The practice yard was quiet this early, just the sound of boots scuffing against packed earth and the hiss of steel parting air.
Aerhuin moved with his back bare to the wind, his skin slick with sweat, bronze-gold in the early light. The Tower's blade flashed in his hands, but not like a sword; more like a spear, or something that wished it were. He hadn’t yet shaped his grip to it fully, but he wielded it with precision honed in a thousand sun-blind battles beneath a harder sky. His motions were lean, deliberate, and patient, not with wetlander showmanship, but Aiel efficiency. No wasted breath, no wasted blood.
His veil hung on the haft of his spear, which stood upright like a totem in the dirt at the edge of the ring. He’d wrapped it tight before dawn, leaving the weapon untouched as a kind of offering and acknowledgment that this wasn’t his fight, not truly. He was practicing with the Tower’s blade now. Practicing to become something else.
The man opposite him—Wyldin of Shienar—grinned through a bloody lip and raised his own sword in salute. "You're favoring your left again," Wyldin said, rolling his shoulder as he circled. His voice was hoarse with exertion, laced with fondness. "How is it a desert-blooded savage fights like he’s read every scroll in the vault?"
Aerhuin gave a small shrug, tilting his head. "I had time. Sand doesn’t make for much conversation."
Wyldin snorted. "Burn me, you’ve been in this Tower too long."
They moved again, impossibly light on their feet despite the hour and their exertion. Wyldin had the edge in reach, but Aerhuin closed the gap with a dancer’s silence, feet whispering over the earth. He caught the Shienaran’s next cut on the flat of his blade, twisted, and dropped low, spinning to unbalance, then rising into a counterstroke that stopped a hair’s breadth from Wyldin’s throat.
The other man froze. Then, stepping back, laughed. "I’m not convinced you're human," Wyldin called incredulously, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "But I’ll take the bruises gladly. Tomorrow I’ll best you."
"You won’t," Aerhuin shot back easily, flashing a grin that tugged more with the eyes than the mouth, "but it’s good to have goals." The morning wind tugged at his hair, unbound today, silver-blond and damp from sweat. Somewhere behind them, the kitchens were just starting to stir. The Tower bells hadn't rung yet, but they would soon.
Aerhuin rolled his shoulders and let his stance ease. His eyes drifted once toward the spear. Toward the veil. Toward the moment that was coming. Soon.
He would be bound. And the woman who would carry his toh... whose face he had not yet even seen.
Wyldin had just retrieved his discarded shirt, though hadn’t yet bothered to wear it, when a new voice carried lightly over the courtyard wall.
“I would’ve placed a wager on you, Aerhuin. But I’m glad I saved my silver, you were leaning too far into your pivot again.”
Aerhuin didn’t turn right away. He wiped a streak of sweat from his temple with the back of his wrist and exhaled a long breath through his nose. “Kisa Sedai,” he said as he straightened. “I was hoping you were still asleep.”
She stepped into the ring with neither formality nor ceremony, blue-fringed shawl draped loosely over her arms rather than around her shoulders. Her hair was swept up and pinned in a way that managed to look effortless while still controlling every strand. The lines at the corners of her eyes hinted at dry wit more than age, and her expression as she looked between the two men was warm but unflinching. “I was, until the noise of you two trying to out-flail each other woke me.” She arched a brow at Wyldin, then let her gaze settle on Aerhuin. “You still haven’t learned to rest your weight in the hips, not the heel. I told you: blades aren’t spears. They don’t forgive balance.”
“I was distracted,” he replied, only half-defensive. “Wyldin was being clever again.”
“Light help us all,” she murmured, and Wyldin grinned. She approached, stopping at the spear’s post. Her fingers brushed the wrap of the veil where it hung, gently, like a woman reading a memory off the cloth. Aerhuin’s eyes followed that gesture, then dropped slightly.
“You don’t have to do this, you know,” she said softly.
“Yes,” he hummed back, “I do.”
Kisa studied him a moment longer, then nodded with no argument. Just acceptance, born of long acquaintance and mutual understanding. She had earned his trust not by demanding it, but by knowing when not to. “You’ll be meeting her soon,” she announced, brushing a few fingers across the edge of her shawl. “Try to smile once or twice. Greens can be charming, but they don't always respond well to brooding silence and unblinking stares.”
Aerhuin raised a brow. “So I should stare and smile? I’ll frighten her.”
Kisa laughed lightly, and for a moment the weight in the yard lifted. She touched his shoulder briefly, more than a Sister might usually offer, but well within bounds between them. “You’ll do fine, Warder-to-be. Just remember that your toh doesn’t chain you. It makes you strong.”
