Your name is Kalyste Wildlight, and you have everything.
You have your family–your mother, kind and strong, whose solemn plate armor belies the warmth of the woman beneath, your father, bright and cunning, who taught you the intricacies of court long before you were old enough to hold a weapon. You have your purpose, something that settled into the very core of your being and refused to be budged. You have your future, spread out before you in a neat, tidy line, a goal to reach and the ambition to reach it.
In the blink of an eye, that future is stolen from you, and you must pick up the shattered pieces before they fall upon the remnants of your family, as surely as your father’s blade fell upon the king he served. You still have your mother, whose kindness and strength both were stolen from her with her strike that felled your father, a traitor to his bones, a fate the rest of your people would pin on you by the fact that you share his name.
You fight for your future, now, for your future, and your family’s, and you succeed, at a cost.
You have a king, now, who is as a brother to you–he lost his family the day you lost yours, and you find solace in that common loss. You stand at his side as he rises from untested prince to respected monarch, the light of Silvermoon. You watch as his son, his heir, who will one day bear the heavy burden of his father’s crown, grows from boy to battlemage, and you know the meaning of pride for your family, your family by choice, if not by blood.
Your name is Kalyste Wildlight, and once, you had thought you had everything, but that does not hold true forever.
[previous: “a cordial invitation”, “shattering the mirror”, “the masquerade”]
—
Morning found Alyseia at the ruins above Shal’aran, with only the slowly-climbing sunrise and the silence for company.
Silence had been a rare gift in the Nighthold–in a structure so busy and so vital to the nightborne, there was always noise, always chaos, no matter how controlled. The quiet should have felt like a gift here, so far away from the only city Alyseia had ever known, so far away from the things that would do her harm.
Instead, it felt like a trap, even more than the Nighthold itself. Within its walls, Alyseia had been an unknown enemy placed in the heart of her people, slowly turning fel-corrupted, but she had been useful. She had been crucial to the Nightfallen’s efforts to remove Elisande from her throne, and save the lives she threw upon the fire to appease her new masters in the Legion.
When she was young, and had stars in her eyes for all the Grand Magistrix’s designs, Alyseia would have said there was no master the regal magistrix would have bowed to. That illusion, like so many others surrounding Elisande, had shattered in the end. Drawing her knees closer to her chest, Alyseia shivered in the warmth of the sun’s rising rays.
In the back of her mind, Alyseia knew she would have been safest within Shal’aran itself, but it was too full, too busy. It felt far more overwhelming to be in an unknown place full of allies than her home, full of enemies, and she didn’t know what that said about her.
By unspoken agreement, and the common sense they both share, they never meet anywhere discovery is a possibility. Both of them have far too much to lose, far too much to risk, even when it comes to the odd, tumultuous tethers that bind them together, to do anything less.
It is for that reason that when Lisbette arrives at the outskirts of Forsaken-held Andorhal, they do not meet immediately. A note is left, encoded and hidden, for Nathanos to find, and he keeps it inside the chestplate of his armor, out of reach, until long after the sun has set, when the hour is more early than late.
Death has a way of teaching patience, whether it is wanted or not, but even without it, he knows Lisbette will wait. The knowledge should not settle the deep, angry void in his chest where his heart had once been, and yet, it does. An unfortunate and treasured lapse in both their judgments.
By unspoken agreement, and the common sense they both share, they never meet anywhere discovery is a possibility. Both of them have far too much to lose, far too much to risk, even when it comes to the odd, tumultuous tethers that bind them together, to do anything less.
It is for that reason that when Lisbette arrives at the outskirts of Forsaken-held Andorhal, they do not meet immediately. A note is left, encoded and hidden, for Nathanos to find, and he keeps it inside the chestplate of his armor, out of reach, until long after the sun has set, when the hour is more early than late.
Death has a way of teaching patience, whether it is wanted or not, but even without it, he knows Lisbette will wait. The knowledge should not settle the deep, angry void in his chest where his heart had once been, and yet, it does. An unfortunate and treasured lapse in both their judgments.
To meet within Lordaeron is itself a risk, where territory has been contested four ways in the past: the Alliance, the Horde, the Argent Crusade, the Scourge, all fighting for ground they believe is theirs. For now, the battlefields have fallen silent, all the banners taken down bar the Forsaken ones he knows will remain for so long as the Forsaken stand.
Still, his approach is marked by caution as he leaves the walls behind him, and it takes only moments of carefully moving from shadow to shadow to see the remnants of glowing embers, left as an inconspicuous marker, meaningless to anyone else, left a safe distance away from where Andorhal’s inn had once been.
Nathanos kicks dirt over the embers, putting them out, and enters.
The building is still dark bar a candle lit at the barkeep’s counter, and while he doesn’t need it for its light, Nathanos takes it regardless, and peers down the steps of the inn’s basement.
Within, whether by luck or by Lisbette’s effort, a rickety approximation of a cot sits on the stone flooring, with Lisbette herself perched atop it with one leg folded beneath her and the other draped over the side of the cot itself, her foot brushing against the stone floor, bare of its plate-armored boots. A single torch is lit nearby, left to illuminate her face in its dark shadows.
“You came,” she says without looking up from a simple leather-bound book, a quill in hand, brow pinched with concentration for a moment before she sets it aside, her amber gaze even and considering.
“Against my better judgment,” he says, even as he leans his bow against the stairwell, the twin axes joining it a moment later.
Lisbette snorts and rolls her eyes. “I always leave you the option. You could simply choose not to come.”
There’s an unspoken response to that, spoken instead in Nathanos’ presence and his axes and bow left out of reach, and Lisbette’s armor left scattered on the floor even while she could be considered little more than a trespasser in her enemy’s lands, but, as ever, neither of them fill that charged space with those unspoken words. The realization is clear enough, and understood.
Stepping around her pack and several scattered pieces of her armor, Nathanos’ hands pull at the buckles where his chestplate is fastened to his long jacket. “You must feel very secure in your presence within Forsaken territory, to leave your best protection on the floor.”
“You must feel very secure in being within striking distance of your enemy, to leave your best weapons next to my best protection.” Lisbette’s grin has teeth as surely as a wolf’s, but there is none of its bite anymore. They have proven themselves too many times over for it to be considered a true threat.
Nathanos’ gloves follow his jacket and chestplate, and only then does he take the obviously empty space at Lisbette’s back, while her attention has shifted, once again, to the journal in her hands. With her armor gone, only a basic linen shirt, a halter style intended for casual sparring, along with simple cloth pants, rolled up to the knee, provides her basic protection from nothing but the damp air in this cellar.
His eye is drawn suddenly to a mark on Lisbette’s lower back, that he’s fairly sure hadn’t been there the last time they’d spoken. His hand rests on the mark, and he feels Lisbette tense for a split second before relaxing again. “I see you got sloppy.”
“I got unlucky,” Lisbette corrects, as Nathanos’ first two fingertips follow the jagged line of the scar, still pink in its newness. “Some of the last remnants of demonic forces we found in Azsuna. A felstalker I hadn’t seen teleported behind me. Its bite did not agree with me.”
“Hmm,” as he lifts his hand from the scar, he lets his first two fingers trail over the skin at her back, “a very convenient excuse. Or perhaps you need more skilled eyes watching your back.”
“Like yours?” Lisbette leans forward just enough to crane her neck around to look at him. “You know that’s impossible. Not to mention your history in ‘watching my back’ is questionable, as you well know.”
It’s a sting from their more troubled past, one they’ve never discussed, that hangs between them on occasion, sometimes--especially--on quiet, dark nights like this. Wordlessly, Nathanos’ hand lifts from her back only long enough to brush a thumb over the divot in her skin just next to her left shoulder blade, where his arrow had once found its mark in a chaotic, screaming sky above Stormheim.
Softness is a language both of them have forgotten how to speak, in the long and turbulent years they have spent mired in their suffering, in their anger, in the endless pursuit of an unnameable goal they have both lost focus on, in pursuit of one another.
Most of softness’ subtleties are lost on them now, but it’s with an ease that surprises both of them that Nathanos moves his hand to Lisbette’s upper arm and presses his lips to the small, deep scar. Her skin smells of dried sweat and stringent armor cleaner and sun-warmed leather, a smell as familiar as it is unique to her and her alone.
It is an apology and something more, an acknowledgment of what they have become, a quieting of their chaos, a necessary dimming of their fire.
When her ink-stained and callused fingers reach around to brush against where his hand rests on her arm, her amber eyes and the helmet-pressed messiness of her golden hair hold their own kind of tentative, half-forgotten softness, the kind that comes from the vulnerability of her armor, scattered around the floor, where it is useless to her, and the vulnerability of his weapons, left at the stairs, where they are useless to him.
Lisbette shuts her journal with a snap, and the moment passes, replaced by the torch’s sudden silence as she snuffs it out, and plunges them both into the safety of nighttime’s shadow.
[previous: “a cordial invitation”, “shattering the mirror”]
---
Rebellion had, in some way, always lit a flame in Thalianne’s blood.
She had never directly been a part of one until Thalyssra’s, but all the typical benchmarks were there: she had an unswerving desire to protect people from those who would exploit them, to see justice done. Once, she had very nearly defied Queen Azshara herself, ten millennia ago, and only the arguments of the prince she had loved had sent her away before the catastrophe that claimed his life, and cursed his people for eternity.
Perhaps it was little surprise that she had found herself at Meredil at the first possible opportunity, to see the First Arcanist’s will be done.
Wearing the mask of loyal Duskwatch captain had not been part of Thalianne’s original plan, but she acknowledged that it was where she was most useful. She had flexibility, maneuverability, and most of all, Elisande’s trust. Her circle was ever-tightening as the Nightfallen rebels tightened their grip, victims either of their actions themselves or of Elisande’s suspicion.
