fixed on the window, empty, idle. “I know now.” She whispered, absent-mindendly, as if she were the only one in the room, with no one to hear her but herself. “I know about her.”

Anvaere’s brow furrowed in confusion. “Know what?” But Guinevere didn’t move. “Winnie, what do you mean?” The older woman repeated after herself, gently nudging her daughter on the shoulder. 

The touch seemed to wake her. Guinevere blinked quickly, as though shaken from a dream. “Nothing,” she said hastily. “It’s nothing. It has nothing to do with this.”

Anvare grabbed her by the chin, in an effort to force her eyes to focus on her. “Guinevere I’m going to ask you one more time, and you’re going to give me a proper answer, I’ll be damned if you don’t. ” She asserted. “What. Is. It?

Guinevere looked up at her finally, meeting her eyes for the first time since she stepped into the room. She let out a small exhale, lips parted and almost trembling. 

“The truth,” she whispered. “That she… that Moiraine is my real mother.”

The silence that followed was not immediate and sharp, but slow and suffocating. It settled like snow. Anvaere did not gasp, nor did she weep. She simply sat back, as if the words themselves had physically struck her.

“I see,” she said after a moment, though there was no strength in it.

Guinevere stood, water sliding off her body like glass. She wrapped the towel around herself and stepped out from the tub. “You are my mother,” she said, softly, with absolute certainty. Her voice cracked, and tears started streaming down her face. “That won’t ever change, that hasn’t changed.”

Anvaere looked up at her, eyes wide, tears on the verge but not yet falling. She needed to be strong for the both of them at the moment. And yet she couldn’t offer her more than a smile, followed by a soft caress on the girl’s cheek. 

“Let me call for a Healer, Guinevere. Someone to take care of those injuries.”

“I don’t need that.”

“You do.”

“Then I’d rather you tend to them.” Guinevere mumbled, a plea, almost. 

Her mother smiled again. A fake, deprived of any emotion kind of smile. “Of course, my sweet girl.”

Anvaere helped her to the bed, gentle as ever, cradling her arm as though Guinevere might shatter if touched too roughly. She fetched the salve herself, cool and white, smelling faintly of mint and something floral, and returned with a basin of warm water, clean linen, and trembling hands she kept steady for her daughter’s sake.

Guinevere sat motionless on the edge of the bed, towel wrapped tightly around her, skin damp and raw. Her knuckles were white where she clutched the fabric. When Anvaere knelt before her, she didn’t flinch this time. She simply looked down, empty-eyed, and let her mother work.

The silence was thick, almost sacred. Anvaere dipped the cloth into the water and began dabbing at the worst of the abrasions, slowly, carefully. Her every movement was infused with the care of a woman who had once soothed scraped knees and frightened nightmares, who had sung lullabies to soothe a baby back to sleep. Infused with the care of a mother. 

“I always knew you would be a force to be reckoned with,” Anvaere said quietly, with the ghost of a smile creeping up her lips, yet not looking up. “You’re too much like her, you know. Too proud. Too stubborn. Too determined to carry your pain alone.”

Guinevere’s eyes fluttered shut, her lip quivered. “I don’t want to be like her.”

Anvaere’s fingers paused for a breath of a second, then resumed their gentle work, softer now as she pressed a clean cloth against the angry welt blooming across Guinevere’s shoulder.

“No one ever does,” she said, voice quieter still. “But blood doesn’t ask your permission when it speaks.”

Guinevere exhaled shakily, the towel loosening just slightly in her grasp. Her shoulders shivered beneath her mother’s hands. “I sometimes can’t help but to loathe her,” she murmured. “I thought she hated me.”

“She didn’t,” Anvaere said, and although her hand might’ve been trembling, her voice was firm and certain. “She only did what she thought was right. That doesn’t make it kind. Or forgivable. But it’s the truth.”

“But she never even looked at me,” Guinevere whispered. “Not until she had to. Not until everything was already broken.”

Anvaere didn’t argue. She rinsed the cloth again, squeezing water into the basin. “Sometimes love is a coward. And sometimes it wears armor so thick it forgets what it’s guarding.”

Guinevere let out a laugh, bitter, broken. “You sound like a Sister from the White Ajah.”

Anvaere did not share her laugh. “I sound like a mother who’s made her own share of mistakes.”

Of course, Guinevere thought, feeling like an absolute idiot, Barthanes. “Mum, I’m so sorry—”

But Anvaere accidentally dabbed ointment over the torn skin on Guinevere’s forearm, and the girl hissed through her teeth. “Light, I’m sorry,” her mother then muttered, instantly blowing on the sting like she had when Guinevere was small. “I’m almost done.”

“That’s alright,” Guinevere said, holding back tears. 

Anvaere then looked up slowly, and for a moment, their eyes locked, blue and aching and unspoken between them. So much had been hidden, twisted in duty and silence and the Tower’s long shadow. And yet, here they were. Still tethered, still together.

“I wish I could promise it gets easier,” Anvaere said at last. “But the path that has been chosen for you is one that will break you a thousand times before it makes you whole. The Tower doesn’t heal its Daughters. It tempers them.”

Guinevere nodded, slowly. “I know.”

Anvaere picked up the salve once more, moving to the long, cruel scrape down her shin. “And still you’ll go back?”

“I have to.”

“Because of her?”

“Because of me.”

This time, it was Anvaere who faltered. Her lips parted, but no words came. She looked at Guinevere then, truly looked at her, not as a little girl in pain, not as the child she’d raised, but as the woman she had become.

And it broke her heart.

She set the cloth aside and reached up, cupping her daughter’s face with cool, careful fingers. “You’re stronger than I ever was,” she said, her voice thick with pride and sorrow. “Stronger than her, too.”

Guinevere blinked rapidly, a tear slipping free at last. “Then why do I feel so… small?”

“Because you haven’t seen the other side yet.”

She leaned forward and kissed her brow, her lips lingering there a moment, as though trying to anchor her to something steady before the storm returned. “But you will. Light willing, you will.”

Guinevere clung to her hand. “Will you write to me?”

“Every week,” Anvaere promised. “If not more.”

“And if I send nothing back?”

“I’ll write anyway.”

They remained resting on the bed for a while, just breathing. Just being. Guinevere resting her head against her mother’s chest, tangled within her warm, loving embrace. 

“I’m tired of fighting,” the girl finally admitted in a raw whisper.

“Then don’t fight,” Anvaere said simply. “Just heal. Just be my daughter for a little while longer. That’s I’ll ever wanted.” 

“I’ll never stop being your daughter.”

“I know.”

The night stretched long around them, thick with the knowledge that morning would come too soon. And with it, the parting.

But for now, Guinevere let her head fall to her mother’s shoulder. And Anvaere held her tightly, the way only a mother could, knowing the moment would pass, but needing to make it last.

The sun had only just begun to crest over Tár Valon when Guinevere arrived. The sky was pale and rimmed with gold, but the White Tower stood unbothered by such gentle changes, immovable, sharp against the horizon. Its shining white walls bore down with all the weight of tradition and law, and yet to Guinevere, it was not awe that stirred in her chest but something else. Not quite dread, and yet not quite longing. Something heavier, like walking toward a place that knew all her sins before she had even spoken them aloud.

She walked with purpose, not grace. Her boots were scuffed from the road, her Yellow-fringed shawl wrinkled and damp from morning mist. There were no Sisters waiting to greet her, nor even a curious Novice to trail behind her. 

The Tower’s interior hadn’t changed. It smelled of parchment and fresh ink, of lavender oil and stone. Guinevere’s fingers twitched at her sides. She passed a few Sisters along the way, eyes flitting to her shawl, to the fatigue that clung to her face, and though none dared speak, Guinevere felt every look like a touch. She had forgotten what it was like to walk those halls wearing her face. Everyone’s reminded of her. By the time she reached the upper levels, her breaths had grown shallow, tight against her ribs.

She turned the last corner and stopped in front of a set of tall, polished doors marked with the Flame of Tar Valon. The entrance to the Amyrlin’s quarters. And in front of it, the always regal, and always beautiful, Leane Sharif.

The Keeper of the Chronicles stood with hands folded at her waist, eyes alert, mouth pressed into a perfect line. She had always been tall, commanding even in silence, and Guinevere felt no less small before her now than she had as a Novice.

“Sister,” Guinevere greeted her, offering a low, courteous bow, “I need to see the Amyrlin,” she added without preamble.

Leane’s eyes narrowed. “Do you have an appointment?”

“It’s urgent.”

The woman did not move. “That’s not what I asked.”

Guinevere’s jaw clenched, just the slightest. “Then I’ll say it plainly. I must speak with her now. I have information of grave importance.”

“Then you may submit it through the Keeper’s desk, and the Amyrlin will respond as her schedule permits.” The Keeper responded, with a faint glint of arrogance in her voice. 

“With all due respect, Leane Sedai, this cannot wait.”

“Everything believes it cannot wait. This Tower does not run on personal emergencies, Sister. You’ve been absent without leave for months, by some accounts, even longer, and you think you can waltz through our halls and demand an audience with Mother herself?”

Guinevere’s face flushed. “I do not demand,” she argued, “but I insist.”

“And I refuse,” Leane said, voice firm. “The Amyrlin’s time is not yours to take.”

But then, came a voice from within. Soft, but commanding. “Leane,” it whispered, “let her in.”

The Keeper stiffened, turning toward the doors. There was a pause. Then Siuan Sanche herself opened them.

She was not in her formal stole, only a crea, dress with white cuffs, and a gold chain at her throat. Her hair was braided back tightly, but rebel tendrils had escaped near her temples. There were lines around her eyes that Guinevere did not remember.

“She may enter,” Siuan repeated, gentler this time.

Leane stepped back. “Yes, Mother.”

Guinevere passed through the door without another word, sending Leane a disdainful look her way without missing a beat. Siuan closed it behind them, and the Tower’s hush fell away.

The Amyrlin’s study was not the sterile seat of power most people would imagine. It was full of life, unexpectedly so. Books lay in orderly stacks, but they were softened by small comforts; a carved model of a fishing boat sat near the hearth, its painted hull chipped with age, and the faint scent of brine still clung to the old oak shelves. Behind her desk hung a tapestry in Sea Folk patterns, waves and stars woven in fine threads of indigo and silver, as if the sea itself had left its mark on these walls. And then, almost hidden in plain sight, a portrait: a serene riverside scene, oil on canvas, the colors soft and dim with age

Guinevere didn’t realize she had stopped in the middle of the room until her eyes settled on Siuan. The woman was staring at her with a curious look on her face; anger, of course, the girl expected as much after she had abandoned her at the Waygate, but also, something more. Something deeper, something gentler. Guinevere then remembered what Moiraine had confessed to her. 

