Jaina sighed and flopped onto the bed, feet hanging off the side. Her clothes were a bit damp from the melted snow and ice and singed but she was exhausted and it felt so good to just flop to the bed.

"Jaina?"

"Jaina's not here right now. Please come back later," she mumbled into the plush bedding.

Kalec laughed quietly. He leaned on the edge of the bed near her head, resting his chin on her crossed arms. "In all honestly are you well?"

Jaina groaned. "Tired. That was a workout." She opened one gimlet eye to glare at Kalec. "And you came down and tried to freeze us all!"

"Only a little," he said. "Modera said it was for your own good." He lightly 'booped' the end of her nose with a finger and stood up.

"She's probably right. She seems to be right
about these things." Jaina sighed. "I should take off these clothes and go get a shower but I don't want to move. Thank you," she said when Kalec began to take off her boots.

"What do you have the rest of the day?" he asked as he unlaced the second boot.

"A short meeting updating me on the status of the investigation into the vandalism," she said groaning. "And then I've set aside some time to work on my spell- Ah! Kalec!" Jaina jerked upright. He'd banished her clothing, leaving her bare skin subject to the cool air. She jumped as his hands touched her shoulders. Jaina glared at him over her shoulder.

"You said you wanted to take off those clothes," he replied, eyes travelling over her without a hint of shame. He dug his thumbs into her back.

Part of her wanted to be at least a little annoyed but he mood didn't hold. Especially not when he'd already found knots of tension and were easing them. She bit back a little moan when he found a particularly tight area.

Kalec kissed her shoulder. "Should I run a bath."

"That would be wonderful," she said, her head hanging forward. She shivered when he kissed the back of her neck and again when he bit her shoulder lightly. "Let me clean up a bit. Modera had us running in armor and I'm disgusting."

"You look fine to me," he said, nipping the other shoulder. He rose and went to the bathroom to start the water.

Jaina followed him into the bathroom. She draped herself over his broad back and wrapped her arms around his chest. "What do you have the rest of the day?"

"Free and clear since my class attended yours," he said. Jaina could hear the smile in his voice.

Jaina snorted a laugh. "How'd they like raining destruction down on us?"

"Oh, they thought it was grand fun. Half of them forgot to shield so they got extra homework." He looked over his shoulder at her. "Think the water's ready."

She kissed his nose. "Thank you."

The water was heavenly. Jaina hated running and that morning Modera had given everyone weights to lift and carry. Her arms had begun to ache when she'd washed her hair. That task done she'd cycled the water so she was soaking in clean, warm water that did much to ease the aches and pains.

While Modera was right that stamina did lead to more endurance, Jaina hated it. At least she'd managed to do it decently well after so many weeks. And she supposed it would help her be able to cast this challenging spell she was planning.

Jaina lifted a foot out of the cooling water and turned the faucet on again.

"Feeling better?" Kalec asked from the doorway.

She lifted a hand out of the water, holding it out in invitation. "Much but I know what'd make me feel even better."

A much more relaxed Jaina met with Ansirem, Defender Ameera and Magus Elena about the latter two's progress. Jaina wasn't terribly familiar with either defender and took a moment to study them as everyone settled down.

Defender Ameera was a tall, muscular draenei woman with elegant backswept horns. Her short hair had an unusual greenish cast. She was a mage but was built like a warrior. Jaina thought she might have been quite at home in Modera's deathmarch bootcamp. Her partner was a study in contrasts. Elena was a petite human woman perhaps a year or two older than Lucithy. She had wide, hazel eyes, a short mop of curly dark hair over pale, freckled skin. Elena looked quite upset with what was going on in the city and kept casting worried looks at her partner and the two Council members.

"Were you able to find much?" Ansirem asked.

Ameera sighed as she sat across the table. "We've determined they were using potions based on some purchasing orders," she said, pushing across some copied parchment. "However the recipients turned out to be a mixture of both legitimate orders for shops and false names."

"The, uhm, false names we're trying to track," Elena said. "I haven't had much luck with the first few, but we'll keep trying Archmages."

"As for the legitimate orders, the shop keepers didn't really remember who'd bought from them. Their records list the transactions happened but not individual purchasers. I was only able to discern it was a potion at all because I ran a search spell on the documentation of the alchemists and suppliers going back in the last three weeks," Ameera said.

