With a feeling akin to the one that sat in his stomach before rushing into a fight, Lor’themar began outlining the events of the recent months. He had not entirely anticipated how difficult it would be, how painful, to relay the story in coherent words and sentences strung together as a timeline, especially in the presence of two people who so thoroughly despised him. He drew the words from his throat, one by one, sometimes forcefully; he had to spit them across the room for fear they would instead be swallowed and lost. When at last he had finished, he blinked once, as if waking up, and a long silence settled between the three of them. Lor’themar had often heard that the sharing of tragic events could help ease their pain. In this case he found it untrue.
Lor’themar was fairly certain he knew what thoughts would be running through the high elves’ heads, if any of their former hopes had matched his. Despite the differences that grew between them now like briarthorn, he felt certain that they had. In prior days they had all marched and trained and danced under the same banners of red and gold, all worn the same phoenix device upon their chests in service. And, when the last dust of battle had settled on Quel’Danas and the Sunwell had shone majestic and proud once again, he had stared into it with the same paralyzed expression that now etched itself into Renthar’s and Aurora’s faces, and he had felt nothing.
“I wondered,” Aurora spoke again, and the sound of her voice startled him, “why the pangs of the addiction felt so eased, lately. I figured that I was simply learning to ignore it, at last.”Some, yes.” Aurora reached her hand up and seemed to grasp something that Lor’themar could not see, twisting it between her fingers as she might a long ribbon. “I am a priestess of the Light. I know this magic.”
