Chapter Text
The cholera outbreak in the southern Free Marches wasn’t quite enough to frighten Maric into closing Ferelden’s borders, but it was enough to make him cautious. After several arguments with his advisors and Loghain – mostly Loghain, if he was honest – they settled on establishing quarantines and checklists in the event of infected parties making their way through the restrictions cities like Kirkwall already had in place. There were dangers, of course, but Maric feared that any more than that would send Ferelden into a panic it couldn’t afford, not only a little more than ten years after the end of the occupation, and not with the kingdom finally steady for the first time since Rowan passed. Their measures seemed to work – for two weeks, only a handful of isolated cases made it into the reports that kept him up into the night, all either sent home again or taken into the quarantines.
Three days after Maric voiced his tenuous hope that the worst was over, five people in Gwaren were sick, and one had died. Almost immediately, there began a furious exchange of messenger crows between Loghain and his wife, Celia, as he insisted she and Anora remove themselves to Denerim for their own safety, and she insisted her place was with her people. Maric only counted himself and the rest of the palace lucky that they weren’t able to argue in person, just yet – Celia was one of the few people he’d met who could match Loghain shout for throat-rending shout, her furrowed brows enough to cow nearly anyone into doing what she asked. They hadn’t met more than a handful of times, but even that was sufficient for Maric to know that he was a little bit afraid of her. When he confessed as much to Loghain one night, over wine, Loghain had snorted and said, “A sensible attitude, I think.”
In the end, Loghain was only able to extricate a promise that Anora would stay inside the castle until they knew the sickness had passed, and that Celia wouldn’t visit the quarantines. That part of the promise was especially dubious, but it had to be enough. There was nothing either of them could do, short of Loghain going out to Gwaren himself, and whether or not he would was unclear. Half the things in his room were packed, hanging out of saddlebags, but the other half stayed neatly in their places, or strewn about his desk as though he had no intention of leaving. Finally, nearly a week after the last letter from Gwaren, Maric thought it safe to ask, his eyes averted as he pretended to look over a trade agreement.
Loghain sighed. “Celia has been more than capable of running the teyrnir in my absences,” he said, more than a little guilt heavy in his tone. “I still have every confidence in her judgment and ability, even if I worry.”
“So you aren’t going?” Maric didn’t like prying when he knew Loghain found the topic uncomfortable, but something in him pushed – perhaps the thought of Loghain lying still, waxy and thin, lips cracked from dehydration as his body expunged everything it had, slowly killing him. It sat in the bottom of his stomach, churning its contents and welling up in his throat, but he swallowed against the sensation. He overreacted, he knew. His friend was hardly made of glass, sturdy where he himself was fragile, and in any case, he was grown and could make his own decisions. There was nothing really keeping him here, not when Maric was on his feet and no longer constantly wracked with his indifference to himself.
Still, Loghain cleared his throat, prevaricated, and left the question unanswered, yes or no. There was still much to be done in Denerim. Nothing that couldn’t be handled without him, of course, but Maric never said as much. His selfishness ate at him, like a poison in his chest, but it was easily ignored in the bustle of the day, in the few precious hours he spent with his son. After he went to bed, it was different, nothing to occupy him except stewing in all his regrets and anxieties. That was hardly out of the ordinary, however. Even if he couldn’t shake the pervasive fear that something would go wrong, that something awful would happen, he brushed it off as nothing to concern himself with once dawn broke. Maric often overreacted. It was as simple as that.
At council the day after next, as Maric, Loghain, and his advisors discussed whether they could afford to send another relief effort to Kirkwall amidst their own troubles, the door flew open and a sweaty young man stumbled inside. His cheeks were red, flushed with exertion – just run from the rookery, Maric imagined, as he clutched a missive in one hand. The boy handed it to Loghain with trembling fingers, his eyes wide with fear – or was it pity? – and in that instant, as Loghain unrolled the parchment and glared down at its contents, Maric knew. His advisors, who had fallen silent at the intrusion, began murmuring to each other again, most of them still pointing accusatory fingers at the map spread on the table in front of them, but Maric could only watch Loghain’s mouth twitch as he read.
“You will excuse me,” Loghain said, getting to his feet in a way that implied he was not requesting their permission. Maric barely waited for the door to shut behind his friend before he called a dismissal and hurried to follow, ignoring the cries of dismay and reminders of duty behind him. He caught up with Loghain in an antechamber, his back to the door and his gaze fixed squarely out a window, the letter still crushed in one hand. Maric threw the lock behind him, conscious of the possibility that someone had followed to drag him back down the hall.
