Chapter Text
Part I: Spring
Boralus Keep, Kul Tiras
Early Spring, Y14
The rain came down in icy sheets, tasting more of Winter than Spring. Her breath came out in gusts of steam, frantic as she fled along the grey, miserable beach, away from the dockside of Boralus. There was a place she could go, a place that was safe. Safe from others, safe from cruel words, spoken with the confidence of one who believed the person who would be hurt by them was far away.
Spoken with a belief in those words that cut more deeply than a knife.
She ran to her safe place, the small, sheltered beach cove, chest heaving and burning from the effort. Her poncho, worn to stave off wet and cold, was soaked through, and she threw it off. The waxed linen fell into the sand, and almost immediately, chill settled in.
She pressed herself against the sheltering rocks -- sheltering from what was anyone’s guess -- and wrapped her arms around herself. The rain had rendered her golden blonde hair, so unlike anyone else’s from her homeland, heavy and lifeless, and it hung across her narrow shoulders in a wet curtain.
They were right about me, she thought, terrified, frantic. I really am a monster.
It was hard to say how long she sat there, cold, miserable, and alone, but after a while, it stopped. Warmth stole over her, wrapping her up carefully.
“Don’t cry, Jaina,” whispered a voice, the sound not unlike a babbling brook over rocks. “I’m here.”
“Oh… oh Bluey,” the girl sobbed. “I don’t know what to do.”
“I’ll protect you,” Bluey said, and the feeling of warmth increased. “No matter what, I’ll keep you safe.”
Jaina sniffled, and leaned into him, though it was hard not to: Bluey was everywhere, his animate liquid form enveloping her entirely. She could breathe safely, and despite the fact he was made of water, it was the comfort of a sun-warmed ocean that he brought to her, not the stormy seas or relentless rains of Tiran Winter.
Soaking in the soothing sensation, Jaina Proudmoore, daughter of Daelin and Adriana Proudmoore, fell asleep.
~ * ~
“Well, isn’t this just a damned mess?” Daelin Proudmoore, Grand-Admiral of Kul Tiras, paced the floor of Boralus Keep like the deck of a ship caught in the rolling sea.
“The boy is unharmed,” Adriana said. Where her husband of nearly thirty years was volatile, angry, always in motion, she was calm, seated in one of the well-loved chairs in their living room. Along the walls hung pictures, landscapes of other cities -- though not her native Gilneas -- like portals to different worlds, though they seemed dim and muted. “He will recover.”
“It’s not about that,” Daelin snapped, and Adriana raised a single, pale-blonde eyebrow. He winced, and looked away. “It’s not just about that. It’s about Jaina. You know she’s always been a bit sensitive.”
“Short-tempered,” Adriana corrected, and gestured slightly, with two fingers. A shrug, or a sigh, muted as she often was. She had not lived the formative years of her life in Gilneas as the only daughter of its former king without cost. “This isn’t the first time she’s lost her temper, and it won’t be the last. She has too much of the storm in her.”
Daelin turned on her, his expression complicated, his already dark skin worn by years at sea, sunlight and moons’ shadow both taking their due, another contrast to his milk-pale wife. “This is the first time she’s… done it, you know.”
“It isn’t, actually,” interjected their son, and both Proudmoores turned to look at him. Tandred, who bore closer resemblance to his father, with dark skin, brown hair, and sea-green eyes, did not wilt under their attention. “There have always been little things. Puddles of wet, snowflakes, being cold to the touch. Usually, they’re confined to her and don’t affect others. Now it does. Now we have a problem.”
“We?” Adriana asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Problem?” Daelin snapped a moment later. “What problem?”
Tandred took a deep breath, and considered. He was their middle child. His older brother had died when Jaina was just little -- more little than she was now -- and no one had quite expected another child, a decade after his own birth.
Some days, he expected Derek to come walking in the door again, expression sunny, to ask them what they were all so worked up about.
