"The weakness of mortal will is the great failing of all the Maker's children. We trade our honor as if it were the cheapest of currency. We do not understand what integrity is or what it is truly worth. From this ignorance, original sin was born. "

—Divine Renata I, Sermon on Integrity

Chapter 2

Malcolm

Not awkward in the least.

After a meal that had practically tested all of his reserve in his attempts to not look over at Fiona, the person who was supposed to be his natural mother, Malcolm had practically fled from the dining hall. Except he hadn't paid enough attention to where he was going, either before, when they'd arrived at the fortress, or after, when being escorted to the dining hall, and now he was lost.

Sort of. He knew where he was: Weisshaupt Fortress. But his knowledge of his exact location ended right there. Malcolm halted in one of the corridors that pretty much looked like every other corridor in the fortress and stared at the wall, wondering what he should do. He wasn't even sure if he could find his way back to the dining hall, much less his room. Malcolm sighed and glanced down at Gunnar. "Any ideas?"

Gunnar whined.

Fearsome warhound, not so much a great tracker, that was his mabari. "Of course not. You know, as a boy, I was once told that if I got lost, I should stay in the same place so someone could find me. Granted, that meant someone would have to be looking for me in the first place, which I'm not sure about in this case. You know, we could be lost forever in these hallways, doomed to wander the corridors of the famed Weisshaupt Fortress, eventually becoming ghosts of a Grey Warden and his faithful companion—"

The dog let out a bark and ran off.

Malcolm stared in the direction his dog had run. "Or not." He sighed again and sat down against the wall, cloak gathered around himself, moping at being abandoned by his dog while he followed his own advice at staying put. He'd sleep here if he had to. He had a meeting with the First Warden in the morning to talk about the Blight and the archdemon. If he didn't show up for that, they would be sure to send out a search party. Maybe. Or, happy to be rid of him, Líadan would make up some sort of story about him running off outside, and he'd never be seen again.

Then he heard Gunnar's distinctive bark and jumped to his feet. The hound loped around the corner, followed by Líadan and another elf. At first Malcolm was thrilled to see his friend, who had a better sense of direction and probably wasn't lost, and then he noticed that the other elven Warden mage he knew of was with her. Suddenly, he wanted to be lost in the corridors again.

"Lost, I take it?" Líadan asked, a smirk yet again plying at her mouth.

"Of course not. I know where I am. Weisshaupt," he said indignantly, knowing full well she'd see right through his sham.

"Well, then, I suppose I can leave you to find your room all by yourself." Líadan turned to leave. What really stung was that Gunnar kept right on her heels, as if he'd leave him, too.

Malcolm knew instantly if he didn't say something, Líadan actually would leave him behind and not feel bad in the slightest. The notion distinctly reminded him of someone else he'd once known, one oft-prickly witch of the wilds. "Okay, okay, I admit it," he said, employing the most pitiful tone of voice he could muster. His elven friend had to have mercy in her somewhere. She was nice to small children, that was a good sign for having mercy, or even pity. "I'm lost. And tired and miserable and have I mentioned that it's cold here? So, please don't take my dog and leave me alone to wander these halls forever. "

Líadan turned back around, lips pursed in thought. "I can show you the way back to your room."

He narrowed his eyes and forced himself not to cross his arms. "What's the catch?"

"No catch."

"I don't believe you. It isn't like you to just... agree like that with only minimal attempts at coercion on my part. You're up to something." He pointed at her. "I'm on to you."

Líadan rolled her eyes even as she motioned for him to follow. "I'm not up to anything. Come on. I've got mage stuff to talk about with Fiona, but so we don't bore you, we'll refrain until we've dropped you off."

