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laurelsofhighever · 1 year

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Fandom: Dragon Age: Origins Characters/pairings: Alistair x Cousland Chapter: 3/? Rating: T Warnings: None Fic Summary: The story of the Fifth Blight, in a world where Alistair was raised to royalty instead of joining the Grey Wardens.

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Cloudreach, 9:29 Dragon

The Couslands ate breakfast together every morning, by tradition. Compared to the dinners in the great hall it was an informal event taken in the library, at a round, walnut table draped with embroidered linen, with the morning light streaming through windows that looked north over the sea. After setting the places, the servants retreated to have their own meal, and, left to the privacy of each other’s company, the family helped each other to platters of eggs, cooked meat, and fruit. The dogs – Bryce’s Mallard and Rosslyn’s Cuno, still with the gangliness of puppyhood – also had their place, tucking into their own breakfasts on leather mats laid out to save the priceless Rivaini carpets from the ravages of slobber and grease.

If not for their grand surroundings, the Laurel motifs decorating the furniture and the rich weave of their clothes, they might have been any ordinary family, with ordinary squabbles. The battle on this particular morning raged around Oren, who had inherited the strong Cousland jaw and his mother’s onyx-dark eyes. He sat high in his cushioned chair, digging through his bowl of porridge for the dried apple slices hidden in its depths and ignoring the entreaties from both his parents to behave.

“I’m three-and-a-half,” he insisted, when Oriana dipped her own spoon into the bowl to try and coax at least one proper mouthful.

Across the table, Eleanor levelled a disapproving stare at her grandson. “When your father was three-and-a-half he knew the benefit of eating everything on his plate,” she told him. “How do you think he got to be so tall?”

Oren’s eyes went wide, turning on his mother. “Is it true?”

“Yes, pequeño,” Oriana replied, ever-patient. “We want you to grow big and strong.”

“And Aunt Rosslyn too?”

Rosslyn glanced up from her book. She had taken to bringing one to breakfast in recent months to keep her own company while the rest of the family got on with their business – there was no one else to talk to, after all, and if she kept herself occupied with such volumes as The Travels of Ebullient Ser Claremore of Stannis it distracted her from the reason why misery gnawed at her like a mouse, stopped her dwelling on the fact that it was her own bloody fault no letters had come from Denerim since the Landsmeet.

“All Couslands eat their porridge,” she replied mildly. “Haelia and Mather started the tradition when they drove the werewolves out of the North.”

A white lie, but the renowned twins, heroes even among the famed and fabled ranks of Cousland ancestors, had held Oren’s imagination like little else could since he heard the story, the illuminations in the family book weaving him tales of wild chases through the forest and daring battles waged against fang and claw.

“I wish you wouldn’t read at the table,” her mother chided, as if she had only just noticed.

“Aldous wants me to broaden my horizons.”

Her father’s eyebrow lifted, amused. “I doubt Aldous meant for your studies to get in the way of your table manners, Pup.”

“It’s not like anyone’s here,” Rosslyn pointed out. “And besides –”

The door to the library opened, cutting off the rest of her protest to admit a human page in a woollen surcoat of deep Laurel blue.

“Calmett?” Bryce turned at the intrusion.

Calmett bowed. “Forgive me, Your Lordship, but a letter just arrived by courier. I thought you’d want to read it.” He offered over a square envelope of thick, cream-coloured paper on a silver tray and Rosslyn saw the flash of a scarlet seal on the back when her father took it.

“‘To His Lordship, Bryce Cousland’,” he read.

Fergus, who was closer, peered at the direction. “That’s rather formal for Alistair.”

The air squeezed from her lungs. She did not miss the curious glance her brother sent her across the table, nor how Oriana’s brow furrowed; it would be one thing for the king to write to the teyrn himself, formal and aloof, but Alistair knew them as well as family and had long since grown out of the shrinking need to call his foster-father by his title.