"There's proof now," Tandred said finally. "Proof that Jaina is strange, and more than that, dangerous. We're going to have a harder time than ever getting people to accept her, but more than that, we're going to have more of a problem with Jaina. She's always had a hard time making friends, and now it turns out Jack wasn't being honest about his friendship. Even if people forget what she did, she won't forget what he did, and it's only going to make her more prickly going forward."
Daelin’s lips peeled back as he bared his teeth. “What did he say to her?”
“The same thing people have been saying since Jaina was six, and she came out of the ocean with a water elemental as a best friend, Da,” Tandred said, and shrugged. “We should have talked to someone then, but we didn’t.”
“...Bluey’s harmless,” Daelin muttered, and turned away to continue pacing. Tandred turned to his mother for help.
“So, which of the particular rumours about your sister have you taken to heart?” Adriana asked, a hint of icy chill, of rebuke, in her voice. “The part where she is cursed? A changeling, stolen from us when we left a window open and replaced with an evil creature? A water spirit?”
“No,” Tandred said, shaking his head, and reached up, smoothing back his hair. At twenty-one, Tandred was a ship’s captain, though the miserable weather tended to restrict him to home. Briefly, he was grateful that he was home for this particular family crisis. “That she has inborn magic, like an elf. Like Kelnar.”
Daelin stopped, and he and Adriana exchanged long, startled looks as their minds worked in unison. Daelin acted first.
“Where’s the damn--?” he muttered, hurrying out of the room.
“In the office, in the first drawer,” Adriana called out as he left. “The one with the-- lock.”
“He’ll figure it out, Mother,” Tandred said. “He might need to bang a few cabinets for his temper.”
“How could we not have seen it sooner?” Adriana asked, her hands falling to her lap to worry at the plain, squared cuffs of her dark blue dress. “Kelnar has visited us for years.”
“Because magic isn’t exactly common on the Isles?” Tandred hazarded. “Because Derek and I are as mundane as floorboards, but Jaina’s always been a little different?”
“Were,” Adriana murmured softly, and Tandred pretended he didn’t hear.
“Not to mention, when we think of wizards and magi, we think of old men with white beards in big towers, not little Sunfish.”
Adriana closed her eyes. “She’s so young, too young.”
“The world doesn’t usually care how old you are before it decides to hurt you,” Tandred said. “The hurt comes and the hurt goes, but the world moves on.”
“I’m going to have to forbid you from going to Lordaeron if you keep quoting from paladins,” Adriana said, though there was no edge to her voice.
“No, not that,” Tandred joked, throwing up his hands in mock-horror. “It’s too cruel.”
“Brat,” Adriana said, but there was no rancour in her voice. “Since you are so clever, what do we do next?”
“What any good member of the Alliance does when they come under siege from an enemy unknown,” Tandred said, shrugging. “They call for help.”
~ * ~
Help came in a matter of hours, which was good, because no one was quite sure where the person who needed help actually was. From the Proudmoores' collective explanation, Antonidas was able to glean that they'd checked all her usual hiding spots. The private cove which was apparently her favorite place had been checked twice, the sheltering rocks inspected, the sand examined for footprints. They had found her poncho, half-buried in sand, and that had led to wild speculation as to where Jaina might be now.
Kelnar Goldensword, one of the teachers at the Violet Spire Academy in Dalaran, had brought the current matter to the Archmage’s attention, and he’d come personally because, in a sense, he and Daelin were friends.
Or, perhaps, it was more accurate to say that they had once sat at the same negotiating table, rolling their eyes as Genn Greymane and Aiden Perenolde argued strenuously that the orcs were not their problem in front of a fifteen year old boy who had watched his entire kingdom burn.
Adriana and Tandred studied him curiously, and the Archmage knew he was exactly what people thought of when they thought of mages: he was an old man, with white, receding hair and a long beard, curled at the tip, from habitually curling it around one finger while he thought. His eyes were piercing and dark, in contrast with skin that was pale, and almost papery in texture, as if he had come to life from one of the numerous tomes held in the great libraries of the city he had ruled for well over a decade.