Thalianne, thus far, had remained as one of her pillars.
It was that fact and that fact alone that granted her unobstructed entrance to Elisande’s private quarters, where the grand magistrix herself held a sheaf of parchment in one hand, a glass of arcwine in the other. She didn’t look up as she said, “Report, Captain.”
“The street guards’ reports are mostly quiet--there have been a few instances of Nightfallen propaganda appearing on some of the walls, but it was removed in short order.” Thalianne held her posture straight, hardly daring to move a muscle for fear something in such an idle movement would give her away. Thalianne was a capable ranger, but a spy she was not. “I have also arranged for your requested amendments to the gala’s security.”
“Very good. You are dismissed, captain.” Elisande still didn’t look up, but Thalianne bowed anyway, and turned on her heel, headed for her next, and in her opinion, far more important stop: Alyseia’s quarters.
As Elisande’s favored handmaiden, Alyseia was “generously” given her own quarters, adjacent to Elisande’s, and in all the times Thalianne had been there before, it had been quiet, unguarded, and left to its own devices, much like the handmaiden herself.
Today, however, two felborne guards stood at the door, with their eerie veridian eyes glowing with corrupted power, their pikes crossed over the door in near-symmetrical perfection. “The handmaiden is not permitted to leave, Captain,” one of the guards told her, his face twisted into a sneer, “but you may speak with her if you require her service.”
“I do, thank you.” Thalianne waited until the felborne guards raised their pikes, then slipped inside.
Alyseia’s quarters were small, tidy, and decorated modestly--the only touch of opulence were the curtains, translucent lavender and wafting gently with the breeze. Alyseia herself sat at the windowsill, looking out at the sea just beyond Suramar City. She didn’t turn even when Thalianne approached, and only released a faint breath when Thalianne’s hand landed on her shoulder.
“Yes?” Alyseia spoke, and seemed...distracted. Thalianne’s heart twisted with sympathy. For all that she was not skilled as a spy in any regard, Alyseia was debatably in the most danger, waiting on Elisande at most hours of the day while simultaneously divulging the secrets she learned to the Nightfallen rebels. A little preoccupation, she had a feeling, was warranted.
“I’ve come to discuss the gala.” Thalianne pitched her voice lower. “Lucarys and I agree--the best thing you can do is attend to Elisande like normal. One of us will fetch you after the target has been killed.”
“Very well.” she said, still not turning to meet Thalianne’s gaze. “Thank you.”
Thalianne hesitated, a pit of unease sitting low in her gut, an age-old instinct that told her something was amiss, from the felborne guards outside Alyseia’s door to the demeanor of the handmaiden herself. Kneeling next to the window, to be at Alyseia’s eye height, Thalianne lowered her voice and said, “Alys...are you well?”
“Everything is fine.” Alyseia still didn’t turn to look Thalianne in the eye, and her unease sank into deep dread. “I’m only tired. I’ll be at the gala and waiting your word.”
“As you say.” Thalianne rose to her feet slowly. “This is the last time we will speak beforehand, if you have anything else?”
It was a final opportunity for Alyseia to be honest, to unburden herself of whatever she carried that weighed her down so heavily, and Thalianne waited a long moment for Alyseia to respond. Finally, she released a long breath, gaze still focused at the inlet outside her window, and said, just above a whisper, like the words took every ounce of her strength, “I’m...scared. I’m scared, Thalianne.”
“Of what?” Thalianne knelt beside Alyseia’s window again. The handmaiden was a good thousand years old, but it was impossible for Thalianne not to feel protective of her regardless, especially while she took such a steep risk for the rebellion. “Is it the gala?”
Alyseia was silent, but did not contradict the suggestion. “Can you...” Alyseia paused, then continued, her voice suddenly and strangely much stronger now, “...just stay away from me until it’s time to go. It’s a risk the longer we’re seen visiting.”
There was an arcane bite to the air with a bitter, demonic taint that unsettled Thalianne further, but she was not adept enough of a mage to divine the source with such limited time, and resources.
It was, she realized, the same feeling she got being around felborne guards, but despite the easy explanation, unease continued to creep across her skin.
“Take care, Alys.” Thalianne finally said, and slipped out, past the felborne guards, and back down the Nighthold’s halls.
---
As Elisande’s handmaiden, Alyseia had long come to learn there was no such thing as true privacy. All her actions were subject to scrutiny and questioning, and while she had been granted leniency with the passage of years, Alyseia was always prepared with an explanation of her actions, no matter who questioned her.
She had wanted to answer Thalianne. So badly had she wanted to answer that even without arcane skill herself, she had briefly pushed through the binding that kept her here, sitting at her window in her empty room with felborne guards that stood watch in case the enchantment failed. She had only broken the compulsion for a split second, and had wasted it on two simple words.
I’m scared.
A hand landed on her shoulder, far less kind than Thalianne’s, and pulled her to her feet. Wordlessly, listlessly, Alyseia rose, and went to Elisande’s chamber with the felborne guard’s hand guiding her.
“Ah, Alyseia.” Elisande’s smile was sharp and sour, and the same feeling roiled through Alyseia’s tender stomach. “I’m so glad you were willing to assist me in this matter.”
Speaking was too difficult, but Alyseia nodded instead. She saw a gown across Elisande’s bed, and she didn’t know what the magistrix had planned, but she knew she would have a part in it she could not warn the Nightfallen spies about. Not until it was far too late.
“Guards, leave us.” Elisande’s command was firmer, and the hand left Alyseia’s shoulder before she felt the shift in the air from the guards departing. Elisande rose to her feet from where she sat at her receiving table, standing at Alyseia’s back and resting both hands on her shoulders. “You are going to be magnificent, my dear.”
Only a weak noise of fear emerged from a deep place in Alyseia’s throat, and Elisande tsk-ed her tongue, moving over to the bed and lifting up the gown, with long, gaudy sleeves.
As if the realization had to float through the arcane fog in her mind, Alyseia realized, after a long moment, exactly what Elisande had planned.
“This is the price you pay for defying me, Alyseia.” Elisande draped the gown over the back of a chair and took Alyseia’s wrists, pushing the sleeves away to reveal the filigree shackles beneath, engraved with fel runes, that held Alyseia’s mind in a stranglehold. “I said you would have your wish--you will die for the empty freedom you so craved. I, however, will not be the one to kill you.” Gesturing towards the gown, Elisande tightened her grip on one of Alyseia’s wrists, sending a pulse of magic through the charmed shackle, and said, “Do hurry up in getting ready--the guests will be arriving very shortly, and they are ever so eager to see their magistrix.”
---
As parties went, Lucarys thought, he’d seen better.
The arcwine was the finest from the Twilight Vineyards--Iltheux’s blend, while Lucarys vastly preferred Margaux’s--and the appetizers had no expense spared, with ingredients brought in from around the world that was so newly open to them again for the first time in ten thousand years. Gentle harp music fluttered down from unseen niches and nooks in the gala’s open ballroom, and to anyone else it would have looked like a picturesque representation of Suramar’s luxuries.
The demons were the real eyesore, honestly.
Since arriving, Lucarys had seen no fewer than a dozen eredar with their glowing fel-green eyes and markings, felt the burn in the air that came from their mere proximity, and steered well clear of them. He’d seen shivarra with blades clutched in all six of their hands, wicked-sharp and deadly. There had been a few doomlords, here and there, but by and large they were not considered palatable enough, he had a feeling, to rub elbows with Suramar’s highest and mightiest.
Highest and mightiest. What a joke. They had no idea how close they were to losing control of it all.
Lucarys took a final drink of his arcwine before setting the glass down on the closest flat surface. He wasn’t here for the ambiance, and he was glad for it. Today, if everything went according to plan, they would deal Elisande a single, fatal blow that would change the course of the Nightfallen’s struggle. It would end things in one fell swoop.
Almost.
There was still the matter of the Nightwell itself, and Elisande’s demonic allies, but by and large those were secondary concerns. Without Elisande’s leadership, her supporters would be easy pickings later. And, more importantly, with Elisande dead, Lucarys had no further reason to lend the Nightfallen his blade or his time. Nobody could very well turn in the bounty for killing him if she died first.
His first step was to check in with Vyltras, but it would be far more efficient, and less suspicious, he knew, to let her find him. It left him at his own devices, though, and he was certainly no longer equipped to deal with the polite niceties of Elisande’s parties.
Instead, he decided, he’d get an idea where their target was. If Elisande was here, she was doing a good job of hiding, as she damn well should, with the Nightfallen all but breathing down her neck. Slipping through crowds of other partygoers, Lucarys picked up one of the many appetizers on display and casually took a bite out of it as he walked, a steady, sedate pace designed to draw no attention.
At the room’s edge, Lucarys saw a series of light curtains, more like veils, really, obscuring a section of the balcony above. From within, he saw a familiar glimmer of lavender-white hair, brushed to a bright shine in the dim starlight. It was almost enough to assure him of their mission’s rapidly-approaching success, but he stopped, and took a closer look.
Elisande’s face turned, left curiously open without her usual headpiece, and perhaps it was a trick of the light, but the shape of her jaw looked...different.
Her face turned again, and made eye contact with Lucarys where he stood, and he resisted the urge to drop everything and take to his heels. Not in fear, no, but if he was discovered, the mission was compromised for certain.
Elisande made no move to call for her guards, though--strangely enough, she moved her hands, slowly and painstakingly pulling back a sleeve of her gown, revealing something on her wrist that glowed faintly with bright green energy, the color of fel magic.
Her lips formed the word help, and Lucarys’ stomach dropped as he swore viciously under his breath.
