Grey mist hung thickly in the air around a snowy precipice, which the Argent Crusade had claimed for themselves after a long battle against the Scourge and renamed Crusader's Pinnacle. The outpost had been meant to be a bastion of light in that dead stretch of land surrounding Icecrown, but gazing outward toward the foggy, towering spectre of the Lich King's citadel, Lady Jaina Proudmoore only felt dread. Doubt.
Poisonous thinking, the mage thought, shaking her head and drawing her fur-lined cloak closer to her slender frame.
"Do you think of him still?" said a gentle voice from behind her. Jaina did not turn to the speaker—it belonged to Lorena, the colonel of Theramore's forces and one of the very few from whom she would tolerate such a question.
"Only of the monster he has become," Jaina replied, perhaps a little too quickly. Aegwynn would have spotted the lie immediately, called her out on it. But then, Aegwynn would not have asked, because she would have already known. There were times that Jaina resented her ancient advisor's uncanny insight; she was growing used to her swiftly disappearing sense of privacy as the leader of Theramore.
Arthas—or the Lich King, his new title spoken only in terrified whispers—had been on her mind more and more in the past months, ever since the Scourge launched their latest strike against the cities of Azeroth. He'd always been there, of course, lingering like a half-dreamt shadow in the back of her mind. She would sometimes allow herself to slip back into remembering him as he once was, when he was young and golden-haired and carefree. Now, however, with the assault on Northrend, he had been pushed to the forefront of her thoughts and the thoughts of everyone else as the forces of the Alliance and Horde marched to Icecrown to defeat him.
"It didn't have to be this way." Jaina's words were so soft that they were nearly lost underneath the howling of the icy winds around the Pinnacle.
"Excuse me, milady?" Lorena had begun to turn back toward the camp, sensing that Jaina had wanted to be left alone, but the dark-haired colonel stopped at the woman's murmuring voice.
"It did not have to be this way," Jaina repeated, her voice having found its strength. She turned to face Lorena and drew her brows together in contemplation. Jaina felt a sudden and powerful need to—was confess the right word? She wanted someone besides Aegwynn to know what had been brewing in her head for so long.
"Do you know how often I return to that massacre at Stratholme in my mind? I wonder, Lorena, what would have happened had I not abandoned him. . ."
"You would not have been a part of that slaughter, Lady Jaina!" Lorena said, her square-jawed face aghast.
"No. . ." Jaina's cornflower eyes remained steady on Icecrown Citadel, watching the decrepit, flying Scourge creations circling the dark spires. "But there must have been some way for me to stop him, to convince him that was not the path to follow. . .and even then, even if he had gone on with it, there must have been some way for me to reign him in. If I had known the right thing to say to him. . .I just stumbled over everything I said that day, because I was so shocked."
She turned to face her colonel then, her pale hair whipping around her face. "Everyone knows that story, though. I hear the soldiers talk, even now. None of you know that he came to visit me a second time, a few days later. He asked me to come with him to Northrend."
"It would have been madness to do so."
Jaina did not respond. Lorena, as good as she was, was perhaps too good—one of her few failings was that she separated people into good and bad, with little room for the shades of gray Jaina herself saw in everyone. To Lorena, Jaina was good. She did a good deed by not helping Arthas murder the plagued citizens of Stratholme and she did a good deed by not following him to his doom in Northrend.
The matter was not so clear-cut to Jaina, who was always aware of the many possible outcomes any event could have, and how many paths a person could take to glory or damnation. She shivered again, this time from a bone-chill that her thick cloak could not warm.
***
"I would have you with me in Northrend." Arthas' eyes were intense and tired and more than a little unsettling. The softness once inherent in his gaze was gone, leaving only a sort of fire and. . .something else. Jaina felt a pang strike her core, sharp and sickly. "Mal'Ganis is there—waiting—mocking me . . ."
"Arthas." Jaina breathed. They stood in her modest quarters in Dalaran in front of the large window opening out onto the moonlit city. She had been in the throes of a restless slumber when she heard the pounding on her door, but quickly shook the sleep from her head when she saw Arthas looming at the threshold, his handsome face wild and shadowed. "Please don't go. Don't do this. He's luring you to Northrend on purpose, you must know that."
Arthas' hand sliced through the air of the dim room. The room's inky shadows shifted strangely over his broad figure. "Of course I do!" His sharp voice was still hoarse from the yelling and the smoke at Stratholme. When he continued, he spoke more softly, but it was clear to Jaina that he was already determined to follow Mal'Ganis to the wastes of Northrend. "But I've little choice. Lordaeron will be avenged."
"There are things so much more important than vengeance, Arthas." Jaina pleaded with him. She wanted to reach out toward him, draw him to her in an embrace, but there was something so foreign about him now that she was hesitant to be that familiar with him. Her small hands hovered awkwardly in front of her before she clenched them into fists and they dropped back to her sides. "Now that we know the origin of the plague, every mage in Dalaran is working toward a solution, and we will find one. We've bested demons—we can best this."
One of the enchanted clocks outside tolled—the bell sounded oddly hollow at this late hour. Jaina's shoulders slumped beneath her gauzy nightdress and she ran a hand through her hair. "You're going to die there, Arthas."
He grabbed her hands in his own at that moment, bringing them to his lips, which felt fevered to the young mage. He closed his eyes and exhaled. "I need you with me, Jaina. I need your support. I. . .please. Am I to shoulder your betrayal on top of all of this?"
Lordaeron's brash prince had always been temperamental, but the sudden way his mood had shifted from determined to angry and now to desperate rattled Jaina. She fought down the hot tears that threatened to well in the corners of her eyes. She untangled her hands from his and stepped back, gaze averted.
"I won't watch you destroy yourself, Arthas. I love you too much for that."
She did love him still—she hadn't even quite realized it herself until she said it just then. Despite what he had done in Stratholme, despite the mad path she saw him following, Jaina was connected to Arthas by some inexorable bond.
Arthas lifted his chin and an odd look sparked briefly in his gaze before those green eyes Jaina knew so well went cold.
***
"I wonder sometimes if I did not betray him after all." Jaina said to herself.
The wind picked up again, sending a flock of black birds up into the dreary sky.