#Wyn Ilthyrii

[wynilthyrii]

A letter to Zanrethan Sunforge, August 4

The letter bears the seal of Lady Ilthyrii—the dagger-and-stars House Ilthyrii arms crossed with the phoenix crest of the Order—pressed in dark gray sealing wax. In neat, familiar handwriting on the front, it is addressed to Zanrethan Sunforge of the Order. The missive is written on good parchment in dark gray ink, bearing the scent of coffee, incense, and smoke.

Zan,

I’ve thought hard before beginning this letter, started and restarted it half a dozen times in the past few days—because it has only been in the past few days that I’ve decided to write it at all. I’ve not told anyone about running into you as it occurred to me that perhaps you didn’t want anyone to know. You didn’t say and I didn’t ask and that was a failing on my part, truth be told. In some ways, I suppose my thoughts were elsewhere.

As long ago as it was, I still remember the morning after we thought you lost. I went to the war room office and spread a black cloth over your desk. What I don’t remember is how long it stayed there, how long it was before we finally cleared it all, filed some things and packed the rest away. Every so often these days when I’m going through the oldest files and reports, I still find things in your handwriting. The ache eased some time ago but every so often, there’s been the pang, the regret. I suppose it will be even less, now, since I know you did survive to live in a world where that fight has ended, despite how many years you lost somewhere in between.

You should know that the files are all classified, now, though I doubt you’ve gone looking—why reopen a wound like that, after all? I haven’t inquired about the classification level though from what I understand, having talked to some others, the level is somewhere like “five meters above your ass”—and that came from a retired combat commander turned archivist with the Order. I don’t even know that I could access them, and many of the last reports, about the very ending of the Neverdark War—that’s what we’ve called it these past few years, now, since the final stages and the end of it—were in my hand. So many that you knew fell away or simply fell, never making it to the end.

We’re seated in the Everlight, now, those remnants of forces that made it to the end. Arius stepped down as Dragonhawk in favor of athair some time ago, and while about half the Council would prefer to not answer to Drimmari Dra’zar as their lord, they can’t deny the strength of his claim to the title. Still, I wonder how long he’ll remain in that position. For my part, I suspect that he’ll return the mantle to Arius at some point, possibly in the relatively near future, though I can’t be certain. The quiet speculation about who he’ll name his heir when it comes to the Dragonhawk Seat is a minor sport, I think, among the Houses of the Everlight and its people alike.

I know both far too much and not enough about the Everlight these days myself—keeping that promise I made to Fleur all those years ago, the one I made again to Arius is part of it, though it’s more now than I think I ever intended. Today as I sat at my desk in the war room at Dawn’s Reach, staring at the board of all the mysteries we’re trying to solve, all the problems we’re sorting through, all the information and we’ve gathered about a thousand things, I wondered.

Wondered, if you hadn’t been taken, would I be in that chair? Would I be his general now, commanding the Everlight’s forces?

Of course, I suppose it doesn’t matter, but it’s one of those things that strikes. It certainly doesn’t stop me from taking risks or making mistakes. I’m currently under orders from Tyr not to swing a blade for the next three days unless it’s a matter of life and death—he doesn’t want to have to do any additional healing for my collarbone and decided for once on the luxury of letting it heal a little more slowly, with more natural healing than the alternative.

There’s always a new mystery to unravel, isn’t there? Always a new challenge. Perhaps someday I’ll tell you more, if you’d like to know. If I’m able.

I’ve not even told my husband about running into you. He might have been distracted enough not to notice but I know better than to count on that. Odds are that he knows something happened, just not what. Someday I’ll tell you more about that, too.

I meant what I said about not being afraid. If you love her as it seems you do, and she loves you the same, then take the chance. She’ll think it’s perfect, no matter what you do.

Be well, my friend. My brother. Wyn.

[Addressed to: @zanrethan-sunforge ]

[zanrethan-sunforge]

A letter to Wyn Ilthyrii (9-19-24)

This letter arrives…if you can call it a letter. A thick envelope, slightly crinkled and sealed with wax, arrives with a few different official stamps. Within is a letter written in familiar tight handwriting along with several leafs of parchments of sketches and other sorts of notes. The sketches show what looks to be underground landscapes rendered expertly, though the work looks quick, and a few of the neater ones show progress on construction and supplies. One sketch in particular shows a massive, glowing crystal jutting out from the ceiling of a large cave. There’s a tiny bit of sawdust inside the envelope, and the papers within smell of wood and ink.

Wyn,

Finally, I’ve a desk to write on.

Some of us were in Dalaran, yes, though not when the city exploded. When I gave the news of Tyr’s warning to everyone, it was as if a machine had been set in motion. A small contingent of us moved into Dalaran and kept our wits about us until the event happened, and did all we could to aid those who needed it. Much time was spent after looking for survivors—one of which I pulled directly from the rubble. Mathieu Waystar. I’m still confounded as to how he survived an exploding city and falling from the sky, and he’s strangely not privy to indulge us in that information, but given the circumstances…I don’t blame him for his silence. He nearly died. I will not press him. The conversation will be had in due time when he is ready.

The attack happened, and the comms lit up. Knight-Lady Blackspear has given her orders, and a new special forces group was established for the current threats at hand. We’ve been on the Isle since Dalaran’s fall and have been erecting a garrison underground in Hallowfall we’ve named “Sunhold”. I’m unsure if you’ve gone underground yet, as it’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve been able to sit and get letters and missives out, but this Arathi city is beautiful and monumental.

Beledar. I hope for you to one day see it with your own eyes if you haven’t yet. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever witnessed. The sight of it even stunned Jax into silence. A massive Light crystal being the sun for an underground city? A city that was founded by an expedition from a kingdom overseas? I’m enthralled. Mesmerized. Fascinating. I can’t stop admiring the city and its people. Alectrael has even playfully teased me in some moments, claiming I’ve become a nerd, but I can’t help it. I find myself seeking to learn more about this city every day.

Light safekeep you and yours. Perhaps I will cross paths with you and others on this Isle or beneath it one day. Though I’ve not seen the sun in many days, I’m thankful to have Beledar to shine upon us.

Sincerely,

Zan

[in response to @wynilthyrii]

[houseildanan]

In Which He Prepares Brunch

The oven door latched with a soft click and he straightened, surveying the stovetop, the pans and pots on the burners, the counters with the cutting boards marked with the juice from the fruit he’d cut and the butcher block surface dusted with traceries of flour and bits of pastry trimmed off to even out edges.  The pastries were not a usual project, but this morning it felt right to make some even as he tended to more savory fare to accompany them.  A proper brunch seemed right this morning, despite everything.

Perhaps because of everything.

“It smells good in here,” his commander’s voice said from the doorway.  The red-headed woman stepped into the kitchen, glancing around and finding them alone.  “When did you get back?”

“About an hour ago,” he said.  “I stopped in the market before I came back.  I hope you don’t mind.”

“Knowing how well whatever you brought back will serve morale?  No, never.”  She joined him at the stove, reaching over the pots and skillets he tended for the one of coffee set at the back to stay warm.  Her glance in his direction held the very vaguest hint of concern.  “What emergency sent your wife here to fetch you back at half past one in the morning?  You didn’t have to come back so quickly.”

He frowned briefly, using a spatula and a firm hand to toss some sizzling greens in their pan.  “What makes you think it was Seni?”