He was not looking at Elisande upon the dais, but Alyseia...and the Nightfallen were preparing to assassinate her where she knelt upon her cushions.
It took a monumental amount of self control not to walk any swifter than normal, but Lucarys slipped through the crowds with little regard to manners now. Vyltras was the only one who could call off the operation entirely...as long as she, too, wasn’t compromised.
At the guard station, Lucarys found Vyltras speaking to a few felborne guards, sending them on patrols, most likely, and as they departed, Lucarys stalked up and yanked her by the shoulder out of sight. He found a blade at his throat a split second later before she recognized him, her lavender eyes boring a baleful hole into him. “What do you think you’re doing?” she hissed. “Are you trying to get us both caught?”
“You know very well no one would question two people slipping away in the middle of a party such as this.”
“They would if one of them was the Duskwatch captain. Speak quickly, we don’t have long.”
“We’re compromised.” Lucarys told her flatly, and watched the moment her heart stopped cold in her chest. “Elisande knows we’re coming for her. She set Alyseia as a decoy.”
“I knew something seemed off when I went to visit her last.” Vyltras, for the briefest moment seized by regret, refocuses. “This limits our options a great deal.”
“It destroys this mission, is what it does.” Lucarys snapped, bitter anger settling in his chest as he came to the realization that he wouldn’t be quite rid of Elisande yet after all. “How do you plan to salvage it?”
“We pull Alyseia out.” Vyltras stated after a pensive pause. “I am one of the few granted clearance to openly approach the ‘grand magistrix’s’ dais, and I can fabricate an excuse to pull her away. If Elisande’s people are watching, however--and I strongly doubt they aren’t--they will know something is amiss.”
“Go to the Arcway.” Lucarys told her after briefly racing through the few options for escaping the city that he was aware of. “We can lose them in the tunnels.”
Vyltras was already shaking her head. “Elisande ordered extra patrols down there, and I can’t pull them out now without raising the alarm too soon.” Closing her eyes with a pained line between her brows, Vyltras released a breath. “Go to the edge of the Nighthold’s docks, where there should still be a few gondolas remaining. Use this to disguise its appearance.” Taking a polished crystal from a pocket of her armor, she shoved it into Lucarys’ hands. “It will give you the appearance of a vintner making deliveries. If Alyseia arrives without me...don’t wait for me.”
It was a clear implication, and Lucarys tightened his fist around the crystal. He would hate to say that the idea of Captain Vyltras sacrificing her life for him left a pang in his chest, but it did.
“Go.” Vyltras pushed him free first, and followed, her strides brisk and her chin held high. “And make haste.”
Lucarys did not quite forsake his appearance of being a casual partygoer just yet--only when he’d rounded the corner did he take off at a full tilt sprint for the Nighthold’s docks, bitter anger and sour resignation warring for control in his chest.
He had no idea how he was going to explain this catastrophe to Thalyssra, but that was a problem for if he made it back alive.
---
Thalianne’s march through the party’s crowds was marked with far more urgency than she would have liked.
It drew attention, but one way or another, this whole situation was about to implode upon itself, and she knew she had to present the mask of loyal Duskwatch captain for only so long as it took to free Alyseia and ensure she made it to the Nighthold’s docks, where Lucarys presumably waited.
“Captain--” one of her guards attempted to gain her attention, but her pace did not falter.
“I am on a task for the Grand Magistrix,” she told them, almost in too much of a rush to even look over her shoulder, “and you may seek me out after.”
Up the stairs Thalianne went, until she came to the balcony entrance that concealed Alyseia from view. Two felborne guards stood with their pikes crossed over the entrance. “The grand magistrix isn’t taking visitors during the gala, Captain.”
“I have urgent business that requires her attention.” Thalianne took another step closer, undeterred by the glowing green of their pikes. “Stand aside.”
“My apologies, Captain,” the first guard told her, “but her order was clear--”
It took only a split second’s realization for Thalianne to reach an obvious conclusion, one she should have known the moment she discovered this plan with Lucarys’ insight--Elisande had not told her of this decoy plan in the first place, and that meant she, too, was suspected of treachery. Now, here, asking to see the magistrix herself, only proved it. Those who knew of the charade would have known to seek her out elsewhere for their urgent news.
It was that realization that made Thalianne launch a tightened fist into the throat of the first felborne guard, take his pike, and use it to strike the second guard down before either of them could even make a sound.
They fell, and Thalianne leaped over them, pulling the opaque curtains aside. Alyseia didn’t turn her head until Thalianne’s hand landed heavy on her shoulder, and she flinched under the touch; with effort, Thalianne lightened her grip. “Alys. Alys, look at me.”
Slowly, her head turned, and Thalianne got that same feeling of arcane sorcery in the air, burnt with its fel taint. Alyseia wordlessly pulled back the edge of her sleeve, and Thalianne’s stomach dropped into her feet.
A charmed shackle, light enough to be mistaken for jewelry...inscribed with fel runes, glowing with power.
Thalianne dropped to one knee and attempted to purge the jewelry of its demonic power with a burst of arcane magic, but Alyseia bit her lip against a scream, and Thalianne knew it would take more effort--and a far more powerful mage--to break the compulsion. “Come on,” she said, just under her breath, pulling Alyseia to her feet, “we need to find someone who can destroy that shackle. Lucarys is waiting at the Nighthold’s docks.”
Alyseia could not respond, it seemed, except to nod, but Thalianne saw the fear shining in her eyes, highlighted with the shimmering tears that couldn’t quite fall, and she tightened her grip on Alyseia’s hands briefly before moving one to her shoulder, a guiding gesture.
This time, Thalianne felt eyes on them as they walked, and she knew she was running out of time to make their escape seamless before it turned bloody. Elisande was surely already aware that Alyseia had been led away, and with two dead guards, as well as her own absence from the court, there would be little doubt of the culprit.
Alyseia, for her part, kept up with Thalianne’s brisk walk effortlessly, and they made it out of immediate sight with no complications, but they would back themselves into a corner soon if they didn’t evade the rest of the Duskwatch’s attention. Pulling them into a side alcove, Thalianne rolled up the sleeve concealing Alyseia’s mind-bending shackle once more, and read the runes inscribed upon it. They were unfamiliar to her, mostly, but a few she recognized as binding runes, intended to subdue a victim’s mind.
She had not the slightest idea how to break them without also breaking Alyseia’s mind in the process. Arcane magic could counter fel energy, if one was skilled enough at its patterns, but Thalianne, by her own estimation, was a very basic mage at her absolute best.
Thalianne summoned an arcane familiar, to bolster what little spell power she still had, and drew upon its energy until her hand glowed a faint violet. With it, she reached for the fel runes, felt their power and the intricate twists and turns so foreign to the magic Thalianne knew. She brought her arcane power to bear, and slowly traced an arcane rune over the fel rune she recognized as a binding shape, leaving its afterimage glowing in the air for a few seconds. The fel rune shimmered, but did not disappear.
Alyseia released a breath, and whispered, “It weakened.”
It was all Thalianne needed to hear--that her instincts had, in some way, led her to the right answer, all she needed was more power to achieve it. Pulling a small pouch from her armor, containing a few emergency mana crystals in the event she found herself separated from the Nightwell’s power or a source of arcwine, Thalianne chewed on several of them, letting its latent energy flow through her veins in a charged rush. Focusing once more on the rune, Thalianne prepared to make her second attempt when another voice rang out through the streets.
“Captain Vyltras!” it commanded, “You are under arrest for the crime of high treason against Suramar. Surrender yourself, and you will be granted a swift death.”
Alyseia whimpered where they stood, and Thalianne closed her eyes, drawing on all the energy she could bring to bear, inscribing the arcane symbol once again. The fel rune flickered, and at last, it failed.
It was not enough to free her entirely, but Alyseia gasped and some of the color returned to her face. Before she could speak, before she could do anything, Thalianne shoved her in the direction of the alcove’s open side, hopefully unguarded, for now, so long as she could keep them occupied. “There’s no time to rest--find Lucarys, Alys. Now.”
“But--” Alyseia raised her chin, some of the determination returning to her in the line her jaw made while it set, in the straightening of her shoulders, but it would not be enough to stop the Duskwatch.
“Alyseia.” Thalianne drew her bow, knuckles tightening on the grip. “Go.”
This time, Alyseia ran, effortless even in her gaudy skirts, and Thalianne turned back to the thoroughfare, taking a breath and releasing it before she stepped out.
She did not know all of her Duskwatch officers by heart, and this was one whose face she recognized, but his name eluded her. “Where is Alyseia Lumes, Captain?” he asked.
“Gone, by now.” Thalianne straightened her spine. “I imagine you know I do not plan to surrender.”
“I thought to at least offer you the option.” there was a strange hint of regret in the Duskwatch officer’s voice, a hint of doubt that this was truly the right thing to do, but Thalianne did not have the time to waste in talking while the lives of their truly loyal agents hung in the balance. “Take her alive, if possible, but she cannot be allowed to escape.”
They fell upon her, but Thalianne was ready.
Arcane bolts left her bow and claimed three Duskwatch agents as they closed ranks with her--using her bow as a bludgeoning tool, she whipped it across the first guard to reach her, and he fell with the force of it, and did not rise again. Shoving the next two guards into the nearby canal with her shoulder, she turned fast enough to draw her belt knife and sink it into the chest of the next guard, yanking it free and turning to throw it--
And froze.
Grand Magistrix Elisande turned the corner, flanked by several of her felborne honor guard, hand raised as her spell kept Thalianne frozen in place where she stood, knife raised, bow in hand. They regarded one another in silence before Elisande broke it first.
