#valerron

She'd tried to ask a few, a scurrying mother who was carrying her child. One of the Blood Knights in full black and red and gold regalia. Even one of the Magisters, whose face was full of something she could only describe as being undeniably grim. But in the face of an emergency, that was to be expected.

Belidrae was still staring intently at the swirling mass of tumultuous Void centred right above where the Sunwell was when she was abruptly grabbed by the shoulder. Before she could really register what was going on, she was ushered brusquely into a nearby alleyway, free of onlookers, covered by the pretty sheer curtains of red. Her back met unforgiving stone harshly and she grimaced when ache rippled up along her spine.

"Unhand me—"

"No, you listen."

The rest of her words were halted at the very sight of her involuntary escort. All hard features and sunny hair, not unlike her own.

Ah. Valerron.

He had his bow slung over his shoulder and he was dressed in full uniform. Green and gold and impressive. But his expression said he was anything but pleased to see her. "You need to go back to the estate. It may not be safe in the city."

"You can't tell me that and not explain why," Belidrae countered. Lifting a hand, she gestured out to where there was no shortage of scattering people, looking for a place to take refuge. "What is happening and why can't I go with you?"

Valerron scowled. "The answer should be obvious. What combat experience do you really have? It's not as if you took practise seriously." But it was more than that, too. He fell back a few steps, gesturing towards her, "You know what you are. Even looking the way you do now doesn't change what you are on the inside."

She didn't agree with him. Her expression said it plainly, the way it twisted and contorted as she fought the war of saying what she really thought and trying to appease him as she often had growing up at his side. Or so she could have claimed. In truth, Belidrae had so infrequently listened to him, to any of her brothers, that maybe she had just a little too much of a free spirit.

"I'm still sin'dorei at my core," she rose her voice at him, feeling it begin to tighten. "I didn't choose this!" Her affliction. Being touched by the Void. "If you and parents had only—"

"Wrong," her brother corrected her sharply. "You look like a sin'dorei. And you may even act like one. Right now, you may look like one and you may even fool all of the other families within Silvermoon, but you are, undeniably, a creature of the Void. It doesn't matter if you intended that or not. The world doesn't run on intention, Belidrae. It runs on action. You made a stupid decision and you paid the price for it. You don't get to turn your back on that and you don't get to blame me, or the rest of our family."

Belidrae scraped her teeth over her bottom lip angrily, biting down into it and keeping whatever remaining words to herself, fearing that if she didn't, she'd either start screaming and causing even more of a spectacle, which quite possibly could have gone completely unnoticed considering the nature of the situation their city was currently in. Her scream surely would have been just one more in a proverbial sea of them.

Instead, she forced her gaze off of him, feeling the way her blood simmered and boiled beneath her skin. She could do plenty. She had enough control over herself, didn't she? She could have gone to Quel'Danas with him. But if she did, she wouldn't be able to hide what she was or what she did. If things were as dire as they seemed, however, and if they were facing things of the Void, who better to have than someone who was well-acquainted with them?

"No matter how much you think you're on control," Valerron continued, losing some of the edge in his tone, though he remained even and composed as he carefully drew the bow he had over his shoulder into hand. "You're a liability. I hear the way you toss and turn at night. I hear the way you still have nightmares. I can't begin to assume what you dream about or what it's like having a mess living inside your head the way you do, but this isn't me being cruel. I'm trying to protect you. If you get too close, if you do something else stupid, I can't talk anyone out of apprehending you. So don't invite trouble."

'For once.' He didn't say it, but he didn't have to. The heavy implication was there.

Valerron reached back over to her, setting hand to her shoulder and giving her a little bit of a shake, like he was trying to bring her back to the present moment. "Understand? Go back to the estate. Let the people who were made for this handle it. At least as much as we can. I'll come home as quickly as I'm able and I'll give you an update. But for the love of the Light, stay the fuck inside."

And then just like that, he was gone, the sharp turn, the view of his back, as he dashed back out onto the streets and in the direction of the span that would lead him right back to the far northern isle. She still ached from where he'd grabbed her and as Belidrae watched him fade into the distance, she ignored the others who ran past her.

He thought she was a liability. A liability? What an awful thing to hear. What an awful thing for a brother to tell his sister. She deserved better. It hadn't been entirely her fault. All she'd been trying to do was support herself. It was a paying job. She needed coin. Instead of trying to leech off of the family, Belidrae had been trying to survive.

She'd been at the wrong place at the wrong time. How was she to have known things would go the way they had? It wasn't like she had the power of foresight. And certainly, it wasn't the smartest thing she'd done, but she didn't think it was worth being called a liability over.

All she wanted to do was help him. Did she even need his permission to do so?

Valerron had never stopped her before. As her gaze sharpened and she felt that warmth in her blood rise again, all of those juvenile feelings of spite and the need to prove her worth, she knew he certainly wasn't going to stop her this time either.