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Chapter Text

Sylvanas knew her heart would be pounding if that were a thing it could do. She knew, logically, that the odds were stacked against them. But such was the way of infinite demon armies, in her experience. And so, it was just another day. A nice morning of target practice on the Broken Shore following some acrobatics on a decommissioned airship. Varian owed her one. She made a mental note as she sunk an arrow into the burning socket of a twisted green stone elemental’s eye.

It groaned and fell to the ground and her eyes darted over the battlefield. Half the troops were in flawless ranks. Her rangers. Of course. Her Forsaken.

She tilted her head to the side calmly to avoid a wayward axe and looked down her nose at the rest of the Horde army at the same time in an unrivaled display of talent and range.

“Re-form ranks!” She shouted across the battlefield drawing another arrow from her quiver and nocking it as she watched for responses to her order. It wasn't perfect, but it would have to do. Especially with the next wave coming.

Her rangers performed flawlessly - supporting the Horde warriors in the center of their v-formation. Each time one was sure to fall to a foe, a dark arrow changed the course of the doomed combatant’s life forever. With sharp eyes and a clear head, Sylvanas saw these moments. Created many of them, herself. But though her fighters would never tire, Vol’jin’s would. And did.

Sylvanas reminded herself that Vol’jin was certainly thankful for her military prowess as she ordered a full-scale move further up the ridge that would allow her archers a better vantage on both the skies over the Alliance and their own troops. Keep the demons at arm's length for a little longer.

Just not long enough.

Her ears were sharp enough to know the sound of a familiar voice bellowing in pain. Her ears pressed back and she let loose an arrow that found its intended target despite how she was looking around.

“Vol’jin!” She shouted, and time slowed as he fell. As his tusk shattered and his eyes sought her out. She doubled over her skeletal mount and it's hooves pounded into the stony earth as she cut a swathe across the battlefield to get to him.

Not today, you son of a bitch. She thought to herself as she reached down and dragged him up into her saddle in front of herself.

He groaned as she adjusted him so she would have at least a modicum of room to maneuver and re-asses.

Things sure didn't look good.

She clenched her jaw and one of her ears flicked in a display of her irritation as Vol’jin spoke.

“Do not let the Horde die this day…,” he croaked, and Sylvanas made a face and looked away from him back towards their struggling army.

A little dramatic, she thought, but she knew enough to know when a fight was lost. She raised her horn to her mouth and sounded for their retreat.

Even as she road towards their waiting ship, her Val’kyr swooped in to take her place - scooping up as many wounded into their arms as they could.

“Take him,” Sylvanas shouted to the Tauren shaman waiting on deck. “His wound is already festering. Do not let the poison spread.”

The shaman looked down at the crumpled warchief in his arms and then back up at the Dark Lady. He meant to say something, but his words stuck in his throat as she drew herself up on her mount and turned her head at the sound of a different kind of shouting.

One of her rangers. She turned her horse in time to meet her near the ramp she was waiting near. One of her captains. For her to leave her post mid-retreat, the interruption was worthy, Sylvanas knew.

“What is it, Velonara?”

“My Lady, the Alliance,” Velonara said gravely. “They've been overrun. And they have left their king.”

Again, time slowed for the Queen of the Forsaken. The panicked and pained voices around her became distant and muffled as she looked into Velonara’s eyes.

She could not afford this loss. She could not afford the political unrest that would undoubtedly come with the death of the High King. And, more importantly, she did not know if she could ever take a child seriously at a negotiation table.

Sylvanas’s eyes slipped shut for a moment and she released a slow breath before she opened them again. “Get them to safety, Velonara. I will join you again as soon as I can.”

“Yes, Dark Lady,” Velonara said, and with that, Sylvanas was gone - riding back into, and through, the fray before the shaman she'd left behind, mouth agape, could even protest if he had the spine to. She leapt from her mount's back as she reached the edge of the ridge and it crumbled into bone and dust as she drew its power back into herself. She would need it, she knew, as she saw Varian facing an endless wall of demons. And Gul’dan.

She'd have let out a wail for the dreadlords’ deadly weapons heading for Varian’s back if she thought it might have helped. But she knew it was too late to warn him. And even as the demons lowered him, impaled, to his knees, she grit her teeth as she flew across the broken earth to reach him.

“You will be remembered,” Gul’dan’s sickly grumble of a voice grated over her as her feet flew. “As the king who sacrificed his life,” she narrowed her eyes as he watched a vile concoction of magic manifest in his outstretched palm. “For-,”

His voice and all other sounds were nothing compared to her wail. Nothing, compared to the fury and the power. Rocks from the wall behind Gul’dan’s portal shook and crumbled and fell. He looked up in shock at the sight of her, arms outstretched. Half real, half not. Half Queen, half Banshee.

She plummeted to the earth and blanketed everything around her in darkness.

“Has no one ever told you about monologuing, Gul’dan?” Her voice was a hollow, terrible echo of a murmur in his ears, but he knew somehow that it came from no direction in particular. That it originated from the shadows itself.

The demons holding the spears that skewered Varian fell. Drained. They became husks before the shadow had even begun to clear, and from the very bones they were made up of, Sylvanas made herself a new escape route. A terrible mockery of white could've been a horse, but looked more like something from the back alley of a butchery come to life.

“Sylvanas! What…are you…doing?” Varian managed to gasp as she gathered him to herself under the cover of the darkness she had created.

“Saving your life, Varian,” Sylvanas snapped as she tossed him up onto the back of her would-be horse. He choked and groaned loudly as she swung up into the beast behind him. “Hush. You're fine.”

“Am I?” Varian demanded, and Sylvanas tsk’d as she peered through the shadows at the demons that were approaching blindly to take their fallen comrades' place.

Sylvanas glanced down at him quickly as their mount made a sound of alarm when the demons drew closer. An awful sound that a horse had no business making. She looked at the broken blades protruding through the front of his body. Quickly ran through her mind all the possible internal injuries he might have incurred.

“Yes,” she said simply, and quickly turned her mount in the direction of the shore. As it sprang forth, Sylvanas extended a hand to her side and wings sprang forth from the beast’s sides. Varian lurched and grunted in pain as it took off, and Sylvanas bent herself over him and drew the first of many arrows it would take to rod the sky of the fel bats trying to stop them.

“No,” Sylvanas said adamantly as she clapped Varian’s cheek with her gloved hand. He jerked and his eyes snapped open so he could look up at her.

“You will not sleep while I lug your giant body across the sea,” Sylvanas scolded him as her hand returned to the wad of cloth she'd pressed against what seemed to be his most grievous wound.

Her creation’s wings beat slow and silent in the green haze of air to either side of them as Varian kept staring up at her.

“What?” Sylvanas asked, eyes flicking down to him and back up again.

“You slapped me.”

“You have two blades running you through and you are worried about a slap,” Sylvanas observed evenly. “How typical.”

“I'm not worried about it, it was just an observation,” Varian grumbled, wincing and reaching for the blade-filled wound Sylvanas was putting pressure on.

“Don't,” Sylvanas warned without looking at him, squinting her eyes as she peered into the distance. “No need making anything worse now when your airship is just there.”

“You can't possibly mean to board that ship riding this thing,” Varian managed to rasp out. He'd lost so much blood. So much. “They'll shoot us down before you ever get close.”

“I can and I will board your ship, Varian Wrynn. You nor I have enough time to fly you to Stormwind.”

Even now, Sylvanas could hear the commotion in the distance as they were sighted. Her beast, more clever than any natural-born thing, avoided each slow-moving cannon shot. And when canons became bullets, it took the brunt of their damage without complaint - allowing the rounds to sink into its rotting flesh instead of Sylvanas or the king she held.

Only when they were close enough for her shout to be heard, did she bother.

“Hold your fire!”

The commotion stopped for a moment. Long enough for her to guide her mount into a deadly downward fall, too fast to be targeted by any human marksman.

They landed on deck in shadow Sylvanas had summoned to cushion their fall and she dismounted in one fluid motion as the shadow began to dissipate.

“Betrayer!” Genn growled, the smoke from his shifting into a form much more threatening than his aging human one still settling. “You dare?!”

“Me?” Sylvanas asked evenly with a tilt of her head. “I am not the one who left my king on my own battlefield.”

Genn snapped his jaws at her and whatever words he'd intended to say came out in a growl as he began to advance on her.

“I”, she continued, unmoving. “Am the one who has returned him to you.”

Genn stopped in his tracks when he realized there were already soldiers unloading Varian from the back of the foul monstrosity that had carried Sylvanas here.

“He's lost blood,” Sylvanas said simply. She was so close to Genn she could smell his breath. Dog. “Direct your energy towards your king, Old Wolf. I have my own wounded to tend to.”

He would have snarled again were every officer onboard not looking directly at him. And then at Sylvanas.

Genn blinked and looked around himself and then at Varian who was being carried towards the captain’s quarters.

“Allow the Banshee safe passage!” He growled, and Sylvanas looked him up and down once more before she returned to her mount and was gone without uttering another word.

“Sylvanas!” Lor'themar shouted the moment she landed in the monotonous red earth of Orgrimmar. She looked around at all the clay and spikes and then, finally, at Lor'themar. “We weren't sure you'd made it! Velonara couldn't even tell us where you'd gone!”

“I'm not a child, Lor’themar. I saved our troops and our Warchief. I saw to it they would be brought home. I thought it might be wise to save Wrynn while I was feeling magnanimous,” The gravely-wounded beast behind her was finally allowed to find its merciful end with a wave of Sylvanas’s hand, then. “Do you disagree?”

“I..” Lor’themar stammered for a moment before recovering. “You saved Varian Wrynn?”

“Assuming he doesn't bleed out,” Sylvanas sighed. “But probably. How is Vol’jin doing?”

Lor'themar’s face fell and Sylvanas narrowed her eyes at him.

“He’s called for you,” Lor'themar said simply, and with far too much gravity for her liking.

Sylvanas shook her head and followed Lor'themar into the dark chambers Vol'jin had been brought to. Past tattered read curtains over worn wooden boards until she was standing in the darkness near the center of the room sharing the space with far too many people intent upon eyeing her for her liking.

She heard Vol’jin rattle out a cough as she looked around. That didn't sound good.

“Windrunner…”

Shit.

“Warchief?”

“The Loa spirits say death will claim me soon,” he husked as he lifted his hand from his wound.

“In the end, death claims us all,” she said, and Lor'themar cut his eyes at her sharply from the corner of the room. She ignored him pointedly. “But the Horde will live on.”

She wondered if Lor'themar was pleased now or more irritated.

“I have never trusted you.”

Sylvanas pressed her lips into a thin line. That seems a bit harsh, all things considered. This is hardly the venue for-

“Nor would I have ever imagined, in our darkest time,-”

Finally. Some recognition.

“That you would be the one to save us.”

Wait.

“The spirits have granted me clarity. A vision.”

No. No, they most certainly have not.

“They whisper a name.”

Not mine.

“Many will not understand. But you must step out of the shadows…and lead.”

Sylvanas stood there in stunned silence for a moment as the room turned its full attention to her following a series of gasps and murmurs. She looked away from Vol’jin towards a wide-eyed Lor'themar. At a rather scandalized-looking Baine.

“Get a portal opened right now. My apothecaries are at the ready as they always are following a battle. Simple fel poisoning won't be any great challenge for them.”

Vol’jin reached out a hand to her in protest as the light in his eyes began to fade, and she lifted a hand to him in return. “You are in your death throes. As a former sufferer of…throes, I assure you we're liable to see and hear any number of things, none of them accurate and all of them just our conscious mind trying to make sense of our thoughts firing away even as we can no longer perceive them properly. You might not feel better soon, but you will feel alive shortly.”

Not even a moment later, Sylvanas could hear a gaggle of Forsaken apothecaries scrambling to heed the call of their mistress, and she gestured at the dying warchief.

“Fel,” she said simply. “Legion-related.”

“Ah, I have just the thing,” Master Apothecary Faranell said in his gravelly voice. “Might be a touch bitter going down.”

The way he sounded oddly delighted as he approached their warchief with a vial in his outstretched hand left the entire room save Sylvanas on high alert.

“He's dying anyway,” Sylvanas said flatly as Baine took a step forward. “What will it hurt?”

He grumbled and huffed out a breath as Faranell poured the green-glowing liquid past Vol’jin’s greying lips.

Immediately, convulsions resulting from his coughing in protest of the rancid concoction brought more life to his body than he'd seen since their arrival back in Orgrimmar. He cursed and stammered and choked for breath, but all the while, the green, putrid wound in his chest grew smaller and smaller until, finally, it was just a wound. Tendrils of corruption no longer spread from it. It no longer stank, Sylvanas noted with relief. Not that she was particularly sensitive. But Orgrimmar had enough smells to adjust to as it was.

“There, now,” Faranell said, sounding more than a little pleased with himself as he patted Vol’jin on the hand with the bones that were his fingers. “Doesn't that feel better?”

Vol’jin glared daggers at him - a look of sickened reproach on his face. “What vile brew have you forced down my gullet?”

“It's…medicine, Warchief,” Faranell said, choosing his words wisely and carefully. “Though I would recommend a great deal of rest following this. Poison’s gone, but if you try and get that wound healed by anything other than time before this antidote works its way through your body, the reaction might kill you.”

Even as Faranell was issuing his advice, Sylvanas was using the opportunity he was creating to slip back towards the entrance to the room. Lor'themar caught her arm and pulled her into the small circular center area and Sylvanas shrugged his hand away from her arm in irritation.

“You think you can slip away after all you've done today?” He asked in a hushed whisper. “After saving the High King? Saving our Warchief? Where do you intend to go?”

“Away.”

Sylvanas’s voice was firm. Quiet enough that those inside still fussing over Vol’jin wouldn't hear, but still loud enough to get her point across.

“You will do no such thing,” Lor'themar chided, glancing over his shoulder just to be sure they were still alone. “We have much here to discuss, and I am a poor substitute for you.”

“But you so enjoy talking, Theron,” Sylvanas said, and Lor'themar stared at her, silent and stony.

“Fine,” Sylvanas sighed bitterly. “A moment of peace to clear my thoughts and I'll return.”

“That's a little more sensible,” Lor'themar said almost haughtily, and Sylvanas cast a warning gaze in his direction before she finally slipped away.

Sylvanas sighed heavily into her arms where she'd lain her head as she heard approaching footsteps. She took comfort in the knowledge that one of her rangers was likely the only person in Orgrimmar who could've found her.

“My lady,” Velonara’s voice was quiet. Full of sympathy and understanding. She, too, was not a fan of the heat and the light and the noise. “How fare you?”

Sylvanas slowly lifted her head and gestured towards the other end of the sofa. One of her few requests for her small, modest room in Orgrimmar. At least the sun wouldn't penetrate here. The Cleft of Shadows had been another request.

