A/N: I felt really bad about how long the last chapter took to post, so I'm going ahead with this one.

…-…

Meryl stared blankly at the stone wall across from her, her mind numb. Her lips were chapped and bleeding and she was just about ready to say whatever she had to, to get some damn water. But she couldn't do that, now could she? That would be letting that dragon bastard win.

She barely registered the footfalls outside her door or the clink of a key in the lock to her cell. She'd heard horrors about the Stockades all her life, but what she should have been afraid of was the dungeons beneath Stormwind castle, the places where the pompous pricks running things squirreled away prisoners who needed to have their brains picked.

As it was, she hadn't eaten in days and she was only given minute amounts of water to keep her going…at least until she 'confessed' for her sins.

The guards stopped in front of her one of them crossed his arms. "You got a special guest today, so if you've got any sense left in that head of yours, be polite and tell the truth for once in your miserable life, you hear?"

The truth…

It was all she'd been telling them, since she got there, and it wasn't enough.

But then, it was all she had, wasn't it? And if she kept to her story, to the truth, eventually they would see that she was innocent, right? That this was all some horrible misunderstanding? That she'd been framed?

She heard soft silks rustling as someone else entered the room and she had to wonder if some noble lady or gentleman got their kicks from harassing the damned. However, as she looked up, thinking that perhaps this new set of ears would actually listen, she saw who it was who had come to visit her and she felt all of the earlier hope she'd been clinging to seep out of her.

The woman in the doorway never took her eyes off Meryl as she addressed the guards. "We'll speak alone."

~!~

Meryl had told the dragon to meet her in an hour at an old fallen log just outside of town. While he'd seemed skeptical that she could get the tome in such little time, she'd feigned bravado and assured him all would be well.

As soon as he had grumbled something about trust and wandered off, she'd made a beeline to Jamal's home on the outskirts of the other side of town. She would talk to him and see which side she needed to be on. From there…either she'd steal the tome or warn the guards that there was a dragon nearby. Once they caught the damned thing, they'd have to believe her, right?

It wasn't until she found herself rooted to the floor that she considered that simply talking might not go over so well. However, this time, things were different. Jamal was apparently still bitter about her handiwork earlier. Rather than simply rooting her and leaving her to stand there in humiliation, the ice was working its way up her legs, freezing her through her flimsy leather armor. She looked around the room frantically before she saw Jamal sitting in one corner, partially hidden by the shadows. His face held an unusual amount of disdain and disgust as he glared her down.

She held her hands up in surrender, glad that she hadn't bothered to swing by the smithy to steal her daggers back. It wasn't like it would have been hard, after all, Lakeshire had quite possibly the worst security in the Eastern Kingdoms. However, she'd figured it would be a waste of time and she'd been figuring that she'd just sneak in unnoticed… So much for that.

"I'm unarmed! Please! Just hear me out!"

Jamal's eyes narrowed and she felt like promising him whatever she could think of to get him to let her go, until she realized that the ice had stopped just below her knees. She took in a shaky breath, though her resolve had barely returned to her when she noticed a staff tapping dully against the floor next to her foot.

"Talk fast or I shatter your legs."

Meryl yelped at the thought and before she could consider tact and all that, she started speaking quickly, unable to hide her terror of the whole situation as she looked up into Jamal's stern face. "Look I don't know what's in that stupid book of yours but I thought if I got it I could make you leave me alone, you know, a trade off. But then that dragon showed up and he let me out of my chains and he said that that book is really bad and that in the wrong hands it could do a lot of damage and he wants it back, so—"

"A dragon…?"

For a moment, Meryl was confused by the surprise on Jamal's face. After all, she'd said there was a dragon in the woods, hadn't she? However, before she could snap a quip about his hearing, he shook his head and began pacing. The threat of being frozen solid seemed to have subsided and she watched him closely, though it occurred to her that if he had been the villain, he'd have killed her the second she mentioned the dragon.

