#one friend had to leave the room to discuss a vinted order they need rushed with another friend of mine

[spiderlegeyelashes]

my birthday party is today and everything is going swimmingly :-) about to take a shower and dress up, then i'll get a cake and strawberries, and then i'll get to the place and start decorating ^^ i'm really excited, also because i know multiple of my friends put in a lot of effort into gifts for me because they'd talk about them a lot, one of them even called my mom 🥳 not that gifts are everything, but u know, it makes me really happy

[laurelsofhighever]

The Falcon and the Rose Ch. 35 - In The Lady’s Hands

Chapter 1 on AO3 This chapter on AO3 Masterpost here

Rosslyn did not go to dinner. The shock and hurt in Alistair’s expression instead drove her into the hills with Cuno behind her, following the steep, narrow tracks made by the shepherds as she marched to try and leave her problems behind. The rain cleared into low, blustery clouds by late afternoon, the grasses bent under the wind, but though the cold cut through her damp outer layers and seeped into her skin, her anger at the Storm Giant’s ruling wrapped around her heart and kept her limbs from settling. Now, hours later with darkness fallen and hunger gnawing at her stomach, she sat on a sheltered ledge above the hold with the rush of a nearby waterfall in her ears to drown out the wind, her eyes glazed on the warm pricks of light that revealed a doorway, a window below her. Cuno curled up mournfully on her feet, but everyone else had long since returned to the comfort of peat fires and hot food. If she followed, there was too much chance that she would scorn the law entirely and confess everything she knew about the challenge Alistair would face in the morning, or worse – try to persuade him not to go through it at all.

Her fist clenched in her lap as her mind drifted once more into the terror of losing him to the sea, of watching him walk down into darkness and never seeing him again. Cowardice kept her out on the heath, nothing more, the idea that if she faced him it might be the last time she ever saw him at all. They might go to Orlais, and eat cake and forget everything, but she laughed bitterly at herself for even entertaining the idea. Honour would not permit it, for either of them.

The rock she had chosen as a perch marked the entrance to a shallow basin enclosed by a circle of weathered rocks. The waterfall poured off the cliff above and tumbled into a clear pool at the bottom, in such a way that ripples never touched the face of the water. Because it was so sheltered, it was rarely troubled by the wind either, and on clear nights it made a perfect mirror of the stars. A place to find the gods.

Lady, help me. The words echoed with the same hollowness they had possessed at Deerswall, when grief and shock for what she had seen at Highever had twined through her limbs until she was left shaking, on her knees in the mud in an ancient grove swearing a curse on her mother’s gods and her father’s sword. She had grown since then. She was a general; she had won battles and loyalty and fame beyond the shadow of her parents’ names, despite those who thought her too young, too inexperienced for war. To give up now and assume nothing could be done would be to throw all of that away, when really saving Alistair was just another battle, a problem requiring a strategy.

There must be a way.

The calm of the night around her pulled her thoughts to fireside stories on winter nights, when howling storms raged outside and Bryce Cousland would recount glorious tales to distract his young children from their own imaginations.

“And there your mother was, at the wheel of the Mistral with her hair flying wild and her gaze staring down the oncoming storm like it had insulted her aim,” he had told them. The fire had painted his shadow huge on the opposite wall of the parlour. “The Orlesian galley we were chasing had already made it to safe harbour out of the squall, and if we followed it, we knew we wouldn’t have enough room to escape their ballistas. I told your mother to give the ship up, that surely it was better to let one ship escape than to risk the lives of our own crew.”

“What did you do, Mama?” Fergus had asked, his eyes round, hooked on every word.

“I certainly did not give up,” their mother had sniffed.

“She levelled such a glare at me, if she’d been a mage I would have been frozen on the spot,” their father chuckled. “She still hated me at that point, you see.”

“I did not, I just didn’t want you throwing up all over my boots. They were Antivan.”

“Does that mean you were already falling for me even then, my Lady Seawolf?”

Their mother had lifted an indulgent eyebrow. “The story, dearest. Your children are waiting to hear.”

“Ah – of course.”

He had always been good at telling stories, getting all the voices right and spinning his tales with just enough suspense to keep his children rapt, but not scared. The one that night ended with the Orlesian ship creeping out of the bay after the storm like a mongrel out of the larder, only to be boarded by the Mistral’s crew, who had sail around the storm and used the following wind to come up on their flank unexpected.

Rosslyn considered the memory. Her mother had been an expert seamaster, had read the currents and the weather and used it to dodge around the problem and claim her prey, when a direct approach might have ruined everything.

Cuno lifted his head as she groaned.

“It’s not the same,” she told him. “This isn’t just some storm. The Clayne won’t help for fear of angering the sea, and I can’t help, or order my people to help, because that will anger the Clayne. Who else is there?”

