The best kept secret

Chapter 7: Moiraine

Moiraine stood paralyzed as Guinevere's body slammed into the wall. Her fingers hung inert in the air, her feet fixed to the ground, her heart thundering in her ears. She could hear someone screaming—an agonising wail tearing the sky apart—but she couldn't draw her gaze away from Guinevere's limp form collapsing into the mud. It wasn't until pain seared down her throat that she realised the screams were her own.

Rand's yelling snapped her out of her stupor. "What are you doing to her?!" The boy howled, striding towards Lanfear with menacing steps.

"I told you the next time I saw you with Ilyena I'd kill her." She heard the woman sneer. The mention of such a name would've stirred something within Moiraine, weren't she in a nearly catatonic state.

"What are you even talking about?!" The redheaded boy grunted, violently grabbing Lanfear by her shoulders, enraged, glancing towards Guinevere, his eyes filled with terror.

But Moiraine's focus had shifted away from them already. Suddenly, she found herself kneeling beside Guinevere, as the girl's eyes fluttered close, harrowing groans leaving her lips, hundreds of lacerations tearing her skin open all over her body. Blood started to pool beneath Guinevere, and she hopelessly glimpsed at Siuan's inert body feet away from her, as a pleading grunt left the woman's lips. Tears started to swell in Moiraine's eyes, our daughter will die if I don't do anything , and it would be no one's fault but hers. Siuan had begged her to stop, to follow the rules for once, but she and her pride always had to know better. And now the two people she cared the most for in the world laid still on the ground, one of them beyond any possible salvation. Is it true? Can you know, beyond any doubt, that it's true? Her own advice, recently recalled to her by her little sister, suddenly rang in her ears. Just pull yourself together .

Moiraine turned her head towards the Guinevere, and briskly brushed the tears away, forcing her mind to focus; she needed to stop the bleeding, to stop the maiming from spreading throughout her body. She stretched her arms and reached for the Source, her body eagerly warming up with the One Power, as her hands intuitively pulled on weaves; incisions like those weren't hard to heal, Moiraine had done so many times. Golden strings of healing power began to slither around Guinevere's body, attempting to remove all the harm, but the tearing didn't stop. Moiraine felt her heart skip a beat, and her hands started moving in desperate motions. No matter which weaves she pulled on, how much power she used, how precisely she thread them, the girl's skin kept on breaking open, and she could feel Guinevere's heartbeat growing weaker by the second.

She began to gasp for air, breathing in uneven intervals, panic sinking down her stomach like a rock, and she started to frantically press her own hands against Guinevere's blood tainted stomach, as if she were able to stop the bleeding by simply compressing the injuries.

"N...No," she let out a weak, quivering sob, "please, no," her voice was barely a whisper, as Guinevere's blood started tainting the sleeves of her gown.

"Undo it NOW," Rand's wretched —yet commanding— scream cut through the chaos, "you will heal her and not harm her again, not if you want my help. NOW, LANFEAR!"

Moiraine was still desperately pressing on Guinevere's wounds when she heard the soft snap of Lanfear's fingers, and the bleeding came to a sudden halt. Guinevere's ripped skin began to sew itself back together, silver scars appearing wherever there had been a bloody lesion, covering the girl's body like a web of shimmering threads. An excruciatingly endless second dragged by, and Moiraine saw her daughter's eyes snap open, gulping on air as she choked on it.

Moiraine felt a shaky whimper escape her lips, relief flooding through her veins, as she helped the girl sit up, softly patting on her back, and brushing her fingers against her face. "Guinevere, dear Winnie," she stuttered, her hands trembling with terror still, "h-how does it feel? Are you alright?"