The people milling about the Royal Quarter didn't seem to want anything in particular, save for an audience with me. And for what? One wanted to show that his skeletal horses were better than anybody else's, while another insisted that a worgen had broken through in Brill, disrupting daily life there.

I rubbed my temple. Not that I had a headache – I didn't get headaches anymore, not really. Sometimes, I felt pressure there when I got angry or extremely annoyed, like right then. I didn't want to deal with any of this. But I had taken on this role, and so, day in and day out, I forced myself to sit on my chair of bones to listen to these petty complaints.

"Is there anybody here who's got something worthwhile to tell me?" I asked. "Because if one more person comes to me with stories such as these, I will give him true death, this I promise you." Getting to my feet, I walked out of the throne room, not caring what people thought.

Anger simmered through me. I glared at everyone I passed, and several of my dreadguards backed away from me, apparently scared.

Good. They should be scared. I was Sylvanas Windrunner, Banshee Queen of the Forsaken. I wasn't someone to come to in times of need, not if people wanted to be coddled.

I kicked at a pebble on the ground, hard enough to make it ricochet several yards ahead of me, where it crumbled into nothing.

"Perhaps you should go back to Silvermoon for a spell, Lady Sylvanas."

That voice would have sent anyone who wasn't me running for the hills. But I turned towards its owner, my eyes blazing so much I could feel their heat. "What did you say to me?"

"Only that you need to see Faith, I think. You have not been the same since you left her side."

"I do not need to be with a girl in order to rule!" I cried.

Varimathras inclined his head, "Of course not, my Lady. But you must admit that you act different with her around. Not as fierce. People are less afraid when she's around. Maybe you would have better court sessions with her by your side."

I kept glaring at him, "Remove yourself from my sight and go do your job," I hissed at him. I didn't need him to tell me what to do.

But I knew he was right, which was the most annoying thing of all. Faith did keep me calmer. As much as I hated to admit it, I missed having Faith around, which was probably why I had insisted so hard that she stay in Silvermoon for so long. I didn't like feeling this way.

Which was probably why, a second later, when I ran into Faith unexpectedly, I stared at her, as though she were an illusion. Rotvine was with her, looking as shocked as I felt.

"Faith… what…"

"Hello, Sylvanas," she said.

Her voice. It was like a balm to the soul. I shook my head. "What in the Sunwell are you doing here? You were supposed to stay in Silvermoon!"

"Technically, only until tomorrow," she said quietly. "Sylvanas, something happened."

"I don't care. I'd ordered you to stay in Silvermoon, and you're going to go back there now!"

"Of course I will, but you have to come with me."

"Oh, do I?" my voice was icy. The anger I'd been feeling inside me for so long threatened to overflow.

"Yes. I told you, something happened. I wouldn't have come back here without your permission unless it were something urgent, you know this. You know me." She looked at me with wide eyes that were filled with what I recognized to be sorrow. "Please, my love."

"Do not call me that," I snapped.

She blinked. I saw pain flicker over her features for an instant. "I'm sorry, Your Majesty. But please. Please come with me. It won't take long. I can have you back here in a couple of hours if you wish."

"And you'll stay there afterwards?"

"You… you don't want me to come back with you?" Naked pain was on her face now. "Did I do something wr –."

"This isn't about you, Faith."

"No," she said. "It's about you. My Lady, there is a portal waiting for you."

She hadn't even protested. I'd expected her to fight me, but she hadn't. Whatever it was that had happened, it had been bad enough for her to overlook the fact that I was purposefully hurting her. "All right."

I followed her back to the Portal Chamber, where we had set up mages who would be taking care of portals on a daily basis.

"When did you do this?" she asked me. "It's a great idea."

"Some mages are more adept at creating portals than at anything else, so I figured it would be best to have them here so that they're on hand when we need portals to any of our capital cities."

Faith nodded, and helped the two mages who were busy creating the portal to Silvermoon City. A minute later, it had materialized in front of us, a large vortex of energy, through which I could see the elven city in which I had spent so many years of my life.

We stepped through it, and were greeted by elven mages, Lor'themar and Halduron.

"Ah, there you are. We were beginning to wonder what had happened." Lor'themar looked at Faith, "Did you tell her?"

"Tell me what?"

