Nothing So Sweet
Chapter 1: All things come round
There's nothing in this world so sweet as love,
And next to love the sweetest thing is hate!
— Longfellow
At least he could toss and turn on a soft mattress instead of a sodden bedroll. Alistair doubted it would help him sleep, but Skyhold was a world away from a mouldering cave. Between promises to himself he wasn't going mad from a stupid magical song and the knowledge his order did a darkspawn magister's bidding, he would've welcomed his old Warden nightmares.
But still. Warm bed, fresh clothes, enough food for his bottomless stomach…he appreciated the small things.
And there were people. Talking made the song between his ears easier to ignore. The Western Approach confirmed his worst fears and added new ones to the table, but it was easier than sitting in a cave waiting for Hawke to make his leisurely way to Crestwood. When Andraste's Herald invited him to Skyhold, he hadn't cared if she was mad heretic. Promise of a hot meat helped too.
Alistair leaned against the battlements outside his door, studying the garden below. Dusk had just fallen and a few people milled around the garden while there was still twilight. Someone in the corner was cutting stalks of blood lotus.
Still, the song was there, on the edge of his hearing, half-lost on the wind. Sighing, slighting, he walked down there himself.
The Inquisitor wasn't half as sinister as her title implied. She hadn't once threatened his soft bits with sharp pointy things. The elf was cunning though. Even in Skyhold her green eyes swept everywhere until they stilled on someone like a fox on a lost chicken. Her smile was usually a prod to say more. Not like Clarel, all cool candor and quiet fervor, or the Warden, all cold silences and masked despondence.
Still, fresh air that didn't reek of corpses and burning hovels…small things. It was nice to just wander, to ignore the music in his head and the looming siege on his brothers. He'd never even seen Adamant until he and Hawke tracked the magister wretch to the gates.
He'd almost walked a lap around the garden when he saw him. The boy sat against a stone pillar, under one of those roofed garden things the Orlesians must have a name for. In his hands he twisted a puzzle box of some kind, different-colored squares that turned and locked.
Nothing was odd about him, other than Alistair had to think to remember the last time he'd seen a living child. Probably months ago, at the first inn he entered after fleeing Montsimmard.
His neck prickled. Metal clinked behind him, too faint to be armor, too steady to be a rambler. A soft tread. The boy looked up, past Alistair.
"Well well, the brave, renegade Ser Warden." That sinuous sing-song voice made him freeze. His training had him grabbing for the sword he hadn't brought. But he didn't lose sight of the boy, who stood up to kindly greet—
"Mother."
Mother of nightmares, maybe.
Stomach churning, Alistair stopped groping for a sword after she strode past him to her son's side. The boy glanced at him with eyes more amber than gold.
"Kieran." The snapping magpie who mocked his every word and pecked his nerves raw laid a soft hand on the boy's shoulder. "Do you know who this is?"
Kieran? Alistair wasn't such an idiot as to think just a bedding ritual would counter the Archdemon. Otherwise everyone would do it. He knew something would come of it, but he'd expected a dragon monster before a lanky child of ten.
"He's a Grey Warden." His voice was soft, not shy.
Alistair almost smiled on reflex, but something felt…off. The boy's brow furrowed as he leaned a bit closer, looking puzzled. Morrigan answered before he could speak again.
"Indeed. We fought together during the Blight." A silent moment and she turned her hawk gaze on him, rolling her eyes like he'd used the wrong fork at an Orlesian dinner party. "He has a name, if he cares to share."
"Er…I'm Alistair."
The boy didn't react to the name, not that his mother gave him the chance. A ruffle through his dark hair and she slipped beside Alistair.
"Finish your puzzle while you still have light, little man. I will be catching up with the Warden."
The boy assented and made a little duck halfway between a nod and a bow.
"Good to meet you, Ser." He slid back down the stone pillar, twisting at the colored squares, but still glancing up, expression measured.
This close, Alistair saw a line or two had deepened her features, giving her a graver cast.
"Come." Already walking, she nodded to a door at the side of the garden.
"He has…nice manners,"Alistair said as he caught up.
A small scoff came from deep in her throat. "Children learn little else of value in the Orlesian court."
That made his mind stumble. "Orlais?"
Her grin used to make him think of a barn cat with her kill, letting a bird flutter by only because she was stuffed and lazy.
She pushed open the heavy door, conjuring up fire in the sconces. A storage room of some kind. A bench sat against the wall. Covered in pale sheets were tables, portraits, and either a gargantuan mirror or vainglorious painting. Morrigan closed the door behind her. Creaking old hinges didn't unnerve him, but his skin prickled at the skitter of magic. Wards, most like. He heard nothing from outside.
The witch took a seat on the bench, crossing a leg and flicking a wrist at a dusty chair in the corner. Her cat smile was gone.
No, he would stand. It mattered little to her.
"You have questions, Orlais likely the least of them. I will answer some." A bite of her old coolness. "But first, you will help me."
Tension clenched down his spine. Of course there was no almost-friendly conversation with Morrigan, just plots he still couldn't see.
"Help you how?" he almost growled. Alistair's face was starting to warm. He'd halfways forgotten what a scheming harpy she was. No wonder she turned up in Orlais.
Oh, but the witch enjoyed this. "I am helping the Inquisitor stop Corypheus. 'Tis likely a Warden has more knowledge of darkspawn than I." Her eyes widened. "Or did the Warden-Commander have you play with blocks every time she called a meeting?"
"Only when I'd been mouthy," he sniped, arms crossing. "That's really it—scraps of Warden lore?"
A brow arched over one hawkish eye. "Was there some other way you hoped I would use you?"
Oh shut up. Sparring with her was never worth it. "Ask if you want."
She hadn't asked him anything last time. That was the Warden.