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Chapter Text

Midnight, and the shadows are so thick Liandrin can feel the weight of them as she walks. Her footsteps are soft on the worn flagstones, although there is no one to see or hear her this deep in the Tower; even she isn’t entirely sure where she is. Corridor after corridor, curving round and back on themselves, and no windows to let in the moonlight. A dozen closed doors leading to rooms that she would once have assumed were empty, but now she isn’t so sure. She is here, after all. How many others are also here, whispering in the darkness? Their imagined voices close in on her, dripping from the walls. Their imagined eyes follow her around yet another unfamiliar corner. There are so many places to hide in a Tower built to house three thousand women, when barely a third of that number are here. 

A lantern bobs in her hand, but the muted glow barely penetrates the gloom. There are no sconces down here, no lights flaring from the walls, no flame dancing off the stone and making the shadows sing. The quiet around her is heavy and absolute; she hardly makes a ripple in it. Doubt flickers in her mind as to whether she’s going the right way, but the note left in her chambers had been precise and her memory is faultless, and if she trusts in nothing else, she thinks, she has to trust in herself. Especially now. Who – or what – is waiting for her is unknown, as shadowy as the corridors she’s passing through. She knows no names. She’s seen no faces, only hoods. She’s heard voices, but they were distorted through shifting masks and echoing stone and her own bitter-sharp fear, and she suspects who some of them might belong to but she isn’t entirely sure. Rings had glinted in all seven colours of the Ajahs, worn over dark gloves which covered hands. Dark cloaks had covered dresses. She’d renounced the Three Oaths and sworn her Dark Oaths, and she recalls nothing of it except the overwhelming, stifling blackness. 

There is a hollow inside her where the Three Oaths had been. A cracked, splintered gouge somewhere so deep she can’t even pinpoint it, but she’d felt it the moment she’d broken them. A tearing so fierce that she’d almost cried out. She’d expected the Dark Oaths to fill the space, to sweep through her and settle under her skin like the Three Oaths had, but there is only a prickle, insistent but vague, as real and as hazy as a nightmare in the moments after waking. Perhaps it will change. Perhaps after a few weeks, a few months, a year, it will feel different. Perhaps two or three decades from now, when her son is still alive and safe. 

Her walk slows as she approaches a door. It’s carved in wood, just like all the others, an ornate filigree pattern that probably has some long-lost significance, but unlike the others it’s standing slightly ajar. A band of golden light spills through the gap, almost welcoming in its warmth. There is no sound from inside, no indication that anyone else is there, but Liandrin can sense another presence almost as clearly as if she could see it. Tension coils through her spine. The One Power tingles at her fingertips, pulsing with her heartbeat. She forces her shallow breaths into something longer, something less frantic, and straightens her spine. She is ready for this. Her hand reaches for the door. She has no choice. 

She steps into a sparsely furnished room, lit by candles set into alcoves on the walls, and then abruptly stops. It’s not the bareness of it that surprises her. It’s not the bed frame with no mattress or the single chair or the cracked washbasin, suggesting that this had once been a bedroom; it’s not the idea that the Tower had once been so full that novices or perhaps servants had had to sleep all the way down here. It’s the figure sitting on the edge of the bed. Flickering between light and shadow, but still unmistakeable. 

‘Verin Sedai?’

Verin stands slowly, a small magnifying glass still glinting on a chain around her neck even here, and says quietly, ‘Liandrin.’

So much unhappiness in one look, Liandrin thinks. So much disappointment and resignation in one word. She tries to ignore the little twist in her chest, and, keeping her hands by her sides, slips her thumbs in between her first two fingers. She’d been told to do that. She’d been told to make sure, and she doesn’t think she’s ever been so unsure in her life. Surely Verin, of all people, is not…

‘I don’t think there’s much need for that, do you?’ A wry smile ghosts across Verin’s face. ‘It doesn’t look like anyone else is going to suddenly appear.’

Liandrin lets her hands relax, a light flush rising to her cheeks, and reaches behind her to close the door. She places her lantern on the chair; it’s the only place. ‘What are you doing here?’ She winces at how harsh it sounds, how shocked her words are. ‘I was expecting –’

‘Someone else?’ Verin tilts her head on one side, sounding almost sympathetic. ‘Someone a little…darker, perhaps?’

Liandrin is silent. Agreeing would be ridiculous, but she can’t think of anything else to say. 

‘I had also hoped for someone else, and yet here we both are. And unfortunately we don’t have much time.’ Verin sighs, and laces her hands in front of her as if she was about to teach; a gesture so familiar that it almost makes Liandrin laugh. ‘So. What do you know about why you’re here?’

‘Nothing.’ There’s no point in lying, and she stiffens against the faint vertigo of knowing that she could, after years of every untruth snagging in her throat like a fish on a hook. ‘I haven’t been told anything yet. I don’t even know who anyone else is…’ She trails off, suddenly aware that fear masked as annoyance has crept into her voice, and that Verin has always been able to tell the difference between the two. Taking a deep, sharp breath to get herself back under control, she says, ‘Would you care to enlighten me?’

‘Hmm.’ A corner of Verin’s mouth curves. ‘Well, you will be assigned to a heart eventually – that is, a group of three sisters who are the only names you will know, apart from one other on the outside of your heart – but not yet.’

‘Then when?’

‘When you have completed a period of testing under a mentor.’ Verin raises an amused eyebrow at her brusqueness. ‘Me. And assuming that you pass the testing, I will be your one contact outside of your heart.’ She pauses, and any hint of a smile fades. ‘I’m sure I don’t need to tell you what happens if you fail.’

Liandrin’s jaw tightens as she tries to push the fractured image of her son from her mind, and then she forces herself to meet Verin’s gaze. ‘I won’t fail,’ she says in a low voice. ‘I’ve never failed anything yet. You know that.’

‘True…’ Verin nods, as if Liandrin has raised a good point but there is still some argument to be made. ‘You have always been determined not to.’ She pauses. ‘Remind me, how long is it now since you came to the Tower – fifteen years? Twenty?’

‘Twenty four.’ Then she adds defiantly, ‘Fourteen since I took the shawl.’

‘Time does pass quickly.’ Verin’s smile is a little vague, a little wistful, but Liandrin knows better than to be fooled. She’s been on the pointed end of Verin’s apparent absent-mindedness once too often. ‘Twenty four years, and you’ve never stopped fighting the world; I don’t think you know any other way to be. But anger and determination will not be enough now, Liandrin. Rely on those alone and you will not last two minutes.’ She looks Liandrin up and down, all trace of vagueness gone. ‘I have mentored others before you, and none of them have failed. I do not want you being the first.’

‘I don’t need a mentor.’ It slips out, a whiplash to try and steady herself against the feeling that the world is turning to liquid under her feet. ‘I don’t need –’

‘If you want to live, you don’t have a choice.’ Verin’s eyes flick to steel, and she takes a step closer to Liandrin. ‘Do you really think you know everything there is to know? Everything that you will need to survive among women you thought were your sisters? Your teachers? Your pillow-friends?’ Liandrin gasps as threads of the One Power, so thin and delicate and swift that she hadn’t seen them coming, swirl around her wrists and her arms, pushing her hard towards the door until the carved wood hits her back. ‘You think that the woman you fucked or confided in or smiled at last week isn’t also sworn to the Shadow – that she won’t be in your heart, watching you, waiting for the first hint of a mistake?’ 

Liandrin swears, pulling against the weave that’s burning her skin like a candle flame and holding her on the point of pain. The Power is swirling around her fingertips too, but she can’t catch hold of it properly, she can’t direct it, she can’t…

‘You have been taught never to use the One Power as a weapon.’ Verin’s voice is soft, relentless. ‘You could, even if your Oaths were intact – I am a Darkfriend, after all – and you want to; you’re angry enough and scared enough to blast me to the other side of this room. But you cannot, because you are not quick enough against a weave that you don’t know, and because your mind won’t allow it.’ She pauses. ‘You are looking at me and seeing Verin Sedai, who brought you honey cakes and taught you to read. Not a woman who could drain your mind of everything you’ve found out here tonight and then leave you here to rot.’

Liandrin bites down on a cry as the weave tighten and spreads around her chest; fighting against it only seems to make it worse, but she can’t help it. ‘I’m not…’

‘You are. And how long do you think you would last, not being able to defend yourself against a simple weave of air and fire? You are as strong in the Power as me, Liandrin, perhaps stronger, and yet…’ Verin tilts her head on side again, the weave flowing from her fingers as if it was nothing at all, ‘look at you.’

There is nothing taunting in Verin’s voice, nothing contemptuous or derisive. Verin is looking at her as if she’s a simply a puzzle that needs to be pinned down and taken apart in order to be solved, but that doesn’t stop Liandrin trying to wrench her body out of the weave, trying to force the Power out of her fingers, trying to swallow the scream of rage and panic that’s tearing at her chest. Verin won’t push it further, she thinks desperately. Verin must know it’s hurting and Verin has never hurt her; Verin never even used to send her to the Mistress of Novices for punishment. But then she realises that she has no idea anymore what Verin might or might not do. Black spots dance along the edges of her vision, and her breath burns in her throat, and she tries to struggle harder, tries to…

The weave vanishes, snapped off by Verin’s fingers as easily as spun sugar, and she crumples to the ground, gasping in pain and anger, her back scraping down the wooden door. Her legs, arms, hands, fingers – everything is shaking too hard to hold her up. The burning sensation fades from her wrists and she registers it in dazed surprise; how has it not marked her, how is it vanishing like water dripping from her skin? She hears footsteps, an indistinct murmur. Then Verin is crouching down beside her and a cool hand is resting on hers, and she nearly laughs at herself for thinking that it feels nice. 

She rests her head back against the door, still breathing hard, and whispers, ‘I’m not scared of you.’

‘Yes, you are.’ Verin sighs, quiet and reluctant, and sweeps a thumb across Liandrin’s wrist. ‘But I’d rather you weren’t, Liandrin. I’d rather help you become powerful enough and strong enough that no one – least of all another sister – can ever scare you like that again.’

The hand drops away, and Liandrin turns to rest her cheek against the cool wood of the door. A bitter smile crosses her face at Verin’s choice of words. She’d once promised her son that she was going to become so strong and so powerful that no one would ever be able to hurt either of them again; she’d told herself that all his screams and tears and misery at being left with another woman while she completed her novice training would be worth it. She’d come to the Tower for him. She’d done everything for him. 

And yet here she is. Ragged, battered, on the floor, where she’d sworn she would never be again. 

Verin is standing now, holding out her hand; an invitation, not a command. Liandrin turns her head back and looks up, and manages, ‘Do I have a choice?’

‘Not if you want to survive,’ Verin repeats, gentle now. ‘But I suppose even that is a choice of sorts.’

Liandrin hesitates, and then reaches up. She is doing this for her son too, she reminds herself; there are too many things in this world that would harm him, too many ways in which he could be taken from her. He needs her protection. He always will. 

***

She waits days for the next note to be slipped under her door. Impatient days, dragged out hour by hour with nothing much to fill them. There are no instructions from the Red Ajah, no mission inside or outside of the Tower to occupy her time. She wants to go and see her son, but can’t bring herself to do it; his pride when he looks at her would be too much. The absolute trust that he still has in her would make sour knots of guilt twist in her stomach. His mother, the Aes Sedai. He has no idea what she’s done or what she’s become, and she hates imagining what she might see in his eyes if he knew the truth. She can’t imagine what he might say if he knew it was because of him.

