Moridin let the gateway close as soon as Neya was through. This reunion had not gone as he'd anticipated. Far from it.

Neya had changed much since he'd last seen her. She was not the frail little girl he'd first encountered over two years ago. She was a woman grown now, a queen and a mother-to-be. She had become the dangerous, powerful individual prophecies and Finn alike had warned him about.

He had no idea why she was still alive. When Demandred had failed to kill her, as commanded, Moridin had been assigned the task. He had intended to send Cyndane after her, or perhaps Hessalam, but the latter was otherwise occupied, and Cyndane was…unreliable, despite the cour'souvra. Moghedien was already in place on the battlefield.

If you want something done, do it yourself. That had always been his motto, in this life and in the previous ones. Besides, he'd wanted to see Neya one last time, he had to admit. He simply hadn't counted on how strong she had become.

Demandred was likely too close to her to notice it, but her ta'veren aura was almost like a living thing, a vortex that sapped the minds of those around her and bent them to her will. She truly was nothing like al'Thor. She was much, much worse than the Dragon. Perhaps she would be their doom after all.

Moridin – better known as Ishamael, born Elan Morin – found that he did not care. It was out of his hands.

With a last look out the window of his fortress in the Blight, he channeled the True Power and opened a gateway to Shayol Ghul.

Bao awakened to the sound of voices and found Neya standing in the middle of the room, glaring at nothing. He got out of bed to join her. "Is something wrong? What happened?"

"Moridin happened." Neya shifted her wrathful gaze to meet his. "Why didn't you tell me who he was?" she demanded, hands on her hips. That was usually a bad sign. Bao kept a safe distance between them, just in case. She had broken his nose once already.

"You did not ask," he answered. Her eyes opened wide in outrage. "And he forbade me to tell you," he added quickly. That was…not exactly a lie. Neya's glare turned into a scowl. She looked as though she had been crying; her eyes were red and puffy. "Did he hurt you?" Bao enquired sharply. Did the man think he could simply waltz in here and torment his wife? Nae'blis or not, he would pay if he had harmed her!

Neya shook her head impatiently. "I'm fine. I just can't believe you kept this from me!" she fumed. "What about the Prophecies? Did you know about that, too?"

Bao hesitated. "Moridin may have mentioned it," he replied cautiously. Neya was barely half his size, but when she was angry, he would rather not be on the receiving end of her temper.

"And you married me anyway?" she asked incredulously. "You can't possibly think I will help you fight Rand."

Well, he had hoped that she would see sense before the end, and prove he Great Lord wrong, but he had wisely not counted on it. He would simply proceed as planned and leave her here. This far away from the battlefield, Neya could not influence the battle, or its outcome, in any way. She could not manipulate him, as she was doing now. "You may insist on calling him whatever you wish, but he remains Lews Therin at the core," Bao snarled. "And I will end him, no matter what you do."

She threw her hands in the air. "I'm not doing anything! Elan is wrong. I'm not ta'veren. If I were, you wouldn't be leaving. Not without me, at any rate."

Bao frowned. "Leaving?"

Neya sighed deeply; the fire seemed to go out of her like a snuffed candle. Her shoulders slumped. "Elan claims that the Last Battle has begun," she said dejectedly.

"Yes, it has. He warned us earlier in the night, in our dreams," Bao added when she narrowed her eyes at him. "I did not want to wake you to let you know. I would have told you in the morning."

"I figured you'd be gone by now, if you knew," she said with a small frown.

"My time has not yet come. I have some more preparations to see to before I can join the fight."

With another sigh, Neya moved closer to him and buried her head in his chest. She did that often, these days. Bao was not certain whether the pregnancy was making her more emotional than usual or if it was the looming spectre of the battle to come that troubled her. Come to think of it, it was probably both of those things. He put both arms around her. She was shaking slightly. "Are you really going to leave me here?" she whispered after a pause.

He did not exactly have a choice, no matter how much he wished that Neya could witness his moment of glory. It was too chancy. "Someone needs to keep an eye on things here, and you are the queen. Besides," he went on softly, cupping her chin in his hand, "if we should both die, the land would be left at the mercy of the Ayyad, and I doubt Galbrait will be forthcoming, after what I did to her. Shara will fall into chaos again, slavery will be re-established. Everything we have accomplished here will be undone in an instant and all our plans for the future will be discarded."

