Secrets spill into Morrigan's lap, and she is reminded of Alistair too. It had been easier to joke with him because it had been Alistair (to ask if he had wanted her sympathies or some such, and she almost chokes on her tea, sets the cup down) when Fiona being elven had been--
Well she was Grand-Enchanter, a former Warden. So many other complicated things all wrapped up in there with Kieran the thing they danced about when he had told her, when if there was something she and Alistair shared long before a child then it was the pain of a childhood you wouldn't wish upon an animal. Unwanted and moved passed about for him, wanted only so much for what she might be in the end for her.
Much more makes sense. A piece slots into place that she thinks would cut them both if handled wrong but when has she been afraid of a dangerous thing or a sharp truth? Kieran's head jerks up, Alistair's face not hers because she's seen Alistair trying to hold himself together in the face of grief and loss on the road to Lothering. Quiet little offers of I'm sorry murmured to her with a beseeching look to his own mother, because mothers have a magic all their own, don't they?
"Gwenaelle," she says when she has her voice, when she knows she must be careful as she would with a wolf hunting in a cold hard winter, with a viper coiled to strike, a thing that might lash out and hurt them both but hurt itself worse because she has been that aching thing for so many other reasons. "I am so sorry. To lose her in such a way-- I cannot--"
And that is the problem, she thinks distantly, that she cannot, that motherhood is sometimes such a snare. That it has been for them both in different ways.
"The woman you spoke of before..in the eyes of all the world she was your mother as she was your father's lady wife. And she was your mother, I will not take that from you. But this loss...tis not one you can grieve. Nor one you can acknowledge outwith many walls." I will keep it safe for you, she thinks. Same as any thing ever said between them though this hangs more heavily when the damage it could do is so much greater for one young woman, when there are so many that would use it as a knife in her back or to her throat, to see her left with nothing at all in the world. The hearts of men and the hearts of the Court are ugly bitter things after all.
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Well she was Grand-Enchanter, a former Warden. So many other complicated things all wrapped up in there with Kieran the thing they danced about when he had told her, when if there was something she and Alistair shared long before a child then it was the pain of a childhood you wouldn't wish upon an animal. Unwanted and moved passed about for him, wanted only so much for what she might be in the end for her.
Much more makes sense. A piece slots into place that she thinks would cut them both if handled wrong but when has she been afraid of a dangerous thing or a sharp truth? Kieran's head jerks up, Alistair's face not hers because she's seen Alistair trying to hold himself together in the face of grief and loss on the road to Lothering. Quiet little offers of I'm sorry murmured to her with a beseeching look to his own mother, because mothers have a magic all their own, don't they?
"Gwenaelle," she says when she has her voice, when she knows she must be careful as she would with a wolf hunting in a cold hard winter, with a viper coiled to strike, a thing that might lash out and hurt them both but hurt itself worse because she has been that aching thing for so many other reasons. "I am so sorry. To lose her in such a way-- I cannot--"
And that is the problem, she thinks distantly, that she cannot, that motherhood is sometimes such a snare. That it has been for them both in different ways.
"The woman you spoke of before..in the eyes of all the world she was your mother as she was your father's lady wife. And she was your mother, I will not take that from you. But this loss...tis not one you can grieve. Nor one you can acknowledge outwith many walls." I will keep it safe for you, she thinks. Same as any thing ever said between them though this hangs more heavily when the damage it could do is so much greater for one young woman, when there are so many that would use it as a knife in her back or to her throat, to see her left with nothing at all in the world. The hearts of men and the hearts of the Court are ugly bitter things after all.