Sheriam rounded on Alanna as soon as the Amyrlin was out of earshot. The Green Aes Sedai glowered and took it in silence. “You are mad, Alanna! A fool, and doubly a fool if you think I will go lightly on you just because we were novices together. Are you taken by the Dragon, to—?” Suddenly Sheriam became aware of Egwene, and the target of her anger shifted. “Did I not hear the Amyrlin Seat order you to your bed, Accepted? If you breathe a word of this, you will wish I had buried you in a field to manure the ground. And I will see you in my study in the morning, when the bell rings First and not one breath later. Now, go!”

Egwene went, her head spinning. Is there anybody I can trust? The Amyrlin? She sent us off chasing thirteen of the Black Ajah and forgot to mention that thirteen is just the number needed to turn a woman who can channel to the Shadow against her will. Who can I trust?

She did not want to be alone, could not stand the thought of it, and so she hurried to the Accepted’s quarters, thinking that tomorrow she would be moving there herself, and immediately after knocking pushed open Nynaeve’s door. She could trust her with anything. Her and Elayne.

But Nynaeve was seated in one of the two chairs, with Elayne’s head buried in her lap. Elayne’s shoulders shook to the sound of weeping, the softer weeping that comes after no energy is left for deeper sobs but the emotion still burns. Dampness shone on Nynaeve’s cheeks, too. The Great Serpent gleaming on her hand, smoothing Elayne’s hair, matched the ring on the hand Elayne used to clutch at Nynaeve’s skirt.

Elayne lifted a face red and swollen from long crying, sniffing through her sobs when she saw Egwene. “I could not be that awful, Egwene. I just couldn’t!”

The accident with the ter’angreal, Egwene’s fear that someone might have read the papers Verin had given her, her suspicions of everyone in that chamber, all these had been terrible, but they had buffered her in a rough, ungentle way from what had happened inside the ter’angreal. They had come from outside; the other was inside. Elayne’s words stripped the buffer away, and what was inside hit Egwene as if the ceiling had collapsed. Rand her husband, and Joiya her baby. Rand pinned and begging her to kill him. Rand chained to be gentled.

Before she was aware of moving, she was on her knees beside Elayne, all the tears that should have fallen earlier coming out in a flood. “I couldn’t help him, Nynaeve,” she sobbed. “I just left him there.”