She favored him with a level look tempered by a wry smile.  “There is a very particular flavor to Senithvia Dra’zar’s magic that I am more than well acquainted with, Tyr.”  She filled a mug and then settled the coffee pot back into place.  “Come on now.  Are we going to do this dance?”

One corner of his mouth kicked into a grin as wry as hers.  “That depends on you.”

She stepped away, sinking into one of the chairs at the table, one that creaked even under her relatively slight weight.  Age and the temperatures were starting to wear on so much up here.  So much would need replacing and repair if they were to stay for much longer, to make everything into a proper garrison.  They both knew that—his commander better than most, since her contingent of Alliance forces was the most likely to remain on-station here even if the Crusade moved on.

She took a sip of coffee, her brow arching.  “Does it?”

He shrugged and turned away, checking the hash.  “It wasn’t Seni.”

“Then who?  And why?”

“My nephew.”

It took a moment for her to catch his meaning, but he knew it had registered as soon as he heard her mug against the table, rattling slightly in a way that suggested she’d hastily set it down.  The chair creaked as she leaned forward, almost but not quite rising.  “Is everything—”

“Everything’s fine,” he soothed.  “Honestly, they didn’t really even need me there, I think.”

“You wouldn’t have forgiven yourself if you hadn’t been.”

He stared down at the stove, at the array of cooking vessels and food he’d begun preparing.  It was probably too much, but better too much than not enough.  The urge to do it was half habit and half therapy.  As bitter as some of the memories were, far more were good.

His eyes stung.  “You’re right,” he murmured.  “I wouldn’t have.”

“Still, that doesn’t explain why you’re already back.  Unless…?”

He laughed.  “She told me to and some habits in that regard die hard.  Orders are orders, right?”

“Everyone’s healthy?”

“She and the baby, yes,” he said, shaking his head.  “Everyone else may be in some kind of altered state, but she said it was fine and I trust her to know.  Told me not to borrow trouble when she shooed me off.  I was glad to have been there, though.”

“I’m certain she was, too.  You’re as much her brother as her actual brothers.”

Tyr laughed quietly, eyes stinging, but he nodded.  “I suppose you’re right.  She’s seemed to collect those over the years.”

“Tyr, if you want to—”

“No,” he said gently, reaching for the coffee pot to pour himself a mug.  “No, Commander.  She’s right, my place is here right now.  I have a job to do until you and the Crusade find someone who can do it better or until I’m actuallyneeded back there.  They know where to find me, how to find me.  I write when I can.”

“Did you leave them breakfast, too?”

He barked another laugh, reaching up to wipe the tears from his eyes.

“What do you think?”

In answer to that, she simply smiled.

[graceintheshadows]

Book of Grace - 24 January

Whisper reached out to me requesting help for a friend, and all things considered, I didn’t see how I could say no without at least learning what might be at stake.  It seems that there was some shal’dorei involvement, which is concerning to say the least.

Perhaps I have been too focused on Val’sharah, on the issues there, and have missed the worst of the hell going on in Suramar.  I am a fool. There is too much work to be done and yet I spin myself in circles, constantly aiming in the wrong direction.

The Sunwhisper brothers were, in a word, amusing, but there was something strange about the two that I just can’t put my finger on—not that I exactly want to.  I have enough trouble; I don’t need to borrow more.  Still, it seems they would like me to work with the more casual of the two on the case.

Perhaps I can help this girl where I fear I am failing and have failed with some others, in part due to my reluctance to do something like blocking the memories.

But blocking memories only leads to trouble later.  I have learned that lesson all too well.  That brings only temporary relief—and the horror is worse later.

It is always so much worse.

[wynilthyrii]

A letter to Zanrethan Sunforge - 30 September

The letter is on good parchment and sealed in dark gray wax bearing the seal of Lady Ilthyrii. It shows minimal wear.

Zan,

I’ve been through the sketches you sent a dozen times as I’ve tried to write this. I can only imagine what it must have been like to be in the city in those moments. I can only imagine what it must have been like to see the fragments of the cobbles and the buildings scattered across the shore. We’ve had scattered reports and I’ve read them all at least half a dozen times, enough to give me a nightmare or three.

I’m thankful to hear that the warning did some good. I’ve shared your letter with Tyr—he’s had a spot of correspondence with his old Argent unit. It sounds as if they’re stationed somewhere in the same area you are, though perhaps nearer the wall. The last letter he let me see said something about holding the line.

It’s only a matter of time, I think, before someone sneaks off to see what’s what. As for me, for now, my place is here with the rest—we’ve work to do that will keep us from the new front, at least for the short term. Volunteers have filled out a decent Farstrider contingent, though, and they shipped before I received your last letter. Lord Hawksong is with them, at least temporarily, and there are several dozen of the Watch, both active and retired, that have answered the call for reinforcements to ship out. Still others have gone to help fill gaps in the kingdom as others ship to the front for whatever waits for them there—for however long they’re required.

I send this by way of an unusual route—the last time, I routed it through Argent contacts, which I’m sure you noticed. This time it was a bit more direct.

I suggest you have a look outside toward the nearest wall with a likely perch.

Take care of each other. Please.

Faithfully,

Wyn.

——

Outside, settled onto a likely perch and halfway through an apple is a blonde Farstrider of mutual acquaintance, one who bears a striking resemblance to the author of the letter that’s arrived by his hand.

In response to @zanrethan-sunforge:

[wynilthyrii]

Lucky ones - part 8

[Part 7 here.]

Deployment.

Right now, they were asking for volunteers, but somewhere deep down she knew—she knew—that if he had still been with the Order today, there would not have been any volunteering. He would have been shipping out with the first push whether any of them liked it or not.

The idea of it had left her queasy all night, made worse by his absence. It was his turn for the overnight watches. She’d grown used to them slowly but surely, but sleeping alone still came hard.

It always would, now.

Her toes dug into the sand of the shore. The wind off the water was strong, kicking up whitecaps and driving the tide a little higher the beach. Perhaps there was a storm offshore.

It would have certainly matched the proverbial one raging onshore.

She knew full well what they had to do, just not the how or any of the details involved and it had nothing to do with a city falling from the sky—or did it? Sometimes she wondered how much things might be connected, how much everything bled together. The flap of wings setting off a chain reaction a thousand years later and a thousand miles away.

It was simply the way of things.

The knight-champion rested her chin on her knees, staring out over the sea. The sky was dark with clouds that hid the moon, the stars. Out here, it was almost cold.

It reminded her of another place and time, of the smell of woodsmoke and blood and ice and the salt of the sea, of cold that nibbled at fingers and toes and the clash of steel and shouts of battle that would give way to the cries of wounded or the murmur of survivors, of commanders. Icecrown—both of her stints there—had been a long time ago. And yet, unbidden, the memories swam up now.

Why?

Her brow furrowed and she hugged her knees against her chest, fingers bunching in the soft cotton of her dress. She wasn’t a Seer like Tyr, but she knew her own mind. If that had swum up from the darkness, there was a reason for it.

The question was what the reason might be.

Was it the reports? Simply the chill of the water and smell of the sea wouldn’t be the culprit; she came out here to think far too often for that. Was it contemplating what came next?

Something else? One of the thousand things bothering her?

Everything was complicated.

The last casualty lists had come through that afternoon. There was a new name among the missing, another person unaccounted for.