There is no word from Verin either. Liandrin doesn’t understand the delay but there’s nothing she can do about it, and she becomes more and more restive, more and more edgy. The Power is a constant tingle at her fingertips; her new Oaths flicker like a thousand tiny knives pricking underneath her skin. Her surroundings seem too bright and too insubstantial, like the mirage left on the eyelids after an Illuminator’s show, and every time she looks at a face she finds herself wondering: Darkfriend or not? Sworn to the Shadow, or not? She sees Verin in the corridors, chatting to other Sisters and smiling at novices, and the world seems to tip away from her before readjusting itself. She can’t help staring. She can’t help picking over every mannerism, every facial expression, every gesture, to try and find something that she’d missed before, something to help her try and make sense of it. But there is no sense. There is never anything to find, no matter how hard she looks.

All the evenings spent learning to read and write as a novice, Verin’s hand guiding hers as she fumbled to hold the pen properly. All the afternoons in the library as an Accepted, learning from the Brown Ajah because she had to, never admitting that she liked the calm atmosphere and the smell of books and Verin’s steady presence on the other side of the desk. All the pleasantries in the corridors, all the smiles that had brightened her day even though she would never have admitted that either. Her years at the Tower seem to revolve around these small memories, and yet now she wonders whether she recognises them at all. 

When the note finally arrives, breaking through her obsessive rumination with its neat handwriting and concise instructions, Liandrin is relieved. This time she has no doubts; she’s sure of her direction and silent on her feet, slipping along corridors where the darkness parts and closes back over her like a fist. Nerves jangle in her stomach, but she’s ready, she won’t be caught out again, and she focuses on the Power instead. Threads of it hum under her skin, so sweet and so powerful and so obedient to her slightest whim that she wonders how they had been impossible to reach before. She uses them to light her way when the darkness becomes too thick and claustrophobic, and only reluctantly pulls them back when she reaches the right door. It’s hardly open this time. Only the thinnest blade of light cuts through the gap, splitting the floor of the corridor in two. 

She enters with barely a sound. The Power is ready at her fingertips, but she lets it fade away when there is no lashing weave of Air, no sudden burning, no attack to defend herself against. Instead, Verin is perched on the bed frame, absorbed in a book, magnifying glass held up to one eye as she squints at the tiny print covering the page. 

‘I’m not going to get a history lesson, am I?’

‘Ah, Liandrin.’ Verin looks up, her smile distracted, as if she’d completely forgotten that they were supposed to be meeting. ‘You came.’

‘I didn’t think I had a choice.’

‘No, I don’t suppose you did.’ Verin sighs, as if she’d rather that Liandrin wanted to be here. ‘And no, this isn’t a history lesson. I learned long ago that trying to teach you to appreciate it is a waste of time.’ She closes the book reluctantly, patting the cover, and then sets it to one side. Meditations on the Kindling Flame, the title embossed in faded script on the spine. ‘We’re going to practice some weaves.’

‘Practice some weaves,’ Liandrin repeats. Verin says it as if she’s talking to a class of novices, and it makes her instantly wary. ‘What kind of weaves?’

‘Oh, nothing in particular tonight.’ Verin pushes herself to her feet, not bothering to smooth out her crinkled dress or to straighten the rolled-up sleeves of her blouse. ‘Just whatever comes to mind…every Ajah has their own little tricks and quirks, after all.’ She raises a playful, challenging eyebrow that catches Liandrin off-guard. ‘Let’s see how you do against Brown, shall we?’

Liandrin had thought she was ready. But the weave hits her before she’s even summoned the Power properly, pushing her across the room and tossing her against the wall; a controlled, contained whirlwind of Air that whips her clothes and the ends of her braids, presses like a hand against her throat, swirls around her until she can barely keep her footing. Sudden, involuntary panic pulls a gasp from her lips, and for a moment she is paralysed, unable to do anything except let herself be shaken like a rag doll. A hand on her throat. A hand closing and tightening until she can’t breathe. A hand that smells of dirt and woodsmoke and unwashed skin and ale, and…

‘Fight it, Liandrin.’ 

Verin’s voice. Not his. 

‘Come on, you can do better than this.’

Verin’s voice, patiently coaxing as if she’d simply asked Liandrin a question and had received a half-correct answer. Verin’s hands, not his, holding the weave in a pale, fragile web that spins out from her palms. Verin’s scent – not his – a light wash of spice and ink and paper and rose oil. Liandrin sucks in a breath and reaches for the Power, dragging it back to the surface and letting it shape itself to the rush of fury and fear; she will not be crushed like that again, she will not go back there, not when she’s done all this to escape. The weave it produces is chaotic. She barely even knows what it is, but it’s forceful enough to slam through the whirlwind and hit Verin’s hastily erected shield. The pressure of Air abruptly drops away. Breath floods her lungs, a long and painful gasp of it. Her weave falters and drops and Verin’s shield fizzles out with it, and through her watering eyes and tight chest, Liandrin thinks she sees a smile. 

‘Good.’ Verin’s eyes run over her, lingering for a moment on her shaking hands. ‘It would have been better if you’d followed through and put me on the floor, but never mind.’

A sharp, panting bark of laughter escapes her –  the idea that she could do that seems ludicrous – and Verin sighs again. 

‘Have you already forgotten what I said about not seeing Verin Sedai?’ Thin streams of fire form between Verin’s hands, exquisite patterns that are almost hypnotic. ‘I could kill you with these, Liandrin. If I wanted to.’ The pattern changes; fire drips and mutates into a soft, swirling coil of Spirit. ‘Or I could Compel you. What would you do for me, if I told you to?’

Liandrin stares, stunned. ‘You…you know that weave?’

‘Clearly.’ Verin sounds amused. ‘And yet you are still standing there doing nothing.’

One second passes, one long drawn-out heartbeat; Liandrin can feel it thudding from her chest up into her throat. Then she weaves. A violent, bright twist of air and fire that slices through the Compulsion weave and almost knocks Verin backwards. Only a quick turn sideways allows her to keep her footing. ‘Better,’ she says, a glint in her voice. ‘But perhaps we could try a bit more imagination?’

It’s not long before Liandrin is sweating and exhausted. Verin’s weaves are so quick and so deceptively light she can barely keep up with them; only the weaves that she’s learned over the years from her Red Ajah sisters, ones that Verin doesn’t know, give her enough space and time to deflect, to twist, to throw something back. Breath burns in her lungs. Tension burns in her arms. She won’t give in, not until she absolutely cannot stay on her feet any longer, and she briefly wonders whether Verin is going to try and push her to that point. But there’s no time for thought. There’s no time for anything except reacting, and she keeps doing it, keeps going and going, until she finally hears Verin’s voice. 

‘Enough.’

The Power floods from her like water from a broken pot. The sudden void it leaves makes her double over with vertigo, but she hasn’t got the energy left to control it or let it trickle away; she can barely keep herself standing. Her hands rest on her thighs, gripping her shaking muscles. Every panting breath feels like a small, agonising victory. It’s as bad as the test for the shawl, she thinks hazily, and far worse than anything she’s faced since then. Has she just become slow and lazy? She manages to glance up at Verin, partly to make sure that there’s not another surprise about to come her way, and huffs in disbelief when she sees Verin flushed and out of breath but but still standing, looking as if she could probably do it all over again. 

‘Fuck,’ Liandrin mutters. She pushes herself upright, and wipes sweat-sticky strands of hair from her forehead. ‘You’re wasted in the library.’

Verin’s laugh is warm and rich, an earthy counterpoint to the crackling of energy still in the room. ‘Perhaps,’ she replies. ‘Or perhaps your Red Ajah is becoming slack. But that was better…much better.’

The old rush of pleasure at being praised – and being praised by Verin in particular – doesn’t really surprise Liandrin, even now. She looks around at the walls that are patchy with burn marks and soot, at the bed that’s completely cracked in half, at the book that’s been thrown onto the floor. The echos of their weaves shimmer in the air; a web of loosening threads, fading and sparking like a hundred guttering candles. She doesn’t think she’s ever channelled like that. She doesn’t remember ever feeling this surge of power and satisfaction, strong enough to push the exhaustion and the pain to one side. She doesn’t ever remember seeing another Sister feeling the same, and yet when she looks at Verin – when she sees how alive Verin’s eyes are, when she sees tendrils of the Power still glimmering at Verin’s fingertips as though Verin can’t quite help herself – she knows. 

‘None of that was Brown Ajah,’ Liandrin says accusingly, partly to distract herself from the tilting sensation that’s threatening to overtake her again. ‘You could have taught me some of it before you tried to kill me with it.’

‘I wanted to see how you would do. What I need to teach you and where your weaknesses are.’ Verin shrugs, vague and unapologetic, and the Power finally fades from her hands. ‘And if I wanted to kill you, you would be dead by now.’ 

‘You know, I actually believe you.’ Liandrin winces; she feels as if her shoulder has been wrenched out of its socket and then shoved back in. ‘Am I really going to need to know all this?’

Verin looks at her for a long moment, head tilted on one side. ‘Always plan for the worst,’ she eventually says, ‘that way all of your surprises will be pleasant ones.’ She bends to pick up the book, dusting it off carefully and straightening the bent cover, and then her gaze returns to Liandrin. It travels slowly over Liandrin’s body, over battered clothes and tousled hair and probably more than a few bruises, and then she gestures to the door. ‘Come. I need some Healing and so do you, and we will be more comfortable talking elsewhere.’

The Tower is silent as they walk, heavy with early-hours darkness, and Liandrin follows Verin through corridors that should be familiar but seem strange and shifting in the shadows. A fierce, silent ache pulses through her legs with every step. She thinks they are going to the Brown Ajah quarters – the smell of books gradually becomes faint but persistent, and she starts to recognise this door, that tapestry – but when they reach what she’s sure is Verin’s study, Verin keeps walking. On along the corridor and around the corner at the end, where anything recognisable suddenly drops away. There are so many corners in the Tower, Liandrin thinks, that she still doesn’t know. So many places to hide. 

Then Verin is unlocking a door and ushering her through it, and the warm glow of firelight makes her blink.

‘Have a seat.’ Verin waves her towards a sofa near the fire, and turns to ward the door. ‘And take your tunic off.’

Honey-coloured wood. Earth-brown sheets over a bed. Deep shades of terracotta and clay, knitted into a blanket that covers the sofa. Books scattered on every surface. This are Verin’s private chamber, she realises, so soft in comparison to her own stark room. So completely Verin…

‘I’m sorry?’ Her eyes snap around the room, to where Verin is flicking a gentle weave at a teapot to heat the water. 

‘Your tunic.’ Verin scoops tea into a strainer, and Liandrin catches the scent of cinnamon and ginger, cardamom and pepper. It’s familiar, catching sweetly in her throat; Verin always used to drink so much of that tea that the spices had soaked into the walls of her study, and Liandrin had come to associate them with Verin’s warmth, Verin’s kindness, Verin’s patience with her tantrums as she learned to read and write. ‘Unless you’d rather explain to someone else how you came by that burn, and have them heal it?’

