Chapter Text
The ocean winds whipped across the deck of the El’thrandir. One of seventeen vessels carrying the remaining diaspora of Quel’thalas away from the tide of the dead that had crashed against their nation’s walls. A tide that ought to have been turned aside if the Ban’dinoriel had held. If they had not been betrayed from within, may Dar’khan’s miserable soul rot forever.
Void take him, but if it weren’t for Nathanos’ innate distrust of the slimy bugger, his betrayal wouldn’t have been discovered til it was far too late. Sylvanas still shivered some nights at how close she’d come to being overrun and forced to witness her entire nation fall to the rapacious advance of the undead through rotting eyes.
They had managed a fighting retreat instead, and by the might of the highborn armies and an unconscionable number of sacrifices, many of the people of Silvermoon had been evacuated. Most scattered into the Summerlands, but those that couldn’t, Sylvanas had taken from the ports. It would have been easier if Kael’thas had fought beside them, but no. The cowardly Sunstrider prince had tried to seal the palace and the Sunwell against the invaders. That had lasted about four days.
So they had fled, and Sylvanas had directed them southward. The Eastern Kingdoms were no better off than her own people, so the next nearest port of call was the neutral nation of Kul Tiras.
If they could just make port, trade some of their goods for some food and fresh water, then they could turn about and make for Stormwind. As far as their last good intelligence said, the human kingdom was still standing. Who knew if that information was still good, though, considering what lay in front of them.
To be fair to Anya, her report said ‘the island seems a bit dead’ and now Sylvanas wished she’d been somewhat more specific. Then again, the Thalassian language was a touch ambiguous, and the shorthand utilized by the Farstriders was even more truncated than that, so some loss in translation was to be expected.
Not this much, though.
“When was the last time we received reports of the human nation of Kul Tiras, exactly?” Sylvanas asked as she tugged her hood more firmly over her windswept hair.
Nathanos came up beside her, lifting a spyglass to his eye and fixing it on the dark harbor of Boralus. It ought to have been lit up like the night sky, but there was nothing; just a faint, ominous glow that clung to a few of the towers that they could see through the heavy mist and rain. The gates were closed, too, though Sylvanas’ eyes picked out what looked like holes in them. Battle-damage? Whatever the case, it was barely evening, but the skies were black as night thanks to the thunderclouds overhead. If they stayed much longer, Sylvanas was worried this ragtag fleet would be drowned beneath the rain.
To say nothing of the ocean.
“I can see just about bugger-all, General,” Nathanos said after a moment, lowering the spyglass and turning to her. “It doesn’t bode well, though.”
Sylvanas grimaced and held out a hand for the spyglass. Nathanos clapped it into her palm, and she brought it up to take a look for herself. “It doesn’t make any sense,” she said through gritted teeth. “If the Scourge took Kul Tiras, why didn’t they just attack us from the seas? Quel’thalas is weaker by far from that angle. At the very least, why not have a picket waiting for us when we tried to flee?”
“Maybe it’s something else,” Nathanos offered. “Some internecine feud? I’m not an expert, but the Great Houses of Kul Tiras aren’t any further above petty warmongering than Lordaeranian nobility.”
“A civil war…” Sylvanas lowered the spyglass, having picked out nothing more useful than Nathanos. “If so, then that’s a miserable bit of bad luck. A strong and united Kul Tiras might have stymied that bastard.”
A low, mournful horn sounded across the waves, and Sylvanas whipped around, eyes wide and hands curling into fists as she unleashed a truly iconic string of Thalassian expletives.
“Just when things couldn’t get any better,” Nathanos remarked blithely.
“So it would seem,” Sylvanas replied through her teeth as her elven eyes picked out the ragged, torn sails of the Scourge’s navy, such as it was, having been ripped from the bottom of the sea by their necromantic cultists.
“Orders, General?”
Sylvanas sighed, then lifted a spelled stone to her lips and spoke into it, and her voice carried to all seventeen of the vessels as she said, “Make for Boralus harbor through the gaps in the seagates! Raise the flags of alliance and aid! We once had treaties with their people in ages past! Let us pray to Belore that someone remains in that stone city who remembers them!”
The remaining mages of Quel’thalas threw their magic against the wild winds and torrential rains, striking them to fill the sails of the diasporan fleet, pushing them against the heaving waves of the gray and freezing seas.