“I am vexed,” Sylvanas said, her eyes following Velonara as she moved to sit with her.

Velonara chuckled and nodded her head before she leaned it back against the sofa and stared up at the ceiling through the darkness that didn't affect her vision in the least. “There is talk of a council to organize this war against the Legion in Vol’jin’s stead.”

“Better than the alternative,” Sylvanas said dryly.

“They mean to ask you to lead it,” Velonara followed without missing a beat.

“Well, fuck,” Sylvanas muttered, looking down at her hands in her lap.

“Entirely your fault for being a military genius, My Lady,” Velonara said, and Sylvanas looked at her with a frown.

“I suppose it is,” Sylvanas said, only half-joking. “Very well. Is this my summoning, then?”

“It is, though I doubt they thought I would find you so quickly. No one saw you come here.”

“Of course, not,” Sylvanas said with a quiet, tired-sounding laugh. “Alright, my esteemed escort. Take me to whatever fresh hell awaits me, now.”

Sylvanas used every ounce of her steel will to keep her ears from sliding back and pressing against her skull when she saw an entourage awaiting her in front of Grommad Hold.

They looked at her differently as she approached with her head held higher than was likely necessary. She was just so used to doing it. It wasn't until she really looked at them that she realized they had all bowed her heads to her.

“Sylvanas,” Baine’s deep rumble of a voice surprised her. Particularly the part where he was addressing her. “We are, all of us, in your debt. Your actions this day have brought glory to the Horde in the face of what is to come. Perhaps the most powerful foe ever to come knocking at our door. To have faced such a thing after such a demoralizing loss as a Warchief would have made this…much more difficult than it already will be. I may not speak for everyone present, Sylvanas, but I see you through new eyes today. As such, I humbly request you lead our war efforts as part of the council we mean to enact while Vol’jin makes his recovery.”

“I accept,” Sylvanas said without thought or hesitation. She'd done all her thinking on her walk back from the cleft. There was no thinking left to be done. And at least this she was confident in. This was a burden that felt like home. “Your request.” She clarified.

Not his would-be group apology. Not his hollow compliments. Not today.

He grunted softly and bowed his head again.

“I would arrange a feast in your honor,” Baine said, “but there is much to be done, and Lor'themar insisted it wasn't necessary.”

“I don't eat,” Sylvanas said, lifting a brow.

Baine grunted again. If he found her as impossible as she was trying to be, he didn't let on. Sylvanas internally applauded his patience. “Very well. There are many, I think, who are in need of food. And of rest. We've arranged our first meeting with the Alliance in the morning.”

“I would have gone in your stead if you had declined,” Lor'themar said. He could already hear Sylvanas coldly accusing them of being presumptuous and he wanted to avoid the inevitability of it. “Of course.”

“In the morning, then,” Sylvanas agreed. “Has Vol’jin been moved? I would utilize the Hold and go over everything you have on Horde troops and supplies while the rest of you take your reprieves.”

“Of course,” Baine said. “He's in the Valley of Spirits, now. He insists upon being moved back here tomorrow. That's a fight I'll be better suited for in the morning. Should you need anything, there will be guards posted to be at your disposal through the night.”

“I need only my rangers and their keen eyes,” Sylvanas said, and without being asked, Velonara and Lenara stepped forward.

Baine looked from Sylvanas and her rangers to the Horde entourage behind him. He seemed almost uncomfortable with the silted efficiency in which Sylvanas operated, yet he couldn't find any real fault with it. This was wartime, now, after all. He should have counted it as a blessing.

“Good night, Baine,” Sylvanas said, and he felt relief wash over him. At the glimmer of normalcy. “Council.” she continued, nodding to them all on her way past them and into the Hold.

They all stared after her, half in disbelief, half in wonder, before they finally decided they should take what could be one of their last opportunities to truly rest for the foreseeable future.

Chapter Text

“You shouldn't even be up,” Jaina said as she glowered at Varian across the larger-than-life map Varian had been pouring since the grey light of dawn first began falling over Stormwind. It didn't reach the war room, though - tucked away beyond the throne room. Never too far away.

“I've been healed. I'm fine.” Varian said as he moved one of the ships on his map to reflect the latest message he'd received regarding his furthest fleet’s coordinates. “And the Horde embassy will be here soon.”

Jaina’s expression darkened. “Right. Well, your peace and quiet will be over even sooner, because Genn is on his way to provide a voice of reason against your sudden, inexplicable love of the Horde.”

“Jaina, don’t start. Please. I don’t have the strength for this today,” Varian sighed as he leaned forward against the map table and looked over it at her. “I'm begging you.”

“I just happen to be of the mind that-,”

Jaina fell silent at the sound of approaching footsteps. Very, very close approaching footsteps. Had she truly been so preoccupied she hadn't sensed a portal opening?

She turned to see none other than Sylvanas Windrunner, flanked by two dark rangers, entering the war room accompanied by one of the Stormwind Guard.

Yes. Yes, she had been so preoccupied.

She'd never seen Sylvanas like this. Her ranger escorts were dressed like she'd seen them any other time, but Sylvanas looked…strangely like a diplomat in her black breeches and riding boots and high-collared, dark, royal purple jacket. The silver filigree along the cuffs and collars and the bottom hem that hung to the tops of her boots looked a strange mix of both vaguely elven and vaguely like some display of military ranking.

Jaina would never say it aloud, but the Dark Lady’s clothing choice and the very way she carried herself were impeccable for this moment. Calculated, Jaina was sure. This woman knew she could command a room without speaking and she'd chosen to put that knowledge on full display.

The little entourage came to a stop not too far into the room and the guard took an additional step forward.

“The Horde envoy, Majesty. Ranger-Captain Velonara, Ranger Lenara, and Lady Sylvanas Windrunner, Queen of the Forsaken.”

“You're early,” Jaina said with a forced smile. “I hope your journey was without complication.”

Varian looked over at Jaina slowly, his face a mask of nigh unreadability. Sylvanas found him amusing, nonetheless.

“Lady Jaina Proudmoore,” Sylvanas greeted evenly - inclining her head from across the room as her rangers left her side to retreat to the edge of the room once the guard slipped away. They didn't need to be close to her to provide whatever protection she might need. Though no one in this room was under the impression that she needed protecting. “Archmage of the Kirin Tor. I'm certain you would have heard by now had our journey gone sideways. We thank you for your concern, and the king for his hospitality. I might offer you my hand were I not afraid of it not being returned to me.”

Jaina was already deciding how she was going to get across the depths of her indignance in a politically acceptable fashion when Varian snorted softly and she cut her eyes at him - furious, but silently so. Subtly so.

Or at least that's what Sylvanas assumed her smoldering look in Varian’s direction was. “I jest, Archmage,” Sylvanas said with a soft smile and another tilt of her head. “In these trying times, we should be loathe to relinquish our sense of humor.” An apologetic gesture Jaina immediately hated, because it was so well put-on that she couldn't even find fault with it.

“Agreed,” Varian said - standing from his seat and walking across the room to where Sylvanas was standing. Jaina watched pointedly as Varian bent his head towards her extended hand when he took it into his own. “Lady Windrunner,” he continued as he let go of her hand and smiled faintly at her. “I regret I was not conscious enough to thank you for your bravery and selflessness by the time we boarded the airship. You'll be happy to know that I'm healing well from the bruises on my ribs courtesy your own rough handling and your bony beast.”

“And the wounds from your being twice-impaled?” Sylvanas asked with a wry smile. “Much less grievous than the ones I gave you in saving your life, I hope.”

Jaina blinked from across the room. Of course, she'd been relieved to receive word in Dalaran that Varian had made it back to Stormwind intact. She had not, however, realized just how grave the situation had been. And she most certainly hadn't known Sylvanas had saved him.

Even as Jaina took that information in to process at a much, much later date - Khadgar walked in with an uncharacteristically grim expression in his wrinkled face. All eyes were on him as he glanced first at Sylvanas and Varian, then at Jaina.

“We need to talk, Jaina,” Khadgar said. “We all do.”

“What's happened now?” Jaina asked with a furrow between her brows as she approached the war table and sat down at it.

“Two things, and quickly. I had planned to discuss this with you upon your return, but it's recently become very apparent that it can't wait. I'll keep this short. We need to move Dalaran, Jaina. And the Horde must be allowed back in.”

“Absolutely not,” Jaina said without hesitation.

Sylvanas’s ears shifted subtly as she looked from Khadgar to Jaina and back again. “And what is the point of what we are doing here right now if not?” She asked simply. Calmly.

“Jaina, we can't fight the Burning Legion as a world divided. You must see that,” Varian implored from the seat he'd taken next to her. “You must know that.”

Jaina had never stopped looking across the table at Sylvanas. She didn't understand how eyes that burned with barely-contained fire could seem so cold. She found the Dark Lady’s presence so disconcerting. From the way her chest never rose or fell unless she was speaking to the way her body was as still as a sculpture.

“After everything the Horde has done, you expect me to believe this is in any way a good idea?” Jaina asked, looking away from Sylvanas quite suddenly. Strange how it felt like she'd lost some sort of unspoken contest.

Just when Sylvanas had been about to speak, Genn’s voice wheedled from the door to the war room. “I agree with Jaina. They can't suddenly be trusted just because there are a few demons afoot

Yes, wheedled, Sylvanas thought as she didn't even look over her shoulder in response to his apparent entrance. Wheedled was a good word for the utter lack of power in his voice when he was his real human self. The wheedle of a coward who hides behind walls.

“Now isn't the time,” Varian said both suddenly and firmly. All eyes turned to him. “For squabbles over banners and land and pride,” he continued. “Or past disputes. No matter how fresh they may feel.”

He looked across the room at Genn, then. And Sylvanas knew it.

“Fine,” Jaina finally said rather stiffly. “I will return to Dalaran and aid you in its relocation, and I will end the banishment of the Horde on a temporary basis. I refuse to commit to more than that.”

“So generous, Archmage,” Sylvanas said quietly. “And would you also free those Sin'dorei imprisoned in your Violet Hold, that they might aid our cause?”

Jaina clenched her jaw. Sylvanas could very well have brought up so much more than that. And she could've done the same, herself. It was easy to look at Sylvanas and not see the Quel’dorei. The Sin’dorei. It was easy to make her something ‘other’ in one's mind, and for her to bring it up so directly it up felt like a chastisement. Jaina wouldn't allow herself to feel as though it was deserved.

“All I can offer with any certainty is that I will take your question under consideration. That is an answer I cannot give on my own without the guidance of the council.”

“A fair response,” Sylvanas said impassively. Unreadably.

Khadgar cleared his throat, deciding to cash in his pot of relatively good fortune before his luck ran out. “We'd best be off to Dalaran. Jaina, I've taken the liberty of arranging temporary quarter for the Horde envoy in advance of your agreement to welcome them back into our city.”

Before Jaina’s frayed nerves finally got the better of her in response to Khadgar’s statement, the wizard opened a portal in the entryway of the war room near enough to where Genn was standing to leave his hair on end.

Sylvanas couldn't remember the last time she'd experienced such a heightened state of mental exhaustion. By now, Lor’themar had joined them in the tucked-away room they’d been at each other’s throats in for the better part of the day. Even Baine had said his piece more than once.

She had grown weary. Too weary.

“And how do you suggest we do that?” Genn asked. He’d shifted into his more imposing form before the factions’ leaders had even convened following the moving of the city. “How do you suggest we put aside the murders and atrocities and the treachery? After everything the Horde has done-”

“Has the Alliance not done just as much?” Sylvanas asked suddenly. It had been so long since she’d spoken nearly everyone at the table turned a surprised eye in her direction. “This is not a pissing contest, Greymane. The Burning Legion is back. Perhaps you don’t remember what this threat is capable of doing to our world. Perhaps you were locked too safely within your own walls and for too long. But I remember. And you should be able to look upon me and remember just as easily. We’ve wasted hours over petty squabbles. It’s clear we aren’t going to come to a resolution today. I suggest, while we hammer out the finer details of a possible truce, we encourage our hunters and our rogues and our warriors to ban together amongst themselves. To draw from the strength of their own covenants while their leaders - their voices at this table - fail them.”

Malfurion seemed to grumble to life from his end of the table. Tyrande remained silent and vigilant as he spoke - her sharp eyes glossing over every face at the table to gauge their reactions. “The Dreamgrove is open to those of Druidic inclination. Nature is nature, and cares little for tabards or banners.”

“The Crusade is still reeling from all that has been lost,” Lord Tyrosus said as he turned his attention from Malfurion to Lady Liadrin. “To not allow Paladins of the Light into Light’s Hope now would be folly, no matter their creed. Faction is nothing more than semantics, now. Lady Liadrin, it would be an honor to fight the Legion by your side.”

Sylvanas cut her eyes in Liadrin’s direction. She hadn’t taken part in many of their…discussions. She hadn’t spoken much at all, really. She was just a solid, stoic presence. A reminder at this table that, perhaps, there was righteousness in places other than Stormwind. She took her role very seriously.

“Folly it would be, indeed,” Liadrin said evenly - her deep voice somehow full of command despite its low volume. “Maxwell.” She said his name and smiled. Only faintly.

The human paladin across from her couldn’t help but smile and release a breath of a laugh, himself, as some of the tension eased from the room.

“Then we’ve given ourselves enough work for one day in getting these missives out to our finest champions,” Varian said, sounding surprisingly exhausted. “And more than enough headaches. I suggest we revisit the rest in the morning once those of us that need rest have had it.”

“Seconded,” Maxwell said, leaning back in his chair and mopping his brow with a cloth he kept tucked in his belt.

“I would comment on the sleepy nature of humans,” High Tinkerrer Mekkatorque said from the modified chair he was sitting in. “If our own Archdruid didn’t put everyone at this table to shame in the nap area.”

“Gelbin,” Jaina hissed from her place at the table - her eyes wide.

Malfurion grumbled again as he moved to stand up, but when Jaina looked over at him in response, he looked on the verge of a laugh even as Tyrande wore an expression of commiseration.

“What!” Gelbin exclaimed as he hopped down from his chair and began rolling up his scrolls and stowing his various map-related odds and ends. “I thought you might be proud I haven’t been neglecting my history studies.”

Sylvanas watched quietly as Genn stalked out of the room. As Liadrin grasped Maxwell’s forearm in a traditional elven greeting. As Khadgar chatted away happily with Baine and Gelbin. She also watched Jaina as she observed the same things Sylvanas was observing with tired, conflicted eyes. Until Jaina realized she was being watched and met Sylvanas’s gaze over the table. She wouldn’t lose this time, she told herself. She wouldn’t back down from it. Whatever this was. This time, it was Sylvanas that looked away. Jaina would’ve congratulated herself on her victory if she were at all sure they’d been competing for anything in the first place.

