This story takes place alongside the events of The Silent Grove (and probably later, Those Who Speak and Until We Sleep). Don't worry if you haven't read the comics though – all you need to know is that King Alistair has run off to Antiva with the pirate queen Isabela in search of his long lost father. Meanwhile back in Ferelden…
Chapter One – Those Who Remain
Harmony un-crumpled the note in her hand and read it again. The words hadn't changed, but they somehow made her angrier this time. She was supposed to come home to a husband, not a handful of hastily scribbled words.
She wanted to scream. She wanted to throw the candlestick through the mirror. She wanted to tear through the palace and rip apart everything in her wake. But that was behaviour unbecoming of a Hero of Ferelden, let alone a Queen.
A pillow bore the brunt of her temper. Ripping through a Hurlock with her daggers would have been better therapy, but the blight was long over and beggars couldn't be choosers. The air was thick with feathers by the time a maid rushed in to see what was making so much noise.
"Everything all right, Your Majesty?"
Harmony wasn't allowed to show her distress. She was the canary in the cave, the one Ferelden looked to for reassurance. She rolled her shoulders back, took a deep breath and forced her mouth to spread into a reassuring smile. "Just an accident. Sorry about the mess."
The palace library was empty save for one person. Technically she was a prisoner, but in truth she was one of the few in whom Harmony could confide.
Anora was quiet these days. She didn't twist her hair up anymore; her blonde locks hung in sheets to her waist. She sat with perfect posture, ankles neatly crossed, book held up to her face. She knew Harmony was standing there but pretended not to notice.
"What do you know of Maric?" Harmony asked, pulling up a chair on the opposite side of the table.
"I know it was his indiscretion that put a bastard on the throne," she answered, not looking up from the pages of her Nevarran romance. "Well, that and your ambition."
She was only bitter on some days. Usually it made things harder, but today it seemed strangely fitting.
You were the one who refused to marry him, Harmony felt like saying, but she bit her tongue. They'd been through this countless times. It was understandable; Alistair had been the one to execute her father. It was hard to move on from something like that.
Harmony pulled the note from her pocket and slid it across the table to Ferelden's former queen.
"I love you. I'm sorry. I need to find out what happened to my father," Anora read aloud.
This was the distance between them. It had started with a thing left unsaid, a secret Alistair held close to his heart, and it had grown into a great chasm. Harmony hadn't even noticed it.
Now she knew. But now it was too late. She was alone.
Anora let out a frustrated sigh. "My father spent two years looking for Maric. He was convinced the disappearance was some Orlesian plot. He burned through half the treasury on the search before we could convince him to come home for the funeral."
"Do you think he's really dead?"
The former queen shrugged. "There's a corpse at the bottom of the sea or there isn't. Either way King Maric is gone. If the man is still alive then he abandoned Ferelden, and that's worse than him dying." You could always count on Anora to speak her mind, at least.
"Did Cailan think he might be alive?" Harmony asked, a tad reluctant to bring up the woman's late husband.
"No," the answer came after a moment's thought. "Cailan had a weakness for legendary tales of lost kings and glorious adventure. If even a part of him thought Maric was still out there, he would have run off on some fool quest to–" Anora stopped herself.
It constantly surprised the both of them how much Maric's two sons had in common.
"You can't go chasing after him," warned Anora. "Ferelden needs you here."
"No, I need to go." Harmony hadn't even noticed her hands curl into clenched fists.
"Harmony…"
"I'm not you, Anora," she snapped. "I don't lounge around the palace playing at being the one in charge while my husband might be in danger."
The slap came out of nowhere. It was sharp and sudden and left Harmony's cheek glowing red. She stared back at the former queen, panting heavily through the sting of it. She didn't retaliate.
Anora's hand trembled as if it had been holding back from doing that for a long time. A part of Harmony was grateful; not many tried to knock sense into her these days. She gave herself a moment to breathe deeply so that her next words would sound calm and confident.
"We fell in love fighting side by side. Whatever's gone wrong here, that's how we'll fix it. I can't let him do this alone," she said, getting to her feet and turning to leave as if nothing had happened.
"You're a fool," Anora scoffed.
Harmony's eyes were cold as she glanced back over her shoulder. "I think you made a better queen too, but it's too late to change that now."
Teagan's face was supposed to go slack with shock as Harmony told him of the King's disappearance. Instead his eyes softened with guilt.
"You already knew," she sighed as she realised.
"It's not like that, Your Majesty," Teagan spluttered.
Harmony just rolled her eyes. "Don't Your Majesty me, I trusted you." She started pacing the floor, her footsteps echoing through the dark of the empty throne room.
Arl Teagan's voice was a mere whisper. "Look, a few nights ago while you were still off in Highever, I helped him sneak out to a tavern near the docks. He said he was meeting up with an old friend."
Old friend usually meant someone from their Warden days. Last she'd heard, Wynne and Shale were caught up with mage politics in Orlais. Leliana served the Divine now. Oghren was at Vigil's Keep. Morrigan and Sten were both long gone. That left… No, it couldn't be him.
"Yesterday I caught Alistair taking his things from the armoury. He wouldn't say where he was headed. He told me that if anything happened, a sea captain named Isabela would bring word. He put some money aside to pay her."
"Isabela…" Harmony repeated. Alistair had mentioned running into the woman last year in Kirkwall, before all that trouble with the mages. Just how long had he been planning this?