“You know the price of this treason, Captain.” Elisande’s face was cold and hard, but desperation lurked behind the obvious fury in her gaze. With Thalianne’s loss, her inner circle was rapidly dwindling, and she had to be aware of the fact. Leaning close enough to almost touch her nose with Thalianne’s, Elisande sniffed, and leaned back. “You reek of mana. I do hope it was sustaining, for it will be the last you will ever see, wretch.”
Even while frozen, Thalianne managed a few words. “It was all I needed.”
Curling her lip, Elisande turned to her guards and ordered, “Take her to the Arcway tunnels. Let her join the ranks of the mindless Withered.”
---
Thalyssra pinched the bridge of her nose, lines of deep sorrow highlighted by Shal’aran’s dim lighting. Lucarys and Alyseia stood before her, the latter being attended by Valtrois, who was attempting to nullify the runes on Alyseia’s charmed shackle.
“Captain Vyltras captured, Alyseia compromised, and the Grand Magistrix still lives.” Thalyssra’s voice was flat in its fury. “You chose to gamble everything we have fought to achieve on a hastily contrived plan, and now we are at a disadvantage.”
“We were always at a disadvantage, in case you haven’t noticed.” Lucarys snapped in response. “We had the opportunity to act, and we took it.”
“And now we have lost two of our best-placed sources of information on the Grand Magistrix’s plans.” Thalyssra, with effort, controlled her tone, but the sharp bite of her anger remained. “Lives will be lost without them, and yet now we must accelerate our plans to storm the Nighthold itself regardless. Elisande is on her guard, and we do not have the luxury of waiting for her to settle back into complacency.” Turning away for a moment to study the portal network that remained open--aside from the Waning Crescent, where all their operations within the city itself had once been based--Thalyssra turned back and said, “I will consult with the Alliance and Horde leaders to determine our next step, but the both of you, until further notice, are to remain in Shal’aran.”
Lucarys straightened and his single remaining eye glowed with indignation. “You can’t just--”
“I can.” Thalyssra told him, voice hard. “And I have. Stay here, and I will return with plans for our next step.”
Lucarys made a dismissive gesture before hauling himself to his feet and going down Shal’aran’s spiraling stairs, likely off to sulk. Valtrois’ attention was still focused on Alyseia’s charmed shackle, but with a gasp of triumph, it finally came loose, and Alyseia rubbed her wrist, shivering, as Valtrois exclaimed, “Finally! I swear they make these enchantments more convoluted all the time. May I keep this? I think I should like to study it.”
“I--of course.” Alyseia managed to mumble, and with a flourish, Valtrois departed, leaving Alyseia in her finery, ruffled and disheveled.
Exhaustion lingered in her frame, though, and Thalyssra rested a careful hand on Alyseia’s shoulder. “You ought to rest, while you can. You will be safe here.”
“What about Captain Vyltras?” Alyseia looked up to meet Thalyssra’s eyes, and to Thalyssra’s relief, her gaze was unclouded, the last of the enchantment wearing off as her typical spirit returned to her. “We can’t just leave her at Elisande’s mercy.”
“If she lives,” Thalyssra chose her words carefully, “we will look for her when we storm the Nighthold. We cannot risk another venture into the city now, not with tensions running this high.”
Alyseia was silent, but nodded her agreement, eyes closed. “I hope we arrive in time to find her.”
Nathanos can count on one hand the number of times he has seen Lisbette sleep, with digits to spare.
Some of that, he knows, can be attributed to the fact they rarely see one another in person except if it happens to be on opposite ends of a battlefield, but even on the occasions like this, where the fire that drives them both is temporarily quieted, Lisbette lays awake, and he doesn’t know if it’s a statement on how little she trusts him not to stab her in the back while she slumbers, or if she remains awake to keep watch for other threats.
There is a third option, which lurks deep in the crevasses of Nathanos’ heart, which says she might lay awake with him because the times they know one another’s peace, rather than one another’s fire, are fewer and farther between than either of them will admit they like. Openly, at least.
Tonight, Lisbette sleeps, but it is a restless slumber. She turns and tosses the borrowed furs she uses for a blanket, until her thrashing sends it falling to the stone floor of their borrowed, abandoned vrykul hovel. Her arms, tense with their cords of muscle, tighten around the flat, dusty pillow her head had been resting on earlier in the night. She speaks in her sleep, but her words are indistinct, inaudible in their detail but clearly carrying an undercurrent of distress.
If he wakes her, it is a clear statement of concern she will demand an explanation for, and if she wakes herself, she will push him away for certain, in her stubborn determination to appear unbreakable in all things. He will see through it anyway, and she knows that he will, and that will only frustrate her more.
He knows all too well, however, the pain that comes from old ghosts.
Lisbette tosses once more, and this time loses her grip on the pillow she had been clutching like a buoy in a storm, and for whatever reason, it is the last boundary separating her from wakefulness--she jerks awake, shooting up into a sitting position with a gasp and a hand on her chest. Nathanos watches, from next to her, and debates his response. They all carry old ghosts with them, but this...this is new.
For a few seconds she either chooses not to acknowledge his presence or her mind is simply elsewhere while she steadily controls her breathing, but with a last, great sigh, she turns to meet his glowing red gaze over her shoulder, the fire normally present in her amber eyes dull and extinguished. “What.” she says, just as flat and emotionless as the look in her eye.
Before he can respond, Lisbette turns away with another disgusted rush of breath, rubbing her face in one hand. Her shoulders shake with imperceptible tremors, but still she turns like she intends to get up, search for her scattered armor pieces, and leave.
It might be the smart thing to do. Every hour they spend here increases the chance they might be discovered by someone, and while it might be far more disastrous for Lisbette--he suspects her father might have a heart attack and die on the spot--he has no desire, not yet, to see this come to a disastrous end. They could leave, split apart in the dead of night, and no one would be any the wiser.
It’s the trembling in her shoulders that makes the decision for him, however unwise, and Nathanos reaches out to put a single hand on Lisbette’s shoulder.
When she rounds on him, it’s with a spark of her usual fire, but nowhere near the inferno it typically is. “What?” she hisses again.
There’s something broken behind her eyes, behind their simple veil of annoyance, that he suspects is keeping her from her sleep, that puts the tremor in her shoulders and the indistinct, distressed words she speaks in her slumber. She looks like she’s seen a ghost, quite frankly, and he suspects that’s exactly what she sees in her dreams.
“They’ll only haunt you more at night, you know.” he tells her.
Or alone.
She meets his gaze, stony-faced, for a long moment. “How very philosophical of you,” she says at last, “but the day I take advice about grief from you--”
“Who better, than someone who’s already been dead?”
“You didn’t see what happened after you died.” Lisbette turns back, but only, he suspects, to square up for the confrontation which seems to be fast-approaching. “You didn’t see the people that might have grieved for you, how they tried to rebuild their lives without you. You didn’t see it from the other side.”
He can’t help the huff of morbid humor that comes from the unintentional joke. “The other side? Perhaps a bit insensitive, considering the circumstances. More to the point,” he continues, far more serious, “what makes you think I did not grieve for myself?”
It pulls Lisbette up short. He can see it in the slight movement of her head pulling back, her spine straightening, and he can give her credit for this--for how much they bicker, even on occasions like this, she does listen to him. It’s the effort of pulling the words free, trapped in some near-forgotten place in his chest, that takes the most effort.
“I grieved,” he tells her, and some of the fire leaves her again, but only to simmer, not to leave ashes behind, “for what might have been.”
“I suppose that’s grief in a nutshell, isn’t it?” she says, quieter than normal, considering and thoughtful, somber in the pitch of her tone. “Missing what might have been, if things had been different.”
It’s a wordless understanding that passes between them, in the heavy silence, and it makes Lisbette reach down for the discarded bedding she lost attempting to evade her ghosts. She lays staring up at the rickety wooden ceiling for a long moment, her hands clasped atop her stomach.
It doesn’t take long for sleep to claim her again.
Nathanos does not need sleep himself, and so busies himself keeping an ear open to the wilderness of Stormheim around them, full of its noise as the forest’s nocturnal inhabitants awaken from their own slumber. Threats lurk within, he knows, but none that can truly challenge them.
In sleep, Lisbette looks more exhausted than in her waking hours. It comes from her steel-boned discipline never to falter in the face of others, but even she cannot control it in her sleep, and the tiredness wells to the surface so easily, turning the curves of her face hollow in the moonlight, highlighting the faint wrinkles already forming at her eyes and corners of her mouth.
If he slept, he wonders, would his face betray him in the same way Lisbette’s does, unveiling the weariness beneath the surface?
A wordless mutter catches his ear, and Lisbette has turned onto her side again, beginning the same shifting she had earlier that heralds the beginning of another ghost, come to haunt her where she lies vulnerable.
Reaching out, Nathanos rests one hand carefully, cautiously--gently, if one believed in such miracles--between Lisbette’s shoulder blades, feeling the rising pulse of her heavy heart. Slowly, the frantic rhythm turns to something steadier, and he could take his hand back, but leaves it where it rests.
Nathanos keeps an ear on the forests outside, but now, as well, keeps watch for the ghosts that haunt Lisbette’s sleep, in the powerful pulse of her heavy heart.
Summary: The seas split, and both Alliance and Horde are trapped in the underwater kingdom of Nazjatar, at the mercy of Queen Azshara. With the sudden and devastating loss of her ship, the Silent Tide, Captain Shadeweaver embarks on a desperate mission to retrieve the last of her missing crew–with unexpected help.
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—
Nightfall finds Genn at the ankoan campfire, with only the unsettling silence and residual shame for company.
