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Oh we’re a mess, poor humans, poor flesh—hybrids of angels and animals, dolls with diamonds stuffed inside them. We’ve been to the moon and we’re still fighting over Jerusalem. Let me tell you what I do know: I am more than one thing, and not all of those things are good. The truth is complicated. It’s two-toned, multi-vocal, bittersweet. I used to think that if I dug deep enough to discover something sad and ugly, I’d know it was something true. Now I’m trying to dig deeper.
I didn’t want to write these pages until there were no hard feelings, no sharp ones. I do not have that luxury. I am sad and angry and I want everyone to be alive again. I want more landmarks, less landmines. I want to be grateful but I’m having a hard time with it.
Richard Siken, "Black Telephone"
----
Valanthe Cousland traveled from Denerim to Teyrnir Highever in the company of her friend Zevran Arainai and her loyal Mabari hound. Leliana was in Orlais; Wynne and Shale in Tevinter; Sten had returned to the Qunari; Morrigan had disappeared into the Wilds and Oghren had decided to accompany Alistair to deal with the future of the Grey Wardens. Zevran insisted he came only to ensure the Hero of Ferelden was not assassinated on the journey, but they talked as they traveled, laughing as they rode and swapping stories at night. He told her about all the missions he’d undertaken as a Crow, about what little he could remember of his childhood, and she told him about her mother and father, her brave older brother made a widower before his time. When she spoke of Oren, she cried, and he took her hand and held on to her tightly.
They traveled lightly, hoping to avoid attention. This proved impossible as they entered Highever lands: farmers wandered out to the road, eyes wide, and peasants crowded around as they rode through towns. Often Valanthe stopped to greet them, to listen to their complaints and thank them for their accolades. More than the glory, more than the gratitude and awe at meeting the Hero of Ferelden, the people expressed their sorrow for the loss of her parents. “Thank you,” she told them, when they clutched her hand and offered their condolences. They begged her to pass their well wishes to her brother.
Her brother sent his honor guard to accompany her as she approached the castle, but he did not come himself. Good, she thought, her blood pumping in her ears as the sound of thundering hooves surrounded her. People lined the road for miles. The cheers were deafening. As always Zevran’s instincts were flawless: beside her he came down from his horse, leading it by the reins. Highever knights fell in line behind her. A bannerman - a boy, couldn’t be older than sixteen - strained to offer a flag for her to take, and she held the laurels of the Cousland crest high as she entered the castle, a thousand people stomping their feet and clapping their hands and screaming her name.
She entered the throne room holding nothing but a stained leather bag which had traveled the entire journey tied to her saddle. Her brother stood before them all, in his shining silken finery. Valanthe saw he wore a circlet of silver on his head: good, she thought, good. They had not spoken of this, not directly, had made no promises in the brief time they’d had in Denerim before he left. But he had understood. They understood each other. Teyrnir Highever would never be humiliated again.
The crowd fell silent as the Warden-Commander approached. She held the leather bag in her hands.
“Teyrn Highever,” she said. “My brother and my lord.”
She turned the leather bag over, and with two thunks its contents dropped onto the stone floor of the throne room. Gasps rippled through the crowd. Valanthe knelt, one hand crossed over her heart.
“I bring you the heads of the traitors Rendon Howe and Loghain Mac Tir,” she announced. The flesh had already begun to rot off of the skull, but when she caught her brother’s eye she saw the fire there, the burning pride, the triumph.
He said, “Rise, sister.”
She stood up tall once more. “On this day I pledge to you my loyalty,” she continued, without hesitation. “I pledge to Teyrnir Highever my sword and my life. I pledge to honor no higher fealty, and to recognize no higher command. I pledge my service to you, Teyrn Fergus Cousland, and to all of your heirs, until the end of time.”
“You belong to Ferelden,” Fergus said. His voice was soft, but strong. “You belong to the Wardens. But we will take you, Warden-Commander. Of course we will take you. Your home will always be here.”
He stepped forward and took her in his arms. Valanthe returned the embrace, holding him tightly. At their feet, Rendon Howe and Loghain Mac Tir stared with sunken eyes into the abyss.
----
By the proclamation of Her Royal Highness Anora Mac Tir,
under the banner of Ferelden’s First Regiment at the Royal Palace of Denerim,
according to common law and practices under the Chant of Light,
In recognition of the Hero of Ferelden’s unique circumstances and her heroic deeds during the Fifth Blight, Queen Anora has permitted the temporary remittance of the remains of her father, the Traitor Loghain Mac Tir, into the property of Fergus Cousland, Teyrn Highever.
It is the Queen’s greatest desire to honor the memory of her father in the way befitting of a daughter’s duty. She humbly requests the return of the remains of the Traitor Loghain Mac Tir before the end of the harvest season, so that she may place him to rest in accordance with Chantry ceremony. The Queen is eager to assure Teyrnir Highever that no special honor will be given towards his burial site. As appropriate to his status as a Traitor, the grave of Loghain Mac Tir will be unmarked and unhonored. The Queen seeks only to fulfill the duties required of her as his only child.
Special dispensation will be required If the remains of the Traitor Loghain Mac Tir are not remitted to the Royal Palace by the end of harvest season.
----
“She’s bluffing,” said Fergus.
“She’s not,” said Valanthe. “You don’t know her like I do. This is beyond polite, this is practically her bowing over backwards for us.” She jerked her shoulder in a shrug. “I say we give it to her.”
“Loghain knew what Howe was planning,” continued Fergus, holding the letter in one hand. “He had no reason except cruelty and ambition to abandon the king at Ostagar. And we’re supposed to allow his daughter to show him honor?”
Valanthe said, “Even prisoners in war have rights, Fergus.”
“Yes, but he’s not a prisoner. He’s dead. His skull is mounted on a spike at the gates. It’s a pilgrimage site now, the people want to be reminded. They need someone to blame.”