“What happened?” he asked, hoping desperately that the fear clawing at him was unfounded. “Is it–?” The words stuck in his throat, unfinished, so he abandoned them.
For a long moment, Loghain was quiet. He stood still, stiff, his only movements side effects of the steady in and out of his breath. When he spoke, his voice rasped as though he hadn’t said a word in years, grating in a way that almost sounded harsh, cruel. “Celia,” he said slowly, bowing his head, “is in the quarantine. She’s been there for days. Apparently, she commanded the healers not to send word until she was well enough to tell me herself. They felt it was time I knew.”
Any remaining optimism Maric had died in its infancy. Not again, his heart hammered against his ribcage, this can’t happen again. Swallowing against the sensation of bile rising in his throat, clenching his fists against the shake he could feel starting in his fingers, he pushed away memories of dark hair fanned out against a pillow, of lips growing thinner and eyesight growing weaker. This was different. “But if you go,” he choked out, “if you see her, maybe you can–”
“I may not get there in time. She’s not…” Loghain’s voice cracked, almost imperceptibly, but even so, it took Maric aback. After a stretch of silence, he tried again. “Celia has yet to improve. Anora is safe, in the castle, but she needs–”
“She needs her father,” Maric finished, stepping forward and resting a hand on Loghain’s arm, above his elbow. He felt his muscles tighten, and then relax again.
Head still bowed, back still turned, Loghain pulled a deep breath in through his nose and let it out again. “I have to finish packing,” he said, “and saddle my horse. With your leave, I’ll go as soon as I’m able.”
“I’ll see to the horse,” Maric said, giving Loghain’s arm a short squeeze. “Gather your things, and they’ll be ready when you are.”
Finally, Loghain turned to face him. His expression was hard, mouth twisted in a strange line that was almost discomfiting, but in his gaze Maric saw everything he was fighting to hide – guilt, horror, fear, things he had seen in the mirror in his own eyes every day for years. Ignoring the painful throb in his chest at the thought, he dropped his hand and took a step back.
Loghain opened his mouth and then snapped it shut again, his lips contorting back into that awkward shape. Without another word, he stormed past Maric at a pace that was nigh on a run. Maric only allowed himself a few seconds to watch him go, trying to steady himself even as he felt all that kept him grounded slipping out from under his feet.
In an hour, Loghain hefted himself onto an Antivan bred horse, a gift from some noble several years back and their fastest charger by far. Maric himself held the reins as he mounted, his heart full of things he wanted to say but was unsure how to express. He nearly wished him luck, but thought better of it when Loghain pulled the reins from his slackened grip and looked down at him, his lips still tight. Instead, he moved out of the way, holding his gaze, and nodded. With that, Loghain dug in his heels and was off, riding into the afternoon for a journey that would last four days, if he didn’t drive the horse into its grave and arrive in three. Maric doubted they would hear word even then; the returning Teyrn would likely be too busy with his family and his people to send a missive back to his overbearing king.
In Loghain’s absence, Maric felt as though the entire castle had their eyes on him. He was clucked over and checked up on more than once, marveled at behind his back as if he were in a zoo, and one little blond scullery maid with freckles on her pointed ears handed him a pastry from the kitchen and said she “hoped it might cheer him up.” She at least made him smile, reminded him of the little boy with sandy hair growing up so far away, but he found the rest of it almost irritating. They acted as though he were going to break any moment, fall back into his old habits, and leave the kingdom to hang. More than once, he made to snap at someone being especially obvious (Loghain was not his minder, he could survive without him), but each time he stopped. He was only resentful of the truth behind their worries, he knew that. Those three years were not so very far behind them that he could expect Denerim to forget.
He was right, as he’d known he would be. They heard nothing from Gwaren for nearly a week, long after Loghain had arrived unless there was some sort of accident. More than once, his scribe asked him whether he wanted them to pen a letter to the Teyrn, but he always shook his head and left the subject without comment. Pestering would do them no good. News would come when there was news to be had, and until then they would have to be patient. If he were truthful, at least with himself, he wasn’t sure he wanted to ask in the first place. His tenuous ignorance ate at him, a constant worry in the back of his mind, but it left room for something to change. Even if he wasn’t sure how to hope anymore, how to pray for Celia’s life when his prayers for healing had been ignored before, it gave the rest of the castle some peace of mind.