He'd nearly forgotten that Fiona was there, she'd been so quiet and still. Remarkable, really. His eyes flicked to the other elf and quickly went back to Líadan. "I don't care what you say. I still think you're up to something devious." And because Líadan had offered to keep quiet about mage things, it meant that the conversation would be lacking, and he'd be doing everything possible to keep from blurting out that Fiona was his mother and launching into the five hundred or so questions he had for her. To keep himself from doing so as they walked, he forced himself to make conversation with Líadan. "So, I'm thinking of growing a beard."

Líadan's head snapped around to look at him in askance. "Why would you do a thing like that?"

He shrugged. "To keep my face warm. I'm not sure if you were paying attention when I mentioned it before, but it's bloody cold here."

"Just so you know, if you grow a beard, it will make me completely ineffective in combat."

It was his turn to look at his friend in askance. "Why's that?"

"I'll be too busy laughing to do anything else."

He scowled and glared at the corridor ahead. "I hate you so much."

"What was that?" Líadan asked in a singsong voice.

Fiona snorted in laughter. The only thing that kept Malcolm from closing his eyes in embarrassment was that he had to pay attention to where they were going or he'd get lost again the next day. Neither of them had admitted that Fiona was his mother, but Maker help him, she was already laughing at him. Maybe she wasn't his mother. Maybe she was just other random elven Orlesian Grey Warden mage. They had to have a lot of those since they had plenty of Orlesians. And plenty of Wardens who fit that particular description. And had that name. Yes, it absolutely had to be just a coincidence.

He kept his mouth shut after that and it wasn't until they stood outside his appointed room that Líadan gave her price for the leading. "And for that," she said, "Gunnar sleeps in my room tonight. That furball gives off heat like you wouldn't believe. You don't even have to keep the fireplace stoked."

"What? Ha! I knew it. I knew there was a catch." He swiveled to look down at his dog. "And you're just going to stand for this, are you? No argument at all? You'll just ditch me for Líadan once again?"

Gunnar barked.

Malcolm scowled at the hound. "You traitor. Between all that scrap begging you did at dinner—which, by the way, was conduct seriously unbecoming a wardog—and then ditching me in the hallways, you agree to her terms?"

And the hound barked his positive reply.

He threw up his hands. "Fine, I see how it is. You hang out with the elf and I'll just cry myself to sleep, mired in my misery, all because you like her better than me."

"It's only because I'm prettier than you. I'm certainly not any nicer," said Líadan.

Malcolm narrowed one of his eyes at his fellow Warden. "I suppose I can't argue with that one." He didn't point out that his friend was rather easy on the eyes, because she'd probably just punch him for it, even though she'd been the one to bring it up. "Okay, whatever. Goodnight. I'm going to bed. Cold and alone." Before Líadan could tease him more and give Fiona another chance to laugh at him, he slipped into the room and closed the door. It wasn't until he was safely in his room that he realized how his statement could've been taken. "Oh, for Andraste's sake. She'll never let me live that down." Scowling all the more, he hurriedly built a fire in the cold fireplace and waited for the room to heat up. As he waited, he took stock of the lodgings he'd been assigned. It was on the small side, though that didn't bother him. It was also fairly bare and contained only a few items. Little table, large enough for two, perhaps three if they squeezed, probably for use in taking meals alone or paperwork. A bed, a chair, a washstand with an empty stone basin, which wouldn't be much good for washing. He supposed he could make a trip to where the baths and privies were in order to fetch water, but that would defeat the purpose of having a washstand in your room, really, once you'd made the trip.

He moved closer and inspected the basin and found a dwarven rune inscribed on the inside. Biting his lower lip, he started to trace the rune with his finger, and drew his hand back in surprise when the bowl filled with clear, fresh water. "Dwarves are awesome," he said to himself. They should have these things everywhere. If the dwarves sold them to surfacers, they could make a killing. If he weren't a Grey Warden, he'd have tried to do it himself. Of course, were he not a Grey Warden, the dwarves wouldn't let him into Orzammar for that reason, and he wouldn't even know about the runes in the first place. But still. The dwarves were damn clever. After happily washing up, Malcolm fell quickly into bed and a deep sleep in the pleasantly warm room.

