She struggled to open her eyes, the heavy feeling of magical exhaustion pressing in on her. She felt weak as a newborn kitten in the spring, and her right hand felt stiff and heavy, as if her fingers were swollen. She couldn't remember much of anything after shifting and attacking the immortal. She knew she had won the fight, knew she had stumbled back out of the clearing...knew she had seen him standing there, magic spewing out of him unharnessed and overwhelming. The last thing she had felt was the darkness of his magic frantically reaching for her...then nothing.

She tugged, attempting to bring hand to forehead, but it didn't budge. Her eyelids flickered open, gaze falling on her hand...noting it was grasped in two much larger ones. Long fingers threaded between the space left in her own, and she realized the swollen feeling was simply the largeness of him, pressed so close. Their hands didn't really fit that well together she realized, even as the feeling of completeness enveloped her. Her eyes flicked up to his. He brought their entwined hands up to his lips, kissing the back of her hand, and reached his other hand out to brush the curl obstructing her vision back. She saw him swallow, and opened her mouth to reassure him that despite how she felt, she was very much alive.

"Shhhh...sweet," he choked on the words, and she could tell from the sound that he had been crying. "Don't try and console me Daine." He looked away, even as he pulled his chair closer to her. They were in an inn she realized, her body becoming aware of the coarseness of the roughhewn wool blanket covering her. The shutters to the one window in the room were pulled tight, but she could see at the edges that no light was seeping through. Night had fallen. She struggled to sit up, but he stood, moving to sit on the bed, and pushing her shoulders back down. "Don't get up yet sweetling. You drained yourself." He stroked her curls again, and she felt the tremor running through him. He was still full of magic, even after today. He stared at her, and she saw his lower jaw working over. She wondered if he was fighting anger...or something else.

"Mair..." her mouth felt dry, and he squeezed the hand he was still holding so tight that it hurt. He shook his head.

"I need to tell you something." There was an oddly tentative note to his voice. It was a tone she had heard him use with others, but never with her. She squeezed his hand weakly, even that taking strength she didn't feel like she possessed at the moment. "I should have told you a long time ago really...when I first realized it. I'm not sure now why I didn't." He shifted closer. "Maybe you already know," he was muttering now. "But I need to tell you now...especially after today. I don't think I could live with myself if something happened and you didn't know..."

"Numair..." She pushed up past him so that she was sitting facing him. It took considerable effort, and she tried to hide the pain that shot through her with the exertion, but knew he would see it. "Numair?" she repeated. She could hear the worry in her own voice. He smiled, and his free hand absently stroked her knee beneath the wool blanket.

"You're my best friend Magelet." His bottom lip trembled, and Daine had the sudden urge to cry herself. She shifted closer, forcing him to raise his arm and tuck it around her. He leaned down and kissed the crown of her curls. "You are the person I care about most in this world. I didn't recognize it for the longest time, but you are the first person I want to see when I wake up. You are the last person I think of when I go to sleep at night. When something happens, you are the first person I seek out to tell. When a new working comes to fruition, you are the only person I am interested in discussing it with." He inhaled, and his hand, absently or on purpose, moved higher up on her thigh. She shivered, and he tucked her closer under the wing of his arm. "You are the person I worry about most in this war," he whispered. "I can't..." he choked. "I can't let another day go by without you knowing how much you mean to me...how you are my best friend, my person, the person who truly matters the most to me..." She felt the dampness of tears on her hair, even if she couldn't hear them in his voice. He pulled back and stared into her eyes, and she could tell he really needed her to hear this, that he was trying to tell her something. He sounded almost desperate. "...how its been that way pretty much since you called me back from being a hawk." It sounded like a revelation, and Daine felt the meaning of it slide into her very core, twisting around the copper fire that held her very life force.

She found his hand again, threading the long fingers through hers. "You're my person too Numair." She could see his body visibly relax. "In fact," she smiled. "You are the only human I love so much to be part of my pack." The look of relief and contentment that crossed his face was enchanting, and she struggled to tear her eyes away. She leaned forward, pressing her forehead into the bare skin exposed by the v in his tunic. They sat that way for a long while. Daine had almost fallen back asleep, lulled by the warmth of him, and reassured by the metronome of his breathing, when he spoke again.

"I wish we could stay like this sweet..." his arms pressed her tighter. "There isn't anything I want more right now than to spend a quiet evening with my best friend." She felt the heaviness of his sigh. He was silent for an extended time.

"But Jon has need of us in Legann..."