Cheeks warming, she dropped her gaze to her plate of half-eaten jam toast, though not quite fast enough to avoid catching her mother’s eye. It was a steady look, a shared confidence; it reminded her of the noble’s mask she had been taught, the blank face required to stare down your worst enemy and make them flinch first. She straightened her shoulders. As her father read the letter she watched with a face of mild, polite interest, taking in the downward pull of his brows as he went on, the way the corner of his mouth flattened into the greying edges of his beard.

“Well? What does it say?” Fergus asked.

Startled, Bryce looked up. “He’s being sent to Starkhaven. From Denerim. King Cailan wishes him to be an aide to the ambassador.”

Fergus clicked his tongue. “Surely Cailan would have allowed him to travel from Highever if he had asked.”

“It isn’t for you to second-guess the king,” Bryce chided, his voice unusually severe. “There might be any number of reasons why the ship left berth at Denerim.”

For a moment, the table stewed in the tension chafing between the teyrn and his eldest child, until Fergus turned his head away with a nod and a sigh and picked up his spoon again. Unnoticed by either of them, Rosslyn frowned at the paper in her father’s hands, the guilt that churned in her stomach for driving Alistair away aclash with a growing anger at his lack of loyalty, his cowardice. Ever since he had first gone to Denerim, no correspondence had ever come back to Highever without at least a small note addressed to her. Did he think no one would notice the change? Did he fear her so much, or put such value on his injured pride that he would shield himself behind the king’s will to neglect his duty to her family?

“May I see the letter?” she asked.

Her father gave her a long look, but passed it to her all the same, as gently as if the paper itself might bite. Curbing her annoyance, she unfolded it and scanned the lines. The unmistakeable scrawl that Aldous had tried so hard to smooth out in their lessons was unchanged, the words short, signed at the bottom with a formality out of place for the person she knew. Despite this, glimmers of humour shone through the stiff, careful style, pulling a traitorous twitch from her lips as she read:

Your Lordship –

I hope you’ll forgive me for bringing you this news in a letter instead of coming to tell you in person. King Cailan has requested that I go to Starkhaven to assist the ambassador there, and since he requires no delay, I’ll be sailing from Denerim as soon as the ship is loaded and the tide is with us. It’s likely I’ll pass by Highever at the same time this letter reaches you – just in case, I’ll wave from my cabin and keep my eyes towards the castle.

If all goes well and I don’t make a complete fool of myself stepping off the ship at journey’s end, it may be some time before I can return to Ferelden, and so this is – for now – a farewell. This is a great opportunity for me to ‘cut my diplomatic teeth’, as my brother keeps on telling me, but I could not leave without at least writing to thank you for everything you have done for me. Without your kindness I don’t know where I would have been by now, but it certainly wouldn’t be here, and I will be forever grateful for that. I hope in return I’ll be able to do you proud.

In my own hand,

Alistair Theirin

It took two days for a courier to take a message from Denerim along the coast, maybe less if the relay used good horses, but half a day less still to cover the distance by water. He would be out on the open sea by now, with Ferelden a smudge of green on a distant horizon.

Starkhaven. It was a place she knew by reputation and court gossip more than anything else. Nate had spoken of it well enough since leaving to become a squire to one of the knights there, and in his own quiet way had painted a picture of exotic markets and gilded palaces merry with the splash of fountains. At least he would be a familiar face to help Alistair orient himself, such a long way away from home.

She wished he had written to her.

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saltlordofold · 4 months

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Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Characters: Duncan (Dragon Age), Male Cousland (Dragon Age), Bryce Cousland, Eleanor Cousland, Oriana Cousland, Oren Cousland, Original Characters, Alistair (Dragon Age) (brief appearance) Additional Tags: Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Grief/Mourning, Suicidal Thoughts, lore dump, Child death (mentioned), Animal Death (Fish), Highever (Dragon Age) Summary:

My telling of Duncan's brief's stay in Highever, and the bloody events that unfolded there.

“As a general rule, Duncan seldom allowed himself the complacency of optimism. Too much of it, life had taught him, often proved counterproductive: not unlike a healing salve, optimism had a tendency to dull the senses against incoming dangers. It lulled the unsuspecting mind into illusions of security, which in turn could fester into over-confidence - and over-confidence, in his line of work, had always proved to be risky business.