She didn’t know if anyone else had seen it yet, that list. Didn’t know what to do about it.

Perhaps it was that.

There was another war coming. There always was. Somehow, this felt different. It felt more like the one they’d all but ended—or thought they had, until the revelation that there was a cycle that continued, that hadn’t yet been broken.

Break the cycle.

It plagued her, what it might mean. She had her theories and all or none of them could be true. It was something she tried not to let bother her as much as it did.

But this—whatever chain reaction had started when Dalaran fell from the sky—this felt similar in some ways. Like the beginning of something big, something that would fundamentally alter everything that came after.

Of course, it was entirely likely that was her overactive imagination talking.

Her problems were both much larger and much smaller.

She wouldn’t volunteer. Most of them wouldn’t. They were needed—either here, or set to another task.

That task still loomed large in her thoughts, helped fuel her sleeplessness tonight.

Break the cycle.

If they could. If they succeeded.

But what would be the cost?

[wynilthyrii]

Lucky ones - Part 3

[See @graceintheshadows for part 2 and @lordaeronslost for part 1]

“What is taking so long?”

Wyn cut a look toward Tyr, frowning.  “Just relax.  They should be here soon.”

The medic glowered, his limp growing heavier with each step.  Soon he’d have to actually use the cane in his hand instead of pretending it didn’t exist.  “I don’t understand why it would take so long for you to get this information.  You’d think that it’d be routed through the Order and you’d be able to lay hands on it at the Hall.”

“Bold of you to assume that the information you’re looking for is ready to sift down beyond the highest levels,” Wyn said, crossing her arms.  “You could have asked Sol to lay hands on this for you, you know.”

“No one can find Sol right now, not even his wife.”  Tyr stopped, squinting at her.  “Do you know where he is?”

“You think that I’d have an idea if Kal doesn’t?”  She shook her head.  “He’d tell Radi before he told me.”  Her eyes scanned over the sun-splashed expanse of the Exchange, looking for the expected courier.  While her brother had his fingers tangled in the threads of part of their mother’s web, she had hers in others—including a few well-placed in the Magistry.  Still, it was a delicate dance, getting information from them, especially when one was looking for information that was being spoken of in whispers and rumors and exaggerations more than fact.

Part of her was more than half certain the details remained unknown.  Another was already contemplating what the response might be, if even half the rumors that had begun to fly in the city were true.  Who had been there when it happened?  Who would be among the first wave to respond—if anyone at all?

What, exactly, were they about to face, how many of them would it take, and how many would not come home?

“Something destroyed an entire city,” Tyr muttered, following her gaze out over the Exchange as he slumped against the wall beside her.  “You would think everyone would be on the highest alert.”

“Perhaps we just don’t know enough about the circumstances yet.”  She glanced toward him with a faintly furrowed brow.  “Did you ever...?”

“No,” he whispered.  “Nothing—nothing solid enough for me to want to give it voice.”

“But you wrote it down?”

He squeezed his eyes shut and nodded.  “Yes.”

Wyn nodded in return and looked back out at the crowds milling along the Exchange, straightening from her lean as she caught a glimpse of the expected courier.  “Wait here.”

For a second, she thought he might protest, but after a second Tyr simply nodded, sagging a little more against the wall with a faint frown.  She held his gaze for a moment before she slipped off into the crowds.  The courier caught her eye a moment later and they both stopped in the shade of one of the Exchange’s awnings.

“Lady Iltyhrii,” the courier murmured.

Wyn inclined her head, turning a hand with a pair of gold crowns and something bundled in a bit of silk toward the courier, who took them in exchange for an envelope and a small trinket.  “Thank you.”

“Always a pleasure, m’lady,” the courier murmured, lingering a few moments more before they stepped away and back into the crowd.  For the span of a few heartbeats, Wyn lingered behind, watching people come and go before she started to make her way back to Tyr.  The medic was frowning at something as she approached, his gaze—and thoughts—seemingly elsewhere.  It wasn’t until she laid a hand on his arm that he startled back to himself, blinking.

“How long was I—”

“Never mind,” she said, brow furrowing.  “What were you seeing?”

“Nothing that made sense,” he admitted.  “At least not yet.  Did you...?”

She nodded.  “Yes.  Come on.”  She started walking, trusting him to follow as she wended her way toward an old hole-in-the-wall they’d frequented in another life, back when both had been playing pretend at being anything other than what they really were—or perhaps discovering who they were really meant to be.  Tyr fell in behind her, silent, frowning.

“Where are we—?” he stopped himself and shook his head.  “Why there?”

“Because at least there I’ll have a chance to get in front of you if you decide to go off fully cocked about something,” she muttered.  “And we won’t be reading this in the middle of the Exchange.”

“No, we’ll be tucked away in the Row where we both know that you’re like to become a walking target in that armor.”

“Not where we’re going,” she muttered.  “Take a breath, Tyr.”

“How can I when...when we’re still not sure what happened, only that something did.”  He kept close as she ducked down a narrow lane that twisted down toward the shadows of Murder Row.  “Wyn, please.”

She simply gave him a level look and opened a door mostly hidden behind a tail of cloth and some crates.  “In, Tyr.  We’ll read it in the old corner and decide what to do about it.”

“Somebody destroyed Dalaran, Wyn,” he whispered as he passed her and ducked through the door, leaving her to follow.  “And no one in the city seems to be doing anything about it.”

“Likely to prevent some kind of panic,” she said, shucking a gauntlet as she followed him down the narrow passage.  It opened up behind a curtain and into a tiny tavern and inn, one remarkably clean and snug given its locale.  Wyn flipped a coin to the barkeep and ushered her friend to a corner where they’d spent more than a few hours in times now long gone. Wordless, Tyr dropped into an overstuffed chair, leaving her to perch on the edge of a low table as she slid her thumb beneath the envelope’s plain seal.  The sheaf of papers inside was thick, thick enough to make her heart stutter for a moment in her chest.

What had they gotten their hands on?

The first page was in the familiar scrawl of one of her mother’s oldest contacts, sketching what was known in broad strokes.  She read it once, then again, then handed it to Tyr.

“Aethas Sunreaver is among the missing, along with three dozen highly ranked mages,” she said, her voice grave as she started to thumb through the documents—casualty lists, carefully duplicated reports.  “No one has solid word on what’s happened—some reports suggest he survived, others say he perished along with most of his host.  At least one report suggests that the city was destroyed by some kind of void explosion.”

“Void,” Tyr echoed.  “What would—?”

“I don’t know,” she said, still thumbing through the rest of the pages.  “But I imagine that the reason why the city doesn’t know anything is because they’re waiting for final word on the archmage and whether or not he’s alive.  And deciding what we’re going to do about it.”

“The Spire—”

“Will have opinions.  I know.  So will the Farstriders and the Order.  One way or another, we’ll figure out what’s what.”  Her lips thinned as she watched him reading over that first page.  “Whoever it was—they more than certainly just wiped out at least half the Kirin Tor, Tyr.  And who knows how much magical knowledge and—” she broke off, swallowing past the lump in her throat.  Suddenly her thoughts went to Juden, who—if not for pure happenstance and a lack of final decisions made—might have been there.  Might have been among a generation of fledging mages devastated by whatever had just occurred.

Tyr grasped her hand and squeezed hard.  “I know,” he whispered.  “I tried, Wyn.  I tried.”

