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“I know what you’re going through.”
Whitnee stiffened, her velvety ears pressed back against her skull. Why must this elf insist on talking? And if he had to speak, couldn’t he do better than a bunch of blithering nonsense about how he could fathom what she felt at that very moment?
She stared straight ahead, eyes fixed on the campfire that separated her from the blood elf and his lazing pet. The flames flickered wildly, almost dancing in the black of night. Watching the fire, she briefly remembered the blaze as it had consumed her family’s farmhouse, and felt sickness rise in her stomach.
Whitnee swallowed hard, an audible ‘gulp’ escaping her as she squeezed her eyes shut. She’d already been rescued by this damn elf — you could guarantee she wasn’t going to cry in front of him.
“I doubt that,” she spoke finally, her voice nary a whisper as her eyelids peeled open to again reveal the yellow orbs beneath.
Constantyne allowed himself a smile, his fingers buried deep into his lynx’s soft mane. ‘If only she knew,’ he thought to himself. His faithful cat raised his head from his paws, seeming to read his mind. A soft purr let his master know that the feeling was mutual.
“Have you ever heard of the Lich King, Whitnee?”
The worgen scoffed. Now he treated her like she was stupid, too.
“Of course I have,” she snapped.
Constantyne nodded his head, reaching for a nearby stick to prod the fire with. He jabbed absently at a few of the logs, staring past the flames and to the woman on the other side. Her eyes were narrowed, her lips curled upwards in a half-snarl that revealed a few of her pearly white fangs. She wasn’t pleased with him.
“I apologize if I offended you,” Constantyne said, hesitating for a moment before he continued. “I wish I had never heard of him.”
Whitnee’s ears twitched slightly. What on Azeroth was the elf getting at now?
“You see, I was born and raised in the great kingdom of Quel’Thalas. If only you could have seen it then. There was no place in the world like it — besides Gilneas, I’m sure,” Constantyne said with a smile, having caught the flare of Whitnee’s nostrils as he spoke of his homeland. Beyond the fire, he saw a flicker of approval in her eyes, and with a newfound sense of contentment he continued his tale.
“My father was a war mage, one of my land’s greatest heroes,” he said. He could feel his chest already swelling with pride, same as it always did when he spoke of his dear father. “My mother was one of the kingdom’s most revered holy priestesses. They were perfect together. Father always told me that he had to go into battle so that mother would still have a job,” Constantyne chuckled, and for a second he swore Whitnee was smiling, too.
“I was their only son — their only child, in fact. The three of us kept a home in Silvermoon City, our proud nation’s capitol. I couldn’t have asked for a better childhood.”
He paused again, taking a moment to push a long blond tendril back behind his slender ear. For the first time that evening his gaze fell from Whitnee and instead to the fire between them. He’d never spoken so openly about this with anyone before — much less a strange wolf-woman who had nearly killed him a few nights prior.
“Not many years ago, Arthas — the Lich King, as you likely know him by — invaded our homeland with an army of undead on his heels. I had just recently become of age, and I begged my father to let me accompany him to the frontlines,” Constantyne said, his voice slowly losing its usual confidence.
“He refused, of course. He told me he couldn’t bear the thought of losing me. Before he left, he gave us each a kiss and promised that he would come back. As he was walking out the door, he turned to me, looked me straight in the eye and made me promise that I would stay there and protect mother. I agreed.”
“I couldn’t begin to tell you how long we were cowered down in that house — sometimes I could swear it was days, while others it seemed to have gone by in seconds. The sounds I heard were unbearable — our people screaming, dying, and in all my selfishness I could only pray that my father wasn’t among them. You could imagine my relief when our front door burst open and he was standing there. He was injured, badly, but by the Light he was alive. Mother rushed to him as if her very life had depended on it, summoning all the spells in the book in an attempt to heal his wounds. But father wasn’t having any of it.”