Cuno grumbled and shifted so his head was in her lap, a subtle plea to go and find somewhere more comfortable, preferably with food. She patted absently at his ears, but her mind ran in distracted circles now, probing at the truth of her problem to find an angle from which she could exploit it, or break it. Alistair was better at such lateral thinking, but she couldn’t ask him, and there was no time, and –

Below in the harbour, a ship’s bell rang as the watch was changed, and the echo of it was answered with a screech from above, the call of a gwyrling as it wheeled overhead, towards the sheerer cliffs at the hub of the island where the colony made its eyrie. She followed its imagined path then looked back, down the hill towards the sea where the Siren’s Call still bobbed at its moorings, sails furled and sleeping like everything else. A plan began to form in her mind.

“Are you the gull, the gwyrling, or the fish…”

At such a late hour, the broch was mostly empty, and Alistair was very conscious of the need to not get drunk, and stared into his tankard, trying to work out if it was his third or fourth refill. A headache was already building behind his eyes, made worse by the fact that every time movement flickered in the corner of his vision, he looked up only to find that Rosslyn still hadn’t come. The people around him laughed and joked in the brittle manner of those fending off darker subjects, and he didn’t miss the nervous glances they kept shooting him from behind their mugs.

“Ach, mebbe ye should go tae bed, lad,” Eoin said to him eventually, with a jovial nudge to his shoulder. “Ye’ll need yer strength fae tomorrow. Ye cannae face the Swallow wi’ a mashed heid.”

“Do you think she’s alright?” Alistair asked. Even now, with the huge, dark blank of the morning’s trial looming over his head, all his mind could focus on was the crease of pain between Rosslyn’s eyes, the way she had stood in front of him, half defiance and half terror as she offered to take his place. He thought about the kisses they had shared, the way she had wrapped herself into his embrace and then, only hours ago, closed herself off and shied away as if she couldn’t bear his touch. He should have known such happiness couldn’t last.

“She’s jest steering clear o’ Big Yin.” Eoin clapped him on the back. “No need tae give her reason to worry, eh? Off tae bed.”

“If she stays away from you, nobody can accuse her of interfering,” one of the other cousins added kindly. Vestra was the tall, brawny captain of a fishing schooner who shared Eoin’s brilliant hair, though Alistair couldn’t quite work out the relation. “That was quite a tongue-lashing she got this morning. Ye could hear it half way down to the harbour.”

Yet another captain, Collum, brought his ale over to where they were sitting. “Or,” he pondered, “mebbe she just wants to keep ye fro’ wastin’ all your energy on other pursuits when ye’ve got the trial in the mornin’.”

“Don’t be crude.”

Alistair glanced between the three captains. “What do you –? No, that’s not – we’re not –”

“Would ye also say ye’re no’ blushin’ now?” Collum probed. “Because that is some quality colour in yer cheeks otherwise. Ye left tegether last night, did ye  no’?”

“Nothing happened!” Alistair insisted. “At least not what you’re implying. I would never compromise…” His voice trailed off, squeezed to a choke, because after she disappeared up the stairs and he into his room, he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about more, about kissing not just her mouth but everywhere else as well.

“The lad’s adorable!” Vestra turned to the others and said something in Clayne.

“Ye’d risk it, would ye?” Collum asked.

Eoin huffed. “It’s no’ a fair test, no’ for what’s bein’ asked. Vints shouldnae be crossin’ our water like they own it. We should be out there huntin’ the bloody bastards doan – no offence, Ye Highness.”

Alistair shrugged. “None taken.”

“It’s what’s been decided.”

“It’s still no’ fair.”

“Don’ ye dare blab, Eoin,” Collum warned. “Ye’ll lose yer captaincy.”

Eoin blanched at that. “Fair point. I’m no’ going back tae keeping the Lady’s Hearth, blessed though She may be.”

“The Lady’s Hearth?” Alistair repeated. Brantis had mentioned it once when talking about the Clayne’s core beliefs. Some of the clan’s children, usually the eldest of a brood, were promised to the Lady’s Hearth and expected to serve there, tending the fire and the sacred grove around it, and if they turned out to be mages, they were taken to be augurs. But it didn’t fit. “I thought only girls were promised to the priestesses there?” he asked.

“Aye,” Eoin replied, throwing him a significant look. “And I’m no’ a girl.”

“I see…”

Vestra cleared her throat to halt the brewing discussion and laid a hand on Alistair’s arm. “Ye should go to bed, lad. A decent night’s sleep is yer best friend now.”

Dully, he nodded, doing his best not to stagger as he rose from the table. “If you see Rosslyn –”

“We’ll tell her she’s an idjit fer makin’ ye flap so,” Eoin assured him.

“Riiiight.” He sighed. “Thanks for the drink, anyway.”