In the shuffle of everyone leaving, Jaina was left alone in the room with her thoughts. Or so she thought.

“Am I interrupting?”

Sylvanas had been lingering near the door. Jaina hadn’t even seen her. In fact, she barely saw her, now, in the shadows. Just two pinpricks of red and the subtle, dark outlines of her form.

“Interrupting what?” Jaina asked dryly as she continued about her task of straightening up.

“You should have someone do that for you,” Sylvanas said, finally stepping back into the room enough for Jaina to see her. She stood stiffly. Unnaturally still. “I would have assumed being the leader of the Kirin Tor would come with some perks.”

“It’s giving me something to do,” Jaina said, waving her hand over the table. Sylvanas watched as various crumbs and little wine spills suddenly dissipated to leave a sparkling surface in their wake.

Sylvanas was silent for a while, then. Long enough that Jaina was feeling uneasy in their shared silence. “Is there anything I can help you with? If you’re concerned about your accommodations-”

“You needn’t feign anything, Archmage. I only stayed to apologize for my comment this morning in Stormwind. I sense tension between us. I feared it might have been due to my remark about the safety of my hand. I’d rather it didn’t get in the way of what we’re all trying to do here.”

Jaina blinked at her. “You think the worst thing I’ve endured is a catty remark, Lady Windrunner? I assure you that isn’t the case. It’s all but forgotten.”

Sylvanas clenched her jaw and Jaina watched as she shifted her weight from one foot to the other. A momentary crack in the flawlessly carved and polished stone that was her demeanor.

“You think you can maintain some non-existent upper hand by establishing some sort of moral high ground over me, hm?” Jaina asked. “You think you can act as unaffected as all this. Like you want to be sharing a room with me or with any of them. You want to remove any and all leverage I have behind my reasonings by virtue of your very existence, but you can’t. I won’t let you.”

“You’re agitated,” Sylvanas said quietly. “I think once you’ve had a chance to rest and analyze, you’ll see that that isn’t the case at all. Have a good evening. But, Archmage, before I go…”

Jaina was teetering upon two entirely separate edges. She couldn’t decide whether to be irritated beyond belief with Sylvanas or comforted by her words and her tone. She decided she would continue to teeter.

“Yes?”

“You have a lovely city here,” Sylvanas said. No smile. No inflection in her tone. Just quiet confidence. More stoicism. “I assure you anyone in my charge appreciates your hospitality.”

Jaina’s long years of diplomacy and even her upbringing took over where her actual mind failed to catch up. “Of course, Lady Windrunner. I…should you need anything…-” Jaina trailed off. She hadn’t wanted to offer anything at all. Perhaps Sylvanas wouldn’t pick up on it.

“I won’t,” Sylvanas said easily, and said nothing more as she turned and vanished into the dark of the silk-curtained corridor outside of their meeting room.

“Are we going to be killed or imprisoned in our sleep?” Velonara asked dryly as she placed Sylvanas’s bags down inside of her room. She’d refused the help of the offered Kirin Tor attendants. She didn’t trust them with her armor. Her arrow material. Her maps. Anything, really.

“Not that I’m aware of,” Sylvanas sighed as Lenara approached her from behind and helped her out of her jacket carefully. The piece had been rush-ordered from Silvermoon and no small amount of magic had gone into its expedited crafting. It had been a long while since Lenara had seen anything like it so close. “But I can have a portal to the Undercity opened for you both. I’m sure between the new Dalaran Forsaken guard wandering around and the Sin’dorei, I’ll have more than my fair share of protection. From the Sin’dorei probably more to spite Proudmoore and my esteemed sister than anything else.”

“Do you think we’d miss a chance at that spitefulness ourselves?” Velonara asked with a smirk as she went to work unpacking her Lady’s armor alongside Lenara. “Not on your many lives, Sylvanas.”

Sylvanas mirrored her smirk and snorted softly as she found her bow waiting for her on a stand near the door. She immediately re-strung it, not sparing a moment of thought as to how she’d never have been able to so much as bend it in life. The strength would serve her all the better against the legion.

Silver linings.

Sylvanas rolled her eyes as she thought that ridiculous thought and tested the draw of her bow before she placed it back on its stand.

“Sixty,” Lenara said, passing Sylvanas’s quiver and the additional bundle of arrows she’d unpacked to Velonara. “I can have another hundred done by morning if you’re up to the task of helping me split the feathers.”

Sylvanas blinked away the thought that this was familiar. She refused to think about these very same conversations in the warm forests of Quel’Thalas under the stars. Cheerful conversations, sometimes jeering out of good-natured, playful jealousy. It was an honor to be trusted to craft the Ranger General’s arrows, after all. An honor and a duty tasked to only the most skilled of the newly-inducted Rangers. Lenara had been her last fletcher.

“Sylvanas,” Velonara’s voice was insistent and Sylvanas’s head snapped in her direction. She wasn’t certain how she’d made it to the desk that had been provided for her. She didn’t remember pulling out the chair or sitting down. She inclined her head in Velonara’s direction nonetheless.

“Lost in your thoughts again?” Velonara asked, closing the drawstring on the pouch of feathers she’d located and hanging it from a hook on her belt. “I was just telling Lenara I would rather be in a city that was hostile to us just yesterday than Orgrimmar. I grow so tired of the heat and the spikes.”

“You can’t even feel the heat,” Sylvanas said dryly, though she was smiling faintly in amusement as she hung an arm over the back of her chair and looked behind herself in the direction of her rangers. “You just don’t like the way the sun washes out your complexion.”

“It’s the red, actually. Red roofs. Red dirt. Red everything. It clashes with every piece of armor and every article of clothing I own. And my complexion, thank you very much. But I imagine I would find the heat stifling, and temperature is a mental game.”

Sylvanas sighed and nodded in both understanding and agreement and then waved at the rug in front of the hearth in her room. “I won’t be sleeping this evening if you’d prefer to work on those arrows here.”

“As though you ever sleep,” Lenara said quietly, sitting down on the rug nonetheless. “You could try tonight, though. To rest at the very least. I’m not used to seeing you look tired, and you look tired.”

“She’s right,” Velonara said, not even looking down at her task as she slid her knife perfectly up the center of a feather and added the halves to a stack she was currently making for Lenara. “You could shut your eyes for an hour or two while we work.”

Sylvanas looked away from them towards the bed and sighed softly. She wasn’t overly fond of beds anymore, really. Her eyes shifted, instead, towards the sofa near the fireplace and she stood from the desk and made her way over. Velonara watched from the corner of her eye as Sylvanas removed her boots and stretched out along the sofa’s length. She set her jaw against the swell of…not emotion, exactly - in her chest. Never that.

Protectiveness wasn’t really an emotion. Knowing that she would sink an arrow between the eyes of anyone who dared disturb Sylvanas how she was right now with her eyes shut and the light of the magefire playing over her pallid skin. That wasn’t an emotion. That was just part of being what she now was.

The room was so quiet. Lenara’s hands. Velonara’s knife. Sylvanas’s unmoving body. None of them could be heard over the gentle crackling of magical flame. In their shared silence, Lenara moved closer to Velonara and leaned into her and, without needing to be asked, the Ranger Captain adjusted her legs so that they were splayed out over the rug instead of folded under her. Lenara immediately laid down with her head resting Velonara’s thigh - never faltering in her task.

Chapter Text

Sylvanas’s eyes snapped open quickly. Her scalp prickled and her ears twitched as she looked around the room.

Velonara and Lenara were already standing - their task abandoned and their ears at attention as they stared towards the window of the tower that was their temporary home in Dalaran.

Shit. Sylvanas thought to herself as she swiftly moved from the sofa and tugged her boots on all while heading towards her bow. “What is it?” She asked, her thoughts and her speech not the least bit muddled despite the sleep-like state she’d just been roused from.

“Something is coming,” Velonara said simply. “And the city sleeps.”

“The city is fucking deaf if it yet sleeps,” Sylvanas grumbled, throwing her quiver on over her back and tossing Velonara her bow once she’d collected her own. “Perhaps if they didn’t have such a strong aversion to people with functioning ears, there would be an alarm sounding already.”

Velonara chuckled dryly despite the continued forecast of possible impending doom, and both her and Lenara followed Sylvanas as she burst through the door. They froze in their tracks when, in the darkness of the corridor outside, the figure of their General became tangled with that of another. They kept watching in stunned, concerned silence as that combined set of figures promptly wound up on the floor.

“Deaf and blind. Everyone in this city is-,” Sylvanas spat as she untangled herself and got swiftly to her feet so she could look down at what she could only assume was a page or an errant cleaner. “...useless.” She finished, because she always finished what she started.

Even when that page or errant cleaner was the Archmage of Dalaran, herself.

“I’m fine,” Jaina said with a lift of one of her brows. “Though your concern is much appreciated and duly noted.”

“What are you doing here?” Sylvanas asked, too surprised at this turn of events to think of offering Jaina a hand. Jaina stood without it.

“In my tower, in my city? Going for a middle-of-the-night stroll, Lady Windrunner. What else would I be doing?” Jaina asked as she looked past Sylvanas to her rangers and then back again.

“This is hardly the time to be patronizing, I feel,” Sylvanas said, though she was having a difficult time not sounding chided. “I wasn’t aware you’d given us a room in your private suites.”

“There’s a saying about that, I think,” Jaina mused. “I can’t quite remember the specifics of it. How odd.”

“Keep your friends close and your enemies closer?” Lenara asked through the doorway.

Velonara delivered a quick jab to Lenara’s ribs that had Lenara clenching her jaw and looking very hard and very long at the floor.

“I’m sorry. I just want to feel something,” Lenara whispered under her breath, and Velonara cut her eyes sharply in the direction of her fellow ranger.

Jaina cleared her throat and Sylvanas narrowed her eyes almost imperceptibly before she spoke. “We were just heading to Krasus’ Landing for a better vantage. I’m almost certain there’s something coming.”

“Oh, there is,” Jaina sighed. “Legion warships. I scried them so easily they couldn’t possibly be trying to obscure their approach. I thought it best to rouse you since it would look very bad on my part to leave you unawares and unprepared.”

“I’m never unprepared,” Sylvanas countered easily. Confidently. “But what of the rest of your city?”

“Under a dampening spell,” Jaina responded. “We would appear very much deaf and blind to anyone outside looking in. I assure you that isn’t the case. You needn’t leave your room. It’s one of the safest in Dalaran.”

“Well I’m certainly not staying in it,” Sylvanas said, and Jaina glanced at the bow she was gripping in her hand.

“Useful against extraterrestrial demonic warships?” she asked, and Sylvanas genuinely couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic.

“Yes,” Sylvanas responded dryly and evenly entirely because of that unsurety. It was too early in the morning to be handing out senses of satisfaction.

“So be it,” Jaina relented, finally turning from Sylvanas to continue her path down the corridor to get to the spiraling stairs at the end of it. “Please avoid death at all costs. I simply cannot deal with an incident once this is over.”

Both Lenara and Velonara were pretending very hard to no longer be paying any sort of attention to what was going on in the hallway and yet, they followed immediately when Sylvanas began moving again in silence.

In the streets below the tower, Sylvanas discovered Jaina had very much been telling the truth about the dampening spell. It was cast over the city in an almost-haze. But everywhere you looked, if you looked closely enough, there was movement. Movement enough that Sylvanas soon realized nearly a full army of mages was lying in wait for the approaching threat.

“They know that I see them,” Jaina said quite suddenly, and Sylvanas turned her attention from Dalaran’s mages to Jaina, who was holding a glinting, shimmering gemstone in her hand. Flawlessly polished and impossibly dark except for the fleet of ships hurtling through the darkness that surrounded them. “But they don’t realize what’s waiting for them.”

“You mean to trap the legion?” Sylvanas scoffed.

“Yes.”

Jaina’s answer was so short and confident that Sylvanas found herself impressed, yet again.

“These particular members of it, in any case,” Jaina continued, slipping the stone into her pocket as they rounded the corner to a terrible sight, indeed. With the city’s lights all but non-existent, the horizon of the night sky was seemingly infinite. The sky was more than clear enough, too, to see the vast expanse of ships approaching in the distance. “I hope you’re ready.”

Jaina turned to look at Sylvanas and her two rangers, and Sylvanas met her gaze evenly as she drew an arrow from the quiver that hung at her back. Inky purple flames sprang to life - casting an eerie glow over her face as they raced along the shaft when the tip was nocked.

The first streak of fel energy illuminated the city in sickly green as it trailed behind the projectile careening toward them like the tail of a comet. Sylvanas narrowed her eyes as she tried to pick out the spot it had come from on the ship hovering nearest to them - looking for a weakness there. She was just beginning to brace for an impact when the fel meteor impacted with an invisible force. The stone fell away - inert and dim, now, as the shield surrounding the city absorbed the impact and illuminated in waves across its entirety.

The sheer power of it harkened Sylvanas’s thoughts back to the protections of the elf gates. Some of the most powerful magic on Azeroth - discovered and perfected by the Quel’dorei and likely passed between her would-be people and the first human mages. Mentally to herself, and rather curtly, Sylvanas sent a 'you're welcome.’ in Jaina’s direction if only to make herself feel better about the coming battle. About all of this.

The next attack wasn't the test-of-waters the first had been. Relentlessly, the shield was battered by a rain of felfire unlike anything Sylvanas had ever seen as her keen eyes focused and re-focused on the ships and their shifting formations.

It wasn't long before the light of mage spells was countering the green as arcane magic hurtled from Krasus’ Landing.

“We best be getting over to-,” Sylvanas’s words were cut short as she felt a terrible lurch of time and space. Rather indignantly, she shot a look in Jaina’s direction as her and her rangers re-materialized on the landing.

“Krasus’ Landing?” Jaina asked with a smirk as Sylvanas lifted her chin at her. “I was just thinking the same thing.”

“A warning next time, Archmage?” Sylvanas asked as Jaina’s eyes brightened - glowing with the white hot light of immense arcane power. Runes spin and intertwined with themselves around her hands - expanding further and further as Sylvanas took a singular step back when Jaina’s gathering magic caused the hair to rise along her arms.

“We’ll see,” Jaina said calmly, but her voice echoed with undeniable power. All at once, she launched a spell that passed through Dalaran’s protective barrier towards the nearest Legion ship. The felfire it had only just launched disintegrated as it passed through the coming spell - a spell that encased the ship and crackled across its unnatural surface until it dropped, rather suddenly, from the sky. It impacted against the barrier and caused another ripple. Mere seconds passed before the impact of it impacting the ground far below shook the floating city.