"You know of her?" Teagan asked. She could tell from the quiver in his voice that he was just as uneasy about this as she was.
"Less than I'd like." She didn't think it would do any good to mention the word pirate, though it was certainly on her mind.
"Harmony, you can't just commandeer a ship and follow. Alistair's leaving can be passed off as some diplomatic crisis that needs his attention. But if it looks like his Queen is chasing him… Things in Ferelden are fragile enough."
"I can't let him go Teagan," she argued. No matter what, she wouldn't let him talk her out of this. "I'm the Hero of Ferelden. I can't stay and warm the throne while he puts himself in danger."
He heaved a tired sigh, clearly uncomfortable to find himself in the middle of the situation. There was a long pause before he voiced his advice. "If you insist on following, there are ways you could do it discreetly. Why not head to Vigil's Keep, start your search from there? Whatever you do then it will look like Warden business."
It was a clever notion, she had to admit. "You have a point."
"Maker knows I'm not sure it's best for you to leave so soon after–" He cut himself off before he let himself touch on a sore subject. "But you ended the blight. Surely chasing a King is child's play compared to that. Bring him back to us, my Queen." He clapped a hand to her shoulder reassuringly.
Harmony let herself breathe easy for a moment. At least Ferelden would be in capable hands.
Bandit, ever the faithful warhound, was still curled up at the foot of the bed when she arrived back at the quarters she shared with Ferelden's king. The mabari had seen better days. His bones creaked audibly as he struggled to his feet, and she could tell it had taken tremendous effort just to stand and greet her.
His tail wagged half-heartedly as he watched her fetch her old equipment from the cupboards. He had that look in his eye, the same one he used to get when he was just a pup and they'd go running through the fields of Highever together. She didn't doubt that he still had the spirit of a warrior willing to follow her to the void and back, but those legs could barely carry him out of the palace these days. This was something she would have to face without him at her side.
"Sorry boy. Not this time."
You're too old for adventures now, my sweet, she wanted to say, but she knew he would understand those words perfectly. She knew they would break his heart.
"I need you here to look after Teagan. All right?" It was a lie, but he believed it. He let out a sad whine and settled back down at the foot of the bed.
The belt needed to be loosened a notch or two, but most of her old things still fit. It would be better this way. She would be unnoticed, unrecognised as she slipped out of the palace in her old travelling cloak. Just a normal person again. A small part of her couldn't wait.
When the time came to say goodbye, Bandit had already drifted back to sleep. His feet twitched as he dreamt, chasing darkspawn and giant rats and who knew what else across the Fade. There was no sense waking him. She smiled at her oldest friend and slipped out the door.
From the outside, the tavern was everything you'd expect from a watering hole by the docks. Loose shingles clattering on the roof, a rusty sign creaking in the wind, paint peeling off the windows. Through the grimy glass she could see a table full of rowdy dockworkers playing Wicked Grace. Two of the men broke into a brawl over the outcome of their last hand, nobody batted an eyelid.
Harmony was still deciding whether or not it would be a good idea to enter when the very man she was looking for burst out and stumbled into the nearest alleyway, already unbuttoning his trousers ready to take a piss. Staying silent, she followed after him.
She plucked a pebble from the ground and threw it past her target. It ricocheted off the wall and bounced off into the darkness. As the man looked away toward the source of the noise, she took her chance to move in from behind. He barely had time to face her before she had her dagger resting at his throat.
"Don't tell me you've gone soft after all these years?" Harmony teased.
That trademark wicked grin spread across Zevran Arainai's lips, and it was only then that Harmony noticed his dagger was already resting against her stomach. "Me? Soft? Unthinkable," he countered.
Inside, the place was just as bad as it looked - and there was the smell to contend with too. The regulars did nothing but unload cargo all day, and most stank of fish and sweat. Her Antivan friend didn't seem to notice.
"So what brings you here of all places?" she asked him as he returned from the bar carrying a pint in each hand. The mugs looked like they might have been made from clear glass once upon a time, but now they were decidedly brown.
"You'd be amazed at what one can learn when one buys the drinks in a place like this. So many ill-treated employees come to drown their sorrows. It's terribly good for business," he answered, sliding her drink across the table. He hadn't changed a bit. He was already smirking at the look on Harmony's face as she pretended the shady inn didn't bother her.
"I meant, what brings you to Ferelden?"
"I came to bring your husband some information." He paused to take a deep swig from his mug. "But then you knew that, you're just toying with me."
Harmony decided there was nothing for it but to follow suit. She tipped her head back and drank. She did her best not to pull a face at the taste of it as she wiped the froth from her lip. "You came all this way and you weren't even going to pay me a visit?"
"My dear Grey Warden, you know I could never pass through the capital without giving you my regards. I simply thought you might need a few days to cool down first," he said with a shrug. He had known then, that Alistair was about to disappear on her.
"I'm not angry, Zev," she assured him. "Not with you anyway."
"No?" he chuckled. "You haven't put a blade to my throat since the time I tried to have you killed."
"I'm not angry because you're going to tell me where he went. And because you're going to come with me to get him back," Harmony said, an expression on her face that all of her former companions knew better than to argue with.
"Well," Zevran's mouth spread into a mischievous grin, "this is starting to sound like the makings of an adventure."