She tried to wonder if he was simply trying to use her to outsmart the creature, but then…Jamal had never been like that.

As he kept pacing, she felt her guilt from earlier returning. This time, toward him. That pacing was something she'd seen him do before when he'd been asked to conjure a spell that could help with something or other—she hadn't been paying attention, since she figured she wouldn't have to thank him for helping the town if she didn't know what he did—and she could practically see the pieces falling into place as he murmured softly under his breath and his gaze flitted back and forth, looking over imaginary pieces to some puzzle.

She felt her heart sink for a moment as she considered that Jamal had never truly done anything to be considered a bad guy and it had just been her personal disdain for him that had allowed her to even consider it. After all, that dragon had easily been far sketchier than Jamal had ever been.

"What color was it?"

"Huh?"

"That dragon. What color were its scales?"

He looked impatient as she tried to understand where he was going with this. Whatever was going on, he'd figured it out, assuming she answered his question right. "Black, I think? But it was dark when I saw him looking like a dragon, so maybe he was just a really dark coloring… What does it even matter—"

"I'm sorry, what?"

"He looks human right now," Meryl snapped, before she could stop herself.

Jamal's eyes widened for a moment before he let out a single, disbelieving bark of a laugh. He ran his hand down his face, and then through his hair, shaking his head slowly. "If that's the case, then…"

"What?" Meryl hated being left in the dark. "You think there are just dozens of dragons wandering around pretending to be human?" She abruptly baulked at the thought. The one she'd seen still had traces that made him look draconic, but what if there were some who could hide that?

"You're such a novice it's amazing," Jamal shook his head as Meryl snapped a quick retaliation. "To think I thought you could be part of the Twilight's Hammer." When Meryl simply gave him an annoyed, indignant look, he frowned. "The Black Flight is led by Neltharion. He's a wicked creature who was defeated years ago, but…there have been rumors that someone else has taken the reins and that they're plotting something big. Something about Twilight." He crossed his arms, inspecting Meryl as if he'd never really seen her before. "That book ties into it all. With it we'll finally be able to get a step ahead of them. Now then about that dragon..."

Jamal darted around Meryl as though she were a permanent fixture in his home that he was used to avoiding every day. As he went to a small coat stand next to the door, Meryl struggled to twist around at her waist so she could keep her eyes on him. Stupid ice.

"If we can catch it, perhaps we can crack the cipher the book is in faster. Do you know where it is?"

"Behind you."

Meryl felt her heart stop as she heard the dragon's voice from somewhere near the doorway. She tried to whirl around, but the ice on her legs held fast and she found herself straining her ears, waiting to hear Jamal cast some spell or…something.

Instead, she heard footfalls come around her other side and she turned her head, at first relieved to see Jamal, though even as she felt herself relax, he slumped forward to the ground. The dragon dropped Jamal's cloak on top of him as he flipped a dagger through the air slowly, a half smile on his face.

She stilled as she realized it was one of her daggers.

"You humans are so amusing, the way you think you're so much smarter than you are." He came to a stop in front of her, still flipping the dagger slowly. "Granted, you're clearly not an exemplary example of your species' intelligence. Honestly, what kind of rogue has never heard that the best way to beat a caster is to kill them before they can cast?"

Meryl's eyes snapped back toward the mage lying at her feet. "Jamal? Jamal get up!"

"The dead don't rise this far south," the dragon taunted, turning his gaze to look over the room. As he started toward the hall leading to the backroom and the stairs, he paused to drop Meryl's dagger. "Now where do you suppose he hid that book?"

It could have been a life time that Meryl had stood there, trying to chip away at the ice on her legs so that she could kneel down and check on Jamal. All of her hate for him had disappeared and all she could think of now was that it was her fault that he was lying there. If only she'd been brave enough to turn the dragon down. Or smart enough not to lead him straight to the book he was after.