Morning dawned with someone pounding on the door and shouting his name. Malcolm tried yelling at them to go away and let him sleep, and instead, the door opened to allow Gunnar inside to wake him up. Two hundred insistent pounds of slobbery dogflesh drove him out of bed and he could hear Líadan laughing just outside the door. He quickly washed up, dressed and armed himself, and stepped out of the room, still bleary-eyed. "You couldn't let me sleep?" he asked as soon as he saw her.

The elf straightened from leaning against the wall. "No. I was hungry and I realized that if I didn't bring you with me, you'd end up lost in the griffon aeries or something when you tried to find the mess hall on your own."

"My sense of direction isn't that bad."

Líadan gave him a look that told him otherwise.

"Whatever. This place is abnormally large. They should hand out maps or something." When Gunnar shoved his large head underneath his hand, he gave the dog a good morning scratch behind the ears, even though he'd abandoned him the night before. The elf rolled her eyes and motioned for him to follow. "You're supposed to come with me to meet with the First Warden, by the way," he said, both to remind her and to make conversation to head off any awkward silences.

"I know. And after, I'm meeting with Fiona to start going over the arcane warrior talent with her and see if any of the other mages here would be open to and benefit from learning the skill," Líadan replied. "They'll probably want you to work with people on templar stuff at some point, too. You can keep well away from me when you do that, I'm of no mind to have you smite me."

"I still owe you a smite, you know, from that lightning you hit me with in the Deep Roads."

"I said I was sorry."

"So you did."

"Oh, I see where you're going with this," she shot back, not bothering to turn around. "You're going to point out that you never technically accepted my apology. And maybe even insinuate that I only apologized because Riordan set us up on the same watch."

"Actually, I was agreeing with you that you'd apologized and that I should stop holding it against you. But if you're saying that you only apologized because Riordan pretty much told you to, then I'll just keep holding it against you and wait for the right opportunity to smite you." He'd really forgiven her ages ago for the lightning-laced shove, but he really didn't think he'd ever tire of giving her crap for that and pretty much every other thing she'd done to him since then. Not that she didn't do the exact same thing back to him. In fact, if either of them were entirely nice to the other, both they and everyone who knew them would be entirely confused and probably assume they were both possessed. And probably be right.

"You and are I sparring later," Líadan said.

Malcolm's eyes widened in surprise at the command. "Are we?"

"I'm not letting that comment pass unchallenged. So it's you and me, practice yard, no magic from me and no templar tricks from you, a single longsword each and we go until someone gives up. Or until an impartial party, to be determined, decides that we need to stop. It doesn't have to be today, since I don't know if we'll have time. But it can be tomorrow or the next day or whenever. Just before we leave here and go back to Ferelden."

"That's assuming we go back to Ferelden. Maybe I'd like to travel."

That made the elf turn to face him, even as she kept walking in the direction of the dining hall. "Travel?"

He'd thought about it even as he accompanied Zevran's body to Weisshaupt. Once they were done here, he could strike out on his own for a while and visit places he'd only read about. There was the Merdaine, with its gigantic statue of Andraste carved into the cliffs, her outstretched hands bearing eternal flames, and that was due west of Weisshaupt, only days away, depending on the weather. A good place to start. "Yes. The Merdaine, Par Vollen, Minrathous, Tallo's Eye, the Donarks, Laysh and the Volca Sea, maybe the Tirashan, and the Urthemiel Plateau seemed particularly appropriate."

Líadan arched an eyebrow. "Wow, when you run away, you really don't mess around."

"I'm not running away. It's called exploring."

"It's running away, however you spell it. Like it or not, you've got a lot waiting for you and no amount of 'exploring' is going to make it go away. You're going back to Ferelden and I'm going with you. Granted, I don't know when you're going back, but you are. And Riordan ordered me to stay with you until you do." She turned back around, giving Gunnar a pat on the head as he bounded to her side.