The day that one of Gwaren’s messenger crows alighted in Denerim’s rookery was a bright one. Maric stood in the practice fields and watched as Cailan ran his drills, not quite graduated to a blunted sword but nearly there. His gaze kept darting to where he knew his father stood, checking to see whether he still paid attention, which earned him more than one admonition from his tutor. Bold, if clumsy, he made a few daring, reckless moves that Maric would have ascribed to his youth if Cailan weren’t his son. Daring and recklessness seemed to run in their blood.
“Keep at it!” he called across the yard, when Cailan landed a particularly loud blow against the tutor’s knee. “She has another knee to break.”
“Die, Orlesian scum!” Cailan cried, abandoning his “sword” to tackle the poor woman to the ground. Maric’s laughter almost completely ruined the effect of her ensuing scolding, matching Cailan’s conspiratorial look with one of his own, until he saw a servant puffing along the path with a scroll in her hand. The exchange was made in utter silence, even the sound of his son’s voice dulling with the rest of his surroundings into a muted roar, like blood pounding in his ears. He only held the scroll for a moment, trying to steel himself for whatever bad news could be inside, and felt a small but palpable rush of relief when he recognized Loghain’s handwriting. The parchment was unsigned, but that was typical, especially when he was in a hurry.
Celia returned to the Maker this afternoon, the letter read, its words matter of fact even as Maric could see ink splotches where Loghain’s hand might have shaken. The healers want to burn her body as soon as possible, but I have convinced them to save the ashes for a ceremony. Spread of disease seems to be slowing. It would be good for the people to see their king at the Teyrna’s pyre, if it can be managed.
It was as he had feared. Folding up the letter, Maric tucked it into his belt and leaned against the fence around the practice yard, a hand over his mouth. Poor Celia. She deserved her spot at the Maker’s side, undoubtedly. For a fleeting moment, the thought of her scolding the Maker with shouts that shook the rafters passed through his mind and made him smile. Perhaps she might keep Rowan company.
Thanking the messenger and declining a reply, Maric scrubbed at his beginnings of a beard and took a deep breath. “That’s enough,” he called to Cailan, his voice deceptively calm and even. “You’ve tormented the poor woman plenty for one day. Come here.” Cailan practically scrambled to his side, two of his teeth missing out of the broad, loving smile that seemed to be reserved solely for him. His heart flipped in his chest at the sight. “Walk with me, son,” Maric said, nodding his dismissal at the tutor. Holding a hand out, he waited for Cailan’s ready grip before he led them both down the path.
They trod through the courtyard mostly in silence, while Maric thought of what to say. Cailan was so young when his mother died, he barely remembered her anymore. Much of what he did remember was filtered through what he’d seen of Maric in the aftermath, his father wasting away, his father wilting and lifeless, his father missing. The last thing Maric wanted to do was frighten him with the news of Celia’s death, but he needed to know, especially since he would be coming to Gwaren as well. Even with the cholera still a concern, their presence wasn’t just requested, it was necessary.
Finally, when they passed a wooden bench nestled up against one of the outer stone walls, Maric settled onto it and drew Cailan up beside him. The boy was only seven, and still he was almost too big to fit comfortably under his arm. That didn’t prevent Cailan from trying, however, his shoulder pressed into Maric’s side as he kicked his legs and scuffed his toes in the dirt. Maric watched him, prayed that he knew what he was doing, and cleared his throat.
“Loghain has written a letter asking us to visit Gwaren,” he said slowly, tilting his head to better see his son’s face. “We’re leaving in the morning.”
Pausing the steady back and forth pump of his legs, Cailan screwed up his nose. “Will I see Anora?” he asked, sounding as though he wasn’t sure whether to feel excited or annoyed at the thought. Maric smiled in spite of himself. They got along, he knew, almost too well sometimes, but Anora did tend to boss him around, and Cailan often got too boisterous for her to handle. He could understand a little confusion.
“Yes, I believe so. She will have need of your friendship.”