“They have Howe,” said Valanthe.
“And how long until his family comes begging for him?” he pressed. “If Anora can do it, they’ll feel they have the right to ask as well. They do not, Val. He slaughtered our family in their beds. They burned Mother and Father’s bodies in a pit. I’m glad to have his head, but I hope the rest of him was chopped into little pieces and fed to the pigs.”
Valanthe did not know. In the dungeons of the Arl of Denerim’s Estate she had gotten on her knees to saw Rendon Howe’s head off his body with a dagger, even as Alistair watched her worriedly and Wynne begged her to reconsider. What happened to the rest of his body, she had no idea. She only knew that the weight of Howe’s head tucked in a saddlebag had been her constant companion as the darkspawn launched their final attack, an unwavering certainty that she had to live so that she could present it as a gift at her brother’s feet.
“Let them beg,” said Valanthe, her eyes staring vacantly at something in the distance. “They don’t have the force of the Queen’s armies behind them. We will be under no obligation to treat them with kindness.”
Fergus said nothing for a moment, his fingers tapping on the table before him. “Perhaps they’ll get desperate,” he said.
“Yes,” said Valanthe.
He didn’t have to finish his thought. She knew what he meant. If the Howes pushed the Couslands, not even the Maker Himself would blame them for drawing their blades. Perhaps allowing them to beg might offer the opportunity for revenge for which they both still ached.
The skull of Loghain Mac Tir was returned to his daughter by Teyrn Highever personally. The Queen stayed at Castle Cousland for five days. At dinner on the first night, Fergus told her in great detail how his men had drawn straws to relay the news to their commander when word of the slaughter reached his troops. How much later he found the letter sent by messenger, and discovered that his beloved Highever officers had softened the blow, had left out the horrible details there. “My wife was raped before she was murdered,” he told Queen Anora, over roast chicken. “They raped her in front of our seven-year-old son, and then they tore her open from neck to groin. I understand my son was stabbed in the belly. I wonder how long he spent with his mother’s corpse before the Maker finally took him into His arms.”
To her credit, Queen Anora only repeated her deepest condolences for his loss, unflappable. She remained cool and polite and appropriate for the entire trip, including when she emerged from Castle Cousland and found the people of Highever shouting in fury at her guards. For not the first time - though this time was certainly the loudest - Anora heard the accusations, that she had no right to the throne, that she had been a co-conspirator in her husband’s death, that without any of Cailan’s children she was just some pretender. And if the people could elect their queen from nobility, why would anyone choose the daughter of the traitor Loghain Mac Tir over the Hero of Ferelden?
But this rabble quieted beyond the reaches of Highever. The Hero of Ferelden, a notorious ghost, said nothing, and beseeched that her brother would not either. But she did have Rendon Howe’s skull taken off the spike at the castle entrance, and fashioned by an artisan into a bejeweled cup for her brother to use to take his ale.
Sometimes in private, late at night, he took too much ale and it was his sister’s responsibility to take him back to his quarters. Sometimes he screamed and cried like a child, curling his bedsheets in his fists. I will never love again, he sobbed. I will not betray my wife. I will not replace my son. It will kill me, Valanthe, if I am allowed a life when they are not.
She held him and let him cry until he slept. After some time this eased. When he drank he took other women into his quarters, not his sister.
Alistair visited. Valanthe had hoped he would get along famously with her brother, had thought they were so alike. It turned out they weren’t. When she forced them together, it was awkward and stilted. Both of them tried, but it took Alistair spelling it out for Valanthe to realize what was going on.
“He knows Valanthe Cousland,” he told her. “But she died the day you took your Joining, Val. You’re the Warden-Commander now. That’s who I know. That’s who you are.”
It was such a painful thing to say that Valanthe decided she would finally leave Highever with Alistair as he traveled west towards Orlais, meeting with the Orlesian Grey Wardens. Not long after that he suggested that she travel to Vigil’s Keep, to see if they needed her there.
When she first met Nathaniel Howe, she found herself imagining the shape of his skull, when all skin had shrunk and receded, when the eyeballs had been picked out by birds, when he was nothing left but bones. She stood there in the dungeons for some time. Then she told them to let him go.
She didn’t know why. She could not explain it, not even to herself. Oghren grunted, “It’s better than he deserves,” and Valanthe found herself picking a fight. He didn’t do anything wrong. He just had the misfortune to be born Rendon Howe’s son.
When Nathaniel came back it took everything Valanthe had in her not to scream at him to leave, to go, that she did not want him here. He reminded her of mercy and compassion, which were traits that she did not want to think of herself with. She wanted to be made of vengeance. She wanted to be a gaping wound, a raw nerve, dangerous and bleeding. She did not want to feel kindness when she thought of the name Howe.
Time, that treacherous old bastard, began to paper over the pain. She got used to Nathaniel at her side, Velanna and Anders on either side of him. They teased. He bitched about everything, about the cold, about the rain, about the walking and especially about the food. Sometimes Valanthe caught herself laughing along with them, sharing a drink in the cellar of the Keep, red-faced and happy.
She thought of her brother. What a betrayal it was, happiness, when he suffered as the last remaining Cousland. News came infrequently, but rarely changed. Still her brother had not taken a wife. Still he had no children. No living children, she sometimes had to remind herself.
Anders made crude jokes about it, especially when he got fed up with the teasing about the mage robes. “I don’t fuck women,” he said, resolutely, to which Sigrun slammed her fist on the table and said, “That’s a stone-damned lie,” and Anders insisted, “I said I don’t fuck women, I’ll do everything else with them. Force of habit from the Circle!”
“Right,” said Nathaniel, amused but openly skeptical. “Because the templars at your Circle much preferred it when the men fucked each other, is that it?”