“Impressive,” Sylvanas remarked, and Jaina lifted a brow in her direction as she glanced over at her only to find her bow and the dangerous, black-wreathed arrow nocked in it aimed directly at her.

“Sylvanas!” Jaina shouted in shock as she ducked instinctively.

“I didn't realize you knew my first name,” Sylvanas quipped as she drew another arrow and gestured behind Jaina.

Jaina’s head whipped around as she righted herself and watched in concern as a felguard fell to its knees and crumpled with an arrow protruding from its throat. Even as green ichor bubbled around the wound, Jaina began shouting orders.

“They have infiltrated the city! Be vigilant!” Jaina shouted, and an almost eerie quiet followed her shout across the landing. Just before shimmers of green flickered intermittently across the darkened cobbles that separated the gathered mages and fighters.

Sylvanas bared her fangs as her eyes shifted quickly from space to space - following the flickers until they materialized into no less than a dozen gel guards identical to the one she'd only just dropped.

“Have your mages focus those ships,” Sylvanas hissed to Jaina. “We’ll handle the rest.”

Jaina was just about to argue that three archers couldn't possibly put a dent in the onslaught of creatures appearing in their midst when another cavalcade of fel meteors rocked the shield surrounding the city, and she could only act. There was no time for argument.

More than once that night, a demon fell at her side scarcely seconds after it had materialized - pinioned by an arrow, its life syphoned by the magic of the Dark Rangers as surely as it would have been by the accuracy of their shots.

After what seemed like an eternity to all involved parties, night stretched on into the grey light of pre-dawn. Her mages grew exhausted beyond measure. Some of them had even collapsed where they stood. Jaina, herself, was running on empty long before the tide of the battle turned - but rest was something none of them had time for. Least of all, in Jaina’s opinion, her.

They had suffered no casualties through the night. Despite the countless demons that had been sent to the Landing to combat them, none of them had drawn a single drop of blood - though the cobbles ran green with ichor. Their would-be battlefield looked more like a pincushion than a landing once all was said and done, but Jaina’s thoughts were far too muddled with exhaustion and adrenaline to consider how impressed she should be by the performance the Dark Lady and her Rangers had put on even as the ships slipped away in retreat like snakes through portals and were gone.

She had far too many other things to worry about. Like checking on the rest of the city. Seeing to it that the Kirin Tor mages weren't all expended to the point of uselessness when she had no hope the Legion had any intention of giving them time to recuperate. Legion or no, she had a city to run. And run it, she did.

Until well into the late morning when Khadgar finally found her - falling into step beside her as the heels of her boots and the butt of her staff made sharp, quick contact with the cobbled streets she was walking.

“You look to have one foot in the grave,” Khadgar said wearily. “Though I must admit your posture is beyond reproach. You should take a bit of time to at least eat something while all is quiet on the front.”

“We don't have ‘a bit of time’,” Jaina managed - turning her head to look at Khadgar. “This isn't my first demonic rodeo, old friend. I'll rest when I've no other choice.”

“Mmm,” Khadgar grumbled, sighing as he ran a hand over his greying hair. “Well. Lady Windrunner is waiting in the council room with a proposal for you.”

“Couldn't she run it by her new best friend on Azeroth, Varian?” Jaina asked dryly, pausing her rather purposeful journey in front of a sewer grate in the road. She tapped her staff sharply on the black iron bars and peered down into it as Khadgar watched it silently. “I'm aware we have an unspoken agreement not to acknowledge each other for any reason, but have you suffered any losses you feel might be righted by some assistance?”

Khadgar’s brow furrowed as he looked between Jaina and the sewer grate. He began to wonder if Jaina had perhaps suffered an unseen head injury when, all at once, a voice answered her from within the sewers beneath the street.

“All’s right down here, ma’am! Got some new handbag material for auction day if you’re interested in-,”

Before the voice could finish making its questionable offer, Jaina had moved on, leaving in her wake Khadgar in a state of bemusement.

“You're looking at me as though I've grown horns,” Jaina remarked a moment or two later once Khadgar had caught up with her.

“It's just that, from time to time, I forget you have people living in your sewers, that's all,” Khadgar offered with a nonchalant shrug. “What’s so pressing that you can’t at least take enough of a respite to eat something?”

“Well, the council will be convening to discuss the Sunreavers around noon. After we see about the portal room, of course. It’s no small task to create permanent portals, as you’re well aware. And then, there’s Matthias Shaw skulking about in Stormwind puffing up his chest and giving orders he has no business giving.”

“Such as?” Khadgar asked curiously.

“Oh, he’s only banned the Uncrowned from entering the city, as though that’s a viable tactic or even a remote possibility. Varian mentioned he’d be returning to check in on that particular fire - one of many currently burning there - and I haven’t heard from him since. Not directly, at least.”

“And why not let Varian worry about his own Spymaster’s drama with the Uncrowned? It isn’t as though we don’t have our hands full.”

“There isn’t a soul on Azeroth that isn’t fel-tained that won’t benefit from the combined talents of the Uncrowned and SI:7, us included. If we can nip tensions between the two of them in the bud before they can get worse, that’s one less catastrophe that can be avoided when it inevitably becomes one down the line. Besides, it’s very unlike Shaw to not be at least a little more shrewd about things like this. He should recognize the boon they could prove to be just as easily as I can.”

Jaina took a sharp left turn, then, and up the stairs of the Scribe’s Sacellum. Khadgar followed, determined to annoy Jaina until she relented. Or at least that’s what it felt like to Jaina as a rather tired looking gnome peaked his balding head over the counter at her.

“Professor Pallin,” Jaina greeted with a faint smile. “I needed to see for myself that you and your wares made it safely through the night. You and I both know how terribly prone to fire vellum is, and there was fire aplenty until morning.”

“Oh, things have certainly been better,” Pallin grumbled, pushing the smoldering body of an imp off his counter as his apprentice approached with a broom and a dustpan already full of none-too-few imp bodies. “But we didn’t lose anything of great import, thanks to whatever it is that you lot on the landing were up to.”

“Should you need anything-,”

Pallin scoffed so quickly Jaina’s words froze on her lips as she tilted her head to listen.

“Should I need anything, I still have two legs and two hands. I also have two half-assed eyes and adequate enough glasses to see you should likely have been seeking a bed ages ago. Go on. Shoo. So I can re-set my imp traps.”

Pallin was bustling about his shop, now, placing little runes here and there Jaina recognized as rather clever little spell traps. She couldn’t be angry at him, nor could she allow herself to feel affronted. Not when, every time she saw him, she couldn’t help remembering a time a kindly old gnome with a streak of grey in his dark hair had done a series of magic tricks for her when she was so young she could scarcely see over the Scribe’s counter, herself, that ended in a rather lovely piece of candy as her prize.

“You win, Pallin,” Jaina acquiesced with a wave of her hand as she turned to leave. “Take care of yourself.”

“Jaina!” He called out just before she got to the door. Jaina turned on her heel to look at him.

He only gave her a sly, knowing smile and gestured at the pouch that hung from her belt.

She opened it and peered down inside of it only to find he’d managed to get a handful of individually wrapped Gnomeregan nougat into it without her noticing.

“Proving to me how tired I really am?” Jaina asked with a sigh. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t realized what he’d been doing.

“I would never, Lady Jaina,” Pallin responded, feigning indignance.

Jaina rolled her eyes and smiled fondly before she slipped out the door and made her way back down the stairs into the streets of Dalaran. The city was bustling. So quick were its inhabitants to get everything cleaned and back to normal that…well. It almost felt like everything actually was back to normal. For the time being, anyway. And for that much, Jaina could find it in herself to be grateful.

Khadgar cleared his throat. “Now, about the Dark Lady. She is still-,”

Jaina sighed as Khadgar chipped his way into the small moment of peace she’d found for herself.

“Waiting for me in the war room. Yes. I heard you the first time. And I'm still not moving her politics or whatever chess game she calls herself currently playing to the top of my list of priorities when the Legion just laid siege to my city. Again.”

“Noted,” Khadgar sighed. “Though I did already offer to send word of her proposal to Varian, and she did decline.”

“Declined?” Jaina asked, her pace finally slowing as she turned her full attention to Khadgar for the first time. “Whyever would she decline an audience with Varian?”

“To quote her; ‘This is not King Wrynn’s city. As such, it would not be his place to entertain an offering of aid in its defense.’.” Khadgar repeated Sylvanas’s words verbatim, and Jaina finally slowed her purposeful pace until she was standing still, looking slightly deflated with a hand on her staff.

“And what might her proposal be?” Jaina asked, with none of the curtness she'd been allowing herself lingering in her voice, now.

Khadgar made a face and then looked away as he coupled his expression with a helpless, vague gesture with his hands. “Haven't the faintest idea, Jaina. Not my city either, I suppose.”

“Very well,” Jaina said, and within a blink, she was gone - leaving Khadgar in her wake again, this time chuckling to himself in what little amusement there was to be had in all of this.

Chapter Text

Garona let out a huff of frustration as she paced back and forth a few feet away from the long, heavy-hewn table serving as the Uncrowned’s current meeting place deep beneath the streets of Dalaran.

“Things went well in Stormwind, then?” Tess asked from her chair as she cut herself another slice of her apple and slipped it past her lips from the blade of her knife.

Garona grunted and cut her eyes at Tess. “You were the one that sent the prospect after me. Don't play coy with me, now.”

“Well. You've pissed Shaw off somehow, pissed him off again, and gotten the Uncrowned formally barred from the Alliance capital city. The last little tidbit is now common knowledge among…well. Everyone. That's the bad news. The good news is…please tell me there's good news.”

Garona heaved a sigh and plopped herself down in the chair. It creaked its protest against her solid form but didn't dare give further protest once she'd settled in it properly. “We dealt with the cult and ascertained that the Broken Shore was, in fact, a trap. Would’ve been a rather effective one, too, if it weren't for a certain someone’s surprise heroics.”

Tess chuckled, and then the laugh fell short. It was easy, at times like this, to forget who she was. To forget who her father was.

“Our most pressing issue, now, is Shaw, it would seem,” Tess responded after a beat or two.

“Yeah, and good luck with that. He's currently got an entire forest of sticks up his ass. Don't think he's feeling very open to the idea of speaking with any of us.”

“And he didn't give you a signal? Did you show him your mark?” Tess asked in concern. She leaned forward over the table to look more closely at Garona.

“No need,” Garona shrugged. “His message was loud and clear. Went something like ‘get the fuck out of my city’, if I recall correctly.”

“Hell,” Tess sighed as she leaned back in her chair and looked down at the half-eaten apple in her hand. “Then that leaves exactly one person with a place at this table who still has free reign to come and go as she pleases in Stormwind whether or not Shaw likes it.”

“And where is that damned slippery elf?” Garona asked, but there was a certain fondness in her tone as she said the words.

“You both suck.”

Tess jumped in her seat and stared at her now-lost apple as it rolled away from her chair towards the shadows that ensconced the darker edges of the meeting hall. Just before it disappeared, it was stopped hard and fast with a small throwing blade that caused it to lurch and spin around.

As Tess’s eyes adjusted to the inky blackness she was peering into, two green eyes came into focus. Half a second later, a red-painted smirk. She squinted to make out the rest and realized - sitting with her legs folded against her chest and her chin against her knees atop a barrel - was none other than Valeera Sanguinar.

Tess rolled her eyes as Garona shook her head. Garona didn't even bother to turn around and look as Valeera slipped silently from the barrel to land on her feet and retrieve both her knife and Tess’s apple in one fluid motion.

“You know how you humans are fond of putting bells on your pet cats?” Garona asked Tess under her breath as Valeera came to a stop behind her and leaned over her shoulder - one hand draped over it as she offered Tess her apple with the other.

Tess looked down at the apple with distaste from her side of the table, expecting to see it covered in filth from the floor it had rolled across, only to find that it was an entirely different, entirely clean apple than the one that had been startled from her hand.

“How did-,”

“Can't have a Princess eating off the floor,” Valeera crooned, waggling the apple back and forth on the tip of her knife. “They'll tell the church we sewer people have no couth.”

“Which dagger is that?” Tess asked with narrowed eyes as she plucked the apple from the end of the knife and examined it.

“Wouldn't you like to know?” Valeera purred, if a normal voice could do such a thing, while slipping her knife back into her sleeve. Not that Valeera had ever been ‘normal’ a day in her life.

Tess bit the apple in a playful show of defiance and once again leaned back in her chair.

“I'm exhausted with you both already,” Garona complained as she removed Valeera’s hand from her shoulder with only her thumb and forefinger on either side of her wrist, and still dwarfing it in size.

“Don't be mean, Garona. Have you been working out? Your shoulders are looking especially grip-able this evening,” Valeera said as she plopped down in a chair next to her with her heels against the edge of her seat.

Garona took her time looking over at her, and blinked at the way she was sitting but decided that was rather low on the list of battles she could pick when it came to Valeera.

“Can you decide which one of us you're flirting with tonight?” Tess asked after another bite of her new apple. “My head is spinning already.”

“This is a team-building exercise, Tess,” Valeera droned, sounding convincingly annoyed at Tess’s insinuated lack of understanding. “If I left anyone out, it wouldn't exactly be helping us come together as a cohesive unit for the sake of Azeroth or whatever, would it?”

“Alright, you win,” Tess said, ignoring Valeera’s ‘I know’ in response as she continued on. “Back to the matter at hand. Shaw.”

Valeera sighed and shook her head. “Perhaps Shaw wouldn't be such an issue if some of us were a little less heavy-handed.”

“You know damn well I'm anything but heavy-handed when subtlety is required of me,” Garona countered sharply.

“Easy, killer,” Valeera said with a little laugh. “I'm just trying to lighten the mood.”

“The world is ending, Sanguinar,” Garona snapped back, her agitation heavy in her voice.

“When is it not?” Valeera asked, and Garona opened her mouth to answer only to find she had no good rebuttal at the ready because there simply wasn't one. The tension in her shoulders deflated and she snorted as she shrugged.

“But anyway,” Valeera continued. “Varian’s spoken to him. He'll be back in Dalaran before nightfall, so I'll make it a point to show my face following his departure. Hopefully if there's something afoot that he can't tell us about outright, he'll communicate that fact to me another way.”

“I forget sometimes that you secretly have a fairly level head on your narrow shoulders,” Garona quipped once Valeera finished saying her peace. Tess smirked down at her apple across the table. Valeera narrowed her eyes in Garona’s direction.

“For someone sitting in the presence of the person who kept your bright green ass out of the stockades, you certainly are catty, Halforcen,” Valeera complained as she slipped from her chair and gestured towards Tess. “But that's alright, Tess is going to buy me dinner at C and C to make up for it. Right, Tess? The stew smelled divine when I passed by earlier.”

