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aly-the-writer · 6 years

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The Apprentice - Part 1

| Parts 1-4 Available on Ao3 | My Ao3

Fandom: Dragon Age

Characters: Lark Trevelyan, Damion Amell

Warnings: Major Character Death, last chapter. Not shown. Otherwise entirely SFW.

Description: Newly made Enchanter Damion Amell of the Ostwick Circle takes on a young fellow pyromancer, newly arrived to the Circle, as his first apprentice.An apprentice whose actions would one day come to shape Thedas itself.

The First Enchanter sighed, as she set the documents on the table. The only reason her counterpart wouldn’t push for Tranquility with this one was because the Trevelyan name held weight. A lot of it. The girl’s uncle was the Knight-Commander’s cousin or something of the like. The family was wealthy, influential, and it was well known that Bann Trevelyan continued to dote on even his ‘wayward’ children.

Not that being a mage was what made one wayward but young Lark Trevelyan had difficulties with her power. Unique abilities and presentations of magic were not nearly as uncommon as the Chantry wished to believe. Most mages leaned heavily towards some category or other.

It was just as well that the girl was not under the Madwoman’s watch either. Young pyromancers often had difficulties with control, ones that would have earned them the brand rather than patience.

“Enchanter Amell,” she greeted as the young man entered her office.

Damion Amell was a Kirkwaller who had been moved to Ostwick due to family politics as a child. Which was just as well as he was the Circle’s other resident pyromancer. She’d apprenticed the youth while writing frequently to her old friend Vivienne to complain of his airheaded nature and how few of her robes were left without singes.

He was brilliant though, and had well earned his newly appointed title of Enchanter despite his youth.

From what she had heard of the other Amell siblings it was much the same. The youngest was on the difficult path of becoming a spirit healer. Twin brothers in the Antivan Circle had both made names for themselves as illusionists – performing before the Antivan court despite their youth and lack of Harrowing. Gawain and Tristan would not be powerful mages but as jesters and performers they already had amassed more political pull than any of the others combined. The last of the brothers, Aristide, had found himself in Montsimmard and seemed uninterested in pursuing the heights that his siblings were reaching, though she knew of him from Viv’s mentions that the boy had a far sharper tongue than anyone with so little rattling around in their brain deserved.

Damion Amell was recently returned from Tevinter. (A return that had surprised her, she’d suspected when he approved his request to study with their brethren at the Minrathous Circle for two years that he would refuse to return at the end of it.) With his return the mage had taken the qualifications as an Enchanter and kept out of trouble far better than he had during his time as an apprentice.

“First Enchanter,” he greeted cheerfully, blue eyes flicking about the room, before resting on her. “Lydia mentioned that you wanted to see me.”

“I’m assigning you an apprentice – Lark Trevelyan.”

“The fire-starter, right?” he asked, tilting his head to the side, before he went to take a seat, eyes more thoughtful than anything, “You test her for the other primal elements yet?”

“I have – there were negative reactions towards ice and water magic. The strongest reactions are with fire and spirit magic.”

“Sounds like a proper death mage,” he chuckled. “Sure you don’t want to send her to the Mortalitasi? Nevarra could use some fresh blood, too many Pentaghast’s.”

“Her family wishes her to remain close,” she frowned. “And I do not think the Trevelyan’s would approve of lessons in necromancy, Damion.”

“No, I suppose they wouldn’t,” he sighed. “A shame, I have no talent for it. I think it’d be rather interesting to see. She my neighbor in the matchbox?”

“I wish you wouldn’t call the fire proofed rooms that,” she sighed heavily. “I thought it prudent, and her family has donated a significant sum to insure the girl is afforded more privacy. She is the scion of a noble house.”

“’Scion’,” he murmured, amused by the use of the term. “I’m guessing if I don’t take over Lydia-by-the-Book is going to be assigned?”

“Yes.”

“Then the firebug’s my apprentice,” he grinned cheerfully. “Pyromancer’s ought to stick together.”