Putting her back to the black sails of the Scourge, Sylvanas tucked the speaking stone away. Twining her fingers around the fine silver chain around her neck, she pulled free the sapphire stone that hung from it and closed her fingers around it. Alleria was gone beyond the Dark Portal, and there had been no word from Vereesa or her human husband after the fall of Lordaeron. For all Sylvanas knew, she was the last of her sisters. With the forces of that pale knight who had extinguished the Sunstrider dynasty on their heels, and an empty harbor before them, she could only wonder if, perhaps, she might be seeing them soon.
If they reached the city and it was truly as empty as it looked, she would send her people to flee and do her best to hold the Scourge at bay. She would fail. She knew that in her bones. There simply wasn’t enough of them.
But she would die doing her duty.
She would die as the Ranger-General of Quel’thalas, such as she was.
“Belore,” Sylvanas whispered in ancient Thalassian, tightening her grip on her necklace, “if ever you looked kindly upon your highborn children, I pray for that kindness now. We are hungry and starved of your light, and death itself preys upon us. Hear the words of the last daughter of House Windrunner…” She clenched her eyes shut as she fought back tears of frustration. “Please…save us.”
Nathanos’ hand clapped onto her and gripped hard. “General!”
Jarred from her prayer, Sylvanas snapped her eyes open and looked up. The rain struck her face like icy needles as an explosion of pale blue erupted from the lighthouse at the throat of the harbor. It’s nigh-spectral light washed across them like the breath of Belore herself, and the ragged gates of the seawalls began to grind and withdraw, opening the way for the oncoming Thalassian ships.
Ripping the speaking stone from her vest, Sylvanas brought it to her lips, as tears of frustration and helpless rage turned to ones of relief, and in Thalassian cried. “SALVATION! SALVATION! ALL CAPTAINS! MAKE FOR THE HARBOR!”
She felt arcane around her surge as their remaining mages put the last of their waning, sunborn strength into their spells. El’thrandir bucked as it struck the waves and beat them into submission, surging toward the opening gates.
“General, look!” Nathanos’ tone had taken a harder tone, but Sylvanas didn’t need the alert. She saw the same thing he did.
As they approached the gates, the mist cleared, revealing gibbets hung from chains, and suspended within were moaning ghouls and other feral undead bearing the marks and armor of the Scourge. Hung from hooks between the gibbets were salt-dessicated figures still clad in the ragged remains of Cult of Damnation robes.
The beam of the lighthouse swept across them again, illuminating more corpses, some writhing, some still, nailed or chained to the seawalls and moving gates.
“What…What is this?” Sylvanas muttered.
“An enemy of the Scourge, clearly,” Nathanos said thinly. “But is that enough to make them our ally, General?”
“Do we have a choice?”
Nathanos pressed his lips to a thin line, then sighed and shook his head.
They drove forward, passing the central islet that the towering lighthouse rested upon. It rose like a shining, ghostly spear. Leading the charge, El’thrandir reached that islet first and nearest, and as they passed the outcropping of rock, Sylvanas turned at a faint shift of motion in her periphery, and time seemed to slow. Her throat constricted, and her mouth went dry as her sharp gaze fell upon a figure stepping out of the lighthouse.
She moved with airy grace, her robes flowing raggedly around her spectral legs, and a brittle black staff in hand. Hair like strands of starlight drifted around her as if she were suspended underwater, and briefly, their eyes met, and Sylvanas saw only the darkness of the empty night.
And there, at the center of her chest, just left of her heart and between her breasts, was a black, brutal wound as if she’d been run through.
Mesmerized, Sylvanas turned and vaulted off the foredecks to strike the rain-soaked decking and sprinted toward the rear of El’thrandir, trying to keep her eyes on the ghostly woman. Throwing herself against the railing of the rearmost deck, Sylvanas stared, unsure why she felt so compelled to do so.
The specter had stopped at the edge of the islet, her shifting robes and hair caught in a ghostly storm. She raised that black staff, then, slowly, turned her head just slightly. One empty eye met Sylvanas over her shoulder. Then she turned back toward the pursuing Scourge fleet, raised her hand and staff higher and higher, and, over the howling winds, Sylvanas heard it.
A great, keening wail.
The figure effervesced, erupting into silvery-blue light, as if she herself were a star fallen to the face of Azeroth. Sylvanas threw her hood back and watched, compelled to bear witness.