“Oh, they hated it - which looking back, may have been another reason why it was so appealing. But no,” insisted Anders. He had spilled some of his wine, and his face was flushed with drunkenness. Oghren took the cup from his hand and emptied it. “Twelve babies! In fifteen years! I delivered twelve babies in the Circle, and what do templars do to infants born to mage women? They tear them from their mother's breast and toss them to the Chantry to be raised as an orphan. No,” he insisted, shaking his head. “No. I won’t do it. I won’t risk it. Everything but the act itself, trust me, but not that. Even now, outside of the Circle, it still feels wrong.”
Velanna rolled her eyes. “It’s pathetic that you think you need to justify the fact that you aren’t attracted to women, Anders.”
“I am,” shouted Anders, as Oghren roared with laughter as Nathaniel pointed out, “He can’t take his eyes off your legs in that armor, Velanna, you can’t fake that.”
Distantly Valanthe thought of Leliana. They had tried to exchange letters at first, but after a while she hadn’t known what to say. Yes, it had been nice to know that Leliana cared for her. But Valanthe had not had the time to entertain the idea of that, not really. The closest she came was the kiss from Alistair, and she still regretted the look on his face when she stopped him short in his tracks. She and Leliana had never even kissed. But there was something very Leliana about that, the chaste love of a Chantry sister.
A letter from Fergus. Oren would have been nine years old today. When the message was delivered at the gates of the Keep, she had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep herself from crying. Justice peered at her curiously, like he did not understand something, and Anders moved protectively over her shoulder to shield her face from view. Nathaniel looked pointedly away.
They drank that night, so much that Valanthe laughed and joined in as they tried to see if it was possible for Justice to get drunk. After finishing off most of Oghren’s cask and reporting that he felt only the slightest tingle in the tips of Kristoff’s fingers, they decided it wasn’t worth it to waste so much good ale, and went back to drinking it themselves. Velanna teased Anders openly as he regaled them all with stories of his valiant escapes, though Nathaniel kept cutting in to say, “That doesn’t seem very likely.”
Justice left first, because he preferred the quiet and alone. Oghren passed out under the table, then Velanna and Sigrun after that until it was just the Warden-Commander, Nathaniel, and Anders left awake. She took another cup of wine: they had run clean out of ale.
Anders was asking Nathaniel, “You were squired in Kirkwall?” When Nathaniel nodded, Anders continued, “I was on my way to Kirkwall before - well - all of this.”
“What for?”
“There’s someone there I need to find,” said Anders.
“Oh?” asked Nathaniel, cocking an eyebrow. “A lady kind of someone?”
“Close,” Anders replied, offering him a grin. “A gentleman kind of someone. He was transferred from the Tower a few years ago. I’ve been trying to find him since.”
Nathaniel lowered his cup to the table. “A mage?” Anders nodded. Nathaniel shook his head. “You’re better off not knowing.”
Instantly Anders’s expression - a sleepy sort of drunken smile - transmuted into a frown. “What?” he asked. “Why?”
“It’s not good,” said Nathaniel. “The Gallows, I mean. That’s what they call the Kirkwall Circle. The templars basically run the city, and they do whatever they want within the Gallows’ walls.”
Anders watched him, his expression dark. “What do you mean?”
Nathaniel shrugged. “There were more and more Tranquil every year I was there. Grown adults, mages who had to have passed their Harrowing. I don’t know how the Chantry allowed it.”
Despite the copious amount of drink he’d imbibed, this seemed to sober Anders up. Not long after that he too disappeared, heading for bed or to make grand new plans for the next phase of his endless escapes. “Goodnight, Commander,” said Nathaniel, when it was just the two of them left. “We’re to Amaranthine in the morning. Don’t be late.”
Twenty minutes later he had tucked himself into bed - wishing vaguely he had a bed warmer, though he couldn’t ask without the rest of them ruthlessly making fun of him - when he heard the door slip open. His first thought was darkspawn, but his thoughts were slow and hazy with drink and sleepiness, and before he could rightly decide what to do someone had lifted the sheets, and he felt hands on his shoulders, and the weight of a body slipping onto his lap. It was dark, but he caught the scent of wine on her breath, the familiar calluses on her fingers.
“Commander?” he whispered.
Her hands went to his waist, to untie the knot of his bedclothes. “Shush,” she mumbled, her words slurring. “You owe me. You owe me this.”
“Commander,” he said again, and this time he took hold of her fingers, stopping her before she went any further. He felt a drop of something hot and wet land on his chest, and suddenly, horribly, he realized that she was crying.
“You owe me,” she insisted, but her hands had gone limp in her grip. “My brother - he will not marry again, I know he won’t, he can’t bear it - we are the last of our family - you did this to us, you have to…” she trailed off, dissolving into shaky breaths. There was a logic to this, if Nathaniel followed what she meant. He just watched her silhouette in the dark, his brow furrowed. She tore her hands from his grip and pulled wretchedly at his bedclothes. “I will not be the last Cousland,” she declared. “You owe it to me.”
The Grey Warden Commander Valanthe Cousland, Hero of Ferelden, was nearly six feet tall and powerful, lean, all sinew and muscle. If she wanted them off, Nathaniel’s clothes would be off by now. She struggled haplessly instead, wiping her face with her hands, her skin coming away wet with tears. No cries escaped her lips, though her shoulders wracked with silent sobs. He wondered if this was how she had cried on the day his father’s men invaded her home, hiding in a cabinet until they abandoned the search of her rooms, like all the stories said. Hiding like a child while her brother’s wife and son were slaughtered like animals.
He took her hands in his. Quietly, he said, “Valanthe.”
She tore her hands away and moaned. “Don’t call me that.”
“Warden-Commander,” he amended. “You need sleep. Things will be different in the morning.”
Her shoulders shook. “Things will never be different,” she mumbled, miserably. “I will never have another life. I will never have another family.”
“You have your brother,” he reminded her, gently.
