“Aura?”

     Frozen muscles seized with tension at the mere mention of the young Highlord, a dozen contradictory thoughts pulled at the fabric of Zoen’s mind like snagged fishing hooks, tugging in twelve different directions and threatening to tear it at the seams. 

     Is she dead, was it one of mine, can the body be recovered?          Does she plan to attack Acherus, does she really think she stands a chance?     Ashbringer, the Ashbringer - where has the Ashbringer gone -

     Sense clipped the lines of the hooks, and the Deathlord relaxed infinitesimally, mind trailing down a single path now. 

     Why can’t you two just hug or something?

     “You’re an idiot.”

     Her voice would fall with the flat, ruthless condemnation of a guillotine. Shoulders pulled back as her spine straightened, her chin tilted down to complete the affectation of imperious disdain. The air was easier to conjure after months of bearing the weight of deathly nobility, feeling less a mask and more a skin; something to inhabit, to don when required, and to shed for a different one when circumstances and necessities changed. 

    “They’re gonna judge her by how I treat her. You know that, right?” Truth, on the other hand, still felt as awkward on her tongue as it ever had, harsh and grinding like a handful of stones she’d been forced to chew. Zoen spat it out, wincing as bloody shards of her teeth came out as well. “Aura - they don’t know Aura. No one knows Aura, she just… bloody came out of nowhere, and now she’s got a lordship and the Ashbringer and that damn Menethil name tied to her.“

     Thinking ill of Tirion Fordring was nearly as intolerable as truth, but she could not ignore the doubts that festered in the back of her skull, the insidious little whispers that spoke of deathbed delusions and the fog of old age - that asked how well could his mind have been at that point, bloodied and bruised by the capable hand of the Legion, that wondered if his choice of heir could have been influenced by -

          Stop it.

     “When - when people found out who I was, there wasn’t this… mystery to me. I mean,” she corrected hastily, “there was, yeah, but nothing like with her. I was never the wolf in sheep’s clothing; everything about me screams predator, so everyone at the very least… they figured they knew what they were getting into, letting me live. I’m monstrous, but at least they knew what sort of monster I was.

     ‘Aura, though?” She shook her head and laughed humorlessly. “Aura’s hidden in the wool right now, and everyone’s too scared to peer through it and find out what sort of creature she is. She’s got wolf’s blood running through her, so they’re already expecting the worst. And if the wolf they know starts treatin’ her like kin?”

     Zoen did not verbalize the inevitable conclusion. .

     “Belligerence is good. Lords of Shadow shouldn’t get along with lords of Light; we’re not priests, we don’t saunter from one end of the spectrum to the other as we please. We clash, and as long as - as long as the mortals see that, see us snarl and spit and hate each other, they won’t worry too much about her. So long as the monster they know keeps snapping at her, they’ll think her heroic enough that they don’t need to throw her on a pyre in case she falls.”