“Don't I always?” Tess droned as she stood with a scrape of her chair and offered her arm to Valeera, who took it like a spoiled cat being offered a bowl of milk.

The two of them walked arm-in-arm in silence for a while once they made their way out of the hall a different way than either of them had come in, as was the common practice of every Shadow. There was a certain kind of peace down here among the fetid darkness and the rats that was sorely missing in Azeroth at large following the Legion’s return.

“How do you do it?” Tess asked after a while. Her low voice sounded loud even to her own ears. They were both otherwise so quiet that the skittering of rats all but covered the sound of their footsteps.

“Do what?” Valeera asked as she looked over at her friend - one of very few.

“The irreverence. The ease. You know all too well what kind of threat we face, yet nothing about your demeanor has changed,” Tess remarked, and Valeera looked away from her.

“Why should I change when the circumstances won't?” Valeera asked. “I can be upset about the prospect of death, or I can settle comfortably into its inevitability. It'll come either way.”

“I suppose that works perfectly well for you, and I don't fault you for it. But what of everyone else? What if the Legion plunged every man woman and child on Azeroth into…well. Whatever it is that comes after.”

“When has every man woman and child on Azeroth ever cared about me?” Valeera asked easily. If the question stung as she asked it, she didn't show it.

“I care about you, Valeera,” Tess countered and Valeera had just been about to answer when she noticed an irregularity in the shadows in front of them. She stopped Tess with a subtle squeeze of her arm and slipped away from her to meld with the wall. Tess could barely see her despite knowing right where she was.

She stayed utterly still - pressing her back against the cold, damp curve of the wall she was nearest to. She was good, but not as good as Valeera, so she stayed put and allowed her to move in closer to investigate whatever it was that she'd seen.

Tess waited for a while with baited breath until, with a spark and a flash Valeera had ignited a small, enchanted fire packet that she allowed to fall from her hand where she stood ankle-deep in rancid water. The little fire illuminated Valeera’s dark-clad form and cast her shadow over the walls before it began to sink slowly down - each flutter of movement revealing more of the shadowy mass in the center of the waterway.

“Shit,” Tess whispered under her breath as she pushed away from the wall and made her way over to Valeera swiftly. Valeera still hadn’t spoken. She was surveying the body carefully in the magical firelight she’d produced from her belt pouch. She even knelt down and reached in towards it - running her fingertips along a particularly deep stab wound and drawing them back so she could smell them.

“Poison?” Tess asked gravely, and Valeera shook her head.

“None,” she answered simply, only now retrieving the knife protruding from the woman’s back. She examined it carefully before she tucked it into her belt and sighed heavily. “Help me get her somewhere dry.”

“Any ideas?” Tess asked, immediately leaning down to help Valeera lift the woman’s body from the water and drag it off to the walkway they’d been traversing.

Valeera was peering down at something so intently she either didn’t hear Tess’s question, or wasn’t inclined to answer. Instead, she reached down and retrieved a letter from the woman’s rigid hand and opened it carefully.

“Well, fuck me in the ass,” Valeera murmured as she folded the letter back up and plopped down on the walkway with the back of her head resting against the wall.

“Forward,” Tess whispered under her breath because she couldn’t help it.

Valeera smirked despite everything. “It’s Amber fucking Kearnen. She’s SI:7. Murdered in the most inopportune of places at the most inopportune of times.”

“That’s what the letter says?” Tess asked, thoroughly impressed.

“I have no idea what the letter says,” Valeera responded incredulously as she passed it to Tess. “SI:7 code changes more often than I change-,”

“I get the idea,” Tess cut her off with a wave of her hand and took the letter from her.

Valeera chuckled. “Get Jorach. I’ll make sure no one sees this.”

Tess grimaced at the thought of having to drag Jorach into this, but knew they had little choice in the matter. “Back in a flash.”

“You still owe me dinner,” Valeera reminded her as she turned to leave. When Tess didn’t answer, Valeera sighed and looked down at the lifeless body laid out in front of where she was sitting.

“Been a while,” she remarked idly, tilting her head as though she was awaiting a response. “Sorry I never never got around to writing.”

Valeera’s eyes shifted as a rather sodden rat hopped up onto the edge of the walkway from the water it had been paddling in and sat up on its hindquarters.

“What?” She asked it with a narrowing of her eyes as it twitched and looked over Amber’s body at her. “You’re judging me? You’re literally a sewer rat and you’re judging me. I was busy. It wasn’t some personal slight against her or something. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s a little much going on in the world, presently, and keeping in touch with…acquaintances isn’t really all that high up on my list of priorities.”

The rat sniffed the air in Valeera’s direction and then slipped back into the water, leaving scarcely a ripple behind. A ripple that Valeera glowered at until it was no more. She looked down at Amber’s body again - at her dull, lifeless eyes and the unmoving, outstretched hand that had been clutching the encoded letter.

“It really wasn’t personal or anything,” Valeera said, continuing their earlier conversation. “I’m just like that, y’know? You were an engaging conversationalist, a skilled spy, all of the above. That’s the problem. That’s the problem with most people, really. They’re either too good, or not worth my time. Sometimes both. I can see how you might think that’s contradictory, but this is about me and my feelings, and I wanted to take this opportunity to be completely candid with you.”

Valeera finally reached down and slid Amber’s eyelids over her eyes before she leaned back against the wall again, this time with her legs crisscrossed in front of her as she looked down the end of the sewers her and Tess hadn’t come from.

She heard movement at the edge of the water a moment later and looked back again to find the rat from before perched on its hindquarters with a second rat to match at its side. They blinked at her and Valeera watched idly as their whispers twitched inquisitively.

“Don’t you have rat business to attend to?” She asked them abruptly. One of them worked its paws in front of its chest in that oddly human way in which they sometimes tended to do these things. “Because what I’ve got going on here isn’t even remotely close to being rat business.”

They continued to stare at her in silence.

“Fine. Fuck. Fine. Weirdos.” Valeera finally hissed at them, rummaging through her belt pouch and pulling out a carefully-wrapped bar of pressed grain and honey, a few of which she always kept on her person in case of emergency. She broke it in half and tossed both pieces onto the ground just below Amber’s feet and rolled her eyes as the pair of rats collected their individual prizes and skittered away and out of view.

The sewer felt strangely empty once they were gone. Suffocatingly empty, after a while. That was, at least, until she heard footsteps approaching in the distance. She knew they belonged to her fellow shadows, because most people wouldn’t have heard them. And because she could make out the outlines of both Tess and Jaroch easily even as dark as it was down here. It was easy enough to pull their forms from the catalogue of visual information she kept stored in the terrible annals of information she’d committed to memory.

Their shapes were soon joined by two others. Valeera recognized them as a pair of Bloodsails the Shadows regularly employed. Valeera didn’t question Jaroch’s judgment in bringing them. She’d have brought them, herself. They were excellent mess-cleaners, and no one looked twice at them for various reasons.

Valeera stood and regarded Jaroch evenly as he approached and gestured at Amber’s body. “Get rid of it. Permanently. I don’t need to know how or where. Not a trace left behind. Make yourselves scarce for a week or two once you’ve finished. This should more than cover a vacation for the both of you.”

Jaroch tossed them a sack of coin and one of them pocketed it to be divided later

The two men grunted their understanding and got to work expeditiously as Jaroch sighed and touched his fingertips to his temples before running his hand through his steel-grey hair. “Give it a couple of hours and then reconvene in the Hall so we can decide what our next move is, if there’s a move to be made, at all. Be sure you’re seen elsewhere, preferably by someone of note, and keep your ears open. I want to know what the word on the street is.”

Valeera and Tess both turned to leave once Jaroch finished saying what he needed to say. Or so they thought, but they both recognized the tone with which he cleared his throat and turned to face him, again.

“Lady Sanguinar,” Jaroch said looking between her and Tess and back again - levelling his gaze on Valeera. “Would you do me the kindness of avoiding instigating Shaw until we know a bit more? This’d be a terrible time to put yourself in any sort of unnecessary danger. Especially when we have talented operatives dropping without our knowledge right under our noses.”

“Fine by me,” Valeera relented without a fight, much to Jaroch’s surprise. He’d been working on the way he approached her. He wondered, as he nodded his thanks and parted ways with them, if that work might’ve finally begun to pay off.

“Varian should be arriving soon,” Valeera said absently. “I need to check in with him, and I’m sure he wouldn’t mind seeing you.”

“Convenient,” Tess remarked. “Varian Wrynn likely qualifies as ‘of note’.”

Valeera hummed her agreement and Tess glanced over her and then back at the tunnel that stretched out ahead of them that would lead them to the back exit.

“Were you talking to yourself earlier?”

“What?” Valeera asked evenly without missing a beat.

“When we turned the corner - Jaroch and I. I could’ve sworn I heard voices.”

“If I wanted to talk, this city and many others have plenty to offer in the way of people who would provide me with their undivided attention,” Valeera scoffed, and Tess couldn’t exactly argue with that. But she could try.

“They’ll be waiting forever, then,” Tess quipped. “When was the last time you talked?”

“We’re talking right now,” Valeera countered.

“Let me rephrase. When was the last time you talked? As in, not treated every word as a piece of some sort of strategy game?”

Valeera clicked her tongue. “I’m going to push you into the water.”

“You wouldn’t d-”

Tess let out a squeak as she found herself swept off her feet and careening towards the sludge that filled the basin of the mouth of the tunnel they were about to exit. Her heart was still racing when Valeera caught her wrist and righted her before she ever even touched it.

“Bitch,” Tess spat over the low, amused sound of Valeera’s low, throaty laugh.

“Say it again, I liked it,” Valeera teased, and Tess responded with a sigh and looped her arm around Valeera’s when it was offered to her again.

Chapter Text

Jaina would’ve been lying if she said she hadn’t been expecting to catch Sylvanas off-guard when she blinked into existence in the war room. But of course, Sylvanas was already looking at her evenly from the far end of the table in a surprisingly empty room. Empty aside from a decanter of wine and a board of meats and cheeses in front of her that looked to be untouched. She was standing there like she’d been expecting Jaina, but not as though she’d been kept waiting. Her poise and demeanor were impeccable in these situations. They always had been, every time they’d met like this.

“Lady Proudmoore,” Sylvanas greeted her in a calm, neutral tone. “I know I’ve pulled you away from pressing matters, but I have a pressing solution to offer.”

Jaina wasn’t sure when Sylvanas had changed. The formal attire from the prior day was no more, and the armor Jaina was used to seeing hadn’t returned. She looked so…normal, standing there. Jaina took the sight in because she might as well, considering how calculated it likely was. Sylvanas had probably had that flowing linen shirt dyed just the right shade of lavender to to make the tone of her skin appear more natural. She’d probably chosen the grey breeches and the slightly darker sash instead of a richer tone to come across as unimposing.

If Jaina was painfully aware she was still wearing the same robes she’d worn to the meeting the prior, she didn’t let on in the least as she approached. She took the last seat on the long side of the table nearest where Sylvanas was standing, and only once she’d settled did Sylvanas do the same at the head of it.

“I’m guessing Khadgar had this sent,” Jaina surmised as she gestured towards the food and wine. “He’s been nagging me all morning. Just like him to sway me with politics.”

“I sent for it, myself,” Sylvanas said, filling the glass in front of Jaina from the decanter and resting her hand atop the table once she finished. Her eyes smoldered instead of burned as she looked at Jaina and then away. “Sorry to disappoint.”

Jaina’s lips parted and then met again. She’d meant to take the upper hand in whatever was going on by porting directly into the room, and yet she’d lost it so easily. “Aren’t you…should I pour your glass, then? Is that what we’re doing?”

“Would it make you feel better if I were to drink?” Sylvanas asked with a flicker of an amused smile in Jaina’s direction.

“You don’t drink?” Jaina asked as her eyes narrowed slightly. She saw something unfamiliar in Sylvanas’s expression. Just a glimpse before it was gone again as Sylvanas reached for the second glass that had been left for them on the table. She placed it closer to Jaina, and Jaina reached for the decanter to fill it as Sylvanas had filled hers.

“I apologize,” Jaina said, her tone softening. “I realize that might have sounded insensitive. You needn’t do anything you’d rather not on my account.”

“I knocked you over in your own home and called everyone in your city useless,” Sylvanas countered as she clinked the rim of her glass against Jaina’s and tilted her head before taking a sip of the fine Dalaran red they’d been given. “We’ll call it even.”

Jaina nearly laughed, but the urge faded before it could become something more.

“So,” she said after she'd taken a sip of her own wine. “You wanted to speak with me.”

“Your mages are exhausted and this has only just begun,” Sylvanas said, not wasting any time now that the floor had been opened to her. “Even you. You're so tired you don't feel the hunger that I know goes hand-in-hand with amount of magic you used last night.”

“We don’t have time to be exhausted, Lady Windrunner. I’m not sure that we ever will again,” Jaina sighed, and Sylvanas regarded her evenly for a moment before she sighed and reached for one of the fine cloth napkins that’d been left for them. Despite the impatience Jaina had entered into this conversation with, she watched curiously as Sylvanas delicately cut a few slivers of cheese and cured meat and arranged them, along with a handful of cut figs and bread, on the napkin.

“I digress,” Sylvanas finally said once she’d finished and deposited the napkin of food in front of Jaina, who looked down at it with unfiltered surprise on her face. “I have a dozen Forsaken mages, and as many rogues and archers waiting on the other side of a portal in the Undercity for my word. Many of them serve in my royal guard and are of the utmost caliber. They have no need of food, drink, or rest - so, even if we are being polite in saying every mage in Dalaran is their better or equal, they are still worth two of everyone here.”

“Would that not leave Lordaeron at-risk of being weak against an invasion?” Jaina asked once her thoughts caught up with her words. “I…I’m not entirely sure why you would even offer such a thing, if I’m being honest.”

“I’ll provide two of them for each singular Sin’dorei prisoner you release from the Violet Hold,” Sylvanas spoke so calmly and flatly that it took a moment for Jaina’s blood to run cold.

“That’s what this is all about? You coming here? Your heroics? Is this all some sort of plot, Windrunner?” Jaina demanded - her voice dangerously low.

“Plot?” Sylvanas scoffed, and Jaina nearly jumped at the harsh sound of Sylvanas’s chair scraping against the stone floor as she stood and stalked away from the table. The airs she held about herself so often were all but gone as she turned to look at Jaina once she was further from her.

“You think I want to be here, Proudmoore? You think I want all these eyes on me constantly? Do you truly believe I enjoy pretending I don’t hear the whispered, vile things they say about me? My interest is and always will be my people, and the Sin’dorei are still my people, whether or not they know it or recognize it. I brought them into the Horde. If you need to be angry with someone over everything that’s come to pass, you might as well be angry with me. Would that help things, Archmage? Would you consider a different trade? Myself for all of them?”

