"Do you ever think you could love me?"
It is late. She has just drawn the curtains on their bed, small hands closing the space between her and the king she doesn't need (the husband she never asked for) with every tug.
His words are soft when they come, almost timid. She pities him at times. He was not raised for this. He ended up on the throne as a pawn of others, and now that he is there she keeps him in check. But she was not born for this either, and she has thrived. Her sympathy has limits.
"Why do you ask?" she responds, because it is easy to dodge, to duck and weave around this man the way she never had to with his brother, because it is simpler to imagine that he is a piece on a chessboard than the living breathing man she has married- but it is not fair to him. He has been used enough as it is.
"I need to know."
She thinks about it. There have been moments where she looks at him and does not see her fallen husband, but a man growing in strength and wisdom by the day. He smiles with a brightness unlike any other, a big grin that spreads across his face. Sometimes she wants to smile back.
Then she remembers the Landsmeet. Then she remembers the last moments of a father and his daughter, the last fond moments shared by a man who knows he will die in so few short moments, the way his voice calmed down from its breaking point of rage (of anger and hate so ingrained in him from her earliest memories because it was easier to hate than to cry) to a rasp so full of tenderness she had thought her heart would burst. He had been cruel to many and so very wrong, but he had been human, and she had hoped that the oh so merciful Warden would see the kindness in her father's eyes.
But Alistair had been there. She had been sprayed with blood in the end.
She curled into the bed, pulling the covers over her and brushing long hair out of her eyes. She was glad it was dark.
"No," she said. "I can't."