Okay, here we go! I've had a couple of stalwarts sticking with me; just know that you guys are the best people, kay? And let the record show, I finished this fic, despite it taking forever! Also, seriously, thanks for reading; the encouragement I've gotten makes me want to keep writing.

"Elednor Edil-Amarandh na, come back to me."

There a was a breath, a pause, and then fire burned through Maerad, forcing her to the peak of nothingness and back again. Her body went limp, supported only by Cadvan's hands on her shoulders, and then she was squeezed into a different shape. Ragged and dirty and human, kneeling in a mirror to Cadvan, and she slipped her arms free of the pack still on her and threw them around his neck.

He buried his face in her neck, half-laughing, half-crying, but very quietly, while Maerad said his name at least four or five times, just grateful for the taste of speech in her mouth and saying the name that most meant comfort to her. They stayed on the floor for long moments in a tight embrace.

Eventually Cadvan pulled back enough to lean their foreheads together, and he hushed her when she started to shake with relief. "Well, Wolf," he murmured, and this close she could see the gentle glint in his deep blue eyes and the affection in the corner of his eyes, "I think I found your name after all, and also what I've been looking for all along."

Maerad laughed for the first time in… oh, months, and it felt so good she could hear her own surprise in it. "Me too," she said, and in a moment of impulsive joy leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek.

There were still things to be said, though, and shortly they helped each other to their feet, legs a little numb from kneeling so long, and Maerad a little shaky from a month of four feet. They sat down on the bed to talk, neither willing to be so far as the chair.

Maerad spoke of her time with the Winterking, astonished as the talked to find the feeling of… unhealthy infatuation dissolved by the distraction of her time since, and by the warmth of her new-found closeness to Cadvan. She told him about losing her fingers, how she turned into a wolf, about meeting Sirkana and about Dharin, all the way back to when she thought he was dead and played him a mourning-song. Cadvan started at that, and told her of his own dark time then—how he had thought that music a hallucination, his own heart giving voice to its pain.

They did not speak long of that time, but they spoke for a long while of everything else.

Sooner than later, both exhausted from their trip and from the emotional exertions of the day, they grew too tired to talk more. Maerad's could feel her blinks getting slower and longer, and after a long silence, yawned and started to get under the covers. "Come on then," she prompted when Cadvan didn't follow suit.

"Maerad!" Cadvan hissed, scandalized. He didn't get under the covers, but he didn't get off the bed either, which Maerad considered progress. Cadvan was as skittish as her, sometimes. Maerad's trauma was overcome by her trust in Cadvan; she guessed that Cadvan had to learn to trust himself also.

"We've been sharing a bedroll long since," Maerad said reasonably, "It's not exactly new. And… I want to be close to you still. We're pack."

"Well, but, it's different, now that… well…" Cadvan hesitated. "It's inappropriate."

"…Now that I am not a wolf?" Maerad said for him. "Cadvan. I never was. When I…" she took a deep breath; this would take courage from both of them. "When I slept in your bedroll, it wasn't for warmth, and it wasn't because I was a wolf." Cadvan looked away, as if in shame, or perhaps confusion.

She took his chin in her hand and drew his eyes back up to hers. "Cadvan Truthteller," she said quietly, "You have told me the truth for many miles now, not with words, but with action. Look into my eyes now and tell me what truth you see there."

He looked, and spoke even more quietly. "You love me." His voice wasn't questioning, and it didn't waver; but something in it still asked for validation. Maerad had rarely seen Cadvan so vulnerable, and her hand moved up to stroke the whiplash scar high on his cheekbone.

"Yes," she answered simply, and something of her own fear must have shown, because Cadvan reached up to cup her face, mirroring her own gesture. "For many reasons, and not… frivolously." She looked at him fiercely. "I know this is a conversation we've had many times, but Cadvan, truly: I am not a child. I haven't been for some time, though perhaps I was one when you first met me."

Cadvan gathered her into his arms, and she tucked her head into his shoulder. "I know, old soul," he murmured to her, "You've had to grow up fast. I just… I never wanted to be one of the things forcing you to."

Maerad wrapped her outside arm around his waist. "Cadvan, in all of this, you've been my safe place, my home and family, my conscience and keeper." She let her lips quirk upwards. "You couldn't force me into anything if you tried."

Cadvan let out a sigh, and Maerad could feel him relax significantly. A moment later he relaxed further, reclining to lay them back against the pillows. His hand stroked over her hair, reminiscent of long nights of him petting her fur, as a wolf. Maerad knew that before, she might have taken his silence as doubt, or cold; but now she could almost feel him thinking and processing. She was willing to wait for him.

After some sweet dragging moments where Maerad drowsed and compared Cadvan's smell from a human perspective (spicier, but her time as a wolf had taught her to smell the Light just the same), he murmured soft and strong in the speech: "I do love thee, Elednor."

Maerad buried her smile in his neck, inhaling Light and spice and love. "I know." Her use of the Speech was deliberate; she wasn't lying, and Cadvan, so unused to trust, had to accept hers.

He seemed to be willing to: he tipped up her chin and bent down his head and kissed her, light and tender enough to make Maerad's heart ache even as her body tingled. She pressed back lightly. Nothing about it was anything like the rough treatment at Gilman's Cot, or the pressure and panic of her learning experience with Dernhil, or the ice of Arkan's affection. It was warm and soft and as soothing as it was exciting. When they parted again, Maerad found herself smiling.

"I just don't want to push." Cadvan said.

"Then let's just rest," Maerad suggested. "We don't need to push, just let it grow."

And they kept each other warm till morning.