A short discussion later about what was expected of him over tea served by one of the Tranquil – Marcus, they’d come to the Circle the same year together, he’d always made fart jokes but was terrified of the Fade, but back then he’d been Markie, not until the brand had he started insisting he be called by Marcus instead – and not even an hour later he stood in front of the door between him and the girl whose future he could very well destroy if he screwed this up.

Faux confidence perfected in the fires of a Tevinter Circle as an outsider or not the idea of having an apprentice – his first – apprentice was nerve wracking.

He hesitated longer, ignoring the curious glance from beneath the helmet of the Templar on guard there.

Letting out the deep breath he knocked on the door, “Lark? I’m coming in,” he called gently before pushing the door open.

The door was made to look like wood on the outside but it was heavier than it looked, metal enchanted against fire plated the inside. Stone walls and floors entirely undecorated made the rest of the cell.

He’d grown up in one of these rooms too after all, he’d known what to expect.

The red haired girl sitting on the straw pallet was in better condition than he remembered himself being when all those years ago the woman who would become First Enchanter had entered his cell. Then again he’d come from Kirkwall, dragged away from his mother’s desperate, bruising grip in the streets of High Town by the Gallows’ Templars and shipped away to save the family from more embarrassment.

Rumor had it though that Lark Trevelyan had the good fortune that the Templar who carried her into the Circle had been her own brother. (He hoped that that did not come to stand as a betrayal in the girl’s memory, family was important, even if he barely remembered his own siblings.)

Her red hair was a tangle of curls in need of a brush, falling into her face, and her eyes were red-rimmed and nose runny from crying. Her clothes were a simple, loose night-gown like thing, meant to be easily replaced if it caught flame. He remembered hating how itchy those garments were.

He wondered if his baby sister – Sol – had grown up to look anything like this girl, though Sol was a few years older than this girl wasn’t she? Just a babe when he’d been taken away.

“Y-you shouldn’t be in here. I’ll hurt you,” she tried to draw herself up straight, to meet his gaze with imperious violet eyes that a noble daughter should have but he could see the tremble. “I make fire’s start.”

“So do I,” he smiled gently, lifting his hand up he let it ignite into flames, careful not to catch the cuff of his jacket. Tevinter’s dramatic fashion had rather caught his fancy while he was in the North, but he’d only been able to bring back so much luggage.

Those purple eyes widened in surprise, “Oh.”

“My name’s Damion,” he smiled a little, “I’m a pyromancer – like you are. I’m going to help you learn how to use your magic, okay?” The fire extinguished as he offered her a friendly smile.

“I’m Lark Trevelyan. It’s nice to meet you, uh…Messere.”

The Apprentice is complete and can be read in its entirety on Ao3.

#long post #Dragon Age: Inquisition #OC: Lark Trevelyan #OC: Damion Amell #there is a cut and my eternal apologies if the cut does not work

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degenerate-perturbation · 4 years

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Chapters: 12/? Fandom: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening Rating: Mature Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Female Amell/Female Surana Characters: Female Amell, Female Surana, Anders, Velanna, Nathaniel Howe, Oghren (Dragon Age), Justice (Dragon Age), Sigrun (Dragon Age) Additional Tags: Established Relationship, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Self-Harm, Blood Magic Series: Part 2 of void and light, blood and spirit Summary: Amell and Surana are out of the Circle, and are now free to build a life together. But when the prison doors fly open, what do you have in common with the one shackled next to you, save for the chains that bound you both?

Yvanne fled.

Her loose robe tangled among her legs, and her slippers did nothing to protect her clumsy feet from the hewn stone of the castle’s passageways, but her only thought was to escape. More than once she slammed her shoulder into a wall, hard enough that it would bruise. She made it to the stables and was wrestling her favored rowan mare into a saddle when it occurred to her just what it was, that she was sacrificing. She was leaving everyone behind. Didn’t she owe it to them to explain?

