Chapter Text
"You sure you want to do this?" The question was low, asked in lilting tones with a gentle hand on her elbow.
"Not even a little," she shot back, her own voice ringing tinny amidst the other echoes in the hall, "But it's seldom I ever want to do anything amongst this many people – let alone see him."
"At least there's free wine here, no?" She could hear him grin through the words, as the scant comfort of his hand fell away, “Perhaps you could learn a thing or two about proper hospitality while we’re here?”
She was about to argue with him – to tell him that she knew plenty about hospitality, and even more about why she’d never give him free wine – but she knew he had melted into the crowd again, another face amongst the gathered.
She scanned the crowd in an effort to find him – his face representative of safety in the storm – but he had already vanished. So she sighed and straightened her back. The steward was almost ready to announce her anyway and she didn't want to look as forlorn as she felt. Trembling a little, she took a steadying breath and stepped forward, her feet filling the space left by the couple before her.
She looked at the flagstones strewn with rushes and remembered the first time she’d been to this hall. She’d clung to her mother’s skirts and stared at these very stones, wishing she was elsewhere. Some time in the interim, everything had changed, and yet, nothing had – she was not that child any more, but she still longed to be literally anywhere else.
"Lady and Lord Du Pont," the steward cried and everyone moved up a space. The introduction was largely ignored by the assembled and she tried to take comfort in that – it had been a long time. No one would remember her, surely…?
She handed the slip of paper she'd so diligently carried with her to the crier. His eyes snagged on the way her name looped across the page, then scanned her face.
"Your ma-" he began, his voice betraying his shock as his face fought to remain neutral.
"Don't finish that title," she snarled, hand automatically at her the weapon on her belt, "Read it as it's written."
He nodded, gulped, and cleared his throat.
"Warden Commander Stevaine Cousland," he cried.
Silence passed like a wave through the crowd from where she stood to the head of the room.
The king rose from his throne and stared at her. She could feel his eyes on her face, but kept her own down – focussing as much as she could on the familiar lines of the stone floor.
This was the moment she'd been dreading, the moment she'd been avoiding for the past five years. Her whole body had seemed to freeze in time, and she struggled to remember how to walk, how to breath. But after a pause which might have lasted an age, and might have lasted a second, the blessed certainty of protocol kicked in, and she sent a silent prayer of thanks to her mother for forcing her to go to every single boring court gathering.
Your youthful charm will fade, daughter, and then where will you be without good manners? Stevaine?! Are you listening to me?
Stevaine Cousland, Warden Commander of Amaranthine, and Queen Consort of the Ferelden Court – shocked into behaving by her mother’s voice in her head – forced herself to step into the room to greet King Alistair. Not because she wanted to, but because good manners and courtly protocol demanded it.
Just ahead of her, the Du Pont's flapped their mouths, unsure of what to do. Stevaine pointedly ignored them, and was relieved when after a good few seconds of flapping mouths, protocol won out for them too. Automatically, they made their way through the great hall and bowed to the throne, then took their place at the side of the room.
As the Du Pont’s settled, the nobility had silently parted and made a path for Stevaine to pass through the room. And she did so, purposefully slowing her feet against a desire to have the thing over and done with. She needed to be sure she looked more confident than she was – needed to be sure she didn’t look as though she was going to sprint for the exit at the first chance she got.
Even though that was exactly what part of her was planning on doing.
The closer she drew to the raised dias on which the twin thrones sat, the more nauseous she felt.
One foot in front of the other. Concentrate on the details and the pig picture will take care of itself.
She found her way to the steps and knelt, bowing her head as the members of other military factions had done. Then, taking a deep and trembling breath, she forced herself to look at the king.
She began by looking at his feet. Then his knees, and his thighs. She pushed away memories of those same strong legs straddling her, standing as if the action could help her leave the past behind, buried beneath the flagstone floor like bodies in a tomb. So she forced her eyes to his chest now. And when she could postpone it no longer, his face.
He still looked almost unbearably kind – his gaze open and honest. When asked to describe him to those she met in the years they'd been apart, she'd always chosen the word earnest, and was pleased to see that it remained a great truth about him.