However, even as she noticed the blood edging across the floor away from his body, she smelled the smoke and it only took her a moment to realize that the house was on fire. As the flames consumed more of the home, the heat finally thawed out her legs and she gripped Jamal's arm, trying to drag him out of the house with her, though she was ashamed as she realized that even as a mage, he was too heavy for her to lift.

She knelt beside him and rolled him over, choking on a sob as she realized that his throat had been cut from ear to ear with her weapon. As she covered her mouth to keep the smoke from her lungs, she leaned down. "I'll make sure people know about the dragons and the book, okay? I-I'm so sorry…"

Even as she escaped the flames into the cool night air, she was grabbed by guards and thrown to the ground. Meryl looked up frantically, recognizing the captain of the guard standing over her as another man shackled her hands behind her back roughly. "You have to hurry! Before the dragon gets away! He—"

She let out a gasp as he kicked her hard in the ribs with his plated boot. The pain exploded through her on impact and she found herself trying to curl up into the dirt to make it stop. Even as she held back a hiccupped sob, fingers went through her hair and she was jerked up off the ground so that she could look into the man's eyes.

"Private Millson thought of you like a little sister! He volunteered to watch you so that nothing ill befell you and you repaid him with a lightdamned knife in his back? For what? A damned key to your shackles? A book?"

Meryl felt like time had stopped. Private Millson? As in…Brett Millson? He was one of the best men she'd ever known. They'd grown up together. Sure she'd been a street rat and he'd had a family, but he'd always left his leftovers from dinner on his windowsill so that she wouldn't go hungry and he'd even taught her how to read what little she could. When he'd gotten married, it'd broken her heart because she'd always had it in her head that somehow they were going to live happily ever after.

Brett was dead?

She tried to swallow her panic. It couldn't be true. "The dragon said—"

"Oh, the beast talks now, does it?" The commander spat on her face, abruptly releasing her hair and letting her crash to the ground. "Tell me, did the beast also sneak to the smithy and steal your weapons for you? Did it also kill Private Daggard because he'd been passing by and saw the great beast picking the tiny lock?"

Meryl's eyes widened slowly as she looked up at him, a numbness taking over her mind and body. She thought of Jamal's body, that they would find when the flames died down. Of her dagger, that was still lying on the floor beside him.

As she was hauled to her feet and forced onto a horse for the long ride to Stormwind, she kept going over everything in her head again and again. There had to be something the dragon had done…some slip up. Something she could point out to prove her innocence and to warn everyone that the dragons were far more dangerous than the stories of fire-breathing monsters lurking in caves.

There had to be something.

~!~

A scream rang out from the dungeon and the guards jerked the door open, one of them already cursing that they'd allowed the private conversation to occur at all. As they hurried in, they stopped, one's eyes widening as he looked to the far wall to see blood already pooling on the floor and staining the elegant fabric of the noble lady's gown.

"Lady Prestor!"

The dark haired woman looked up, a frown in place as she let her hands fall away from the lowlife rogue. The young woman held a shiv in her hand—where she could have gotten it was beyond either of the guards' imagination—and her throat was slit. Lady Prestor rose to her feet, her eyes still on the body. "I tried to reason with her, but…"

"You're not hurt, are you?" One of the guards stepped up to her and started to reach out to put his hand on the lady's shoulder, but stopped himself. Something about Lady Prestor had always unsettled him, though he could never place what.

"I'm fine, though…I would have rather had information than this…confession." She spoke the last word with such venom, it made the two men recoil. She looked at them, a grim smile in place. "She said that she would never let the Twilight Cult's secrets be known and then she…" She motioned to the body.

"I thought we were looking for something called the Twilight's Hammer?" One of the guards objected.

Lady Prestor shrugged, stepping away from the corpse and toward the door. "Perhaps she slipped up and offered us real information in her dying words, then?" As she reached the hallway, she looked back at the men, her expression eerily calm. "I trust you can clean up this mess? I need to send word to a few contacts about this turn of events."