“Siuan was my partner when I became pregnant with you”

And now Guinevere saw it for the first time. The gentleness tucked behind Siuan’s sternness. The worry in the set of her jaw. The love in the way her eyes lingered, not with judgment, but aching concern. She had always been there, just beyond reach. Watching. Guarding. Wanting. 

Guinevere had almost forgotten how to breathe, until the quiet sound of Siuan clearing her throat shattered the stillness. The spell broke. Reality rushed back in, sharp and undeniable: she stood before the Amyrlin Seat.

“Mother,” she hurried to address her, with a low, almost ceremonial curtsy. Her skirts whispered against the floor, the tip of her boots sinking deeper into the rug. 

Mother.

The word felt uncomfortable on her lips. A vile joke by the Wheel to remind Siuan of what she’d always wanted yet could never have.

“Daughter,” Siuan’s answer was simple, collected, almost too deliberately so, “you look like you’ve come to confess,” she added quietly.

Guinevere turned, her throat tightening. “I have.”

Siuan didn’t offer her a chair, nor did Guinevere expect one. They stood, two women facing one another, the silence between them charged with things neither had yet said.

“I went through the Waygate,” Guinevere began. “With Moiraine. With Rand al’Thor. And with Lanfear.”

Siuan’s eyes didn’t widen, but her breath did catch.

“I followed them to Falme,” Guinevere continued. “I saw Moiraine channeling weaves to paint a fiery dragon in the sky, proclaiming Rand al’Thor as the Dragon Reborn, up on Toman Head. I saw him being impaled by a poisonous dagger, and then I Healed him. I saw him kill the most dangerous of the Forsaken, Ishamael.”

“And then I felt him lose control,” Guinevere voice hitched at the memory, “I’m afraid you were right, Mother. He needs training, he needs practice, he needs obedience. I apologise I didn’t see it before, and chose to follow Moiraine.”

Siuan took a step closer, and offered her a gentle smile. “Thank you, Daughter,” she spoke, sincerely, “but I’ve been made aware of these things already. What concerns me the most as of now is why aren’t you with them, down in the city. Or why didn’t you come straight to the Tower after you learnt all of these things.” Siuan continued, her voice turning sterner now. “Where did you go?”

“Home,” the girl answered simply, silent tears painfully pooling behind her eyes at the memories, “I went back home. To my mother, to my brother. That is where I’ve been.” She concluded, stiffly folding her arms over her chest. 

The older woman observed her for a moment. “Why did you come back here, Guinevere?”

“I swore to inform you about Moiraine’s whereabouts—”

Siuan interrupted her. “That’s not it.” 

“I need penance, Mother.” Guinevere finally broke, voice strained, throat tight with shame. “I seek forgiveness.”

“Why do you need forgiveness for, Daughter?” Siuan asked, softly, gently, as if her voice were caressing the petals of a skeleton flower. 

Guionevere looked down at her hands, clasped tightly before her. Her breathing grew ragged, labored, all the energy in her body focused on keeping the tears away. But then Siuan approached her, and placed a tender hand on her cheek, forcing her gaze upwards. Guinevere locked eyes with her, eyes warm, inviting, reliable. 

“She cares for you in ways she has not been allowed to demonstrate”

“I have a Talent,” the girl finally confessed with a soft, broken whimper, her voice quivering under the weight of dread. Tears, thick with shame, spilled freely down her cheeks as her body trembled, not with cold, but with something feverish and frantic, like guilt too long caged. “A Talent that shouldn’t be used, a Talent I should have long informed you of.”

Siuan went very still.

“I’ve known for years. I’ve hidden it. I told myself I would never use it. That I was strong enough.” 

Guinevere took a shaking breath. “I’ve used it on guards. On prisoners. On Sisters, even. To get through doors, to silence cries. To seek information I wanted, to make people do what I needed them to. It didn’t feel like power. It felt like a blade. I’ve been instructed better, and yet I used it anyway.”

Siuan didn’t interrupt. She didn’t move. Instead she did something the girl wouldn’t have imagined in her wildest dreams: she pulled Guinevere into her arms, embracing her in a warm, loving hug. “I know, Guinevere.” She whispered.

“Y-you do?” The girl asked, motionless, too shaken still to reciprocate Siuan’s affection. 

“Yes,” Siuan replied, backing an arm’s length away so their eyes could meet. “I’ve always kept an eye on you, Guinevere, from afar. Nothing about you has ever gone past me.”

The girl gave her a tentative look. “Aren’t you going to punish me? Exile me from the Tower?” She asked. 

Siuan’s lips pressed into a tight line, but her gaze softened. “I should,” she sighed. “But I can’t really bring myself to do so, not now.”

Guinevere was about to say something, but Siuan, ever the protective figure, moved toward her with open arms once more. She hesitated for a moment before she tried to pull Guinevere into an embrace, but the younger woman took a small step back, a faint flush on her cheeks.

“I know,” Guinevere quickly rushed to explain, her voice wavering slightly. “S-she told me.”

For a heartbeat, the room held its breath. Siuan went utterly still, not the poised stillness of the Amyrlin, but something brittle, like glass before it cracks. Her fingers, usually so sure, hovered halfway to her stole before falling limp at her side.

“What,” she began, then stopped. The word was a blade turned inward. When she spoke again, it was quieter, raw in a way Guinevere had never heard. “What are you talking about?”

Guinevere took a step back. “Moiraine,” she explained, “she told me everything. About Gitara’s prophecy. About the mission. About the day I was born. About the plan to raise me together, and how duty tore you both away from that.”

Siuan’s breath hitched, a sound so small it might have been the wind through the tapestry’s threads. Her hand pressed to her chest, not as a gesture, but as if to cage a heart that threatened to break free. When she finally met Guinevere’s eyes, hers were bright with something perilously close to tears.

“I never thought she’d speak of it,” Siuan admitted, voice fraying at the edges. “Least of all to you.”

“I understand,” Guinevere replied gently. She wasn’t angry anymore. Time had softened the sharp edges of her feelings. “But it doesn’t matter now. I know you both had your reasons.”

Siuan’s gaze softened, her posture relaxing just a little as the weight of Guinevere’s words sank in. “It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be a part of your life,” she said quietly. “I just... I had to stay away, for all our sakes. For the Tower, for this Rand al’Thor,” she added, Rand’s name coming out like poison from her lips. Guinevere almost laughed at that. “For you.”

Guinevere nodded, her expression more thoughtful than it had been in years. “I never thought of you as distant. You were the Amyrlin. You had the Tower to look after. It never occurred to me you were holding back.”

Siuan’s breath caught at the unexpected calm in her voice, the absence of bitterness, of resentment. She stepped closer, eyes studying Guinevere’s face with a new softness. “I never wanted to be distant, you know. I wanted to be there. For you. But duty…” Her voice trailed off as she reached for Guinevere, her hand lingering in the air for a moment before she pulled back, uncertain. “It was always the Tower, that’s what Moiraine and I agreed on.”

Guinevere stepped closer to Siuan, her voice gentle. “I understand that now. And I’m not angry with you. I never was, not really.”

Siuan’s expression softened with the quiet relief that seemed to come over her. “I didn’t know if I could ever make up for that distance. For all those years lost.”

“You don’t have to,” Guinevere replied tenderly, her eyes meeting Siuan’s with quiet sincerity, a small, innocent smile on her lips. 

And then Siuan broke. The dam of restraint she’d held for so long gave way, and silent tears welled in her eyes. She crossed the space between them in a few hurried steps and pulled Guinevere into a fierce, trembling embrace. No hesitation. No distance left between them. And Guinevere clung to her just as tightly, her own arms winding around the woman for dear life. “It’s good to have you home, Guinevere.”

The two of them sat in the quiet together, the heat of the fire soft against their skin, curling around them like a protective cloak. Outside, the Tower was drenched in eerie silence. Guinevere stared down at her hands, her eyes fixed on the faint tremble in her fingers. Her shoulders were rigid, tense with exhaustion and shame, fear that if she loosened the tight grip she held over herself, everything inside might spill out. Siuan’s presence beside her no longer felt heavy with formality or the cool authority of the Amyrlin Seat; instead, there was a thread of something almost familiar running through it, something softer, warmer, an intimacy that belonged not in the Hall of the Tower, but in a long-forgotten memory of comfort.

“Tell me about the dreams.” Siuan had asked, how long ago Guinevere didn’t know. The words had settled in the air between them, not as a command, but an invitation, gentle and open.

The girl’s voice was hoarse when she finally spoke, her throat raw and her lips dry as though she’d swallowed back too many tears. “They… Light…” Guinevere blinked rapidly, trying to force the tears to retreat, but they clung to her lashes stubbornly, a shimmering edge that threatened to spill.

“I-It’s those children, always.” She swallowed hard, the knot in her throat pulling tight as she forced the words out. “Ever since I was a little girl, I dreamt about three children, my children, somehow, dying in my arms, and I can never do nothing to stop them.” Guinevere explained, her voice cracked under the weight of the memory, as her gaze lifted from her hands to the older woman beside her, eyes wide and lost. 

Siuan didn’t speak right away. Her face, usually so quick to show judgment or clarity, was instead still, her expression unreadable but not unkind. She only motioned gently for the girl to continue, a slight tilt of her chin and the softest movement of her hand, silent permission, maybe even encouragement.

“I never knew what they meant, whose dream it was… until Lanfear.” Guinevere’s voice had steadied slightly, but her breathing remained uneven, every inhale catching on a sharp edge she couldn’t quite smooth. “She hates me, always has. Has tried to kill me every time we’ve run into each other, and I never understood why. Then, at the Ways, she called me this name… Ilyena.”

Siuan’s gasp was audible this time, sharp and instinctive, her entire body jolting with the shock of it. Her mouth parted in disbelief, and her voice came as a whisper, breathless and haunted. “Ilyena Therin Moerelle.”

Guinevere nodded slowly, and as she did, her chest rose and fell in a ragged rhythm, the pressure in her throat twisting into something near to a sob. “I knew not who she was, nor what it meant, but Moiraine did, and she explained it to me. Ilyena was Lews’ wife back at the Age of Legends, the mother of his children. And she was forced to see their children being slaughtered by him when he went mad. That is what my dreams mean.” Her words spilled out too fast, as though she feared they might freeze on her tongue if she paused for too long. 

“Lanfear believes me to be Ilyena’s reincarnation, and so does Moiraine.” The statement hung in the air like smoke, thick and unshakable.

“I see.” Siuan said simply, and then remained quiet, pensative. She leaned back slightly, folding her hands over her lap, her eyes narrowed but not cold. She was weighing the information carefully, her brow furrowed not with judgment, but with consideration. When she finally spoke again, it was with caution, the kind that comes from knowing too well what power names can hold. “If you were indeed Ilyena… there would have to be something more to it than dreams, there’d ought to be a connection between this boy and—”

Guinevere’s breath hitched suddenly, sharp and uncontrolled, like the beginning of a sob she couldn’t suppress.