Aerhuin watched her go, and only once she’d turned the corner did he glance again toward the spear. "I hope so," he murmured. Then, with a deep breath, turned back toward Wyldin. "One more round?"
The garden was quiet, except for the hush of wind moving through ivy and the faint trickle of water from the old stone fountain. A single sparrow rustled in the hedge, took one look at him, and thought better of staying.
Aerhuin sat on the low edge of the fountain wall, elbows on his knees, watching the slow ripple of the surface. His boots were dusty from the walk, forgoing the usual paths. There was no sense parading; let the Tower whisper when they saw him afterward. The ceremonial uniform they'd given him—dark wool, polished boots, a silver pin shaped like a falling leaf—was folded with absurd care in the corner of the bench behind him. It was not rejected, exactly, just... deferred. Maybe he'd wear it tomorrow.
The cloak, though... That he wore.
It was good cloth. Better made than most things in the Waste, and better-suited for this morning's chill. It draped heavy over his shoulders, the clasp a simple bronze disk bearing no sigil. The hem dragged lightly behind him when he moved, and the green silk lining, faint and almost black in this light, caught at the corner of his eye sometimes, like a shadow that knew more than it let on. Beneath it, cadin'sor. Pale grey, soft-worn. His belt carried no weapon today, his sword left in his quarters when he had gone up to change. That had been part of the instructions, and a detail he thought about more than he should.
He glanced toward the archway where ivy climbed over old stone columns, tangled but deliberate. A single lantern hung unlit from an iron hook. The sun hadn't cleared the eastern walls yet, but light was beginning to warm the leaves, catching in dew that clung like breath on steel. The center of the garden was a ring of carved flagstones, smoothed by years and likely hundreds of boots—Sisters and Warders both. He wondered, not for the first time, how many had stood where he would soon stand. Whether they'd felt the same weight.
His thoughts were with him, as always, and, also as always, they were bordering on unkind. She will carry my oath... but I will carry her burden.
That was how it had been explained to him. How Kisa had put it, long ago, with that sharp glint in her eye when she told him he didn't have to kneel to repay his life... but he could fight. The idea of the bond didn't unsettle him, not truly. But this moment before, this stillness before the knot was tied... that was something else entirely.
He rubbed his palm across the rough edge of the fountain and exhaled slowly through his nose. Not nervously, but aware. Deeply aware.
He didn't know her face. Rinaeve Honyron. Green. Raised quick, they said, from fire into steel. A Sister born among Whitecloaks, of all things. He admired that, in a way, the choice of it and the force of it. It was no doubt something he would have endless questions about, considering his own unpleasant experiences with the Children.
He'd meet her soon. He wasn't ready... but he would be.
Walk in the light. It was something that Rinaeve had heard almost every day of her life. It was more than a saying it was a way of life. The life that the Children of the Light devoted themselves to. Within the brotherhood, it had never been clear to the small golden haired child what her people were like. How they were feared and hated across the realm. She never saw their authoritarianism. No, all she saw was the love of her family. Kindness and care. Far from the front lines of the war that all brotherhood fought, to route out dark friends.
It wasn’t until she turned five that she could feel the threads of the one power. It had been magical, that first brush and it had filled her with a sense of wonder and yet, even at a young age, she knew to keep this gift to herself. A child’s intuition perhaps. It wasn’t scary or harmful so she felt no guilt keeping her secret.
Upon turning eight, it was announced that she would marry a high ranking member’s son. He was a few years older than she and while their first interactions were pleasant, she soon found that within the light of the brotherhood, there was darkness. She was not witness to the atrocities, but the screams would haunt her dreams for the rest of her life. It was the way they had talked about the woman that had made her heart stop for a moment. Aes Sedai. Not quite hatred, though it was there, but the revulsion. They spoke of her wickedness and how they were dark friends. It was what she did though, the power she wielded that had given Rinaeve pause. It sounded a lot like her secret.
Two years and that fear had only grown. Careful questions had been asked, behind a veil of innocence. What was the one power? Why was it evil? What were the women that her betrothed’s family hunted? Where was the White Tower?
That last question had come a week or so after turning ten, a plan laid the best it could be for a child. To run away, not some childish little game, but to truly flee from her family. She had seen it in their eyes too, when she had asked about the Aes Sedai. If one could touch the power and not be evil. The answer was a resounding no and while she was unsure if her secret was her touching the one power, she knew that if anyone ever found out, it would be her they turned on next.