In Highever's great stone hall, however, bathed in the warmth of a dozen fires, with a full cup of wine in his hand as he stood watching three young couples’ hands be joined in marriage, Duncan searched his heart for at least a sliver of the perilous sentiment. On the eve of battle, he had decided, a morsel of hope was the most fitting gift he could think of offering the newlyweds.”

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I finally lore dumped about the Couslands and life in Highever right before, uh, you know what.

#dragon age #dao #dragon age origins #dragon age: origins #duncan #aedan cousland #cousland #male cousland #highever #oriana cousland #bryce cousland #eleanor cousland #fic #salt’s writing

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calico-callista · 8 months

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Queen Cousland tarot

#dragon age #dragon age origins #Cousland #Luscinia Cousland #grey warden #queen of Ferelden #Warden Cousland #Highever #Tarot #Queen of Swords #origins #Luscinia #queen #lady in armour #knight #lady Cousland #Ferelden

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aesfocus · 4 months

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Around Castle Cousland

#dragon age #dragon age: origins #daedit #daedits #videogameedit #vgedit #gamingedit #gameedit #edits24 #myda #mydao #mygif #mygif(da)#mygif(dao)#whoever made this flycam mod I kiss you I love you thank you #really highever castle but :P

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fergus-cousland · 9 days

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i am also sad that the only one who doesn't get to "go home" during DAO is Cousland. i want that psychic damage

#admittedly! going to highever would be a detour #but you know. so is going back to ostagar #like if i was going to change something about DAO it would be putting riordan in highever rather than denerim

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rosykims · 5 months

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honestly im so glad bioware nerfed the cousland origin by not making them as socially & politically powerful as they technically ought to be. bc i think if i had to confront the whole cousland/mac tir situation in canon as opposed to just my own unsalvageable deep fried thoughts i think i would contract some sort of brain eating bacterial infection and die :/

#tay plays dao #oc: elspeth #of COURSE elspeth Knows these people! ofc she knows eamon !and teagan ! she and cailan were friends and maric held her as a baby !!!!!!!#and of COURSE. of COURSE she knows the mac tirs. the only other teyrnir family. inherent allies AND rivals to the kings favor. ok. okokokok #but thinking abt the post occupation solidarity between all of ferelden. bryce and loghain letting their daughters be friends #elspeth and anora being the BEST of friends growing up. each one spending months at highever or gwaren respectively #god. thinking about loghain as a godfather figure to elspeth makes me insane. thinking of anora being a sister to elspeth makes me insaner #the girls later growing up and recognising that the kingdom was beginning to set the two of them up against one another as they + cailan #came of age. realizing one of them would likely be chosen as queen and the other would Not.#and its not so much the jealous/competitiveness that drove them apart but the fear that the other one thought less of them for it #idk. idk idk idk.#i just love making things complicated. i love the idea that when alistair kills loghain its like... 1) elspeth is horrified bc he was at on #point like family to her.#and then 2) grateful ! bc what sort of family would do all of this to her !!!!!!!!!#and then his death also being the final nail in the coffin for anora and elspeth's friendship. H. HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH #I CANT. I CANT EVEN THINK OF THIS IM GOING TO GO SOAK MY HEAD OR WHATEVER COUSLAND SAYS TO DAIRREN IDEK.

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widgits · 1 year

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a drawing i did for my nathaniel/cousland political marriage au (after nate and luce do a little revenge)

#my art #warden cousland #dragon age origins #dao #dragon age awakening #nathaniel howe #dragon age fanart #dragon age #luce tag #cw blood #ok so basically... its like what if instead of returning after the blight #howe calls nathaniel back to ferelden at the start of dao #and nathaniel has to watch his dad do atrocities while killing everyone in castle cousland #duncan went straight to ostagar in this au so luce makes a final stand expecting to get killed alongside her parents #but instead howe decides to marry her to nate by force to help legitimize his newfound hold on highever #plot ensues and eventually they fall in love or whatever and kill nates lame ass dad #also fergus becomes a warden in this dw about it #dao political marriage au

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voidendron · 7 months

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Azan in D2?