With her open palm she slapped him across his bare chest, stinging his skin. “Don’t you dare speak of him,” she hissed. “You with your sister…her living husband, the baby in her belly… Did you know my brother’s wife was with child when they killed her?... She hadn’t told Fergus, just me and our mother… I will go to my grave with that secret… You don’t get to speak of my brother, Nathaniel Howe. You do not have my permission to speak of my family, ever.”
He said, “And yet now it seems you want me as part of that family.”
She hit him again, her fist pounding into his shoulder. A gasping sob escaped her lips, and she collapsed on top of him, her face pressed into the crook of his neck. “No,” she whispered. Her tears smeared against his skin. “No. My name. My child. I have no one else.”
Rumors said otherwise. “Surely any child of yours would be better off with king’s blood in their veins, Commander.”
She let out a breathy sound of contempt, almost a laugh, hot against his neck. “I could no more bed my brother. I could not ask Alistair. Not after I already kept one child from him.”
Nathaniel did not know what this meant. He had found himself growing skeptical of the rumors surrounding the Hero of Ferelden and King Maric’s bastard, primarily because the Warden-Commander had never indicated an interest in men in the time he’d known her. But he could have been wrong about that. After all, here she was, in his bed pressed against him in the dark of night.
He didn’t move. She had stopped shaking, laid out on top of him limply, her cheek pressed against his shoulder. He didn’t know what to do with his hands, so he placed them palms-down on the bed on either side of them.
“Anders is one room over,” he said, after a terrible, penetrating silence. “I suspect he’d be quite happy to help.”
She sniffed. Then she mumbled: “I won’t forfeit a child to the Circle.”
Despite himself, he had to let out a little chuckle. “Better a Howe than a mage, is that it?”
“You owe it to me,” she insisted. She pulled herself up to look him in the eye, and the stench of alcohol on her breath almost blinded Nathaniel. “Your family killed my family. I don’t want a husband. I want reparations, Nathaniel. I want revenge. I want my family back. And I want you to make it so.”
He didn’t want to say the next words that came bubbling to his mind, but he couldn’t stop himself. “You killed my father,” he said. “You had your revenge.”
She shook her head ever so gently. With one finger she reached out and touched his forehead, pushing hair back from his temples.
“It did not give me what I wanted,” she whispered. She watched him like a bird of prey, her eyes dull and blank in the darkness. “It did not bring my parents back, nor my sister and nephew. It did not send me back to safety. It did not turn me back into who I was, before.”
Quietly, Nathaniel said, “A child won’t do that, either.”
She knew this. Of course she knew this. And if the Warden-Commander wanted a child off of Nathaniel there was little he could do but comply, but that wasn’t what she wanted. What she wanted he was incapable of giving; she was incapable of taking. Nothing could be done that could ever make any difference.
She laid against him like a corpse. After a long time of stillness and skin against skin, finally he detected her gentle snores. Very carefully he extracted himself from the bed, tugging the blankets up about her shoulders. He fetched water for the morning, for she would be in pain when she woke up. And he sat with her through the night.
In the early morning Anders caught Nathaniel closing the bedroom door behind him as the Warden-Commander let out a particularly evil-sounding retch. He grinned at Nathaniel. Innocently he asked, “Had a late night, did you?”
But Nathaniel opened the door for him all the same. At the end of the day Anders was an accomplished healer, and it took him only a few minutes with the Warden-Commander to get her at least back on her feet, though still a bit wobbly. “I know it’s unlikely for Wardens,” he added, kindly, “but if you’d like anything to make sure it doesn’t take,” he gestured to her lap and the place on her belly just above it, “then I do have a special tea I can brew for you.”
Quickly Nathaniel said, “That won’t be needed,” to which Anders replied mildly, “Let the lady speak for herself, Nate.”
Valanthe too refused the offer. “He was a gentleman,” she muttered, massaging her aching head.
“Yes, well,” shrugged Anders, matter-of-factly, “that method isn’t always foolproof-” at which point Nathaniel removed him bodily from the room.
The Warden-Commander was unpopular in the Arling. When she sat in the throne room of Vigil’s Keep and listened to their complaints, she dreamt of sending them all away, of slaughtering them all, of setting up favored nobles from Highever across Amaranthine to bolster her support. Once when she wondered such a thing aloud, Seneschal Varel delicately but pointedly recommended against it. Highever was the strongest teyrnir in Ferelden, even after Howe’s betrayal. Expanding to Amaranthine, so close to Denerim, would be seen as an act of expansion. An act of aggression. The queen was already uneasy with the Hero of Ferelden’s political influence, everyone knew that. Valanthe should take care not to disrupt her further.
Especially not when she had news from Highever that her brother had refused to offer men for the royal guard, historically staffed by men from every region in the country. It was a foolish move, but Valanthe understood it. Fergus still smarted at having to bend the knee to Queen Anora Mac Tir, of no royal blood, the daughter of a traitor.
They say she’s barren, he wrote to her, in a long and rambling letter. Valanthe wondered if he’d been drinking. They say she’s a witch who ensorcelled Cailan with her beauty and wiles but forfeited her womb to do it.
Valanthe wrote back, She didn’t need to ensorcell Cailan, they were betrothed at birth. It’s not like it’s her fault she hasn’t had any babies.
Fergus did not reply to that letter for weeks. She imagined him doing the same thing she had, getting stone drunk and crawling into the nearest bed, desperate for a life that was long gone.
Mostly she did not acknowledge what happened between her and Nathaniel. Without really looking him in the eye, she’d admitted, “It was a moment of weakness. It will not happen again.” And he said nothing in return, only watching her with a pained look on his brow.
When she attacked the Keep with the Crows, Valanthe put Bann Esmerelle down like a dog. She screamed that this was for Arl Howe and Ser Temmerly, both cruel men, both dead at the Warden-Commander’s hand. Valanthe found herself unmoved. She had no loyalty for the Amaranthine nobles.