No—she didn’t owe anyone shit, she decided, and anyway, she couldn’t stand the shame, couldn’t stand to be cared about, couldn’t stand to be loved. Her first and only need was to be far away from here, immediately.

The mare was recalcitrant, feeling its rider’s disturbed mood in that careful way horses had. Yvanne calmed it with a spell, all but took the mare’s mind with her so-called healing magic, and as soon as she mounted, it was off. Yvanne could barely stay upright as it bolted. Belatedly she realized that the main gate was down, and barely in time cast a spell of pure force. The gate exploded open, and only magic kept the mare from panicking and throwing her.

She clung to the horse’s neck, galloping down the road in the dead of night. What road, she couldn’t say, only that it lead away from Vigil’s Keep. The air rushed past her, stealing her warmth, deafening her senses.

All she could think of was Loriel’s face. Are you telling me to go? And the long, meaningful silence that had followed.

Every time she remembered it—and this was every handful of seconds, now—it hurt all over again.

She had tried so hard! She had done everything right! She had supported her at every turn, even when it had been hard, even when it hurt. Because they had been through so much together, because their lives were each other’s, because this thing between them mattered.

And this thing between them, wrested from the jaws of Chantry and Circle both, this beautiful shining thing so precious and so rare so hard won and mysterious—Loriel had thrown it away like it was nothing. And Yvanne had let her.

How could she just throw it away?

How could it mean nothing?

How? How? How? The question rattled around in her head like a deafening echo, so total and central to her attention, that she failed to notice the lowered quality of the road ahead—how could she, in the dark?—and the mare’s leg disappeared into a sinkhole. She barely heard the snap of broken bone as she was thrown from the panicking mare.

Pain exploded in her shoulder and head. She’d landed not exactly well, but not badly, either—she was still alive. She sat catching her breath, feeling the pain radiate from her shoulder across her whole body, barely noticed the layers of skin scraped away in the fall. The mare was worse off; its eyes rolled wildly in pain and bewilderment, laying on its side.

She healed herself first, then went to the horse. Normally an injury like this was death to the animal; the bone would never heal right. Even magical healing was essentially normal healing but faster. She was a decent healer, but not amazing; the shoulder she’d just healed was still stiff and smarting, and probably would be that way for a while. It would have been kindest to let the poor animal die.

“Sorry, old girl,” she said, gathering a cohort of wisps to help her.

After several minutes of struggle, the mare was up again. The leg hadn’t healed quite properly, and the horse’s eyes were filmed with pain. But there were spells for that.

She remounted, and rode hard. The mare didn’t stop or slow or stumble, enveloped as she was with layers and layers of creation magic. Yvanne didn’t know how long the magic or the mare would last, and she didn’t care.

By the time the sun broke over the horizon, she had driven the animal at full gallop for nearly the whole night, and no amount of magic could keep it from expiring of exhaustion out from under her.

This time the fall was less abrupt, the poor creature slowing gradually and collapsing. Yvanne narrowly avoided being crushed beneath it, scrambling to heal it again—but there was no hope this time. The mare was dead, and Yvanne couldn’t bring back the dead.

She sat by the side of the road, leaning against the corpse of the mare, and cried. The mare had been a good horse, sweet-tempered and faithful, and for almost no reason at all Yvanne had killed it. Suddenly the mare’s death was the greatest tragedy in the history of all Thedas, made all the worse by the beauty of the sunrise and song of the morning lark. Yvanne sobbed until she couldn’t stand it anymore.

After a while she looked up. The sun had fully risen by now, but the air was still cold. Gradually it dawned on her just what a bad way she was in—half-dressed, not a thing to her name, filthy and tired and hungry, stranded on the highway in the middle of nowhere in particular. The whole ride her head had been filled with the grand emotional tragedies of love and loss and disappointment, but all that faded rapidly, to be replaced by a prosaic, deeply banal fear.

Whatever was going to become of her?

