“Da, did Mathair write to Quel’thalas about this?”
Sam Auroran looked up from the scattered papers on the desk, brows knitting as he regarded his younger daughter. Karinlyyn stood a few feet away, an unfolded letter in her hand, the envelope tucked between her fingers bearing the seal of the Argent Crusade. If she had been in a dress instead of the gray leathers, it would have been like looking at both of his daughters at once. “No,” he said slowly. “Your mother hasn’t written to anyone there since—hell. I think since your cousin’s wife had their last child.”
She nodded slowly, frowning at the letter in her hands, violet eyes skipping over the page again as she read it a second time, then again.
Sam drew himself up straighter. “Why?”
“Do you know if the Crusade reached out to anyone that might have served with them?”
He didn’t like the strange note in her voice. The elder Auroran rounded the table, moving toward where his daughter stood just shy of a patch of sunlight that streamed through the windows at their townhouse in Dalaran—their primary home these days, with Lordaeron long lost and Theramore gone. “Lyyn.”
Her gaze flicked up from the letter, regarding her father with a quiet, probing gaze. “Do you?”
“Everyone I’ve spoken to—everyone that you and Anthus have spoken to for that matter—have been fairly firm about keeping it quiet and refusing to send another contingent for fear of panic. Three units in a matter of weeks without warning? There hasn’t been anything quite like that since the war.”
She didn’t ask which war. It didn’t matter. Her gaze drifted back to the page. “If no one is supposed to know and no one reached out from the Crusade, then why are there being inquiries made by someone else?”
“Who?”
She relinquished the letter to him, starting to pace as he scanned the missive, getting the gist. His mouth soured, stomach twisting.
“Do you know these names?” He asked.
“Yes,” she said, leaning against the windowsill and staring out at the courtyard below where her husband did his best to keep their nieces and nephews distracted from everything going on. Her daughter’s laughter echoed off the walls, cheering on her eldest cousin as he squared off against his uncle with practice swords.
Sam waited, but she didn’t seem inclined to elaborate. He exhaled. “Lyyn.”
“You know them, too,” she said.
“Not quite the way you do, I imagine,” he said quietly. “You serve with them?”
“That is a complicated question, Da.”
The ghost of a smile curved his lips for a second before it was gone. “I meant in the Crusade.”
“It was the Dawn, then,” she said. “Grimstryke and Brightborn, yes. Cieltus I knew by reputation. It was at Light’s Hope, mostly.”
“Strike forces?”
She shook her head. “Usually not but every so often they’d deploy a combat medic with us.”
Sam nodded slowly. “But that doesn’t solve our mystery, does it?”
“If Mathair had written—”
“But she didn’t, like I said, not since his wife had their son. Grimstryke must have found out another way.”
Sam sank down into one of the heavy leather reading chairs near the window. “Then how?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I know Anny hasn’t written to anyone in Quel’thalas. I haven’t had contact since the incident here a couple of months ago, but that was before any of this happened. I hadn’t heard even a whisper since.”
Sam frowned, glancing toward the window. “Then how would they know to make inquiries?”
“Perhaps it’s nothing,” she murmured. “Perhaps it’s—hell. Coincidence. Grimstryke’s well-placed, it could just be something he caught a rumor about and pressed on. The other two are associates of his. It would track.”
“Does it really feel like it’s nothing?” Sam glanced up at her with an arched brow.
Karinlyyn exhaled a sigh and leaned against the sill. “No. No, it doesn’t.”
Sam simply nodded, gaze drifting toward the window. “Then I’ll leave it to you.”
“Another wrinkle,” his daughter murmured, taking the letter back.
“There always is,” he said, smiling reassuringly, the expression lingering for only a few seconds before it faded. “We’ll find them.”
“Of course we will,” she said softly, folding up the letter and tucking it into her leathers. “We don’t have a choice.”