"A search on the text?" Jaina asked. Such spells were very complex magic. The Draenei had brought far more efficient structures with them when they'd fled from Argus. The Elves tended to use their own, but Jaina hadn't been too proud to use new things if they were better for the task at hand. She'd never- stay on task, Jaina. Ask about the research spell later she told herself.

Amera nodded. "Haven't used it in years but it's a solid spell. Had to do it in batches but I trust the results. The purchases all happened over three days immediately following the Council's announcement. We think they were using an improved version of an invisibility potion."

"Then the question becomes who in the city can make such a potion," Ansirem said, scratching his beard. "Karlain can, but I'd like to think we could rule him out."

"I have, actually," Ameera said with a small smile. "Fortunately the Archmage wasn't offended and appreciated how thorough I was being. We were also able to rule out his apprentice. With his help we were able to make a list of Mages who have the requisite talents to pull off a potion like that."

"How many are we talking about?" Jaina asked.

"About thirty," Ameera said, "Less those we have spoken of already and Magus Elena here," she said, nodding at the younger mage. Elena winced and wiggled her fingers in an shy wave. "We'll begin our interviews tomorrow."

"Good. Keep us informed," Ansirem said.

"We will," Ameera said.

Meetings done, Jaina ignored the city outside. She couldn't do anything more than she had already done, so she dove into her personal work. Part of her wanted to brood over the problem, but a greater part of her wanted to dig into the magical problem again. She was learning so much!

The main component of her spell's focus would be something wearable. She'd decided on a necklace so she could be hands-free. She'd need something to act as a supplemental power source and the rest would act as a structure to both guide and hold the power. The initial spellwork diagrams she'd tried out were coming along well, but Jaina had reached the point where she needed to know what the enchanted Item would be before she made further progress.

It was a remarkably tricky problem. Did she decide on the structure and let it inform the spell or decide on the spell and have it determine the structure? There were arguments for either action and Jaina was currently considering her options. She rose from her desk in the library and stretched her hands over her head. Her back cracked as she released the tension in her shoulders. Jaina set her stylus and papers aside and went to the tall balcony doors.

Snow was falling beyond the semi-permeable weather shield around Dalaran. The flakes were fat and the snowfall thick. The city lights illuminated the falling flakes, gently within the shield and far more intensely beyond. The effect was somewhat dizzying, the normal depth cues obfuscated by the thick, swirling snow.

Winter technically hadn't arrived by the standards of the calendar but no one had apparently told the snow. It was an equal chance that the snow would continue or it might stop all together and the weather would warm for a few weeks before arriving in earnest.

Multicolored lights were up around the city, as were early boughs of evergreen. The early snow had spurred the holiday decor to appear early as well. In the Horde quarter of the city there were more lights in windows and more smoke from chimneys. There were even some boughs strung up. Jaina hoped that Winter Veil celebrations would give the city the breathing room it needed to readjust and recuperate. Gifts had to be acquired and hidden from inquisitive children, holiday feasts had to be planned and purchased, travel had to be arranged. There were a great many important things to do that didn't include throwing bricks through windows or scrawling slurs on walls with paint.

Jaina had debated cancelling their plans to spend Winter Veil with Anduin and Varian in Stormwind, but she'd decided against it. She was a teleport away if something happened and most of the rest of the Council would be in Dalaran. And besides, she'd been a poor guest the year before. They were not just close political allies, the Wrynn men were good friends; family. Jaina was looking forward to facing off against Anduin using his new Hearthstone board and perhaps riding in the snow. This year would be far better than the last.

Jaina smiled at the memory. She'd been closed off from the young Prince who'd been eager, desperate, to get her to smile. Their ride had been relaxing but it hadn't gotten through Jaina's depression and anger. The guards who'd insisted the Prince wear his armored coat had been looking at her askance a bit too much. Anduin had protested but she'd taken the guard's side, which had helped some of the looks. Besides the layered jacket would have been warmer for him anyway, even if it was far heavier and didn't allow him the agility to throw snowballs the way he wished. Smirking to herself, Jaina returned to her table and the documents strewn across the surface.

She tilted her head as the image of Anduin reluctantly shrugging into the armored coat stayed with her. What she needed was her necklace to serve multiple functions like the coat had for Anduin.

Enchantments could be placed onto objects by imbuing them with power. Adding runes, circles and other bits of inscription could make such things far more effective. The structure of an object could also direct things. What Jaina needed was something that did it all.