She looked back the way she’d come. Her whole life was there, her friends, her things, her vocation. Everything she’d built, everything she’d striven for, was back at Vigil’s Keep.

That way was barred to her now.

She could stay here with the dead horse, or she could go on.

Struggling up, she faced the road before her, and began to walk.

—

She walked for most of the morning. By now her thirst had outstripped her hunger. Her throat was parched, and she struggled not to sway as she walked. Even magic was no help; weakened as she was by her own rash foolishness, her mana restored too slowly to be of any use.

When the sun was nearly at its zenith, she heard the creak of wagon wheels and clop of horse’s hooves behind her.

There was nowhere to go; this section of the road crossed through wide open plains and gently rolling hills. Even if she’d wanted to hide she couldn’t have. She had no sword, no weapon at all, and all her half-forgotten training as an arcane warrior was worthless without one.

Whatever was coming, she would have to deal with it.

She got out of the road, stepping over the gutter to stand in the grass. A cart leashed to a pair of mules approached. The driver was a round-bellied man dressed not richly, but neither like a peasant. His cart was well-laden, judging by the patient speed his mules walked with.

He slowed as he approached, tugging on the reins. “Ho there, stranger. What circumstance has brought an unaccompanied young lady of such beauty to travel alone and unladen?”

She struggled not to glare at him, looking at the ground. “My business is my own.”

He laughed. “Very well, then! Am I to assume that dead horse I saw some miles behind me was once yours?”

No point in lying. “Yes.”

The merchant sadly shook his head. “Poor creature. What happened to it?”

“It died.”

“Alright, then. I see you have the situation well in hand. I’ll be on my way.”

Electricity surged through her. “W-wait!” she stuttered, swallowing a great deal of pride as she did.

The merchant stopped halfway through flicking the reins.

Yvanne hung her head, humiliated. “Ser, where are you headed, if I may ask?”

“To Highever, my dear.”

“How far is it?”

“Not far, not far. Less than a day at an easy pace, by cart.”

Less than a day. She was closer to Highever than to Vigil’s Keep. Highever would do.

“Could you take me there?”

“I could,” the merchant said. “But how will you make it worth my while?”

She took off one of her amulets. She had bought it in Amaranthine, and Loriel had said it was one of the gaudiest things she’d ever seen, and Yvanne had retorted that surely she had, she’d seen the rest of Yvanne’s jewelry. “Will this do? It’s enchanted.” She went on, half-manic. “It protects the wearer from harm. Ask any enchanter when you get to Highever, they’ll tell you it’s real, I swear.”

The merchant’s eyes glinted as he saw the gem glitter on its chain. “Yes, that will do nicely.” He snatched it up, as though she was going to take it back, and tucked it into his coat. Then he moved over in the driver’s seat to make room for her. “Come and sit by me, young lady. You can enchant me with conversation, as part of your payment for passage.”

She really just wanted to sleep in the back of the cart, but she could tell she had no choice. She took her seat.

“Will you do me the honor of telling me your name?” the merchant said.

“It’s...Leliana,” Yvanne said.

“Leliana. That’s a beautiful name. Is it Orlesian?”

“I dunno. I’ve never been to Orlais.”

That was the right thing to say; the merchant had been to Orlais, and was content to spend the next several minutes telling her all about the glory of the markets of Val Royeux, the colored silks, the fine clothing, the masks and intrigues of it all. While he prattled, Yvanne let herself relax.

“Forgive me—I’ve been rude,” the merchant said, startling her out of her stupor. “You must be weary.”

He offered her a waterskin, dried jerky, and bread that was only somewhat stale. All this she devoured so quickly it hurt going down. The merchant chuckled to see it, and she didn’t have nearly enough energy to be irritated at him for it. She was too busy being grateful.