Faith shook her head and looked at me again, "Sylvanas…"

"Speak. Now, Faith."

She swallowed, "We went to Windrunner Spire this week."

"You did what?" I cried, making the people around me wince. "What the hell were you thinking? You were supposed to remain here!"

"The healers gave me the okay to go," she told me. "Besides, the situation was getting dire, and it's a good thing we went."

I balled my hands into fists and closed my eyes to try and contain the fury that now coursed within me. I felt as though I could have beaten Faith to a pulp, "I don't believe this. You promise me one thing, and do the exact opposite."

"For one thing, I didn't promise you that I would remain within the city, Sylvanas! I promised you that I would remain in Quel'Thalas."

"Away from the Scourge! If you were going to fight them, you might as well have returned to Undercity!"

"That's what I've been trying to tell you. But you're missing the –."

"I'm not missing anything!" I screamed.

"Lady Sylvanas –."

I rounded on Lor'themar, "Stay out of this."

"Enough, Sylvanas," Faith told me in a tone she'd never used with me before. "Enough. You will listen to what I have to tell you!"

A portal coalesced to my left, and all of us turned our heads to look as Rhonin and Vereesa stepped through it.

Rhonin and… what? "What's going on here?"

"Oh, will you allow me to tell you now, Sylvanas?" said Faith to me.

I looked at her, "What did you find at Windrunner Spire?"

"You went to the spire?" asked Vereesa, coming closer to Faith.

Faith nodded, "I found about two hundred banshees and members of the Cult of the Damned." She began to walk and we walked with her, following her to a chamber within Sunfury Spire.

"Why were you there, Faith?" wondered Rhonin.

"Because things are getting bad in the Ghostlands. I had troops all over the area, and elected to go to Windrunner Spire to see what the situation was like." She paused and turned to look at me. Her eyes were sad. "She was walking around the grounds. She wasn't aggressive, not towards us. I don't know how much of her mind was left, but she almost seemed to know me."

Dread came over me. Suddenly, I wanted to hold Faith and beg her to not have us go inside that room. I didn't want to see what was in there.

She opened the door and I followed her in.

On a table in the center of the room lay a figure I knew. Her skin had once been pink like mine, but it had become a dark gray, contrasting with her paler hair. She wore robes I remembered, green ones with golden embroidery, but they had rotten on her body.

Vereesa cried out, a heartbreaking sound. "Mother!"

Yes. This was our mother. Or what had been our mother. The one who had told me several times that Faith could not be truly mine.

I felt nothing. Even as Vereesa fell to her knees and Rhonin caught her, I turned around and walked out of the room.

"Sylvanas."

It was Faith, following close behind me. She caught my shoulder, and my hand flew out, backhanding her across the face. Blood flew as my ring cut her lower lip. She staggered backwards and fell against the wall. Eyes wide, she looked at me. I turned my back on her and made it a few more steps before she caught me again.

A fury so intense crashed over me that I lashed out at the first person I could. A horrible sound was wrenched out of me as I began to hit her over and over again, catching her face, arms and abdomen.

She didn't fight back, and I probably would have killed her had guards not jumped in and forcibly pulled me off of her. I shrieked and tried to fight against them, but a wall of magic hit me, causing me to collapse as though my muscles had been taken from me.

"Merciful gods, Sylvanas, what were you trying to do to her?" Rhonin was picking Faith up, but she was struggling against him. I don't know how she was managing to move at all after what I'd done to her.

"No, no, I'm okay… let me go to her…" she wriggled out of his grasp, and the next thing I knew, she was there with me, her face already bruising, her hand, which was probably broken, on my face. "Oh, my Sylvanas." She gathered me against her and held me there, wrapping an arm around me.

"Faith… you shouldn't be near her." Lor'themar didn't sound happy.

"It wasn't me she was hitting."

"Really? Because it looked like she was beating the living hell out of you."

She shook her head and pulled away from me, "Sylvanas? Can you hear me?"

I nodded, taking her hand in mine, "You… you need healing."

"No. I need to be with you. I'm sorry, my love, I'm so sorry." She kissed the corner of my lips, which must have hurt her, because her mouth was beginning to swell.

I shook my head and looked up at Lor'themar, "Could you find her a healer?"