“Thank you for coming so quickly,” Daelin said, offering a work-roughened hand. Antonidas was startled by the gesture, but took it, and returned what he hoped was a reasonably firm sailor’s handshake.
Adriana held out her hand, and he bowed over it, in a more courtly, and more comfortable manner.
“Kelnar impressed upon me the urgency of the situation,” Antonidas said. “Sorcery is a dangerous thing when left uncontrolled, and rarely manifests in one so young. Jaina was… quite small, when last I saw her.”
“Well, she’s been having odd turns since she was about six,” Daelin said, and Antonidas raised an eyebrow. “Don’t give me that. We thought most of it was people imagining things, or fussing for nothing. Now she’s disappeared without a trace. It could be… magic.”
“That seems unlikely, but I can certainly locate her,” Antonidas said. “I will require a bowl of water, and a possession of hers. A beloved toy, perhaps, or an article of clothing. Something she has with her quite often.”
“Shame she has her gun with her then,” Daelin said, even as Tandred rose to fetch Jaina’s bedclothes. “She never leaves anywhere without it.”
Antonidas, stopped in the process of pulling out a sampling of herbs from his belt pouches and stared, aghast. “Her what?”
“Tiran,” Adriana said, helpfully, ringing for a kitchen servant. “They’re quite fond of their guns.”
“She’s eleven.”
“She received it when she was eight,” Adriana said mildly. “A compromise made to address my concerns, since the usual age is seven.” The look of abject horror and confusion on his face made Adriana smile, just the tiniest bit, a concession towards emotion.
The requested items appeared quickly, Tandred carrying a nightshirt, and the maid, who saw the Archmage, wisely put the bowl down on the table, and left for the safety of the kitchen.
“In, ah,” Daelin began, beginning to pace, and then realized -- with encouragement from Adriana -- that he probably shouldn’t. He stopped, and toyed with his sleeve. “In your own time.”
Antonidas peered at the Grand Admiral, his lady wife, who sat with hands folded and expression closed off, as though the whole thing was happening to someone else’s daughter and not her own, and Tandred, who was sitting forward in his seat, hands clasped, as though waiting to see something incredible. He sighed. “Of course.”
Antonidas focused his attention on the bowl. He sprinkled a handful of crushed silverleaf into the bowl and used a small, tapered stick to stir it. As he did so, he began the incantation, and each word was fixed in his mind as a particular component to the spell. The syllables, to the uninitiated, would sound like gibberish, but to him created a string of real, stone-solid ideas.
Vision near and vision far,
Bring me the sights that I look for.
Vision far and vision near,
Show me the one that I hold dear.
Antonidas stopped stirring and set the stick aside, then dipped the nightshirt in the water. It was only the tiniest touch, but already, the water was darkening, and he set it aside, focusing his gaze on the bowl. The image resolved and a beach appeared to him, grey and dingy, lashed with rain and mist coming from the nearby ocean.
It would have been unremarkable except for the cluster of boulders that occupied the focus of his vision.
“I have found her,” Antonidas declared. “Do you have a beach nearby with grey sand, and a cluster of large rocks?”
In near-perfect unison, all three Proudmoores rolled their eyes.
“Of course we do,” Daelin said. “But we’ve looked there. Twice. It’s her favourite spot on the Isles, but that’s not where she is.”
“Could it be… that perhaps her fondness for it has imprinted onto her clothing, somehow?” Adriana hazarded. “You needed it for… familiarity?”
Antonidas had to give the woman some credit for at least attempting to understand the science behind the magic. “That was the reason, but the process isn’t so simple. No, she must be there, you must have missed her.”
“Twice?”
“She could be hiding,” Tandred pointed out. “Considering how frightened she was, there’s a very good chance she is hiding.”
“Hiding from her family?” Daelin asked, skeptical. “Doesn’t she know she can trust us?”
Antonidas held up a hand to forestall further argument. “If she is there, even hidden, I can find her.”