“I know,” she echoed, squeezing back.  “All we can do is—is hope.  At least for now.”

“And after?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted.  “We have...we have other work.  But who knows who they’ll call up.  Who knows what the response will be.”

“You think there will be one?” he asked, taking the rest of the papers from her and starting to thumb through them slowly.  He’d return them to her before they left—she knew that.  “That they’ll risk...?”

“I don’t know what it will be, but there will be something,” she said softly.  “One way or another, we’re about to send people to war.  I just don’t know what it is yet.”

“Nor I,” Tyr said, then sighed.  “But as you said.  We have our own.”

“Yes,” she whispered.  “We do.”

[wynilthyrii]

Whisper in the Void

The sun painted the very tops of the trees and the slate roof tiles pink and orange as she walked down the overgrown path to the wrought iron gates.  The lock was undisturbed.  The old wards thrummed slightly at her approach, warming, the chill that had once lingered now faded with the passage of time and the end of a war.  Still, she was glad that she’d portaged a distance away, leaving herself to walk the track that had narrowed from years of disuse through the trees and up the hill to the manor where she’d been born, had spent the first sixteen years of her life.

It was quiet except for the wind in the trees.  Nothing seemed amiss.  The smell of woodsmoke drifted on the breeze.  Back in the Everlight, in Quel’thalas, it was eternal spring.  Here, in the marches, winter clung with a tenacity that belied the coming turn of seasons.  Beyond the gate stood the house, the gardens, the old stables and more.

The ghosts of her past haunted this place, even if those ghosts were nothing more than memory.

The key ground quietly in the gate’s lock but twisted and clicked easily despite the disconcerting noise.  The gates themselves shrieked softly, briefly as she parted them just enough that her slender form could slip through the gap.

She closed them behind her, but didn’t lock it.  No, that would come when she left, because she fully intended to leave through those gates when she was finished here.

There should be nothing left to fear, nothing left to threaten.  Not here.  Not with the wards repaired, not with the long absence.

It had been years since the last time they’d dared venture here.  Most who knew were dead—or worse.  Those that remained were scattered, hiding—or should be.

No.  They would not be so foolish, not now.

The blood that had once stained the ground in her mother’s garden was all but scoured away, now, but for a few traces still lingering in the gazebo where she’d died.  Still, stepping into it, the memory was there.  Dessera Ilthyrii’s defiance.  Radiaten’s courage.  Her stubborn determination.

One had died.  Two had lived.  A third, believing all were lost.

It still brought a dull ache to her chest thinking about it.

The gardens themselves were a wild, elegant tangle, still maintaining the barest echo of the shape her mother had woven them into.  Leather-shod fingers brushed along a trellis of rose-vines.

They were still alive.  Come late spring, perhaps not until summer, they would start to bud, to blossom into a riot of color and scent.  Butterflies and bees would haunt these wild gardens, left alone as a memorial to those who once had lived here.  Perhaps she’d come to rescue some more of the plants, to move them to the manor gardens in the Everlight, tucked into the woods just beyond the shore.

If she did, she would come alone, as she did today, or perhaps with one of her brothers.

No one else needed to be haunted by the ghosts of House Ilthyrii.

She stood a few moments in the garden, watching the light from the rising sun creep higher against the trees.

Then, taking a few breaths of bracingly cold air, she crossed the courtyard, past the spot where her mother died, and jogged up the few steps to doors of leaded glass that led inside, into the manor itself.

The air was thick with dust, with the smell of old books and weapons oil, pressed flowers and spell components.  It was the smell of her childhood, of home, and it made her chest ache with memory and longing.

When she and Joros were gone, would their children walk the halls of the manor in the Everlight and feel the same ache?  The same distant sting of unshed tears?

What had her father said?  In a perfect world, their deaths would be many centuries distant.

Perhaps so.  She hoped he was right in that.

Her footsteps carried over across the marble floors of the halls and to the well-worn wood of her mother’s study.  The morning light streamed in through high windows, rainbows painted against the highest of the bookshelves here.  The stained glass had helped protect her mother’s secrets in addition to lending a bit more magic to the place.

At least, it had been magic to the child her daughter had once been.

Wyn sank down on the stool that had always been hers, the spot where she’d so often perched with a book or her sketchpad and colors all those years ago, seated there while her mother worked.

Odd, how things paralleled through time and space.

“Hello, mathair,” Wyn whispered into the silence and stillness of her childhood home.  “I’m sorry I’ve been so long away.  I just…”

The excuses died to nothing on her tongue—and what did they matter, anyway?  Dessera Ilthyrii was long beyond hearing whatever she had to say.

And yet, here she was anyway.

“So much has changed,” she said.  “The war’s long over and yet the embers still stir, still flare.  I wonder, did you see what was to come when you were there all those years ago, when Anavela ascended as the Dragonhawk?  Could you sense it even then?  Was there a hint, a whisper?”

She had always wondered that.  Wondered when her mother had begun to realize, had known.  It was long before the day she’d died, but how long?  Years?  Decades?

Centuries?

Did it truly matter anymore?

“I’ve come to love that place.  Those lands.  I’m sure you understand why.  The Wanderers are my family as much as anyone else could ever be.  And my husband is both Wanderer and Warden.

“I know you saw them, then.  They were all Dawnroses, selected for Dawnglory scions from birth.  I wonder what you thought of it all.  Perhaps there’s something in a journal that I haven’t scoured yet, haven’t found.  I know you must have had opinions on it all, wondered.  It wouldn’t be like you not to.  Gan survived the lot of them, though I doubt any of us would have expected it.  Did you ever speak to him, I wonder?  What was he like all those years ago?  I never asked if he’d ever met you.  I don’t know why.

“Were you here, you’d tell me to come to the point, since you’d know that none of that is what’s truly eating at the heart of me.  You could always tell with all of us.

“I’m troubled, Mathair.  But of course, you’d know that.  I just don’t know what to do.  It’s not like it was in the old days in the Everlight anymore, when Wardens were always Dawnroses and their charges were always of House Dawnglory.  We lost so many in the war, the Dawnroses began to train volunteers from beyond their blood, beyond their House.  Joros was one of the first volunteers, even before we were married.  I know that he’s always intended to take me as his charge.  But I don’t know if I can do it—I don’t know if I should.  It’s never been done like that.  There’s never been a pairing between—how did athair put it?  Romantic partners.  And perhaps the way things have always been done explain why.  But maybe not.  I just don’t know—none of us know.

“There’s no answer I can find.  Athair said don’t do it unless you’re absolutely certain.  Randhir’s been telling me for years that it—that it would destroy what Joros and I are without the Bond, that neither of us would ever know if his love was the bond or him.  I know we both hope that we would know the difference but I can’t help—it scares me.  It scares me so much that he might be right.  But if I say no, then what will it do to us?  Will he regret it, becoming a Warden?  He says he won’t, he said he was sure when he took that step, but I—”

She stopped, tilting her face up toward the shafts of colored light that filtered through from the stained glass above the high shelves.

“He’ll have to take a charge someday,” she finally said.  “Even if I never take a Warden, he’ll have to take one someday.  I don’t know how I’ll handle it.  My gaze always goes to him unconsciously after a fight.  I look for him unless I actually think about looking elsewhere first.  When I gave him my vows, it wasn’t until death.  It was for as long as love lasts.  I look for him because I can’t imagine my world without him anymore.