“So there is a connection.” Siuan uttered, almost irked, not at Guinevere, but at the pieces now falling into place too easily. Her tone was firm, but her eyes softened slightly.

“Yes,” she whispered, “and I’ve abused it. Moiraine told me to stay away from him, that it would be far too dangerous to get involved, and I listened to her, I did, but I couldn’t stop myself from getting close to him, from…”

“Sleeping with him,” Siuan finished for her, and there was no anger in her voice, no judgement whatsoever. Just quiet, gentle understanding, from a woman that knew all too well how love could twist even the strongest of one’s morals.

Guinevere shattered. She folded forward, burying her face in her hands. “Yes,” she admitted through her fingers, her voice hoarse, the shame clinging to each syllable like soot. “And I’ve ruined everything. That’s why I left them back at Fal Dara. I couldn’t stand the fact of being near him and having to restrain myself. I despise myself for not being able to hold back. What if it happens to me? What if I make the wrong choice again and I have to watch my children die at his hands, just like in the dreams?”

Her words spilled out fast, rushed, as if the very act of speaking them might make the horror of the possibility less real. She clutched her arms around herself, trying to hold the pieces in, but the fear was too big, too old, it seeped out through every crack in her voice.

The silence that followed wasn’t hollow, but dense, heavy with everything neither of them dared name. The fire crackled on, throwing restless shadows across the stone walls as if it, too, was unsettled.

Then Siuan leaned closer. She took one of Guinevere’s trembling hands, cool against the heat of her skin, and held it with a strength that belied the gentleness of the act. Her voice was soft, but no less commanding for it. “The Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills, Guinevere. We don’t choose the Pattern we’re part of, but the Light burn me if it means we’re powerless within it.”

Guinevere’s breath caught, her eyes flickering up to meet hers.

“You think you’ve failed because you feel too much,” Siuan continued. “But I’d rather see you fight and falter than turn to stone and call it strength. You hear me? The Pattern gave you this thread to carry, but it didn’t take away your will.”

“But what if my will leads to ruin?” Guinevere whispered, her voice so low it barely reached past her lips. “What if the Pattern meant for me to be nothing more than a cautionary tale?”

Siuan’s expression tightened, a flicker of that old storm gathering in her blue eyes. “You are not a tale,” she said fiercely, leaning forward until their foreheads nearly touched. “You are flesh and blood and fire and breath. You are here, now. You’re not just some echo of the Age of Legends. You are Guinevere Damodred, an Aes Sedai of the Yellow Ajah, and no thread is stronger than the one that heals.”

Guinevere blinked, and for the first time in hours, her eyes did not spill over with tears. They burned, yes, but it was the kind of burn that felt almost like light.

She exhaled slowly, the weight of her guilt still heavy, but no longer unbearable. The silence between them softened, no longer brittle or cold, but something malleable, capable of holding more.

“I should have come to you sooner,” she murmured, her voice quieter now, steadier. “About Liandrin. About what she is.”

Siuan didn’t flinch, though her eyes darkened at the name.

“You weren’t the only one who kept secrets,” the Amyrlin replied, folding her hands once more in her lap. “Moiraine suspected her, quietly, long before I dared to believe it. And now, with your words… it’s no longer suspicion.”

Guinevere’s brow knit. “What will you do?”

Siuan’s jaw set, the faintest trace of steel returning to her voice. “I’m calling her before the Hall.”

The words landed like a stone dropped in still water. Guinevere looked up, startled. “Truly?”

“I won’t allow a Darkfriend to keep her oaths under the Light, not under my watch. Not after what you’ve told me about Egwene al’Vere and Nynaeve al’Meara.” Siuan’s voice was quiet, but there was nothing uncertain about it. “She used the Tower’s name to mask her own treachery. She manipulated novices, endangered the world with her schemes. Her penance won’t be in stillness alone. It will be exile. She’ll be cast out, stripped of the shawl.”

Guinevere’s mouth parted slightly, a breath catching on her tongue. “And if she resists?” she asked.

“She will resist,” Siuan said simply, with a grim, ironic smile on her face. “But it won’t matter. The Hall will hear the truth, and that truth will be spoken by you.”

Guinevere’s stomach turned, her hands curling against the fabric of her skirts. “You want me to testify before the Hall.”

“I need you to be heard,” Siuan said, reaching for her hand again. 

The fire crackled in the hearth. Outside, the night pressed close around the Tower, but inside, Guinevere’s gaze grew steadier.

“Then I will,” she said at last. “If you bring her to the Hall… I’ll speak.”

Siuan gave a single nod. “Then she’ll answer for what she’s done.”

Notes:

But she couldn’t.

With a quiet, broken sigh, she bowed her head and turned the ring toward her palm, hiding it from sight. Then she knocked again, weaker this time. A hollow sound. It’s pointless, no one is waiting for you. Maybe there is no one left in the house to wait for someone at all, she thought, teary eyed. 

And then—quietly, almost shyly—the doors opened, and the sight was one much too welcomed to her. “Mother,” Guinevere smiled, and for a brief moment all of the torment in her heart slipped away. 

“Mother,” she whispered.

Anvaere made no sound at first. She stared, stunned, then choked out a cry that sounded like a lifetime of prayers finally answered. “My darling… my darling girl.”

She rushed forward and wrapped Guinevere in her arms, sobbing into her shoulder, holding her as if she might vanish again if she loosened her grip even slightly.

Guinevere, filthy and shaking, clung back just as tightly.

“At last,” Anvaere wept, her voice muffled against her hair, “at last, you’re home.”

*********

Fal Dara,

A month before

When Rand returned to the withered old inn, followed by Moiraine and Lan, he found Guinevere waiting for him.

She sat alone at a corner table tucked deep into the shadows, her eyes, distant and unfocused, were fixed on the windowpane, where pale morning light filtered through the dusty glass. She wasn’t really looking at anything. Just staring, as if waiting for something that wouldn’t come, or someone who already had.

She didn’t move when the door creaked open. Didn’t turn her head when their footsteps crossed the threshold. She simply sat there, still as stone, as tragically beautiful as a statue.

He took measured, gentle steps towards her, leading the Aes Sedai and the Warder, but Guinevere didn’t take notice of them. As Rand drew nearer, he saw the marks on her neck, the bruising around her wrists, the uncomfortable way in which her thighs rested upon the chair, and the guilt of it all came rushing back to him. And suddenly, he couldn’t take another step. He couldn’t risk harming her again. He couldn’t bear hearing the children’s voices again. He didn’t have the strength for it. 

“Let’s go,” Lan suddenly whispered in his ear, walking towards Guinevere’s table. The girl raised her head at the man’s presence, and then her gaze travelled between the Warder and Moiraine, until they finally landed on Rand. She sighed at the sight of him. Their eyes locked, and Rand felt it all: the sadness, the pity, the betrayal of it all. He wanted to sprint into her arms, to rest his head against her chest, apologise for everything he’d done, kiss her, embrace her, smell her hair and bare skin; and he would’ve done so, weren’t for Moiraine’s firm arm pressing against his chest. Rand turned his head towards her, perplexed, and saw the older woman ever so slightly shaking her head, her eyes fixed on Guinevere’s form; the ghost of a worrisome expression printed on her face. 

She knows, Rand gulped. She knows what I’ve done to Guinevere. 

Guinevere stared at them for a second, uncertain, and then she rose briskly, her skirts whispering against the floor as she led them through the dimly lit inn. She moved slowly but with purpose, weaving past worn furniture and flickering lanterns until they reached a narrow corridor at the far end. Their room lay tucked away in the quietest corner, hidden from curious eyes. Lan cast a brief glance over his shoulder before stepping inside, the door closing behind him with a soft, decisive click.

“We need to get to Tár Valon,” Moiraine said, the words rushed and brittle, like cracked porcelain straining under pressure. “As soon as the next ship sails.”

She didn’t look at them—neither Guinevere nor Rand—her gaze flickering to everything in the room but their faces. Her arms moved restlessly: folded over her chest, then falling to her sides, then clasping behind her back. An almost imperceptible tremor ran through her fingers, as though she were suppressing something she didn’t dare name.

Guinevere watched her with a weight in her chest that refused to lift. Moiraine’s eyes had lingered on the bed, its sheets twisted and stained, pillows thrown askew like casualties of war. The blood-smeared water bucket sat nearby, a half-wrung rag clinging to its edge like a corpse clinging to a riverbank. Torn, sweat-damp clothing was scattered across the floor. It looked like a battlefield. It was one, after all.

Moiraine’s gaze snagged on the bloodied bucket. For a heartbeat, her lips parted, not in anger, but in something quieter. A mother’s grief. Then it vanished.

“I’ve disappointed her,” she thought with a hollow numbness that threatened to crush her ribcage. The idea was bitter, but not surprising. Not anymore. What scraped even deeper was the echo that followed it, whispered in a voice that sounded too much like her own: I’ve betrayed myself.

Moiraine’s voice came again, stiff as if dragged from her throat by force. “We need to find the others,” she said, her eyes finally settling on Guinevere, but only barely, only long enough for Guinevere to catch the flicker of something hot and wild behind them. Rage. Contained, if only by a thread. “And leave this city at once.”

Lan stood beside her like a statue, the kind carved to honor forgotten kings, still, unyielding, expressionless. Had he guessed what had happened in that room before he entered—if he had pieced it together from the looks, the silences, the faint scent of blood in the air—he gave no indication of it.

The silence was suffocating, thick enough to choke on. It settled like a shroud over everything, heavy and unrelenting. She could feel Moiraine watching her, her posture rigid, her breath clipped, her silence louder than any accusation. Their eyes met, two parallel mirrors reflecting themselves infinitely, and held. Neither blinked.

Guinevere felt like she was being torn open by that gaze. The shame radiating from the Aes Sedai was palpable; this woman, her mother (though neither dared name it), staring at her as if she were a stranger. A traitor. A fool.

Moiraine’s eyes narrowed, just slightly. “What in the Light were you thinking?”

She dropped her eyes, shame flushing her cheeks until they burned. She wanted to disappear. No, that wasn’t quite right. She wanted to scream. She wanted to break something. Anything.

Her hands curled into fists at her sides, nails biting into her palms until she could feel the sting of torn skin. A thousand emotions stormed inside her, each one louder and more desperate than the last. She felt like flinging the water bucket at the wall, like shattering the windows across the room, like throwing herself against the stone and demanding that it hurt her more than she already hurt, if only to cover the pain with a palpable one. 