The food and water granted her enough energy to restore her magical resources; at least enough that she could layer enough creation spells over herself to feel alert and capable again. Subtly, subtly, so as not to alert the merchant. She didn’t need him knowing what she was, Warden or not. She so badly wanted to sleep; the back of the cart was so tempting, there among the sacks of goods. But she didn’t dare sleep, in this stranger’s cart.

The whole road to Highever he prattled cheerfully about his journeys, requiring only the most token of responses from Yvanne. This was both a blessing and a curse. A blessing, that she didn’t have to do much talking; a curse, that it left her mind free to wander.

That’s just it, isn’t it? You don’t understand, and you never will. You never will. You never will. You never—

“But I’m boring you, aren’t I?” the merchant said jovially.

“No!” she said. “No, I...I’m just tired. How much further to Highever?”

“We’ve just passed the village of Hornbill, so I wager not much longer than an hour,” said the merchant. “Plenty of time, in fact, for you to explain how you managed to escape your Circle.”

Yvanne froze.

“Oh, come now,” said the merchant. “Surely you don’t think me quite so dull as all that. You are a mage, are you not? Don’t try to deny it.”

“What makes you think I’m a mage?”

“I’ve been here and again, I can tell a woman on the run when I see one.”

“That doesn’t mean mage. You don’t know what I’m running from.”

He chuckled. “True, true. Only you stink of lyrium. I wasn’t sure until you came closer, but at this range? No question of what you are, my dear. Come now, tell me where you’ve escaped from? Wycome? Kinloch? Surely not Kirkwall.”

“I didn’t escape,” she said. “I’m a free mage. A Grey Warden.”

The merchant snorted. “I’m sure. I suppose you were there atop Fort Drakon when the Hero of Ferelden slew the Archdemon, too?”

“I have papers—”

The merchant chuckled. “Papers, hah! Good one. As though I’ve never forged a document in my day. You must think me very stupid—but I assure you, I’m merely old. Now how about telling me the truth?”

Yvanne said nothing. What could she say? She wasn’t in uniform. Right now she wasn’t Warden-Commander Yvanne Amell, local hero to thousands, an imposing Grey Warden who deserved respect. She was underdressed and unkempt and covered in mud. Even she wouldn’t have believed herself.

“Very well,” the merchant harrumphed. “Keep your secrets. Don’t worry, I don’t intend to turn you over to the Templars.”

“You aren’t?”

He smiled at her. “Of course, my silence isn’t free. You can start by turning over the rest of your pretty baubles.”

At first she didn’t know how to respond. “You’re extorting me for jewelry?” she managed, then scoffed. “This stuff’s worthless, you realize.”

The merchant shrugged. “I’d wager they’re all as valuable or more than the one you gave me, as you were so willing to part from it. Come on, now, I gave you a valuable tip about the lyrium smell. You’ll want to find new clothes in Highever, maybe cut your hair. That’ll help hide it.”

Yvanne’s mind raced. The jewelry she’d been wearing when she’d fled, most of it enchanted with runes to make her spirit magic stronger—a lucky thing that she’d fallen asleep still wearing it—was far from worthless. In fact it was probably her only source of income for the foreseeable future. And she had no guarantee that this wretched man with his piggy eyes and curdled smile wouldn’t simply rob her and call the Templars anyway.

She had the legal grounds to challenge them, but since when did Templars mind the law?

“Thinking of killing me with magic, my dear?” the merchant said as her silence stretched on. “I wouldn’t recommend that. My route is well known to many, and I would be missed. Any fool would be able to tell I’d been killed by unnatural means, and that means Templars investigating, and I’m sure you’d prefer to avoid that.”

At that point the cart hit something in the road; something big enough to break the wheel and send the whole thing pitching to the side. The mules brayed and the merchant, swearing, brought them to a halt. He sighed and muttered something about always some damn thing and nobody maintaining the roads properly these days.

