Random Pellinor fic, M/C, that came about from my tired mind.
Takes place after "The Riddle." Nighttime. Maerad and Cadvan sit in their camp.
An Excess of Fire
There are shadows in her eyes.
She sits across the small camp-fire, staring motionless into the reaching flames. Her gown is little more than mud, her hair matted and filthy, and when she lifts her hand he can see the missing fingers, cruel, taunting.
She could not have been more beautiful.
Again, his mind wanders back to the moment of discovery; that moment of…of…he can not describe it. A lifetime's worth of song and poetry, and he can not describe a meeting. He wishes that he could fit it into a rhythm: pure joy, pure thankfulness. But it had not been pure.
Oh, how he wants it to be! Cadvan tries to turn away from her, for fear that his mask is cracking, for fear that she will become aware of his scrutiny. He can not manage it. Oh, how he yearns to forget the strange souring in his stomach at the end of that Moment, the blaze that he could only hope had been contained.
Her eyelids droop, lashes dark against the cheeks with the new ridges and hollows. Maerad does not have a glass to see the bruising on her forehead, or the small cut across her lip. Cadvan had offered her his dwindling supply of salve, but she had merely stared blankly; he knew that he should have tended her wounds for her, as she had for him and he for her in the past. It was not so hard a thing, and necessary— except, he does not trust himself, not yet. Not with her return so raw and painful. A welcome pain, a wonderful one, but pain nonetheless.
The wind blows, and she shivers. Before thought, his cloak is around her shoulders—and as she flinches, he realizes that it is not from cold that she recoils. Anger, hot and hateful, rises behind his teeth. What has the Ice Witch done to her? It takes some time, then, for Cadvan to unclench his fists, but he will not risk her seeing his emotion. Only when he can ease back safely to his seat on the bare ground does he chance a word. It might well have gone unsaid. She does not hear. He leaves her his cloak, though now he remembers that she is used to the bone-ache of ice and snow. Still, her fingers tighten on it and she draws it closer, absentmindedly, fixated once more on the fire.
There is a space beside her that needs filling. With effort, Cadvan resists it. It would be far too easy to allow this flood to sweep him up, this hurricane that he does not understand to carry him away. Until he can contain himself he will not touch her.
Self-loathing is dank in his throat and at last, with this, he can avert his gaze. He is still her teacher, and still more than threescore years older than she. By all rights he should be dead, and she should be free; he should not keep her to himself as he does. This is unhealthy, for both of them. When they get back—
And here a wave of homesickness washes over him, and he shudders suddenly. As nothing else has, this causes her to look up. Comforting is the smile he gives her, comfort is what she takes from it. Why has that which he has learned to suppress arisen again to haunt him? He is an open sore, and the world is full of salt.
She cannot know the flames within his heart. She cannot know that burns brightest among them the most fleeting, the most forbidden: his Fire Lily.
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