#ailit

"It protects you even now." Her fingers draw back, and he gasps at the faint chill that hits his face when her radiance no longer warms his face. But her hand moves over his left shoulder, and the warmth returns anew there, as her fingers glide down to his elbow and ultimately his wrist. She holds the back of his hand within her own. "It mends your leg and your mana. I feel it there, trying; so much of your potential is burned away on just these ailments."

"Can you take it away?" he asks, but the question frightens him.

Ailit gently shakes her head. "I cannot. If these things were truly curable with the Light, then you'd have achieved it yourself long ago. My ancestral home would not still be the shadow of its former self. The Legion's power is corrosive, and what it destroys cannot be completely restored."

Raein nods. He understands. Ailit rests her other hand over the one of Raein's she holds. Her head tilts, thinking. Her hands begin to glow, this impossibly clear power, brighter and whiter and golder than Raein has ever seen.

"Maybe," she says, thinks more, and her brow relaxes. "Yes. I think I can relieve you of the burden, for just a moment. I think..."

Her hands glow brighter, and Raein feels her power pouring into him—softly, slowly, like how the pond water in Eversong used to run across his feet. He hasn't felt the Light in his left arm in over a year; it's been stonewalled time and time again by the severity of his weakness, the destroyed pathways through him that his mana can no longer travel. But Ailit fills those dried up leylines so effortlessly. It travels further, flooding his chest, cascading through his torso and into his legs—for one moment, and only one moment, the pain in his leg is gone. Not lessened, not numbed, but truly absent.

It's even terrifying. It feels good but it's wrong, then the ache is back again—weaker, as it always is after the Light's touched it, but there. And his arm... his heart, his face—

The moment her hands draw back, Raein's go to his chest, one hand clasped to his left arm, then his cheeks. His heart beats easier, his arm feels lighter, and his face—

"You cannot restore what was destroyed," Ailit says, so kindly. Gently, she takes his hands again, simply to hold them, and hers are... colder—no. His are warmer. "But you can forge anew."

There's new passage in his arm, new life to his erratic heart. And his face...

His eyes focus on her gauntlet, and the reflection is muddled by the curve and details in the steel, but he sees the difference immediately. Both his eyes void of any blue, but they're not greener; the right, unharmed since his days in Tempest Keep, glows a clear gold, and the left, more freshly scarred and still a long way from healing, no longer ebbs toward the arcanic blue he'd had as a little boy, but the gold like its sibling.

He looks back up at Ailit, to ask, but somehow he already knows. The answer is in his own body, as the Light burns clearer and closer in his blood. It's not new, it's not hers, it's his and it's always been his. But she's broken away some of the darkness that has dimmed its presence for so long.

"Why?" He didn't do anything. He doesn't—

"We who walk in the Light are not ruled by deservedness. We give. Sight, warmth, and the opportunity to try again." She lets go of his hands and steps back, and this time, he doesn't feel the chill of her absence. "Show me your Light."

It's not effortless—after everything he's been through, Ailit is right, it will never be effortless again—but it's easier. The Light answers him, in both his hands, burning gold and white; he feels it flood his chest and his eyes, and it feels different as it flows through his body different. It's not what he remembers, but Ailit is right; it never will be again.