The hold was mostly silent by the time Rosslyn made her way down from the mountainside. Her hair had long since pulled out of the neat braids her maid had woven that morning, hanging damp and dishevelled over her shoulders, and her coat had picked up stains from her rambling. The dark made her pick her way slowly to avoid a twisted ankle, but her mind burned with the urgency of her plan, the knowledge that she had only a few hours of darkness left before she ran out of time for what she had to do. The oil lights at the entrance of the guesthouse beckoned, but she marched past them, pausing only to sneak food from the kitchens for Cuno before she headed for the barracks where Morrence and the other guards were billeted. Her captain’s room was at the far end of the upper floor, overlooking the yard above the smithy, and while her dog tucked into the mutton joint she’d seized for him, she swept up the stairs, heart hammering behind her ribs.

“Captain?” she called as she knocked on the door. There was a groaned yes from within – understandable given the late hour – but Rosslyn took it as permission and turned the latch. “Morrence? I’m sorry to wake you but I need your help with – oh.”

She stared.

“Leliana’s here.”

She tried for something more coherent, but her tongue wouldn’t work. Her thoughts jumbled together, half-formed, until her early training in propriety reasserted itself at Morrence’s first scramble off the bed and realised that her hand was still on the latch, the door still ajar on what should have been a very private moment.

“I’mverysorrypleaseexcuseme,” she rushed, and swung back out into the corridor with her face flaming. Now she understood the response when she knocked; caught up in her own thoughts, the tone of the word hadn’t registered, nor the fact that it probably wasn’t Morrence who uttered it. The image seared in her mind, the two of them sprawled on the bed, clothes half scattered, Leliana’s hands fisted in Morrence’s hair…

As she leaned on the rail separating the corridor from the open common area below, the image shifted. Her blood pulsed heavy through her chest, swooping low in her stomach as her mind substituted herself, and Alistair – rough palms, soft lips, the slight scrape of stubble she had felt the night before as she kissed him, roaming her skin, eager and exploring in ways she had barely contemplated before, at least not so vividly, and certainly not with anyone specific in mind. The clatter of the latch sounded behind her and she straightened, swallowing her thoughts with as much grace as she could muster before turning to find Morrence in the doorway in a loose undershirt, with Leliana behind her wrapped in the blanket that had previously gone discarded on the floor.

“Your Ladyship.” Morrence bowed, finding small relief in formality. “I didn’t realise you were still awake.”

“Of course,” Rosslyn said. “Forgive me for… well. I should have been more considerate, given the hour. Please accept my apologies.”

“It’s quite alright, Your Ladyship.” Leliana’s mouth pulled up in a dimpled smile, though whether it was more for reassurance or amusement at Morrence’s reaction, Rosslyn couldn’t say. As the silence grew more weighted, her mind swung back to why she had come so far in the first place.

“I’m sorry to intrude,” she told her captain, “but I was wondering if you would take a walk with me. There’s something I’d like to discuss with you. As a friend.”

Morrence caught the significance in the words, and the frantic note buried beneath them. “Of course. Just let me get, ah…” she glanced down and pulled her shirt tighter across her body. “I’ll be right with you.”

She turned back into her room, her hand gentle as it brushed an apology over Leliana’s arm. A look passed between them, one that contained understanding and a promise to return later, and Rosslyn felt even more like an interloper than she had before. She turned away and waited at a polite distance while her captain found the rest of her clothes and pulled on her boots, trying to ignore Leliana’s soft scrutiny and her own returning sense of urgency, which made her foot twitch in agitation.

“Ready.”

“I’ll be keeping the sheets warm,” Leliana purred as she accepted her lover’s kiss. “Don’t be gone too long.”

“I’ll… uh… try?”

Giggling, she shooed Morrence away and retreated, closing the door behind her. Morrence cleared her throat and offered a hopeless sort of shrug, her cheeks darkening as she tried to contain the grin determined to stretch across her face.

“Shall we?”

They stepped out in silence at first, each wrapped in their own thoughts. Morrence took Rosslyn’s lead, her curiosity contained for the time being by the purse of her friend’s mouth and the way her hand wound into the loose fur at her dog’s neck. As they headed down through the narrow, cobbled paths of the hold, only a stray cat crossed their path, on some midnight errand of its own.

“I’m sorry again for interrupting you and Leliana,” Rosslyn said eventually. “I didn’t know you were… together.”

Morrence sighed. “It’s new. That was the first time we, uh… We thought we’d keep it quiet, at least for now, until we know where it’s going.”

“Are you happy?”

“Yes.” Her whole face lit up, a smile that reached right up to the corners of her eyes. “I am.”

“I’m glad.” Rosslyn turned a teasing smirk on her captain. “Though I’m curious about how she managed to change your mind. You were so very suspicious of her not that long ago.”