"I can't imagine what you must've done to irritate Riordan so much that he'd give you this particular assignment," Malcolm replied as he finally started to recognize his surroundings. If he wasn't mistaken, they were finally getting close to the dining hall, and he even caught whiffs of breakfast on the air in the hallway.

"I requested the assignment," said Líadan.

Malcolm wordlessly stared at her, his feet sliding to a halt as he did so. But the elf didn't turn to face him after her last comment. Instead, she pushed through the doorway in front of him and left him behind, alone in the corridor. After a moment, he collected himself and followed his friend into the gargantuan mess hall, still trying to figure out why in all of Thedas she would've requested to follow him. The most plausible theory he could come up with is to torture him. Or... no. It might not be about him at all, it could be about Zevran. Perhaps she and Zevran had been closer than he'd thought, though he'd assumed that his old friend would've mentioned any sort of relationship with his fellow elf. Maybe he'd just have to accept the fact that, most of the time, Líadan made no sense whatsoever, and it would only hurt his brain to try to keep figuring her out.

Continuing to cast her curious looks, he sat with her at a table near the back, hoping to escape the notice of the other Wardens. They didn't. More than a few of the less stand-offish Wardens sat with them, plying them with question after question about the Blight. Turned out all Wardens had had dreams of the archdemon, not just the ones who were in close proximity to said archdemon. There were also a few newer Wardens, ones who had Joined while the Blight was still ongoing in Ferelden, and suffered the same intensity of dreams that Malcolm and Líadan did. They, also, had heard the song during their First Dream, the one every Warden had right after partaking of the darkspawn and archdemon blood concoction. Astrid, the Second Warden, eventually found them and shooed off most of the other Wardens. Then she escorted them to see the First Warden. Another group of Wardens followed, Senior Wardens, Astrid explained, ones in charge of certain areas of training and knowledge. There was the now-familiar Fiona, who oversaw the mages, Hildur, a dwarven woman who headed up training for the rogues, and finally, there was Marius, a Tevinter man who watched over the warriors. Then there were a couple scribes and a few other scholars, all of whom seemed very interested in the forthcoming meeting.

Malcolm, who hadn't been nervous previous, started questioning himself and feared this gathering audience would be doing the same to him very soon. Astrid ushered the party into Georg's study, where Malcolm discovered many more chairs had been brought in for the meeting. He exchanged alarmed looks with Líadan, both of them realizing this could be a very tough question and answer session. He knew it would be more so for him than her, as she hadn't joined the Grey Wardens until three-quarters of a year after Ostagar. Still, she'd been present at the end, both the night before the final battle with the archdemon, and in the battle itself. She'd witnessed Zevran clip the archdemon's wing and, with him, she'd witnessed Riordan take the final blow—and not die. And if Malcolm was correct, he figured Riordan was a bit cranky about having not died, and not just because of the whole unknown aspect of where that Old God's soul really was. Because Riordan hadn't died from that final blow, it meant that within the next year, he'd have to go on his Calling, a death certainly more drawn out and nasty than dying from an annihilated soul. At least they all assumed that sort of death would be 'clean,' so to speak. At any rate, it would've been faster instead of battling endless waves of darkspawn until you couldn't lift your sword anymore and one of them decided to chop off your head. And even then, you had to hope that particular blow was clean. Darkspawn weren't known to be as skilled as professional executioners when it came to lopping off heads.

The First Warden seemed to be in a decent mood, though he was certainly much more brusque than he'd been the day before. It was understandable—this meeting was much more official in its capacity than when they'd met him for the first time. Once everyone was seated, Georg motioned toward one of the scribes, now tucked away at a small table in a corner, stacks of paper, several inkwells, and more than a few quills at the ready. "Torben here will be recording everything we go over today, as we're trying to establish the official history of the Fifth Blight."