For once, Guinevere had made a choice for herself. Not as a pawn moved by others’ hands. Not as a daughter, or a sister, or a servant of the Tower. Just herself, acting out of want, out of hunger, out of the desperate need to feel something that was hers alone.

And it had been a mistake.

She had ruined everything, so thoroughly that Rand had dressed in silence and left the room as soon as he could. So deeply that Lan couldn’t even meet her gaze. So completely that Moiraine looked at her as though she were something tainted, something fragile and already breaking. Not with rage. Not even disappointment. But with cold, quiet disgust. 

She wanted to scream until her lungs gave out. She wanted to cry until there was nothing left in her. But instead, she swallowed it all. She had to. She could not, would not, show weakness. Not in front of them. Especially not in front of her.

So Guinevere lifted her head with dignity she did not possess, with pride she had lost long ago. Her voice, when it came, was calm and cold as a winter breeze.

“I agree.” Her eyes met Moiraine’s again. If the woman had expected tears, she would find none. If she’d hoped for an apology, she would be left wanting. “We’ve been here but a day and there are already whispers about the Dragon Reborn, people looking for Rand. Tár Valon is… far from being the safest place he can go to, but we will hopefully find some answers as to what to do next.”

The silence that followed her words was not relief. It was taut, strained, like a bowstring pulled too far. Even Rand, who had been silent near the wall, winced as though the air itself were pressing in on him.

He gave a weak nod. “Yeah. I… agree too,” he offered, voice barely more than a whisper. “It’s… yeah. Good plan.”

No one responded.

Moiraine’s eyes flicked from Guinevere to Rand. Her lips pressed into a narrow line. Not a frown. Not a sneer. But something far more dangerous, knowledge. Her gaze slipped past them again, tracing once again the battlefield of their choices: the tangled bed. The bruises. The bare feet. The vague, drying smear of blood near the bucket. The faint bruise on the young girl’s throat.

Her expression didn’t change, but something in the air did. Her silence was weightier than any outburst. She turned to Guinevere, voice clipped and efficient. “We’ll begin with the west gate and make our way through the outer quarters. They may be in hiding, or worse.” She explained, her voice strained. “If they’re alive, we will find them.”

Lan gave a single nod, already adjusting the heavy cloak over his shoulders. He moved like a shadow, a ghost of war and duty. His eyes flicked briefly toward Guinevere, there was no anger in them, no warmth either. Only something unreadable, something distant. It almost felt like pity.

Then he looked at Rand. And for the first time since entering, the Warder’s gaze changed. His eyes narrowed.

Rand looked away immediately.

Moiraine stepped forward, her boots echoing on the wooden floor. She stopped directly in front of Guinevere, standing close enough that the scent of her, a mixture of wind and lavender, leather and burnt sand, brushed against the girl’s skin. For a moment, she seemed to struggle with something, something bitter in her throat, something gentle in her heart. But when she spoke, her voice was sharp as steel.

“Do not let him out of your sight,” she commanded her. “No matter what excuses he makes. No matter how soft his eyes may seem.”

Moiraine held her gaze for a breath longer. Her face was unreadable. Not kind. Not motherly. Not cruel. Just empty. A mask that had been worn so long, it no longer felt like a mask at all.

Guinevere froze.

“He’s dangerous, whether he means to be or not.”

Their eyes locked.

Moiraine tilted her head, a shadow of something cold, almost brutal. “If he tries to leave,” she said in a low voice, not bothering to mask her words from Rand, “you are to stop him. By any means necessary.”

Rand flinched. “I’m not—”

“You’re not in control of yourself,” Moiraine snapped, with an edge that made the room colder. “And that makes you dangerous. I don’t care how gentle you think you are, or how sorry you feel. You’re unpredictable.”

Rand opened his mouth to protest again, but no words came. His face fell—collapsed inward like a building gutted by fire.

Guinevere stood still as death, jaw clenched so tightly it ached.

Moiraine’s voice softened, but only slightly. “You may feel pity for him,” she said to Guinevere, “but do not mistake that for trust. Keep him here. Do you understand me?”

Guinevere’s heart pounded like war drums in her ears. She nodded once, stiffly.

Moiraine studied her for a long moment. Not as a mother. Not even as a mentor.

But as a general assessing a soldier.

Finally, she stepped back. The spell was broken. She turned toward the door, her voice drifting over her shoulder.

“We’ll return by dusk.”

And just like that, she was gone, Lan ghosting after her with a final nod.

The door clicked closed behind Moiraine, the echo of it reverberating like a gavel striking down judgment.

Rand let out a breath that sounded almost like a curse. “She knows,” he muttered, running a hand through his hair, his fingers tangling in the red strands. His voice was hoarse, dry as winter air.

Guinevere didn’t answer right away. She moved stiffly, like a doll wounded too tightly, and lowered herself onto the edge of the disheveled bed. Her hands rested on her lap, fingers curled, unmoving. She stared at the floor where the shadows pooled like spilled ink.

“Of course she knows,” she said at last, her voice so low it might’ve been mistaken for a thought.

Rand sat across from her, elbows over his knees, his posture unsure. He kept glancing at her from beneath his lashes, as if trying to measure how far the crack in her armor went. The nervous tapping of his thumb on his thigh mirrored his still-racing thoughts.

“I didn’t mean for it to happen like it did,” he said quietly, his eyes fixed on the floorboards. “Last night. I didn’t want to make things worse. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

Guinevere tilted her head, her face unreadable. “You didn’t,” she said after a pause. But her voice was flat, hollow, drained of conviction.

Rand turned to her fully now, something raw passing over his expression. “Guinevere,” he whispered. “Light… I couldn’t sleep after. I keep seeing their faces. Hearing the screams. What I did to you…”

“You didn’t do anything to me,” she said sharply this time, her tone cracking like brittle glass. “I made a choice.”

She finally looked up at him, her eyes brimming with tears but dry. “For once, I wasn’t someone’s daughter. Wasn’t an Aes Sedai. Wasn’t a pawn. I wasn’t hers,” she added, the word like poison. Ilyena. “I chose for myself.”

Rand said nothing.

“But it was the wrong choice,” she continued, quieter now. “Not because I regret it. Not because it wasn’t real. It came from a place of desperation. I was angry. I was lost. And you…” Her voice trailed off.

“I was lost too,” he whispered.

She nodded slowly, her gaze distant. “There’s this ancient… desire, that burns between you and me. Stronger than us both, carved by the Wheel itself. And I clung to that. I thought maybe, if I reached for something, anything, I could feel like I belonged somewhere.”

He hesitated, then extended his hand toward her, palm up, trembling slightly. “Can I…?”

Guinevere looked at his hand. She didn’t take it right away. She stared at it as though it were a tether to something she wasn’t sure she deserved.

Then, finally, she placed her fingers in his. Their hands closed together, warm and tentative.

Time passed without words. The lantern on the wall flickered low, casting long shadows across the wreck of the room. The faint sound of wind howled past the shuttered window, but inside, it was silent save for their shared breath.

Rand had shifted closer. Their foreheads now rested together, still linked by their clasped hands. The warmth of him bled into her skin. Not consuming. Not devouring, but steady, safe. 

When their lips met again, it was not urgent. It was not greedy. It was soft, deliberate, reverent. A confession without sound.

Guinevere’s hands found the buttons of his shirt. Her fingers trembled as she undid them one by one, slow and hesitant, as Rand’s hands moved to her hips, his thumbs brushing the faint bruises left by battle. He touched them like one might touch the edge of a wound, carefully, with apology.

She shrugged off her shift, and he helped her, the motion slow, almost ceremonial. His eyes never left hers, not even once.

They moved together on the bed, not in frenzy but in something that felt like breathing after too long underwater. He kissed the hollow of her throat, then her collarbone, then the soft space behind her ear where her pulse fluttered fast beneath the skin. She threaded her fingers through his hair and whispered his name like it was the only thing she trusted to remain unchanged.

Rand laid her back against the tangled sheets as if she were something sacred. A relic. A truth buried too long.

When he moved inside her, it was not the first time, but it was the first time it felt like more than need. She gasped, clutching at his shoulders, and he held her like he was afraid she’d vanish. Like she’d dissolve into light and flame, and he would be left only with ash.

They moved slow, learning each other all over again. His lips found hers over and over, chasing her breath like a prayer. She arched into him, every motion a wordless answer to a question neither had known they were asking.

And for the first time in months, no, years, Guinevere didn’t feel haunted.

When it ended, they remained tangled in silence, sweat cooling on their skin. Rand’s head rested on her breasts, rising and falling with the rhythm of her breath.

“I still don’t know what happens next, Gwen.” Rand said eventually, his voice nearly a whisper. “I still feel like something’s unraveling inside me.”

Guinevere’s eyes remained closed. “We’re both going mad.” Her hand, resting lightly on his chest, rose to trace a faint scar across his collarbone. He turned his head slightly to look at her. 

A beat of silence stretched.

“She thinks we shouldn’t be together,” Rand said, though it wasn’t really a question.

Guinevere nodded. “She’s right,” she admitted. “We make each other weak in all the wrong ways. We don’t see clearly when we’re together. We don’t think.”

Rand’s throat worked. “I don’t want to lose you.”His face crumpled for a second, just enough for her to see the boy behind the burden. “I don’t know how to be what the world wants me to be.”

Guinevere sat up slightly, brushing his hair back from his forehead. “Neither do I.” She said, with a smile that didn’t quite reach her lips. 

He looked away. “She said to keep me close. In case I… slip.”

Guinevere’s expression hardened. “And I will. I’ll do what needs to be done.”

He turned back to her, searching her eyes. “Would you really stop me?”

Guinevere’s voice was soft, but steady. “If I had to.”

Another long silence.

“Do you promise, Gwen?”

She couldn’t answer. 

Rand pulled her close again, just for a moment, burying his face in her hair. “Then let this be the last night,” he whispered. “Before we become what we have to be.”

The city was still cloaked in shadow when Moiraine and Lan returned to the inn. Guinevere heard their footsteps before she saw them, the unmistakable rhythm of Lan’s stride, purposeful and silent as a hunting cat, and Moiraine’s quieter, deliberate pace. The air shifted when they entered. The door creaked open, and Guinevere rose from her seat on a chair by the window, her eyes flickering to the entrance.

Behind them came others.

Guinevere was already standing. She had straightened her dress, combed her hair, wiped the dried tears from her face. But even still, when Elayne gasped her name and ran forward, the emotion welled in her chest like a long-forgotten ache.

“Winnie? “Elayne’s voice had hardly changed, still that same lilting sweetness from their childhood days in Caemlyn, when they played at queens and warriors in Morgase’s gardens.

Guinevere startled. And then, slowly, a smile crept onto her lips. “Elayne. Light, I never thought I’d see you again.”