Liandrin looks down at herself, and I’m fine fizzles out on her tongue as she sees the angry red welt of a burn, slashed across her collarbone and down under her tunic. The fabric is scorched, charred black down to her breast. An astonished, angry huff escapes her – how had she not even noticed it before? – and then she winces. Seeing it brings the pain, sharp and hot and prickling over her skin. Her shoulder still hurts too, a throbbing ache that rolls down her shoulder blade and into her back. She needs the Healing and she can’t do it herself, that much is obvious. But to have Verin do it, after Verin had caused the pain in the first place, seems too ironic and somehow too intimate, and she isn’t sure why. 

‘Your choice.’ 

Verin’s voice is soft, amused. Liandrin draws her shoulders back and steps over to the sofa, turning away to hide her shaking fingers. She fumbles with the buttons on her tunic, letting the fabric fall apart to just above her breasts. Then she forces herself to turn to Verin’s eyes and Verin’s hands, to the gentle wash of the Power that makes her shiver as it spreads through her veins and bones, probing for any injuries that Verin can’t immediately see. It sharpens in her shoulder, focuses to an icy twisting sensation, wrenches a gasp from her as the pain intensifies and then vanishes. It falls down to her collarbone, golden threads soothing and erasing the burn as if it had never been there. Verin takes one of Liandrin’s hands and then the other, healing the kind of small scrapes that a child gets when they fall over, and then, satisfied that there is nothing else, lets the Power drop. The cold, shivery ache is immediate. Liandrin breathes in against it, and wonders why the sudden withdrawal of Healing feels worse from Verin than it does from anyone else. 

‘There.’ Verin steps back, giving Liandrin space. ‘That shoulder might twinge for a few days.’

There is no apology. Liandrin doesn’t really expect one. She does her tunic back up as best she can, and thinks that it’s not so much the hollow chill of Healing that’s making her hands tremble as much as Verin’s gaze, lingering curiously on the exposed skin of her chest where the burn mark had been. 

‘It doesn’t usually do that,’ Verin murmurs to herself. ‘There shouldn’t have been enough fire in the weave…’ She hurries over to the desk and scribbles something in a notebook. ‘Are you usually sensitive to burning?’

‘Isn’t everybody?’ Liandrin shifts awkwardly, not sure where she’s supposed to put herself now. ‘It wasn’t that bad.’

Verin makes a distracted noise that could have been agreement or not. Her brow furrows as she reads what she’s written, following a thread of thought back through the pages of the notebook, and  Liandrin perches quietly on the sofa. She knows better than to try and interrupt. Warmth from the fire dances over her cold skin, but the memory of the burn keeps her from moving closer or stretching out her hands. Only when she hears Verin sigh and put the pen down does she ask, ‘You’ve used it before?’

‘Hmmm?’

‘That weave.’ Liandrin watches as Verin lifts the lid of the teapot, stirs the tea, pours two cups of it through a delicate metal strainer. ‘You said it doesn’t usually do that. So you’ve used it before?’

Verin puts one of the cups down by Liandrin’s feet, and sits down on the other end of the sofa. ‘Of course I have. I invented it – well, discovered it, I suppose. No weave is ever truly invented given that the elements are already there, it’s just a question of manipulating them in different ways…but don’t worry, I won’t use it on you again.’ She takes a deep, satisfied sip of her own tea before putting the cup down and holding out her arm. ‘Now, could I ask you to do something about this?’ 

Liandrin blinks. There’s a vivid, raw scrape running up the inside of the elbow; it looks as if Verin has been rubbing it for hours in hot sand. 

‘I did that?’ She shifts over, her eyes on Verin’s arm, her fingers reaching out cautiously to touch. Verin doesn’t flinch away, but it’s clearly painful. ‘You should have said something.’

‘I told you to do that, did I not?’ Verin’s lips curve, wry and warm. ‘And I am saying something now.’

Liandrin breathes deeply, and tries to focus. She’s never been much good at Healing, but this is basic, this is only skin-deep, this is Verin. She gathers her energy, waits until it feels less shaky, and then reaches for Spirit. A gossamer-light weave that seems to settle over the wound and then dissolve, leaving nothing but skin behind. 

‘Thank you.’

‘Is that it?’ Now that she thinks about it she can’t quite believe that there isn’t more, that all the violence of her weaves left nothing but that single scrape. Verin nods. 

‘That’s it. Do you know why?’

Liandrin raises an eyebrow. 

‘Because you fight as if you are still trapped. As if someone is standing over you, preventing you from avoiding any of the blows which come your way. You forget – something in here forgets –’ she places a brief, gentle hand on Liandrin’s chest, over the blackened edges of the tunic, ‘– that you can move. You can defend yourself by evading, not just by attacking back.’ She pauses. ‘One of your weaknesses, which we will work on.’

Liandrin sits in silence for a moment, unsettled by the sudden, uncomfortable honesty of Verin’s words. There is no way that she can think of to deny it. Twenty four years and hundreds of miles away, and she’s still… 

She clears her throat, and tries to make her voice light. ‘Just one of my weaknesses?’

‘One at a time is enough, don’t you think?’ Verin picks up her tea, and gestures to Liandrin’s cup. ‘Drink that, it will help. And please try to relax a bit, hmm? I’m not going to surprise you with anything here.’

Liandrin tries. She sits back against the cushions, cup cradled in her hands. She allows the scent of the tea to unravel some of the tension in her back and her chest. Verin had always made it for her after a reading lesson, and the spices had soothed her then as well; it had been much more difficult to cling to any sense of shame or failure or impotent anger when there was this tea and perhaps a honey cake, and Verin telling her that she’d done well. 

Now Verin has made it for her after teaching her to fight, and she sucks in a quiet breath against the sudden swirling sensation under her feet. 

‘This is…’ She shakes her head as if to clear her ears of water. There is no word she can think of that encompasses what it is; no word that can describe what it feels like to watch twenty years of memories crumble and fragment and rearrange themselves in front of her eyes. All the assumptions, all the things she thought she knew. All the fantasies and the daydreams that she’d indulged in. She’d always seen Verin as someone too good and too kind for her, and now, suddenly – perhaps too suddenly – she sees a woman just like her. A woman with a shadow, and too many flickering faces to count. 

‘I trusted you,’ she murmurs, almost to herself. It’s not what she means to say or how she means to say it, and she shakes her head again. ‘I mean…’

Verin smiles, sympathetic. ‘We often mistake masks for something solid,’ she says quietly. ‘And when we see them slip….well. Anything is possible, and that is disorienting.’ She pauses. ‘Does it help to know that I had already joined Black Ajah long before you even came to the Tower?’

‘Not really.’

‘Does it help to know that it wasn’t because I wanted to?’

Liandrin stares into the fire. All those kindnesses that she hadn’t known what to do with, all the care and compassion that she’d sometimes tried to push away. Verin had kept giving them to her anyway; she’d been the only person who had. The thought that it might all have been an act makes Liandrin’s breath tighten and her hands clench.

‘I was young,’ Verin continues, ‘believe it or not. I was stupid. I asked too many of the wrong questions, and the wrong people heard me. Would I change it?’ She considers, and shrugs. ‘Yes. But what’s done is done.’

‘And now you do this.’

‘I teach others what I know of how to survive in the Shadow, yes. Is that so bad?’ Verin sighs, and absent-mindedly rubs her healed arm. ‘You know what it’s like, I think, to be in a place you would rather not be. You know what hopeless and helpless are. And you know that finding something good – doing something good – is the only way to survive.’ She looks at Liandrin, and the quiet compassion in her eyes makes Liandrin’s breath catch. ‘You are seeing things differently. Your perception of me has changed…as mine has of you. But that doesn’t mean that everything else was a lie, does it?’

Liandrin gasps, soft and involuntary, as Verin reaches out a hand and touches her cheek. Not a brief touch but a lingering one; not a chaste touch but a comforting, sensual caress. How often had she imagined this, how often had she longed for it before she stopped allowing herself to long for anything? A small, wry smile flickers. That, at least, hasn’t changed. 

‘You wouldn’t have done this before,’ she says. 

‘Perhaps not.’ Verin’s thumb strokes the angle of her cheekbone, as if the gentleness could soften it. ‘But that doesn’t mean I didn’t want to. Nor that I didn’t know that you wanted me to.’

A light flush spreads up Liandrin’s neck, and she swallows the denial that instinctively rises up in her throat. There’s no point, not when she’s leaning into Verin’s hand, not when she’s stopping herself from catching Verin’s palm in a kiss. Still, it’s a moment before she can speak. Everything seems both real and unreal at once, as if the Wheel has slipped sideways into a parallel weave. A parallel version of her, living a parallel life, so similar and yet completely different. And everything else, everything before this…

‘No,’ she whispers. ‘I…it wasn’t all a lie.’

Verin’s hand cradles her face, and she tentatively lifts her own hand to hold it there. Perhaps, she thinks, Verin is feeling this disjointedness almost as much as she is. Perhaps Verin needs the reassurance too; that the small bits of herself Liandrin had shared, the scattered confidences and the hesitant trust, had also been real. 

The intimacy swells around them, a soft bubble that Liandrin doesn’t want to break, until Verin says quietly, ‘You know there will be a test. Probably more than one.’

Liandrin nods, reluctant. ‘What are they planning to have me do?’

‘I don’t know.’ Verin is gentle in disentangling her hand from Liandrin’s, in letting it drop from Liandrin’s cheek. She pushes herself to her feet and steps over to poke the fire. Wood sparks and spits, and the charred edges of it crumble to ash. ‘Neither will you until the time comes.’ 

‘But you’ll teach me those weaves you used earlier.’

‘I’ll teach you whatever I can, yes.’ Verin’s face flickers between flame and shadow, glimpses of resignation and sadness catching the light like raindrops before they’re gone, and all of a sudden Liandrin wants to apologise. She wants to say that she hadn’t wanted to disappoint Verin, that she hadn’t wanted to make Verin do this with her, that she had never wanted Verin to see her slip to the Dark, no matter that Verin is already there herself. But she doesn’t know how, and Verin is already speaking again. ‘But not tonight. It’s late, and we both need to rest.’ 

Liandrin gathers herself enough to ask, ‘When?’

Verin considers, turning something over in her mind before deciding. ‘The night after tomorrow,’ she says at last. ‘At the same time. We can start then.’

Chapter Text

For the next two nights, Liandrin doesn’t sleep well. Dreams slop against her mind like a tide against rocks; waves break and leave images behind. Fire weaves dancing in the corners of her vision, with no hands to form or guide them. A sudden fall of darkness over the streets of the city outside, so dense that she can’t even see the glimmers of light that she knows must be in the windows. Verin’s voice – come on, Liandrin, you can find your way, I know you can – and hooded figures drenched in black seeping from the Tower walls. Her son’s voice, begging her for a bedtime story, but he’s too old and she can’t read and she can’t see. She tosses and turns and wakes with a gasp, only to be sucked under again as soon as she closes her eyes. 

Verin’s hands, healing the burn on her shoulder. Verin’s lips trailing over the skin, leaving their own scar that burns even hotter than the weave.