Three weeks after turning ten, she fled in the night. A simple note was left for her parents. It read simply I am sorry and I love you. Perhaps she could have told them why she was running away, but the fear that had slowly been crushing her for two years was still weighing down on her slender shoulders.
Butterflies spun in her stomach as she gazed at her reflection in the mirror. The dress had been a gift from Alanna, the head of her Ajah. Finer than anything she had ever owned, the sage green fabric, threaded with copper stitching so fine that it looked like the diaphanous wings of a dragonfly. It fit to her slender body, hugging her soft curves like a second skin before flowing around her hips. Panels were transparent and gave flashes of her legs as she moved. It made her feel beautiful. Something she had not truly felt in a long while. Though she didn’t seem to be older than nineteen, Rinaeve was nearing her twenty-fifth birthday.
There were whispers about her and her power and the meteoric rise she had from novice to accepted. In that time, she had grown close to one woman who though she would never be her mother, had looked after her almost like one. It was she who had decided that Rinaeve should look the part. Alanna had always been there, to offer council or advice when the younger woman sought it. Quick with a smile and a joke, she had a way of drawing out that which Rinaeve kept hidden. That she had picked green had not come as a surprise, though other Ajah had desired her within their ranks.
A smile curled on her lips and in a swirl of skirts, she left her room. She was to meet the one that the tower had picked to be her warder. She knew little of him, but when offered to know more, she had declined. Their friendship would form naturally, she had decided.
Around the tower, novices were waking to begin their chores. It was still as unusual to have them dip their head in greeting to her as it was to see the green stone set in her ring. In time, Rinaeve would grow accustomed, she was sure. Flickering candles illuminated her path, the sun just rising. Nearing the garden, she paused and exhaled.
To meet the one who would become her other half. Sword and confidant. The one who would know her the best. Among the green, it was common for sisters to wed their warders or to have a harem of men to serve them. Alanna being a perfect example. A smile curled on her lips and she gave a small shake of her head. One man would be a handful, and she was not even in love with him. Didn’t know if that would be their fate. Nor was now the time to think upon such things.
Quietly she entered the garden, her pale white blonde locks catching the light of the lantern, his eyes on the surface of the fountain. Aiel. That much she knew and like her, there were whispers of him. Hands folded before her, she smiled, her pale lips quirking to flash a dimple. “Hello, Aerhuin.” Lavender eyes gazed at him from beneath a fringe of dark lashes as she took a step closer.
Aerhuin stood as she stepped into the garden. The fountain murmured behind him, low and constant, like a second heartbeat he hadn’t noticed until it stopped matching his own. His boots scraped softly against the flagstones as he turned, but he didn’t step forward, didn’t bow, as he took her in. The cloak settled down his back with the motion, green silk catching faint morning light, but his eyes were already on her. Pale hair like moonlight. A dress that moved like breath. Lavender eyes, watching him not coyly, not testing, just… watching. He didn’t look away. Not yet.
"Rinaeve Sedai," he greeted quietly. He let out a slow breath and inclined his head, not deeply, but respectfully. “You’re early,” he said, something dry and almost wry in the line of it. “I’d heard you Greens prefer to arrive precisely when it suits you.”
The smile that curled on her lips grew a fraction. "Am I?" she asked from the doorway, still watching him. Amusement tinged her voice as she asked, "Do you judge all, by the hearsay of others, Warder?"
"Judge? No." He spread his hands amicably, his half-grin mirroring hers. "But one can't help but build expectations on what he hears over the years."
"Perhaps. But then when most build such expectations they come in with preconceived ideas. It may color and hide what lay before them." Slowly, she moved from the doorway, the firelight crating a halo of flame along her locks.
Aerhuin hesitated a moment, unsure whether to offer his hand. That wasn’t Aiel custom, but it was Tower custom, and this moment belonged to both of them now. Instead, he shifted slightly, leaving the space between them deliberately open. “I’m told we’ll know each other better soon,” he offered, more thoughtful this time. “But today… it’s strange. Standing in front of someone you’ll fight beside, die beside—” his eyes met hers again, level and unflinching “—and not knowing the sound of their laugh or what kind of tea they prefer.”
The soft, slippery sound of her dress along the paving stones and her legs as she moved joined the hush of the fountain as she came to stand a few feet before him. Her head tilted and the silvery locks shifted with the movement, cascading down her shoulder and a stray lock falling into her eyes. "Do you plan to die so soon?" The question was serious, perhaps, but her voice was almost teasing. "While I have no cause to laugh, I can at least share that I prefer my tea creamy and sweet and preferably warmed with spices."
