"I... don't think we've met and I don't have dream subtext on it either, no."

The man in white jogs up to them. He's actually quite young-looking, maybe in his mid-thirties, but with the look of someone whose twenties were very gruelling. "Leareth, if you were going to bring up the songs, don't, just, do not. I will throw a snowball at you. Who is this and what is she doing, um, flying over my head in the dream?"

"This is Belrun," Leareth says, and then gets stuck on saying the 'lifebonded' part, mostly because it's just occurred to him that Vanyel is pretty likely to find that upsetting. 

"I feel like flying is a very obvious thing to do in a dream. I refrain awake, you lose more Fetchers that way. ...is this some kind of magic dream? Leareth, do you have contagious magic dreams - anyway. Songs? I avoid Bards and am accordingly not up on current events."

"Vanyel here – from Valdemar, obviously – heroically won their war with Karse a couple of years ago," Leareth says. He seems to be trying not to have facial expressions. 

"I think it wasn't just me," Vanyel says dryly. 

"It was approximately just you." 

"Uh. Congratulations. ...if I'm in the way of your magic dream, or this is not a magic dream and you're just not very expository dream characters, can't quite tell which yet, I'm perfectly content to glide around for the duration," she adds.

"Oh, it's a magic dream," Vanyel says. "Leareth, what is she doing here?" 

Leareth glances at Belrun, lowers his voice. "What are you doing here? I did not think that - the situation - meant you would just turn up in all of my dreams. Unless it is only this one specifically." 

"I didn't do it on purpose! I do not normally have magic dreams."

"It must be related to the - other thing, then." Leareth glances at Vanyel. "I think we were about to have an important conversation, but–"

"I mean, I'm very curious," Vanyel says. "Also it's not like this is a huge secret anymore, that's kind of the whole point. If you know who she is and she isn't just some random person, I guess she can hang out while we talk. It just might be boring. Or gross. Or generally un-fun." 

"I'm not a random person, he knows who I am," confirms Belrun slowly. "And I can abandon a conversation I'm not getting anything out of but I'm not squeamish, so, uh, converse away, I guess. ...it's nice to meet you?"

"Short version is I did blood-magic at an important battle because I was dumb and was going to die otherwise and I kept it secret from almost everyone but then there was a different scandal and someone leaked it and I just went under trial with the Heralds' Court about it and they ended up deciding it was fine but I don't know if they were right," Vanyel says all in one breath. 

Belrun Fetches over a heap of snow to sit on. Opens her mouth to say something, pauses, glances at Leareth, subsides.

Leareth makes himself a seat as well and puts a heat-spell up between them. "Well, do you think that what you did was reasonable and justified?"

"...Yes," Vanyel says, with some obvious reluctance. "I mean, everything I did leading up to having to do that was stupid, but - given that I was in that position, I can't see that not doing it would've been better?" 

"What were your considerations?" Leareth says. He glances at Belrun. (He's weirdly tempted to offer to drape some of his cloak around her, but Vanyel is going to give him such a weird look if he does that.) 

"They were enemy soldiers and they were trying to kill me and I would have killed them anyway except I was out of magic. Due to being an idiot. I - don't see that it's really worse to have killed them for power?" 

"Ignore me if I'm just retreading context you both already have but is there even a treaty in place between Valdemar and Karse forbidding wartime blood-magic?"

"I would assume not given that the Karsite side was using it copiously," Leareth says dryly. 

Vanyel nods. "It's against Valdemar's Laws, and - the rules that apply to Heralds around acceptable use of Gifts, I mean. It's obviously not against Karsite law although Queen Karis might be trying to change that." 

"So the issue has absolutely nothing to do with the effect on the victim, and instead people are worried about - moral injury? Public relations? Isn't your Companion supposed to handle both of those for you, I thought that was what they were for."

"I think the concern is about - precedent, basically? Yfandes didn't repudiate me over it, obviously – she was mad but she also got it, she was there with me. But, the thing my aunt said is that it means something real that Heralds aren't supposed to do that kind of thing. Aren't supposed to even be capable of it, because our Companions would repudiate us if we were bad people. So everyone's really confused about what that means. Also the King is furious with me for not telling him two years ago when it originally happened, which is on me, I - thought nobody knew and what was the point, but I should've guessed there was a good chance it'd come out eventually in some giant scandal."