She spends the days in the Red Ajah quarters, listening for gossip and keeping her head down. If anyone notices that she’s a little quieter than usual, a little less eager to offer a cutting remark or an opinion about something, then they don’t mention it. Sometimes she can’t believe that it’s not obvious: how can she have rejected the Three Oaths and got away with it, how can no one else have noticed? But Red Ajah business, such as it is at the moment, swirls on around her as if nothing has changed. Her sisters talk and bicker and occasionally discuss one or two of the more promising Accepted, and Liandrin lounges on the edge of it. Looking out of the window, down at the gardens and the city beyond. Looking around at her sisters. Which of them, she wonders, is sworn to the Shadow; which of them was wearing red under a black cloak when she took her Oaths? It could be an infinite spiral, if she let it be. A never-ending game of watching and waiting and reading signs that aren’t there. 

When evening falls on the second day, she goes back to her room early. She can’t stand the irritating buzz of her sisters any longer, can’t stand her own disinterest in whatever conversation she overhears. Hours seem to be longer than usual, stretched out beyond all reasonable limits, and every time she tries to focus on something to make them go faster, Verin’s touch echoes on her skin. Verin’s face swims through her mind. She’s so restless and preoccupied as she opens her door that she only notices the note when she almost steps on it. The same paper as usual, the same printed writing. Her immediate thought is that Verin must be cancelling their meeting, and her stomach sinks uncomfortably fast before she realises that Verin is simply changing the place.

She tears it into small pieces and tosses it on the fire, and tries to ignore the part of her mind that is already running over why, precisely, Verin might be telling her to come to the Brown Ajah quarters instead of to the empty, shadowy room downstairs. 

Darkness falls interminably slowly. Liandrin watches the mesh of city lights rise up into the dusk, and the sharp crescent of the moon lift like a fingernail scratching the sky. Practical matters distract her a little. She tidies the mess of clothes that have built up on the chair, sorting some for the laundry and putting others away; she changes her bedsheets; she cleans her riding boots. She changes her trousers and tunic for a dress that she thinks might be more comfortable, and then changes back again. Guilt tumbles through her mind like thistledown when she thinks that she could have gone to see her son, and she vows that she will go the following week. She’ll take him some sweet cakes from the market and lie about what she’s been doing, and she’ll try to believe that, however twisted it is, she’s doing something good. 

Then it’s finally late enough. The corridors are less claustrophobic when she’s not descending into the bowels of the Tower; there is light that dances with the shadow, and the walls flicker pale grey instead of black. She passes almost no one. A Blue sister who barely even glances her way, a couple of Accepted who dip their eyes and hurry on. The Brown Ajah corridors are empty, although thin strips of light glow through several of the doors and she hurries silently past them; she doesn’t want to be asked what she’s doing here. She doesn’t have an excuse. All of her old reasons for being here – reading lessons, studying, borrowing a book that she would never read – are ones for the daylight. Not for the shadow. Not for midnight, when most of the Tower is asleep.

She reaches Verin’s room and knocks quietly, and wonders again why she is here and not downstairs. 

‘Liandrin.’ Verin is by the fire when she enters, prodding some life back into the flames. Books and papers are strewn over the sofa and the small table, and she wonders how long Verin must have been absorbed in reading for the fire to almost die in front of her. ‘Could you ward the door, please? I must tidy these away before we start.’

She does as she’s told, weaving a deceptively soft net to stop any sound leaving and any intruders coming in, and then lingers by the door, waiting. Verin is gathering everything into seemingly haphazard piles, carrying some to the desk and placing some on the floor around the desk, un-looping the magnifying glass from around her neck with an exasperated sigh when it swings too hard from side to side. Her dress is rumpled again, the top buttons of her blouse are undone. She seems more distracted than usual, but Liandrin hesitates over asking whether everything is alright. It seems like too new and strange a thing to ask, somehow, even though it’s so simple. She’s always cared about Verin, she thinks. But she’s never been close enough to show it before. 

‘That will do.’ Verin surveys the room with her hands on her hips, and then turns to Liandrin with a small smile. ‘Apologies for the sudden change of plan.’

‘It’s fine.’ Liandrin shrugs, and then asks hesitantly, ‘Was there a problem?’

Verin sighs again, irritated this time, although not with Liandrin. ‘The Mistress of Novices – for reasons known only to herself – has decided that those basement rooms should be cleaned up and tidied.’ She shakes her head. ‘There were novices down there today, scrubbing the floors and dusting out all the spiders. I doubt they would have been keen enough to still be scrubbing at midnight, but best not to risk it.’

Liandrin grimaces as she thinks of the mess they’d left the other night, but Verin is speaking again before she can comment. 

‘So we are not going to be doing anything dramatic tonight, given that I like my room the way it is. Perhaps just a variation on that weave of Air, and –’

‘The weave of Air?’ Liandrin can’t help interrupting, or the note of skepticism in her voice as she looks around at all the books and papers. ‘The one that whipped me up like cream?’

‘The one that was confined to within six inches of your body, yes.’ Verin smiles at Liandrin’s expression. ‘Do it properly – over there, please –’ she gestures to the space between the sofa and the bed, to the large patterned rug that divides waking from sleeping, ‘and none of those papers will even flutter.’

It takes her several tries. Verin shows her the weave itself and the minute movements needed to control it, but the delicacy and precision of it eludes her at first. The weave envelops Verin, but it also folds the rug in two and slams it against the wall. She’s not using that much power, but it catches on the back of the sofa and rocks the cushions. The effort of trying to control it leaves her hot and breathless, straining against the feeling of it wanting to burst, and frustration starts to build as Verin emerges almost unscathed yet again, while the rug has been shaken and left crumpled like a huge rag doll. 

‘This would have been easier somewhere else,’ she snaps, breathing hard, trying to gather herself for another go, but Verin only smiles. 

‘Perhaps,’ she says, ‘but I was under the impression that you didn’t want to wait. Now, try again. Focus. There’s no rush. You need to shape the weave to me, not just send it spiralling in my direction while hoping for the best.’

The power flows between her fingers, but this time Liandrin holds it there while she looks at Verin. The outline of Verin’s body. The shadow Verin throws against the wall. The weave takes shape easily enough now, but this time she imagines it curving over Verin’s shoulders, Verin’s arms, Verin’s waist; she imagines her hands running over Verin’s body, holding the weave beneath them. Is that what Verin had done with her? It’s a fleeting thought before she pushes the weave forward, and this time Verin is sent backwards against the wall, unable to hold herself against the concentrated force of air. The only other thing it takes with it is a small tapestry, hanging on the wall several inches from Verin’s head. 

‘Better.’ Verin lets out a long breath as the weave dissolves. She pats her hair with a distracted hand, but doesn’t bother to tuck all the escaping strands back into place. ‘Again.’

It takes another three goes for Liandrin to manage it to Verin’s satisfaction, for the weave to wrap itself around Verin and leave the air around her almost completely undisturbed. Each time is easier, each time feels more intimate. She can feel Verin’s body beneath the weave. She can feel Air flowing over every curve, every limb, every muscle. A violent caress, a strange kind of foreplay. And with the intimacy comes a creeping, euphoric sense of power, a horrible realisation that she could twist flesh with this weave. She could bend a body back on itself. She could hold so much pressure over a throat that it would be impossible to breathe. 

She lets the weave slide away, and Verin puts out a hand to steady herself against the wall as the force of Air vanishes. 

‘Much better.’ 

‘What next?’ Liandrin flexes her fingers, hoping that Verin doesn’t notice the shaking in them, trying not to lose the sensation of Verin that lingers on her skin. ‘Do you need…?’ She gestures to Verin’s body, to the bruises that she imagines are blossoming under the dress and the blouse, but Verin shakes her head. 

‘A cup of tea is next.’ Verin pushes herself upright and pats herself down as if to confirm that no, no Healing is needed, and walks over to the teapot on the desk. ‘For me, anyway. Would you like one?’

Liandrin shakes her head. The scent of spices wafts into the air, and for a moment there is nothing but the crackle of the fire, the pouring of water, the stirring and the steeping and the straining. Then she says, ‘Will you show me the one that burned me?’

‘Certainly not. Not until I’ve worked out why it burned you – the whole room might go up in flames.’ Verin looks at the desk, and shudders. ‘Do you remember the one I used to bind you, at our first meeting?’

‘I’m not likely to forget it,’ Liandrin mutters. 

‘Then see if you can work it out.’ Verin blows on her tea, and takes a delicate sip. ‘But please give me some warning before you try it on me, I’d rather not spill my tea.’

Liandrin manages the basics almost straightaway. Another weave of Air, simpler but stronger, wound as tightly as a fisherman’s rope; she’d learned something similar during her first week in the Red Ajah, when it had been made clear to her that the Oaths she’d just taken could be stretched, that binding and subduing someone who was misusing the Power would soon come as naturally to her as breathing. But recreating the burning sensation, finding that same heat without leaving a mark, is more difficult. Fire mixed with Water, she thinks, a tiny amount of each held alongside the Air, but that makes it too slippery. Fire on its own is far too much. She tries a small amount of earth, but that flattens the Air and makes it too heavy to manipulate. She can feel the base of the weave sliding away from her, and nothing she tries comes close to working. 

Verin watches her, drinking tea, and the amused, warm gaze seems to burn Liandrin far more effectively than the weave had done. 

‘Air, spirit, and fire,’ Verin eventually says, taking pity on her. She puts her cup down on the desk and demonstrates. ‘Layer them. Air first, then spirit, then a small amount of fire. The spirit protects the skin from actually burning, but doesn’t douse the fire in the same way water would.’

It’s easy, then. One element on top of another, three of them swirling through her fingertips into one shimmering gold weave; deceptively beautiful, Liandrin thinks, given what it could do. Keeping the layers is the tricky part, but even that becomes easy after a couple of tries. She draws it together and lets it dissolve, over and over again, and then her eyes catch Verin’s. Her heart beats faster. Have these thoughts crossed Verin’s mind too? Has Verin been watching the weave and…

‘Try it.’ Verin spreads her hands in invitation. A small, curious smile curves her lips. ‘Your choice as to where you put me.’

The soft gasp escapes before Liandrin can stop it. The gentle weave of Air flows before she really thinks about it. It pushes Verin back against the wall – not into the desk chair, or onto the sofa, or anywhere near the bed –and she thinks that Verin must feel the caress in it, the touch that’s like her hands but not her hands. Then the layering, the swift blending, the winding of a single thread. Splitting it to wrap around Verin’s wrists, tightly enough to hold her there. Tightly enough that Verin must be able to feel the burn just as Liandrin had. 

She stares at what she’s done, and a sweet throbbing runs through her that has nothing to do with the Power. 

‘Good.’ Verin flexes her wrists, tries to break out of the bindings and can’t. ‘Now tone down the fire, and tie the weave off.’

‘Tie it off?’ 

‘A knot. Just a simple one for now. Picture it in your mind, form it in the weave, let it rest where the weave splits. It should hold the binding without you having to channel into it.’

She manages it, or thinks she does. A basic knot, woven through the elements and pushed down the weave to the point where it splits; too difficult for novices, perhaps, but easy enough that she doesn’t know why it’s not taught to Accepted. When the Power slips from her fingers, the golden threads holding Verin’s wrists in place remain. 