Overhead, the storm came alive with something like hate. Twisters descended to meet vortexes in all-consuming waterspouts. The keening rose in intensity, and Sylvanas could only think that no living creature should be able to scream for so long and so deeply; that no being could possibly feel so much grief all at once. The foremost frigates of the Scourge were ripped from the surface of the sea, heaved into the air like toys, and all at once, Sylvanas felt so, so small.
This wasn’t anger. This wasn’t even rage.
This was wrath.
Spears of green, ravening light lanced out from the line of ships that had been far back enough to avoid the fate of the front line, but each one was struck aside with bitter contempt. The keening reached a fever pitch, and the very waters of the harbor heaved beneath the El’thrandir.
The last thing she saw before their pace took them beyond view of the islet was everything beyond the mouth of the harbor suddenly snapping still as it was flash-frozen, and spears of ice the size of ship’s masts erupting from beneath that sheet to impale the Scourge ships, which lacked the wisdom to turn back. The ones that had been hauled into the air were suddenly in freefall, crashing into the ice and shattering to splinters, and then the gates of the seawall began to close, and Sylvanas fell to her knees, thoughtlessly rolling the sapphire still clutched in her hand between her fingers.
The thud of boots reached her, and then a hand settled on her shoulder as Nathanos knelt beside her. “General?” His voice was hard and raw. “What was that?”
“I don’t know,” Sylvanas breathed. “But I believe that, for now, we may very well be at her mercy.”
“Her?”
Sylvanas nodded. “Yes, Nathanos, ‘Her’. Now…get us…get us to the docks. Have everyone stay below decks. Find Anya, Vel, and Clea, and the five of us will go ashore to investigate. No one draws steel, though.”
“Leaving Captain Areiel in charge?”
“Naturally.”
“As you say, General,” Nathanos replied quietly before rising and leaving to see her orders done.
For the second time, Sylvanas prayed to Belore.
This time, for mercy.
Life, warm and unwelcome, had invaded her realm. Just the sensation of them drifting in the harbor made her want to scream, but she knew if she did, she might not stop for a long time. The slaughter she’d wreaked on the ships that had been pursuing the elves—high elves, she thought, but her mind was scattered lately, so she couldn’t be sure—had soothed some of that mindless fury, but it was never enough.
It would never be enough.
Not until every single trace of Him had been scoured away.
Her mind drifted through the city, a single lonely spirit soothing the countless weeping souls of an entire island. They were hers. Her souls. Not His. They belonged to Kul Tiras. They belonged to her. And she would keep them, as she would keep the island, as she would keep the waters of the Tidemother, stained and soiled as they were.
The once verdant island chain was a husk, riven by necromantic plague and reduced to a haunted scattering of stones, and now, adding insult to injury, elves had landed on her shores. Had they not obviously been being chased, she would have lashed out at them. Barred them from even approaching.
Now, she was hosting their pumping blood and beating hearts and heaving lungs, moving the still and silent air of her city.
She stamped down on the rage building within her. Once the waters beyond the gate were clear, she would make them leave, and finally, finally be alone again. Finally, everything would be quiet once more. No more breathing, no more deafening, beating hearts, no more living souls violating the isles of the dead.
The invaders had left their ships and were walking her streets. Their footsteps were light upon the cobbled paths as they explored the empty veins and crumbling organs of her body, which was the city of Boralus. She was it and It was her. And neither she nor it welcomed them, but they at least had the good manners to tread lightly and not touch what was not theirs. Their weapons remained in their sheaths, bows upon their backs, and arrows in their quivers.
They were, at least, polite guests.
She sighed, and the wind keened in echo. If they were going to make the effort, then she supposed she ought to do the same, and with a thought, she ignited heatless, gravelight flames in the streetlamps around the advancing elves, and then further down the street they were on, leading toward Boralus Keep.
Best that she be the one to deal with the city’s guests. Best they not trouble the already troubled sleep of the city’s denizens. They had already suffered nightmares aplenty.
And hopefully, the elves remained good guests.
“Well, that’s not ominous or anything.”
“Yes, Anya, thank you, that had escaped me until just now,” Sylvanas said under her breath as she waited for the other shoe to drop.
She, Nathanos, Clea, and Velonara had departed the El’thrandir less than an hour ago. Anya had joined them moments later, having docked her one-woman scout sloop near an outcropping outside the gates prior to their opening, only to join the ingress as whatever the void that thing was made the Scourge chasing them regret ever being raised.