"Official history?" Malcolm asked before he realized what he was saying.

"Yes," said Marius, his wide frame filling the chair he'd chosen, black hair falling over his brow. "Official history because while the archdemon is dead, and we no longer see the archdemon in our dreams, the Warden who dealt the final blow is still alive. While Thedas does not know that Riordan should be dead, the Grey Wardens certainly know. And so we must decide what really happened because of your irresponsibility."

"My irresponsibility? How is it mine? I refused the offer because I didn't want to take the chance of an Old God flitting about the surface of Thedas unchecked! What else would you have had me do?"

Marius's dark eyes held no rancor as he simply said, "Kill her."

"Are you serious? You actually think I should have killed her just for offering the choice she gave me?"

"You should have killed the witch the moment she gave you that choice," Marius said, his tone gaining heat as he continued. "It was your responsibility as a Grey Warden and you failed. Not only that, but you failed to report the deal to your superior officer as soon as that mage left your presence. If you had done those things, we wouldn't be in the situation we're in now, trying to determine if we have another threat of a Blight waiting for us, darkspawn constantly rushing for the surface instead of tunneling down below."

"We can't know that," Malcolm said, the reply sounding lame even to his ears. Perhaps he should have killed Morrigan when she came to him that night. He had the abilities of a templar, he could have kept her from harming him. There had been a cliff right there and the fall down to the ocean was easily hundreds of feet. And she'd been so trusting, just as he'd been. He could have easily accomplished it. But he knew there was no way he could have done it. Maker, he hated Isolde, but he couldn't have killed her, either. And to think of actually having to kill Morrigan? He'd loved her. And he thought... he'd thought she'd loved him. Even then, after she'd told him she would leave him for refusing. The truth hadn't come out until later. That, perhaps, she'd used him, either as a Warden or to get close enough to the other male Wardens to get what she wanted.

No. He refused to believe that. He knew what he'd seen in her eyes. That had been love. Either that, or love never existed in the first place, for anyone.

"We wouldn't have to wonder if you'd done your duty," Marius said.

"Oh, sod your duty," Líadan snapped, already standing from the seat she'd just taken. "You weren't there, Marius. You have no idea what all of us went through. That woman you say Malcolm so easily should've been able to kill had fought with him and his brother from the beginning. He could no more easily have killed any of his fellow Wardens than kill her. You're saying you could do that? Easily kill one of your own? Just toss a brother or sister Warden from the cliffs over the aeries?"

"Yes," said Marius, making no move to stand from his own seat, keeping his large hands relaxed on the arms of the chair.

Some of the other Wardens present in the room started to voice their protests to what Marius said, while others made their agreement known. Marius pitched his voice to be heard above the others and continued, "If it meant keeping the archdemon from gaining a second foothold on Thedas? In an instant."

"Do you even have a heart?" Líadan asked.

At the same time, Hildur, her light eyes flashing, turned a glare on Marius. "Ancestors take you, Marius, have you turned Anders on us?"

"We Anders are pragmatic, not heartless," Astrid said, leaping to the defense of her country.

Malcolm, on his part, wanted to disappear into his chair. He was doing his best not to have the constant image of Morrigan flung off the edge of a cliff playing over and over in his head, but trying to concentrate on the talking, and then shouting, around him didn't do much to help. Except, after a few minutes, it did. The arguing reminded him of his time with the group he traveled with during the Blight. Reminded him of all their discussions and debates and stupid fights, exchanges with his brother always interrupted by darkspawn incursions, Leliana appalled by all their behavior, Morrigan petrifying them out of frustration, Zevran making racy comments and causing others to blush, Riordan sighing and trying to make them behave. Apparently they'd all been acting more Warden-like than any of them had thought, even though most of the people they'd traveled with hadn't been Wardens.

Finally, Georg requested silence. After leveling a significant look at all of the Wardens present, he said, "Now is not the time for judgement. We'll have Malcolm start at the beginning."