“Do you need someone to show you the way?” Tandred asked, rising from his seat. “I can--”
“I have seen the location, and thus I can find it,” Antonidas reassured him, and Tandred frowned. “Remain here, in case seeing you provokes her towards moving elsewhere.”
“Archmage,” Adriana said, her voice soft. “Bring my daughter home safely. Please.”
“I will,” Antonidas promised, and for a moment, saw the very real fear behind the illusion of calm. Tandred crossed to his mother’s side, and put a hand on her shoulder, comforting.
The Archmage uttered a short incantation that teleported him towards the beach, leaving the Proudmoores to worry amongst themselves.
~ * ~
The weather was, of course, utterly wretched, and Antonidas wondered, as he stumbled across the beach, if the girl might not have just given up and gone indoors.
I was not wrong, he thought in irritation. My scrying is quite accurate. The girl is here, just… very well hidden.
He had expected that, upon arrival, the girl would be easy to find. Certainly, he could feel the gentle eddies of arcane magic here, no greater or lesser than most other places that weren’t Dalaran, Quel’thalas, or a few select other locations in the greater Eastern Kingdoms. There was nothing overtly remarkable about the Sovereign Nation of the Great Sea, Consisting Of the Isles of Kul Tiras, Crestfall, and Balor, all things considered.
Except for one, little girl, eluding an archmage, Antonidas thought with no small amount of annoyance, and resisted the urge to punt the starfish on the beach straight back into the ocean. No need to lose your temper, Anton. Just find the girl and go back inside. Simple.
It was not simple. He had circled the rocks three times, looking for cracks or places to hide underneath, and found none. The wind and rain lashed at the beach, erasing his own tracks as easily as any spell of obfuscation could.
It was cold, and wet, and he had not dressed for this at all. The Archmage sighed deeply, and looked at the matted state of his beard, the odd bit of tarp that had been discarded on the beach, and touched his sleeve. He uttered a few short words, all of which translated roughly to ‘repel’, and immediately, he was dry. The runes on his robes blazed purple, and the silk and cotton they were composed of rejected the water, allowing it to roll off of him as rain was repelled by glass windows, as fine a modern invention as anything else.
For a moment, he watched the water gather and drip, and then it hit him, the flash of genius that came after a long, frustrating slump.
She is hiding, and she’s using magic, he realized. Not deliberately, but if her powers have awakened in a haphazard fashion, there is no logic to her progression, no measured learning experience, just instinct. Therefore…
He returned to the rocks, and circled more slowly. On the side near the ocean, the rain struck the rocks and dripped down, though there was no telling how long it had been since the beach had been dry, if ever. On the two other sides, they seemed quite ordinary, but Antonidas suspected that he would find his solution sheltering on the far side of the rocks, away from the ocean and some of the wind and rain.
He was right, and found water dripping not from the rocks, but from a small distance in front of it. The air, which was already filled with mist and moisture, was distorted, blurry, hidden by the terrible weather.
“I see you,” Antonidas said, putting confidence into his voice, even though what he could see was the faintest smudge on reality. “Come out, now.”
There was a pause, and briefly, the Archmage had some concern he was about to be shot by an angry, frightened eleven year old, but the sharp crack never came. Instead, the illusion fell away, and was replaced by a different strange sight.
Jaina Proudmoore sat curled against the rock, completely immersed in water. It clung to her, almost entirely clear, with only the faintest hint of blue around the edges, and a pair of glowing, white-gold eyes peered up at him, reproachful.
They were not Jaina’s eyes, and Antonidas realized he probably should have asked about this.
“Who’re you?” asked the girl, her voice distorted by water. “Are you taking me away? Are you a paladin?”
Antonidas considered his appearance, and that of great men and women like Sir Uther and Lady Trueheart, and tried not to laugh. She was only a child, after all. Fortunately, beards were good at hiding mirth, most of the time. “No, my dear. My name is Antonidas and I am an Archmage. Do you know what that means?”
“It means you’re a witch,” Jaina replied, staring up at him. “Like Kelnar.”