Her loyalty laid with the people, with a city besieged by Darkspawn. Vigil’s Keep had not been her home, and once it had belonged to Rendon Howe. When she abandoned it, she saw the hard look in Nathaniel’s eye, the way he argued, insisting The city is already lost, but she would not hear it. And once it was done she saw the shame in his eyes, kneeling in the pews of the Chantry and begging forgiveness from the Maker.
They had no time to wait. She could not bear to hear news of the Keep, so she took Nathaniel - and Velanna and Sigrun - and she chased after the Mother.
She emerged from the Deep Roads to discover that Vigil’s Keep had lasted over a week against a thousand darkspawn. Anders, still exhausted days after the battle, greeted her weakly by the fire, surrounded by a constant barrage of soldiers buying him drinks. “I knew you’d make it,” she told him, scratching Ser Pounce-a-Lot under the chin. “I trusted that you would.”
“Sure,” he agreed. She noticed his earring was different, a dot of a jewel instead of a gold ring. “The only reason you abandoned us is because you knew we could take the full weight of the darkspawn army. So thoughtful, you are, Commander, so kind to us.”
He was joking, so she grinned back at him. “So,” she said. “What do you think? Will you stay?”
“As a Grey Warden? Or at the Keep?”
“Both,” she said.
He shrugged, raising his ale to cheers against the drink in her hand. “Only if you do, Commander.”
Nathaniel’s nephew was born that spring. Often he was gone from his quarters, in Amaranthine with his sister and her husband. More and more Valanthe stayed away from the city, spending time with Oghren in the Keep. The others too drifted. Slowly Sigrun seemed to lose her focus, her thoughts somewhere else entirely. Sometimes Valanthe had to call her three or four times before she snapped back to the present. Velanna withdrew, as Velanna was wont to do, became secretive and snappish. When Nathaniel tried to draw her into conversation, to be a part of them all there in the Keep, it no longer worked. Valanthe heard her shut down his advances, saw the longing look in his eye when he thought she wasn’t looking. She did not pity him.
Justice was there sometimes; other times he was not. As the days passed he became more insubstantial, like Valanthe could walk into a room and not even notice that he was already there. At night sometimes he went to the tallest tower and looked at the stars. Aura visited the Keep now and again in her work as a seamstress. Her eyes followed Justice’s movements like an animal’s, her expression blank and painless.
A year passed at the Keep. Nathaniel, Justice, and Anders left within days of each other. Justice and Anders disappeared without a word, but Valanthe caught Nathaniel in the halls of the Keep late at night, a traveler’s pack around his shoulders.
He stopped short, watching her, his mouth a thin line.
Then he held his arms out and he said: “Kill me.”
Valanthe just returned his gaze. “Why?” she asked.
“Last chance.”
Something felt unpleasant in her stomach, like the sensation of a stone dropped into water from a great height. “You’re leaving?”
He nodded. “If you want to kill me, do it now, Commander.” He watched her. “If that’s what you want, I would not keep it from you.”
For one beautiful, blissful moment, she almost pulled her sword from her scabbard.
Instead she asked, “Where are you going?”
He shook his head. “I can’t tell you.”
“Afraid I’ll hunt you down?”
“I am chartering a boat,” he told her. “But I will not be the only one on the voyage. I gave my word that I would not tell you where Anders is headed.”
Yes, she thought so. “What of Justice?”
He shook his head again, but this time said nothing.
She considered Nathaniel Howe for a long moment. He was tall, like his father had been, with dark hair and piercing eyes. She could not remember the color of Rendon Howe’s eyes: they had been the first to rot and be eaten by vermin when she carried the head with her back to Highever. Nathaniel’s were the color of pondscum green.
Her gaze flicked away from him. “It will not bring my family back.”
He did not move. She saw the crease on his brow, the way his mouth seemed to work, as if searching for the words, tasting them carefully before he spoke to her. With great effort, he began, “If I can…give you, what you want. Then tell me, Valanthe, and I will stay. I will send word to the ship to leave without me, and I’ll stay.”
A rush of affection rose in her chest. “What?” she asked him, a small smile tugging at her lips. “You’d still offer to be the father of my children? Even after I practically forced myself on you?”
His shoulders were wound tightly. “It was a moment of weakness,” he said, quoting her words back at her.
She gestured with one hand for him to go. “You cannot give me what I want, Nathaniel. Go.”
He bent at the waist, bowing low to the Warden-Commander. It was the sort of bow one might offer to a queen. And then he turned away, and he disappeared into the night.
Kristoff’s body was found not long after that, empty of any spirit. It was returned to his widow Aura. If Valanthe had suspicions about where Justice had gone, she kept them to herself.
Those Amaranthine nobles who had been loyal to Howe or Loghain were all dead; those that remained were of recent nobility, younger, more connected to the peasants and to the city. And the people loved the Hero of Ferelden; they called her the Hero of Amaranthine sometimes, for her refusal to abandon the city to the darkspawn. And there were rumors from the west, leaders of the Bannorn sending caravans and messengers to Vigil’s Keep, taking private meetings with the Warden-Commander. To fund the restoration of the city, tollways were set up along the roads from Denerim. Royal guards of the First Regiment refused to pay, and killed two workers at the tollbooth. Queen Anora sent her apologies directly to the Warden, along with a donation for the workers’ families and to put towards rebuilding.
On Feastday, Valanthe opened the gates of Vigil’s Keep to all. Farmers and landowners had fallen over themselves to offer food and drink, slaughter their animals and produce their crops, sending their own cooks and servants to prepare the feast. It was a riotous celebration, filled with good food and ale and games. Drunken speeches were made. Ser Derren - Bann Derren now, having taken Esmerelle’s seat - hoisted his cup to the Warden in a toast.