“I know part of the reason he wants to be my Warden is because he wants to always know, to sense that I’m all right, that he hasn’t—that something hasn’t happened.  I understand it.  Part of me wants that, too, to always know.  But I don’t need obedience or subservience or magic-fueled devotion.  I don’t want it.

“I just want him.  But how do I tell him?  How do I find the words to tell him that and not shatter us both?  How do I watch as he takes someone else for his charge and know that it wasn’t in his plan?  That now his duty is to someone else, not just us—not Lea, nor Jude, nor me.  And if he tells me that if he must take a charge that he wants me to take a Warden, can I stomach it?  It would feel like a betrayal.

“I’m just so afraid, Mathair.  I don’t know what to do.  If we take the bond and something happens to me, then he won’t survive it.  But I won’t survive losing him, either.  I know that I won’t but I’m sure anyone who hears me say it would think that I’m just being dramatic.  But I know.  It would hollow me out inside until there was nothing left but a shell.

“Would it be fair to take the risk, not knowing what it would do?  I’ve been trying for years to figure out how to modify the spell, to strip out pieces and change them and even it all out but it’s—it’s not so simple.  It’s not that it’s beyond me, I’m just not sure it’s possible.  And not knowing the whole story behind why and how the Wardens came to be—only having pieces of that puzzle—that just makes it harder.  There’s something about all of it that’s planted this fear and doubt deep inside of me that I’ve never quite been able to ease or uproot.  There’s something important that we’re missing.

“Something important that I’m missing.  Maybe that’s also part of my hesitation, why he and I have only talked about it briefly in passing.  I love him with my whole soul and I would want us to be equals in this—to be partners, complimentary, not with one subservient to the other.  But for some reason, that’s the way it’s built and I need to know why.  I need to understand.

“I can’t be the only one who wonders, who it bothers.  But it’s been this way in the Everlight for generations and no one questioned it before now.  No one’s asked except for me that I’ve come across.

“Another question without an answer.  There are just so many.  I have to wonder how it’s all bound together.  The long war.  The caverns, the Everlight, the Vault, the Wanders and the Eye and the Shard and the Keeper and all of it.  Every piece of it.  The threads are there I Just can’t figure out how they’re woven together.  It seems like they should be but maybe they’re just the same color, or a similar pattern, they’re not part of the same tapestry.”

She hunched forward, then, burying her face in her gloved hands.  She was alone here.  There would be no answers, at least not from her mother’s lips.

Her mother was long gone, just a memory.  While her presence seemed to linger here, in this place where she’d spent so many hours, it was just her daughter’s imagination that painted that into being.

Still, sitting there in the silence of a winter morning, the legends woven into her mother’s stained glass painting the shelves and the tomes behind her, Wyn let her control slip.

There, in her mother’s study, she cried, sitting on the stool where she’d spent so many hours of her childhood, the green velvet stained with traces of jam and honey and tea and juice left behind by the child she had been.

The answers she sought could not come from here, not her childhood home, nor the ghost of her mother, nor the memories of this place.

The answers lay in the lands where her mother had once witnessed the ascent of a Dragonhawk so many, many years ago.

The lands that were now her last surviving daughter’s home.

The sun had fully crested the horizon by the time she dried her tears and took a deep, slow breath.  Her eyes ached, but she stood, surveying the room for a few moments, letting her heart calm and her breathing even out again, hiccups and hitches fading.  She would need to wash her face before anyone saw her when she returned home.

Home, to the Everlight.  To the family she’d made after she’d buried so much of hers.  Her sisters.  Her brother.  Her father and later her mother.  Tali.  Lexsi.  So many others.

But she had Joros, now.  She had Jude and Lea.  She had the family she’d forged in fire and blood and steel and war.

And she loved them fiercely.

That, in the end, was all that mattered.

[wynilthyrii]

(( Tell me more about her, please !))

Mage turned Blood Knight.

Victim turned General.

Mother, lover, soldier, friend.

Born the youngest daughter of Dessera Ilthyrii, Lady Ilthyrii, the spider perched in the heart of a silver web, Wyn was raised to inherit the matriarchal House Ilthyrii. Her mother’s skills at information gathering perhaps played a part in the fate that she met, murdered while trying to protect her two youngest children.

After surviving several years in the hands of rogue Apothecaries beneath Undercity, Wyn eventually escaped and began to build a new life, only for it to be shattered by the death of her first love in Northrend after the worst of the fighting had ended. Years later, when she emerged from her seclusion, she fell in with a fledgling Adept and eventually joined the Order herself. The unit she’s served in for the better part of a decade has become her family. She currently serves as commander of combined forces in one of the counties of the kingdom, answerable to the kingdom and her mentor from the Order.

[wynilthyrii]

A letter to Zanrethan Sunforge - 5 September

The letter comes bearing a surprising number of seals across its seam—the Order, House Ilthyrii, and that of the Argent Crusade. It’s written on good parchment but is a bit creased at the edges, as if from the bag it was carried in, and entirely possible that the courier that brings it to his posting wears the colors of the Argent Crusade.

Zan,

I can only guess where you are, though my gut says that your unit was one of the ones immediately dispatched—likely before anyone truly knew what was going on. The official reports only started coming when I received your letter and actual word of anything happening has only reached the public in whispers and rumors.

Please tell me you were not in Dalaran when it fell from the sky. I’ve only seen two reports with any sort of depth of description and both left me sick to my stomach. The casualty lists contradict each other—no one seems to have a good accounting of the living or the missing or the dead.

They are asking for volunteers to go with the relief—some by portal, some with the fleet. The Magistry is reluctant to commit many mages to the cause at this point, given what’s happened and the number of unknowns, but the Kingdom sends troops to be certain. I have word that the Alliance does the same. Clearly, so do other organizations. I’m sure you’ve noticed the Argent seal on the letter. Their request for volunteers came even before the official ones were posted at the Hall. I think Tyr’s received a direct request but I doubt he’ll ship, not yet. There are things that must be done before he can think of it, but I deeply suspect that his unit—the 58th Argent Crusade—is already en route if they’re not already on-station.

My uncle and Lord Hawksong are coordinating the Farstrider volunteers and the reservists and retired rangers signing up for one more fight sourced from the Watch and the people of the Everlight. Hawksong is making noises about going himself but I’ve not heard what anyone thinks of that, least of all athair.

Ardus intends to go. That’s all I know right now.

I pray that wherever you are out there, you’re safe for now. If there’s anything you need that may be in my power to give, ask. I’ll do what I can.

Please, my brother, be safe.

Faithfully,

Wyn.

[ @zanrethan-sunforge ]

In response to

[wynilthyrii]

In this together

I came within inches of telling Vordinum Lightrest a thousand things that would make athair explode. I know both things to be true—that athair would explode and that I nearly sat the Lord Templar down and told him anyway.

Somehow, I can’t shake the feeling that they should know, this younger generation that will inherit the Everlight with us—in his case, sooner than he’d like, probably sooner than he’d planned. They deserve to know the things that we’ve started to unravel, the history that’s been hidden almost in plain sight for their whole lives.

Somehow, on some level, we’re all in this together—aren’t we?

Tyr set a plate down just in my line of sight, just above the corner of my journal. The aroma of bacon and eggs hit my nose almost immediately, and I found myself wondering how I’d missed the scent alone that must have heralded his approach. I glanced up as he topped off my half-empty coffee cup from a small carafe that he settled on one corner of the desk.