What if the necklace itself were comprised of some of the proper structural elements. Inscription and imbuing as was usual but the shape too. It would require some very delicate forging. Jaina knew she could lay down the requisite etching with magic but forging metal wasn't a skill she possessed. She knew the shape though.

Sitting down with a grin, Jaina summoned several pages of blank paper to her. Layers. She would array the shapes into layers and have them connect at specific points. There would almost certainly have to be a gemstone. If she could transfer more of the structure into the shape of the metal itself she would get a far more efficient cast than if she just inscribed on sheets and layering would reduce the size of the necklace. She couldn't forge it but perhaps a Draenei jewel crafter or Dwarf smith could be engaged.

Grinning she set to work.

Five goblins were mugged. It was determined that in three cases it was because another goblin wanted their money. The Silver Covenant and Defenders handled those cases as typical crimes, but that still left two cases of anti-Horde sentiment. The restitution had been expensive - enough that another mugging the next day was staged. Fortunately, it was an obvious case, but it had to be investigated as if it were real until it could be determined it was false.

It was a mess.

More graffiti appeared and was removed as quickly as it could be. The graffiti seemed to annoy the business owners more than it generated any anti-horde or anti-Council sentiment.

Uda, the Horde Innkeeper, was well liked among the Horde because she was a no-nonsense orc who ran a tight ship and treated her patrons well. She was less liked by the Silver Covenant because during the Purge, she'd put up a fight. Uda appeared to think the Silver Covenant were a bunch of weaklings but the fight had been 'entertaining', but she'd wanted to return to Dalaran. Speculation ran from the mundane to the bizarre as to why she would enthusiastically return. Then a cart belonging to Uda the innkeeper was set on fire with all the goods she'd purchased for the week. Worse, one of her wolves had sustained some minor injures. Nargut and Rhukah were both beloved and feared by the Horde patrons. They could take graffiti and trash talk in the streets, they could withstand cold attitudes and thinly veiled hate-

"But apparently the dogs were the breaking point," Ansirem lamented. He set his forehead in his hands. He was giving his report to the rest of the Council currently in the city.

"It would have just been something else," Karlain said. "Did we ensure proper recompense?"

"We did," Ansirem said. "And this time we even caught one of the culprits. Young kid. Son of one of the Silver Covenant we lost in the fighting. His father died."

"Damn," Karlain said. "And the surviving parent?"

"She's upset. She's in the process of moving her household to Westfall, by the way." Ansirem said.

"Probably helped her son to decide to act out," Modera said. "His father died. His mother is angry and is moving the family away." She pursed her lips. "Think our archivists will kill me if I exchange a few more crates of Mogus relics in exchange for about a dozen more Shado-Pan counselors?" She looked over at Jaina.

Jaina winced. "If you feel it would help, I'll back you on it. I don't want to see more trouble like this." She shook her head, eyes falling to the report because she didn't want to look at the reactions of the others around the table. "He sounds like he's got a lot of anger. His mother too."

"Talking it out can help," Modera said, "but you have to want to engage with the system or it doesn't do a lick of good."

Jaina rubbed her temples. "Any good news on this front? Anything from Defender Ameera?"

"They're making their way through the list," Ansirem said. "The good news is that Ameera is getting less pushback than the others on similar cases."

"Any good news?" Modera asked what Jaina was thinking.

"Trade is up," Karlain said. "Having the Pandaren markets added has done a lot to reverse the downward trends. We're climbing in population in a steady rate between the Pandaren and the Horde races. Ms. Woodland and her son are in the minority. Most people haven't found the reintroduction to be sufficient reason to leave."

"Is it settling down though?" Jaina asked.

"It seems like we're seeing larger actions which are fewer in number," Modera commented.

"That's what's being reported," Ansirem sitting back with a sigh.

"Like last time?" Jaina asked.

He scratched his beard. "Bit more destructive actually, but there's a lot of bad blood. The Horde are behaving themselves mostly. A few fights in the streets and the Goblins trying to scam us out of our money, but they're not the ones who are starting the property damage."

"And the blood elves?" Jaina asked.

"Not a peep from anyone I know," Ansirem said.

"Not from my areas either," Karlain added. "Anything via Khadgar?"

"No."

"Well I guess they are still deciding," Karlain said.

"Rommath's probably pouting up in Silvermoon," Modera said. She snorted and rolled her eyes.

"Whatever it is, it hasn't stopped the goblins, trolls and undead."