"Life is a dream from which we all must wake," he recited almost automatically, but the quirk of his lips suggested he was enjoying himself more than he was willing to let on. "Cairhienen, then," he added with a nod, visibly filing the information away for later use. "I'll keep that in mind." He trailed off, then, seemingly at a loss of where to go next. He peered across at her in a state of almost suspended-animation, searching for something clever and coming up empty-handed.
"Will you not share how you like your tea, Aerhuin?" His name was said with a caress, softened as she took another step closer. "It would be fair, at least. For tomorrow, we may wake."
"Not much tea in the Waste," he answered. "Tried the kaf out of Tarabon once, too bitter even for my tongue. Willowbark from the Wise Ones now and again. Hadn't had a proper tea just to drink until I came here." With a wry twist in his voice, he added, "Had more oosquai than tea, in my life," as he dropped back onto the fountain ridge, leaning back on his hands.
"Oosquai?" Her lips curled and she playfully wrinkled her nose. "I can't say I have had it, maybe you can share some with me." Wine had been far more common than the harder liquor and tea was by far her most consumed beverage. Nodding to the seat beside him, she asked, "May I sit?" He had spoken openly of his own feelings. She had not, but she felt them. He nodded, scooting aside more symbolically than of any need to make space on the fountain edge. She settled beside him with that uncanny Aes Sedai grace, colliding with his senses like a loosed bull. "Does it bother you?" This close, the sweet scent of apple, a mix of herbs and the warmth of cedar could be smelled. "Being assigned, rather than choosing?"
Breathing in her space was a confusing mash of emotions, his perception of her as a Sister grinding against the perception of a woman. "I did choose, really." His eyes dropped from hers and he leaned his elbows on his knees, hands folded together. "My life was saved by one of your Sisters. My toh was to her, but of course the Tower would never allow me to serve my year as gai'shain. So she suggested this, instead. And I accepted."
Gai'shain. She understood the word, but the concept was harder to wrap her head around. It was duty, bound to serve as repayment for saving a life. Toh. As he leaned forward, arms on his knees, she studied him. "I see." The response was soft. She herself had not known what to look for in a Warder and felt that though she'd risen through the ranks fast, there as much she didn't know. To pick a Warder? Seemed not daunting, but unwise, given her lack of life experience. So she'd asked to be assigned one, trusting the Tower and her Sisters.
He tilted his head toward the center of the ring, to the lantern hanging dim and cold in the early morning gray. “I didn’t light the lantern,” he said. “Didn’t know if it should be you.”
Biting her lower lip she held in her laugh. She knew about as much as he did, but she also knew that the lamp held no significance. Her smile was soft and her fingers moved, the light flaring to life with a thought and a tug on the weave. "The light holds no purpose. It is about the binding... I believe." Rather than appear all-knowing, she reached out a hand and, after a moment, laid it on his shoulder. "I feel like I am meant to be all-knowing. Maybe even a badass?" Now she laughed, though at herself, rather than him. "In truth... I know little more than you and I am..." She offered a breathy exhale and a shy smile. "I am nervous."
Slowly she withdrew her hand and laid in her lap, fingers joining as she gazed down at her ring. "The One Power is oddly simple for me." It wasn't a brag, as she tried to put her feelings into words. "But... this, what I am meant to do? It seems harder, binding myself to another. To guard and be guarded?"
He turned his head just enough to see her in profile. "I'd like to learn. If you'd have me." The silence that followed wasn't heavy, but aware. The garden had shifted again—lighter, maybe, or simply more still, like the Pattern itself had paused to listen.
Aerhuin exhaled softly through his nose, then straightened. The movement wasn't abrupt, but it carried a kind of finality with it, the way a spear is planted before a line is drawn. His hand passed over his thigh, brushing away a speck of dust that hadn't mattered until now. "I think... it's time?" It was a question as much a statement, a suggestion as much asking permission. He turned his hand over, palm up, and held it forward, panning it over to her in offer. He knew well and good that she need not touch him—or even look at him, for some Sisters—to assemble the binding weaves, but something about the gesture felt right and good and warranted. Aerhuin stared at his hand for a moment longer than was sensible, taking great note of the lines on his palm and the small scar at the base of his ring finger from a now decade-old spear wound. Finally, though, he dragged his eyes up to meet hers, the offer flickering in his eyes like the first embers of a building fire.
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