He got out of the driver’s seat and went around to look at the damage. If he had looked carefully, he might have noticed the ridge of earth that had splintered the wheel, with its sharp ninety-degree edges, was clearly unnatural. If he had not been so self-satisfied with his extortion scheme, he might have noticed Yvanne casting the spell that had put it there. And he might have noticed the glyph of paralysis she had placed by the wheel while he had wasted precious moments walking around the side of the cart.

As it was, he did none of those things, and found himself frozen in a half-bent position for the next minute at least.

Yvanne let out a breath.

“That’s not true, you know, about it being obvious you’d been killed by unnatural means,” she said. “I could slit your throat right now, and everybody would assume it was bandits.”

The merchant said nothing. Predictably.

“That was a very stupid thing to do for some jewelry,” she said.

She could have just slit his throat. No one would ever be the wiser, and she’d never have to worry about him again. She could even take his cart, and trade his goods, sell his mules; live on the income for months. If she let him go, she’d always be looking over her shoulder. Maybe get into altercations, with Templars, with others. Maybe have to kill even more people. More probably, get killed herself.

She remembered what it had felt like, to threaten Rolan, to really consider killing a helpless man, and—no, she would not do that.

The paralysis glyph was wearing off. She replaced it with a force cage just in time. The merchant regained the use of his limbs and fell to his knees, beating at the inside of the force cage with both fists. Whatever vile things he was shouting, Yvanne couldn’t hear them.

“Thanks for the tip about the lyrium smell,” she said. “And the food. I wouldn't have been able to cast anything without that. So thank you for that, and the ride, as well.” He couldn’t hear any of it, but she felt the need to say it.

Yvanne reached into the Fade and drew from it a spirit of Forgetting. It was a small thing, not much more than a wisp, just barely beginning to form an identity as Forgetting rather than an amorphous blob of Fade-stuff. It fluttered around her, curious, eager to take what memories it could. She gently directed it away from herself, towards the merchant.

She saw the panic in his eyes as he realized what was happening; she supposed he thought she was putting a demon in him, or something heinous like that. The spirit entered him, and he collapsed.

She hoped that the spirit would only take the past couple days from him, recent fresh memories—Yvanne’s face and existence at the least—and not much more. A few weeks at the most. Some larger spirits of this nature could erase a person’s whole life without meaning to. Victims would forget their lives, their names, every skill they’d learned since leaving diapers, ended up as drooling infants blank as the day they were born. It was horrifically sad to behold.

But this wouldn’t happen to the merchant, Yvanne assured herself. The spirit was small. A few weeks at the most.

The force cage faded, but the merchant didn’t move. He’d be unconscious for some time. Best that Yvanne be far away from here by then.

While he lay in the dirt she retrieved her amulet, then rifled through the contents of the cart. He carried mostly fine fabrics. She took the finest she could easily carry, and unharnessed one of the mules. It gazed at her with what she imagined was reproach. The merchant would only need one mule, with his lightened cart-load. He’d be fine. Confused, sure, but fine. It was more than what he deserved, for what he tried to do to her.

She ought to have killed him, she thought, leading the mule away. Vigil’s Keep had softened her, weakened her. It had made her forget what people were like.

She wouldn’t be forgetting again.

—

In Highever she sold the bolts of fabric and the mule first, just to be rid of them. It all came to far less than she’d hoped, and she came away thinking she ought to have bargained more, but it was enough for a change of clothes and a room at the first inn she saw. Not a nice room, but she got a hot meal and a bath in the bargain. There she scrubbed herself until she was sure the lyrium smell was gone. She’d grown so used to it that she’d forgotten how acrid-sharp it smelled to others, though she could only hope that the innkeeper and the merchants she’d traded with hadn’t recognized it. She thought about cutting her hair to be sure, but couldn’t bear it. Surely this one thing she could keep.

There she finally slept, in her shift and all her jewelry. Whatever dreams haunted her, she could not recall in the morning.

When she woke, evening had fallen again. The dark, the unfamiliar room, and the hard mattress disoriented her—this wasn’t her home. This wasn’t her bed. Why did her shoulder hurt? What had happened to her feet?Then she remembered.