“...a little like that, yes,” Antonidas said. “I understand that you’ve been using magic yourself.”
Jaina pressed herself back against the stones, and the water flowed around her, hardening into a shield.
“Leave Jaina alone!” said a voice that burbled up from the water in clear, though accented, Common, a match for the girl’s own. “She didn’t mean to hurt him, and he was mean besides!”
What on Azeroth..? Antonidas wondered, and considered for a moment. “Do you… did you conjure a water elemental?”
“Didn’t… con-thing,” Jaina said. “Bluey’s my friend. He saved me when I was little.”
You’re still little, the Archmage reflected. “That is a fine nickname.” He put authority into his voice. “Denizen of the Abyssal Depths, identify yourself to me.”
The elemental seemed to shrink a little, but replied, “M’name’s Bluey.”
That’s absolutely absurd, no creature of that designation would have the name-- It struck him suddenly, as the realization about how Jaina had been hiding had done, moments before. She did this. She called out to the elemental planes for an ally and summoned up a… an impressionable being and shaped it to her will. She used illusion magic instinctively to hide herself, and ice magic to strike out at a foe.
Jaina Proudmoore might well be the most powerful potential sorceress he had ever seen.
He was knocked out of his reverie by Jaina herself, poking at him with one foot. “You stuck? You stopped.”
“No, I am quite well,” Antonidas said, blustering a little. “You, however, are not. How long have you been out here in the rain?”
“Um,” Jaina considered. “A while. Everyone hates me, I’m weird.” She shrugged, uncomfortable. “Cursed.”
“You are unusual, but no one hates you,” Antonidas assured her. “In fact, your parents and your brother asked me to come here, all the way from Dalaran, just to look for you and help you. They love you very much.”
“Dalaran…” Jaina breathed. “Do you know Kelnar? Is she here too? Is Finn?”
In most circumstances, assuming that, as a mage, Antonidas knew every other mage, would be irritating, but it was in this particular circumstance, quite true.
“I do, though they are not here,” he said. “But Kelnar is worried about you too, I’m certain. And, Finn?”
“Finnall Goldensword,” Jaina said, impatient. “She’s my sister. My big sister.”
Oh, Antonidas thought. He knew the elven woman primarily through her work as a first-year teacher, and was dimly aware of her daughter, who had finished her tall-and-awkward stage some time ago, and had been sent to Silvermoon to learn the craft of the Spellbreakers.
He had not quite considered what her familiarity to the family might mean.
“Is Jaina cold?” Bluey asked, worried. “You’re shivering.”
“It’s cold out here,” Jaina admitted. “Though you’re doing a good job, don’t worry.”
“We could go inside to talk,” Antonidas suggested, putting contemplation about the romantic entanglements of his peers aside. “You could be drier, and warmer.”
“...you’re sure no one is mad at me?” Jaina asked, peering up at him through the elemental’s body.
“I’m sure.” Antonidas offered her his hand. “Come along, my dear.”
Jaina reached up and took it, and like a bubble, the elemental stretched and then broke, falling off of Jaina as she stood, then reformed at her side.
It was, to Antonidas’ estimation, only the size of the average six year old, and bore no signs of the binding typical of the adult mages trained to summon them, which was, in and of itself, frightening in its display of wielded power.
“This way,” Jaina said, and tugged Antonidas up the beach. He opened his mouth to object, to point out quite rightly that they could teleport, and closed it.
Instead, he let Jaina, soaking and afraid as she was, lead the way. Antonidas looked up at the Keep, seeing how large it was, dark and half-shrouded in misting rain. On a clearer day, the cannon emplacements that he saw would be more obvious, and he could imagine them being rolled out, regardless of weather, to defend its occupants should invaders come to call.
The Second War was not so long ago that they had forgotten what it meant to be threatened so close to home.
~ * ~
“Archmage, please tell us what happens now,” Adriana said. She sat in her worn chair as though it were a throne, rigid and upright. When Jaina had brought Antonidas inside, and led him unerringly to her home within her home, her parents had pounced on her.