“To the Hero of Ferelden!” he bellowed, to thunderous cheers, applause and the stomping of feet. “She who slayed the archdemon! Who avenged her family against the snake Rendon Howe! Who executed the traitor Loghain Mac Tir!”
More cheers, deafening now. To Varel, Valanthe grinned and murmured, “My friend Alistair actually did that.”
Ser Derren drank, and there was a brief reprieve from the shouting as all around the hall, everyone took a long draught of their ale. He smacked his lips and held up his empty goblet. “Such brutal shame,” he hissed, drunkenly, “that Ferelden now lays captive to the traitor’s daughter.”
Nervously, Varel intervened. “She is the widow of the king-”
“Had she borne him children?” called Derren, raising his voice above Varel’s. “No? Then that woman has no blood claim to the throne. All she is is the daughter of a teyrn, and a traitor at that!”
A shepherd the Warden-Commander once spared from execution stepped forward. “We have our own daughter of a teyrn!” he shouted. “And Teyrn Highever was no traitor!”
The hall shook from the force of two hundred people banging their cups against the tables and stomping their feet.
Valanthe sat on her throne in Vigil’s Keep, listening to them scream her name.
----
To the Warden-Commander,
Your brother, the Teyrn of Highever, requests your presence at Castle Cousland as soon as possible. Urgent business requires your attendance. The teyrn bids that you make haste.
----
“She has to be joking,” insisted Fergus.
Valanthe still inspected the letter. “She wouldn’t. Not about this.”
If Valanthe had had any concerns about her brother’s state of mind and the drunken sound of his letters, these were assuaged when she arrived at Castle Cousland to find it in pristine shape. There were more guards than she had ever seen, but that filled her with a sense of unspeakable relief, relief she could barely look at directly. Her brother had been trained as a field general, and he ran his teyrnir like an army: clean and sharp and carefully rationed. Approaching a difficult winter and poor harvest like a clash of armies, he ensured that the peasants would have enough to eat, even if it meant the nobility had to tighten their belts.
Highever adored him. It was striking to Valanthe, seeing the admiration in the eyes of his people, from the peasant farmers in their fields to the advisors at his back. They had been leaderless, controlled by the iron fist of Rendon Howe for the better part of a year. Now Fergus Cousland, the prodigal son, the young widower, only living family to the Hero of Ferelden, had returned to them, and brought wisdom and fair judgment.
And he still drank his wine from the cup fashioned out of Rendon Howe’s skull. It was a thing of legends, kept always in the throne room, where all could see.
As winter came to an end, he had received a letter directly from the queen, written in her hand. Valanthe was a little surprised Anora hadn’t written to her first; but then, perhaps she overestimated the warmth between the two of them. Anora had been calculating and recalculating every moment they spent together, never fully honest, never all deception. Perhaps their alliance had been less about trust, and more about Anora securing her future.
The queen had a proposal for the Teyrn of Highever, and had requested his presence in Denerim to discuss the potential match.
Furious, Fergus paced back and forth in his personal quarters, where Valanthe read and reread the letter. “Her father,” he spat, “allied with the man who murdered my wife. And now she asks to take her place? It’s a plot, Val, she’s been planning this from the beginning. She’s carrying on her father’s work.”
Valanthe thought of the crowds at Vigil’s Keep, the joyful loyalty of the men here at Highever. “Her father held her prisoner, Fergus. She allowed me to end his life. If she were truly loyal to him, she never would have supported me at the Landsmeet.”
“It’s a faithless power grab!”
“Maybe it is,” said Valanthe, challenging her brother. “But she’s right about one thing.”
His gaze snapped to her. “And what’s that?”
She held up the letter. “You need a wife.”
His eyes bugged out of his head, utterly incensed. “My wife is dead,” he spat, slamming his palms onto the desk where Valanthe sat. “My son is dead.”
“You are still young,” she told him, calmly. “You will have many more children yet. You will rebuild the Cousland line. But in order to do that,” she said, “you need a wife.”
“She’s barren,” he snapped. “She’s a witch. Haven’t you heard the stories?”
“Then you’ll father a bastard. If you’re married to Anora when you do it, that’s a royal bastard. He would have a claim to the throne, Alistair proved that.” Fergus said nothing as she spoke, something dawning in his eyes, almost like fear. “Listen,” said Valanthe, reaching across the desk to take hold of her brother’s wrist. “This is our chance. We could have it all. A Cousland on the throne of Ferelden. A Cousland dynasty.”
He ripped his wrist away from her touch, his expression tight with misery. “And all I have to do to secure our future is betray my family.”
“I am your family,” Valanthe told him. “You do not betray me, Fergus.”
Fergus worked his jaw, considering this. One hand held his wrist, where she had touched him. “She’s only offering this because of you.”
“Maybe,” said Valanthe.
“Not maybe. Highever and Amaranthine threaten civil war, and they want you as their commander. No,” he corrected. “Not commander. They want you as their queen.”
“I am a Grey Warden,” she said, steeling herself. “Even if I won the throne, my claim would die with me. I will have no children, Fergus. I haven’t bled since the Joining.”
He had not known this; for a moment his resolve crumbled, but with great effort he heaved it up once more. “Marriages,” he said, “are supposed to be about love.”
Perhaps this was true. Perhaps it wasn’t. Anora’s marriage to King Cailan had had little to do with love and everything to do with their families. Even Oriana had been presented to court by her wealthy Antivan father, not some wench met by chance.
Valanthe rose from her seat at the desk, and went to her brother. “You love Highever,” she told him, taking his hand. “You love our people. You love me.”
He shook his head, covering his face with his hand, hiding the hot shame of the tears on his cheeks. Valanthe brought the hand she held to her lips, and she kissed the ring.
“Long live the king,” she said.
They arrived in Denerim with a company of two hundred knights on horseback, the banners of Highever flying behind them. At the gates to the Royal Palace Queen Anora met them in the courtyard, the hem of her dress dirtied by mud on the cobblestones. “You honor me with your presence,” she told them both, but her gaze was focused on Valanthe when she said it. “The crown welcomes you.”