[Outfit Meme]

Thank you, Raven! >:D Ironically, I've actually been wanting to draw her in something like this for A While but was procrastinating Hard. Thank u for kicking the motivation in 💚💜

Two versions, because I wanted to see how it would look with her themed gold - and ngl, I'm digging it 👀

#swtor #sith warrior #sith pureblood #void attempts art #voids ocs #oc: aaz'n tarnak #answered ask #outfit meme #the-raven-of-highever #smoking

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illusivesoul · 9 months

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Why Rendon Howe is evil

This is a little theory thats been going around in my head for several days.

Rendon Howe. Evil personified. Probably one of the most despicable and hated characters in the Dragon Age series. One of the characters thats most easily defined as being just plain bad and evil, with good reason. Even in the game itself no one likes him (with 1 exception that I'll mention later in this post)

In the game, we really aren't given many reasons as to why he is the way he is and why he does the thing he does beyond saying he's evil, power hungry, and like he himself says as he dies, "I deserved more!" But recently I started to become curious about him to try to find out what had made him become like this, cause I prefer villains to have some complexity that goes beyond just "He's evil just because".

Rest of the analysis under the cut.

My main theory of why I think Rendon became "evil" is cause he may have suffered brain damage due to his injuries while fighting against Orlais with Maric and his rebels. My first thought for this came cause historically, Henry the 8th of England suffered several brain injuries during sporting events, and its believed that his injuries led to him having a severe personality change, which led to him become more radical, tyrannical and murderous.

After the death of his father and the Howe family joining the rebellion, Rendon joined Maric's forces and became close friends with Bryce Cousland, future Teyrn of Highever, and Leonas Bryland, future Arl of South Reach. The 3 of them fought together in the Battle of White River, which was the worse defeat the rebels suffered in the war against Orlais, and only 50 of the initial thousand soldier strong fereldan army survived.

Rendon was very badly injured during the battle, and Bryce and Leonas had to dragged him away to safety as the rebel army was crushed by the orlesians. Bryce was injured in the arm while trying to save Rendon from a chevalier. They got Rendon to Redcliffe and stayed with him for a month while he recovered before leaving to rejoin Maric and the rest of the rebel forces. While Rendon recovered in Redcliffe, he was tended to by Leonas's sister, Eliane, until he eventually recovered months later. He eventually proposed to her and they got married.

And here is the first bit of evidence we get of Rendon's attitude and behaviour completely changing after that battle and his wounds. From the wiki: "Leonas had become concerned by the changes in his friend's behavior since the battle and attempted to prevent the marriage." And some other quotes from Leonas that we get to her in dao: "Rendon Howe was no friend of mine. The boy I knew... died at the Battle of White River" and "That he didn't die years ago is the only thing worth mourning here." Leonas cut all contact with Rendon after he told him that he was only marrying his sister for her dowry and connections.

This goes back to what I mentioned earlier about the one person that seemed to care for Rendon. That person is Bryce Cousland.

Bryce and Eleanor were the only people that attended Rendon and Eliane's wedding, and even though Rendon was treated as a pariah by almost everyone in fereldan nobility, Bryce still maintained a friendly relation with Rendon, and seemed to have an almost protective attitude towards him, which contrasts greatly with how Leonas feels about Rendon. And this is where I came up with another theory about why this is. I believe that Bryce feels personally responsible for the injuries and near death that Rendon suffered during the Battle of White River and feels that he is somehow obligated to look after him. I can only hc why these could be, but maybe Rendon got injured while protecting Bryce, or maybe Bryce's actions during the battle led to Rendon's injuries. Maybe that's why Bryce seems to have keep pushing for the friendship that he once had with him, even though he clearly no longer was the same person. Cause Bryce felt responsible for the way Rendon had turned out.

Its possible that Rendon was just always like this, and those months he spent recovering just made him become super resentful against everything and everyone, but I do believe that the near death injuries he suffered during that battle, including possible head injuries and brain trauma, led to his personality changing and to him becoming the sheer villain we see ingame.