“With what little strength he had left in him, he conjured a portal that would lead us to Dalaran, where we would be safe. He promised us that he would be right behind us,” Constantyne continued, blinking furiously as his words began to falter.
“Not a moment after that promise was made, the Lich King was at our doorstep. Father screamed for us to go as the son of a bitch raised his sword against him, splintering his faithful old staff as if it were a twig. I was screaming, struggling to get out of my mother’s arms. I’d never felt so helpless in my life — I was watching my father get murdered and I was too weak to even break loose of my tiny little mother’s embrace.”
To Whitnee’s surprise, tears began to drip from the elf’s eyes, streaming down his cheeks and dripping quietly onto the dusty earth beneath them.
“The last thing I saw was the Lich King’s damned blade as he raised it high above my father’s body. Mother had pulled the both of us through the portal, and the next thing I knew we’d landed smack in the middle of Dalaran. Before we could return to Silvermoon, I played out all sorts of fantastic visages in my head — scenes of my father somehow persevering, somehow managing to win a hopeless fight. I kept telling myself that he had to be alive,” Constantyne whispered, his entire body trembling as the tears poured down his face. “I should have known better.”
“We couldn’t even find his bones when we made it back to the house,” he choked out as a sob rocked his body. He raised a trembling hand to his chest, reaching beneath the fabric of his tabard to reveal a tarnished gold locket emblazoned with some sort of emblem. “There was just this. He always said it was how he kept mother and I close when he was away.”
And with that Constantyne gently pressed the latch open, revealing two pictures inside the pendant. On the left was a beautiful elven woman, her long blonde hair drawn up into an elegant-looking ponytail. Opposite of her there was a young boy — a little Constantyne — with a smiling, mostly-toothless face that made even Whitnee’s broken heart leap a little.
“Mother hasn’t been the same since,” Constantyne murmured, flipping the locket over to run his thumb over her old photograph. “She gave up healing and began dabbling in the dark arts. She calls herself a shadow priestess now,” he said, staring at the picture for a second longer before snapping the locket shut and returning it to its rightful place near his heart. “I worry for her more than I can put into words.”
“I left home — what was left of it, anyway — not long after. I made it my mission to find and destroy every damned member of the Scourge I could,” Constantyne said, his gaze drifting down to the lynx that lounged beside him. “I found this guy half-dead amidst all the destruction, a victim of the Lich King’s army himself. I took him into my care, using all the old first aid tricks I’d picked up from mother. I never thought he’d make it this far,” he smiled, patting the cat on the head. The action rewarded him with a long, contented purr. “His name is Selama. It means ‘justice’ in my native tongue.”
“It’s a beautiful name,” Whitnee whispered. She was shocked at just how weak her voice sounded when she spoke. After a moment she sputtered, “I’m sorry Constantyne. I’m so sorry.”
“I don’t want you to be sorry,” Constantyne replied, a slight smile creeping onto his lips as he once again brought his gaze to meet the worgen’s. He felt at ease with her, somehow — a feeling he couldn’t quite explain, but one he appreciated nonetheless. “I just wanted you to know that you’re not alone, even though it feels that way.”
For several more minutes, neither of the mismatched pair spoke a word. Only the sound of the fire hissing and crackling permeated the stillness of night.
Then, to Constantyne’s surprise, Whitnee rose from the hollowed out log she had been using as a seat. The leaves on the ground crunched beneath her hefty pads as she knelt down, claiming the empty space at the elf’s side. Her slim shoulder brushed against his broad one, and for a second she felt a strange sense of comfort wash over her. He felt warm, comforting. She would even venture to say he felt… safe.
“Thank you for saving my life,” Whitnee said quietly, allowing a single tear to escape the corner of her eye. One of Constantyne’s fingers caught it before it got too far, wiping the watery drop away from her feather-soft fur. For the first time, she smiled at him.
“You’re quite welcome,” he smiled, cupping her face for a moment before letting his hand fall back to his lap. “Thank you for not taking mine away.”