Jaina was stunned into silence. She’d never heard so much emotion in Sylvanas’s voice. Not even following Putress’s treachery. But it was the fact that her hands were shaking at her sides that drew most of Jaina’s attention. Perhaps noticing what she was focusing on, Sylvanas clenched them into fists and then shook them as though that might help.

Jaina stood quite suddenly and walked around the corner of the table to pull Sylvanas’s chair back towards it.

“Please sit,” Jaina implored as the wind left her sails, entirely, in the face of such thinly-veiled pain. She turned the chair towards Sylvanas in offering, then, because she knew all too well the way pain had a habit of changing shape to rear its head as something else. And she knew what it was like to have that pain dismissed. Even as much as she didn’t see eye to eye with anyone on Sylvanas’s side of the divide, she refused to be party to such dismissal.

Sylvanas shifted her weight from one finely-booted foot to the other and let out a sigh that shuddered as it left her before she approached the table and took her seat. Jaina returned to her own and reached for a fig that she held between her fingertips to give herself something to look at as she spoke.

“Your offer is a generous one, but it does little to restore my trust in the Sunreavers. And my feelings regarding the matter aren’t the only ones that need to be weighed into such a decision,” Jaina said, and she watched as Sylvanas’s ears shifted subtly before going still again. These mannerisms were something she had grown used to in her years being around various elves. So much so that she often found herself looking for these important little queues when she was sharing a space with the Dark Lady - but just as often, she found they were absent with her.

“I would bring this matter up to the rest of your council if you so wish,” Sylvanas offered - her voice and her demeanor once again so composed it was easy to forget the way she had just let it all slip, if only for a moment. “I would even address the war room and put it to a vote.”

“It isn’t the council or the war room I’m concerned about,” Jaina offered. “This just isn’t really a decision that needs to be made without all concerned parties present.”

Sylvanas’s thoughts raced for a moment before, all at once, they came careening to a halt.

“Vereesa,” Sylvanas uttered the name as she kept her eyes levelled squarely on Jaina.

“The Silver Covenant is an integral part of Dalaran’s defense. Disregarding its leader’s authority would be unwise. Especially right now.” Jaina continued carefully. “She’s due back in a day’s time. I would at least ask that you wait to present this idea to the council until her return. Perhaps until I’ve had a chance to speak to her, personally.”

Jaina noted the brightening of Sylvanas’s eyes, and half expected her to lose her cool again. She was almost more nervous when that didn’t happen. When Sylvanas instead took a sip of her wine and examined her glass.

“The Silver Covenant is a made-up faction led by a woman whose arrows are stained by the blood of her own people. A woman who bears a title stolen from those very same people. The Silver Covenant is yet so young that their history is rich only with the Purge, and I fail to see how Vereesa’s feelings on the matter bear more weight than my own or that of the Sin’dorei.”

Jaina’s mouth fell open and closed again as she shook her head in near-disbelief and then followed the path Sylvanas’s eyes took towards the entryway into their meeting place. “That being said, I believe she’s arrived early.”

Sylvanas finished her wine in one swift, easy motion and placed the empty glass down on the table before she stood.

“Isn’t that right, Little Moon?”

Jaina stood quickly in response to the sight of a red-faced, furious Vereesa rounding the corner.

“Don’t your Dark Rangers have anything better to do than follow me in my own home?” Vereesa asked as she approached the table and tossed a stack of scrolls onto it.

“No one needs to watch you, Vereesa. You were never quite as skilled as most at hiding the sounds of your footfall, and I would know the creak of ranger leather from a mile away,” Sylvanas remarked dryly. “I believe Jaina has something to discuss with you. If my ears haven’t yet failed me, you missed the good part.”

Sylvanas began walking out of the room and avoided the reach Vereesa made for her wrist quite handily.

“Sylvanas!” Vereesa shouted, sounding both hurt and enraged.

“Oh, you want to talk, now?” Sylvanas asked as she paused and turned to halfway face the room just before she took the corner that would put her out of sight. “Your last letter was so verbose, I was almost surprised when another never came. Perhaps they were lost?”

Vereesa wilted visibly as Sylvanas looked at her almost searchingly. Jaina couldn’t move, much less speak. The tension in the room felt like an ocean’s worth of water weighing down on her.

“You were much braver when you were young,” Sylvanas said, her voice suddenly quiet. She was gone before either Vereesa or Jaina could recover enough to process what had happened.

Jaina looked after Sylvanas for a while to collect her thoughts and then finally turned her attention to Vereesa, who was staring holes in the tabletop. “Vereesa…what was that?”

“Nothing,” Vereesa said, shaking herself out of the place she’d gone to and clearing her throat as she took the seat Sylvanas had only just been sitting in. “Sit, sit. What was it you needed to talk to me about?”

“You should eat,” Jaina said, and Vereesa sighed and reached for the platter of food - quickly gathering a handful of what was on offer and obliging Jaina without putting up a fight aside from gesturing at Jaina’s own food.

Once they’d both had a few bites, Jaina sighed and looked up at the vaulted ceiling before finally breaking the silence that had fallen over them. “Anything interesting?” she asked, gesturing at the scrolls.

“Not particularly,” Vereesa sighed. “Notes from certain battles during the crusade. Not much else. I’d considering contacting Halduron. I know the Farstriders are likely to have far more on the Legion than the Covenant’s archives might, but…well.”

“Funny you should bring up the Sin’dorei,” Jaina interjected, and Vereesa blinked at her.

“I didn’t,” Vereesa said warily. “What did you need to talk to me about, exactly?”

“You aren’t going to like it,” Jaina warned.

“I gathered.”

Jaina took in a steadying breath and released it slowly before throwing her hands up. “Sylvanas offered two Forsaken guard in service of Dalaran for every Sunreaver we release from the hold.”

Vereesa stared at her blankly for a moment or two before blinking again and looking away with her mouth agape. A tense moment passed between them before Vereesa looked back at her. “You can’t seriously be considering-,”

“I’m more than considering it, Vereesa,” Jaina cut her off firmly, albeit gently. “We know now who was and wasn’t aware of Thalen’s treachery. No more than a handful were.”

“Maybe you should try telling that to my husband,” Vereesa spat bitterly, and Jaina set her jaw firmly before responding.

“Or Kinndy. Or Pained. Or any of the other countless people we have both lost. Vereesa, I know how it feels to have to face the demons of one’s past. It’s twice as bitter a pill to swallow when those demons weren’t brought about by oneself. But most of us aren’t quite so low-maintenance as the Forsaken are.”

“Rotting flesh and bone, you mean? Most of us aren’t rotting flesh and bone?” Vereesa asked incredulously.

“Precisely,” Jaina said. “And there are…well. There are those being held prisoner that would be invaluable to us. To all of Azeroth. Did you know that there has been talk of freeing the Illidari?”

"I'm sure Maiev is thrilled," Vereesa groaned as she leaned back in her chair and brought her fingertips to her temples, squeezing her eyes shut with a grimace. She tried to release the tension wracking her body when she exhaled again and drooped in her chair, but it didn’t help.

“Have you spoken to the council about this, yet?” Vereesa asked as she let her head roll to the side so she could appraise Jaina’s reaction.

“No,” Jaina said. “I wanted to discuss it with you, first. But I have a feeling the two of us are likely the only ones that would stand in opposition.”

“You don’t exactly sound like you’re keen on standing in opposition, Jaina,” Vereesa countered, and Jaina slowly looked down at the table. The exhaustion everyone had been forcing on her was starting to catch up. Even her eyes were burning, now.

“Perhaps I’m not,” Jaina finally said, her voice wavering dangerously. The emotion and fatigue in it brought about a tinge of guilt in Vereesa that she wasn’t at all in the mood for.

Vereesa waved a hand dismissively and looked away from Jaina towards the nearest window that was casting colorfully stained light over the meeting hall. “I can’t say this has my blessing, but I can’t say I have an argument against it that’s stronger than the Burning Legion, either.”

“I’m in a similar boat,” Jaina agreed, and Vereesa pursed her lips and reached for another slice of cheese.

“So be it, then,” Vereesa sighed. “Perhaps this will open a line of communication between us and the Farstriders.”

“Do you suppose Sylvanas might be able to do that just as easily?” Jaina asked - very, very carefully.

Vereesa looked down at the cheese she was holding and tossed it back onto the tray she’d chosen it from.

“I think she’s mad at me.” She said dryly, and Jaina nearly laughed.

“Do you think Lor’themar put her up to this?” Vereesa asked once some of the tension had finally fled the space between them.

“No,” Jaina answered honestly. “No, I think…well. I suppose I never quite realized just how strongly she still feels about them.”

“Them?” Vereesa asked with a quirked brow.

“The Sin’dorei. Quel’Thalas. I suppose I always viewed her as more…self-serving. You must have some sort of insight, no? It’s obvious things aren’t exactly…copacetic between the two of you. But it can’t always have been that way.”

“My sister is infuriatingly selfless, actually,” Vereesa muttered. “Though that’s changed somewhat since Icecrown. Still. She takes her post very seriously and Lordaeron’s geography does effectively make it the only barrier stopping possible threats from reaching Quel’Thalas. She could have taken the Forsaken anywhere, I’d assume. It’s probably no accident that she chose not to.”

“I don’t know how that never occurred to me,” Jaina murmured thoughtfully after rolling that information around in her mind.

“She makes it almost impossible for most people to think of her possessing even the slightest hint of humanity,” Vereesa said with a shrug. “And that isn’t new to her in undeath.”

“Don’t you think that’s…a little uncharitable?” Jaina asked after wincing.

“What’s gotten into you?” Vereesa asked suspiciously, and Jaina shook her head.

“Sheer and utter exhaustion, maybe,” Jaina quipped, and Vereesa somehow managed to smile.

“I think we could both use a little nap, perhaps. Thank you for taking my feelings on the matter into consideration. Really.”

Jaina sighed and finally leaned over to pull Vereesa into a quick hug before she stood and offered her a hand up. “An hour probably wouldn’t hurt before I meet with the council. We have plenty to do this afternoon that’s going to require my not being delirious.”

“Right,” Vereesa said. “And I’ll have to be a bit more well-rested to properly avoid seeing my sister…and the threat of finding a Sunreaver dagger in my kidney. Dalaran isn’t big enough for all of this.”

“That isn’t going to happen, Vereesa,” Jaina said, quite seriously. “You have my word that neither I nor the council would release someone who was a danger to anyone here.”

“I hope you’re right,” Vereesa said, but she reached out and clasped Jaina’s arm gently for a moment of quick reassurance before turning to leave.

It was all Jaina could do to stay on her feet long enough to watch her go before she sank right back down into her chair and fell asleep in the most unflattering position possible - and she didn't care in the least.

Chapter Text

“I don’t know what to do,” Lenara whispered from her spot on the floor in front of Velonara’s chair. Velonara hummed low in her throat as she continued working on the miniscule braid she’d been weaving into Lenara’s hair.

“Best leave her be,” Velonara responded, and Lenara snuck a glance across the grandroom of their shared suite to where Sylvanas had been pacing for the better part of the evening. “She’ll talk if she chooses to.”

The pacing stopped quite suddenly and Lenara averted her gaze to the fireplace swiftly.

“Subtle,” Velonara whispered, giving the hair in her fingertips a gentle yet reproachful tug.

“I'm not deaf,” Sylvanas said from the other side of the room, staring at them flatly for a moment before she resumed her pacing, but only for a short while. Long enough to make one more circuit around the small dining table in their sitting room. Her leather-gloved fingertips made a subtle noise as she ran them along the table’s edge before finally leaving the room to retreat down the hallway.

She was glad of their accommodations, really. They provided ample enough space that she could find privacy when she needed it, and ample enough luxury that she didn't feel like the second-class citizen she’d previously feared she might.

Velonara finished Lenara’s braid silently and frowned when she noticed Lenara was picking the barbs off the feather she'd been splitting most recently. The little fragments fluttered slowly from her hands onto the floor where she'd been making piles of fletching to repair and replace the arrows the previous night had damaged or taken, entirely.

“Lenara,” Velonara began, and her fellow ranger’s head dropped when she realized she'd been caught doing something so wasteful and juvenile.

“I'm worried,” Lenara whispered, so quietly Velonara almost hadn't heard her.

Velonara’s frown shifted into genuine concern as she gently folded the back of her hand against Lenara’s cheek - sliding her knuckles along her cool, pallid skin until she was tracing the line of her jaw. Lenara looked up slowly at Velonara’s almost imperceptible urging.

There was a moment’s pause before Velonara slowly bent far enough to reach her. She stopped just short of her lips.

“Would it ease your troubled mind if I spoke with her?” Velonara asked, now trailing her fingertips along the opposite side of her cheek.

“Yes,” Lenara responded simply, and Velonara kissed her in response so softly it was almost chaste.

“Then that's what I'll do,” Velonara murmured, and Lenara slowly turned herself around until was facing Velonara. Only then did she kneel up and lean closer - her hands atop Velonara’s thighs and her hips against the front of the chair. Velonara reached, then, to cradle Lenara’s face in her palms as she offered her the faintest of smiles.

“Why are you smiling at me?” Lenara asked plainly.

“Can't a dead girl afford herself the luxury of a smile?” Velonara queried with a quirk of her brow. She didn't really allow Lenara much time to answer aside from the amused breath of an almost-laugh she'd drawn from her, then leaned in to brush her lips against the side of Lenara’s mouth before she spoke quietly against it. “I'm smiling at you because you are the fairest of all the rangers, and because I am fortunate enough to bask in your radiance.”

Lenara snorted derisively and gave Velonara’s shoulder an almost playful shove. “I simply cannot stand you,” she chided, and Velonara finally stood up, but only once she managed to get her choked, cackling laughter under control.

Velonara knocked on the frame of the door that led to the bedroom Sylvanas had claimed for herself, and peered into the darkness silently until a pair of glowing red skits appeared in the direction of the bed.

“Are you still brooding, old friend?” Velonara asked as she leaned against the open door and crossed her arms in front of her chest.

“Are you still canoodling my ranger?” Sylvanas countered instantly, and Velonara clicked her tongue.

“I despise that word,” Velonara droned, and Sylvanas’s dual-toned chuckle filled the room for a moment before it was gone.

“I'm rather fond of it,” Sylvanas countered, and Velonara watched her sit up in her still-made bed. Now that her eyes had adjusted fully to the darkness, she saw Sylvanas and the deep purple colors she knew she was wearing only in soft, varied shades of grey.

“Why?” Velonara asked in a tone of genuine curiosity.

“Because your distaste for it amuses me to no end,” Sylvanas sighed as though that much should've been obvious.