They’d been heading toward the most prominent part of the city—the keep—when all of a sudden several of the gaslamps that lined the street on either side of them erupted into a pale, bluish-white light. More burned further down the street, although all of the side-streets and alleys remained forebodingly dark. It had not escaped the notice of any of them that the streetlamps were all pointedly guiding them toward the keep.
“Maybe we’re being welcomed?” Clea said with a faint smile.
“Your optimism is the fletching on my arrows,” Velonara replied aridly before turning to Sylvanas. “What say you, General? Shall we keep going? Turn back?”
Sylvanas grit her teeth, then said, “We continue. So far, she hasn’t shown us any hostility. Quite the opposite, aside from being a bit spooky. Let’s at least give her the benefit of the doubt.”
The looks she got from them weren’t the most heartening ones she’d ever seen, but they respected her enough not to question her orders. The worst part was that Sylvanas had no idea if that was a good thing or not. Her eyes and ears told her that this was a place of death that had nothing but doom within it for the living, but her gut told her that there was more to the story. And her heart, such as it was, wanted to believe that there was more to that…that woman, dead or not, than just a vengeful ghost.
So they followed the lights.
They followed up empty streets that smelled of old death, past doors bashed open by what could only have been bare hands or ghoulish claws. They passed shattered windows and snapped street signs. And with every step closer to the dark and looming keep, Sylvanas felt a deeper and deeper sense of cloying, all-consuming grief.
Clea fell to a knee outside the gates. They were all pale after so many days spent so far from the Sunwell without meaningful rest, but she was bloodless. Vel went to her side, kneeling and putting an arm over her.
Before she could ask what was wrong, though, Clea said, “Is this…what Silvermoon looks like, now, do you think?”
All of them froze at that, and Sylvanas swallowed thickly. It was a thought that she was sure they had all felt pass through their mind, and one that Sylvanas had made a conscious effort not to dwell on. She had seen the gilded spires burning and the great promenades and boulevards choked with the rotting dead, but the sight of a place under siege and the sight of a place that was well and truly dead, such that no living soul ought ever to dwell in it again, were two different beasts.
“We’ll take our home back,” Velonara said as Anya moved to her other side and took her by the arm.
“Up you get, Clee,” Anya added. “Let’s worry about home when we’ve got people to fill it. There are still people to fight for. The city comes later.”
Sylvanas sighed, then nodded. “Well said, Lieutenant. Now let’s not keep our hostess waiting.”
“I don’t like this, General,” Nathanos said from her other side, his voice low enough that the distracted rangers wouldn’t hear it.
“We’ve had nothing to like for days, Nathanos,” Sylvanas replied darkly. “Now are you with me or not?”
“Always with you, General,” Nathanos replied with hesitation.
“Good man.” Sylvanas clapped a hand on his shoulder, then turned and let out a low whistle toward Anya, Vel, and Clea. They could weep when they were done, til then, they had a duty to what was left of the people of Silvermoon.
They climbed the stone steps up to the doors of the keep. Like the others, these doors had been ripped open, but there was no need to wonder what had done it in that case. Slouched to the side of the door lay the nearly-flayed corpse of a dragon with an icicle the size of a ballista bolt punched through the roof of its mouth, obliterating most of its skull.
Cautiously, Velonara approached the body, held out a hand, then dragged it back with a sharp hiss. “It’s still cold,” she muttered. “The icicle…it’s…it’s still cold.”
“Magic,” Sylvanas murmured as she turned away from the slain frost wyrm and back toward the keep. “Powerful elemental magic.”
“How do you make something so cold it can kill a frost wyrm?” Anya asked as she came up beside Sylvanas.
“The same way you make fire so hot it slays a red dragon,” Sylvanas replied. “Prince Kael’thas was a blowhard, but he was a powerful one. He could’ve done that.”
“You’re saying there was a human mage here,” Anya began slowly, “on this damp, dead island, whose magic rivaled our Prince?”
Sylvanas shook her head. “Not ‘was’. No, Anya, I suspect that she is very much still here.”
Advancing through the door, Sylvanas shivered as the air became noticeably colder. Every step saw the temperature drop further and further and further until her every breath was coming out as a puff of mist. Enchantments woven into her leathers and cloak that proofed it against rain and storm and chill did nothing to keep the unnatural cold from sinking in, and all five of them were shivering by the time they got to what must have been the grand hall.
