Alanna watched the tall Mage as he stared at the sky, watching the hawk's tail feathers disappear into the grey clouds.
"this isn't what I wanted for us" Numair whispered. Even with the black fire cracking and radiating off of his person, his voice sounded weak and hollow.
"I know…but that's the reason we are fighting this war Numair," Alanna's voice was heavy with emotion, "so you can have the life you wanted with her." She saw his shoulders fall, and the fire surrounding him seemed to lessen some. He looked weaker than she had seen him in a long time, weaker even than he had at the end of the Immortals War. His gaze never left the sky, though Daine's shape shifted form had long since evaporated into the morning mist. He looked like half the man she had seen mere moments ago, kissing his love at the top of this tower before she left to perform her duties to the crown.
"I feel like half of me is missing." Numair had told Alanna once, when Daine had been gone two weeks helping Onua purchase horses for the riders. This was long before she had known what Daine meant to him, and, she guessed, long before even Numair had known. Now she wondered if what Numair had been expressing, and what she was now witnessing, was much more than sentimental. She had wondered for a while now if Numair had unconsciously been mingling his magic with Daine's, if his affection and love for the young woman had caused some of it to envelop the Wild Mage…if he really truly was weaker without her? It was deep magic. She knew it was something Numair would never purposefully experiment with, but it was old magic, said to be of the gods, and incredibly powerful. It could have gotten away from him, even being the most powerful mage in the realms…and Daine was a demi goddess after all. It could be out of his control. She wondered if the consummation of their love would have made the ancient spell whole, forever uniting the Black Robe and the Wild Mage, and making their magic incomplete in their individual forms.
Suddenly Alanna knew it to be true…and she realized Daine knew as well. She had wondered why the Wild Mage had declined to marry the Black Robe. She had discussed it with her once. Daine had told her that she would, "someday," but only because she knew it was something Numair so desperately wanted, and not because she felt they needed to. "I am as connected to Numair as I ever could be, and marriage wont change that… nothing can change that now" Daine had said. Alanna had thought that it had been the young women's naiveté and the emotions of being in the throws of young love. Now she understood. Even then Daine had understood that Numair had committed to her in a way he never would be able to commit to another human, and in a way no other human but the most powerful mage in the realms could ever be capable of. Part of Numair's magic was forever entwined to that of the Wild Mage.
She looked up at her tall lanky friend, pretending not to notice the silent tears slipping down his cheeks, and realized that this likely worked both ways. Daine would also be weaker without Numair. She suddenly understood why the powerful Mage was so worried about her capable young friend. Nothing she could say would reassure him. She silently took his hand, tangling the long fingers with her own, letting him know that despite what he was feeling, he was not alone.