Fergus did not dismount his horse. “My men require barracks and supplies,” he said.
Anora bowed her head. “They will be well-provisioned in Fort Drakon.”
Negotiations were held with advisors: Arl Eamon, Bann Teagan, and Bann Derren accompanied the Couslands, along with the commander of the Highever army, who stood at attention just behind his teyrn. Bann Ceorlic, Grand Cleric Elemena, and Arl Wulff accompanied Queen Anora. She brought with her no military men, but her maidservant Erlina stood at her back. Both sides proposed their conditions. All were agreed upon except for two.
“Vigil’s Keep belongs to the Warden-Commander,” said Fergus, his voice heated. “The Arling of Amaranthine was rightfully given to my sister-”
“It was given to the Grey Wardens,” corrected Bann Ceorlic.
“My sister,” snapped Fergus, “is a Grey Warden.”
Valanthe placed a hand on her brother’s arm, silencing him. “The Arling belongs to the Wardens,” she agreed. “The next Warden-Commander will inherit Vigil’s Keep. It is not a hereditary claim. If your wish is that I relinquish my claim on Amaranthine, then all I can do is appoint a new Warden-Commander.”
Queen Anora nodded. “That satisfies my request, Warden.”
“I will name Alistair Theirin,” said Valanthe.
Arl Wulff groaned. Anora was not deterred. “I will not object.”
“But Fergus will be styled King,” Valanthe countered. “Not Prince Consort.”
Anora’s mouth flattened into a thin line. The Grand Cleric leaned in and whispered into her ear. “Fine,” said Anora. “But in return Teyrnir Highever will be absorbed into the Crownlands.”
Fergus practically jumped to his feet in fury. Valanthe reached out and tugged him back into his seat.
Anora merely continued, “As King, your lands belong to the crown. The prince or princess will inherit them, along with all the rest of the Crownlands.”
“No,” spat Fergus. “Highever remains.”
“As Prince Consort,” Anora said, “you will retain your titles. Our eldest child will inherit the throne. Any child after that will be permitted to inherit Castle Cousland and rule Teyrn Highever.”
Arl Eamon glanced between Fergus and the queen. “A fair trade,” he advised Fergus, whose jaw was clenched tightly. “It’s just a title. Your children will inherit the right to call themselves king.”
A sneer crossed Bann Ceorlic’s face. “But his bastards won’t.”
Teagan and Derren were instantly on their feet, ready to defend Fergus from such insult. But Anora held up her hand.
“Bann Ceorlic,” she said. “Leave us.”
His eyebrows shot up. “My Queen - you know this is his objection-”
“Out,” she said, sharply. “Now.”
There was a moment’s hesitation. Bann Ceorlic glared at Fergus and Valanthe, and then he stalked out of the room, his head held high.
“The Couslands may keep Highever,” Anora promised them. “The Wardens may keep Amaranthine. You will be styled the Prince Fergus Cousland.”
His voice striking like a flint, Fergus asked, “Not Mac Tir?”
Anora bowed her head slightly. “As is the custom, the husband will retain his name, and the wife will take his.”
“So selfless,” mocked Bann Derren. “Eager to help the people forget who your father is, my Queen?”
With great dignity, Anora said: “I count the days until I may call the Hero of Ferelden my sister, yes.”
A heavy silence smothered the room. Valanthe looked at her brother, who glared at Anora. He glanced his sister’s way. With a jerk of his chin, he offered her a nod.
“We accept,” said Valanthe.
After the marriage ceremony, in the great hall of the Royal Palace, Fergus knelt before his queen and swore himself to her. “On this day I pledge to you my loyalty,” he spoke, the words like gravel in his mouth. “I pledge to my Queen and my wife, Anora Cousland, my sword and my life. I pledge to honor no higher fealty. I pledge to recognize no higher command. I pledge to defend the Kingdom of Ferelden until my dying breath, and to serve and protect you as your loyal husband until that day.”
Traditionally, he would have pledged to obey and protect. Anora did not protest when Valanthe asked her to change obey to serve .
Alistair joined Valanthe in Denerim for the wedding and coronation, accepting his position as Warden-Commander. He brought with him Leliana, who smiled at Valanthe but always disappeared whenever Valanthe tried to find her for a moment alone. She felt badly for not writing. She wanted to explain, but didn’t know what to say.
Wynne and Zevran returned as well. Wynne held Valanthe in her arms, smoothing her hair with her hands. “I am so proud of you,” she told her. “You and your brother honor your parents, you know. I hope you know that.”
“Good luck being king,” Alistair said to Fergus, shaking his hand. “I didn’t want it, too much work, but I understand Anora’s got most of that taken care of.”
“Prince Consort,” corrected Fergus. “Not a king.”
“Oh,” said Alistair, nodding his head. “Well, good luck on being that I suppose.”
When Alistair asked if Valanthe would serve in Vigil’s Keep as his second-in-command, she declined. With her brother so recently gone, she had to return to Highever, to look over their ancestral home. “It’s temporary,” she told Alistair. He seemed doubtful, watching her with his expression drawn and worried. “I’ll join the rest of the Wardens when I have everything under control again.”
It was, to everyone’s great relief, hardly a year before the healers confirmed Anora was with child. When Valanthe went to visit her brother at the palace - she came from Highever, having never left - he poured her wine unsteadily, already drunk. “We’ll need two, of course,” he said, matter-of-factly. “One for the throne and one for Highever. Let’s hope it’s twins, eh?”
He knocked his cup against hers, spilling wine from Rendon Howe’s skull.
Anora lost the baby in winter. The sheets were so soaked with blood they had to be burned. Afterwards Fergus left the Royal Palace, retiring to Castle Cousland until spring arrived. Alistair wrote a letter offering his condolences. Valanthe did not read it.