Lisbette is gone on a preliminary patrol, maintaining the camp’s perimeter for her own peace of mind. Shandris had been given all the ankoan’s most recent information regarding naga movements, and they’d deemed her the obvious choice to potentially gain additional insight. Jaina is occupied at various points around the camp, never staying still for long, but Archdruid Grimm is hovering at the opposite edge of the camp, where another fire sits, tending the more minor wounds from the day’s catastrophe.
Ordinarily, Genn’s pride would not let him slink back to anyone with his tail between his legs, figuratively speaking, but today his pride has earned him nothing but faint bruising around his wrists and ankles from the Archdruid’s roots, and the sting of heat in his cheeks that says he’s well aware she was right to intervene in the first place. She had been a respected fixture in Gilneas for almost two decades before the Cataclysm, and a friend and ally to him in the years since, and to date her approval was one of the only ones he cared to maintain.
Tonight, he will place his pride one step lower on his priorities.
Summary: The seas split, and both Alliance and Horde are trapped in the underwater kingdom of Nazjatar, at the mercy of Queen Azshara. With the sudden and devastating loss of her ship, the Silent Tide, Captain Shadeweaver embarks on a desperate mission to retrieve the last of her missing crew–with unexpected help.
—
Miri has had centuries to become acquainted with the tides.
She’s well aware, naturally, that she might not be the foremost authority on sailing in the entirety of Azeroth–she’s fairly sure the Kul Tirans have that on lockdown–but she knows enough to tell when something is amiss, when the winds are off, when the slap of water against the Tide’s hull resonates in such a way that it makes her skin crawl.
Today is one of those times.
At the helm, she stands with Jaina and the Gilnean king–she’s fairly sure he’s forgotten her name just like she’s pretending to have forgotten his–and in the distance, far in the distance, she can just barely see the silhouette of Horde vessels. Alliance ships, some of them belonging to the 7th Legion, some belonging to the Kul Tiran fleet, follow the Silent Tide in a fan behind them, giving the scouting vessel enough distance to do its job properly.
With a spyglass held up to her remaining eye, Miri twists her lip. “Can’t see them through the fog.”
It is something both Kalyste and Halford know well–Halford has been among the ranks of the Alliance’s best since the years of the Second War, and Kalyste, well…she has likely been a warrior since Halford’s ancestors were young. There’s something humbling about that, but Kalyste is too unapologetically real for him to be intimidated by the fact. Or perhaps that’s just him, because he has seen her when she is not the immovable general, steadfast between her people and those who would do them harm.
Today, he sees her in the midst of a sparring session with some of his best melee combatants, her armor plating gone and replaced with simple cloth pants, leather boots, and a halter shirt cut off at the ribs, baring her muscled arms, shoulders, and abdomen to the sweltering Kul Tiras summer sun. She holds a training claymore in one hand while instructing one of the 7th Legion dragoons, then hands the blade off, putting distance between them.
Kalyste leaned back as the strike’s momentum threatened to pull her balance away from her, reset her stance, and hefted the warhammer for another strike against the training dummy, outside Stormwind’s embassy. High above, the sun beamed its merciless rays upon her, and her skin was already slicked with sweat across her arms and shoulders, turning the washed-out fabric of her sparring shirt a dark, ugly gray, but her posture was still ramrod-straight, unbreakable as iron, and only when it faltered would she allow herself a break.
Wham!
Ordinarily, Kalyste would have preferred practicing with her claymore, as her preferred weapon of choice, but on a day like today, as with most days since Telogrus Rift, when rage lit a fiery path through her blood, Kalyste found a warhammer more satisfying. In truth, most of her anger was directed not outwardly, but within. For all her strength, all her cleverness and ingenuity, she continued to fail when it mattered most.
(Notes: in honor of this fic’s one-year anniversary, it’s been polished, edited, and re-posted for posterity.)
—
For the countless years he and the Army of the Light had been fighting their way through the infinite coils of the Twisting Nether, Turalyon had learned to believe in the simple concept of light at the end of a tunnel.
It was more than hope, because while hope on its own was a powerful force, it was something different, he felt, to hope despite the greatest odds. To be surrounded by shadow, and still believe, with absolute certainty, that there was a pinpoint of light somewhere within.
The Xenedar crashed, and Turalyon began looking for the light anew.
(summary: the light is many things, to many people)
– the deathlord exarch
(tyracel nightsinger)
it is as an old, half-forgotten friend; so beloved by the light was she, that even after countless days separated from it by the merciless strike of death, she found her way back to it, and it to her, wrapping her in its warm, summery coils that say i was never gone, only lost, and surrender will not come so easily again. it fled her once before, in the strength and brightness of her youth, when she most needed it, but she wraps the deep winter in her soul around the light in turn, and offers forgiveness.
– the high anchorite
(alaela kamis)
as she moves, the light moves with her, graceful and teasing and weightless in its ease. you could almost see the faintest glimmer of it as she turns too suddenly, when she shifts and moves like the dancer in her knows best. it is a friend and partner, but it remembers the fel-pocked fields she came from, and when brought to bear, it surges, powered by the love she holds for her people and the joy of life itself, a tide as inevitable as the sunrise.
– the princess knight
(lisbette greymane)
it is bright in her, so bright, not blinding, but burning. her light is aflame with wrath and justice, an unstoppable force and immovable object both. it is no friend, nor ally, it is a tool and a shield and a weapon all at once. it responds to her in kind, utilitarian and brisk, wielded in the defense of the world she surrendered her own light to save. the light may be softness and warmth, but it is also an inferno in her hands, the hands of a righteous queen-in-the-making who is crowned far more by the the light that wreaths her in power than any diadem one could place upon her brow.
From the day she had awoken under Acherus’ ceilings as a death knight in service of the Lich King, she knew what she had awoken for. She knew she had been snatched from the jaws of death for the sole purpose of waging war upon the world, and while her adversaries had changed over the years, the reality of her existence had not. She was a weapon to be deployed in the name of victory, not a bauble to be dressed up and admired.
Except for tonight, it seemed.
Tonight’s only mercy was that Tyracel had been granted leave to wear armor, but it was certainly not her comfortable, well broken-in set she had worn for years–it was polished, unmarked by dents or scratches, designed to impress and not to protect.
It was that fact which made Tyracel patrol the outer edges of the gardens within Stormwind Keep, thronged full of Alliance veterans and Kul Tiran guests both, as they took their brief respite to celebrate the returning partnership before duty called them away. She did not trust it–it would have been a perfect time to sow chaos in the ranks by targeting leadership. It was what Tyracel would have done, were she their enemy, but she was not, and so she watched, instead, for those who might be.
She held a unique place in the Alliance’s knowing–most everyone knew her as a defector, and those who were surviving veterans of the Northrend campaigns against the Lich King might have even known her as the death knight commander who championed the Ebon Blade’s cause as the Argent Crusade prepared to take the walls of Icecrown Citadel by storm. Whether she was respected, or hated, or both for that part of her history was a matter for individual debate.
That nebulous and vague feeling of unease and admiration combined was enough to keep Tyracel out of their immediate notice, and she found it a blessing–she was far more able to keep track of the room without distractions.
A burst of raucous laughter across the gardens made her ear twitch and her lip curl with annoyance, and she turned on her heel, one hand wrapped around the hilt of one blade, both swords sheathed at her hip, as that was a concession she had refused to make, even here. Let the rest of the guests leave themselves at the mercy of what might happen–Tyracel would be prepared regardless.
Most of her attention was spread evenly across the room, as she took in groups of guests, some of whom were clearly familiar with one another, and some of whom were venturing out to make new connections. A small group had formed around the representatives from the Army of the Light that were also present, for their contributions to the Arathi warfront. At their center, Turalyon fielded questions and remarks with an increasingly tired inflection. Clearly he was no more enthused with the occasion than she–he was simply able to put a far more polite and amicable mask over it.
At a break in the conversation, Turalyon looked up while Tyracel watched, and for a few brief seconds, their eyes met across the room, and some of the exhausted lines in Turalyon’s face softened as he smiled, really just the slightest lift at the corner of his mouth. It was a gesture Tyracel had struggled with for years–her life, as it stood, did not typically provide her many reasons to smile–but here, it was easy to share it; she felt the tightening around her eyes as she smiled in turn, and didn’t care if it made her look soft.
As quickly as the moment came, it was gone, and someone asked Turalyon something that Tyracel couldn’t hear from this distance, but as she continued her patrol, she felt lighter than she had all evening, the briefest break in the chaos of the night.
(there’s a distinct lack of Kal mothering Briony on this blog and it was time to fix that)
—
29. Tucking their hair behind their ear to help them get it out of their face.
Briony can count the number of times she’s worn her dress armor on one hand with fingers to spare, and with good reason. Her job isn’t exactly about looking pretty, but getting things done the only way she knows how, and ceremonial armor is for just the opposite: built to look pretty, and nothing else.
Sometimes, though, she’s been wrangled into wearing it for special occasions, and she supposes this counts. She supposes she should be grateful, since it’s an occasion to celebrate her, and the people she works with.
Wouldn’t hurt if it were a more casual get-together, though.
“It’s itchy.” she complains at Kalyste, across the room in her own set of dress armor, looking far more at ease than Briony feels in hers. “Couldn’t I have at least worn my own chainmail coat beneath it? I have that one broken in and everything.”
“I sympathize,” Kalyste finishes fastening the buckles on her gauntlet, her face looking more tired than normal, but leagues better since their return from Ny’alotha, “however, your regular chainmail coat is an entirely different color and pattern than your dress armor, and even if I did not notice it, Halford assuredly would. You will not have to suffer it for long.”
“You make it look easy,” Briony resists the urge to fidget, lest she make the existing itch worse.