They embraced, and Elayne held on tighter than Guinevere expected.

“You’re an Aes Sedai now,” Elayne whispered, pulling back. “And you helped them, us. I saw what you did in the Tower.”

“Y-you were at the Tower?” Guinevere asked, perplexed. “Light, I didn’t recognise you.”

“You had much to worry about.” The red-haired girl said with a soft voice, gently rubbing on Guinevere’s forearm.

“Light, Elayne, it’s been so long… I-I…” 

Before she could find words, Egwene joined them, eyes bright. “Gwen,” the girl sighed, pulling her onto a tight hug, “thank you. Back at the Tower, if it weren’t for you… Thank you.”

Guinevere nodded, throat tight, bitterly staring at the mark that forsaken collar had left around Egwene’s neck. The girl might be grateful, but Guinevere could think of nothing more than she had let it happen. What if the Compulsion had left her too weak? What if it was all of her fault?  “I only did what I had to.” She said, shrugging her shoulders.

Before the conversation could drift into something heavier, Perrin appeared at her side. He looked taller than she remembered, broader somehow, but still carried the same quiet calm.

“Hey,” he said, offering her a small smile. “I never got the chance to thank you. For healing me. Back in Tar Valon.”

Guinevere blinked, surprised. “You remember that?”

He nodded. “I remember the pain. And then I remember it being gone. You did that. So… thank you.”

The girl softened. “I’m glad you’re well, Perrin. You and Egwene both.”

“And this is Mat,” Perrin added, nudging the boy standing behind him with an easy grin. Guinevere recognised him as the boy that was holding Rand in his arms just before she reached the Tower. 

Mat tipped an invisible hat and gave a mock bow. “Mat Cauthon, at your service. I’m told you’re a miracle worker, though I’m hoping I’ll never have need of it.”

Guinevere raised a playful eyebrow. “We’ll see about that. You look like trouble.”

Mat grinned. “I’m the picture of responsibility.”

“Of course you are,” she replied dryly, her tone just light enough to draw a chuckle from him.

“The lady is virtuous with sarcasm as well,” Mat said, nudging Perrin. “Perrin, didn’t I say we’d get along?”

“You said she’d kill us with a look,” Perrin corrected.

“Details,” Mat said, waving a hand.

Guinevere laughed, a sound freer than she expected. But then she walked into her sight.

Moiraine gave only a brief nod in Guinevere’s direction. “Pack what you need. We leave for the docks within the hour.”

Guinevere stood frozen as the room turned to quiet chaos. Lan was already distributing satchels, guiding the group with clipped efficiency. Moiraine moved like wind through tall grass, silent and swift, her sapphire pendant glinting faintly in the low light.

Then came the moment Guinevere had been dreading.

Moiraine turned toward her.

The silence thickened between them. Guinevere stood still, arms wrapped around herself, but Moiraine said nothing at first. She simply studied her, eyes roaming over her face like trying to read a book written in a script too old to understand.

“Come,” Moiraine said at last.

They stepped into the narrow hallway beyond the main room. The shadows clung to the walls. The hum of voices behind them faded. Guinevere felt like a girl again—small, caught, and desperately trying to hide the storm caged within her chest.

Moiraine did not pace this time. She stood still, arms at her sides, her eyes unreadable.

“What passed between you and Rand,” she began, voice cool but not cruel, “cannot happen again.”

Guinevere blinked. A thousand replies tried to rise in her throat, but all she managed was a weak, fearful, “you don’t understand.”

“I do,” Moiraine said, the shadow of a sorrowful grin flickering behind her calm demeanour. “You think you’ve made a choice. You believe it was yours to make. But there are consequences, Guinevere. To every touch. Every bond. Especially with him.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Her voice cracked. “Do you think I planned this?”

“No,” Moiraine said. “But I’ve lived long enough to see how love can be twisted by the Pattern. It is a cruel thing, sometimes, to care.”

Guinevere took a step back, fury rushing through her veins like a living thing, “you didn’t raise me. You don’t get to decide who I—”

“This has nothing to do with who raised you,” Moiraine cut in, sharper now. “It has to do with the world breaking beneath your feet.”

The woman took a deep breath, steading herself. “The Dragon Reborn does not get to love. He will destroy everything he touches. He must walk a path of fire, and you…” she faltered, then went on, “you must not walk it with him.”

Then came a pause. A long one.

“You care for him.”

Guinevere held Moiraine’s stare, relentless, wild, until she finally gave in. She lowered her head, and offered her a weak nod, her breath coming shallow. “I don’t know why. I just do.”

Moiraine stepped forward, as her voice dropped to a whisper. “I see too much of myself in you, Guinevere. That’s why I know how this ends.”

The girl tried to speak, but the words wouldn’t come. Her throat ached. Her eyes burned.

“I just wanted to choose something,” she whispered, voice trembling. “Something for myself.”

Moiraine’s voice was quieter now, softer, understanding. “You wanted a choice. And you thought love would be that choice. But it never is. Not for people like us, Guinevere. I’ve given up on love, too. It’s a hard thing to do.” She confessed, placing a trembling, yet gentle hand on the girl’s cheek, damp with rebel tears. 

“Siuan,” Guinevere’s sighed, voice hitching. 

Moiraine closed her eyes, and nodded. Guinevere wished she could offer her some comfort, but she knew not how. When the woman held her gaze again, she saw pity in her eyes. 

Tears stung her eyes again. “You think I’m too weak.” Guinevere sobbed. 

“I think you’re brave. Braver than I ever was. But this,” Moiraine hesitated, the words coming slower now, “this is not a path you can survive.”

Guinevere’s voice trembled. “I don’t want to lose him.”

“You already are.”

Moiraine’s hand, cool and tentative, brushed her shoulder. “I didn’t get to raise you. And I will carry that regret until my last breath. But I am trying to protect you now. As best I can. As… As Siuan would.”

Guinevere looked at her. And for the first time, she truly saw her—not the coldness, not the calculation, but the quiet, fragile thing beneath it all. A love that burned low and steady, fierce in its silence. An unshakable resolve that hadn’t faltered, even after all it had cost her.

Most people could only hold one or the other, tenderness or strength. But Moiraine held both, like a blade sheathed in velvet. Her heart was as vast as her will, and somehow, impossibly, she bore the weight of both.

Guinevere, in that moment, realized she was nothing like her.

She wasn’t strong. She wasn’t steady. She wasn’t powerful or poised or anything at all. She was just a girl with no ground beneath her feet. Nothing to cling to but the ache in her chest and the slow unraveling of everything she thought she knew.

It broke her.

Her knees gave out and she sank to the ground, sobbing. “I don’t know how. I don’t know how to fix any of this.”

Moiraine knelt beside her. Her hand hovered, then landed gently on Guinevere’s back.

She didn’t speak, she didn’t lecture, didn’t reason, didn’t try to explain away the ache in the girl’s voice. 

And then, all the visions of Siuan that had haunted her dreams came rushing forward.

The Siuan who would have raised their daughter with laughter and steel. The Siuan who would have wiped away her tears and kissed her forehead and told her she was brave, even when she stumbled. The Siuan who would have pulled Guinevere into her arms without thinking twice, without needing a reason, and held her until the storm passed.

Moiraine could see her clearly, laugh-lines crinkling, eyes fierce with love, hands steady and sure.

So she did what Siuan would have done.

She moved closer, wrapping both arms around the little girl. It wasn’t stiff or formal or restrained, it was the kind of embrace Moiraine Damodred rarely gave, if ever. She simply held her, one hand cradling the back of Guinevere’s head, the other pulling her close against her chest.

Guinevere collapsed into it.

Her sobs came quiet and raw, and Moiraine held her through them, rocking her gently, back and forth. She pressed her lips to her daughter’s temple and didn’t let go. Her thumb stroked lightly through tangled strands of hair. Her heartbeat was steady, her presence unshakable.

There were no words. Only warmth. Only touch. Only the strength of arms that should have held her years ago.

When Guinevere finally stilled, her face damp and tucked against Moiraine’s shoulder, Moiraine whispered, barely above a breath, “I’ve got you.”

And for the first time in weeks, Guinevere let herself believe that.

The docks were swathed in mist when they arrived.

The river stretched black and endless before them. A narrow passenger vessel bobbed gently at its moorings, its sails furled, crew preparing the ship for departure. The gangplank groaned as Lan crossed it first, leading the others. Guinevere walked near the rear of the group, half-listening to the conversations around her. Elayne asked about her studies in the Tower, laughing at a memory of them chasing a cat through the Rose Garden.

“Remember how you swore it was a darkfriend in disguise?” Elayne giggled.

“I was six,” Guinevere muttered, but a smile broke through.

Egwene touched her arm now and then, offering smiles and gentle conversation. “You’ve always been brave,” she said once. “Even when I didn’t understand it.”

Mat told a ridiculous story about a tavern in Baerlon, and Guinevere smiled despite herself.

“There was a goat, a flaming pie, and a man who thought he was the King of Arad Doman,” Mat said.

“That’s a lie,” Perrin interjected.

Mat winked. “That it happened, or that he was king?”

Guinevere laughed at that, a real laugh. But the weight remained.

And so she stopped listening, she stopped watching. Her mind was elsewhere.

A merchant called out to her, asking if she wanted ribbon for her hair. She smiled politely, but kept walking.

A group of children ran past, laughing, one of them bumping her arm. She looked back and watched them until they vanished.

A dockworker offered to carry her bag, and she declined without hearing the words.

She wasn’t there.

She was already gone.

Then she saw him. Rand. Standing by the railing of the ship, his hands braced against the wood, looking out toward the sea.

He turned. Their eyes met. He smiled.

And that was it.

She felt the breath leave her lungs. A sharp, clean pain. The final thread snapped.

Stay, and he will drown you. Moiraine’s warning coiled in her chest. Leave, and you’ll drown alone.

She exhaled. The choice was no choice at all.

She stepped away. 

The ship rocked gently as they boarded. One by one.

The gangplank was drawn.

The sails caught wind.

And the ship pulled away from the harbor.

No one noticed when Guinevere turned.

No one called her name as she slipped into the fog.

She didn’t look back.

She moved like a shadow between the barrels and crates, her boots quiet against the wet wood. Her heart pounded. Every step away from that ship was a scream in her chest.

But she didn’t stop.

She kept walking, deeper into the mist, deeper into the silence.

It wasn’t until the sails caught wind and the ship began to glide downriver that Rand finally looked around.

“Where’s Guinevere?”

Lan turned.

Moiraine’s face went still. Her breath caught. She frantically moved to the railing, eyes scanning the shore, the dock now empty.

“Light,” she whispered, as her hands began shaking, tears silently pooling in her eyes. 

But the fog swallowed everything.