Velonara sighed heavily and dropped her arms to her sides, but didn't yet fully enter the room.

“I assume you'd like to come in?” Sylvanas finally asked, making no move to get up from where she was seated on the edge of her bed. “I haven't yet had a chance to update myself on Dalaran’s current city ordinances. Is it a crime to seek the peace of solitude, however fleeting?”

Velonara was already lowering herself down next to Sylvanas before she even finished her monologue.

“I haven't seen you this agitated in a long while,” Velonara said once Sylvanas went silent beside her. “And Lenara is worried.”

“I'm fine, Velonara,” Sylvanas sighed.

“This is the part where I call you on your lie and you either dismiss me or remind me of the existence of respect as a concept,” Velonara quipped. And she continued just as Sylvanas began to speak. “Or, the third, secret option where you tell me why you're wearing a path in the floors of our room with your pacing - which you could easily have done here instead of there.”

“What in the names of the gods has gotten into you, Velonara?” Sylvanas barked at her incredulously. “That would make you think this line of questioning and the way you are going about it is in any way appropriate?”

“I'm older than you,” Velonara said simply with the faintest of smiles playing at the corner of her lips.

“We’re dead, Velonara,” Sylvanas grated out as her eyes narrowed at her old, sharp-mouthed and quick-witted friend.

“Then I will always be older than you,” Velonara countered as she raised one of her brows and crossed her arms.

Sylvanas’s lips parted, but no further words came. Her teeth clicked audibly as she shut them and looked down at her own hands in her lap before sighing quite heavily. “I cannot stress enough how much I cannot stand you.”

Velonara made a sound that was unapologetically close to the beginnings of a giggle.

“That is most unfortunate,” Velonara purred. “But perhaps if you tell me why you are worrying my beloved with your fretting, I can return to my…canoodling.”

Velonara said the word like it tasted sour.

And Sylvanas nearly laughed. She hummed low and soft under her breath, instead, and nodded - finally giving up a fight she hadn't really had the energy to start in the first place.

“Vereesa-,”

“I fucking knew it.”

“Velonara…please…,”

“My apologies,” Velonara said far too quickly. As though she’d had her apology prepared.

Sylvanas rubbed her eyes with her fingertips and Velonara pretended not to notice her exasperation for the time being.

“I spoke with the Archmage regarding the prisoners,” Sylvanas finally continued once she managed to collect herself.

Velonara immediately sobered. “Did it go as well as we suspected it would?”

“It went significantly better, actually,” Sylvanas sighed as she stood from the edge of her bed and walked slowly towards the hearth. “As a matter of fact, she’s not even notably opposed to the idea. Her only real objection, if you could call it that, was that Vereesa be present when the council makes the decision.”

“Ah. The great leader of her people, herself, Vereesa Windrunner,” Velonara droned as she followed Sylvanas after a time and reached out to squeeze her shoulder gently before she took a seat in one of the armchairs positioned by the hearth. “And when does the supreme ruler of Azeroth plan to grace us with her presence?”

“She is already here,” Sylvanas said flatly. “And I did not conduct myself in the way that I should have when she entered the room. I thought myself more in control.”

“First, who was present - second, how, exactly, did you conduct yourself?” Velonara prodded - her tone both sober and altogether without judgment.

“Only Proudmoore and my sister, thankfully. As for how I conducted myself - in summation, I informed the Archmage that there is, essentially, no such thing as the Silver Covenant and most certainly not a Ranger General of the aforementioned fantasy, and that the only deed that can be attributed to said fantasy is self-genocide,” Sylvanas began evenly - staring into the flames that cast a warm glow across her cold, sharp features.

“I see,” Velonara said softly - lifting her brows when Sylvanas began speaking again.

“And when Vereesa entered the room, I reminded her that she is heavy-footed and a coward,” Sylvanas finished, slowly lifting her eyes to level them at Velonara. “And that is where I left it.”

Velonara nodded slowly and then examined her fingernails as she cleared her throat. “Would you like the good news first, or the bad news?” She finally asked.

“Surprise me,” Sylvanas suggested as she plopped down in the armchair not currently occupied by her friend.

“The good news is that you are not wrong,” Velonara began. “The bad news is that this may not have been the best display of your political prowess, though I do not think it is as consequential as you fear it to have been.”

”Truly?” Sylvanas asked - sounding more than a little surprised.

“I stopped trying to say things with the intention of making you feel better when we were both yet living. I see no reason to start trying again, now. In any event, the proposition carries with it far too much gravity for family squabbles to have any real effect aside from bitterness, but there is already that in spades. So, save your worry for…well. All of this.” Velonara gestured vaguely and smiled wryly at Sylvanas.

“The end of the world, you mean?” Sylvanas asked, allowing her head to loll to the side in an uncharacteristically comical fashion as Velonara chuckled.

“The newest of many, yes,” Velonara crossed her legs and peered across the short distance that separated them. “You do know we will not allow her to…wound you so deeply again, yes? Unless you choose to let her, which I hope that you do not.”

“I know, Vel,” Sylvanas said - her voice uncharacteristically quiet. “I think I'm going to go for a walk. Your council is appreciated.”

Sylvanas stood and clasped Velonara’s shoulder. Celibate didn't bother attempting to stop her.

The streets of Dalaran were quiet this late in the evening. More quiet, at least, than usual. Sylvanas enjoyed the relative freedom these late hours provided. She even enjoyed the sound of her boot-heels clicking on the cobblestones. She wandered for just a short while, however, before her ambling brought her to the council chambers.

Her subconscious mind itched for something to do. For a way to feel useful as she waited to receive word that the council would be called into session now that Vereesa was present. And, here among the maps and missives, she could sate herself at least somewhat.

The mage lights burned low in the room - casting a soft, cool glow over everything. It was a welcome reprieve from the usual glaring brightness of Dalaran.

Thoughts of Silvermoon flitted into her mind - of brilliant marble and gold and royal blue. Her expression remained unchanged as she walked quietly alongside one of the long, heavy-hewn tables currently sporting countless maps and models of ships and armies. The unbidden memories of her former home were quickly drowned out by more tangible, methodical, and decidedly less sentimental thoughts.

Sylvanas removed her coat and hung it on the back of her chair and then sat down in it, already tilting her head as she looked at the way the troops were meant to lead an attack that she could already tell was doomed to fail. With a furrowed brow, she quickly reached for a quill and an ink pot - drawing lines and markers with effortless swiftness that would turn the tide of a battle that hadn't yet even begun.

She was so engrossed in her work that she nearly missed the soft sound of footfall in the corridor outside. And even though her ears twitched in the direction of the noise, she remained focused on her work - expecting to hear Velonara’s voice to chide her at any moment.

“It's dark,” the voice was soft and low - familiar, but not too familiar. “Shall I raise the lights?”

“I prefer the dark, Lady Proudmoore,” Sylvanas said - her tone calm and even. “Unless you need them brighter for your own purposes.”

Sylvanas finally looked up at her then, and the quick way in which Jaina averted her gaze wasn't lost on her, though the reason behind it might have been beyond her grasp. Sylvanas took in the sight of her openly, on the contrary. It was interesting to see her in such plain clothing. Just breeches and a shirt - hair in a mess of a bun atop her head.

“I didn't really come here with a purpose,” Jaina mused, wryly. “Other than, perhaps, to be alone.”

“Your disappointment must be immeasurable,” Sylvanas droned as she looked at the key she'd just drawn for the map she was sketching.

“It isn't at all,” Jaina said easily, walking further into the room before she paused. “May I sit with you for a time?”

Sylvanas looked up again, this time in surprise.

“It is your city, Lady Proudmoore-,” she responded with one eyebrow raised slightly. Her surprise didn’t bleed into her cool, easy tone in the slightest. “-you may sit anywhere you wish.”

Jaina rounded the table and quietly took the chair opposite Sylvanas. Her eyes raked over the maps. She noticed the change to the formations the council had been working on earlier immediately.

“This is…,” Jaina trailed off and reached over to touch the map, but thought better of it as her brow furrowed. Her hand withdrew. “You’d have solved an hour-long argument earlier had you only been here. This is brilliant.”

“A little hobby of mine,” Sylvanas quipped as she compared her recreated map to its larger counterpart. “War planning.”

Jaina allowed herself a little chuckle at that and then sobered for a time as she watched Sylvanas work. She found her thoughts drifting to the sound of pen against parchment and, around that same time, Sylvanas spoke. It almost startled her.

“I did not handle myself well with Vereesa,” She began - dipping her quill again and watching the ink draw up into the split calamus until she was satisfied. “I am aware that the two of you are close. It was not my intention to…well.”

“Whatever it is you think that you did, you did not,” Jaina said when it became clear Sylvanas wouldn’t be continuing. “You are so…polished, for lack of a better term. Your every word…every move. Even down to the way that you dress. I know that you know that, obviously.”

Jaina almost stopped speaking when she realized Sylvanas was looking at her from across the table. Waiting.

“Mm. Well. All that to say, perhaps it was somewhat of a relief,” Jaina continued, finally, after clearing her throat. “If we are to work together, which we must, common ground is not so terrible a thing to find. And I, too, have been angry at my siblings.”

Jaina was smiling. Only slightly. But enough that Sylvanas exhaled in amusement through her nose and looked back down at her map.

Jaina had to stop herself from sighing in relief. Her gaze fell to the map Sylvanas was duplicating. She was fascinated by the accuracy of it. So enthralled was she that she spoke again without first thinking.

“You care so much for them, still,” she murmured absently as her thoughts wandered to tomorrow’s council meeting. “The Sin’dorei.”

“I would do for them all that I can,” Sylvanas said simply. “Those that are left. Those that I did not fail. As you would have done for yours.”

Jaina winced and looked away quickly.

“I meant nothing by it,” Sylvanas said easily - not needing to take her eyes off her map to see the way Jaina had reacted. “I am only speaking freely. Does this bother you?”

“No, I just…,” Jaina sighed and shook her head.

Sylvanas placed her quill down and looked across the table at Jaina. “Perhaps you should speak freely, in turn.”

Jaina slowly looked over at Sylvanas - at her impassive, unreadable expression.

“I suppose if mine yet lived, I would do the same as you are doing, now,” Jaina finally said after a time. “And you did not…if you had failed them, we would not be discussing them, now.”

“You are far too learned to believe that to be true,” Sylvanas said. She was so still. Unmoving. Unbreathing. “Surely.”

Jaina looked down at the table and at the maps spread before them as she ran her fingertips along the nearest parchment. “I didn't mean-”

“I am not good company, I fear, Lady Proudmoore,” Sylvanas cut off her apology quickly, but not harshly, and continued with her work.

Jaina sat quietly for a moment or two before she stood just as quietly.

“You were fine company, Lady Windrunner,” she said - her voice sounding, suddenly, quite tired and raw around the edges. Less measured and poised than Sylvanas was used to hearing it. The difference might have been subtle to most, but not to one as on-guard as Sylvanas. The change was enough to draw her full attention.

Their eyes met for as long as a breath took, and Jaina looked away. “I just mean I enjoyed the peace of it. This room is going to be filled with warring egos tomorrow, among other things. Thank you for humoring me.”

Sylvanas hadn't looked away. “It is your city, Jaina,” she said - repeating her earlier reassurance, though it sounded altogether different to Jaina this time. “But there is, perhaps, as much peace to be had in slumber. If the fates so will that your nightmares be kept at bay for a time. I hope that it is so.”

Jaina wasn't sure she'd ever heard the Banshee Queen address her by her first name. Nor had she ever heard her speak so…well. ‘Eloquently’ wasn't the right word.

Jaina put a halt to her thoughts seeking a more apt one.

“I suppose I should retire for a while, at least,” Jaina said after clearing her throat and looking towards the door. “Will you attend the council meeting tomorrow?”

“Of course,” Sylvanas said. “I have no choice.”

“Right…,” Jaina sighed and shut her eyes for a moment. “As must I. Goodnight, Lady Windrunner.” She said before she turned to take her leave.

Sylvanas let her reach the door before she offered a faint nod in return to Jaina’s farewell.

Chapter Text

“What I can't understand is why we are having such a sudden and, quite frankly, reckless change of heart at a time like this,” a gnome mage Sylvanas did not recognize said - her voice cutting above the din.

Her eyes slid slowly from the mage to watch the reactions of those gathered.

“The horde as a whole is already amongst us,” Khadgar chided. “Already fighting to defend Dalaran.” He gestured towards Sylvanas.

Unfortunately. Sylvanas thought as she looked at him impassively from where she had sat, unmoving and unbreathing for the better part of an hour.

“The Dark Lady has pledged her Forsaken to our cause as part of our exchange. And I have no doubt this release would go great lengths in repairing relations with Silvermoon. Or, perhaps, it would be just a start. But in case you all had forgotten, we are up against a foe far more powerful than the Alliance, or the Horde. But perhaps our combined forces-”

“And what say Lady Proudmoore?” Varian asked from the far end of the massive, wood-hewn table - directly opposite Sylvanas.

“She gave the orders to begin with,” Vereesa suddenly cut in. “I hardly think expecting her to go back on a decision that-”

“And you followed them,” Sylvanas said - not letting Vereesa finish. The room fell silent for the first time in ages. Sylvanas hadn't shouted. Not even close. She had spoken calmly and almost coolly and yet her voice cut through and silenced everything. Vereesa looked accosted. “You followed them so very well, dear sister.”

Before Vereesa could get her bearings, Sylvanas sat up in the chair she'd been so carefully casually lounging in. “We have, all of us in this room, made decisions that we believed, in the moment, were for the good of our people. And we must make a similar decision now. Not with our wounded pride or personal bias, but with impartial facts - for the good of our people. All of them.”

“It's easy to say that when what you refer to as ‘impartial fact’ solely supports your argument, sister,” Vereesa finally responded from across the room.

There was a split murmur among those gathered. Some agreeing. Some worried. Some shocked.

“Oh, but the facts are so very apparent in this instance,” Sylvanas responded easily - one hand on the edge of the table and the other on the arm of her chair as she looked around at the assembled leaders and envoys. “If we do not come to an agreement, I will remove myself and my Forsaken from the equation, entirely. And that will change very little in the grand scheme of things if this keeps going the way that it has been. It will only make me more comfortable as the world crumbles. Because it will. Unless we can all leave the past where it belongs, we are easy prey. I am not even certain we can win as a united front, much less as a room full of bickering peahens. But I know that if we try, we may have a chance, albeit a slim one. And I know that if we do not - I am going back to my city to experience a modicum of peace before we are all obliterated while the rest of you squabble about crimes we have all committed.”

Everyone stared.

Sylvanas turned her hand over and lifted a brow incredulously.

“The choice is not mine,” she said. “I have said my piece. Feel free to go back to your squabbling while the burning legion floods our world with demons.”

