Prompt #12 - Mama said
"Aes Sedai marry as seldom as Wisdoms," Moiraine heard Lan say in a gentle voice that cut her to the bone. She strained her ears, trying to hear more of the words she knew she wasn't meant to hear. "No woman deserves the sure knowledge of widow's black as her brideprice, you least of all."
Moiraine closed her eyes against the tears that threatened to spill. She could hear Nynaeve suppressing the same sobs.
After a while, Nynaeve's breathing evened out and slowed, and Moiraine decided she was asleep. She sat up, careful not to move so far away from Rand that his dreams would no longer be shielded from Ba'alzamon, and focused on saidar.
Ever since childhood, Moiraine had played with fire created using the Power. Whether she was happy, sad, angry or scared, every time she felt strong emotion she would create some form of flame. When she was happy it would simply be a circular stream of fire, or maybe if she was feeling playful it would be several different-coloured fireballs that she could try to juggle with without injury. When she was angry the fireballs would fight, trying to jostle each other out of the air. This time it formed as black balls of liquid fire.
Moiraine watched the fireballs as they appeared in the air. Intended fireballs; they quickly dissolved into a maelstrom of whirling darkness.
Bloody Lan, she thought bitterly. Al'Lan Mandragoran, uncrowned king of Malkier. His mother and father had taken an oath for him when he was still a baby that he would protect his people, so he spent his life trying to give it up to uphold that oath.
Moiraine wished Lan's mother had been someone else. Anyone other than Malkier's queen. Then he wouldn't have learnt to use his oath as an excuse to stay away from romantic commitment.
How many times had she heard him use the same line, now? Three? Four? Five, including her. The painful part was that she knew he'd honestly loved all of them – loved her, loved the others, loved Nynaeve. She wished he didn't. It would have been bearable to know that he loved her, and only her forever – although that was romantic nonsense – even though he was too obsessed over his mother's oath to let himself get close to her. But watching him move on and inspire the same hope in other women… she knew she didn't mean it even while she thought it, but sometimes Moiraine told herself she wished she'd never met al'Lan Mandragoran.