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“Forgive me if I’m overstepping,” Lan says when he and Moiraine sit down beside their fire, “I know we’ve only just met, but I can feel that you’re in pain.”
“It’s hardly anything,” Moiraine says in that aloof voice she uses when Lan knows she is trying to hide what she’s truly feeling. He’s only known her a month, been bonded to her for a week, and yet he can read nearly everything about her. But this bottomless pit of grief that feels like it is drowning her, this Lan does not understand. “Just a twisted ankle.”
“Not your ankle.” Moiraine ignores her injuries as easily as Lan does, blocks them from her mind so well that he hardly felt her ankle as they rode all day. He watches her for a long moment, thinks he sees grief and sorrow in her eyes as she stares at the fire. “Did you lose someone?” Lan expects her to deny her grief, to claim not to know what he is referring to.
“Siuan.” It is as if a weight is lifted when she says the name, as if she can breathe again. Lan feels more than he has since Moiraine bonded him, corners of her mind and memory opening to him anew. “She isn’t dead. She’s in the White Tower, and I’m here searching.”
“Why does it feel – ”
“I don’t think we’ll be together again in this life,” Moiraine answers before Lan finishes his question. She’s getting better at reading the bond, at understanding Lan’s mind. He wonders if one day they won’t need words at all, just like in the stories he’d heard of Aes Sedai and their Warders who communicated silently with ease.
Lan waits for Moiraine to speak more but she doesn’t. A hundred questions run though his mind. “How long have you been in love?” he settles on. Speak first of the joy and the love. There will be time later to hear Moiraine’s fears for the future, to try to soothe them.
“Forty-three years,” Moiraine answers, then with a smile that transforms her entire face, makes Lan want to hug her and find a way to make her this happy every day, she adds, “I think I’ve loved her since the Wheel began turning.”
Lan can feel a memory, feels its joy along with the aching sadness of what Moiraine lost. He wants to hear the details, wants to know what it is that makes her heart, and his along with it, ache with love and longing. “Would you tell me about her?”
Moiraine begins to speak, the bond filled with joy and amusement, a lightness he didn’t expect to feel from her as she gets lost in memories, as he thinks she takes joy in sharing them with Lan.
“Will I meet your Siuan?”
“You will,” Moiraine answers, the thought of it making her smile that beautiful smile again. Lan thinks he would give his life to see Moiraine smile this way every day.