They spoke in whispers, their breath visible in the cold night air. She was propped up on one elbow now, and he imitated her, reaching with his other hand to touch her face. She did not pull back.
“Jaina…I think there was a reason we were brought together again.”
There it was, the little furrow in her brow. “Of course. Your father sent you because—”
“No, no. More than that. We’re working together as a team now. We—we work well that way.”
She was very still. He continued to caress the smooth curve of her cheek.
“I—when this is all over—maybe we can…talk. You know.”
“About what ended at Winter Veil?”
“No. Not about endings. About beginnings. Because things have felt very incomplete to me without you. You know me like no one else does, Jaina, and I’ve missed that.”
She was silent for a long moment, then sighed softly and leaned her cheek into his hand. He shivered as she turned her head and kissed his palm.
“I have never been able to deny you, Arthas,” she said, a hint of laughter in her voice. “And yes. It feels incomplete to me, too. I’ve missed you very much.”
Relief washed over him and he leaned forward, wrapping her in his arms and kissing her passionately. They would get to the bottom of this mystery together, solve it, and come home heroes. Then they’d get married—maybe in the spring. He wanted to see her showered with rose petals. And later there’d be those fair-haired children Jaina had talked about.
They were not intimate, not here, surrounded as they were by Arthas’s men, but he did join her under the blankets until the steely dawn called him reluctantly back to his own bed. Before he left, though, he caught her in his arms and held her tightly.
He did sleep a little then, secure in the knowledge that nothing—no plague, no demon, no mystery could stand up to the joined efforts of Prince Arthas Menethil, paladin of the Light, and Lady Jaina Proudmoore, mage. They’d see it through together—whatever it took.
Jaina raced through the gardens, late to her meeting with Archmage Antonidas. She’d done it again—lost track of time with her nose buried in a book. Her master was always chiding her about that, but she couldn’t help it. Her slippered feet took her down between the rows of goldenbark apple trees, the fruit hanging heavy and ripe. She felt a brief brush of sorrow as she remembered a conversation held here only a few short years ago—when Arthas had appeared behind her, slipping his hands over her eyes, and whispering, “Guess who?”
Arthas. She missed him still. She supposed she always would. The breakup had been unexpected and hurtful, and the timing couldn’t have been worse—she still cringed as she thought about having to continue through the formal Winter Veil ball as if nothing had gone wrong—but as the initial shock had faded she had grown to understand his reasoning. They were both young yet and, as he had pointed out at the time, they had responsibilities and training to complete. She’d promised him they’d always stay friends, and she had meant it, then and afterward. In order for her to keep that promise, she had had to heal. And so she had done.
Certainly much had happened in those few short years to keep her busy and focused elsewhere. Five years ago, a powerful wizard named Kel’Thuzad had drawn the ire of the Kirin Tor with his dabbling in unnatural necromantic magic. He had left, suddenly and mysteriously, after being severely reprimanded and told in no uncertain terms to cease his experiments immediately. The mystery had been one of many things that had helped distract her over the last three years.
Outside the gates of the magical city, things had happened too, though information was scattered, rumor-ridden, and chaotic. As best Jaina had been able to determine, the escaped orc Thrall, now calling himself the warchief of the new Horde, had begun attacking the internment camps and freeing the captive orcs. Later, Durnholde itself had been razed by this self-styled warchief, crumbling into ruins as Thrall called forth what Jaina had learned was the ancient shamanistic magic of his people. Blackmoore had fallen too, but by all accounts, he would not be mourned overlong. While troubled at what this new Horde might eventually mean for her people, Jaina could not find it in herself to mourn the loss of the camps. Not after what she had seen of them.
Voices reached her ears, one raised in anger. So unusual was that in this place that Jaina slid to an abrupt halt.
“As I told Terenas, your people are prisoners in their own lands. I repeat to you now—humanity is in peril. The tides of darkness have come again, and the whole world is poised upon the brink of war!” The voice was male, resonant and strong, and Jaina did not recognize it.
“Ah, now I know who you must be. You are the rambling prophet who was the subject of King Terenas’s last letter. And I am no more interested in your babble than he is.” The other speaker was Antonidas, as calm as the stranger was insistent. Jaina knew that she should discreetly withdraw before she was noticed, but the same curiosity that had driven the girl she had been to go along with Arthas to spy on the orc encampments now prompted her to cloak herself in invisibility and learn more. She moved closer as quietly as possible. She could see them both now; the first speaker, whom Antonidas had sarcastically referred to as a “prophet,” clad in a cloak and hood decorated with black feathers, and her master on horseback. “I thought Terenas was quite plain in his opinion of your predictions.”
“You must be wiser than the king! The end is near!”
“I told you before, I’m not interested in this nonsense.” Clipped, calm, dismissive. Jaina knew that tone of voice.
The prophet was silent for a moment, then he sighed. “Then I’ve wasted my time here.”
Before Jaina’s startled gaze, the stranger’s shape blurred. It compressed and shifted, and where an instant before a man in a cowled robe had stood, now there was only a large black bird. With a caw of frustration, it sprang skyward, flapping its wings, and was gone.
His eyes still on the interloper, now a vanishing dot in the blue sky, Antonidas said, “You can show yourself now, Jaina.”
Heat washed over Jaina’s face. She murmured a counterspell and edged forward. “I’m sorry for eavesdropping, Master, but—”
“It’s your inquisitive nature that I’ve come to rely on, child,” Antonidas said, chuckling a little. “That crazed fool’s convinced that the world’s about to end. That’s taking the whole ‘plague’ thing a bit far, in my opinion.”
“Plague?” Jaina started.
Antonidas sighed and dismounted, sending his steed off with an amiable slap to the rear. The horse pranced a little, then trotted obediently off to the stables, where a groom would attend to him. The archmage beckoned to his apprentice, who stepped forward and took the outstretched, gnarled hand. “You will recall I sent some messengers to Capital City a short time ago.”
“I thought that was regarding the orc situtation.” Antonidas murmured an incantation, and a few moments later they appeared in his private quarters. Jaina loved this place; loved the untidiness, the smell of parchment and leather and ink, and the old chairs into which one could curl and lose oneself in knowledge. He gestured for her to sit and with the crook of a finger had a pitcher pour nectar for them.
“Well, that was on the agenda, yes, but my representatives thought that a more dire threat was at our doorstep.”
“More dire than the Horde re-forming?” Jaina extended her hand, and the crystal goblet, filled with golden liquid, floated into her palm.
“Orcs, potentially, could be reasoned with. Disease cannot. There are reports of a plague spreading in the northlands. Something I think the Kirin Tor should be paying close attention to.”
Jaina peered at him, her brow furrowing as she sipped. Generally disease fell under the auspices of the priests, not magi. Unless—