A bit of early sunlight crept in at the door flap, barely lighting the tent’s interior. She might as well not have slept at all, and her temples were throbbing. Since the day Lanfear had nearly killed her and Aviendha, the day the Forsaken and Moiraine had killed each other, her head always hurt after a visit to Tel’aran’rhiod, though never enough to be a real bother. Anyway, back home Nynaeve had taught her something of herbs, and she had managed to find a few of the right sort here in Cairhien. Sleepwell root would make her drowsy—or maybe, as weary she was, it might put her under for hours—but it would clear any vestige of a headache.

Climbing to her feet, she straightened her twisted sweat-soaked shift and padded across the layered carpets to the washbasin, a carved crystal bowl that had probably once held wine punch for some nobleman. In any case, it held plain water as well as the blue-glazed pitcher did, water that hardly felt cool at all when she splashed it on her face. Her gaze met her own eyes in the small gilt-framed mirror propped against the dark tent wall, and her cheeks crimsoned.

“Well, what did you think would happen?” she whispered. She would not have thought it possible, but her reflection’s face grew redder.

It had only been a dream, not like Tel’aran’rhiod, where what happened to you was real when you woke. But she remembered everything, just as if it had been real. She thought her cheeks might burn right off. Just a dream, and Gawyn’s dream at that. He had no right to dream about her like that.

“It was all his doing,” she told her reflection angrily, “not mine! I had no choice in it!” Her mouth snapped shut ruefully. Trying to hold a man at fault for his dreams. And talking to a mirror like a goosehead.

Pausing at the door flap, she stooped to peer out. Her low tent stood on the edge of the Aiel encampment. The gray walls of Cairhien rose some two miles to the west across the bare hills, with nothing between except the charred ground where Foregate had once encircled the city. By the sharp cast to the light, the sun was just peeking over the horizon, yet Aiel already bustled among the tents.

No early rising for her this morning. After a whole night out of her body—her cheeks heated again; Light, was she going to go the rest of her life blushing over a dream? She was very much afraid she might—after that she could sleep until afternoon. The smell of cooking porridge was no competition for heavy eyelids.