“Eat something,” he said quietly, catching and holding my gaze for a few heartbeats. “We don’t have to talk about it, but I do need you to eat something. All of you are starting that thing you do.”

“What thing we do?” I asked, setting down my pen to take the fork he offered me.

“That thing where you all pretend that you’re not hurt so no one worries, least of all me. Where you all pretend that nothing’s happening or wrong until either the reports are written or it’s too late to hide.” He smiled slightly, though he half hid the expression behind the rim of his mug. “There’s a pattern to it, you know.”

I loaded my fork as I stared up at him. “Has anyone else told you what happened?” I asked before I took that first bite.

“No. Not beyond you. I suspect that the reports are already written and summarily delivered. I’ll see them if he wants me to.”

What he left unsaid was that I’d only told him because he’d asked when he was working on my collarbone and the other things I’d ignored after my close encounter with a string of layered anti-magic wards and, subsequently, a tree. Even if I’d been the one who’d dragged everyone out to the woods around what was left of Dreamveil’s holding, I’d almost hoped I was wrong, that we wouldn’t find anything.

It was not the case.

The sight of an obelisk so like the others we’d seen, surrounded by the skulls and all of those bodies was one I couldn’t shake. Worse than what I’d almost told Vice was that I’d almost asked him to ride with me.

I’d very nearly asked him to ride with me so I could show him what we’d found. So he would be there to bless those lost and unknown souls that the Forked Tongue trolls had left laying there in that camp that must have been there for generations on generations. So he could maybe begin to understand without my having to tell him why.

Why we did what we did. Why we asked what we asked. Why some things remained silent, hidden from most.

Maybe part of me wanted to share the burden of there being so much we didn’t understand—because I thought that it was likely he was very much in the same boat we were. I already knew that Arius was, though he knew more than any of the coming generation beyond our innermost circles. That was because we’d told him, because he deserved to know. Tenebre had bits and pieces, knew more than most because of her past history with us—much like her cousin. So why not the third of the cousins, too?

Tyr’s voice drew me back from the swirl of my thoughts. “What’s the matter?”

I shook my head. “You’re right,” I said. “We are doing it again but I don’t know that it’s a conscious thing. I think—Tyr, I think we’ve all grown so damn accustomed to keeping some of these things secret that—that we’ve forgotten who should really know. That the lines are starting to get weird and blurry.”

He studied me for a few moments, watching as I took another bite of breakfast, then another, avoiding meeting his eye. I was almost afraid of what he’d see if I met his gaze.

“I don’t know what to tell you, little sister,” he finally said quietly. “I think I stopped really knowing a while ago. There are calls I can’t make—I gave up that right a long time ago. But you know if I think it’s gone too far—”

“I know. I think we all know.”

He nodded, then straightened from his lean against my desk. He came around the edge and wrapped an arm around my shoulders, pressing a kiss to my temple. “Trust yourself, Wyn,” he murmured as he squeezed me and then straightened. “Your head and your heart know the way.”

“And when they’re at war with each other?”

He just smiled. “Remember that we’re all in it together,” he said simply.

I watched him leave, fork poised over the plate he’d brought me. I swallowed hard once, then again.

He was right.

I just still wasn’t sure what it meant.

[wynilthyrii]

Journal entry - 27 July

I ran into a ghost last night.

It seems so dramatic, putting it that way.  He’s hardly a ghost, though for a moment—

Well.  Until I saw him with my own eyes, I hadn’t known what to think of the rumor about his resurfacing, or about the story Tenebre told me one night a couple years back as we drank to some anniversary or another.  Even then, even with what she’d told me, I wasn’t sure if I believed it. I wasn’t sure that I was willing to believe it.  There had been enough pain.  The ache had eased.  The losses of that night were long ago and far away even if the grief was still real.

I think it was fear that kept me from pulling the files to see if it was true—to see if it had been real.  Fear of what it might mean if it wasn’t true.  Fear of what to do if it was, of the questions that would come.  So I never did.

And then there was last night.

I’d gone to the Hall to pick up some files and correspondence.  There was something about the carriage and the stance of the man standing on the steps in full plate that made me pause long enough to take a longer look.

Zanrethan fucking Sunforge, alive and breathing, right there on the steps.  Everything Tenebre had said was true—I knew I that second.  What little she’d known and relayed about what had happened after that night.  How long had it been for him, really?  Longer than it had been for us.  Hard, but in different ways.

I should have hugged him last night but the moment never felt quite right.

But I was so glad to see him.

Alive.  The brother that had helped forge me in those early days, who’d been taken from us one awful night.  I could still feel the fabric of the sheet I’d used to cover his desk beneath my fingers.  There were shadows behind his eyes but they weren’t the kind that came from being fuel for the Eye’s forges, just the shadows of other, different horrors, of trauma unspoken that didn’t need to be voiced to be understood.  Because hearing him talk about the woman he’d fallen in love with, I understood—I understood what had gone unsaid, understood things that haunted him without knowing what they were.

I think I also understood the answer to the question I couldn’t ask—shouldn’t ask.

But maybe I should have asked if he wanted anyone else to know.  He said he thought Athair saw him once and looked as if he’d seen a phantom.  I don’t recall Athair ever saying anything about what he’d seen, at least not to me.  But even that doesn’t come as a surprise, not really.  Perhaps he’d dismissed it as some figment of his imagination, a spectre conjured by stress or guilt or something else he’s so rarely admitted to feeling.  That wouldn’t have surprised me, either, not if it was around the time it must have been.

But does anyone else know?  And if they don’t, should I tell them?

I don’t know.  I just don’t know.

[wynilthyrii]

Scars and Souvenirs

A gray sliver of dawn appeared through the trees that lined the road through the Everlight. For a few moments, she watched that slice of sky shift its color, growing lighter with the sunrise. A mist hung thick and heavy, as was common this time of year, threading through the trees the same as it would hang over the markets at the township, at the Reprieve, as it would drape itself over still-rebuilding Whiteblade and lay like velvet over the fields outside of Anu’shalah.

Thoughts tangled, images from the previous night’s nightmare mingled with the conversations of previous days. The argument with Tyr. The discussion with a stranger near the steps. Then Aison Bloodwrath the previous night, with a ranger’s teasing to break the brittle ice that might have settled without it. Maybe that had been the spark that set the fuse that led to the terrors that had plagued her sleep.

“You’re quieter than usual for a morning you’ve asked me to ride with you,” her companion ventured softly. Tenebre sat easily in her saddle, body swaying with her mount, bow hanging from a hook near her knee. The ranger watched her for a few seconds, then glanced away, tracking the motion of one of her foxes as it veered off toward the edge of the road to investigate something, only to return a moment later.

Wyn noticed, too. “Anything?”

Tenebre shook her head. “No. So what is it?”

She winced. “Just a lot on my mind, I think.”

“Ah, well. Join the club, there.” A wry smile curved her lips, then faded. “So what piece is it? The thing that has Tess wargaming, the fight that no one is supposed to know you had with Tyr, or something else? Sleeping giants stirring?”

Wyn winced again. “How did you know about—”

“Ardus is worried,” Tenebre said, her voice even even as her tone remained light but almost wry. “When it comes to the two of you he falls into that brotherly role pretty easily. His only saving grace is that he didn’t inherit the same drive to fix things for everyone all the time.”