His expression in that moment though was unreadable, and though she'd been dreading having to see him, she was suddenly desolate that she couldn't tell what he was thinking.
For a moment, she expected an argument – a return to form – but he cracked a smile, relieved and adoring, and gestured to the chair at his side. She felt her own features contort to mirror his recognition with the sadness she felt as she her shook her head.
"I'm here as Warden Commander, your majesty, not as queen," she was careful to speak gently – to be as soothing as she could be. She expected a return of his inscrutable look, but he nodded, understanding.
At least superficially so, hissed a particularly viscous memory, and she clung to it like a woman drowning. It would have been easier if he’d hated her.
"Are you here alone? At your last report you said there were a number of Ferelden Wardens now… though, that was five years ago."
She could hear his admonishment, and again, she grasped it like it was gold.
"I'm not alone, no. I come with Warden Lieutenant Howe, and a new recruit I imagine you'll be keen to hear from at the Landsmeet proper. He's why I came, in fact."
The only reason, she told herself, but didn't buy it.
"Very well…"
Silence stretched out before them. She was about to consider herself dismissed, but he stepped forward then and pulled her into an awkward embrace, clapping her back. Outwardly, she imagined it looked like two old comrades parting ways – which, she supposed, it was too – but he took the closeness to whisper in her ear, "I've missed you. I'll find you soon."
She felt her cheeks burn at the closeness of him – at the enormity of his frame compared to hers. She gathered herself and stepped back, offering only a curt nod. Then she walked to where the other armed attendees stood.
The king’s calm dismissal of her had signalled to the nobles that her presence there was not truly worth noting, and she clung to the animosity she was building against him, lest she felt the need to thank him for his composure later. For now, she let the other soldiers become camouflage around her as she lost herself in their ranks, and as the room began to swell with noise again, she was able to vanish amidst the sea of armour.
Stevaine Cousland was very good at vanishing.
At first, she'd learned to do it precisely because of situations like these – too many people for her shy soul to manage – but she'd soon learned the advantages of not being seen.
Almost invisible as she was now, she slipped out of the great hall and into the familiar space between the walls. The Denerim palace had been built with the sole purpose of accommodating the royal family in comfort and in order to do this, the rooms inhabited by nobility all had a second skin of stone surrounding them. This allowed the fires within to better heat them – a thermal layer of insulation wrapped around every chamber. And an endlessly useful web of secret passageways if you were small enough, and determined enough to use them.
When she’d moved into the palace, it hadn't taken Stevaine long to find them, or pass their details on to her dearest friend.
"Zev?" she hissed into the darkness.
"That was not so bad, no?" said a shadow to her right. Despite herself, she jumped. No matter how good she was at not being seen, Zevran Arainai was better.
She scoffed, "He asked me to sit in the throne."
Her friend's usually teasing voice took on a seriousness she was unaccustomed to, "You asked him to be king, did you not? You loved him then. If you did not wish to be queen, and did not wish for all that came with it, why did you ask it of him?"
She flopped back against the wall, "Things change. I… don't know. During the Blight, I never really expected to live to see the next morning. Something as permanent as marriage never felt… possible. And by the time it did, it had already happened."
"You did well out there, by the way. You looked like you didn't give a crap about any of them."
Another scoff, "I couldn't have done it without knowing you were here."
"Well, here I am. And here I will stay. But you need to get back, do you not? You'll be called upon for an opinion sooner than all the others, I think."
She nodded, reached out into the darkness and squeezed his hand for comfort, then slipped back through the hidden door and into the corridor outside the great hall.
Faltering, Stevaine took a few moments to steady herself. Then she drew her shoulders back, and with the ease brought by years of practise, entered the great hall of Denerim Palace like a queen.
Before the Ferelden delegate decided on what to do about the Inquisition, the least she could do was bring them the opinions of someone who'd served there.
That he'd once been the Inquisitor's lover didn't need to be mentioned.
Nor did the fact that the Inquisitor had sentenced him to life as a Warden for treason.
Stevaine sighed. She'd had a lot of stupid ideas over the years, but coming back here with Thom-fucking-Rainier had to be the worst of the lot.