Busying herself with the fastenings on her cape, Kalyste chuckles. “I’ve had slightly longer to grow accustomed to the discomfort. You should have seen the ceremonial set I wore for special occasions during my time as Knight-General. It made this set look almost utilitarian.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Briony spots a piece of her ash-blonde hair that stubbornly evaded her hair tie earlier, and she puffs a breath in its direction, hoping to dislodge it. When that fails, she reaches up and gingerly tries to pluck it loose…succeeding only in pulling the whole lock free. “Oh, fuck.”
“Briony,” Kalyste comments mildly, gaze focused on securing her last few greave buckles, “I would consider it a personal favor if you would not place me or Halford in the position of having to explain to the king that your foul tongue comes not from disrespect, but from habit. We allow such things because we know this about you, but this is the high king of the Alliance, who does not.”
“The high king of the Alliance is younger than I am, and I could probably beat him in a fight. I’m not scared of him.”
“I will refrain from lecturing you on the fact we do not speculate whether we could best our kings in single combat, because that is hardly relevant to the current situation.” Kalyste rolls her shoulders as she straightens, and pins Briony with the force of her gaze, an eerie lavender. “I will simply remind you to check your language, if you are asked to speak.”
“Yeah, yeah, Lady Kal, I’ve got it.” Briony doesn’t reach up to try and fix her wayward hair, knowing she’ll only make it even worse, but she does toss her head once to try and shift it anyway. “Damnit…”
With a sigh and a tired smile, Kalyste approaches and turns Briony around by the shoulder, tugging the hair tie loose. “One day, I imagine, you will have to replace this with something newer, that won’t release pieces of your hair.”
“I’ve had it since before Northrend! It has sentimental value!”
With deft hands, Kalyste pulls Briony’s hair, growing longer without the time to trim it, into a tight, braided knot at the base of her neck. Despite her efforts, a single piece breaks free, and when Briony turns back around, Kalyste picks it up and gingerly places it behind Briony’s ear. “It’s going to be fine, Briony. I know these ceremonies are not enjoyable for you, but take comfort in the fact they are rarely enjoyable for anyone involved, even the one leading it.”
“How many of these have you been through?” she can’t help but be curious.
“Enough to know they are not enjoyable.” Kalyste tells her, a wry twist to her mouth. “And the sooner we begin, the sooner it will be done.”
Deep in the halls of Acherus, there was an old, well-worn journal with its pages full of pressed flowers.
It was a well-kept secret, one of the most well-kept in the whole of the necropolis, Highlord Mograine thought, and this place was host to many hidden things, so rarely brought to light even for the knights who called it home, as close to home as any of them had anymore.
The only secret better kept than the journal’s existence was the identity of its owner, so he’d thought.
(could be read as a follow-up to ill tidings. vague references to the ny’alotha raid)
---
Kalyste drifts.
It is different from a lack of consciousness, which feels heavy like stone in her limbs, different from exhaustion, which feels like a magnetic pull towards the ground she ignores only by digging into her deepest reserves of discipline. She feels light, and somehow unstable, like if she lets her attention wander she will become nothingness, as insubstantial as smoke in the wind.
She wonders if this is what Alleria cautioned her against, if this is the void come to claim her for good, in its endless hunger.
This is different, though, from the feeling that swallowed her nearly whole in Telogrus Rift. This is weightless drifting compared to the rift’s constant tugging at the threads of her consciousness, hoping to direct her in its desires, to remake her in its image. A deep sense of unease flutters across her senses, and a time-honed instinct from thousands of years of watching her own back--and others’--tells her beware, and she listens, and thinks.
Has she always been drifting? Has she always been here? Or has it been only a split second, dragging through time like plate-armored boots through sand?
“Kalyste!”
The scream centers her, abruptly, sharply, and she knows the voice’s owner as well as her own. Briony. But why is Briony yelling for her, in this deep, empty space, where there ought to be nothing but her?
Nothingness resolves itself and becomes the throne of a corrupted god, and in a scale of time she could only describe as instant and infinite, Kalyste takes in Briony, Wynonah, Wyndric, Asrian, the high exarch, crowded around...
Her. Her body. Her body.
In a rush, it comes back--N’Zoth’s final attack as the high exarch prepared to channel the power of Azeroth’s heart, the bolts of void energy lashing out at anything that might stop the caster’s intent. Most everyone had been safely guarded within the high exarch’s shield...save one.
Briony.
Kalyste remembers dashing from the shield’s protective barrier, seizing Briony’s arm, and shoving her close enough to the barrier that one of the Freys--Kalyste hadn’t seen who, in the melee--had been able to pull her in.
Nobody could have saved Kalyste from the retaliation, and the heavy truth of that realization brings what’s left of Kalyste’s drifting consciousness back to its center.
She, Kalyste Wildlight, is dead.
“No, no, no, Lady Kal, come on, talk to me!” Briony is already sobbing, in that desperate, heart-wrenching way Kalyste has seen before, from those begging their loved ones to stay, and never had she thought to hear it meant for her.
“Kalyste?”
Another voice, one Kalyste knows better than her own, almost breaks the dam of her own composure, and she turns to see Anasterian, watching her with a baffled expression on his face. “It’s--I suppose--”
“What are you doing here?” he asks before Kalyste can organize her thoughts, and the question brings her up short.
“Well, I died, in case it wasn’t patently obvious.” there’s something so incredibly morbid about the humor Kalyste finds in the matter-of-fact way she says it, but with effort, she suppresses a laugh.
Anasterian shakes his head, the confused expression still resting across his face. “It’s too soon, Kalyste. You weren’t supposed to be here yet.”
“Can’t I go anyway?” Kalyste finds herself blurting out, voice shaking at its roots, followed by an immediate pulse of guilt, and she can tell the question strikes Anasterian at his core.
“Kalyste,” he says softly, this man she knew and loved as a brother, who she stood beside for thousands of years. She has seen him at his best and worst, and never has he looked so shocked or sorrowful as he does here.
Perhaps it’s the nostalgia, perhaps it’s the weight of her years and the things she’s survived, but it feels like too much to keep clutched to her chest anymore, like a hand of cards that has rewarded her with only misery and isolation. “I’m...” Kalyste begins, then coughs to cover up her own sob, a single one, caught in her chest like cobwebs, “...I’m tired, Steri. I’m...I’m just very tired. Haven’t I earned a rest? After everything?”
Anasterian picks up one of her hands, then both of them, and his grip is firm, and warm, and it lights a dying ember in Kalyste’s chest, all but forgotten. “There is no one I know on this world who has earned a rest as much as you, dearest sister,” he tells her, quiet and earnest, “but your last rest...I do not necessarily ask you for their sake,” he nods towards the shapes nearby, still surrounding her body, time slowed once again to an infinite crawl, “but for yours.”
Kalyste turns her gaze towards them again, releasing her hands from Anasterian’s grip, and with her focus, the scene plays out. Briony is clutching Kalyste’s body across her knees, her sobs almost too thick to make out the words anymore, pleading, begging for Kalyste’s life.
“You were supposed to be there, damn it!” Briony chokes, her hand clutching one of Kalyste’s limp ones. “You were supposed to watch Tae and I get hitched, and walk us down the aisle together since neither of us have mums anymore, you were supposed to teach me that cleaving trick you said you learned in Outland, you told me you’d fight for this, you said--” Briony chokes again and doesn’t immediately recover, and Wynonah kneels next to her, Wyndric at her other side, both Freys uncharacteristically somber. “It should have been me, she should’ve just let me go. She’s three thousand fucking years old and a bloody general, and she throws her life away for me,” Briony manages, and everyone around her straightens.
“Hey, hey now,” Wyndric speaks first, tightening his grip on Briony’s shoulder, “you know the Lady Kal would hate for you to think that, I hate for you to think that and I didn’t even die for you. She fucking loved you, kid.”
“Kalyste would rather sacrifice her life for a world where you would be safe, no matter how much she might want to see that world herself.” Asrian says, quiet and tremulous, and Briony’s sobs pick up in volume again, twisting Kalyste’s heart in a vise grip.
“You were something else, Lady Kal.” Wynonah finally says, volume stolen by her grief. Wyndric lowers his head, but picks up Kalyste’s empty hand, the other still claimed by Briony while her tears decorate Kalyste’s chestplate. “Sorry I gave you a hard time about Hal. You deserve...” Wynonah looks away before refocusing, “...you deserved to be happy for a bit.”
Briony freezes stock-still, then manages, still half-swallowed by her tears, “Oh fuck, what’re we gonna tell Hal? He’ll be fucking devastated. Fuck!”
With one ghostly hand reaching out for Briony’s shoulder before remembering she wouldn’t be able to feel the touch, Kalyste withdraws, and buries her face in her hands instead. “Steri--”
“I would never say that you should live only because others will it.” Anasterian fixes her with that same steely blue gaze she remembers from many arguments they had over the years, the expression that said he was not speaking to her as her king, but as someone who cares for her, deeply so. “But perhaps you would live for those who make it worth it.”
“It’s too late for that.” Kalyste leans back, puts the iron back in her spine, the general in command, but it takes more effort than it ever has before, and she closes her eyes, the last of her strength unable to keep them open. “I can’t go back, not like this.”
“You can.” Anasterian comes to her side once again, picks up one of her hands. “Kalyste--you have spent much of your life shouldering the burdens of others, and doing so with the poise and grace and stoicity that only a Wildlight, that only you, could, but I think it’s time you shed some of that weight. Trust in them,” Anasterian nods down at those who would call Kalyste family, those who hold her body, slumbering more peacefully than it has in millennia, “as they trust in you.”
Kalyste does not know what it is to shed her weight and give it to others--so much of her life has been spent on others, an expenditure that she does not regret, but it leaves her so woefully unprepared for this, for a reversal. “I’ll try,” she says, because she wants to, Light’s mercy, does she want to, because it means more time with these people who have already tried to take her weight in more ways than one. “I don’t know how to go back.”
