"No one's magic is meant for this." (an old Quin s

            “She said she wanted to be alone,” Jude Auroran said softly, trailing the soft steps of her mother down the wooded path outside of the city, along the shores of Lordamere.  Wind whispered through the trees, a faint breeze, worrying wisps of red hair free from the braid that hung down the fledgling mage’s back.  She clutched her younger sister’s hand.  Lyyn was quiet, mercifully so, for all her earlier protests about not wanting to come, about her being old enough to stay home alone.

            “I know she did,” Aminestria Greymantle answered, voice as quiet as that of her daughter, “but no one should be fully alone to do this.  No one.”

            “She’s not alone.  Tanith left a quarter bell after she did.”

            Aminestria paused on the trail, turning to look at the two girls behind her.  She smiled grimly.  “I know full well what your brother did.  But there’s another reason for our coming.”

            The young mage’s brow furrowed, then it dawned on her.  A shiver worked its way down her spine.  “You said that no one’s magic is meant for this, Mother.  You told her that at breakfast.  And lunch.  And every day since they died.”

            “I know,” the archmage said simply, a wry smile twisting her lips.  “But with things developing as they seem to be…perhaps it’s best you learn this lesson from Quin’lisse and I rather than on a battlefield someplace.”

            Jude winced, shaking her head.  “It won’t come to that,” she murmured.  “Everything’s going to be okay.  Isn’t it?”

            Her mother reached out, gloved fingertips brushing along her daughter’s cheek.  “You’re smarter than that, Judean.  You know it’s going to get worse before it gets any better.”

            She caught her lip between her teeth and nodded slightly, looking past her mother in the dim moonlight that slanted through the trees, toward where the sound of wood being stacked had stopped.  “I’m not sure I want to learn this lesson, Mother.”

            “No one does,” Aminestria murmured, then took her hand and led her onward.  Lyyn trailed behind, clutching her older sister’s hand, silent as the grave.  They finally stopped a bit further on.  Aminestria stepped off the trail into a small clearing within sight of another clearing, where a slender, pale-haired girl in violet robes stood bathed in starlight, staring at wood stacked around two shrouded forms.

            “Wait here,” Aminestria said softly, brushing an errant strand of red back from Jude’s face.  “Be still and be silent.  Watch, and listen.”

            She left it unsaid to her elder daughter that perhaps, someday, the girl might have to do this someday.  Jude took a quiet, unsteady breath, eyes on the back of her friend, her mother’s apprentice.  She nodded slightly.  “Yes, Mother,” she murmured.  She didn’t listen to whatever Aminestria said to Lyyn, who watched with clear, bright eyes.

            Jude swallowed and continued to watch, even as their mother returned to the trail and advanced a bit further, to wait in the shadows of the trees, nearer to where the pyre—or soon-to-be pyre—stood.  There had been so many bodies burnt in recent weeks, due to the sicknesses that seemed to completely ravage the countryside of Lordaeron.  There had been rumors—rumors the girl had completely discounted—of some sort of zombie rising elsewhere.  It was too ridiculous to countenance.  That was what Master Finucane had said, anyway, when she’d asked.  Necromancy, after all, was a forbidden art amongst the Kirin-Tor, and how would the dead walk without magic?

            Still…something left her unsettled, and it was not the fact that she was about to watch a fellow mage, her best friend, use her magic to cremate the bodies that had given Quin’lisse life.

            She stilled her thoughts and struggled to take another deep, silent breath to calm her pounding heart.  She could see Quin’lisse lifting her hands, hear the words of a spell come softly to the other mage.  She watched as the flames the girl conjured sprang from her fingertips and caught amongst the wood piled around the bodies.  Jude’s nose closed up at the charnel-house smell that rose soon after, the scent of roasting meat that wasn’t quite right.  She watched as the other young mage trembled, staring sightlessly at the pyre, only slowly lowering her hands long, agonizing moments later.

            Jude swallowed hard, watching her mother finally move again.  She felt sick down into her very core, shaken.  I never want to have to do that, she thought even as she listened to her mother.  The words drifted back to them on the breeze.

            “For all my protests,” Aminestria said softly to her apprentice, “that no one’s magic should ever have to be used this way, it is a thing that Jude needs to learn, given the world we live in.”