“I don’t do that. Not all the time.”

“Only sometimes,” Tenebre agreed. “So is it that, or…?”

“No,” she said. “Not just that, anyway. “More than that, and less. It’s a lot of things.” Wyn paused, eyes roaming across the road ahead of them. They’d clear this section of the forest soon, emerge into fields near the lake. “Maybe it’s just the weight crashing back down again.”

Tenebre was silent for a few seconds at her side, following her gaze. The forest grew lighter as the sun climbed into the sky. “I don’t know. It seems like the balls are in the air.”

“For now,” Wyn said softly. “I was talking to someone yesterday about the Order. Something he said…I don’t know. It just brought everything back. The choices you try to make to make things better until suddenly there’s no more choices—the choices are all bad.”

“Service teaches us to obey orders in those situations,” Tenebre said quietly. “And command teaches us to make them and damn what it might do to us.”

“I can’t let the Order turn into some kind of meat-grinder again, Tenebre. But that almost seems secondary to here, to this place and these people. And at the same time, what kind of person would I be if I stood back and just let the old patterns take hold again?”

“Not the person any of us know you are.”

The brush thinned. The gray light of a misty dawn folded around them. Tenebre nudged her horse closer, reached across the gap to squeeze her knee.

“I had nightmares last night,” Wyn said, her voice barely audible over the sounds of the mist-shrouded wood. “My mother. The war. The aftermath. That—all of it.” She swallowed hard, closing her eyes for a second. “If he hadn’t been there this morning, I’d have woken up screaming.”

Tenebre’s fingers tightened a little more on her knee before she let go. “You’re not the only one with nightmares like that. More of us have them than don’t, I think. It’s…it’s another part of what we are, I guess. Part of the kind of life we live. I think…” her voice trailed away.

The silence lingered for long enough that Wyn began to wonder if the Farstrider by her side would say anything at all, would finish the thought. She nearly told her that it was all right, that it was just that she needed to wrestle with some things, to sort through them, and all would be well. It was perhaps only half a lie.

But Tenebre eventually continued, as they cleared the edge of the forest and began up the road that curved toward the lake and the Caverns, green grass rising on either side of the road. “I think the fact that some of us find a way to keep on, to keep trying to make it all better than it was for us for those that come after—it’s good. Maybe it’s not all good for us, but it’s good. It’s something. Somehow it’ll make a difference even if it doesn’t make everything worth it.”

The nod came slowly, but it came nonetheless. Wyn reached across to squeeze her arm, then let go, turning her attention back to the road, to the stillness and quiet around them.

”There’s more coming,” Wyn said, her voice nearly inaudible.

”I know,” Tenebre answered. “There always is.”

Somehow, the way she said it didn’t leave her stomach clenching or her blood cold. It was just an acknowledgement. Not something to fear, to run from.

It simply was.

Just another thing that would leave them bent, but not broken—or, if broken, remade. Perhaps it had always been that way, would be that way, until cycles were broken.

They’d already broken one. How many more would there be?

“Thanks, Tenebre,” Wyn murmured.

“Yeah,” the ranger said softly. “Of course. Anytime. You all right?”

“I will be,” Wyn said, one corner of her mouth quirking toward a smile. “Probably. Eventually.”

Tenebre laughed. “The story of our lives.”

Wyn grinned, then kicked her horse into a trot. Tenebre kicked hers into a gallop, setting off across the dew-damp grass.

Laughing, letting go of some of the weight, Wyn followed.

[wynilthyrii]

The city felt different.

Perhaps it was that she’d been to the capital so seldomly the past few years—a trip here and there, only for an hour or two at most, an errand to the hall here, a trip to the Spire there.  Nothing terribly long, and usually right in and then out again.

But it was more than that, wasn’t it?  The place had been quiet—almost too quiet.  The streets too broad, too clean.  The people she did see out and about too stiff, too—

Too what, exactly?

Unfamiliar.  Potentially dangerous.

Dangerous?  Perhaps.  Unknown?  For the most part.

Perhaps that was where the problem truly lay.  While she didn’t know the names of every soul in the Everlight, she knew the folk there well enough to recognize them as belonging.  In the city, that wasn’t so.

Of course the streets were broader in the city—it was to be expected, wasn’t it?  But it wasn’t like the Township or the Reprieve, where market stalls clustered and shops stood with open doors, curtains blowing in the sea breeze.  There was more formality to the capital that she’d found that she hadn’t entirely missed.

But perhaps it was just her imagination.

Still, there was something that set a tightness to her shoulders.  Maybe it was the business with Nefari, or her former mother-in-law, the machinations of the Spire.  Perhaps it was internal politicking amongst the Order, which she’d largely ignored these past few years, left to two men above her paygrade to handle.

There was something about the city that felt different, though.  As if something was simmering just beneath the surface.

It’s your imagination.  It must be.

The faces as she walked the broad streets of the Exchange weren’t ones she knew, though, not as she might have once upon a time.  Before the war—wars—and before so many things had come to pass.  Perhaps some of those faces were gone forever.  The possibility—the high likelihood, in fact—didn’t escape her.

But there were also strong odds that not all of them were gone, too.

Time will tell, she counseled herself silently as she turned for the Hall, gaze lighting on a cluster of mages—perhaps not all mages, but all certainly garbed like them—chattering in the shade of a tree, laughing together about something or another.  Ahead, a few rangers practiced against the targets in the Square.  A would-be initiate squared off against a training dummy.  She paused near a lamppost to watch for a few moments.

It felt different, but some things, it seemed, remained.

[wynilthyrii]

A Strand of Pearls

“Joros, will you meet me at home?  I have a wound that needs cleaning.”

I have a soul that needs mending.  I need your touch and your warmth and to hear the sound of your heartbeat against my hand, I need—

“Yes, sweetheart.  On my way.”

The relief made my knees weak and I slumped against the cold stone of the keep.  Vyas had seen me in the hall when I’d made my escape.  I just hoped he hadn’t noticed the tears on my face.

No one needed to see those right now.  They were birthed of an ache and a fear that I couldn’t dare voice because it might make them real, might put them out into the universe.

“Thank you.”

There were a thousand things I should be doing instead of retreating.  I was more than half certain there were a thousand things that he should be doing, too, instead of coming home to tend to me.  The Everlight was a powder keg fit to explode, and what was I doing?

Running home to lick my wounds and dragging a Warden that wasn’t mine—that wasn’t anyone’s, not yet, but would be soon enough—with me.  Two fewer blades on watch in a realm balancing on a razor’s edge, enemies within and without baying for blood.

I could have just as easily asked one of the others to clean it—Vyas, Amaris, Tess, even athair, if only to give him something to focus on other than what had driven him to drinking so early—but I hadn’t.  No.  No, after what we’d done and seen at Deatholme, after the beach yesterday, after Lum’s anger and hurt in the kitchen, the words that crystallized into something else, something different and driven a spike into my heart, I couldn’t.

What I was doing was a luxury I shouldn’t allow myself.  It wasn’t something that was sustainable.

But right then, at that second?  All the strength that it would have taken to stop myself had ebbed away.  Maybe it had been the effort to hold the shield back in Deathholme, or the sting of an authirus-laced wound, one that very well could have been deeper than I realized, one that would add another scar to the collection on my back.