“I’ll guide you.” Anasterian’s voice says, already fainter, as if from a great distance. “You will fall, and I know you will want to fly, but you must fall to return.”
Kalyste drifts.
Kalyste falls.
For a split second, she cannot remember how to breathe, and her coughing and choking feels like another opportunity to fall, and this time she wouldn’t be able to fly even if she wanted to. With effort, Kalyste gasps in a short, choppy series of breaths, her heart erratic in her ears, and her skin is cool, but she feels hands on her cheeks, armored hands, and hears Briony’s voice, high-pitched with shock and disbelief and a kind of improbable hope. “Kalyste? Kal? Lady Kal!”
Kalyste’s gaze is unfocused, blurry, a tunnel through which she squints to see what lies beyond, and the shifting shapes resolve into Briony’s face, blotched red and wet with tears, but Kalyste’s hands don’t respond like she wants them to, scrabbling at the floor with frantic, jerking motions. She draws another breath for strength, focuses her sight enough to look Briony in the eye, and while her tongue feels leaden in her mouth, she manages, “I told you...I would fight...” before the battle is too much, and the darkness comes to swallow her once again.
Kalyste drifts, and this time she doesn’t know if it’s hours or days or seconds between her bouts of cognizance, but she fights, she fights for every moment of lucidity she can grasp for in the shifting dark. She hears voices, reaching through the endless shadow, and her ears pick them up, buoys in the stormy sea of her mind.
“Kal? Kal! Don’t you fucking--”
“--take her, she’s going into shock--”
“--fetch Alaela!”
“--all I can. If she wakes, it is--”
“--stay with her, to keep an eye on things, y’know.”
“--it rings in the day, and it rings in the evening. Oh, I could pray, but it won’t stop you leaving.”
It’s the song that pulls her free, word by word, and the voice that sings it. Kalyste has never heard Briony sing, but she knows the cadence of her voice, the deeper pitch and the Lordaeranian accent.
“Shadow in black, you are grim from your reaping.” Briony’s voice continues, and Kalyste strains her ears, desperate to hear, even more desperate to speak. “Oh, can’t you spare just a day for the weeping?”
Speech is too difficult, yet, but Kalyste reaches for the last, recovering vestiges of her strength, and flexes her fingers where she can feel them rest against what feels like a quilt. Slowly, other shreds of awareness return to her, like with that tiny action, the shell around her skin protecting her from everything outside shatters, fragmenting away piece by piece.
Her body is warm, surrounded by sheets and quilts and pillows for her head and shoulders, and she can hear the faint creak of wood that comes from the boards--walls, floor, ceiling--in her borrowed home in Boralus, as well as the faint ticking of the clock downstairs. The smells of wood varnish and armor cleaner tickle her nose in their familiar potency, and Kalyste releases a breath.
It will take more of her strength to open her eyes, but she’s come this far, and she’ll damn well see it through. She flexes her fingers again, her awareness of Briony’s singing gone in the wake of the effort the action takes out of her, but the singing stops anyway the moment Briony’s hand seizes hers, and is replaced by a shaking, terrified voice, saying “Kal? Lady Kal?” there’s a pause, where Kalyste struggles to come up with a response, and Briony adds, “Can you hear me?” so much quieter than Kalyste has ever heard her voice. Just as when she watched from outside her body, with Anasterian’s image at her side, her heart clenches tight, and with it comes the last burst of strength she needs to open her eyes.
Briony hovers, her hand locked around Kalyste’s in a carefully firm grip, her amber eyes blown wide and already shimmering with tears, and Kalyste draws in one more breath, holds it, releases it, before saying, “You have a lovely singing voice, my dear.”
Torn between a laugh and a sob, thick with relief and joy and renewed shock, Briony tightens her grip and Kalyste struggles to do the same. “You scared us to fuckin’ death, Lady Kal.”
“That’s hardly fair, Bri,” comes Wyndric’s voice, and he pokes his head into the door a split second later, holding a mug with a tendril of steam wafting from it, “since she’s the one who actually died--ow!”
Rubbing the back of his head, Wyndric scowls at someone just beyond the doorway, and Wynonah saunters through, taking whatever mug Wyndric had been holding on her way. “At least save the dead person jokes for when she’s not still almost dead, Wynnie.”
She still feels too weak to laugh, but Kalyste does summon a smile, and it feels better on her face than it has in months, free of the effort it takes to do so under the pressure of the void’s whispers. “What happened?” she asks, still quieter than normal, but slowly regaining her usual steam.
Briony sighs and leans back in her chair such that two of its legs leave the ground, feet balanced on the frame of Kalyste’s bed. “Well, to be blunt, you died, Lady Kal. It was--” Briony swallows, and composes herself before continuing, “--really bad.”
“Dunno what happened, but it was like a miracle--you were dead for a hot minute, then suddenly you weren’t.” Wynonah shrugs, and takes a drink from the mug she’d swiped from her twin--coffee, if Kalyste had to guess. “Woke up and told Bri something, then passed out again.”
“You’ve been out for about two weeks, off and on.” Wyndric continues. “Sometimes it seems like you’d wake up, or get closer to it, at least, mutterin’ in your sleep and all that, but you didn’t respond to any of us. Lae finally said it was a coma, and that if you woke up, it’d be all on you: she’d done all she could.”
“All of us have been pulling shifts watching you.” Briony picks up the tale again. “Me, Nonah, Wynnie, Asrian, even Essie and Lae when they were free. Hal was here every night when one of us couldn’t be here--figures tonight would be the first night he got called away.”
“Night?” Kalyste looks out the window, then, and, sure enough, sees the darkness approaching midnight. “It’s the middle of the night?”
“Sure is. Why else would I be stealin’ Wynnie’s coffee?” Wynonah smirks at her twin, who rolls his icy-blue eyes. “Asrian would’ve been here, but he’s grabbin’ food for us. Was his turn to leave.”
“Wait.” Kalyste fixes a glance on each of them, settling on Briony, before cycling back to the Freys. “All of you have been here? The whole time?”
“Well, not the whole time,” Briony rolls her neck until it pops, stretching her back, “since some of us got sucked into the last bit of cleanup from Ny’alotha. At least one of us has been here all the time, though. Wynnie was here most.”
“Don’t need sleep, after all.” Wyndric reminds her cheerfully, draping one ankle over his knee. “Finally, being a death knight’s useful for something.”
“Don’t look so surprised, Lady Kal.” Wynonah gestures with her mug before taking another drink out of it. “We know you’d do the same for us. And as an honorary member of the Frey family I’m afraid you’re stuck with our hoverin’ til you’re back on your feet.”
“I should go tell Hal.” Briony gets up and casts a reluctant glance in Kalyste’s direction. “I’m sure he’ll hit the roof.”
Wynonah snorts. “I’d pay to see that. Don’t worry--we’re not goin’ anywhere till you get back.”
Still, Briony hesitates, then points a finger at Kalyste, who raises a single brow. “If I come back and I find out you’re dead again--”
“I’m on my best behavior. I promised you I would fight, and I will.” The smile comes easier this time, and she is tired, still, but filled with the energy from everyone at her bedside, filled with their excitable relief and joy.
Filled, she thinks, with the warmth of her family.
Wynonah and Wyndric--and Asrian, when he returns from fetching the group’s sustenance for the night--keep her talking, but ask little of her, having either been warned by Alaela that her strength would still be limited or simply knowing her well enough to know that this is the sternest test she has ever passed in her time as a warrior, a survivor, and either way Kalyste finds herself touched even deeper by their intuition.
Trust in them, Anasterian’s voice reminds her, as they trust in you.
“Hal’s here!” comes Briony’s shout, and it’s the only warning they get before Kalyste hears heavy footfalls on the stairs, taking them two at a time if she’s counting the steps right, heart racing at almost the same pace, and the Freys and Asrian stand clear as Halford swings within, less a helmet, one of his shoulder pauldrons, and his claymore, face faintly flushed with exertion and moderately out of breath. Silver hair falls across his forehead in damp locks, but his gray eyes lock with hers and Kalyste feels her own well up with heat, tears falling before he’s even fully within.
Her arms reach out, weak and shaky, and it’s the only invitation Halford needs to take two swift strides to her bedside and wrap his arms around her in turn, picking her halfway up out of the sheets that have been her body’s sanctuary for the past two weeks, waiting for her pieces to fall back into place. He chokes, and his hand sinks into her ash-gray locks, careful of the single tentacle as he always is, and Kalyste places her arms around the solid shape of him as her blankets fall away, shifting from one sanctuary to another with seamless ease.
They say nothing, but Kalyste tightens her grip, and lets her tears fall, the first weight she can think to shed, into her family’s waiting hands.
---
Her strength returns to her far more slowly after the first day, and that is perhaps the most frustrating part of her recovery.
“I don’t understand,” Kalyste had told Alaela one day, at the end of her patience after a long and frustrating afternoon of attempting to cross her borrowed home herself, unaided, without much success, “I wasn’t out of it long enough for muscle atrophy to take hold.”
“No, you certainly weren’t.” Alaela had told her cheerfully, her own considerable volume of patience still intact despite Kalyste’s increasingly irritable mood. “But death--even temporary death--takes a toll on the body. Your brain was deprived of air for almost two minutes, and your soul completely untethered from your body. By all accounts, your survival shouldn’t have been possible--only someone with a particularly strong will could have evaded death like that without help.”
“So, you are telling me I ought to be grateful I’m here at all, rather than bellyaching about how long it’s taking to get back up to my usual strength?” Kalyste carefully avoids mentioning her encounter with Anasterian, which she was increasingly convinced must have been a conjured image from her subconscious rather than his spirit, but it was anyone’s guess.