And to finish, a bit of background as to why Rendon would have hated Bryce even despite of this, here's a bit of info about them and about the relation between Highever and Amaranthine.

Rendon's father, Tarleton, supported Orlais during their occupation of Ferelden, and was eventually hanged by the Couslands before the Howes officially joined the rebellion. Adding the fact that Highever was once part of Amaranthine before they rebelled to gain their independence and annexed a good part of southern Amaranthine after winning their independence war, it adds some context to how Rendon could have seen this part of his greater vengeance against the Couslands and Highever for killing his father and taking away land from Amaranthine.

TL,DR: Rendon Howe suffered grieveous injuries during the war against Orlais, including possible brain injuries which may have led to a complete personality shift and to him becoming the person that we see him being in the game.

#dragon age #dragon age meta #dragon age lore #rendon howe #illusivesoulrambles #nathaniel howe #delilah howe #couslands #bryce cousland #eleanor cousland #ferelden #maric theirin #denerim #amaranthine #highever #the landsmeet #dragon age origins #dao #da:o

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curiouslavellan · 1 year

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I love the Grey Whiskey/Ritewine/Conscription Ale bottles from Inquisition, so reblog and tell me what your Hero of Ferelden's drink and label would be

#elly.txt #dragon age #oops all wardens #Harriet's says 'Highever Fortified: Best Served Cold' and it's a mix of all the sweet fruity things she can find #Yulita's is actually just the nicest bottle she was able to steal from wherever they've been recently #the label says 'Top Shelf - No Charge' and she resticks the same label on every new bottle #Iris has as close to pure alcohol as she can get but it says 'Disinfectant. DO NOT DRINK.'#Caradoc's started off saying 'Halla piss' and it was whatever the Dalish most commonly drink (I see cider as a common HC)#but post Haven he crosses that out and rewrites it as 'Andraste's sacrifice' because he put dragon blood in it for his reaper stuff #Phaeron's says 'Malevolent Spirits' and its usually just hard liquor no mixers that he pretends isnt unpleasant to drink #Dorach's says 'Better than dust' and its just whatever he can get #I still dont know what Rendri's would be

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laurelsofhighever · 1 year

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One Last Song

Fandom: Dragon Age: Origins Pairings/Characters: Bryce Cousland/Eleanor Cousland Rating: Mature Warnings: Gore, Violence, Character Death Summary: With her last child fled to escape Howe's attack and her husband dealt a mortal wound, the Seawolf makes her last stand.

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A last glint of light sparked off metal armour as the figure disappeared into the shadows, down the narrow path behind the false wall that led through the passages of the old Alamarri tombs, to a hidden cleft in the rock on the lip of the sea. In the night-time dark, the chance was good that Howe’s men, focused instead on their plunder, on withering Highever’s power at the root, would miss the shape of a lone straggler not worth the sport of a chase.

“Eleanor…”

The Teyrna of Highever straightened at the sound of her name. The midst of battle was no place for softness. Death, she had been taught, was steel-hard, inflexible as stone and as inevitable as the sea. And she had been Death for so many. Drawing in a breath of the stale, brackish air that exuded from the tunnel, she pressed the hidden switch to block it off again, and turned to gather barrels and laden crates, anything that might be shoved against the pantry door to keep it fast against whatever soldiers might come. The sounds of fighting were muffled still, distant, but the gate would not hold for long with enemies on the walls. Still, it offered enough of a breathing space for her to see to the one sharing the room with her. In the moments since she had left him to watch that last trace of hope vanish from sight, Bryce had dragged himself upright to rest against a pile of grain sacks, though the cost of the action shone clear in the new, blue tinge to his lips, the fever-brightness of his eyes as he watched her.

“They’ll be alright, love,” he panted, as she wadded up a spare cloth to staunch the blood pooling around him. “Our children will live – how can they not, when they – when they have such a formidable mother?” He tried to laugh, but the sound escaped only as a wheeze.

“We’ve done what we can for them,” she agreed. “And Howe will regret it.”

For a moment, quiet seeped in around them, with the stench of hot iron rising from the stones and acrid curls of smoke wafting down from the floors above. Their hands pressed together over the wound in Bryce’s side, but though the bleeding slowed, the stain in the surrounding cloth betrayed the futility of the effort.