And Guinevere was gone, her presence but a ghost in the ship. By the time they reached Tár Valon, she was already a silence they had grown used to. No letter waited. No word. No goodbye.

Only the echo of a choice made in silence.

Notes:

The garden was a tangle of color, where bursts of crimson poppies, golden sunbursts, and deep violet irises bloomed in careful rows—each one pruned to her mother’s vigilant standards. Bees hummed lazily in the lavender bushes, and the scent of damp earth clung to the morning air.

Moiraine knew her mother would be furious if she saw the grass stains creeping up their silk gowns. Her own dress was sky blue, embroidered with tiny silver lilies along the hem, but now, smudges of green and brown marred the delicate fabric. Anvaere’s dress, a simple cream-colored frock with lace-trimmed sleeves, had already gathered streaks of mud where she’d knelt. The little girl’s bare feet were caked in dirt, her shoes long since discarded in the grass. But Moiraine didn’t care.

Moiraine gently pried the sapling from her sister’s small hands, running her fingers over its petals. “See here?” she murmured, tilting the bloom toward Anvaere. “The roots are still green, and the stem is stiff. That means it hasn’t bloomed yet.” She smiled, soft but knowing. “We want the best flowers for Father, don’t we?”

“Yes,” Anvaere replied, with her usual mischievous smile, the kind of smile that made Moiraine’s heart swell with adoration, “I want to gift Father with the most beautiful flowers.” She added, in loud excitement. 

“Alright then,” Moiraine said, “let’s get on then. But best be quiet about it, unless we want that hideous governess telling us off.”

Anvaere suppressed a small giggle as her sister helped her back on her feet, casket on hand, ready to get back with her job. Moiraine carefully and methodically kept on picking flowers, occasionally swaying her gaze towards little Anvaere, making sure she was alright. But she should’ve ought to know a second's distraction was all it took. 

Before she realised, Anvaere had walked all the way down to the back of the garden, her gown muddy with dirt, hopelessly reaching for a bloom too high for her reach. That’s when Moiraine heard the door, and the tedious screaming that followed. 

“Moiraine and Anvaere Damodred!” The plumpy governess called, with her all too irritably high-pitched voice. “This is not how ladies behave! Do you think your Mother will be happy knowing you’ve been ruining her garden?”

The woman huffed toward them, her skirts swishing furiously, her round face red with exertion. Moiraine barely contained her laughter. In one swift movement, she kicked off her shoes and flung them at the governess’s feet before grabbing Anvaere’s hand, breaking into a run with her. 

“Mo!” The toddler giggled, always eager to participate in her older sister’s antics, “Where are we going?”

“Shh, little sister,” Moiraine whispered, pulling her along as they darted toward the kitchen door. “Follow me!”

They slipped into the house, the scent of fresh bread and roasted almonds from the morning’s baking filling the air. The kitchen was dimly lit, save for the golden glow of the hearth, where a pot of soup bubbled quietly. A startled maid gasped as they dashed past, knocking over a bowl of flour.

“Not again!” the woman cried after them.

Moiraine didn’t stop, dragging Anvaere down the long marble-floored hall. Their feet slid as they turned the corner, nearly toppling a small side table bearing a porcelain vase. Above them, oil-painted portraits of their ancestors loomed, their painted eyes following the girls’ flight with silent disapproval.

They weaved past towering, silk-draped windows, their mother’s prized blue-and-gold tapestries swaying in the draft of their movement. The smell of beeswax and old parchment clung to the air as they ran past the library, its heavy oak doors slightly ajar.

At last, they reached the east wing—where the old and withered down guest room awaited them. 

Moiraine flung open the wardrobe’s heavy doors, the scent of aged wood and moth-eaten fabric filling the air. Anvaere scrambled inside, her breath coming fast, the excitement of the chase still lighting up her face. Moiraine followed, pulling the door shut behind them, its hinges crying in rust and time passed.

Dust swirled in the narrow slats of light, catching in her throat as she pressed her back against the wooden panel. The air was thick with the scent of old lavender sachets, long since faded, and the faint musk of forgotten gowns hanging above their heads.

She could feel Anvaere’s small hands gripping her arm, could hear the way her little sister’s breath hitched when the governess’s sharp voice rang out in the corridor beyond. A board creaked. Footsteps. Then silence.

Moiraine barely breathed. “I think we lost her,” she finally said, in a soft whisper. 

Anvaere remained quiet for a minute, resting her ear against the wooden door. “I think so too.” The little girl then agreed, with a nod of her head. 

“Well, what did you get?” Moiraine asked, eagerly. 

“Look Mo,” she replied, unfolding the fabric of her dress. Moiraine caught a glimpse of something red, almost orange, before a quiet cry left Anvaere’s lips. 

“Anvaere what is it?” She asked, worried. 

“It’s the flower,” the toddler explained, placing the bloom in between the two, “one of its spines pinched my finger,” Anvaere added, raising her hand and showing Moiraine a thin thread of blood running down her palm. 

Moiraine felt her heart start beating harder on her chest, as she reached for her sister’s hand. “Oh, Anvaere,” she sighed, sorrowfully, “don’t you worry, I’ll get it fixed.” 

Moiraine had heard countless stories about Aes Sedai, and the White Tower they trained in and the Ajahs they got to choose, but never in her wildest dreams did she ever imagine she could become one of them. That’s why she still felt that rush of adrenaline every time she reached for the One Power, in her own rustic way. 

She took Anvaere’s finger, and softly brushed her thumb over it, while searching for that river within, that calmness that helped her channel. Golden threads of light started dancing around the little girl’s injury, until it disappeared, as if it had never happened. 

“Better?” Moiraine asked, leaving a tender kiss on Anvaere’s hand. 

“Better.” The little girl giggled, before throwing herself onto her older sister, in an all too welcomed hug. “Mo?” She then asked. 

“What is it, Anvaere?”

“Do you think I can do that too?” 

“I’m sure you can,” Moiraine smiled, tucking a loose strand behind her ear, “I’m sure you will, in the future. You’re too young now.” 

“But what if I can’t?” Anvaere asked, as tears started to pool in her eyes. “Mo, what if I can’t and then you get sent to Tár Valon and I’m left here all alone, with Mother.”

“Hush, that won’t happen,” Moiraine reassured her, “and even if it did happen, it would only be for a few years, until I become an Aes Sedai. Then I would come back, to you.”

“Do you promise?” Anvaere asked, as a single tear rolled down her cheek. 

“I promise,” Moiraine replied, pressing their foreheads together, “I would never leave you, Anvaere, not for anything in the world. I promise.” 

The two girls started giggling, and then abruptly stopped when they heard a hard knock on the wood. 

“Oh no!” Anvaere whispered, “she’s found us!” 

The closet door started cracking open, and Moiraine braced both herself and her sister for the lecture they were about to endure, when her gaze suddenly stumbled upon their Father. 

“Father!” Anvaere cried in joy, jumping to the edge of the wardrobe. 

“How did you find us?” Moiraine asked, perplexed. That was their secret hiding spot, and it belonged to her and Anvaere alone. 

“Well it was very easy, mind you,” Father laughed, pointing towards the floor behind him, “I just followed the muddy steps.”

And the three of them exploded in giggles. 

Moiraine opened her eyes, softly, in peace. Beside her, Siuan slept soundly. She glanced through the room’s window, and realised it was only dawn. Oh, how she used to love looking for Anvaere at that hour, so they could watch the sunrise together. She laid her head back on her pillow, and closed her eyes. 

Moiraine couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen Anvaere, but she could count the days. Ten years, almost exactly. Anvaere looked older than herself now, most probably. 

Moiraine wondered if there was a cruelty greater than watching her younger sister grow older than she ever would. Most probably not, she guessed. 

But then again, she had not the Talent of Foretelling, and The Wheel weaves as The Wheel wills, after all. There was no knowing what life had coming for her.

Notes:

The shoreline twisted and turned, stretching farther than it should, eerie and unnerving g in ways that defied reality. The tide pulled at her ankles, slowing her steps, as if trying to drag her back.

Then, at last, she saw her.

Moiraine stood where the sea met the sky, waiting at the water’s edge, as still as a statue. The wind stirred her hair—loose, unbound, curling dark against the pale curve of her cheek. Her deep blue silks shimmered strangely, dry despite the rising mist. She was watching Siuan, as if she had known all along that she would come.

Siuan's breath hitched.

“You always find me by the water,” Moiraine murmured, with a gentle, sorrow filled smile on her face; her voice echoing sweetly across the distance between them.

Siuan swallowed a lump down her throat, mirroring the woman's smile. “And I always find you waiting for me.”

She stepped forward, but the sand dragged at her feet. The tide tickled her calves, higher now, creeping toward her waist. She pushed forward anyway, the cold water biting into her skin.

Moiraine tilted her head slightly, her expression unreadable. She was close now—so close that Siuan could almost reach her.

“Moiraine—” Siuan whined, with a pleading, almost mournful groan.

The waves crashed between them.

Salt filled Siuan’s mouth, raw and bitter. When she blinked, Moiraine was still there, waiting, but farther now, slowly slipping beyond her grasp.

Siuan fought against the tide, her limbs heavy, her breath coming faster.

Light, let me reach her.

But Moiraine only watched.

Not cruelly, not indifferently, but with something softer. Something sad. As if anguish had swallowed her whole.

“You always fight the current,” she murmured, softly, shaking her head with affection, though Siuan could barely hear her over the roar of the sea.

Siuan gritted her teeth, bitter tears threatening to fall down her weathered down cheeks. “What else am I supposed to do?” 

Moiraine did not answer.

The next wave rose higher than the rest, curling over them both like a hand poised to pull them under.

Siuan lunged forward, fingers stretching toward the fabric of Moiraine’s sleeve, grasping on the edge of it—

But then the water hit.

Siuan gasped awake, choking on a breath that burned, drowing in sorrow. The taste of salt lingered on her lips. The room was dark, silent save for her own ragged breathing.

She was alone,just as she always was when she woke. Siuan turned around, and stared at the harrowingly empty space next to her.

The boy’s face was pale, eyes wide and watery. He hadn’t said a word since they’d escaped Tommen’s Head, amidst chaos and frolics, his silence only broken by the rasp of his breath. Whether from exhaustion, shock, or terror, Guinevere couldn’t say, but she was betting on all three. 

“Stay with me,” she murmured, pleading almost, as she tugged Rand into the shadowed alley behind an all but collapsed bakery. The narrow passage was bursting with debris, but it gave them enough cover to slip out of sight. “We can’t risk the streets—not now. If anyone recognises you…” Guinevere shook her head, “there’s an inn just ahead,” she whispered, peering around the corner. “It looks quiet enough—if we’re lucky, no one there will care about who you are.” Or what you are , she didn’t add.