"They seem to be behaving," Jaina said.

"Aye and that bothers me a bit," Modera said.

"Oh?"

The older mage shrugged a shoulder as all eyes turned to her. "Sylvanas Windrunner's a cunning one and she's vicious. All things equal I'll be keeping my paranoia healthy where she is concerned."

"Heh. Well they're playing nice right now," Ansirem said. "And that's all I have. Wish it were more."

"Thank you, Ansirem. Keep us posted to any developments," Jaina said.

Jaina scowled at the problem before her. She lay on her stomach on the bed, the pages covered in spellwork propped upright or suspended in the air with her magic. The door opened and closed behind her, sending in a gust of air and rustling her pages.

"Have fun without Modera?" Jaina asked. Modera had been asked by Spellsong and Khadgar to help make a final evaluation of the proposed Everbloom outpost, leaving Kalec to continue her class of novices. She and Spellsong would return soon as they'd had favorable results.

"They thought they could take advantage but I straightened that notion out. They wanted to know more about the re-addition of the Horde in their classes." Kalec said. "Modera said she's open to accepting students but no one has contacted her. I told the kids it was too early to tell who might want to join, but yes they would have the same homework." He kissed Jaina's shoulder.

She jumped at his touch. "Cold!"

"Sorry!"

"Your nose is like ice!" Jaina said, laughing. She waved her pages into a pile with magic then rose to her knees to kiss him.

"I thought I was cold?"

"Warming you up," she replied smartly. "So you're done?"

"For tonight and the rest of the weekend." He kissed her. "How is this project going?"

Jaina made a dramatic aggravated noise and flopped back to the bed. It felt good to voice her frustration. "I think I resolved the power storage issue."

"Oh! I want to hear about it, but I hear a 'but' coming."

"But I don't know how I'm going to be able to get all that power out as fast as I need it to come out." Over flow and stabilization would be an issue and unless she wanted to live with magic burns, she'd have to sort something out. Among the many things she needed to sort out. That wasn't even going into the invasiveness of the spell. She was beginning to accept it might happen and following a known pattern at least would give it some predictability. Not wanting to lose herself entirely she was adding more safeguards - which meant more power was needed.

"What's the solution for the power issue?"

Jaina lifted a hand and pointed at her vanity. "Green ledger. Theoretically I should be able to acquire a crystal that meets my specifications. It might be the price of a small kingdom though. The rest of the necklace will need to be done in a layers." She let her hand fall back to her forehead, eyes closed.

"You're using metal filigree as layers of spell-glyphs and circles?" Kalec asked. "That's ingenious!"

"Winterveil's been on my mind," she said. She was looking forward to having some quiet time. "I got the idea from something Anduin said when we went riding last year. His guards insisted he wear a specific coat. It has plates and mail sewn in between the leather and cotton inside. A necklace where I used the structure as a method of control and layered together sounded like ti would work."

"This should work well. Do you know where you'll acquire the crystal?"

"No," she sighed. "The Draenei are some of the finest arcane jewel crafters on Azeroth. One might be able to make what I need."

"Any idea what material?"

"Again, no," she sighed. "Something with very high arcane affinity. Possibly a high quality alexandrite or opal. Leystone with a core of some sort might work if I need the stability."

"Leycrystal?"

Jaina snorted. "Leycrystal? That would be perfect, but I don't know offhand if anyone would be selling stones of high enough quality and large enough size. Do you know how hard it is to get?"

"No? It's all over the spires in Dalaran."

"It's very hard to find. Leycrystal is only found near the surface in a few places on Azeroth and it's even harder to find the quality I'd need. Most of it has been mined already. It took centuries for the spires of Dalaran to collect what we have for their cores and half of those are actually composite or multi-cored because finding large pieces without inclusions is rare. Unless I want to start chipping blocks off some foci, I'm probably out of luck. Might be worth looking into for a few shards."

"Huh."

"Huh?"

"Well it's just, I trip over it when I go to Aszuna."

Jaina moved her wrist and opened an eye. "You know where to get high quality leycrystal?"

He nodded. "There's a whole seam under the leyline conflux near our whelplands in Aszuna. We've been using it for centuries. There's more under the Nexus."

Jaina sat up. "You have multiples seams of high quality leycrystal. That your flight has been using."

"Yes. The heart of my father's Life-Recording is a solid, cut leycrystal about this big," he said, holding out his hands just smaller than the device had been. The device had been the size of a dragon's egg.