Wynne visited the palace at Valanthe’s request. She examined Anora with and without magic. “There is no defect,” she assured both Valanthe and Anora both. “These things sometimes happen, Your Majesty. Think nothing of it. If you linger on the loss, the stress may affect your ability to conceive again.”
Anora stared up at the ceiling, her legs spread open for examination. “You have my thanks, Enchanter.”
In Highever, Fergus openly courted other women. Drinking ale with his men the women filed through, to sit on his lap, to be pawed at like a common whore, to be taken to back rooms and royal quarters. His favored were given their own rooms in the castle, and seen at the right hand of the Prince Consort when he addressed the people of Highever in his throne room.
Warden-Commander Theirin arrived one clear morning. He took supper in the private dining room with the Prince Consort and the Hero of Ferelden.
“It’s dishonorable,” Alistair protested, to Valanthe’s great dismay. “It’s one thing to disrespect your wife, but to do it so openly-”
On Fergus’s right hand, Valanthe warned, “You will not speak to my brother with such contempt, Alistair.”
“I agreed to marry Anora,” said Fergus, his expression hard. “I did not agree to love her.”
Alistair insisted, “You made an oath before the Maker-”
“So did she,” pressed Fergus. “She promised herself to your brother, Alistair, and then she sat by while her father allowed him to die.”
“She didn’t know!”
“Not likely,” muttered Fergus, sipping wine from his cup.
Alistair took a deep breath, unclenching his fists beside his dinner plate. “Listen,” he said, bluntly. “I’m not saying this out of any loyalty to Anora. I am a king’s bastard, Your Highness, I know what it’s like. It’s not a fate I would wish on any child. That’s all I came here to say.”
He asked Valanthe again if she would return with him to Vigil’s Keep. Again, she declined. There was hurt on his face when he left, like he could barely recognize her anymore. Maybe this was true: she had been someone else during the campaign against the darkspawn, had been focused on dealing with the threat immediately before her. She had been a Grey Warden then, with no family, no name, no other purpose. Now she was a Cousland once more, loyal to Highever and to her brother above all else. Alistair had been some other woman’s friend. Not the woman she was now.
But Fergus returned to Denerim. Highever was in good hands, run competently by the seneschal. Valanthe left and headed south, but told no one her destination. Later the elf Ariane and the mage Finn would swear to anyone that Morrigan left the Warden on the pedestal in the Dragonbone Wastes, fleeing into the eluvian. Valanthe appreciated their loyalty. It did not occur to her to ask Morrigan if she would ever allow Valanthe to bring Alistair to meet his son.
This time Fergus did not write to his sister until the month before the child was due. Valanthe arrived after the birth to meet a swaddled infant crowned with a mess of auburn Cousland hair. Bann Teagan informed her that Fergus had wanted to name the baby Oriana, but the council had successfully shot that down. Instead she was named Eleanor, after her grandmother. “We’ll call her Ella,” said Fergus, cradling the babe in his arms.
All the while Valanthe was in Denerim she kept hearing something, like voices in the next room. “I can hardly sleep at night,” she complained to her brother. “You need to get your servants under control.”
Fergus looked at her strangely, but agreed that he would speak with the servants.
The baby’s eyes were a clear, bright blue, like Anora’s, like Loghain’s. “Ella,” Valanthe repeated to herself, gently rocking the baby in her arms. “Princess Eleanor, of House Cousland. Heir to the throne of Ferelden.” She kissed the baby on her forehead. “Mother would be very proud,” she whispered.
When she left the Royal Palace, she heard voices outside her tent, and then in Castle Cousland, and then still even in Vigil’s Keep. She found Alistair directing work to rebuild the Keep’s defenses, and when he met her gaze she could see the terror sink into his gut.
For another year she stayed at the Keep, working with the Warden-Commander to rebuild the Grey Wardens in Ferelden. Late the next year news arrived from the capital: the birth of another princess, the second-born, destined to inherit Highever. She was named Celia, after her mother’s mother.
The voices in Valanthe’s head became louder, until she could no longer hear Alistair’s commands in the heat of battle. She retired to her private quarters in the Keep, burying her head in pillows, her hands over her ears, shutting out the sound of it, refusing to listen.
Valanthe Cousland never met her second niece. Nor her only nephew, born on the eve of the Mage Rebellion: not a necessary child, not born for reasons of inheritance and politicking but rather out of something else entirely. Affection, perhaps, if love was too strong of a word.
The Hero of Ferelden went west, plagued by the Calling. The pupils of her eyes grew cloudy and blurred. Her skin took on a grayish pallor, the black veins of the taint visible on her bare chest and the inside of her wrists. Alistair begged to accompany her. Voice raised above the din in her ears, Valanthe took his hand.
“No,” she told him, soothingly, comforting, with as much certainty as she’d had when she convinced her brother to walk through his grief and commit his life to a woman he still blamed for his family’s murder. “Stay, Alistair. There is so much you can do here.”
“Don’t go,” he said, clutching onto her. “I know that’s what you’re planning. Don’t go, Val. The Deep Roads aren’t ready for you yet.”
She smiled at him, her expression serene.
“I am not going to die,” she told him. “I am going to find a way to live. I’m going to find a cure. I know it’s out there. All I have to do is find it.”
That night she shouldered her blade, kissed Alistair on the cheek, and she turned and disappeared into the night. Later Valanthe’s brother would send out a search party for Alistair, bidding him come to Denerim and explain what he knew of her disappearance; but then there was an explosion at the Temple of Sacred Ashes, and the Divine fell, and it was all Anora could do - fresh from the birthing bed - to keep Ferelden from falling apart. In the days afterwards, Alistair retreated to safety in Crestwood, away from the rest of the Grey Wardens and their false Calling.
The Hero of Ferelden has yet to be seen again.