“You’ll be back to normal soon.” Alaela had assured her, artfully dodging the question, but giving Kalyste a pointed glance that spoke volumes. “In the meantime, we’ll try again tomorrow.”
Two weeks after waking, and Kalyste can just barely take herself out of bed and into the receiving room next to the bedroom before needing rest, but one week after waking, she had not even been able to leave her room. It is progress, she reminds herself, even if it may not be as swift as she would like.
Three weeks after her initial waking, Halford comes into their room holding his helmet in his hands. Kalyste reads a book Wynonah had acquired for her earlier in the week after complaining of boredom, and looks up when Halford leans his claymore in the corner next to Kalyste’s own, which she regards somewhat wistfully. “Are you up for a trip to Stormwind tomorrow?” he asks.
“May I ask what for?” Kalyste slowly bookmarks her book and sets it aside. “I confess I’m still not quite back to normal, after all.”
“I know--it would be a short visit.” Halford assures her, hands working to remove armor pieces. Kalyste’s own itch to help, but she doubts she’d be able to stand long enough. “The king wants to grant us recognition for our work against N’Zoth’s forces, and you, for your efforts within Ny’alotha itself.”
Kalyste shudders briefly at the reminder of that wretched place, but shoves the uneasy feeling aside. “Very well. I imagine I will need to lean on you for support on our way there.”
“Battlemage Menethil is coming here tomorrow morning, and opening us a portal to Stormwind. You won’t have to travel all the way to the Tradewinds Market just yet.” Halford runs a quick comb through his hair before setting it down, and Kalyste throws open a section of quilt for him when he gets close enough that he couldn’t be doing anything but coming to sleep. “The king has been informed that your recovery is incomplete, and the ceremony won’t be long. We’ll return here, and you can rest if need be.”
“I suppose that is agreeable enough.” Kalyste releases a breath, setting her book down on the bedside table before puffing a breath over her candle. “Though I admit I still despise that I must be coddled so.”
Halford doesn’t respond immediately. He busies himself tucking his body carefully around hers--after the first day he’d returned to their bed, and he’d been so cautious as to not touch her at all that Kalyste had taken initiative and wrapped herself around him, he’d returned, with no small amount of relief, to their typical arrangement--with knees fitted behind hers, an arm around her stomach and the other arm atop her pillow, over her head. He doesn’t quite bury his face into her neck like usual, but that just means he’s not done talking yet. “I know you dislike the necessity of it,” he finally says, “but you know as well as I that taking care of yourself now is the only way you’ll regain your strength.”
“I’m not accustomed to it,” Kalyste admits, shifting her legs and settling into Halford’s grip, “this drawn-out period of inactivity. I feel as though I ought to be doing something, making myself useful, but I’m far too weak to do much of anything.”
Halford is silent for a long beat, but doesn’t lay fully down, so Kalyste turns over her shoulder to see him regarding her with a kind of pensive seriousness, and it’s only when she turns enough to look him in the eye that he says, “Kalyste, you very nearly died for the Alliance, under a remarkable amount of duress from N’Zoth’s influence, which you successfully resisted for a sustained length of time. There is no one who could say you haven’t made yourself useful, even if that had any bearing on the fact you are entitled to rest when you require it, which it doesn’t.”
“I don’t think I’m really accustomed to that, either.” Kalyste turns back over, her muscles still feeling tender and fragile. “Rest without obligation. Relying on others for my care.”
Pushing himself back just enough to pull his hands free, Halford runs them over Kalyste’s back, and she hums when he digs his fingers into a particularly sore spot. He turns the gentle kneading into rubbing up and down her back, from shoulders to ribs, and the methodical motion fills her with drowsiness, closing her eyes as Halford settles against her again. “Do you recall what you told me, when I stubbornly avoided asking for your help when my shoulder was dislocated after that trogg ambush some months back?”
“I do.” Kalyste mumbles, only half-awake, but still paying attention.
“The same applies here.” he tells her, and she can feel his breath against the back of her neck, warm and familiar. “I would not be here if I did not believe in aiding you when you require it. Even if I haven’t been as available as I would like.”
“We both know we have responsibilities outside of ourselves.” Kalyste’s lip twitches up into an unseen grin, but she knows he can hear it in her voice when she says, “And I’d have strung you up myself if I’d heard you were shirking duty for my sake. I have never been alone long in my recovery.”
And it’s the truth. On the days where Halford cannot be there to aid her daily struggle, someone always keeps her company. Asrian brings his scrolls and tomes and keeps her occupied when she asks questions about arcane theory that have never been her strength, but Asrian simplifies them enough to be understandable. Wyndric brings his mug of coffee, for smelling, which he hands off to Kalyste when it’s cool enough to drink, and his somewhat morbid but well-meaning sense of humor. Wynonah brings books, and all the latest gossip from the Snug Harbor, and tales of her and her brother’s escapades in the years before they knew Kalyste. Briony brings pages of songs, some of which Kalyste knows, some of which she doesn’t, and together they sing, a harmonious melody with Kalyste’s huskier, Silvermoon-accented voice and Briony’s harsher, Lordaeranian tones.
It is the most Kalyste has ever relied on anyone in her three thousand years of life, but it never feels forced, rarely awkward--none of them have ever allowed it to feel that way for long. It feels, quite simply, like her family has come together for no other reason except to help.
Kalyste has had family before, of course--her parents had been her first teachers, catching her when she stumbled, giving her their wisdom in the years before she became knight-general. With her father’s death and her mother’s withdrawal from politics, however, there had also been a withdrawal from Kalyste herself, and she had been left to fall or fly, with only her own willpower to carry her.
She’d had Anasterian, too, and later she had loved Kael’thas like family, but Anasterian was a king and had far more to concern himself with than her. It had been her job to shoulder the burdens he could not carry alone; she would never have given him any of her own.
Not since her youth had Kalyste felt so treasured, so cherished, by this wonderful collection of people from vastly different backgrounds that she had, in some way, become important to.
Sometime during her introspection, Halford had fallen asleep--his breath puffs across her neck as he lightly snores, and Kalyste wraps herself in the sound just as she tightens her hold on the quilt covering them both, feeling its warmth settle into her bones, light enough to let her breathe, light enough to let her soar.
Kalyste has never shared space with anyone before.
Certainly, she has been called away from her quarters before–there had been times she might have gone weeks in between seeing her own bed in Sunfury Spire–but they were still irrevocably hers, and it was a privilege she had been loath to give up when so many other things occupied her time and attention. A quiet room to come home to was the most ideal way to spend what little free time had been available to her in those days.
Since that day on the Wind’s Redemption, though, things had begun to change, as Kalyste had suspected they would. It had been a risk, but she thought of the ways Halford had taken on some of her burdens, despite the fact he certainly had many of his own to carry, and knew that it would be worth it.
Still, there were adjustments. There had to be designated places for their armor to be organized, lest smaller pieces get mixed up between them. There had to be new routines worked out among them, because occupying any space alone for so long had left Kalyste woefully unprepared for sharing it with another. There had been a learning curve where boundaries were tested, discussed, and laid down.
It had been less than a week since that day on the Redemption that Kalyste had offered to let Halford share the home she had been loaned by a Kul Tiran merchant family for the duration of their mission in Kul Tiras, a surprisingly easy gesture that Halford had seemed surprised at–perhaps he knew her better than she sometimes gave him credit for.
One of the first boundaries they had discussed were sleeping arrangements. Kalyste was not accustomed to sharing a bed with anyone, a fact she had freely admitted, and Halford had confessed much of the same. They had agreed to simply try and see if it was an arrangement that needed tweaking.
The first morning, Kalyste had awoken on her stomach, with Halford draped mostly over her body, his breath ghosting against her neck while he snored. Kalyste was rarely a soft woman, but she would be lying if she said the idea of waking up like that more often didn’t appeal to her.
Another easy step to take came early one morning, with dawn just starting to peek over the horizon, when banging on the door and the familiar sound of Briony’s voice woke both Kalyste and Halford from much-needed sleep. Kalyste, however, had been asleep far less time that night, having only come to bed a few hours before, having returned late from a mission on the coasts of Nazmir. They both groaned near-simultaneously, Kalyste on her side with her arm curled under her pillow and Halford with one arm curled around her, face buried in the curve of her neck.
“Your protege is knocking.” he mumbled into her tangled, ash-gray hair.
Kalyste felt a grin tug at her lips as she told him in return, “Before dawn, she’s your protege.”
Turning over her shoulder, Kalyste met a baleful and sleepy Halford’s gaze and felt the moment he acquiesced to her, withdrawing as he sighed and rolled to his feet. Kalyste buried her face back into her pillow, fatigue burning at her still-closed eyes, and she had barely descended back into dozing when the bed dipped and Halford’s warmth returned.
“What was the emergency?” Kalyste asked without opening her eyes, muffled by her pillow.
“A fire in the Proudmoore barracks kitchen.” Halford told her as he wrapped himself around her again. “Miss Lockwood was rather surprised to see me at your door instead of you, I think.”
“And what made her think we would have the solution to such an incident?”
“It’s been resolved. She simply wanted to inform us–well, you, I suppose–before someone else, and I quote, ‘Filled your head with some far-fetched story’.”
“Hmm.” Kalyste managed, already half asleep again, when another question hit her. “What was Briony attempting to make in the Proudmoore barracks kitchen?”
“I did not ask,” Halford replied, sounding nearly asleep himself, “nor did I particularly want to know. I believe we should simply be grateful she was not coming to report the kitchen burned down.”
She didn’t have the energy to laugh, but a grin twitched at Kalyste’s lip as she replied, “Fair point, I suppose.“