"Or three, considering." He glared down at me, "I should lock you up for what you just did to her. She's not the one who turned Quel'Thalas into this, you know. She was more hurt by the Scourge's actions than anybody I can think of."

Faith pressed her forehead to mine, closing her eyes, "We were all hurt, Lor'themar, not just me."

"I'm just having a hard time reconciling this banshee with the person who was going to propose to you, that's all."

Had magic not been holding me down, I think I would have leapt on him next for what he had just said. My eyes flashed, and, as it was, I tried to get up.

"I won't release you until you've calmed yourself down, Sylvanas," said Rhonin.

"Either let me go so that I can bring Faith to be healed, or go tend to your wife," I snapped. I could hear her sobbing from where I was.

Rhonin shook his head sadly and sighed, "Fine. But know that if you lay a hand on Faith again, we won't hesitate to strike you down." He released me, and I fell flat on my back for a second as my strength fully returned to me. Faith fell against me and I gently wrapped my arms around her before getting to my feet and taking her with me.

"Why didn't you fight back?"

Faith chuckled darkly, "If you think for one second that I'm going to fight you, Sylvanas, you are sadly mistaken."

"I could have killed you."

"Well, I always thought you'd be the death of me," she whispered to me.

I set her down on a couch and knelt next to her as a priest bustled in. He hissed at her injuries and immediately got to work.

"Didn't we just release you from here?" he said to her. "Why do you always go looking for trouble?"

"I didn't!" she protested. "I – ouch!"

"Your hand's broken, and so is one of your ribs. What in the world have you done?"

"Got my ass handed to me by a banshee. I'm okay."

"A banshee? In here?" the priest looked at her in obvious dismay.

"She meant me," I said.

He glanced at me, "I used to know her sister. She was in my classes. She always used to talk about the two of you and how much you cared for each other. Obviously, something's changed that."

"Well yeah," I said. "I'm dead."

Faith took my hand, "She doesn't control her emotions as well as she used to."

"Don't make excuses for me," I told her.

"I'm not making excuses. I'm just stating the facts." She ran the pad of her thumb over my knuckles, squeezing as the priest imbued her broken hand with magic. "Are you okay?"

Who me? Was I okay? I had beaten her to a pulp, and she was asking me if I was okay? "I'm fine."

"Sylvanas. You just had a very… violent reaction out there to what you saw in that room."

"Did you expect me to be happy at seeing my mother's corpse?"

She shook her head, "No. You're angry. And that's okay, Sylvanas. It's okay to be angry about what happened."

Angry. Of course I was angry. I was furious. I had lashed out at the woman who had meant everything to me, simply because she'd been physically close to me at the time. And I was starting to feel guilty as well.

"I shouldn't have hit you."

"No, you shouldn't have, but I understand the impulse. Besides, you weren't hitting me, you were hitting the people who did this to all of us."

"It's a wonder you don't run as far away from me as you can."

Faith smiled and brushed a lock of hair away from my face, "I don't know if there's anything you could do – again – to make me leave you. And I'd appreciate it if you stopped trying. The way you greeted me when you saw me in Undercity… please don't let it happen again."

I looked at her, my eyes wide. Was she standing up to me again?

"You are queen of the Forsaken, and while I'm not a Forsaken, you are my queen as well. But that does not give you the right to treat me as you did. You lashing out at me now, I understand, you were in shock. What you said to me earlier today, I don't understand."

"I told you before, my moods change quickly."

Faith winced and rolled her eyes, "That's convenient, isn't it? We're here together, and you say you love me. A few weeks later, we see each other again, and you tell me to remain in Silvermoon."

How could I tell her? I didn't want to, not while the priest was still working on her. How could I say exactly what I felt? I loved her, and I wanted her safe. I didn't want her to fight the Scourge – it scared me too much to think of what they would do to her. And if she stayed with me, she would probably end up being killed. It infuriated me that it had come to that.

"I can no longer keep you safe," I said quietly.

"What are you talking about?"

"You get hurt when you're with me."

"Yes, because you nearly beat me to death, Sylvanas."

"That's not what I mean."

Faith gasped a little as a healing spell repaired her ribs, and nodded when the priest told her not to overdo it for the next couple of days. He left, and she looked at me, "What do you mean, then?"

"I get angry. I don't think you know how much. I'm angry because I care for you, and while I used to be able to keep you safe by having you with me, I can't do that anymore."