Cailan hummed, looked away with a pensive expression, and then turned in his seat to face his father, wiggling out from under the weight of his arm. For a moment, they only stared at each other, Maric’s sweet, intuitive son seeming to calculate each flicker in his expression and find him wanting. “Is something wrong, Father?” he asked, less a question and more a request for confirmation. Maric turned over every response he could think of that would soften the blow, anything he might do that would keep his son in the world he’d slowly been building since he came home, but in the end, all he could think to do was bring Cailan back against his side in a one-armed hug.
“Anora’s mother is gone, pup,” he said. “We’re going to her funeral.”
As soon as Maric, Cailan, and their little retinue arrived in Gwaren, Maric settled Cailan inside the castle and left for the quarantine that sat near the harbor, close enough that it was accessible. In the amount of time it took them to travel from Denerim, the outbreak had settled into only one outstanding case, and according to reports, that person was on the mend. Several more had died, their bodies already burned for fear of contamination. When he asked the healer at the door, guarded by a solitary templar who inclined his head brusquely on Maric’s entrance, she took him to a room toward the back of the house, empty except for a table and a simple pot in the middle. Celia’s were the only ashes they had kept.
He didn’t hear the healer slip out of the room, lost in thought as he tracked lines in the pot’s blue glaze. He was still discomfited by the idea that a person could be reduced to little more than a handful of dust. So many people once in his life were now lost, and leading a war made him more familiar with death than he ever would have liked to be, but that mattered little. The ashes in front of him were once Celia Mac Tir, beautiful and terrifying, the wife of his best friend, now gone forever. He would never become used to death.
“Gwaren has suffered a great loss,” he said aloud, in part to the healer he thought was still there. When he turned at the lack of response, he saw Loghain instead, standing in the doorway with his arms folded across his chest, leaned slightly so that his weight rested on the wooden frame. Maric’s heart caught in his throat. Loghain looked as though he hadn’t slept in days.
“Her people know it,” he said. His eyes hadn’t lost any of their piercing shine, their pale blue standing out even more violently due to the darkened shadows above his cheekbones. “Their grief is incalculable. We’ve received more flowers than the staff knows what to do with.”
“Loghain,” Maric said, at a loss for a suitable greeting. Their differences far outweighed their similarities, they both knew, but never had it been better illustrated than in this. In the initial days after Rowan’s death, Maric didn’t get out of bed once, refusing visitors, food, and anything that would have taken him away from the grief that swamped him. Loghain wasn’t like that, of course, Maric never expected him to be. But that meant he had little idea of what to do or say that might provide comfort, give solace, or even express how truly sorry he was. Loghain had dragged him back from the brink of self-destruction, hefted him through years of sorrow, and it dawned on him slowly that he would never be capable of returning the favor.
Loghain walked further inside, stopped at the table, and glanced down at the urn. “There will be a service in two days,” he said, ignoring the stare he could almost certainly feel on his neck. “Her pyre will be largely symbolic, but I could not deny her the funeral she deserves. It is an ignoble death, one that I am sorry she suffered.”
“How is Anora?” Maric asked, unable to think of much else to say. Loghain snorted, but the harder lines in his face softened at what Maric assumed was the thought of his daughter.
“As well as can be expected. She keeps to herself. I trust you didn’t see her at the castle?”
Maric shook his head, just once. They hadn’t spent much time looking, but she hadn’t appeared in any of the racket they made while arriving. Doubtless, she was spending time alone, with her own thoughts. He understood. “Cailan is there. I hope he can be some small comfort to her, once she sees him.” He hesitated before speaking again, struggling against what he knew of his friend and his resistance to anything resembling pity, and his uncontrollable desire to lend Loghain what support he could. In the end, his heart overruled his head. He reached out to touch his elbow. “Are you all right?”
Loghain jerked at the contact, looking down his nose at where Maric’s fingers settled loosely around the sleeve of his shirt. In one movement, he turned his head and shook his arm loose. “I’ve lost my wife, Maric,” he said, a bite in his tone harsher than any cold. The vehemence of it was nearly enough to send Maric reeling. “Surely you remember what that’s like.”
He did. Loghain knew he did. An ache in his chest opened up sure as if someone had ripped it with their bare hands, painful enough that he felt stinging tears threatening to gather at the corners of his eyes. Crying had been rare on the worst days of his listless melancholia, supplanted mostly by a throbbing emptiness, but that never meant he particularly missed it. His mother had never cried, even in the face of her worst defeats, and he felt unworthy of her legacy for being so damnably emotional, even if he knew he couldn’t help it.