She could do anything. 

She steps closer, her heart thumping, not even sure what she’s thinking of, and Verin watches her. Curious – always so bloody curious. A hint of a challenge in her dark eyes, a hint of amusement. Liandrin’s hand stretches out, a finger settles lightly on Verin’s collarbone. Always so far out of her reach before, and now…

She trails it down the edge of Verin’s blouse, down past the undone top buttons to the dip of her breasts, and thinks she feels Verin’s heart beating beneath the skin. 

‘This wasn’t a lie,’ she murmurs, half to herself. ‘I wanted to do this when I was a novice.’

‘Oh, I know you did.’ Verin’s voice is a little husky, her breath a little shallow, and Liandrin adds another finger. Two of them now, dipping between Verin’s breasts, skirting the line of fabric and skin. 

‘Did you want me to?’

‘Irrelevant.’ Verin’s lips curve in a soft smile. ‘There are some lines even I won’t cross.’

Liandrin hums, and slowly rests her palm against Verin’s chest. Splayed fingers, light pressure, a far more gentle and intimate touch than she’s even given anyone. ‘And now?’

‘I’m not stopping you, am I?’

‘You can’t,’ Liandrin points out in a whisper. Verin’s heartbeat is thrumming under her touch, dancing with her fingers, and she wants more. But she won’t just take it, not unless she knows Verin wants her to. 

‘I could,’ Verin says quietly. ‘I still know you, Liandrin. You would stop if I told you to, I wouldn’t need to push you away.’ She pauses, and her eyes glint hot in the firelight. ‘Show me.’

‘Show you what?’ Liandrin’s hand presses a little harder, catching the shiver that passes over Verin’s skin.

‘What you’ve been thinking of doing for the past twenty years.’

Liandrin sucks in a long breath. Her heart thuds, leaving her lightheaded, and she keeps her hand where it is for a moment longer. Verin’s warmth grounds her; the soft rhythm of Verin’s pulse steadies her. Then she leans in slowly, giving Verin time to change her mind, and dusts a soft, deliberate kiss over Verin’s neck. 

‘That’s a long list.’

‘Oh?’ Verin tilts her head to one side and Liandrin kisses again, so delicate it must be almost ticklish.

‘Scrubbing pots gives you a lot of time to daydream.’ Her tongue flickers over Verin’s skin; her lips brush like feathers over the line of Verin’s jaw. ‘All those hours in your study. All those times you stopped me in the corridors to ask how I was.’

Too revealing, she thinks; she’s already making herself far too vulnerable even though Verin is the one pinned against the wall. She moves her hand up to Verin’s throat, her fingers curving around to find the flutter of skin. Her lips ghost over Verin’s cheek. The weaves shimmer in the corners of her eyes, and she tightens her fingers for a single second. A barely-there hint that makes Verin’s breath catch in her hand.

‘Then show me what you thought about at night.’ Verin’s whisper brushes against her ear. ‘Show me what you thought about to make yourself come.’ Liandrin gasps, unable to stifle it. ‘And don’t tease.’

The seconds stretch out, caught on the end of Liandrin’s fingertips, a heartbeat throbbing against her palm. Then she slowly lowers her hand, trailing it down over Verin’s breast. Her lips take the place of her fingers, kissing the soft skin under Verin’s ear, so gentle until she sucks a sharp mark where she knows it will be seen. She feels the quiet gasp more than she hears it. A subtle jerk of Verin’s throat, a flicker of sound against her mouth.

She wants to kiss Verin properly, to take Verin’s face between her hands and kiss her until it bruises, but she has a sudden, stinging fear that it’s too intimate somehow, that Verin might not kiss her back. She drags her lips down towards Verin’s collarbone instead, open-mouthed kisses of teeth and tongue, and then moves her hands to Verin’s breast. A teasing touch before withdrawing, again and again, while she moves her lips to the other side of Verin’s neck and kisses there. Verin is sensitive under her ear, over her pulse, down over the ridge of her collarbone. Liandrin sucks another mark, hot and possessive. Her fingers brush Verin’s nipples through her dress. She breathes in and Verin overwhelms her, the soft taste and scent and feel of skin, and arousal thrums through her body, dampness already gathering between her legs. She wants so much more. She’s wanted more for years, and now she can have it.

‘Liandrin…oh.’ Verin’s husky warning dissolves into a soft, delighted breath as Liandrin sinks to the floor. ‘I didn’t think you’d get on your knees for anyone.’

She doesn’t. She never has done. Her heart trips in a violent, sweet rush against her ribs, and she swallows the admission that threatens to spill from her mouth; she’s never wanted to give herself over to anyone like this, but Verin doesn’t need to know that. ‘Enough talking,’ she murmurs instead, running her hands up under Verin’s skirt. Curves, muscle, smooth skin. The weight of Verin’s gaze. Too much fabric bunched up over her arms. She huffs, gathering it impatiently into her fists, pushing it up until Verin’s thighs are open to her mouth. Wet, soft kisses make Verin tremble, and she smiles when Verin’s hips tilt towards her mouth. 

‘I told you not to tease, did I not?’ Verin’s fingers flex, stretching towards Liandrin as if to nudge her in the right direction, and Liandrin reaches up to take Verin’s hand in hers. 

‘I don’t think you’re in much of a position to complain.’ The Power still hums in the weave, singing like distant water under her fingers, and Verin’s arousal dances against her skin. ‘For once,’ she whispers, ‘you’re not in charge.’

It’s a lie; she knows it and Verin knows it. Whatever Verin tells her to do, she will eventually do. But the illusion makes her breathe a little faster. It makes anticipation run like sparks through her body, it makes her want to gasp when she presses her thighs together. She wants to take Verin apart. 

Her lips move higher. She drops her hand to Verin’s hip, a firm warning to keep still, and then to the underclothes that are between her and where she really wants to be. They’re easy enough to push and hold to one side, already damp with arousal. She brushes an awed kiss over the inside of Verin’s thigh, so close and yet not quite there, and ignores the hiss of frustration that falls from above her. Normally she would have made some sweetly demeaning comment about wetness, about impatience, about such obvious want. But this is Verin, and Verin wants her, and Verin isn’t the one who’s on her knees.  

‘Liandrin…’

She cuts Verin off with a soft, barely-there flick of her tongue, and isn’t sure who moans first. Her lips follow. Light kisses that leave her mouth soaking, light licks that flood her tongue. When her tongue dips inside, Verin’s moan makes her own thighs clench. When she finds the right spot to suck, gentle and then sharp, the jerk of Verin’s hips makes her throb. She can feel herself clenching against nothing, but she ignores it. Her senses dissolve into every tiny reaction of Verin’s instead. Every sound, every tightening, every tremor. 

Then she feels a hand in her hair and another hand taking the bunched-up dress from her, and when she glances to the side, the weave holding Verin’s wrists is no longer there. 

‘Touch yourself.’ 

She moans into Verin as the idea of it shivers over her skin; she doesn’t even bother to ask what’s happened to the weave. The hand grips her hair harder, pleasure flickering briefly into pain and back again, and she gasps as a spike of pure arousal hits between her legs. She drops her own hand to her trousers, fumbling with the buttons. Too quick, she thinks hazily, too eager, but it’s for Verin and so she doesn’t really care. 

Her fingers slide awkwardly through hot, trembling wetness, and Verin’s fingers scrape over her scalp. 

‘Give me that hand.’

She withdraws it from herself with a small whimper, and holds it up for Verin to take, to lick, to suck between her tongue and her teeth. Her own tongue mimics whatever Verin does; slow flicks over sensitive spots, sucking and grazing with teeth, deep kisses to soothe the intensity. Verin is close to coming, she can feel it. She would be too, if only she could touch herself properly, if only she’d kept the dress on, if only…

Verin drops her hand and Liandrin pushes it back between her legs, desperate now for any friction she can get. Feeling Verin so close is almost unbearably arousing. Every tremble of Verin’s thighs, every shudder around her tongue, every husky gasp and moan that falls from Verin’s lips. She’s stunned to realise that she is actually almost there herself, that Verin’s growing urgency has pushed her right to an edge she hadn’t seen. Her gasp catches in her throat, and Verin’s fingers stroke hard through her hair. 

They come almost together. Verin first, she thinks, although she isn’t sure; everything blurs and melts into a slow-falling, blinding, white-hot pleasure, until she can’t tell what’s her and what’s Verin. On and on until there’s nothing left but hard breaths and shaking bodies. Liandrin slumps back onto her heels, unable to keep herself kneeling upright any longer, and is only vaguely aware of Verin lowering herself to the floor, of hands cradling her face and drawing her close. Her forehead rests against Verin’s and fingers stroke over her cheeks, over dampness that could be tears or arousal or sweat. The sweet-sharp scent of what they’ve just done hangs between them, and neither of them make any move to wipe it away. 

She doesn’t know how long they stay like that. Too long and not long enough. Verin’s touch is grounding, a counterpoint to the rush of emotion that’s spiralling through her chest. Lips touch hers, more of a breath than a kiss. Her body seems to cling to Verin’s, and it unsettles her; she usually wants to withdraw, to snatch the pieces of herself back before she loses them for good. She usually feels constricted by someone else’s closeness when there is no arousal to distract her. But now the longing for Verin’s arms is a sweet, tense ache that she doesn’t understand and she doesn’t know what to do with. She can’t ask to be held. She doesn’t know how. 

Eventually she manages to whisper, ‘What happened to the weave?’

‘Your knot wasn’t strong enough.’ The quiet tenderness in Verin’s voice makes her shudder. It sparks too much in her; too much that she can’t name, too much desire for something that she doesn’t know if she can have. ‘Good for a first time – and considering the circumstances. I’ll teach you how to do it properly.’

Liandrin nods. She can’t speak. Her chest is swelling with something that feels too strange, her eyes are stinging with tears and she doesn’t know why. The praise hums through her like a sweetly-plucked string, and part of her wants to snap it. Verin is touching her as if she’s worth everything, and she feels too fragile to hold the weight of it; she doesn’t know what Verin might want from her now, and the idea that Verin might want nothing is almost worse than the idea of Verin wanting something that she’s not good enough to give. She wants to crawl into Verin’s arms, and the idea of that appalls her. She wants to kiss Verin, she wants Verin’s lips to chase away some of her bewilderment, but the idea of a gentle rebuttal is more than she can stand. 

‘I should go.’ She pushes herself to her feet. Her legs wobble and her vision blurs from standing up too quickly, but she brushes off Verin’s outstretched hand and doesn’t look at the concerned, questioning gaze. Salt and sweetness linger around her lips and on her tongue. When Verin stands up too, she dips her eyes away.

‘You don’t have to. Unless you really want to.’ Verin’s voice flickers over her like firelight. ‘I’d like it if you stayed.’

Liandrin hesitates. A brief moment of paralysis, too many incomprehensible thoughts that make it impossible to say yes or no. Too much confusion. She hears what Verin is saying but doesn’t quite understand it; the meanings drift apart from the words like smoke. Only one thing is clear. She doesn’t want Verin to see her fall apart.

She steps over to the door, and manages to ask, ‘Are we meeting again?’

