“Oh, I won't ever touch it again. Not if I have to cut my hand off, first.” What if I can't stop? I never tried to wield it, not even at the Eye. What if I can't stop?
“Will you go home, Rand? Your father must be dying to see you. Even Mat's father must be dying to see him by now. I'll be coming back to Emond's Field next year. For a little while, at least.”
He rubbed his palm over the hilt of his sword, feeling the bronze heron. My father. Home. Light, how I want to see ... “Not home.” Someplace where there aren't any people to hurt if I can't stop myself. Somewhere alone. Suddenly it felt as cold as snow on the balcony. “I'm going away, but not home.” Egwene, Egwene, why did you have to be one of those ... ? He put his arms around her, and whispered into her hair. “Not ever home.”
In Agelmar's private garden, under a thick bower dotted with white blossoms, Moiraine shifted on her bedchair. The fragments of the seal lay on her lap, and the small gem she sometimes wore in her hair spun and glittered on its gold chain from the ends of her fingers. The faint blue glow faded from the stone, and a smile touched her lips. It had no power in itself, the stone, but the first use she had ever learned of the One Power, as a girl, in the Royal Palace in Cairhien, was using the stone to listen to people when they thought they were too far off to be overheard.
“The Prophecies will be fulfilled,” the Aes Sedai whispered. “The Dragon is Reborn.&