A heavy sigh drew him back to the world around him, refocused his attention on Loghain as his friend scrubbed his forehead and closed his eyes. “That was unworthy. I’m sorry.”
Maric gave him a tentative smile, weak, but genuine. “I said worse to you, I think, when you came back.”
“You did.” Loghain nodded and smiled, just as uncertainly, but it felt something like progress. It gave them both the peace of mind to stand in silence for a time, the urn their mutual focus, before Loghain shifted and sighed again. “When I feel anything,” he said slowly, his gaze trained somewhere on the other side of the room, “I believe I feel angry.”
“At her, or at yourself?” Maric asked. Loghain raised an eyebrow, but seemed to honestly consider the question.
“Both, I suppose,” he said at length. Maric snorted a mirthless laugh. That sounded familiar.
“I wouldn’t have wished it on anyone, least of all you. Celia was a good woman.”
“She was.” Loghain laid one hand flat on the table that held his wife’s ashes. For a moment, his gloved fingers dug into the wood as though he intended to crush it in his grip, and then they relaxed again. He shook his head, and said, in a tone that sounded as though it better suited a dry reading of a history book, “I treated her abominably.”
Maric’s heart lurched violently as though it intended to burst from his ribs. “Loghain–”
“I have a great deal more to take care of,” he said, smoothly overriding anything else Maric might have wanted to say. Drawing himself back to full height, he straightened his tunic and clasped his hands behind his back, the Teyrn of Gwaren once more. “I trust you won’t be offended if I’m not available to play your host this evening.”
Maric grappled with his unmoving tongue until Loghain was in the doorway, obviously intent on leaving him without another word. Frustration flared in his gut. “I want to help you, Loghain,” he snapped, immediately feeling stupid for having even tried. He expected a disdainful frown, cold condescension, a biting remark, but instead, when Loghain looked at him, he saw nothing – no expression at all.
“You can’t.”
“What if the rain puts it out?” Cailan whispered, leaning into his father. Maric set a hand on his shoulder, bending slightly so that he could speak low into his ear.
“It won’t,” he said, eyes steady on the pyre as the wood began to flicker and crack. “It’s just a drizzle, son. Hush.”
The pyre seemed strange without a body on it, the blue pot with Celia’s ashes sitting in front where all could see it. In her stead, they had set down some of her possessions, the most prominent of which was a dress. It was the one she’d been married in, if Maric had his guess: a pretty thing that had lost much of its color after so many years in Celia’s closet. There was something almost eerie about it lying there without someone to fill it. Before long, it caught fire and burned, lost in the conflagration.
To his left, a short distance away, Anora stood alone. In her mourning clothes, she looked pale as a ghost, blond hair the same color as her mother’s tucked in an austere bun. Her eyes were red with tears, and yet she shed none – proud, even at nine years old, every inch her father’s daughter. Loghain hovered not too far from her, and he was just as stiff, impassive, his eyes frozen on the smoky tendrils drifting into the sky. Maric had to choke back the rising sorrow in his chest. His friend had made it very clear that he wanted no pity or solace. In the days since their meeting in the quarantine, Loghain had seen him rarely and spoken to him less, refusing to be caught alone for even a moment. Infuriating as it was, that was how Loghain grieved – he knew that, and had experienced it first hand before. Still, a piece of him too large to be contained wished he would let Maric offer the little comfort he could. It broke his heart, to see him so.
Gwaren’s chantry Mother stepped forward, turned to face the crowd, and raised her arms to the heavens. She stood too close to the flames; sweat beaded down her forehead. “The Light shall lead her safely through the paths of this world,” she warbled, her voice thick, “and into the next. For she who trusts in the Maker, fire is her water.” With her guidance, the people of Gwaren lifted their voices, joining her chorus in a solemn, plaintive plea to the Maker for the safe passage of Celia Mac Tir’s soul. Not for the first time, Maric felt struck by how much her people truly loved her.
“The Veil holds no uncertainty for her,” Cailan sang, stumbling over the words without pausing, his voice one step off-key. Anora’s voice was high, sweet, and clear, easily picked out, and even Maric sang, as best he could. Of them all, only Loghain’s mouth remained shut. He inclined his head, eyes shut, but he made not a sound. For him, for the uncertainties he knew he must have been feeling, Maric prayed even harder.