There are a few seconds of quiet, and then Verin says, ‘Of course.’ She sounds a little puzzled, a little wary at the abruptness. ‘Two nights from now, if you can. I’ll let you know where.’

Liandrin nods. She turns the handle on the door but can’t quite bring herself to open it, and then she hears Verin’s voice like a soft hand on her arm. 

‘Liandrin.’ Dark, curious eyes linger on her; she can feel them even without turning around. ‘Are you sure you want to go?’

She tightens her grip on the handle. She doesn’t want to. She has to. And she could simply say yes, she wants to go, but she knows the lie would still stick in her throat as if she’d never broken her Oaths. 

She steps out into the corridor and closes the door behind her, and takes one step. Then another step. Then a whole series of them, quickening into a jog as if she could outrun the tears, as if she could forget the flash of disappointment and resignation on Verin’s face. 

Chapter Text

The first test comes the next day, disguised as a Red Ajah mission; a swift departure and journey towards Caemlyn. A note slipped to someone, slipped to someone else. It’s often the way when a mother doesn’t want it to be known that her son is a channeller, or when friends would rather not be identified as they whisper his name in an Aes Sedai’s ear. Liandrin rides out in the evening with four of her sisters, a flare of red against the setting sun, and she doesn’t think to question where the information has come from. It feels too good to be out of the Tower again, to have a purpose other than waiting around. 

It isn’t a good enough distraction to push Verin from her mind, or to smother the gut-deep twists of fear and confusion and longing and elation that come every time she has a quiet enough moment to feel them. It doesn’t stop her thinking, over and over again, about what might have happened if she’d stayed in Verin’s room. 

They make a brief camp for the night, only stopping when the darkness becomes too thick to ride through, and set off again at first light. Her dreams are unsettled, dragged through her mind by the full moon that hovers above the trees. Verin, except it doesn’t look like Verin. Her son, except it doesn’t look like her son. The images leave her chilled and brittle in the dawn air, silent as they ride along the Caemlyn road, overly alert to every stare from the roadside and every hostile glance. Five sisters make a spectacle in these parts. Five sisters draw attention that might or might not be benign. The Power feels like it’s constantly at her fingertips, even though she can’t use it, and her new Oaths flutter like dark moths under her skin. She still doesn’t know how her sisters haven’t noticed. She feels as if it must be written all over her, her betrayal spelled out in ink, rising to the surface no matter how hard she tries to conceal it, and she finds herself wondering how Verin has managed it all these years. 

She could have stayed. She’d wanted to stay. Why hadn’t she stayed? Verin, she thinks now, would have held her vulnerability. She could have handed it over piece by piece, and Verin would have touched it like she’d touched her; as if it was worth everything. 

Longing. So much longing, so deep it swirls as a nauseating ache. 

Fear that makes her want to cringe away into a dark corner. 

It’s better to be here, out of the Tower completely, away from the corridors and the walls that close in on her and trap her thoughts into a never-ending loop. But her exhilaration at leaving has already worn down to suspicion and wariness, and a strange sense of loss that she thinks probably comes from not being under the same roof as Verin. 

When they reach the village, just outside Caemlyn, she can feel the tension like raindrops in the air. A humid cloud of it that makes it almost impossible to breathe. No one likes Aes Sedai, especially Aes Sedai of the Red Ajah, but distrust usually gives way to some kind of deference. Here, faces turn away. Whispers wrap around them, loud enough to hear. Their red cloaks cut a slow swathe through dirt streets and ragged houses, asking questions that are met with sullen stares and shrugs, and Liandrin finds herself gritting her teeth, holding the Power liked a caged animal under her skin. 

‘They brought us here,’ she mutters to Teslyn. ‘What was the point if they now won’t tell us where he is?’

Eventually, at one of the last houses in the village, they are met with the empty gaze of a grandmother, a reluctant gesture towards one of the barns across a field. A muddy field strewn with sheep droppings, squelching under the horses’s hooves; a poor barn with barely any hay left in it, with holes in the roof and the nibblings of mice around the walls. Liandrin’s eyes strain inside, searching the pockets of gloom and dust for a man who’s ready to fight – none of them ever come quietly, not when they’re faced with being cut off from the Source, and how can she blame them? – but what she catches sight of isn’t a man at all. Her heart drops into her stomach as she sees the small body, the wide-eyed stare, the mess of dark hair. A rush of sickness almost overwhelms her, and she only just manages to swallow her moan. 

Part of her mind knows that it’s not her son. Her son is a hundred miles away in his bed in Tar Valon, taller and older and hacking with the cough that’s plagued him for years. But the other part – the part that seems to be linked to her body, the part that can’t breathe and can’t move – sees Aludran, ten years old again, crouching in the corner of his bedroom after a nightmare, whimpering that he wanted his mother even though she’d been right there. 

‘Blood and ashes,’ Lemai mutters, ‘what are we supposed to do with that?’ 

Liandrin barely hears it. A deep ringing has started in her ears, a swarm of bees spreading through her head and clouding her vision, and panic is starting to swirl in her stomach. This is a test. She doesn’t know how she knows, or how it has been organised or what she’s supposed to do in order to pass it, but it’s here in front of her and she can’t fail. There will be someone watching. There is always someone watching. She wonders briefly which of her sisters it is, which one of them is wearing the shadow underneath the red cloak just as she is, but then the thought dissolves under another wave of nausea. It doesn’t matter which of them it is. She has to do something. 

‘I’m not taking a child back to the Tower.’ Janine folds her arms. ‘Is he even old enough to be tried?’

‘If he can channel, then he can be tried.’ It’s Katerine’s voice, but to Liandrin it sounds like it’s underwater. ‘We do what we came here to do.’

‘No.’ It’s her own voice this time, forced out from underneath the vertigo that still threatens to floor her. ‘He’s a terrified child.’

‘Getting soft, Liandrin?’ She can feel Katerine’s raised eyebrow, a judgment that flickers at the corner of her eye. ‘I’m surprised. You usually don’t care who it is.’

Quiet arguments fill the air around her, words that she doesn’t really listen to. She wants to tell the boy to run. She wants to run herself. She sucks in one deep breath and then another, trying to get herself under some kind of control, trying not to reach blindly for Verin with her mind. Verin would have an answer. Verin, with her steady hands and calm voice, would tell her what to do. But Verin isn’t here. 

‘We gentle him here,’ she says, and the murmurs dissolve into a surprised silence. It surprises her too; the firmness she hears in her voice, the sudden certainty of command. But she has to. This is the test, and if she fails it then her own son will die. ‘Taking him to the Tower is just dragging out the inevitable. Can you imagine what it would do to him, being tried in Tar Valon?’ She tilts her head, gazing at the boy, forcing her spiralling emotion down into a hard knot in her stomach. ‘And then the Brown sisters would want to study him. The Yellow sisters would want to experiment on him.’ She pauses. ‘If he really can channel, then it’s kinder to do it here.’

‘I didn’t know you cared about being kind,’ Janine mutters, but there’s a sense of relief creeping in. A decision has almost been made, illegal though it is, and Liandrin is the one who’s made it, not them. ‘And it takes eight sisters to –’

‘Eight sisters for a grown man at the height of his powers,’ interrupts Teslyn. ‘Five of the most powerful Red Ajah sisters for a ten year old boy shouldn’t be a problem, should it?’ She glances around meaningfully. ‘Neither will keeping our mouths shut at the Tower.’

Liandrin tunes her sisters out, and steps towards the boy. He watches her silently, not moving, arms wrapped around his knees and his eyes too big in his dirty face. Blue eyes, she notices, and her stomach twists in a violent spasm. The same clear, calm shade as her son’s.

‘Do you know what we’re here for?’ she asks quietly, crouching down in front of him. She doesn’t ask his name or how old he actually is; she doesn’t think she can bear to know.

He shakes his head, and says in a cracked whisper: ‘Mam put me here. I didn’t mean to hurt her, but she said I had to stay here. Are you going to take me home?’

Liandrin closes her eyes briefly, a hot blink against the lump forming in her throat. ‘Yes, we are,’ she manages. She forces a smile, the same reassuring smile that she’d tried to give her son after that nightmare. ‘But first, we want to make sure that you don’t accidentally hurt your mother again. And it was an accident, wasn’t it?’

He nods. ‘She was angry with me, and I… I don’t know what I did, but I didn’t mean to…’

‘I know,’ she soothes. ‘It’s scary, isn’t it, when sometimes you can’t control what comes out.’

He nods again, transfixed. 

‘But we can take those feelings away.’ It’s only a twisting of the truth, she tells herself, she’s not lying to him. ‘All the horrible things that burst out of you when you’re angry or afraid…they won’t be there anymore. That would be better, wouldn’t it? And then you can go back and live with your mother.’

‘It feels good too,’ he whispers, his eyes dropping to his hands. ‘It feels –’

‘Hush, don’t say that.’ Liandrin quickly puts a finger close to his mouth. She doesn’t think she can stand hearing that he’s already tainted by it, that he already knows how sweet and how sickly it is; it will make it so much harder for him to have it taken away. ‘Not everything that tastes nice is actually good for you, is it?’

‘Are you done making friends?’ It’s Katerine again, impatient and sharp, but Liandrin ignores her. 

‘Can you show me?’ she half-whispers to the boy. If they’re going to do this, she reasons, they should at least make absolutely sure that he can channel. She tries to ignore the part of her that desperately hopes he can’t and that it’s all been a mistake. ‘Can you summon it yet, or not?’

‘Of course he can’t.’ Katerine takes a step forward. ‘You said it yourself, he’s a terrified –’ 

Liandrin can’t see the weave. She doubts it’s even anything that could be termed a weave; it’s an instinct made into fire, a burst of fear that shatters into sparks and lands at Katerine’s feet. Tiny flames lick up from the scattered hay. They’re easily doused with a weave of water, but the boy huddles further down in his corner, eyes wild and hands out in front of him, and Liandrin sees both the horror and the thrill in his eyes at what he’s done. 

‘Enough talking, Liandrin.’ Lemai, this time. ‘Are we doing this or not?’

Liandrin doesn’t take her eyes from the boy. She can’t. He deserves that much, she thinks, and she hopes that she hears her whispered, ‘I’m sorry,’ before she steadies herself against the rush of the Power, the sweetness of it flooding through her, her power and her sisters’ power joined as one and flowing through her body, her hands, her fingertips. She watches the agony in his eyes as the Source is cut from him. She watches his body crumple from the inside out as the life seems to drain from it, leaving the empty husk of a child behind. She watches, and she thinks of doing this to her son. She thinks of the death that her son will face – worse than this, much worse – if she ever fails, and she knows then that that was the whole point of this. Not just a test, but a reminder.

One by one her sisters drop the Power, and she manages to hold herself upright against the draining of it, the hollowness that comes after the surge. She takes one last look at the boy, shocked and glassy-eyed. Then she turns and walks out of the barn, head as high as she can carry it. There is nothing else she can do for him now. 

***

She holds herself together as they travel back to Tar Valon. The knot in her stomach expands and contracts, rising up into her throat and sinking back down, a choppy counterpoint to the steady rhythms of riding and making camp and breaking camp and riding again. It fills her skin, swelling until she thinks it will have to burst out of her in a scream; it shrinks and grates on her insides like the hard, wrinkled shell of a walnut. Her sisters’ eyes land on her every so often and linger, but there is too much wariness there, too much respect. She turns away from it and stays silent, only speaking when she has to. Tight lips, stiff tongue, words like stones weighing down her mouth. 