They had many projects. They had begun conceiving the future Shara soon after they were married. The first undertaking had been prompted by Neya, after she asked why Bao had sent Mintel to recruit people for his army, instead of a younger person. The truth was that the old abrishi had travelled the land back and forth and knew it better than anyone else; he knew every populated area from the mining camps of the Great Rift to the fishing villages of the coast of the Morenal Ocean. Besides, Mintel could travel along the City of Dreams with remarkable ease, something that Bao himself could not do. Indeed, the Ways had been crafted after he was confined inside Shayol Ghul, and he was not familiar with them. Mintel was simply the best suited for the task.

In any case, it had prompted Neya to question how those isolated villagers went by, and she had not liked the answer. The land was so immense, she said, it was a shame that only a tiny part of it was inhabited and, even worse, that these people – her people – lived in such dreadful conditions, for the most part. She wanted to build new cities and places where people could learn, as they did in Bao's Age. Think what we could do, she had told him dreamily. Think of the possibilities. And they had; as soon as the battle was over, they would begin by setting interconnected gateway platforms across the land, so that the fishermen and miners and lumberjacks who lived in all corners of the nation could visit the Capital at any time. It was an ambitious project, and there were more to follow. Just as he had known she would, Neya was quickly adjusting to being a queen. She was going to be a wonderful mother, too, Bao was sure.

"I know," Neya murmured. "I just hate to let you go away without me. I'll be fretting all the time, not knowing what's going on. Not knowing if you're safe."

"There is nothing for you to worry about," Bao assured her, not for the first time. "By the time I join the battle, Lews Therin's forces will be exhausted, weakened. It will be a matter of days, maybe hours, before I secure our victory. It will be a mere formality. Our losses will be few. Once I have crushed the Dragon's puny army, we can start planning in earnest. We will have the whole world to ourselves," he told her earnestly, "and all the time we could ever want." Neya's eyes took on a sad look. She still did not believe, but it mattered little. She would, soon enough. "It was promised," he went on in a low voice. "The Dark One will reward us beyond our imagination." He saw her sudden frown. "I know what you think. But you will see." He bent down to kiss her gently, then more roughly. She responded with her usual passion, and soon Bao forgot about it all.

Neya watched Bao's muscular chest rise and fall, focusing her attention on his even breathing, his heartbeat. It would be another few days before he had to depart, apparently. She intended to spend as much of that time with him. Preferably in bed.

Idly, Neya wondered if he realised what he'd said, just before they fell into the canopy bed. The Dark One, he had called it. She dared not hope, but she knew what she had to do.

She would drag Bao over to the Light with her bare hands if she had to.

She could tell that he was conflicted. He had been distracted since his mysterious mission a few days ago. Something must have happened to make him doubt the promises of the Shadow. He tried to hide it from her, of course. Now Neya knew why: Bao was genuinely worried that she might succeed in accomplishing the Prophecies, and not in the way he wanted, or expected. Not in the way Shendla had led him to believe.

Neya still couldn't fathom Elan. Why in the name of the Light had he kept her alive for so long, knowing what he knew? Why had he let her go this time, for that matter, unharmed and unfettered? According to him, she could still change everything.

And she certainly intended to.

Shendla had been right all along. Prophecies were subject to interpretation, as the older woman put it. Bao wasn't meant to kill Rand at all. He was not meant to accomplish his dearest wish, as Shendla had purposefully allowed him to believe. Just as Neya had surmised, Bao had already killed 'his' dragon, the jumara, thus becoming the Wyld. He was meant to save the Sharan people – and the world, indeed – by siding with the Light in the Last Battle.

How Neya was supposed to convince him, or the Light to take him back, for that matter, was another problem entirely. Bao had resisted every single attempt at changing his mind. She was beginning to think it would take a lot more than words to make him see reason – not to mention that she would be stuck in Shara after he left. He was taking with him all the male Ayyad, and the few women Bao would leave behind didn't know how to open gateways.

Neya was running out of time. Now would probably be a good time to seek out help and start making concrete plans. She'd been too sloppy, certain that she could make Bao see reason by talking to him, convinced that her love for him would transform him, somehow. Well, ta'veren or not, it had failed. She could only hope that Kal would come up with something else – something that preferably didn't involve murdering Bao in his sleep.