Daelin had been all rough embraces -- regardless of Jaina’s wet clothing -- and extracting promises from Jaina to not run away again, while Adriana had clung to thick towels and a robe, ushering her daughter away to help her change out of her soaked clothing, and Tandred had brought in a mug of steaming tea, ready for Jaina once she was dry.
It was, in all, supportive if not confused and worried, and Antonidas had simply explained she had been hiding, but not the extent of her gifts. While wizardry was an unusual but necessary profession like any other, sorcery was what people imagined when they conjured up frightening images of out of control magic users.
Not all of them were wrong, either.
She must be trained immediately, for all she is very young, Antonidas thought to himself as he studied the Proudmoores, a huddle of anxious family members, now joined by ex-Grand Admiral Amelia Proudmoore, who despite the inflammation in her joints looked as sharp-eyed as ever. “I would like to bring Jaina to Dalaran to study magic,” he began. “I understand that this incident was a frightening one, but it wasn’t the first of such incidents, nor will it be the last. Magic -- sorcery -- left uncontrolled can be dangerous. Trained, controlled, understood, it can be a marvel.”
“How long would this be for, exactly?” Adriana asked, her tone tight, controlled. “She is very young, yet.”
“Adri, probably until she’s a full mage,” Daelin said, putting his hand on his wife’s shoulder. “I don’t know much about magic, but she’s not much younger than Derek or Tandred were when they started on the ships. Hellfire, I would have brought her with me when she was old enough too, if that’s how she wanted things.”
“I don’t want to be a mage,” Jaina said. “I want to be a Captain, like Da.”
Antonidas blinked, and blinked again. “You-- what?”
“I hate magic!” Jaina cried. “All it does is hurt people.” Her thin shoulders began to shake, and Tandred rescued the tea before Daelin picked her up, wrapping his arms around her.
Somehow, she seemed smaller in her father’s embrace than ever before, as well as afraid.
“Is there nothing that can be done?” Adriana asked softly, and her tone belied the fact that her expression had not changed, and for a moment, Antonidas feared that the woman didn’t care about her daughter.
The other logical conclusion is that something truly frightening happens to Gilnean royal and noblewomen. Antonidas was sincerely tempted to tell her no, that the choices were training or self-destruction, but that wasn’t quite true, and it was dangerous to lie to people, especially a family of such power within the Alliance. “There is one thing,” he said slowly. “It is possible to have the magic… sealed off. Removed. It is… dangerous, and not something we usually perform on children.”
“You’re talking criminals, aren’t you?” Amelia asked. Her voice was cracked, broken from years of time spent on the decks of ships, shouting orders and giving directions. She seemed to have a perpetual squint against blinding sunlight, and wind had weathered her already dark skin into leather, though her eyes were the same ocean-green as her son’s and grandson’s.
Next to them, Adriana looked like a pale shadow, and her daughter, a ghost.
“I am, yes,” Antonidas said. “There are two types of magic users among humans. Wizards are taught, like anyone else. I could have become a… a blacksmith or a librarian, and no harm could have come to me.” He would have done no such thing, his family had a heritage amongst the Dalarani that stretched back to the Hundred, and the idea of rejecting it for mundane occupations was appalling to him. “Sorcerers are born with their magic. It manifests in various ways, though often beginning at puberty. Jaina is quite young to be demonstrating it.”
“My daughter is special,” Adriana said, and the steel behind her words assured Antonidas that, come what may, this woman would stand behind Jaina. “What precisely does this have to do with removal?”
“A wizard requires tools,” Antonidas said. “Incantations, reagents, time. You saw a fraction of it. With study and dedication, anyone can become a wizard. The power is all around us.” That wasn’t quite a lie. Most people could not become wizards, because they lacked patience, analysis, or were inclined to be caught up in their own emotions. Adriana, perhaps, would have made a good wizard, but Daelin, for all his bluster, would not. “A sorcerer requires none of these things. They can use them if it helps, but their magic is spontaneous. Spontaneous means--”
“I know what it means,” Jaina interrupted, looking up. Her eyes were red, and her expression mulish. “It means you do magic on accident.”