“Such arrogance,” Genn Greymane growled from across the table and a few seats down. “To think your belittlement of those on this council will sway the decision to be made.”

“I do not need to belittle you,” Sylvanas said as her eyes slid slowly across the assembled leaders to rest easily and coldly on Genn. “I have just grown incredibly weary of watching the leaders of our world create political rifts because that is less…scary…than facing catastrophe.”

Genn let out a growl that turned into words, his hackles thoroughly raised. “And again you-,”

“Enough, Genn,” Jaina said flatly. “That is enough from everyone. Leave us to deliberate.” Jaina looked around as she stood from her place at the head of the table. Sylvanas stood without a sound and slipped from the room like water - looking untroubled by the prospect of being anywhere but here.

A few tense, silent moments passed. Jaina rolled her neck and glanced around the room. “I said - leave us to deliberate,” she repeated, her tone a little harsher. “Unless you are suddenly a member of the Council of Six, I urge you to respect the time and wishes of those who are.”

Immediately, the room was a flurry of motion. Jaina slipped through one of the doorways near the back of the room and, with a wave of her hand, her next step landed in the private chamber the true council met in.

Vereesa pointedly avoided Halduron’s seeking, accusatory gaze as she stalked out of the room. She was all but blinded with indignance as she travelled down the stone stairs two at a time - quickly but with enough grace that she drew very little attention to herself.

As she walked, she fished the message out of her belt pouch that had been slid into her hand as she'd entered the council chamber this morning. It was coded, but she'd written the code herself, and it read smoothly and easily to her eyes.

News on your sister.

Balcony.

-D

Vereesa’s heart skipped a beat as she picked up her pace once her feet met the cobbled streets of Dalaran. Given something to focus on, she redirected her roiling emotions into something more productive. Or, at least, the potential of something fruitful. Finding out why her sister was doing…well. Whatever it was that she was doing.

Daelin sat down across from Vereesa in her parlor in his Silver Covenant finest without mentioning the sudden absence of a balcony that had been taken out just this morning by a fel meteor. Vereesa surveyed the destruction impassively for a moment before re-focusing her attention when the Scout Captain cleared his throat.

“I assume you wouldn't have braved my ill mood so soon after the council adjourned unless you'd found something pertinent?” Vereesa asked dryly. She was still fuming from her older sister’s unseemly, public scolding. “She must be slipping if you have. I truly didn't expect you to find anything at all.”

“I hate to disappoint you, Vereesa, but she is nigh impossible to follow. When her rangers aren't running impeccable interference, she’s either moving too quickly and silently or paying far too much attention for anyone to tail her for long. Usually both.”

Vereesa sighed a defeated sigh and pinched her nose between her fingers. “Then why are we here? We could be called back to council any moment.”

“Because Jaina is not nearly so…discreet,” Daelin offered almost tentatively.

“Why would she be? And what does that have to do with my sister?” Vereesa demanded - temper growing ever shorter. If that was even possible right now.

“We are all aware of Jaina’s late-night strolls,” Daelin continued. “Last night, she was seen going to the council chamber. Nothing unusual, but with all of…well. This…going on-,” Daelin gestured both vaguely and broadly. “One of ours followed her. For her safety, of course.”

“Of course,” Vereesa remarked dryly. “Of course, that's a perfectly legitimate reason for you to be spying on her.”

Daelin again cleared his throat. “Right. Well. She was with Sylvanas. Rather, Sylvanas was already there. Our man backed off the moment he heard her beyond the doors. She'd have caught on far too quickly for him to keep an ear to the door. But…they were talking. Amicably. And Jaina looked…almost flustered following her departure. Perhaps because our man pretended to cross paths with her rather clumsily in the corridor, perhaps not. But flustered, nonetheless.”

Vereesa stared at Daelin for a long while as a myriad of emotions assailed her. More annoyance. Anger. Suspicion. Jealousy…

“Thank you, Daelin,” Vereesa said - her voice suddenly something adjacent to quiet, and almost appreciative. At the same time, it sounded as though she was forcibly dragging the words out of her own throat.

“You seem agitated by this,” Daelin hazarded. “Should we avoid any lines of inquiry that put us on a path that involves the Archmage?”

“No,” Vereesa said almost too quickly. “No, whatever my sister is plotting, we need to know it both for Dalaran and for Lady Jaina. Continue as you have been. She is not to be trusted.”

“Of course, Lady Windrunner.”

“Getting cozy with the archmage, again?” Velonara asked with an altogether feline smirk as Sylvanas shut the door to her chambers.

“I do not know what that even means, Velonara,” Sylvanas sighed as she draped herself across a velour armchair near the hearth. “Nor do I know why you are constantly in my rooms.”

“No judgment,” Velonara said easily, most of her attention on the fletching she was working on. Even amongst fine armories, Velonara preferred to craft her own errors. She preferred to craft all of their arrows. And they were in high demand of late. “I am so very proud of you for making friends.”

Sylvanas didn’t ask if Velonara had been following her. She didn’t need to. Velonara was always nearby. But she did let out a sigh.

“Any word from the council on the Sunreavers?” Velonara asked, holding her arrow up to examine it closely. Seemingly approving, she tossed it into a pile of finished bolts with a quiet clatter and began on the next.

“Nothing finite,” Sylvanas mused. “Though Lady Proudmoore does seem…more than open to the idea. Which is as surprising as it is fortuitous.”

Velonara gave Sylvanas a faintly conspiratorial smile that Sylvanas caught but did not return - opting, instead, to become lost in her own thoughts.

Sylvanas had just begun to succeed in this endeavor when she heard an unusually loud set of approaching ranger footsteps. Unusually loud, at least, for her rangers. The urgency this implied had her sitting up like a bolt in her chair and turning her head towards the door.

Lenara burst through it without knocking. Sylvanas pressed her ears back as Velonara lept to her feet.

“What is it?” Velonra asked before Sylvanas had a chance to.

“Lor’themar Theron is c-”

“Am I interrupting?” Lor’themar’s rather boisterous voice sounded from the next room over.

Lenara looked stricken.

“He seems quite…here.” Sylvanas observed - relaxing somewhat into her chair with a sigh as Velonara moved towards the door to excuse both herself and Lenara. “Come in, Theron.”

Velonara eyed Lor’themar as she passed by him on her way out of Sylvanas’s private room, and she shut the door behind herself.

Lor’themar, never one to be lost for words, was very much at a loss for words.

Sylvanas smirked.

“Cat got your tongue, Lord Regent?” She asked in Thalassian - smooth and flowery and rich as it had been when she yet lived, but with a hollow, quiet echo, now.

“I…no. Apologies, Lady Windrunner. May I sit?” He asked - again, uncharacteristically stilted in his speech.

Sylvanas canted her head to the side and gestured to the chair on the opposite side of the hearth. As Lor’themar got comfortable, Sylvanas stood and reached for an untouched decanter of wine that had been placed in her room ahead of her arrival. She poured a single glass for the man that had once been one of her dearest friends, and passed it to him.

“You sat as though you are feeling your increasingly long years,” she quipped as he took the glass and gave her a nod.

It seemed that was all she'd needed to do to ease the tension. He laughed softly and wryly and took a sip of his wine as Sylvanas returned to her seat.

“Well, I am,” Lor’themar confirmed. “Every single one of them. But I didn't come here to moan, I-”

“I certainly hope you didn't. Undeath hasn't changed my preferences.” Sylvanas said dryly. Again, Lor’themar laughed - more of a warm, familiar chuckle this time.

“I'd forgotten how funny you are, Lady Windrunner,” Lor’themar said as he smiled faintly at her.

“I'm devastated.”

“I'm sure you are,” Lor’themar said before drawing in a deep breath and sighing the remaining tension out of his shoulders. “I came to thank you.”

Sylvanas’s ears sank slightly as she stared at Lor’themar with furrowed brows - an expression she couldn't school away quickly enough for Lor’themar not to notice.

“Thank me for what, Theron?” Sylvanas asked as she looked away towards the fire she could scarcely feel despite its closeness.

“For what you are doing for us,” Lor’themar said carefully. “The stance you took earlier, it…it could have cost you much more than some might realize. But it was not lost on me.”

Sylvanas made a noise that could have meant anything, and Lor’themar looked down at his wine and then back to her. She didn't look so different, really. Of course, she had a certain pallor…her hair had lost its luster, too. But you couldn't remove what made a Windrunner a Windrunner. Her sharp yet delicate features and the grace with which she sat there - just sat there - remained the same.

“Will you not accept my thanks, Sylvanas?” Lor'themar asked almost gently.

Sylvanas turned at the sound of her name and the familiar tone with which it was spoken. “I accept your thanks, Theron.”

They are my people, too. They were my people, first.

The bitter thought railed against the walls of her mind, and the resulting agitation sat coiled in the back of her throat like a snake’s nest.

Lor’themar was quiet for some time before he drew in a breath to speak again.

“I should have asked if you were in the mood for company,” he said - finishing his glass of wine and sitting it to the side. “I should leave you. We will be called back to council soon enough.”

“Thank you for the visit, Theron,” Sylvanas said smoothly, standing along with him and walking towards the door. “Perhaps we can catch up another time. Under better circumstances.” She was still biting back words of indignance. Of ever-festering hurt and loss. But she was used to this. Used to every meeting with someone from her past being something akin to a funeral service - which were never for the deceased, nor those left behind. They were great pyres at which attendees could lay their guilt at the feet of the still-suffering. Because they did not visit more. Did not write more. Or, more often than not, because they did nothing at all.

She held the door open for him and, when he nodded at her and offered her a faint smile, she returned both offerings to him. Because this was not for her. It never was. And it would do her no good to seek solace in any of it.

It was no more than an hour later that Sylvanas was summoned back to the council chamber. Velonara opted to accompany her and, much to her surprise, Sylvanas gave no resistance.

“Are you unwell, fearless leader?” Velonara asked as Sylvanas surveyed herself in the standing mirror in her chamber - adjusting the deep purple sash of silk tied so carefully around her waist.

“Well, I'm dead, so,” Sylvanas quipped without looking at her old friend.

Velonara gasped. “So am I. We have more in common every day.”

Sylvanas smirked and turned from the mirror - slipping her black leather boots on over her dark breeches. The silver accents on the boots glinted faintly in the fading light within the room - matching the silver buttons of her high-collared shirt.

“How do I look?” Sylvanas asked a touch sarcastically as she held her hands out.

“Like you are trying too hard and not at all at the same time,” Velonara droned, falling into step beside Sylvanas as they left their joined rooms. “I assume that's what you are going for?”

“I changed my mind,” Sylvanas said, side-eyeing Velonara as her ears shifted in feigned annoyance. “You may not come.”

“That's too bad,” Velonara sighed. “I've already gotten myself presentable and I refuse to waste the effort.”

Sylvanas hummed as she began taking the spiral stairs that led to the streets below two at a time. “And where is your beloved this evening?”

“Hunting demons,” Velonara said with a faint chuckle. “She has been feeling under stimulated.”

“Have you considered stimulating her?” Sylvanas asked in a decidedly sultry tone - finding it difficult not to show her amusement as more than one person side-stepped out of their dark and dreary way with a comical quickness while they stalked towards their destination.

“Don't be crass, Sylvanas!” Velonara exclaimed - her expression one of shock until it wasn't. Until she wore nearly the same expression as a cat at play.

It happened in the blink of an eye. Sylvanas’s ears twitched in the direction of what sounded like a struggle. The streets were unbearably crowded. Even her sharp eyes could not find the source of the ruckus. Until, suddenly, the ruckus was upon them.

A man easily twice her width came careening in her direction - having been either shoved or otherwise put off-balance.

Sylvanas didn't even move. Velonara was on him so quickly she was a blur until she wasn't. Until she was lowering the man she'd just rendered unconscious to the ground like he was no heavier than a sack of flour and looking up slowly as three others approached them. Her eyes burned like angry embers as Sylvanas watched them from over her ranger’s shoulder.

“You would do well to tread more carefully in the Dark Lady’s presence,” she said coldly and sharply in accented Common. “He's going to need a compress for the bump on the back of his head. Take him home or to whatever Inn you crawled out of.”

The two remaining men from the group looked equal parts furious and fearful. They'd just watched a woman who couldn't have weighed more than their boots after a trek through Dustwallow Marsh unsheath her blade, use the pommel of it to render the largest of them unconscious, catch him with one hand on his collar and lower him to the ground all while looking…well. Expressionless save for fury in her eyes.

And behind her…well. Everyone knew who the Dark Lady was. They didn't dare even look at her. None of them had ever even been in her presence, much less drawn her ire.

They changed their expressions to something in between apologetic and mournful as they both reached for their friend - straining to lift him from the ground. Even then, they had to drag most of his weight along. Velonara stood there - unmoving until the sound of his boots scraping long the cobbled road began to fade. Only then did she sheath her blade and continue walking. Sylvanas was at her side again already - a smirk playing at one corner of her lips.

“I'm sure you are devastated Lenara wasn't here, hm, my most fearsome peacock?” Sylvanas asked wryly.

“I would like for you to leave me alone,” Velonara countered. “Or would you rather talk about the human?”

“What human?” Sylvanas asked - brows kitting together as she looked over at Vel. “You are aware there are many humans, yes?”

Velonara chuckled almost darkly. “The one who might actually not be useless. But, to save you the floundering, I'm referring to the Proudmoore girl, of course.”

“She isn't a girl,” Sylvanas scoffed. And then she caught herself. Realized which part, exactly, she'd rebutted. She despised how clever Velonara could be as much as she enjoyed it.

“Oh, I know. I have eyes. I was just curious what you would say,” Velonara sounded smug. She looked smug, too.

“I still haven't the faintest idea what you are talking about,” Sylvanas said flatly.

“Lenara was following the Covenant cuck that was tailing you the other night. He didn't realize it, obviously. But Lenara - you know how curious she tends to be - couldn't help but notice he switched targets when Proudmoore joined you.”

“My sister has someone spying on one of her own? And the Archmage, of all people?” Sylvanas asked - sounding genuinely surprised. “I'd no idea she was quite so…paranoid. Foolish, yes.”

“Well, she is still that - and in spades. But perhaps it was just happenstance,” Velonara mused. “I still wish you would let us give Vereesa’s men a little fright.”

“I find them entertaining,” Sylvanas shrugged. “The other day I let them watch me stare at a blank piece of parchment for an hour. I'm certain they’re still trying to figure out what magic my correspondents cast on it.”

“You're terrible,” Velonara chuckled. “I adore it, so.”

“I know,” Sylvanas said, offering Velonara an exceedingly rare, charmingly crooked smile as they reached the steps to the tower that contained the council chamber.