You don’t understand, and you never will.

Maker, what had she done? Had the others noticed her absence yet? It had been nearly a full day, but she sometimes went many days without seeing those she counted friends. It might be a week or more until they all knew she’d fled. What would Loriel tell them? Would she tell them anything at all? Was she even thinking about her at all anymore?

She half-snarled and stumbled off the sagging mattress—and immediately slammed her foot into a bedside table so hard it splintered her big toenail.

She swore, bending to heal it—and hesitated. What if somebody saw? What if calling on magic at all made it easier for someone to spot her for what she was?

But she had Loriel’s parchment...didn’t she?

She rifled through her few possessions; the irrevocably ruined slippers, the torn and muddy house robe, the one bolt of cloth she wasn’t able to sell, a leather belt hung with pouches (mostly missing, now) of herbs, the plain linen dress she’d bought, though who knew if it would even fit her...

No parchment.

It was hardly surprising. She’d haphazardly jammed the document into her belt, and since then had fallen off a horse, twice. Who knew how long ago she’d lost it?

A heaviness settled in her chest, a weight like being deep underground. Now she didn’t have even the flimsiest of legal protections. And worse, she didn’t have Loriel’s handwriting, the only physical trace she had of her.

She hadn’t even read the full text before fleeing.

Loriel had done this to her. Had turned her out with nothing but a sheaf of parchment to her name. Had somehow foolishly believed that Loriel’s written word would protect her. The sheer arrogance of it all! To the void with her, to the void with her stupid bloody parchment. If Yvanne had still had it she would have burned it to a crisp. Her fists trembled, her eyes burned with fury, but she pushed herself up. To the void with her!

Yes, she was alone, she had almost nothing, and if the Templars found her, they would surely drag her back to Kinloch, and who knew what they’d do with her there. But she was damn well still alive, and she was going to live. And if Loriel didn’t want to do it with her, that was her fucking problem.

And, before the cloying darkness could settle in her chest again, Yvanne went downstairs to get a drink.

#dragon age #amell #surana #dragon age femslash #please read my wizard lesbian fanfiction

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carabas · 7 years

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Leandra used to love to walk along Hightown’s narrow street of luthiers and other instrument-makers, the scents of wood and varnish, the rows of fiddles and mandolins hanging from the rafters, stretching all the way between her home and the theater district. She’d bought her lute from an Antivan woman who smiled little but could coax wood and strings into the most playable, beautifully-toned instruments Leandra could have wished for.

The first winter night in Amaranthine, when she starts to play, she looks up to find a wisp of light floating around her, gradually resolving into the shape of a bird, like something out of a dream. A lark to sing with her. And Malcolm watches the pair of them with a fond smile playing around his lips, so proud of himself for his little trick.

“What, not a hawk?” she teases.

“They can’t carry a tune.” He gestures to himself, self-deprecating; this Hawke’s no better.

And after a moment, he speaks of the lark that used to sing in the courtyard of the Gallows. Unusual for a songbird to make the trip across the water. He’d suspected one of the templars was feeding it.

And she’d never thought of the Gallows as a place anyone might be homesick for, but it had been a home of a sort. And she hasn’t seen any larks in Amaranthine, except for Malcolm’s.

The price she gets for her lute in the Amaranthine market isn’t half what it’s worth, and not nearly what Lord Amell’s daughter would have gotten for it back in Kirkwall, but it’s still more than enough to go to the Mages’ Collective and buy a templar’s silence. And Malcolm looks stricken when he realizes what she’s done, but it was just a lute, and it’s already gone, and there’s no use being silly about it.

And he kisses her, murmurs, “Brave Leandra. Is there anything you can’t do?”

There are quite a few things she can’t do. Laundry, for one.

Leandra’s hands are sore and reddened, and when Malcolm puts his fingers over hers, she reluctantly says, “We shouldn’t.” The caress of healing magic already sinking into her skin, tingling, soothing. “Who ever heard of a washerwoman with soft hands?”