After the service concluded, Maric made no attempt to approach Loghain. Either he would be rebuked, as he expected, or Loghain would feel forced to speak with him for the sake of public appearance, and he did not want that either. Instead, he led Cailan away, expressing condolences to those who stopped him, and walked all the way back to the castle. They were leaving again in the morning, heading home to Denerim. The kingdom wouldn’t have missed him a few more days, but there was no reason for him to stay, not when Loghain was so obviously settling back into his true role as Gwaren’s Teyrn.
It shouldn’t have upset him that Loghain wanted to do the job Maric had originally given him. He hadn’t forgotten where Loghain belonged, not truly – he spent so much time at the palace, and was so content to let Celia govern her own people, that Maric had become complacent, let himself believe it could stay that way. Evidently, he had been wrong, and he was furious with himself for pretending for so long. Gwaren needed a leader, someone who loved her and could give her their attention without distractions. Loghain could be that leader, was that leader, and Maric had no right to keep him in Denerim – not now, and much as it shamed him, not in the past. If he’d been here before Celia fell ill…
Such thoughts plagued him as he finished packing that night, while he lay in bed and tried to sleep, and in the morning, as he watched the stable hands saddling horses. Cailan weaved in and out of the action, getting underfoot, and making up for it with his most charming smiles, until suddenly he was back at Maric’s side, tugging on his arm to get his attention. At the entrance to the yard, Loghain and Anora waited patiently for someone to notice them, ignoring the stammered apologies as one of the younger hands took the bags they were holding. Unease bubbling up in the pit of his stomach, Maric moved to greet them.
“Anora will be traveling with you,” Loghain said, as soon as Maric was close enough. His tone brokered no argument, but even so, he met Maric’s eyes with a steady gaze he found he had genuinely missed. “If you will have her, that is.”
“It would be our pleasure,” Maric said honestly, settling a hand on Anora’s head, briefly. She was dressed in plain riding clothes, her hair in a plait that sat over one shoulder, and if her smile was watery, the look in her eyes insisted he not mention it. “Cailan will be happy for the company. He’s over there, Anora, behind the piebald.”
“Thank you,” she said. Sparing her father a last backward glance, she headed off to root Cailan out from his hiding place. He would help her pick a horse.
Loghain huffed a heavy breath. “I apologize for how sudden this is,” he said, sounding almost genuinely so. “We had planned that she would travel with me, but I felt perhaps your son might make a better companion than I.”
“With you?” Maric repeated. Days of being ignored, refuted, and now he wanted to talk? It was hardly his fault if he didn’t understand.
“Establishing a council has taken longer than I initially thought, and the people still mourn. I may remain here for up to another week.”
“And then where will you go after that?” Maric asked, unable to keep a slight pique from his voice.
“To Denerim.”
Maric blinked. He nearly repeated him again, although he was perfectly aware of how stupid that would sound. Witness King Maric, the pretty talking-bird, unable to understand the common tongue, but capable of parroting it back to you! The worst of it was that Loghain waited patiently for his reaction, a guarded steel in his face as if he expected to be turned away. Did he think Maric so petty, that a disagreement would threaten his place in Maric’s court? Did he imagine Maric would harshly remind him of his duty to the people of Gwaren, and refuse?
He was wrong, on both counts. At his core, in the most secret parts of his heart, Maric had always been a bit of a selfish bastard.
“I thought we would be going home without you,” he said.
Loghain still looked raw, and tired, as though he hadn’t slept at all in days. Dark circles under his eyes gave his skin a sickly pallor, his skin stretched taut over his cheekbones, and yet – he smiled. It was a true smile, if a weak one, and he seemed to feel guilty for it, but it sat on his lips just the same. Maric nearly put a hand on his chest to cover the little thrill he felt for the sight.
“Not this time,” Loghain said – and that was the end of it. Maric left for Denerim that day with a heart lighter than it had been in weeks, enjoying even the inevitable bickering coming from Cailan and Anora behind him. He pushed aside any thoughts of regret or shame, the lingering doubts in his mind left to wait for another time. Maker forgive him, all that truly mattered was that Loghain would come home. They had lost each other once thanks to Loghain’s sense of duty. Even if his nation was the poorer for it, he was glad this would not be the case again.
He’d been wrong in his self-assessment, before, Maric thought a bit ruefully. He was a horribly selfish bastard.