And there, at the far end, slumping a seat like a modest throne, was the body of a beautiful young woman with a waterfall of buckwheat hair. She wore a tattered naval coat and breeches, and she might have been sleeping were it not for the gaping wound in her chest from where she’d clearly been run through. She had been nailed to her own seat by a cruel blade and left to die.
And Belore, she looked so young.
“Sylva—” Anya started, then bit off the rest of the word as a sudden gale swept the room.
Broken window-shutters clattered deafeningly, loose glass scattered across the floor. Sylvanas felt more than saw her squad about to pull bows and blades, and she snapped out a hand signal, silently ordering them to hold. That unnatural wind swept around the pristine corpse, rocking it upright in a grotesque parody of attention.
Then a shape rose from beneath the floor.
It was the shade from the islet. The one who had emerged from the lighthouse to save them from the Scourge. Her spectral form seemed to merge with the body, sinking into it. Then the fingers twitched, followed by the muscles around the eyes and mouth, and a spasm ran through her limbs all at once before settling.
“General?” Nathanos said slowly.
“Hold…” Sylvanas kept her hand out, doing her utmost to ignore every reflex in her body telling her to attack before the body was fully overtaken.
“Sylvanas—!” Velonara hissed.
“Hold!”
The eyes snapped open, and Sylvanas felt her breath catch in her chest. They were the brightest, clearest, and loveliest pair of blue eyes that she had ever seen in her life. It was like looking into the ocean with the sun shining right through into the depths.
Infinite, cold…and beautiful.
“Elves.” Her voice was a rasp as she raised a hand and curled her fingers as if taking hold of something, only for there suddenly to be a staff of brittle, crooked black wood in her hand. “Why have you come to this dead place? Why do you disturb our graves?”
Clearing her throat, Sylvanas stepped forward and laid a hand over her chest. “My name is Sylvanas Windrunner, Ranger-General of Quel’thalas. We were driven from our homes by the Scourge. Silvermoon was put to the torch and the sword. Those we were able to save are in the ships that you protected. I just…I wanted to say ‘thank you’. For saving us.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I didn’t save you for your sake,” she replied. “I destroyed the Scourge for returning to my shores. It’s not the same thing.”
“Still, you did save us,” Sylvanas pressed. “Intentional or no, we owe you our lives. And the lives of all of our people. If we can repay you at all…”
The dead woman scowled. “Can you resurrect my people?” she said hollowly. “Rebuild my city? Heal this”—she laid a hand over the black, frost-bitten wound—“hole in my soul? Can you turn back time and give me back my mother and my father and my brothers?”
Her eyes began to glow, and Sylvanas took a step back.
“Can you?!” Her voice echoed with an unnatural timbre. “Can the magic of the elves do ANY OF THAT?!”
The last three words struck all five of them like a physical blow, throwing Nathanos, Clea, and Anya to the floor, and forcing Velona to her knees. It washed over them like palpable grief and ripped the thin scar tissue of duty from the wound of seeing the Summerlands necrotize and burn. Clea and Anya clung to one another, sobbing, while Velonara just stared blankly forward. Nathanos clutched at his head, letting out a low, animal moan.
Only Sylvanas remained standing, tears pouring silently down her cheeks.
The dead woman met her gaze evenly. “Well? Can you?”
“No,” Sylvanas rasped. “No, I…I’m sorry.”
The woman slumped back down into the chair whose back was painted in her frozen blood, and wearily—emptily—said, “Then get out.”
“Wait!” Forcing herself to take a step forward, Sylvanas thrust out a hand. “Please! If we leave now, we’ll be hunted down. Let us…let us stay! We have civilians! Children!”
There was a flicker of hesitation, then, “So you can what? Raise new gleaming towers on the bones and graves of my people? So you can rip them from the ground and cast them out when their writhing spirits become unpalatable? No. Kul Tiras is a dead place; it is not for you or anyone anymore.”
Sylvanas took a chance. Following her gut, she approached the young woman and knelt before her, then held out a hand. “If there is anyone who understands your loss,” she said quietly. “It’s us. Please, if it were just me and my rangers, I would move on in an instant and leave you to your graves, but I’m responsible for my people! I’m all they have! So please!”