"What do you consider the beginning?" Considering the size of this audience, Malcolm didn't particularly want to tell the tale of his the Fall of Highever and the circumstances of his own conscription. Actually, he had no wish to tell an audience of any size, even one, that story, but given his choice, he'd rather it be few over many.

"Start after Ostagar," the First Warden said.

Malcolm took a deep breath, and then began his story. He'd barely gotten past waking up at Flemeth's hut and being told he and Alistair were the only Grey Wardens not killed in the battle when Marius interrupted him.

"You should have gone straight to Orlais and met with the Wardens there."

Malcolm felt the edges of control of his temper fraying. "Should we? Maybe you should wait and let me finish, since the next part reveals that the Wardens were labeled traitors and kingslayers. Bounties were put on our heads. Had we tried to sail from any port, we would have been captured. And that's exactly what happened to Riordan months later when he tried to sail from Highever to Jader once we found out where the archdemon was. And, sure, we could have tried to cut through Gherlen's Pass, but the border there was well guarded. If that hadn't worked, I suppose we could've attempted Sulcher's Pass, and I'm not sure how much you know about the southern Frostback Mountains, but there's a ton of Avvars up there who like to kill Fereldans and ask why they're there later. Except, usually, you're too dead to provide any kind of answer." His temper gaining control of his actions, Malcolm stood up and glared down at the still-sitting Marius. "Alistair had been a Grey Warden for all of six months. I had been a Grey Warden for all of few days and maybe for twenty-four hours of those days was I actually conscious. I knew nothing. I didn't know about the thirty year death sentence, I didn't know about the nightmares or the Calling, I didn't even know about the increase in appetite. We didn't know the Warden cipher, we didn't know what to use for messengers, we didn't know the locations of any of the compounds outside of Ferelden. We didn't even know how to do a Joining. It was just the two of us, by ourselves. Oh, and, by the way, we'd also been declared traitors to a country we'd both grown up in. We'd been declared the killers of a king who happened to be our half-brother. We'd been made to watch all of our Warden brothers die in a waste of a battle where the general quit the field and the darkspawn slaughtered everyone."

"Why were you in that tower, anyway?" Astrid asked.

The emotional memories from the time in the early Blight threatening to overwhelm him, Malcolm spun away from Marius to face the Second Warden. "Because Duncan told us to! Were you not listening to what I said? The king ordered for us to light the stupid beacon, we argued with Duncan that we should be on the battlefield with the rest of the Grey Wardens, and he told us we would do what the king said to. I believe his exact words were 'we must do whatever it takes to destroy the darkspawn, exciting or no.' We weren't really in a place to argue our orders. Which we did argue, anyway, but it didn't do us any good."

"It saved your lives, in the end," said Hildur. "Which I think the king intended, if your claims of being Cailan's half-brothers are to be believed."

Had Malcolm not been looking at the First Warden, he would've missed Georg's eyes flicking quickly over to Fiona, and Fiona's imperceptible nod, and then him turning back to Hildur before saying to the dwarf, "Their claims are true, we know that much. And I agree. I think the king, despite your objections, wanted to keep his half-brothers as far from the battle as possible. That put Duncan in a difficult position, as well. The Grey Wardens were kicked out of Ferelden for two hundred years and our Order had only been allowed back into their country twenty years ago. He couldn't go disobeying the king and certainly not in this matter, not without risking getting the Wardens kicked out of the country yet again." He motioned toward Malcolm. "Continue, please."