The portal home was one I was able to manage almost without thinking.  It spat me out in the mudroom off the gardens, and I sank down onto one of the benches that ran the length of the room.  With shaking hands, I took off my boots, stacking them in one of the cubbies beneath the bench.

One breath.  Another.  Steady.

Adrenaline was wearing off.  It was only a matter of time before I got the shakes.

It felt wrong.  It had been so long.

Steady.

I heard him calling my name from the foyer.  Swallowing hard, blinking back tears I didn’t remember welling up, I lurched to my feet.  Out of the mudroom, through the kitchen, the sitting room.

His face was the only thing I saw as I stepped into the foyer, and it was enough.  Concern contorted his expression and my breath caught, rasping.

He didn’t say anything when I threw myself into his arms, not giving a damn that I’d just thrown myself against plate and that the clasp of his cloak, his Warden insignia, was digging into my cheek.  I didn’t care because his arms closed around me and his fingers laced through my hair and that was all it took to calm my racing heart, to ease the panicked fear that had welled up inside.

It’s okay.  It’s okay.  You’re okay.  He’s here.  Everyone’s safe.  It’s okay.

The litany kept going through my head as he guided me back to our bedroom and we helped each other out of armor—though he tried to stop me from helping him, protesting that I was still bleeding, what are you doing, I can handle it myself—

But I needed to do it.  I needed it, and he relented.

Cleaning the wound stung, but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been, wasn’t as bad as he’d clearly feared when he laid eyes on it.  I probably could have saved the effort, had someone back at the Keep stitch it instead of using the Light to speed the healing after it was cleaned.

I hadn’t even dared to figure out how bad it was until after he’d cleaned it.  Not knowing what authirus did.  That was a horror neither of us needed, one that would throw us both back into another time.  What I’d seen was bad enough.  He didn’t need it, too.

Of course, I would tell him.  He wouldn’t ask, but I’d tell him, but not yet.  Not yet.

His fingers were soft and warm against my back, the touch gentle as he smoothed a rag over the wound after it was cleaned, after I’d started it knitting back together.  His breath stirred the hairs on the back of my neck as he pressed a kiss to my spine.

I shivered a little and his arms closed around me, his chest against my back and his breath warm against my cheek and ear.  I closed my eyes, letting go of the tension by inches and fractions.  My pulse slowed and I turned my face just enough to look at him, managing to smile.  He pressed a kiss to my forehead and murmured the words that even after almost five years made my heart stutter in my chest.

It was half an hour later when he managed to get me into the shower.  I don’t remember if it was trying to convince me or if it was just getting me to move from where we knelt on the bed that was the problem, but it took longer than it should have for us to end up under a steaming stream of water.

I don’t remember if I cried.  I think I must have.  The water drew the words from me—Corey, athair, Deathholme, Dazen, the kitchen after.  I recall the trace of pain that washed through his expression, the determined set to his jaw, the tenderness of his touch and his voice when he told me that somehow, it would be all right, that I didn’t need to worry.

It would be okay.

I let the fear out, the one I knew that he already knew full well.  We both carried it for each other, and the promise between us was unspoken.

Forever.  Because we’d asked.  Because we’d vowed it under a summer sky.  Forever.

Steam and water were cleansing for the soul as much as the body.  Exhaustion washed over and through me like waves against the shore, where craggy rocks weathered away and the sand was long gone.

I’d forgotten what a bitch adrenaline and fear could be, coupled with magic and pain.  How much of that was because of the authirus that had been the wound, I wasn’t sure.

He carried me to bed and stretched out beside me, propped against our pillows.  I curled against his side as he pulled the covers up over me and I pressed my cheek against his shoulder.  The book we’d been reading filled his hands, and the sound of his voice filled my ears as I closed my eyes, fingers tracing the old scars on his shoulder and collarbone.  His cheek rested against my damp hair and I exhaled a quiet, shaky sigh.

Centuries, athair had said that night in the war room after the others had made their strategic escapes once they’d realized what I was talking about.  Light and fate willing, we’d have centuries.

I clung to that, especially now.  Especially the way things seemed to be turning out.  It would be hard work, but we’d done that before.  Fought hard.  Won.  The fight to keep him was one I was willing to wage, so long as we came out of it together in the end.

Forever.

He drew the blanket a little closer and kissed me once, then again.  I kissed him back and settled, closing my eyes again as he wrapped his arm around me, its weight comforting, protecting.  He probably wouldn’t sleep tonight, but I would.  The cadence of his voice was as familiar to me now as breathing and the steady beat of his heart matched my own.

The last of the tension drained away as sleep closed in.  It was too early, of course, but it was coming just the same, and I had no choice but to welcome it.  I could only hope, as I drifted off into the gray, that the dreams that came would be good ones—or none at all.

The last thing I felt before sleep claimed me was the touch of his fingers lifting hair away from my face before he pulled me a little closer, held me a little tighter, before he started the next chapter.

[wynilthyrii]

A letter to Anthus Steelshatter - 11 December

[This letter is written on good parchment in dark ink. It is sealed in charcoal gray wax bearing the seal of House Ilthyrii of Quel’thalas.]

Dear Anthus,

At the outset, I must apologize for my lack of communication, though I’m certain you understand.  A great deal has happened since we saw each other last, and hopefully this note will catch you up on some of the more important bits of that.  I don’t precisely have much opportunity to come to Dalaran as one might (or might not?) hope, but I do plan to be there in the next day or two, which of course brings me to the reason for this letter—beyond, of course, letting you know as much.

I plan to meet with your sister-in-law regarding the expedition she has been called upon to assemble.  I do not know if you or your wife have involvement in it, but it seems my son will.  Juden is fifteen now, nearly sixteen, and is well beyond his years when it comes to his studies thanks to some truly incredible teachers that he has been blessed to work with these past several years.  I do not know what ultimately made her think of him, but the invitation has been extended and I suspect that he would not forgive me if I told him he could not go.

In the old days, of course, I would have simply asked to come along, but my current duties in the Everlight, among other things, preclude that as an option.  I will be having some strong words with Commander Frost to ensure his safety.  A political consideration to such is that he is the last scion of House Riverwind and its lord and the kingdom can ill afford to lose him, though I think we both know that my concern is that of a mother for her son.  I am not asking that you attach yourself to whatever expedition she is organizing, I’m merely advising you of my position on the matter, should she approach you for your insight.  I do not know the shape of your relationship these days, though I certainly can recall in hindsight how insistent she was on your safety and treatment back all those years ago.  Tyr did mention to me in passing that he could not recall seeing you in Northrend more than once or twice in the near three years he spent there with the Crusade in her command, so I must imagine that retirement has actually stuck.  I am glad of it—you deserve to be settled and happy.

Clearly, I am most decidedly not retired these days, though I am relatively settled and quite happy. Overall, the family is well, and we have settled into the relative peace with more ease than I would have anticipated. I didn’t join Tyr in Northrend with the Crusade at first because I was newly wed and then caring for a newborn and that after that my duties with the Order and matters within the Everlight precluded my doing so.  All seems well enough these days, though, and quiet, and now we all are home.

I don’t know how long I will be in Dalaran, but I may call on you if there is time.  If not, I shall have to make arrangements for another time. It would be good to see your face.

Thank you.

Yours faithfully,

Wyn.

[Tagging @versusvices because I’m not sure where else to tag these days ;) ]