So this is a little late, isn't it.
When Zoen was young (when Zoen was younger) an illness swept through Old Town.
Typical cold, she would learn later. Sickness bred by the change of the seasons, summer-fall-winter except not, what did southern-born Stormwinders know of winter, what did they know of cold that reached with clawed fingers into your lungs to scrape them raw and bloody, they'd never even seen snow for Light's sake.
When Zoen was young, an illness swept through Old Town. A typical cold, she would later learn. An annual annoyance.
Except.
Except.
Lordaeron died of Plague that year.
When Zoen was young, an illness swept through Old Town.
And the Stormwinders started burning.
The recollection comes quietly, blooming to life as she watches Havenshire blossom orange against a midnight blue backdrop. Distant screams carry across bloodsoaked fields the way dandelion seeds float along a breeze, and brush against her just as gently. Zoen inhales, drawing in the scent of old blood and sword oil, of rot and apples, before exhaling slow and silent. They burned the grain, because that's what killed everyone in Lordaeron. (That was your father.) They burned the few who died, in case they reanimated. They burned incense, and candles, and lanterns. And when Zoen caught ill, because Old Town was not a kind place for little girls who could still smell the breath of ghouls and feel the aching cold of the Hinterlands and who still sometimes woke up thinking they were in Capital City, she burned as well.
And as Havenshire smolders, Zoen takes that memory of bedridden fevers and smoke caught in the back of her throat, cradles it between her hands, and drowns it in a lake filled with ice.
And the screaming agony of her scars abates a little bit more.
When Zoen was young (when Zoen was younger) -
The courier is on time.
'Scarlet efficiency' is oxymoronic to the extreme, but he seems to have missed that office memo. The courier canters by the orchard on his proper little horse, straight-backed and serious as old Markus, glancing left and right occasionally because this is, after all, a warzone, not some a autumnal parade sending summer out with a bang and a shout as friends and families come together one last time before the winter chill sweeps in to pluck its crop of souls before the springtime thaw.
Perhaps she needn't even kill him. He's been riding for so long, after all. Won't he think to stop at the tavern for a drink?
The wind shifts, brushing through Zoen's pale, pale hair to nick the scent of frostbite and old blood and that cold, gnawing death in the dark of winter's victims which she wears like a perfume, and sends it down the tree, onto the path. The horse stutters to a stop, feet stamping and head thrown - oh, the wonders of the animal instinct, that it grants them this small clairvoyance of Death's nearness. The courier tries soothing it, patting its neck comfortingly even as he looks around warily, one hand creeping towards the hammer at his side.
Never mind on the drink then.
He's making a good show of searching for the threat, neck swinging to and fro like a horizontal pendulum, but there's a beast who is heir to ten thousand-thousand-thousand years of stalking prey in the dark waiting for him, lantern eyes just the barest flash of yellow on black, and she really shouldn't think badly of him when he's caught off guard by Tiris launching from behind a tree to knock him off the horse's back.
He lands with a cookware clatter to the ground, breath hissing out of him in a kettle screech that's nearly lost to the horse's guttural cry of terror. No warbeast in blood or breeding here - it bolts, a one animal stampede through the apple orchard, fading away as thunder from a receding storm. Tiris pays it little mind, because Zoen pays it none.
The courier, on the other hand.
Credit where credit is due: he is not entirely stupid, this errand boy of the Crusade. (Boy, she thinks, as though he hasn't the beard and lines of one ten, fifteen years her senior.) There's an arm in Tiris' mouth instead of the throat he had aimed for, thrown up in unthinking sacrifice, and oh, the pain - she can feel it trickle down the chain which binds her to the wolf, the knives of Hunger dulling within her belly and bones and blood, the aching empty pit at the bottom of her stomach suddenly a little less empty, a little less aching. For the sake of speed, they only gave him boiled leather to guard his body against the evils of the world.
But the thing is, mortal, the thing is -
You know leather is made from cattle, yeah?
You know what wolves do to cattle?
