A/N: Please read my story Rise before getting into this one, or else it won't make sense at all.


She sat by the edge of a window, observing her breath fog up the multi-coloured glass. Her eyes were momentarily concealed of the sight beyond the pane, millions of intricate snowflakes twirling along the breeze before grouping together on the sill outside. The icy air battled with the breath of her own, once again triggering the lively warmth of her exhale to scamper off, revealing a snow-shrouded Silvermoon City.

Her skin was ablaze, singed to the very bone by her irate irritation. Her fingers tapped a solemn song upon the calloused grains of wood, conflicting with the sweltering sentiments that quarrelled within her. She was mislaid there; in herself, and in the outbreak of crystals beyond her face.

"Faine?" A voice called, someplace behind her. It broadcasted inaccurate to her pointed ears. Rather than having the voice echo itself, she turned.

Her exhausted eyes met the blithe, jade ones of Evagria, the young paladin she had brought with her from the depths of Stormwind. Her coffee hair had been gusted amiss by the heartless winds outside, dappled with snowflakes. The button-like nose that sat above full lips was tickled pink, as were her ears, yet she did not seem phased by any of this. "Your cousin is here," the blessed elf breathed after an extended absence of muteness, before adding, "Eraline."

Faine sat back from her perch, her naked shoulders pressing against the frozen glass behind her. She collected her thoughts before speaking. "Send her in. Sit downstairs with my mother until my homecoming from the Spire." The brunette nodded once, twisting her way through the door.

A mere moment later, a woman entered, almost indistinguishable to the settled elf. The only suggestion that they were not the same was the absence of scarring on the former's visage.

She stepped to Faine with resolution, seating herself without an invitation. Faine tightened her eyes as Eraline clutched both of her hands in one of her own while caressing them with the other. "I have caught the news, but Lor'themar has prohibited me from letting it drip from my own lips. I will not keep you long… I just desire to extend my sympathy in person."

The warrior remained impassive as she mulled over her kin's words.

Eraline Dawnwalker, née Bloodsky, was one of the Sunfeather childrens' four cousins, the only child of Reath and M'eline Bloodsky. She was, in the unadulterated form, an aristocrat, wedded off to a Blood Knight. She was also very pregnant with his child, the movements evident under Faine's fingers.

She gave her kin a slight nod in advance to standing, taking her hands with her. "Thank you, but I trust those words would do better with my mother than with me."

She left Eraline in the upper seating area by herself, dashing down the spiral steps and through the labyrinth of passageways before seizing her thickest wrap and fleeing through the back door. The alleyway had not been cleared of the inches of snowfall that amassed from the curved roof, but she paid no mind.

Upon her entrance to the Spire, she was discernibly comforted to find that Gwionnin had been traded by another woman, the nametag of which she did not care to recite. She also disregarded the demands absconding the woman's lips as Faine pushed her way through the sheer draperies.

The room was vacant, and so the warrior took the steps two at once up to his dominant office. She did not knock, rather, she flung the door open and let herself in, as his sentries appeared to be accustomed with her form. The woman caught his perplexed stare as she barraged him with her words.

"How long have you known before thinking it was time to enlighten me?"

She slammed the door shut and tossed her wool-lined cloak to the ground as he stood. His posture indicated he was not in a disposition to be berated, specifically by a female well under his authority. "She was taken in the night by Kor'kron rogues," he commenced, not even offering her an answer to her inquiry. "Her dinner had not even been touched, rather left cold as your mother opened the door to find her room unoccupied. Not a trace," he said, rotating his back to her once more and leaning his palms against his writing table.

"I came to you with a query, not for a melodramatic retelling of my sister's abduction," Faine spat, crossing her arms. Her fingertips were numb from the cold, yet stung as she balled them into fists. She heard Lor'themar's unsteady exhalation afore he straightened to face her. He was strikingly infuriated.

"They left a letter, roughly two moons ago. They demanded gold, our collaboration, and silence in return for a splinter of her well-being. In turn they would send a lock of her hair as evidence that she was still alive, but hair does not decay as a corpse does." Saliva pitched from his mouth during his wrath.

She overlooked the connotations of sorrow and lost hope in his speech. It still did not add up to her. "But why would they take her in the first place? What did a young noble have to offer them, particularly one from Silvermoon?"

His face blanched ever so faintly before her dissecting eyes. "They are most likely torturing her for information." The sin'dorei leader's voice hesitated at the conclusion, indicating he was about to elaborate but chose not to. This did not go by Faine unnoted.

"You idiot," she exhaled. "Both of you. Idiots."

The comprehension of his guilt hit her, and her concentration ran back to a summer a few years past, when Corriana had remained with her in Orgrimmar after displeasing their mother. She had been writing notes day in and day out, receiving just as many.

Lor appeared to have grasped that she knew, as he fell to a divan and hung his head in his hands. "There was absolutely no way anyone knew," he tried, speech stifled by his stray sleeve. "Perchance there was a spy, reading our letters-"

He was interrupted by the golden pillow Faine sent soaring into his face from across the small room. "You fool," she whispered, loud enough for him to perceive. She stalked to his bench and began whacking him with her hands. "You have been gracing this planet for eras and yet your mind gives the impression that it is no older than a few days!"