The inn’s weathered sign creaked over their heads, nearly ripped from its hinges by the raging winds. Inside, the common room was as good as empty, the air thick with the scent of damp sand and spilled ale. The place was old, and filthy beyond her experience, but it would serve her purpose just right. The odds of someone looking for them there were thin.  

Guinevere softly nudged Rand into a corner seat near the fire, and he didn’t argue, just let her lead him, one arm around his waist to keep him steady as they stumbled through the side entrance. There were only a few weary travelers huddled at the far end of the room, their voices hushed. The innkeeper barely glanced at them, too preoccupied with scrubbing the bar, though Guinevere caught the flicker of suspicion in her eye.

“Stay here,” she said softly, once the boy had sat down, as she brushed a damp strand of hair from his forehead. “I’ll get us a room.”

Rand didn’t respond, only gave a faint nod, his gaze distant—as if seeing something far beyond the walls of the inn. She wondered what he was thinking about. Was it killing Ishamael? Being proclaimed the Dragon? Seeing his friends battle for his life? That ought to stir any sane person’s mind. 

Is he? Sane?

Still, she doubted any of such matters could pull him so far away from reality. The mere fact that she could pull him away from his friends without a single complaint from him remained a complete mystery to her. What is troubling that head of his?  

She had a way of getting him to tell her, but no, she couldn’t, she wouldn’t . Not to Rand. 

Guinevere approached the bar, leaning in to exchange quiet words with the innkeeper. Only when a small, crimson pouch—heavy with coin—was set between them did she finally turn, her gaze sweeping the room in search of Rand. Spotting him, she silently walked towards him and seized his arm, leading him up the stairs, down a damp hallway reeking of mold, until they reached a secluded, narrow room tucked away from prying eyes.

The latch settled into place with a dull click, the final barrier drawn between themselves and the storm-torn world outside. The air within the room was heavy, moist sea odor, abrasive of salt and the sweat of fear.

Rand stood next to the closed door, his face pale in the wavering candlelight, his hands hung loose at his sides, fingers curling and uncurling as though they longed to grip something , sword, fabric, perhaps her own hand, and dared not.

Guinevere stood beside the table, her fingers light upon the handle of the worn pitcher. There was nothing grand about the place, the bed was low and narrow, the blanket frayed, the wood of the floor uneven and swollen from years of damp. Yet the room seemed to press against her skin, growing smaller by the second, and a sense of unbearable confinement began running throughout her. Every inch of her body told her to run from him, to stay as far away as she could, to pull herself out of his life for the rest of her own, but she couldn’t bring herself to yield into such instincts. 

“Come you here,” she said at last, her voice low, but not unkind. “Lay yourself down, Rand. Your body is not yet whole, and you shall fare no better standing like some statue left in the rain.”

Rand’s lips curled in a humorless smile, but he obeyed, his limbs stiff, grace worn thin by weariness. He sat upon the edge of the bed, his head bowed, fingers lacing together between his knees. Guinevere knelt beside him, the floor cold beneath her, though she scarcely felt it.

First, she lifted his shirt, only the smallest bit, so she could take a better look at the injury caused by the dagger. She had Healed what she could, but it had remained a dark, vicious wound where the blade had broken his skin. Only time would cure such a thing. Guinevere softly placed his shirt down once again, and brought the jar into her arms. 

Rand looked so worn out, so tired. His gaze was set aimlessly on the floor, his mind immersed in chaos. She raised a trembling hand and placed it on his cheek, rubbing her thumb against his sand-eroded skin. He flinched, not from pain, but from the touch itself, the softness of it, the memory it carried. She had done this before, in another room, beneath another sky, when they had still been foolish enough to believe themselves masters of their fate. 

Guinevere dipped the cloth into the cool water, wringing it out with steady hands before running it gently down the side of Rand’s throat. His pulse fluttered beneath her fingertips, uneven, fragile, as though his body had yet to catch up with everything it had endured. She traced the damp cloth over his chest, then down to his hands, her touch slow and deliberate, as if she could smooth away the tremors that still lingered in his fingers. At last, she reached for his chin, tenderly tilting it upward, though his eyes kept avoiding hers.

She had already Healed everything within her power—every wound, every scrape. But some things could not be mended with the One Power. The mind left its own scars, ones even the strongest weave could not erase. Sure, she could take some of his tiredness away, but they both needed her as alert as possible. 

“You should sleep,” she finally murmured, softly patting the cold cloth over his forehead. 

Rand laughed, and the sound was soft and bitter. “I believe myself unable to catch any sleep as of now.”

“Well, I could help you with that.” Guinevere sighed, brushing a smear of ash away from his cheek, before she felt his palm over hers, softly pressing onto his skin. “Rand, what is it?” She asked, a worrisome frown showing on her face. “Rand?”

Only then did the boy lift his gaze, his eyes locking onto hers with a quiet intensity, as if searching her face for answers she could not give. His voice, when it came, was soft—almost weary, almost resigned. “What dreams would come for me now, do you think?” 

The cloth paused, as Guinevere’s breath hitched. She set it aside with a quivering motion, her hands folded in her lap. Dreams? Could it be…? No, that was impossible. 

“Don’t be silly,” she anxiously chuckled, “what… what dreams could come for you?” Guinevere attempted a smile, but it faltered before it could fully form. “Is it Lanfear? Are you afraid she’ll find you? Because I can protect you from it if—”

This time, it was Rand who seized her face, his grip firm yet trembling, forcing her to meet his gaze. In the flickering candlelight, his eyes burned—bright, feverish, relentless. “You have seen them.” 

There was no question in it.

“I—I’m afraid the fever might be speaking for you,” Guinevere said with a nervous whisper. “You really should get some sleep, Rand,” she insisted, pushing herself up, attempting to free herself from the approaching accusations. But before she could rise, his hand caught her wrist, holding her in place.

“Don’t lie to me, Gwen,” he whispered, his voice barely holding together, fraying at the edges like a thread pulled too thin. There was no anger in it, only quiet, aching desperation. “Not you.”

Guinevere’s eyes flooded with tears as she tore her gaze away, staring out the window. She bit down on her lip, hard enough to draw blood, desperate to silence the sob clawing its way up her throat. She couldn’t face him—not now. Her hands twisted together in her lap, trembling, knuckles white with the force of her grip. She hadn’t turned to face him yet, but she felt it—his hatred, sharp as a blade at her back. The silent, desperate plea woven beneath it, the longing for her to deny his words, to make it untrue. But she couldn’t. An Aes Sedai cannot lie.

“I—I have,” she choked out, her voice barely more than a whimper. Tears started to pool in her eyes, salty and abrasive, like everything else in this place. 

“How long?” Rand’s voice was a blade drawn slowly from the sheath, drenched in betrayal.

“Years,” Guinevere whispered, as teardrops threatened to fall through her cheeks. “S—since I was a child, I have seen them. Heard them,” she added, with a soft, harrowing murmur. 

Rand’s breath hissed through his teeth. He stood, too sudden, too unsteady, pacing the narrow room like a beast whose cage had shrunk too small. “You knew,” he said, voice trembling with the weight of it. “You knew what we were to each other, and you said nothing.”

“I knew not what it meant!” Guinevere rose as well, her fists at her sides. “Would you have had me come to you and say I dreamt of children not yet born? Would you have believed me, had I told you I knew their faces before I knew yours?”

“You might have tried,” Rand said, his voice rough. “You might have trusted me.”

“I trusted myself not,” she snapped. Tears were now pouring freely from her eyes, weary and rimmed with redness, carrying the exhaustion of it all. “I thought myself mad. I did not understand what these dreams meant, not until… not until Moiraine explained—”

His breath came hard and uneven, his hands curling into fists. “Moiraine… Moiraine!” He snapped, fist striking the wall. “You shouldn’t trust what that woman says—”

“No, Rand… Rand,” she urged him, closing the distance between them, her back to the door, placing her hands on his chest, in a foolish attempt to calm him down, “I do believe she is your best—”

“All she’s ever done is lie to me!” He yelled back. “Manipulate me into doing what she believes must be done. Who’s to say she’s not manipulating us now?”

Guinevere stepped back, her spine striking the door. She raised a trembling, accusatory finger towards him. “You’ve seen them, Rand.” She muttered, lips quivering in between salty tears. “Moiraine is not manipulating us. Lanfear isn’t either. Tell me, in truth, you don’t hear their screams. There is no one fooling ourselves but us now.”

Rand’s hand struck the door beside her head, not with violence, but with trembling desperation. “Then tell me to leave you be,” he said, and his voice was supposed to be an order but it didn’t quite manage to do so. “Command me, Guinevere.”

Her hands trembled where they rested against his chest. “Go,” she whispered, her voice breaking upon the single word. “Leave me. I don’t wish you near me.”

Rand’s fingers curled into her hair, tilting her face to his. “Liar,” he breathed, and then his mouth was on hers.

The kiss was not gentle, it was war, the clash of lips and breath, of memory and fear and a longing too ancient and to deny, they felt it deep in their bones. His hands clutched at her, tangling in her skirts, pulling her flush against him, her breasts crushed to his chest. Her nails raked his shoulders, and he only pressed closer, the ache of her fingers like proof of his reality.

Guinevere’s back struck the wall, and he pressed his body to hers, the force of his thigh parting her legs beneath her skirts. His hands were rough, tracing the line of her waist, finding the laces that bound her bodice and tugging with too much force, the fabric rasping apart.

She gasped against his mouth, but her hands found him in turn, unlacing his shirt, her fingers tracing the warm skin beneath it. His breath caught, and she felt the shiver race through him, not fear, not hesitation, but some terrible, aching relief.

They fell to the bed, as her skirts undid around her hips, his hand sliding beneath, fingers tracing the soft skin of her bare thigh. Her head fell back with a soft moan, exposing her throat, and his mouth found the curve of it, biting hard enough to mark her. She arched beneath him, nails digging into his back.

“I should know better,” she whispered, breathless.

“As I should know better,” he said, his mouth tracing the line of her collarbone. “Yet here we are.”

His fingers slid higher, finding the damp heat of her, and her gasp was sharp, her body arching into his hand. There was no gentleness in this, no slow seduction, only need, raw and clumsy and too long desired. His mouth found her breast, his tongue flicking over her nipple, his teeth grazing her skin just shy of pain.

Her hands fumbled at his belt, pushing his breeches down over his hips, her fingers finding him hard, burning hot in her palm. He groaned into her skin, his body shuddering against hers.

He entered her with no preamble, the stretch sharp, a gasp torn from her throat, his own breath ragged as he pressed into her, inch by inch, until there was no space left between them. 