A groan. “She delights in reminding me. I don’t know how it happened, really, she just got under my skin, and now whenever she’s in a room it makes everything so much brighter, you know?” She caught Rosslyn’s nod, noticing the wistful edge to it, and cleared her throat. “The prince came looking for you earlier, you know. He shouted at me when I told him I didn’t know where you were, even when I said you left orders not to follow you. I’ve never seen him like that.”

“That wasn’t fair, I’m sorry.”

“Can I ask –” Morrence huffed. “I know it’s not my place, but all of this – why aren’t you talking to him instead of me?”

Rosslyn shook her head. “Because I can’t. Clayne law forbids me from interfering. If I did – if I persuaded Alistair to not go through with it, or helped him to cheat the trial, then everything we came here to do would be forfeit.”

“So you have to choose,” her captain replied, distantly, “between helping the elves, and –”

“I have no intention of choosing.”

By now they had reached the quayside. The tide was out, the ships all hunched beneath the lip of the retaining wall or else scattered on the bared sand like forgotten toys, with light from the lamps gleaming slickly on the stray lumps of seaweed that had drifted in and been left behind. Further out, the wind slapped sailropes against their masts and drove sullen waves against the cliffs. Cuno ducked out from under his mistress’ hand and trotted off into the darkness.

“So… why are you talking to me?” Morrence asked. “And why here?”

Rosslyn flashed her a grin. “Because I needed to clear my head, and I thought I would look considerably less insane if I had someone to share the conversation. Oh, I think Cuno went this way.” She gestured towards the gangplank on the Siren’s Call and led the way onto the deck, listening for the scrabble of claws or the telltale whuff of a satisfied mabari.

“He’s probably after the cat again,” Morrence offered, still not entirely certain what was happening.

The hand on watch nodded to them and pointed to the aft hatch, his gaze drowsy, having decided that it was more fuss to chase after the animal himself than to let two armed soldiers do it. Rosslyn watched him for any signs of curiosity, but when he spat over the side and turned to pace his way back along the deck, she relaxed and followed her captain below deck, where the only light came from a few guttering storm lanterns. Snores echoed from deeper in the ship. In a commercial port like Denerim, the sailors might have sought out company ashore, but Dunedyn was a small community that didn’t see much direct trade from outsiders.

“Cuno,” Morrence hissed.

They heard him before they saw him. A canine sneeze, then a staggered grunt as he shook dust out of his coat, and he padded out to meet them, stubby tail wagging and tongue lolling in the same self-satisfied manner he always got when catching rats in Nan’s kitchen. Behind him, Rosslyn noticed a flash of movement as she kneeled to scrub his ears.

“Do you know what An Sgòrnan Aigeinn is?” she asked Morrence.

“No…”

“Nobody does, except the lords. Not really. The name means ‘the throat of the abyss’, and all I know is that it’s a cave open to the water, and that it’s mostly used as a trial for murderers – if they make it back alive, they’re pardoned, but most choose a straight execution, it’s that dangerous. If His Highness is claimed by it tomorrow, no help will come for the elves, and it’s likely that Loghain’s madness will consume the whole of Ferelden.”

She didn’t look at her captain while she spoke, instead fixed her gaze on the far corner of the hold where Cuno had been. When Morrence looked, her superior night vision made out the shape of a figure listening, with two pale discs where a pair of eyes reflected the light, and a suspicion took root in her mind. Rosslyn nodded when she glanced back, confirmation and encouragement.

She steadied her breath. “Is there any way to help the prince?”

“There are precautions he could take. If he rubbed goose fat on his skin it would insulate him from the cold, and he would be better off in fewer clothes, otherwise he’d get dragged down. And whatever happens, he needs to keep an eye on the tide. If it rises too far, he’ll be stuck, and even if he finds somewhere out of the current, the water will freeze him to death before it lowers enough for him to go on.”

“Why can’t you tell him yourself?” Morrence asked a little louder, when Rosslyn’s frown deepened and grew distant.

“Because the challenge tests the favour of the gods. If I interfere, then it dishonours them, and the Clayne won’t risk their anger and Ferelden won’t get any ships even if he does come back. The same would be true if I ordered anyone under my command to do it.”

“If only there was someone here who didn’t owe fealty to you or the Clayne.”

“Indeed.” Rosslyn straightened at last and unbuckled her dagger from her belt. “It’s said that the gods help those who help themselves, though. So perhaps all is not lost. It’s just a shame that I’ve lost my dagger,” she added as she placed it deliberately on top of a barrel by the gangway. “I might have given it to him otherwise. It would have been a useful addition to all that advice I can’t give him.”

She sent one final look into the dark, directly at the catlike reflection of eyes, then clucked to the dog and followed Morrence back up to the deck, leaving her hopes in the hold below.