“Are ye OK back there?” Beli Flinthammer called out over her shoulder.

Bael Flinthammer was fine. He was bundled up tight and strapped to her back as they soared through the skies over Quel’Thalas on the back of a gryphon. Beli’s baby laughed and giggled as the gryphon spiraled down toward the harbor. Even from here, she could see Burning Legion forces on the island, engaged in a firefight with dwarven riflemen. If her husband wasn’t among them, she knew he would be champing at the bit to join the fight.

The isle of Quel’Danas looked what she had expected it to look like. Thanks to spending more time around humans growing up than Ringo sometimes grumbled had been wise, Beli had read a diet of romance novels as a girl. And mixed in with the dashing knights and brusque pirate captains with hearts of gold in those novels, there had been a good share of high elf princes, whisking seemingly ordinary maidens away to balls beneath the elven skies, dressed in gowns made of the finest silk and mageweave, with fireflies in their hair.

There were no balls going on that she could see, but Quel’Thalas had looked beautiful, at least what she had seen of it from the air, north of the Ghostlands. Leaves of orange and red and gold had fluttered in her gryphon’s wake, and while she no longer had any desire to be swept off her feet by a High Elf prince, she would have liked to have visited Quel’Thalas in the days before the Third War and the elves’ departure from the Alliance.

She spotted Ringo and Frostmaw down by the docks. Ringo was fishing and Frostmaw was eating whatever Ringo had caught. It was a bit of normalcy in what was obviously a war zone. Only Ringo would have thought this was a place to bring a child, and only she would have listened, she realized with a grimace.

Ringo looked up as she flew over and behind her, Bael burbled with excitement to see Ringo and Frostmaw running after them, toward the flightmaster.

She slipped off the gryphon’s back and was met with a hug that squeezed the air out of her.

“Ye came! Last time we …”

“Of course I came, shut up.”

Ringo stepped aside and gestured back toward Quel’Danas behind him.

“Welcome to Sun’s Reach.”