When she dozes off for a couple of hours, unable to properly sleep, the clearing around her fills with the boy’s eyes, hundreds of them staring at her from the darkness. She wakes trembling and drenched in sweat, Verin’s name on her lips until she remembers that Verin isn’t there. Verin never has been there, not like that. Verin might well have known about this, and allowed her to go into it blind. 

When they reach the Tower, Liandrin barely even bothers to go back to her room. She needs a bath, she needs to get changed, she needs to unpack the few things she’d taken with her, but she dumps her bag onto the bed and goes straight back out to the gardens, through a side gate and into the city beyond. Colours slip and slide in the dusk. Noises seem too vivid in her ears. The streets leading to her son’s apartment are so familiar that she could walk them with her eyes closed, but now they feel unsteady beneath her, as if the cobbles have been lifted by a flood. She hurries along them, her breath compounding in her chest until it feels like she can’t breathe at all. Lights flicker in windows like fireflies. She dreads seeing darkness in her son’s window; she never usually acknowledges the fear, but tonight it bubbles up hot against the underside of her skin. 

There is a light, and he is asleep. She’d known he would be asleep, but that doesn’t stop her from sitting beside the bed and taking his hand. A pulse underneath her fingertips, faint and crackling like paper. A warmth in his skin that speaks of blood, air, life. It’s moments before she can look at his face, too pale against the pillow, and when she does she sees the differences float to the surface: his nose is sharper, his cheekbones are different, he has a dimple in his chin. He isn’t the boy. The boy wasn’t him. They never were the same. 

Nothing will ever hurt her son like it had hurt that boy. 

She doesn’t stay for very long. Aludran’s face is too peaceful to disturb, and anything that she thinks she might say if he were to wake catches painfully in her throat. She watches him sleep for a while, watches the soft rise and fall of his breath just as she had when he was a baby, and then silently checks the fire, places fresh water by his bed, hovers by the door before letting herself out. Next time, she thinks. Next time she will come earlier and stay for longer, and talk to him. 

Darkness surrounds her on the walk back to the Tower, darkness that isn’t quite dark. It never is in the city. It turns her into a shadow, not quite invisible but not fully there either, a ripple on the street that fades as soon as it’s seen. She walks more slowly now, stripped of the rush to see her son. The knot in her stomach begins to shift, a gradual unravelling that leaves her shaking and nauseous, and she stops by a corner wall, putting out a hand to steady herself. Cold stone, warm skin. A longing that slices through her unexpectedly, and then a whiplash of anger that Verin is still in her mind at that precise moment. She pushes hard away from the wall, as if the wall was to blame, and thinks for one wild moment about not going back to the Tower at all. 

But the lights of it are inescapable, a shower of them glittering in the sky. There is nowhere she could run with her son where they wouldn’t be found. There is nowhere she could go and not think of Verin. 

The corridors are quiet when Liandrin enters. A scattering of hushed footsteps, a few novices at their chores. All of the noise will be centred on the kitchen at this time of day, but Liandrin bypasses it; the thought of food makes her stomach roll. Her insides still tremble as she walks to her room. She stands in the door and looks around, waiting for the familiarity of it to sink in and soothe her, but all she can think is how strange it seems that nothing is different. The furniture sits in the same places, the reflection of the city lights glints in the same pane of the window. Everything is as she left it, and it feels wrong. 

She doesn’t bother to make a fire or even to light candles. Solid shapes fall from her travelling bag when she upends it, and she leaves them where they land on the bed. She opens the wardrobe for something fresh to wear, and shadows hang empty of bodies. Anything will do, there isn’t that much to choose from, but her hands still stumble; all her clothes seem wrong as well. She thinks she can smell herself on them, the old version of herself that’s everywhere in here. Her body feels like an intruder in its own space. She grabs a dress that hasn’t been worn for years, that she’d kept simply for the pleasure and luxury of having something that wasn’t useful and that she didn’t need, and slams the wardrobe door on the rest of it. Tears burn in the back of her eyes. A touch of vertigo swims over her and then vanishes. She can afford new clothes if she wants new clothes, and she fights the impulse to draw on the spark between her fingertips and burn the whole lot to ashes. 

***

Steam curls over her body. Hot water, scented oil. Liandrin has the room almost to herself, apart from two blurred shapes well away from hers, and she sinks into the bath, turning away from the sweat-stale clothes that she’s left in a heap on the floor. Her trousers are still spattered with mud from the field, the imagined smell of hay still clings to the fabric of her tunic. They will be laundered clean, but she doesn’t want them back. 

She slides down up to her neck, letting the ends of her hair trail through the water. Then all the way down until her head is submerged, her eyes closed, the sounds of her own body thrumming in her ears and everything else muffled. Her heartbeat, miraculously steady. The hum of blood through her veins, the rustle of air held in her lungs. She moves her arms, reaching to run her fingers through her hair, and water rushes past her ears in slow motion. A soft pressure starts to swell in her chest, but she doesn’t move. The image of the boy has faded from her eyelids. Colours ripple instead, dark reds and darker oranges. A flicker of something else as the oil slicks across her face. Then twilight, the coolness of a shadow falling across the water. 

She gasps up to the surface, reaching for the towel that she’d left on the side, and through the dripping burst of panic she registers a familiar scent, a familiar outline, a presence that she knows sitting on the side of the bath. Her heart begins to calm itself almost against her will. The towel is held out to her and she takes it, wiping it slowly over her face. She doesn’t want to look at Verin, but she can’t help it.

‘How did you know I was here?’

‘An educated guess.’ 

Liandrin’s eyes slip down over the wet strands of hair sticking to Verin’s neck, over glistening shoulders and the curves underneath the towel. Memories pop through her body and leave gentle bubbles of warmth in their wake, and she dips her head away; there’s no need for Verin to see that revealing mixture of longing and fear in her eyes. No need for Verin to see how much she wants to lean in. She reaches for the soap instead and begins to scrub, briskly and hard over tender skin, but she’s too aware of Verin’s gaze. Too soft, too dark. Too much like a hand, reaching out to see if Liandrin might be ready to take it. 

Eventually she gives up, letting the soap slide out of her fingers and over the side of the bath, and then asks, ‘Did you know?’

‘No. Not until you’d already left.’ Verin catches the soap before it thuds to the floor, and places it neatly beside Liandrin’s towel. Her hand lingers on it, hesitant, her finger tapping the tiny bubbles that are coagulating on the edges. Then she sighs. ‘I was given a choice, Liandrin, to either join or die. I chose to join, but had I chosen to die, it would not have been quick and it would certainly not have been painless.’ She pauses. ‘For my first test, I was forced to watch what could have happened to me. For my second, I had to do it, to a woman not much older than you are now.’ 

Liandrin looks up, the shock dissolving in her throat before she can speak it aloud.

‘They are never easy,’ Verin continues. Her voice is quiet, intense and full of something that Liandrin can’t name. ‘They are designed to break you. If I’d known it was going to be now, I would have told you. I promise.’

Liandrin nods. She lets her cheek rest in the hand that touches it, turns her head to press a tentative kiss to Verin’s palm, and Verin’s fingers tighten fractionally, holding her there.

‘You left a bit suddenly the other night.’ 

She closes her eyes. There is nothing she can say; no way to explain the swell of bewilderment and panic or how it had swamped her before she could stop it. No way of saying that her own feelings had terrified her. Guilt spikes as she realises that she’d left Verin alone with an aftermath that should have been shared, but even an apology feels impossible and inadequate. Words are too caught up in her throat. Too tangled. A mass of thorns and threads that will scratch her on the way out, and won’t mean what she intends them to mean. 

Instead, she slowly lowers her forehead to rest against Verin’s leg. A long, deep shudder runs through her; it feels like an admission of something, a surrender of something else. Nothing that she could name. Tightness squeezes her chest like a fist, then dissolves when Verin cradles the back of her head. The tension laced across her shoulders fades. Her breath slows in time with Verin’s, and her heartbeat seems to reach for Verin’s too, steadying itself and calming itself for the first time in days. 

So simple, to offer everything in one gesture. So unexpected. Such a sweet, tender relief. 

Verin lifts her hand and tilts Liandrin’s head up. ‘Have you scrubbed yourself raw enough yet, or do you want longer in there?’ she murmurs. Her thumb runs over Liandrin’s lips, her gaze runs over Liandrin’s body, and a soft flush creeps over Liandrin’s cheeks. Dripping warmth runs down her body as she stands up. She reaches for the towel and begins to dry herself off, aware of Verin’s eyes running over every curve and every hard plane of muscle, and she doesn’t resist when Verin takes the towel from her, interrupting her brusque rubbing with something much more gentle and slow. Delicate shivers spread over her skin like a web. Her nipples harden, a quiet flush of dampness spreads between her legs. She can’t help it. Verin’s dark, satisfied gaze only makes it worse. 

Verin wants her aroused, and she’s always found it easy to do what Verin wants. 

‘Let me fetch my things.’ 

Verin disappears into the steam, and Liandrin tries to gather herself before reaching for her dress. It slips over her skin, a breath of fabric that settles like a sigh, so dark that in this light the red seems to melt into black. Appropriate, she thinks, and almost laughs when Verin reappears beside her, wrapped in a soft dark robe that’s only nominally laced at the edges with brown. 

‘A bit obvious, no?’

‘Or simply in fashion…so my sister tells me.’ Verin glances down at Liandrin’s dress, and her wry smile becomes appreciative. ‘Much better. I would leave those other things here.’

Liandrin looks down at the discarded pile of tunic and trousers, a crude gash of red against the floor, and then turns away.

She follows Verin along deserted corridors, narrow and winding, a little-used shortcut to the Brown Ajah quarters, and the steam and heat evaporate quickly. Warm-cool shivers run over her skin as Verin’s hand brushes against hers. Arousal hums low through her body. It feels like a dream-walk, time and space stretching and then contracting into nothing; her fingers curl around Verin’s to ground her against the strangeness. An image floats across her mind of her skin sloughing off, all at once like a snake’s. The image of the boy in the barn flickers and then fades again. The image of her son, clear and peaceful in his sleep, swims like she’s looking at it underwater. Only when they reach Verin’s chamber does the sensation fade; there is no before and after here, none of the jarring of then and now that she’d felt in her own room. She watches Verin make tea, and the ritual feels almost intimate. She moves books off the sofa and it feels like she’s done it a hundred times before. She sits down with her mug and the cushions curve themselves to her body, and Verin’s quiet presence settles beside her like it belongs.

Everything should feel harsher, she thinks, after what she’s done. Everything should feel as sharp as darkness snapping over stars, but instead all there is is softness. 

‘It was a boy,’ she says quietly. She stares into the fire, watching low flames curl around the wood, watching the wood blacken and soften to ash. ‘A boy who could channel. He couldn’t have been more than ten.’

Verin is silent, but Liandrin feels the gentle pressure of a hand on her knee. 

‘He looked like my son, when my son was that age.’ She sips her tea, surprised at her own calmness in saying it out loud. ‘Did they know that he looked like my son, or was that just a lucky accident?’