Sweat clung to their bare skin, thick and sticky, pooling in the hollows of their bodies where they pressed together. The heat between them grew unbearable, the damp friction at their chests and thighs turning raw. Soon enough, neither could tell where the sweat ended and the tears began. Their hands clasped together above her head, fingers interlocked, bodies moving as though they had always known each other, not just in this life but in every life before. 

But just as her body began to tighten around him, as his whimpers grew ragged and hot against her throat, the screaming started ringing through their minds.

“Mama!”

Guinevere’s body went still, her hands clenching around his fingers.

Rand froze, his weight sinking onto her, his breath coming in harsh, uneven gasps.

“Father, please!” The voice was everywhere, in the walls, in their very bones.

Guinevere shoved at his chest, harsh fists filled with agony pushing him away, scrambling from beneath him, hands clamped over her ears. Rand sat back, shaking, his head bowed, his own hands tangled in his hair.

“We cannot escape them,” she whispered.

“No,” Rand said, his voice hoarse. “We cannot.”

They sat apart, the weight of the past, present, and future echoing on both their minds. 

Outside, the wind screamed with them.

The grey light of dawn seeped through the narrow window, faint as breath, pale as a ghost. The storm had passed in the night, leaving only the scent of damp wood and salt clinging to the air, mingling with the faint, lingering scent of sweat and skin.

Guinevere lay upon her side, her naked back to Rand, the thin blanket pulled high over her shoulder. The air between them was thick, not with warmth, but with silence. Heavy, suffocating, woven from things neither dared speak aloud.

He had not touched her since the scream shattered the dark. His hand had lain beside hers for a time, fingers curled loosely, just shy of touching. But at some point, she knew not when, he had drawn it back.

They had not spoken.

Guinevere’s body ached, though she could not say from what, from the desperate, bruising way they had clung to each other, or from the way she had curled in upon herself once it was done, heart pounding, skin burning, shame and grief and something far too ancient to name coiling within her like a serpent. Her thighs were sore, her lips tender, her neck marked where his mouth had been. But it was the silence that stung most of all.

They did not dare look at each other.

The bed was too narrow to allow much space between them, yet somehow it felt like a chasm, wide and impassable. Her back felt too bare, exposed to him, yet she could not bring herself to turn, to face him, to see her own regret reflected in his eyes.

She bit the inside of her cheek until the taste of blood filled her mouth.

The Wheel had played this game with them before, drawing them together only to tear them apart. In every life, the same bitter dance. And in every life, it seemed, they swore they would not let it happen again.

But it had.

Again.

She stared at the wall, tracing the cracks in the plaster with her eyes, trying to anchor herself in the smallness of the room, the ordinary flaws in its surface, anything to keep from thinking of his hands on her, his mouth against hers, the way her body had known him as though they had lain together a thousand times before.

Because they had.

Rand shifted behind her, the mattress creaking. He was awake. He had been awake for hours, just as she had.

The words she should say—could say—crowded behind her teeth, but none of them broke free. What would they matter? They had no power here. Not in the face of the truth they both knew too well.

There was no future for them. There never had been.

He sat up at last, the blanket slipping from his back, and she heard the rustle of fabric as he reached for his shirt. He dressed in silence, each movement careful, almost reverent, as though trying not to disturb her, though he must have known she was awake.

Guinevere did not move. Her body was stone, her breath measured, her hands fisted in the blankets beneath her chin.

She waited for him to speak. To say anything, some halfhearted apology, some cold attempt at explaining away what they had done. But none came.

When at last she heard the door open, the chill air slipping in around him, she thought for a moment he would leave without a word.

But he paused in the doorway.

“Sorry,” he said quietly, and his voice was softer than it should have been—tender even, though it trembled at the edges. She saw him take gentle steps towards her, and he kneeled down to leave a soft, loving kiss on her cheek, his hand caressing her neck where his mouth had marked her, as the other delicately brushed against sickly skin over her cheeks. Guinevere closed her eyes at his touch. “I’m sorry for last night.” He eventually said, with a mournful whimper.

Guinevere bit her lips, to prevent angry sobs from escaping them, before responding. “I’m sorry too.”

She felt Rand press his forehead against hers, before the warmth of his body was gone all of the sudden. “Rest, Gwen,” he heard him say from the hallway. She briskly opened her eyes, and became painfully aware of how naked she was and how little the blanket did to cover her. 

“Rand, you mustn’t leave the room,” Guinevere urged him, tiredly, “you know that,” she added, with a final whisper. 

But then the latch clicked shut behind him.

She sat up slowly, her body protesting, her skin bearing the ghost of his touch. The room felt hollow, emptied of air, though her heart still pounded in her chest.

She washed herself with water gone cold in the basin, scrubbing her skin as though she could erase what had been done, as though her own hands had not clutched at him just as fiercely, her own voice had not broken on his name. The bruises would fade, they always did.

The memory would not.

She braided her hair with steady hands, smoothed the creases from her dress, what was left of it at least. By the time she reached the door, her face was smooth, her back straight, her shoulders squared. A Daughter of House Damodred. A Sister of the Yellow Ajah. Not a woman who had wept beneath her lover’s hands, hearing the voices of her unborn children echo through the dark.

The stairs creaked beneath her feet as she descended, the scent of stale ale and smoke curling up to meet her. She couldn’t feel him around, and the terrible fear of him slipping through her fingers, into the ones of a Darkfriend, or even worse, a Forsaken, started to shiver down her spine. 

Nonetheless, Guinevere stepped into the common room, her smile polite, her face serene. She had worn the mask for so long, it was easy to slip back into it.

Guinevere turned toward the bar, but her steps faltered the moment her gaze swept the room.

At a table near the window, half-shrouded in shadow, sat a man wrapped in a patchwork cloak, his fingers idly plucking at the strings of a harp resting against his knee. He had not been there the day before, Guinevere would’ve noticed him. His hair was silvered with age, his beard neatly trimmed, but it wasn’t the lines on his face that caught her breath.

It was the shape of him, the set of his shoulders, the angle of his jaw, something both eerily and achingly familiar, though she couldn’t place why.

The gleeman’s gaze lifted from his harp, meeting hers for the briefest heartbeat. Something flickered there, curiosity, perhaps, or the slightest echo of recognition, like hearing a tune he almost remembered.

Before she could look away, the man signaled for her to approach him. Guinevere discreetly looked around her, to make sure there wasn’t anyone else he was pointing at, but his gaze was unmistakably set on her.

Guinevere moved toward him with careful steps, her skirts whispering against the wooden floor. As she approached the table, she took quick stock of what he carried: a harp, resting lightly in his lap for all to see. A knife, hidden where he thought no one would notice. A travel-worn bag, slouched against his chair, its weight suggesting enough coin to survive—but not enough to thrive.

He was a man who knew how to survive on the road. That alone made him dangerous.

She did not sit until she had measured him thoroughly.

The man plucked a lazy note from his harp, a half-smile playing at the corner of his lips. “So, tell me, child,” he said, and his voice was melodic and smooth as aged wine. “What’s your name?”

“I’m not a child,” Guinevere protested, her voice high-pitched and stubborn enough to lead him into believing she was one indeed, or so she thought. 

He gave a low, ashy laugh, shaking his head. “Well, I’ll be damned.” He leaned back in his chair, studying her with something close to amusement. “No harm meant, girl. I’m only looking for someone.”

Guinevere tensed. “Who?”

The gleeman let his fingers dance idly along the strings of his harp, playing a wandering tune. “Why, the Dragon Reborn, of course,” he said, his voice almost playful. “Who else?”

The words landed like a stone in her stomach.

Of course. A gleeman would be looking for Rand. Rumors didn’t walk on their own. They were carried by men like him.

She tilted her head, feigning mild amusement. “The Dragon Reborn?” she repeated, tapping a thoughtful finger against the worn surface of the table. “You must be a man who listens to a great deal of foolish tales, then.”

The gleeman only smiled. “Oh, I listen to everything. Sometimes foolish tales have the ring of truth, if you know how to hear it.”

Guinevere held his gaze, keeping her expression carefully neutral. “And what would a gleeman want with the Dragon Reborn?”

The man plucked another note, tilting his head as if considering. “What does anyone want with him?” He let the words hang in the air before adding, “Maybe I’m just curious.”

“Curiosity gets men killed.”

He chuckled, his eyes crinkling with something like genuine delight. “And yet, here I sit.”

Guinevere inhaled slowly. If this man was after Rand, he could be anyone, an agent of some noble house, an informant for the Tower, or something far worse. He didn’t look like a Darkfriend. But then again, neither did most.

She had to throw him off the trail.

“There are many tales,” she said smoothly, letting a small, coy smile play on her lips. “Some say the Dragon Reborn was spotted crossing the Erinin three days ago. Or was it the Alguenya?” She frowned, as if struggling to recall. “The trouble with rumors is that they never seem to agree, do they?”

The gleeman watched her, the flickering firelight casting deep shadows across his face. His fingers idly stroked the harp strings, but she could feel the weight of his silence.

“No, they don’t,” he said finally. “Yet you don’t seem the type to trade in rumors alone.”

Guinevere shrugged one shoulder. “I trade in what’s useful.”

A smile ghosted his lips. “That, I believe.”

For a moment, neither of them spoke. The air between them was thick with unspoken meaning, with quiet assessments, with the delicate game of weighing truths against half-truths.

Then, at last, the gleeman leaned back, exhaling softly. “Well, I suppose I’ll have to keep looking.” He plucked a final, lazy note from his harp, then reached for his bag. 

But just as he was rising, he paused. His gaze swept over her once more, slower this time, as though he were seeing something he had missed before. His brows furrowed, his mouth quirking in something like recognition.

He raised a hesitant hand towards her, before he tenderly brushed on a strand of her hair. Guinevere found it strange, but for some reason his touch felt comforting, safe even. She gazed into his eyes, and almost recognised herself in them. “You know, girl,” the man sighed, leaving one final caress on her chin, before stepping back, “you’ve got your aunt’s look about you.”

Guinevere froze.

Her heart slammed against her ribs and for a moment, she forgot how to breathe.

The mask nearly slipped, the carefully trained serenity, the unshakable poise, but she caught herself just in time.

She swallowed hard. “I wouldn’t know.”

“Oh, I think you would.” The gleeman’s eyes lingered on her for a breath longer, before he exhaled softly. 

Guinevere hesitated, then lifted her chin. She knew she was being reckless, but something instinctive, almost demonic had taken over her. “And if I encounter him, who should I say was looking for him?”

He smiled, the kind of smile that belonged to a man who had seen too much and survived anyway. “Thom,” he said, turning toward the door, his cloak swirling around him like a storm cloud, his harp slung across his back.“Thom Merrilin.”

Guinevere did not stop him, and when Rand came back, accompanied by Moiraine and Lan, she did not tell them that Thom Merrilin had come looking for him.