“By accident,” Antonidas corrected automatically. Jaina stuck her tongue out, and it startled a laugh from him. She returned to the comfort of her father’s shoulder, and he continued. “It’s good enough to lock up wizards who have… failed in their duties to their people and to Azeroth, though we dislike the waste. There is no keeping a sorcerer from their magic. Should we deem a sorcerer too dangerous, but execution is too great a punishment, their magic can be sealed off, removed. There are, of course, consequences.”
Consequences like suicide, in most cases, but Antonidas didn’t dare bring that up in front of a frightened child.
“Take it away,” Jaina said, muffled. “I don’t want it. I don’t want to hurt people any more. I want to be normal.”
“Sunfish,” Daelin said gently. “Isn’t it a bit too soon for that? Y’ha’ nae e’en boarded th’ ship an’ yer already complainin’ ‘bout the smell, aye?”
Antonidas blinked at the shift of accent, from something similar enough to the Dalarani or the Lordamere, their neighbours, to something scraped from the Undercity of Lordaeron.
“But I dinnae want to,” Jaina said, bursting into tears again. “I wanter be a pirate.”
“You what?” Antonidas asked, disbelief overriding his restraint. “You have the most powerful gift that I’ve seen since the Orc Wars, and you want to be a… a…”
“Watch it, Toni,” Amelia said, giving him a hard look. “That’s our Jaina you’re talking about.”
It didn’t do to anger the woman who, by all accounts, had killed a leviathan with a handful of ships and sheer force of personality, and he took a breath. “Why do you wish to be a pirate, Jaina?”
The girl sniffled, and looked up. “Because Jaina was a pirate, an’ I want to be just like her. I want to sail around the ocean fightin’ bad people and rescuin’ lost treasure. I want a ship an’ a crew an’ to be able to see Mother an’ Da and Grand-Dam all the time. Tandred too.”
This must be what going mad feels like, Antonidas thought. “Those are… very noble goals, but being a sorceress won’t stop you from doing any of those things, not if you wish to do them.”
“Ship’s training starts at twelve,” Tandred murmured to Antonidas. “If she spends all her time in Dalaran, she won’t learn much about ships.”
Kindly stop helping, Antonidas thought, glaring at the young man. Tandred held up his hands in surrender.
“Jaina,” Adriana said, and gestured her over. The girl slipped from her father’s grip, and went to her mother, who cupped her cheeks with both hands, gaze darting over her daughter’s face. “When I was young, but not much older than you are now, my father sent me to Kul Tiras, to meet your father and your grandparents. I thought I would hate it. I thought I would be miserable and alone. Your father’s family taught me how to see the beauty of the Isles and its people. I have never looked back because of how much I love it. You don’t have to love your magic, or Dalaran, but before you decide you hate it, you should at least see what the Archmage has in store for you. Will you try, heart of my heart? Will you try for me?”
Jaina was quiet for a moment, seeming to think it over. Her mother didn’t rush her. “I’ll get to see Finn, right? And Kelnar?”
Adriana’s lips twitched, and Antonidas realized it was a fond smile. “Finnall is away for her training, but I’m sure she’ll come visit you, and yes, you’ll be able to see Kelnar every day, if she isn’t busy.”
Let it be enough, Antonidas thought, with a vehemence that surprised even himself. Let this be what convinces her not to rob herself of such a great gift.
As it transpired, it was. Jaina nodded, and Adriana leaned forward, hugging her daughter tightly, and the Proudmoores converged on one another, hugging and murmuring until the Archmage of Dalaran, leader of the Six, keeper of the ancient Tome of Medivh and countless other artifacts, felt quite out of place.
“We’ll pack your things,” Adriana murmured. “You must practice your writing and write us as often as you can. We want to hear about your studies.”
“Okay,” Jaina said softly, clinging to her mother. “I promise.”