Unsteady, he raised his fingers to brush her face, to trace the fine bones of her cheek, the wrinkles time had left so lightly at her jaw and the corner of her eye. “You – you should have gone too.”

She caught his hand and held it against her skin. It was already so cold.

“I do not run,” she growled, and stood.

Soot had settled on her armour during the mad dash through the castle; with the first two fingers of her left hand she gathered it, then dragged the digits in unwavering stripes down her face so that one passed over each of her eyes. Her husband’s blood gloved her other hand to the wrist; she took her thumb and drew it first over her knuckles, then just as deliberately smeared the red across her teeth. The taste woke the mettle slumbering in her veins, the old ritual meant to draw down the power of the gods, to make her the calm eye at the centre of the storm.

“To the Lady, for the Lady,” she intoned in Clayne, the language of her people. “My blood and the blood of my enemies this night.”

Her husband’s breath rasped harsher in the stillness as she moved into an archer’s stance before the door. Even after so many years, her feet still expected the phantom sensation of a ship’s deck pitching beneath her feet.

“Did I ever tell you – the moment I fell in love with you?” Bryce asked, as she drew the first of her arrows.

“Tell me.”

“The officers’ moot,” he answered, shallow. “After that disastrous introduction.”

“When you made a tit of yourself. Aye.” The quiver at her belt only held twelve shafts.

He hummed. “You stalked into that stateroom. Full armour and warpaint – just to teach me a lesson. It was that moment. And every moment after.”

She nocked one arrow, and kept two more held between nimble fingers to follow the first. “You’re lucky I didn’t let you drown.”

Behind her, his usual hearty laugh erupted as a weak, bubbling cough that made her fingers clench on the bow. They had shared the same joke for years now, fondly or with exasperation as the situation required. This would be the last.

Tears clouded the vision. She couldn’t afford them. Above the pulse of her heart, beating in her ears like the wings of some great creature, clashing metal and the shouts of dying soldiers became clearer – closer – as the castle’s last defenders were pushed back from the main door.

“Eleanor…”

“I’m here, mo ghràdh,” she said.

“Are they close?” Another laboured breath. “I can’t see anymore. The torches must have – must have gone out…”

“Bryce?” Her heart clenched in her chest. “Stay with me.”

“We must – draw them down. Thin them.” He coughed. “They should consider it – an honour to die at – at your hands.”

“What do you suggest?” she asked, to keep him talking.

He wheezed again, drunk on blood loss. “A song.”

She almost missed the first notes. In earlier days her husband’s voice had been a rich baritone, fair as a harper’s though not trained to anything more sophisticated than an army’s marching songs, and though now his breath was growing more ragged by the moment, the tune hummed true as it ever had in lullabies over their children’s cradles.

Her eyes closed as she recognised it. “I always hated that one.”

“Oh, drop him, Lady, drop him…” A hiss forced its way between his teeth as he shifted to find more comfort. “Liar. Or you’d – never have married me.”

“I took you for pity,” she retorted, without bite, but without her hands shaking either.

“It’s fitting.” His breath hitched. “Sing it with me.”

Howe would not suffer them to live. But she was the Seawolf, and she would make sure he remembered it. She would cost him.

“Eleanor? I can’t see you –”

“The Lion’s ships were Denerim-bound – Oh, drop him, Lady, drop him!”

In the tiny chamber, her voice rang like a struck chime, thick with the tears she held at bay but battle-hard, defiant, the kind of voice that could shout clear orders over the roar of a storm and be obeyed.

“Let the true king’s call for aid resound – Just drop him, Lady, drop him!”

Beyond the door, the noise lulled, and then she heard an echo taken up. The defiance spread as they sang, the chaos of the attack bridled and reined in and turned back on the dogs who had thought to butcher them in their home. Highever’s soldiers had mighty voices, even in the face of defeat, and to a one they knew the words well.