"Kalec, that's almost the size of some of the leycrystal cores in the foci of Dalaran's spires. It's taken the Kirin Tor a thousand years to collect the ones they have."

"Huh," Kalec mused, head tilted. "I'd noticed that the tower foci were leycrystal within leystone, amethyst or diamond structures. I thought it was a deliberate choice. We've certainly done similar things before."

"It was but because we had to maximize what we had."

"I'd never considered it was because the resource was considered to be scarce. We have bigger crystals inside the Nexus. The largest is probably the size of some of the entire foci apparatus on the towers in Dalaran. I take it that due to its scarcity, it's valuable?"

Jaina stared. "It's extremely valuable."

"Well you are certainly welcome to use some." His expression brightened. "Would leywater be considered useful or valuable? These days some of our elders use it to alleviate aches and pains, but in the past our expectant mothers with large clutches would bathe in it and severely mana-drained dragons still drink from the pools. We also use it with crushed leycrystals to create empowered tattoos."

"Yes it would be very- you bathe in it? You leycrystal into leywater. And use it for tattoo ink."

"Well I understand there are often more things that go into the ink but yes," Kalec said. "It's a rather involved process," he said, wincing. "To be effective your scales have to be removed with the skin underneath left intact and then it is applied there. Sometimes your own scales go into the ink ingredients. And then it has to be carefully healed or the replacement scales don't come in well or at all." Kalec gritted his teeth, "It's very painful and the ink begins to break up in a few centuries. Depending on the intent and the materials, it can be an even longer, repeated process and your scales end up visibly glowing when you channel energy. Sorry, I wandered off on a tangent."

Jaina continued to stare. "I'm sorry, I can't get over the idea of having something so expensive be crushed and used as ink." She frowned. "I'd wondered how those glyphs I'd seen on some dragons were put there and why they glowed."

"Just some," Kalec said. "The ones I have were enough to change the color of the scales above but they're not the fully structured empowered runes so many took on during the war."

"You don't appear to have any tattoos now," she said, reaching for one of his hands and sliding the sleeve of his shirt up his arm. "And I've never seen them on your paws."

"Well, humans have a hard time seeing them anyway. The colors aren't ones you can see easily. It's utility, not vanity so I've never bothered including them in this shape."

"What utility?"

"General flow stabilization for larger workings. I needed them more when I was younger but now they are useful when I have to manage the wards on the Nexus myself," he said. He willed power and a ring of draconic glyphs appeared in a band around his wrist, glowing white-blue.

"Flow- Modera has something similar on her wrists. The designs matched the gemstones on her bracers," she mused, trailing off. "Huh." It was interesting, and also somewhat heartening, that the human mages and blue flight had devised similar things for the same purpose. The idea of empowered tattooing wasn't new, but it wasn't done lightly. Jaina hadn't ever had a reason to have something done before. Typically it was done by Mages who needed to... "Huh."

"Hmm?"

"What if my second component was an empowered tattoo," Jaina thought aloud. "Perhaps something on the back of my neck that touched where the necklace rests and forms the magical circuit?" It would expand her ability to move magical energy around. Creating a runic structure would also help the necklace's structure work. Like a fulcrum the components would make the immense task more manageable. Adding the second component would be like adjusting the fulcrum to a more optimal location.

"That could work," Kalec said cheerfully. "If your gemstone is leycrystal you might as well go all in and ask one of our artisans to create an ink for you and apply it. The same materials would be sympathetic and allow an easier flow of energies."

"I don't want to walk around with a giant glowing sigil on my back," Jaina said, smirking.

"You would be very pretty with a glowing sigil on your back," Kalec said, leaning over to kiss the end of her nose. "But likely it would only glow when it was empowered, which mean your dragon form would have some glowing scales. You'd hardly be alone in that."

"I'd probably want to make a structure with power circles and runes. It might be larger than just a single rune." She looked up at Kalec. "Would I get any sympathetic energy from using draconic sigils? The runic system your flight uses is... It wants to use magic."

Kalec's eyebrows shot up. "You might! It's worth exploring at least."

Jaina smiled. "Help me figure which I'd want to use? I think probably this would be the base since I know it's the glyph for 'blue dragon'," Jaina said, pulling out some paper and drawing the symbol Kalec had shown her.

"You're forms are improving and that's a good place to start."

