the wolves that eddy out of the corners of his eyes

[daughterofblood]

It's Jaenelle, but it's not her.

She's in the gardens outside the Keep, deceptively still--the witch-storm around her has grown for the past hour and a half, and as much as he wanted to rush out and hold her, safe in the knowledge that she was alive and sane, it was that growing psychic pressure that kept him away. So he's just watching, for now, waiting for her to let him in, but she's not.

*Witch-child,* he calls to her on a distaff thread, hoping that when (if?) she turns to him, he'll recognize what he sees.

She doesn't move for a long time, and when she does, all he sees are the lines carved around her too-young face. She's struggling to contain it, and she's still destabilized half the Keep with the rage she is, with no other outlet, taking out on herself.

She could kill him--he's aware of this, has always been aware of this, because his power is dark but hers is Dark. She could wipe him out with a thought, leave him little more than a whisper in the Darkness, could empty this Realm of everyone in it without a thought--although that had been a lesson that had been long and hard in coming, the acceptance that his daughter had to be more than simply that. Everything has a price, and the price for their power is death.

But Mother Night, she's so young.

So young, and learning things he had stupidly hoped she would never learn.

He doesn't know what angered her so badly he could feel it from so far away, from so deep inside of her, but he knows that if he hadn't been shielding her, she wouldn't have been able to leash the rage. That price feels pulled out of his sinews, leaving him hollow-boned; he feels like he's had all the stuffing sucked out of him, years taken off his admittedly already too-long life. But his pain is insignificant compared to the rage in her eyes when she looks at him and he knows that she is trying so hard not to kill him for being what he is.

Male?

Or dead?

"Witch-child," he says, and holds out his arms.

It's finally his daughter who creeps towards him.