Turn him loose and let him go – Oh, drop him, Lady, drop him! Down to the rocks and sand below – Just drop him, Lady, drop him! The depths can have that scurvy knave – Oh, drop him, Lady, drop him! For brushing off our Seawolf brave –

She made it to the second repeat before the latch rattled on the pantry door, with a voice raised in consternation a moment later on finding it immovable.

“If it won’t budge, break it down,” came the gruff command. “His Lordship wants his prizes and we’re running out of places to look.”

“‘His Lordship’,” she spat, baring her teeth. “A stolen title he won’t enjoy for long.”

A hatchet was brought to try the door, and long moments passed measured in the thud of steel on wood. Belatedly, she thought she should have poisoned the barrels of Antivan wine standing around her, placed in the pantry to be under Nan’s fierce and unrelenting watch.

“Bryce?” she called, as the gleam of the axehead broke through the wood. “Bryce? Are you still with me?”

The axe withdrew. A chunk of the door went with it, the bright torchlight from the other side blocked almost immediately by an eye shoved against the crack.

“It’s them! Call Captain Lowan, it’s th– aaagh!”

Second arrow nocked.

“Break it down – break it down now!”

Three more arrows found their mark before the hole was widened far enough for Howe’s archers to return fire, but by then she had moved to an oblique angle out of range, and sank two more into the most careless who gave her soft spots to target. They rammed the latch. Two more at the chink of light it exposed. The night grew long. A sergeant barking orders sent man after man into the breach, and when she finally ran out of arrows, daggers did well instead to slice throats and find those same soft, weak points as they tried to widen the opening of the barricaded door.

“When the Soldier met the Mistral’s crew, not a word of their great deeds he knew –”

She gasped the words now, exhausted, the rhythm flowing with the strikes of her blades, and they drew back.

“And the Seawolf he took for a servant lass, great Andraste, what an ass –”

Too used to an open field, their swords swung wide and struck sparks from the walls, while she, who had fought on the confined deck of a ship for almost half her life, wielded death with more precision, striking at any opening they left until the bodies piled high.

“’Fore the Seawolf’s ire no man could stand, Soldier felt his death was close at hand –”

A bright bloom of pain opened in her gut, parried downwards from a stab that would have taken her in the heart.

“Two great steps back did he retreat,” she snarled, holding the hilt to her belly, “And the cliff side crumbled ‘neath his feet.”

Her attacker’s eyes widened as her dagger crossed his throat. Blood sprayed onto her face. A cry tore from her lips as the man slumped forward with a grip gone slack on the hilt and wrenched the sword from the wound, but as she turned to face the next she was met with only silence. It rang as only the aftermath of a battle could ring, harsh with breath and beating blood, deadened by the limp weight of the score of corpses at her feet. Others would come soon, looking for the treasury once the riches of the upper floors had been pillaged, and when they did…

The wound in her side bled deeply even after she pressed hard to try and halt the flow. As the battle lust drained away with the warm seep over her hands, a gnawing pain stole in, spreading through her side like cracks in a frost-weathered cliff.

“Bryce…”

As she turned, the room swayed under her, dimming at the edges so that for a moment she lost him in the gloom. But he had not moved. He lay against the sack of grain as still as an iced-over pond, his head rolled slightly to one side.

“No…” The grey eyes looked on nothing. “No, you cannot do this, you cannot –”

Her bloodied hand reached for his face and found it cold, his life nothing but a puddle beneath him, sinking in a slow drip through the flagstones into the ancient bedrock, and she had not noticed. Her own movements weakened; her arm felt cased in lead, her spine no longer rigid enough to support her as she sank down next to him in a pale shade of the intimacy they had shared for so long. Death would take her. Wings would take her. Tears – a useless waste of fluid – sprang to her cheeks and washed away the Lady’s marks, but it did not matter. Voices hovered on the edge of her hearing, though whether it was Howe or the whispers of the Fade she could not tell, and did not care. Instead, her thoughts drifted to the tunnel beneath the castle, to Fergus marching south unaware of the loss of all he’d ever known, to the last glint of light sparking off metal in the darkness.

Gradually, it seemed, her Soldier’s cheek no longer felt so cold.

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