Tiris chews and chews and chews, and the screaming is a choir in her head.
But an arm is not a throat, and pain is not the end, not when your jackrabbit brain is flooded full of all those fascinating chemicals which clamor at the doors of their cages, waiting for danger and threat to strike off the locks and give them free rein at last. With that biological backup, you might have just enough sense left in you to reach out for the mallet which had once been at your hip, which had fallen just a little whiles away after the End slammed you onto the ground seconds ago, and think to yourself that if you can just get one good solid hit against that skull which houses those teeth, maybe you can get some breathing room - maybe you can get a chance, maybe this is not the End -
Except.
There is the arboreal groan of a branch bent to near-snapping, as Zoen leans down and plummets from her tree.
And if pain is a feeling, fear is a taste.
Zesty. Lemon-sour and a drop of honey sweetness, with a hint of apple sharpness supplied by their location. She lets herself savor it for a breath, lambent eyes locking with his as she unfurls from her landing. The fingers brushing the mallet stall, and this is all she asks, mortals, just a little recognition of her station, a little acknowledgement over here.
She strolls over leisurely, one hand resting on Lament's pommel, the other jammed in a pocket, teeth bared in a grin that sends her face into screaming protest. Yet how can she not smile for this fawn of a man, caught in the glen by predators and turned to ice by terror and instinct, motionless even as he stares them head-on? Chin up, eyes on her, don't blink - let her eyes be the last thing you ever see -
Wait.
It's not her eyes he's looking at now, oh no. The ice melts, his gaze wanders, tracing a path a little off-center, following the curve of her cheek, of her -
Pain is a feeling, fear is a taste, but this - this sudden emptiness which bloats through her mind, this white noise of the spirit - she cannot name it, the sensation which cuts the strings of her grin and turns her mouth slack, which sends that hand on the pommel slipping down to the sword's grip. What is it - where did it come from - how may she kill it -
The courier's shock ends; his hand curls around his mallet to send it whistling for Tiris' head, but wolves, mortal, wolves hunt prey faster than that. Tiris spits out the arm and jerks back his head long before the weapon goes crashing through the air where once his skull resided, snarling in red annoyance all the way. The man staggers to his feet at last, slipping in dirt and blood, but too little too late, because with this hand does she grab and twist his wrist until the mallet falls with a bony crack, and with this hand does she shove a runeblade through his guts.
Orbaz will be unhappy, she thinks, as intestines spill through the smile she makes of his belly, but it's a distant consideration, further than even the bright edge of the horizon as she stands with monument stillness in this orchard of rotting apples and rotting meat. Even the bright flame of Tiris in her mind seems dulled as a candle in a winter storm.
Master.
The lesson has been learned, Master. Never again will her hands still with the weakness of mercy, nor shall that wretched treacherous spark within her ever kindle to life again. The punishment was deserved, she understands why you needed to mete out this burden and mark her with your disappointment, she does, but. Master.
Father.
Is it weakness still, to ask your forgiveness?
Author's note: Part of the reason (other than college is just Very hectic, and since I am studying to become a professional screenwriter, a significant amount of my creative passion for longform and serial narrative has been channeled through writing scripts and producing movies) why this fanfiction fell totally on the wayside is that, for the last few years, I've been writing Zoen and Arthas over on tumblr, on the blogs Exspiravitae and Necroarchy respectively. The current blogs are actually the third iterations; previous ones were too cluttered, or had a bad memory attached. If you want to see what they've been up to and how they're doing, check me out there. My personal blog is Winterskorn, and I happily accept questions regarding Blood in the Ice - or, if you've actually been here long enough, Lich Child.
I certainly haven't abandoned this fic, however; this section itself is merely the most complete part of the chapter I've been (not) writing for the past many years. This life or the next, I intend to actually finish this story. One day.
Hopefully you won't have to wait for me to finish graduate school before I start posting again, though.
Thank you to Ace, Mavvy, and Yoshi for your unexpected love and support of this dumb fic. Love you all.
See ya.