            Jude shivered again.  She could have stood to miss this particular lesson.  Somewhere inside, though, she knew—she knew—that her mother would be right in this, as she’d been right in so many other things.  She prayed her moment would be a long time in coming.

            She watched the pyre burn through as master embraced apprentice.  She shivered again.  That will never be me, she decided.

             Of course, she would be wrong.  Very, very wrong.

            The ashes shimmered a moment in the starlight as the wind caught them, making them swirl and dance before stealing them away, out of her vision, carrying them across and down to the waters of Lake Lordamere.

            “Goodbye,” she whispered, watching as the last of the ashes vanished from her sight.  One last tear traced a path down a slightly sooty cheek as the wind tugged at the hem of her robes.

            It was a moment before Tanith’s gloved hands rested on her shoulders.  “Are you all right, Quin?”

            She drew a deep breath, steadying and calming herself.  She nodded a little, reaching up with her free hand to squeeze his fingers.  “I will be.  Can we stay here a little while, or will your friend on the watch get in trouble?”

            “A little while.”  He drew her against him and she closed her eyes, rubbing her cheek against the heavy linen of his tabard, letting his arms enfold her in warmth and comfort.  She rested her head against the curve of his breastplate, exhaling a sigh as he laced his fingers through her hair.  “What will you do now, Quin?” he murmured, breath warm against her ear.  “It won’t be safe to stay here much longer.  The sickness draws closer—the one one, the one they reported from the outlying villages.  Some of the nobles are talking about taking extended holidays.”

            ”I don’t know,” she admitted quietly, reveling in the feeling of his fingers in her hair.  Fate, why are you so cruel?  Goddess…  “What will you do?”

            “I go where the Order and my king will,” he said quietly, though she thought she caught a slight hitch in his voice.

            “What’s wrong?”

            He shook his head slightly.  “Rumors, that’s all.  They’ve sent the prince to investigate the sickness that’s spreading.  I was supposed to go, but my father’s influence has kept me near the city.  He suspects something, though I don’t know what.”  Tanith licked his lips, staring out over the water, fingers still laced through her hair even as she lifted her cheek from his chest to stare at him.  “There’s talk of sending my grandfather to Dalaran as the king’s representative to the Kirin Tor.  There’s sounds that I would lead the honor guard, if that happened, and that my mother and my sisters would be a part of the entourage.”  He looked down at her, blue eyes meeting blue eyes.  “You could go with them.”

            Was there a hint of hope in his voice?  “I suppose that I could.”

            “But would you?”  He tugged off one of his gloves, then brushed stray hair from her face.  “Would you go with them?  Would you go with me?”

            Her shoulders rose and dropped in a shrug.  “I don’t know, Tanith.”

            His voice dropped to a bare whisper as he leaned close, mouth so near to her ear that she could feel his breath, errant strands of his silver-black hair tickling her cheek.  “Come with me, Quin.  I want you to come with me.  Please.”  His hand trembled as his fingers trailed along her jaw.  “Please.”

            She found herself breathless, heart in her throat.  She nodded, turning her face to his, body trembling as much as his hand was.

            Tanith kissed her, his gloved hand pressing against the small of her back as his bare fingers laced through her hair.  She felt a rush of warmth as he held her, as he kissed her.

            They came up for air a few moments later, her arms around his neck, a boyish smile on his face.

            “I was so afraid you’d say no,” he whispered, stroking her cheek.  “So very, very afraid.”  He closed his eyes, taking a breath and exhaling slowly.  “I couldn’t stand the thought of it…”

            She swallowed hard.  “How long?”

            He pressed his forehead into the crook of her neck.  “Since I came back from Northshire.”

            “Five years?”  She drew back, staring at him.  “I was a child!”

            “So was I, still.”  The rough of his fingers caught in her hair, palm brushing against her cheek.  “I fell more and more every day, and every day my courage failed me.”

            “Until tonight.”

            “Until tonight.”  He licked his lips.  “There’s too much at stake, Quin.  I won’t see you thrown to the wolves by anyone.”  He cradled her face in his hands.  “We’re not children anymore.”

             “No,” she murmured.  “We’re not.”  She rose on her toes, kissing him again, ignoring the part of her that was screaming inside that maybe, just maybe, this was a mistake.  It was drowned out by the pounding of her heart and the feeling that this was very, very right.