The young woman raised her head slightly, meeting Sylvanas gaze fully for the first time, and beneath the wrath and the rage and the sorrow, she saw something horribly and terribly lonely.
Her gut having led her this far, Sylvanas took another gamble and took the young woman’s cold, bloodless hand in her own. Her fingers were freezing, and there was no pulse nor beat of life to them. Sylvanas hadn’t been expecting there to be, but feeling it was…disconcerting, to say the least. That wasn’t the surprising part, though.
The surprising part was that the woman’s hands were shaking.
“Please…show mercy,” Sylvanas asked in as soft a tone as she could manage. “I beg of you, don’t force me to watch my people die.”
To Sylvanas’ surprise and relief, she felt the young woman’s cool fingers curl around hers before finally nodding. It was a small, barely-there motion, but it was there.
“Only the keep and its surrounding grounds, though,” she said stiffly. “Proudmoore Keep was designed to hold a full third of the city’s population during a siege. There will be plenty of room.”
“Done,” Sylvanas said quickly.
“And no one is to venture into the city without my say,” she added.
Sylvanas nodded, still gripping her hand as relief flooded through her. “By your word, and mine, I swear it.”
At that, the young woman relaxed and nodded a little more certainly. Sylvanas cast a look over her shoulder at where her rangers were slowly coming back to themselves. Their expressions were faintly haunted, which, given where they were, was perhaps more than a little appropriate, but otherwise seemed none the worse for wear.
“Return to the ships,” Sylvanas said. “Tell them we’re welcome for the time being, but only within the bounds of the keep.”
“You may follow the lights there and back here,” their host added before a thundercloud passed over her expression. “Stray off the path, though, and you will join my people in their slumber. That is the only warning you and your people will receive from me, is that clear?”
“Crystal, ma’am,” Nathanos replied shakily, then he turned to Sylvanas. “General?”
Sylvanas shook her head. “I’ll remain here as a…a token of good faith.” As a hostage, but she didn’t say it out loud. “Now, go. All of you.”
Their eyes lingered on her, and Sylvanas could see the question cross their mind if this might be the last time they’d see their Ranger-General alive. But they were at their host’s mercy. All of them knew that, and before any of them could voice a question, she narrowed her eyes at each of them and flicked her fingers in the Farstrider command sign for ‘Go’.
They obeyed, though Nathanos hesitated the longest.
The man was loyal as a bloodhound.
“You didn’t have to remain,” the woman said after they’d left. “I gave you my promise. So I won’t hurt you.”
“I didn’t think you would,” Sylvanas said, turning back to her.
“Then why stay?” She asked, raising a single blonde eyebrow. “Why not go back to the warmth of your people?”
Sylvanas sat down on the stone steps that led up to the simple throne the woman sat on and said, “I don’t know, but I think maybe it’s because you seemed lonely.” She shot a faint smile at the woman. “And I thought it was a shame for such a beautiful young lady to be lonely, that’s all.”
The woman blinked owlishly at her in the first show of real, honest, almost-warm human emotion she’d displayed since meeting them, then, to Sylvanas' delight, she let out the tiniest little scoff of a laugh.
“You’re…a shameless flirt, aren’t you, Lady Windrunner?” She asked with a small smile that seemed to bring her face back to life for a moment.
“I’ve certainly been called worse,” Sylvanas replied. “And since we’re going to be guests, may I have the honor of knowing our lovely host’s name? It seems rude not to be able to at least address you properly.”
There was a moment of sadness that passed over her, then something less identifiable. A thoughtfulness only made Sylvanas more curious about her.
“It’s Jaina,” she said, finally. “Jaina Proudmoore.”
Sylvanas rose, squared her shoulders, and cut a genteel, courtly bow, keeping her head up enough that their met gaze never broke. “A pleasure to meet you, Lady Proudmoore.”
Jaina eyed the hand for a moment, flicked those suddenly-vulnerable baby blue eyes up to Sylvanas, and in that moment her heart skipped again. Then she extended a hand, cold, pale fingers out, and said, “The pleasure is mine, General Windrunner.”
There, in that ruined hall, Sylvanas Windrunner reached out to take that hand gently by the fingers as any court noble might take a maiden’s hand, and brought them to her lips. She pressed the kiss to cold knuckles, and watched the shift and glimmerin Jaina’s unearthly eyes.
“The pleasure,” Sylvanas murmured, “is entirely mine.”
And she meant it.