"I'm not sure about this," the Tall Elf said. He regarded the Hostess across a small table in her kitchen. "Public discourse is progressing. Others have taken up our call. Why do we need outside support?"

"Don't think of it as strictly support. Think of it as a collaboration. There are those who agree with what we are doing. They see there is a plague in the Alliance. We all want the same thing."

"I'm not sure you should go alone. At least take someone."

"I plan on it. While I'm gone, we won't have a few of our people in key positions. Try to keep things rolling but not so much it unravels."

"Of course. Are you certain also we shouldn't do something over the holiday? Give people time for this to normalize and we lost momentum."

"Fair but if we do anything overt over the holiday we'll lose more than we gain. Proceed with the informational meetings. Build the networks." The Hostess reached over and placed a hand on her companion's shoulder. "Remember all the loved ones we've lost and how they've been taken from us by the Horde. Remind people of that. When the time is right, they'll stand with us." She rose. "And find whoever burned that cart."

"Punishment?"

"Hmm. Guidance, I think. If they cannot be taught we can reevaluate the situation and use them to deflect some attention away from the true work." She sighed mournfully. "Their hearts are in the right place even if their methods are lacking."

The Tall Elf chuckled. "I'll see to it. When do you leave?"

"The meeting date and time will be conveyed to me soon. So. Until then, shall we get some coffee? My treat."

"Lovely."

Jaina had brushed her hair three times. She'd changed outfits twice. She set the brush down for the last time and looked in the mirror. Though she didn't wish to admit it aloud, she was nervous about going to Aszuna and meeting the blue dragons there. What would they make of her? Would the dragons be curious? Kind? Aloof? Disdainful? Tarecgosa appeared to approve of them but Tare was in a unique situation. She was very curious about Kalec's people, but she also didn't wish to be something that came between him and the remains of his flight. Jaina rose from her vanity to find Kalec. She found him in the parlor, her travelling cloak draped over the back of one of the chairs.

Kalec was fidgeting. He'd been swinging from being excited to worried about their reception. It was sweet but did nothing to lessen Jaina's concerns.

"Are you certain this is a good idea?" Jaina asked. "You can go by yourself."

"Yes! I mean no- No you should come with me. This is a good idea and I would like for you to come." He took her hand. "This is difficult for me. Not because of you! It's..." He trailed off, thinking. His thumbs rubbed over the back of her hands.. "They're one of the largest groups of blue dragons left in the world," he said, his voice growing softer. "Many of our youngest remaining children are there. It is difficult because they are the last."

"Maybe I shouldn't intrude."

"You are not," he insisted. "You are my mate. They have to get used to non-dragon mages," he said, but somehow Jaina felt as if he were trying to reassure himself as much as her. "The blues of Aszuna were very opposed to Malygos's war and many of my supporters for the position of Aspect make their home there. I-" he cut himself off and shook his head. "If there are a group of dragons most likely to be friendly, it is there."

"If they want me to leave I will," Jaina told him.

Kalec nodded. "They might not be comfortable, but they have to get used to it." He drew himself up. "You are my mate and I go there to teach sometimes. I would like it if you came with me in the future. So why not start now?"

Jaina leaned up and kissed him. "Do you think they will be offended by my spell and my reason for visiting?"

"That is hard to say. I think there will be as many different opinions as there are dragons. Senegos could go either way," Kalec said, fidgeting again, his hands worrying the fabric of her sleeves.

Jaina wasn't certain who Senegos was, but Kalec clearly held the other dragon in high regard. She stroked his cheek and straightened his shirt, trying to settle him with gentle touches. Kalec relaxed a little which helped her relax.

"They might find it to be fascinating magic or they might think you are reaching above your station." His expression hardened. "But the younger races will remain when we are gone and you are quite talented." Kalec's expression eased. "You might even find one of our artisans there would be willing to help with the ink."

"You think so?"

He shrugged. "I have no idea. It wouldn't hurt to talk. It think this is a good opportunity to have my people interact with non-dragon mages."

The clock on the mantle chimed. "We should get going," Jaina said. She only had a day off as she couldn't abandon her duties in Dalaran. She leaned up and kissed him. "Should I stop by Aimee's cart and bring cupcakes as a peace offering?"

"Actually... That might not be a bad idea."

Jaina narrowed her eyes playfully. "You just want some." She poked his side.

He placed a hand on his chest and pretended to be horribly offended. "Was I the one who made the suggestion? Hardly!"

Jaina took his hand. "Come on."