He grasped her wrists and restrained her onto his lap, his knee tunnelling into her stomach while her face was pressed into the material of the davenport.

"How could you not know Garrosh has had every letter sent in and out of his city read?" Her voice was moderately covered from the position her face was in, but she still succeeded to crane her head far enough to the left to look him in the eye. "No wonder the orc knew about you… how thoughtless of you to lose your mind the minute a young woman-"

"That's enough!" The Regent Lord thundered above her, face flustered and knuckles white around the fingertips he had burrowed into her waist and neck. Faine squinted her eyes judgmentally at him, not at all threatened by both her present position and his tenor.

"You should have thought of the risks you would put my sister in if you wanted to use that tone with me," she hissed, struggling to writhe out of his grip.

A knock on the door hushed both of them and granted Lor'themar's attention, permitting the woman he had shoved halfway into his lounger to be freed. "Is everything alright in there, my lord?" One of the guards called from behind the impenetrable wooden door.

"Everything is fine," the Regent Lord retorted, shoving Faine off from the seat beside him and sending her sprawling onto the floor by his feet.

She shot him an unamused scowl as she stood, sweeping herself off and facing her back to him. She yet again overlapped her arms, one of which trickled blood down to her fingers from striking a wooden stand during her fall.

"The time to assault Orgrimmar is creeping closer," he puffed, voice uneven in the quiet room. "All I truthfully wish for is Corri's protection."

"The only time it is," she instigated without a pause, "is the time for you to stop living in denial. Throw away that blanket you have concealed yourself in. Come clean to yourself, and then to me."

She twisted back to him, met his dismayed eyes. He was entirely at her mercy, nerves raw and exposed. He had nowhere to hide.

"Your sister grasps the heart that beats in my chest; the one that courses blood through my veins and has me chastised to this world. Somewhere, eternities ago, we divided from the same atom as a star perished, and shimmered its dust across the cosmos, drifting aimlessly until once again we chanced, here on this war-torn world."

Faine collected her cape from the ground with bloodied fingers. "Use that love as your blaze, and I shall follow behind you, bathed in your light."


In the Sunfeather estate, Faine collected Evagria and Alastrine from her mother's tearoom. Ardis, virtually a rambling cadaver, bunched into herself on a tattered chair. She did not even look up to her daughter. "How long?" She rattled, shutting her eyes firmly. The warrior, signalling for the pair of holy women by her side to leave, inhaled deeply. "Any minute now."

Her mother began to weep. "Just go," she chanted like a mantra as her eldest daughter stood, dazed.

She did not move until her brother entered the humid room and lead her out by the elbow. His stature was taciturn and rigid, but his eyes remained as drained as their mother's as he gazed down at her confused face.

"It is best you wait on the steps," Pengion whispered to her, helping her with her bags and cloak before holding the front door open to her. Her companions were already outdoors, ankle-deep in the fresh snow, the paladin's murloc on her back. They would wait in the cold for a mage to come, sent by Lor'themar to teleport them straight to Stormwind.

After confessing his elegiac love for her little sister, Lor'themar had told the warrior she was better off returning to Stormwind as she flattened out her bloodied cloak, as she would be appreciated more there in advance to the siege. She then, of course, cursed him out, infuriated that she had only just arrived that sunrise and already he was sending her back onto the same boat to make the month-long voyage back to the Alliance capital.

He agreed it would be too much to ask, as an alternative offering to send a mage to her home, as well as an assemblage of elves of his selection. She could not refuse even if she wished to, and instead left him to his paperwork as she headed home.

The three women waited in the cold, Evagria and Alastrine chatting between themselves unobtrusively as the warrior looked out towards the fountain, vision indistinct by the steady fall of snow. A small group of figures rounded around the frozen water and advanced. Faine instantaneously deciphered Rommath's face from behind his azure cowl, giving her a sad smile as he stopped at the bottommost of her steps.

The women to Faine's right took the inaudible indication and descended the steps together as Rommath scaled them. He did nothing but exhale before gripping her shoulder with a gloved hand as a humble gesture of encouragement.

"I've never seen him so distressed in my life," he told her, locking eyes. "We'll find her. As far as Lor is concerned, she's coming home with him, whether she's in one piece or not."

"I appreciate your sincerity, but I am not as optimistic about the ordeal as the rest of you appear to be."

Rommath tightened his jaw at her words. "Faine, the things that you can't control are the things that wound you the most, but you are in charge of that hurt. You are your own beacon of hope. If you can't bask in the conviction of those around you, look inside yourself and find your own source. There's something in there that's worth fighting for."

She was too exhausted, too weak to take his words out of context in the moment. As an alternative she only nodded and permitted him to aid her down the steps while carrying half of her luggage. She united with the cluster of freezing elves at the foot of her home's brass staircase, bracing herself as Rommath initiated the incantation for the spell that would form their portal. She felt a small hand fleetingly squeeze her own from behind her, presumably Evagria's, as the mage completed his words and a great rift twisted between them.

Faine was the first to step in, permitting her figure and cognizance to be tossed and taken by the Twisting Nether, her eyes aflame with fortitude.


A/N: Oh my god, I'm finally onto the 2nd part of my trilogy. This one's the long one, it's going to be about 30-something chapters, so buckle your seatbelts.