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Everyone said Onyxia was dead. Anduin Wrynn knew they were wrong.
Sure, in the physical sense the daughter of Death Wing, who had nearly succeeded in destroying both his city and his family, was gone. Anduin had been there when his father had cut off her head. He had seen it when it was hung above the city gates as a sign to all that Stormwind stood stronger than ever. Onyxia was dead and everyone knew it.
Only Anduin knew that she still lived in the keep. He saw her in the mirror as he gathered his hair into a ponytail. Her ghostly fingers brushed his then-shorter locks back, “You are king, child. A king cannot have a hair out of place.”
He heard her in his debates with the House of Nobles, “Dear Anduin, sometimes you have to tell people what they want to hear, in order to get what you need.”
He saw her in the ink every time he wrote out a trade deal, an approval, a speech outline, or even a personal journal entry. “As prince, you’re writing must be perfect. This is not perfect. You will do it again, until you get right.” He scrapped the page with the messy signature and started again.
Onyxia breathed and laughed whenever he made a snarky quip that was completely different from Bolvar’s sense of humor, or the sort of comments his depressed father would make during the first half of his life. Anduin and Lady Prestor shared a quick smile at the dumbfounded look on the guard’s face. He hadn’t expected that response. No harm was done though, just a little game that was all Lady Prestor’s and his own.
For so long, his father hadn’t been around. First he was crippled by depression and Onyxia’s magic, then he was missing, and Anduin was forced to become regent. All his life, Bolvar had done his best to raise Anduin as a good man who valued honor, valor, and the light, a king, and a prince, who would be a kind and noble leader. He had succeeded. But Bolvar Fordragon wasn’t the only one who had raised Anduin to be what they wanted.
Bolvar had been almost like a second father, but Onyxia, then going by Lady Prestor, had been the closest thing Anduin had ever had to a mother. Bolvar had taught him how to act, Lady Prestor had taught him how to speak, how to carry himself, how to lie, and use politics to get what he wanted. Bolvar had succeeded, but so had she.
Everyone thought of Anduin as good and just, maybe a bit naïve, but with good intentions. Jaina, Genn, Velen, and all the other Alliance leaders trusted his character, even if nothing else. If they knew what he really was, they would never look at him the same.
If they knew how false his smiles and platitudes could sometimes be, he would never again be the happy and genuinely good man they thought he was. If they ever caught onto the lies he sometimes told in court to drive the conversation where he needed, or to reach the goals he wanted, or the SI:7 missions he occasionally sent out without their knowledge, they would never look at him as the same innocent, naïve, young king they thought he was raised to be. Anduin liked to believe his goals were noble where Onyxia’s had not been, but if their methods were the same, how different were they really?
His father had known. Varian had picked up on it not long after Onyxia’s death. He had seen her in Anduin’s body language, in the way he read the room, and the little phrases, and verbal ticks he could only have picked up from her. Bolvar had always known, though he had only seen the issue with that after Onyxia’s true identity had been revealed, but he was dead now. So was Anduin’s father. Everyone else who had known Lady Prestor in life either hadn’t paid her enough attention to recognize the lasting influence she had had on Anduin as a child, or they didn’t care. No one knew, except him.
Anduin knew as he strode through the halls with the slight click of heels on the floor from the style of boots she’d taught him to love, from the perfect posture she’d drilled into him, to the perfectly sweet smile he gave the passing servants, that Onyxia was not dead. She was king.