"I don't need you to keep me safe, I've told you this before."

"But it's what I'm supposed to do."

She shook her head, sitting up and kissing my forehead, "Is that what you're so angry about? That you can't keep me safe?"

"I can't keep you, period."

"Not this again. I know you're dead, I've come to terms with it."

I raised my eyebrow at her, not believing that for a second.

"I have, Sylvanas. But that doesn't stop me from loving you. And I know that it hasn't stopped you from loving me. You hate that you still love me, because you have some misconceived notion that it makes you look weak, and you keep thinking that I should be together with someone who's alive." She cupped my face in her hands, "I don't want to be with anybody else. I only want to be with you, and I don't care what the consequences are."

"But I do care. If us being together means that you're going to end up dead, Faith, I can't even begin to consider it." I looked at her, "We can't be together. We can't."

"Sylvanas…" her voice shook.

"I had to let you go once. It was both desperately hard, and the easiest thing I ever had to do."

"I will not leave you."

"No, I don't suppose you will, even if I give you a direct order to stay away from me."

She stared at me, beginning to cry. These weren't the tears she was used to crying. She was hurt now. "You're breaking my heart, Sylvanas."

"I want you to move on."

She shook her head, "No."

"Yes. Build yourself a new family with someone who loves you."

"You are my family. You always have been."

Oh, that brought in a fresh surge of pain I hadn't expected to feel. I remembered suddenly how I'd felt as I had written that letter to her, the one where I was proposing to her. I'd been faint with longing. I'd cried. I had hoped. Now, that was gone.

"It's time for you to let me go."

"Never."

"Faith. If I had really died, if I hadn't come back, would you be like this? Would you spend your time alone? I don't think so." Then again, I knew her. If I'd really died, Faith would have been destroyed. It would have taken her years to get over it.

"Would you have been able to get over me if I'd died?"

No. But we weren't talking about me, "That's not the issue."

"Yes it is." She stood up, "Why does everyone expect me to get over this? I haven't, and I won't. I don't want to stop loving you, Sylvanas. I need some hope after the nightmare that we went through, don't you understand? I need to be able to love you!"

I just looked at her. She needed to love me? I didn't even know what that meant.

"Will you ever stop loving me?" she asked.

"Stop loving you? I died loving you, Faith."

"Then let me love you. I don't want to keep asking you the same thing all the time. But please, let me love you."

"Fine. If that's the way you want it, fine. But you're going to have to love me from here."

"Sylvanas!"

I held up a hand, "You're going to have to love me from here, because I'm putting you in charge of the Forsaken forces of Quel'Thalas."

"Will you ever allow me to come home?"

I shouldn't. I should ban her from Undercity and never see her again. "You may come home whenever you want, since you can create portals between both cities now. I'll speak to Lor'themar about that. Now… how many members of the Scourge did you kill at Windrunner Spire?"

"Only about ten. There were too many of them and not enough of us. I don't want to know how many forces are at the village, not to mention in Deatholme." She touched my shoulder, "Where do you want to bury your mother?"

"I don't know. Here somewhere, I guess." I didn't want to think about that. "Although I guess we should cremate her to keep someone from resurrecting her again."

Faith grimaced, "Could they do that? Raise her a second time?"

"Technically, they could, as long as they could control her body." I shook my head, "I just don't know." I almost felt tired.

"I'll take care of it, okay?"

I nodded.

"Are you any closer to getting the Sin'dorei into the Horde?"

"Yes. Thrall said that if we can contain the Scourge, there shouldn't be a problem."

"Oh, well, no pressure there."

I cracked a smile. "I should be going back to Undercity."

"Sylvanas, you have to stay until we have the ceremony for Sanalla."

"No. You can come and get me again when you're ready to have it. I can't…" I looked at her. If I stayed too close to her, I was going to hold her, and kiss her, and love her. And I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to drag her back with me. She would go willingly, and it would be too unhealthy for her.

"Okay, look, I promise to keep my distance from you," she backed up a few paces, "if you stay."

"Faith, I've known you for over a century, and I've never seen you keeping a physical distance from me."

"And for a century, the two of us have been dancing around each other without actually dancing together. I'm used to not having you. This won't be any different."

No. I didn't suppose it would be.