The hand on her knee squeezes, and she thinks that it’s right; she probably doesn’t need to know. 

‘I took my Oaths for him. I did it to protect him.’ Spices warm her throat, tingling down the sides of her tongue. ‘I’d do it again.’

Any of it, all of it, as many times as she needs to. There are too many things in this world that would harm him, and how can she ever lose the only thing that’s hers? Her breath catches as she remembers his illness last winter. How the Wheel itself had seemed to slow down, pinning him between cruel dreams and shadows, between this life and the next. How easily it had ripped him from her arms and taken him just beyond her reach. She’d sat by his bed and watched it, her pitiful skills at Healing useless against whatever was turning his body inside out, her fear of discovery still crippling her and preventing her from asking one of her Yellow sisters for help. Too scared and too helpless to save him. Too afraid that, next time, he might be taken from her forever. 

Verin’s thumb rubs over her knee, soothing and steady and not in the least surprised that Liandrin is talking about a son, and she wonders whether somehow Verin had always known. Perhaps there had been something in the way Liandrin had held herself that had set her apart from the other novices, something more than the faded bruises and the flinching brittleness and the five or six year age gap. Perhaps Verin had followed her out of the Tower one day, or perhaps one of the women she had paid to look after her son had talked. Or perhaps, now that Liandrin is sworn to the Shadow, Verin knows everything about her that there is to know. 

It doesn’t matter. She is here, and Verin is here, and nothing will ever hurt her son again. 

‘There will be other tests,’ Verin says.

‘I know.’

‘You need to be prepared.’ The hand on her knee disappears and leaves a cold hollow behind, but Liandrin feels it wrap around her fingers instead, finds herself putting her tea down so that she can be drawn over onto Verin’s lap. She gasps, unable to stifle it. Warm skin. Soft curves between her legs. Verin’s arms, holding her steady while her own body shakes with the closeness. 

‘I am prepared.’

‘Are you?’ Emotion catches the light in Verin’s eyes, there and then gone. ‘Are you ready for yesterday to happen all over again in a different way?’

Liandrin leans in, slow and trembling, resting her head in the crook of Verin’s neck. Her lips find the flicker of Verin’s pulse and she breathes kisses against it, soft kisses, so unlike any kisses that she’s ever given anybody, until she feels arms holding her closer and hands stroking her back. 

‘I won’t fail.’ She whispers it against Verin’s heartbeat. ‘I won’t make you watch me die. I won’t fail.’

She trails her mouth up over Verin’s jaw. She’s still half-expecting a gentle rebuff, but she finds Verin’s lips instead, a slow kiss that leaves her lightheaded. Verin’s hands rest on her sides, warm and grounding. A muted gasp falls from her when she feels a tug on her hips, when Verin’s mouth opens under hers, and she takes the invitation eagerly. Verin’s tongue and teeth graze her bottom lip, pulling a moan from her throat. They’re harsh and demanding for just long enough before softer kisses soothe the sting, over and over again, leaving her breathless and trembling and sticky with sweat, sticky with arousal, far needier than she should be. Her hips move instinctively. The brief, light pressure that Verin allows her makes her shudder. 

‘I would have done this the other night,’ Verin murmurs, ‘but you didn’t give me much of a chance.’ 

‘Do you like it?’ Liandrin whispers. It comes out ragged rather than playful; Verin’s touch is hot and possessive now, a soft command on her hips, and arousal is throbbing and twisting between her legs. ‘You were looking at me in the bath.’

‘Of course I was.’ Verin lifts her thigh, just enough for Liandrin to almost whimper in relief before it’s withdrawn again.

‘You could have just got in with me.’

Verin smiles. ‘Have you ever actually had sex in the bath, Liandrin?’ Her thigh lifts again, and a soft fuck drops from Liandrin’s lips. Silk robe, warm skin. The sweet burst of wetness that she knows Verin must feel. ‘Water gets everywhere. It’s incredibly uncomfortable. And if I tried to do everything that I want to do, well, at least one of us would be at risk of drowning.’

‘Always so practical,’ Liandrin manages. 

‘Not always,’ Verin murmurs. ‘But I do wonder what you’d do for me…’

Anything, Liandrin thinks, and she doesn’t realise that she’s breathed it aloud, shallow and damp with need, until she feels Verin’s fingers tighten on her hips. 

‘Be careful.’ Her hands hold Liandrin still, and her eyes make it impossible for Liandrin to dip her gaze away. ‘I might assume you’re telling the truth.’

I am, Liandrin thinks, please. Need trembles through her, a humming desire that’s so unfamiliar and insistent that she isn’t sure what to do with it. She can’t speak it. She doesn’t know what to say; it’s so unexpected that it makes her breath catch. She forces herself to hold Verin’s gaze instead, willing Verin to understand at least something of what she wants, and yet another shiver runs through her when Verin says, ‘Take this dress off.’

Liandrin’s fingers fumble at the fabric. It’s caught underneath her legs; it feels too long and constricting and heavy on the sudden flush that heats her skin. She lifts it over her head, and Verin’s hands run up her stomach to her breasts. She tosses it to one side, and Verin’s fingers tease her nipples so delicately that she almost begs.

Then Verin’s eyes flicker down to the rug in front of the sofa, and she obeys before the words have left Verin’s mouth. On your knees. Her legs shake as she sinks to the floor. ‘You liked this, then,’ she whispers, and she can’t help nudging Verin’s robe apart, can’t help the softness of the kisses she presses to Verin’s thigh. She can’t help sighing as Verin’s fingers run through her still-damp hair, tightening and scratching on her scalp, holding her there until her breath softens into the pleasure and until the pleasure starts to sting. 

‘So did you.’ Verin leans forward, and her voice brushes against Liandrin’s ear. ‘Now what, Liandrin? What else do you want to do for me?’

Liandrin goes still. Her heart thuds, her mind goes fuzzy, a quiet frenzy of arousal threatens to overwhelm her. She knows what she wants to do, but she doesn’t know if she can do it. Not without Verin telling her to. Not without knowing that Verin wants her like this, that it isn’t too much, that Verin will take everything that she wants to give. Not without Verin putting the words around it, turning it into something she can understand. 

Her fingers curl into fists on Verin’s knees, and then a light tug on her hair forces her head up. 

‘Your hands are fidgeting,’ Verin murmurs. A question hangs in her eyes; heat and anticipation make her voice husky. Liandrin gives a slight nod. She hadn’t meant for them to, she hadn’t intended her body to give her away so easily, but she thinks that there’s probably not much left to hide. ‘Put them behind your back.’

She hesitates for only a few seconds. Long enough to let the words wind around her and sink into her and hold her; long enough for them to bring her breath back to Verin’s. Then she places her hands behind her back. Tendrils of a weave float around her wrists, tight enough to bind but not enough to hurt, and she almost whimpers at the sensation. The dampness between her legs slicks onto her thighs. Tears spring to her eyes at the tenderness of the touch, and Verin’s hand tilts her chin. 

‘Alright?’

Liandrin nods. Verin’s finger runs down her cheek, laced with so much wonder and desire that she gasps. Then the finger runs down between her breasts, down her stomach and between her legs, and the gasp shatters into a deep moan. 

‘Oh,’ Verin breathes. She withdraws the finger and holds it up, drenched and glistening in the firelight, and Liandrin closes her eyes. The throbbing is almost unbearable now. Too wet, too hot. No one gets her to this state, she thinks hazily; not even her fantasies have ever got her this worked up this quickly; not even having her mouth on Verin had spun this amount of need out through her body. Verin’s hand nudges her knees further apart, and a whine drops from her lips. Verin’s fingers circle, stroke, slide inside her, pressing and curling and seeking out every spot that will make her fall apart, and a whole string of pleading sounds tumbles out of her mouth. She doesn’t care. She’s already too close to care. Verin’s other hand is still in her hair, fingers scratching, the pleasure bordering deliciously on pain. Her thigh muscles are trembling from holding herself in a kneeling position; she’s so wet she can hear it. Verin’s voice is an indistinct murmur, but eventually her body picks out the words that tell her to come, to let go, to let Verin catch her. One last command that she can’t help obeying. 

Afterwards, when she can open her eyes and keep them open, when the dazzling haze of pleasure is starting to clear from her mind, Liandrin finds that she’s slumped over, held in a gentle embrace against Verin’s legs. Her body is still shaking, the insides of her thighs feel sticky and wet. There is no resistance when she flexes her wrists, only a sweet ache in her shoulders and a brief, tingling pain as she moves. She shifts her knees and the stiffness makes her wince, but she doesn’t try and get up. She feels so light and unreal that she isn’t sure that she can.

Verin’s warmth is everywhere. A hand rubbing her back, another hand stroking her hair, lips pressing kisses and soft words against her temple. Liandrin leans into them, but she doesn’t realise that she’s gripping Verin’s legs until Verin eases her fingers away and moves onto the floor beside her. Arms gather her close, steadying her until she can steady herself. Every part of her body is wrapped up in Verin’s, and Verin keeps the rest of the room at bay until she’s ready for it.

‘We’re on the floor again,’ she murmurs, testing her voice. Her throat feels dry and cracked. She reaches for the now-cold tea that she’d placed on the floor at the end of the sofa, but Verin gets there first. Verin cradles her while she sips it and takes it back from her when she’s finished, and the simple act of care brings another lump to her throat. 

‘I’d rather not make it a habit.’ Verin smiles, and kisses her head. ‘My knees won’t stand it.’

‘Your knees?’ 

Verin caresses her cheek, and presses another soft kiss to her lips. ‘Your knees seemed to do well enough.’ Her hands drop to Liandrin’s wrists, probing gently for bruising or tenderness. ‘But perhaps a cushion next time.’

‘Next time?’ Liandrin whispers. ‘Do you…’ 

She cuts the question off before it becomes too needy, too pathetic for her to hear, and she senses Verin sigh. Not out of exasperation or irritation, but from wishing that Liandrin didn’t feel the need to ask at all. 

‘Yes.’ Verin lets her wrists go, satisfied that there is nothing to heal. ‘We will have to be careful for a while, but yes. Do you?’

She nods. 

Verin hums, quiet and satisfied. She pulls Liandrin closer, and the warmth of her arms feels too solid and real to doubt. ‘Good. But no walking out on me again, please.’

Liandrin muffles her face in Verin’s shoulder. There’s no need, she thinks, for Verin to see her relief or her guilt or her embarrassment, her strange elation or the wonder that’s filling her. ‘I can’t walk,’ she mumbles, ‘so yes, I’m staying.’  

But Verin kisses her again and it cuts through her weak joke, prises her open, teases out every feeling that she’d tried to keep to herself. Verin’s lips find all of it in a few seconds, and it makes Liandrin gasp; Verin holds it all as if it belongs to her. As if it has every right to be there. As if everything Liandrin gives her is precious, even this. 

‘Can you at least walk to bed?’

Verin is holding out a hand, and Liandrin almost laughs as she remembers that hand being held out to her on another floor somewhere deep in the Tower, as she remembers the pain and confusion of then compared to the deep, satiating pleasure of now. But the hand, she thinks, had always been gentle. It had always been Verin. 

She nods, and takes it.