“You can set a new trend.”

“That makes no sense at all,” she says, trying not to smile.

And what she should say is no more magic. That would be safest. Smartest. It’s on the tip of her tongue.

But she thinks it would kill her to ask him to stifle that part of himself completely, even here in their room, even when it’s just the two of them. He’s meant for wonders. Though she’s the only one who gets to see it.

Brave, he calls her, but she hasn’t felt brave at all, not even when stepping on the ship to take her away from Kirkwall. It’s just that she’s found something she’s not willing to let go.

Their little room overlooks the edge of the alienage, this room that was supposed to be temporary, just until Malcolm found work on one of the outlying farms, somewhere with a few less neighbors, a few less templars. But he’s as skilled a farmhand as she is a laundress, and before she knows it it’s Summerday, and she stands at the window and holds the curtain aside and watches an elven girl in the street below weave a bridal crown out of daisies and Andraste’s Grace.

She’s always known exactly how her wedding would go. The chantry she’s gone to all her life decked in flowers, Mother Elthina speaking the words just as she did for Leandra’s parents. Guillaume’s guests and hers, the list of names nearly unchanged since she was eleven. The ceremony wouldn’t be on Summerday itself, of course. Too old-fashioned. But sometime in the week before.

It’s not forbidden for a mage to marry outside the Circle, strictly speaking. She’d asked Mother Elthina soon after Malcolm proposed. Trying it probably would have gotten Malcolm transferred to the back end of the Anderfels before she could blink, but technically, it’s allowed in the eyes of the Maker.

An apostate, on the other hand. Nothing an apostate does is allowed in the eyes of the Maker, strictly speaking.

It doesn’t matter. As far as anyone in Amaranthine is concerned, Leandra and Malcolm are married. They’d better be. Their landlady wouldn’t have rented to them otherwise.

Malcolm wraps his arms around her from behind, rests his chin on her shoulder, looks out the window with her to where the elven girl has finished her crown.

“I heard an interesting story in the market today,” she tells him. “An old Alamarri Summerday tradition. They used to marry by stealing their brides and running off with them.”

He hums, thoughtful, and raises his head, his beard tickling. “I kidnapped you, did I? Is that what this is?”

“Oh, don’t be silly, I kidnapped you. Stole you right out from under the—”

She shouldn’t say Circle, not in front of the open window. But she doesn’t need to say it, and Malcolm presses a soft kiss to her cheek.

Harvest time comes, and work comes along with it, and on the day they move out of Amaranthine and into their room on one of the outlying farms, Malcolm brings her a lute. It’s not the one she’d brought from Kirkwall, and it can’t produce the sort of clear tones that would fill a Hightown salon, but the sound fills their little room just fine. And quietly, she plays a lullaby.

There are so many ways of checking a child for magic, or preventing it, or driving it out of them. After what happened with her cousin’s children, she’d heard more about it than she ever wanted to. Feed them nothing but crushed embrium blossoms, submerge them in ice water. The most horrible superstitions, and not a one of them true.

But the impulse to search for some hint, some sign, to be able to prepare—she understands that.

Malcolm is meant for wonders, and if anyone else but her ever sees that then they’ll lock him away. And he’s a man grown and in full control, and she worries as it is. She doesn’t have the slightest idea how they’ll begin to explain this to a child, learning to keep secrets right alongside learning to talk.

But a glowing lark floats above the cradle, bright as candlelight, drifting here and there in response to a wave of Malcolm’s hand, as if he were conducting. Singing along with the lullaby. And their little Hawke reaches toward the light.

And every moment like this is one more secret to keep, one more risk, but they’re beautiful and they’re hers and they’re worth the keeping.

#dragon age #da2 #leandra amell #malcolm hawke #hawke family #my writing #crossposting my black emporium exchange fic here now that the authors have all been revealed

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