Malcolm allowed himself to sit back down in his seat after giving Marius a wary look. He took another deep breath, willing away the crushing feeling in his chest that was the helplessness he'd felt after Ostagar, and continued telling his tale. Marius objected to their actions in saving Redcliffe, but Malcolm explained them away with his reasoning that they needed Eamon's help. Basically, at that point, they needed anyone's help. Someone who believed that they weren't the ones who killed Cailan and the Grey Wardens weren't the reason Ferelden's armies lost the battle at Ostagar. When he told them about the templars at the Circle Tower having called for the Right of Annulment, Fiona's head snapped up from where she'd been taking her own notes. And when he said that they'd gone in to help the mages, her brown eyes, ones so similar to Alistair's, showed obvious relief.

"That was too dangerous," Astrid said, at first ignoring the scathing glare she immediately got from Fiona.

"Good to know mages are so expendable to you," Fiona said.

Astrid sighed. "That isn't what I meant and you know it."

"Then perhaps I should appeal to your pragmatic side, then? That ten mages in a battle are much more powerful and useful than fifty templars?" She looked over at Malcolm. "You have templar abilities and you have fought at the side of many a mage. Would you disagree?"

Malcolm quickly glanced at Astrid to break eye contact with Fiona. It unnerved him too much. "I would not. Mages are exponentially more useful than templars. But that's not why I saved them, not entirely. Frown at my and Alistair's decision all you want, but there were innocent people in that tower and we were in a position to keep them from dying."

"Risking your lives, and consequently the lives of the last two Wardens in Ferelden to do so," said Marius.

"There's no point in saving humanity from the Blight if we're no better than the darkspawn and just let innocents die," Malcolm shot back. "Many of the things we have to do as Grey Wardens are bad enough as it is. When we can do something that will help us fight the darkspawn and turns out to be a morally decent thing to do, we might as well do it. At least, I will. You might not, and that's your decision. But you weren't there. My brother and I were." Malcolm forced himself not to look at Fiona, even though he wanted to look and see if there would be approval in her eyes over his actions and words. Instead, he looked at the First Warden. "May I continue?"

Georg inclined his head.

Malcolm explained what they'd done at Redcliffe with Connor, leaving the bit about him and Isolde and their perpetual fight out of it. Marius glowered, and Astrid quickly followed in the glower, about Alistair's decision to help heal Eamon. He told them about Zevran finding them and relaying the information of an assassination contract on their heads, and then them saving Riordan from Fort Drakon. Memories flooded Malcolm's senses as he told them of the burning of Lothering, of returning to Ostagar and fighting the dead bodies of people they'd once known in life. Of finding the Joining chalice and the needed components for the Joining at the campsite, of having Riordan leave them to travel in the Deep Roads to find the archdemon. He made sure to make very clear what Riordan had ordered them to do in his absence—despite their hefty objections. While Georg simply nodded in agreement to the orders, Astrid looked almost gleeful at the idea of a Warden King of Ferelden, Marius and Hildur both seemed annoyed, while Fiona looked rather discomfited at the notion. Malcolm wondered why, but didn't ask. Most likely, he never would ask, as that would require acknowledging the relationship between him and Fiona. And he had no intention of being the one to bring up the mother issue. He'd just treat her like any other Warden unless she brought up the matter of him and Alistair being her natural sons.

Then he told them about finding the Sacred Ashes of Andraste in the Frostback Mountains. Astrid looked at him as Brother Genitivi had looked at them when they returned from the gauntlet at the top of the mountain: almost reverently. "You truly found the Ashes of Andraste?" she asked.

"Yes," he replied. "I mean, they did heal Arl Eamon when nothing else would. And the trials we had to go through to get to the Urn made it all seem true enough."

"What was it like, being in the presence of the Urn?"

Malcolm shrugged. He'd forgotten that the Anderfels held the most devout Andrastians in Thedas. "Unreal. Like everything else that happened in the past year, all of it was very unreal. Part dream and part nightmare, and the entire time, I wondered when I would wake up in my home in Highever."

The First Warden raised an eyebrow. "Even now?"

Malcolm's eyes drifted across the room, lighting from person to person, catching on Fiona for a moment longer than he wanted, before returning to Georg. "Especially now."