Author's note: Huge hugs and thanks to everyone who read and added the story to their favorites! I always believed the Cousland origin was just a little bit limited and it struck me how much potential it could have if blended with another origin. I've seen so many good Loghain stories that I couldn't resist writing my own. Here's another tasty morsel for you!
The bloody light of the dying sun fell across the floor tiles and illuminated the small antechamber where Amerana was waiting. She was turned away, pressed to the window, but the heavy, resentful atmosphere of the room still burned across her nerves like acid.
Behind her, Alistair and Anora sat like two beautiful marble statues, sharing a bench but not touching. Anora's hands were once again twisted in her lap and Alistair was looking at anything but his intended. The air in the room was heavy with anger and hurt.
I could have been her, Amerana thought fleetingly. If she hadn't been a mage, cursed in the Maker's sight and abandoned to the Circle, if she had been allowed to remain tucked safely within the bosom of her family, raised with all the love and adoration the Couslands had to offer... She could have been different. The whole world could have been different. But there would be no glittering crown, not for Amerana. No sweet, beautiful Alistair for her husband and king.
No, the Grey Wardens were the only ones who could lay claim to her now. She would bury herself in the heavy solemnity of duty, she would carry forth her responsibilities with honor. She would make her parents proud. She was a Cousland.
"How long... will it take?" Anora asked quietly. Her fingers curled and twisted.
When Alistair did not reply, Amerana raised her shoulders briefly. "It varies, your majesty. Sometimes as little as minutes, sometimes as much as an hour." She looked to Alistair for support or confirmation, but his face was stony and his lips pursed. "I'm sure Riordan will be able to tell us soon if Loghain lives."
Anora nodded, which brought her face into the fading sunlight. Amerana sighed inaudibly. It just wasn't fair that Alistair's wife would be so beautiful. She had always admired Anora's fair, golden looks, the flow of her hair and the shape of her thin nose.
If she could have seen herself, free from the bias that had been instilled into her by the years at the Circle, she would have realized that her own face was just as beautiful, if not more. But such an insight was not granted to her.
Anora peeked suspiciously at Amerana from under thick, full lashes, the rosy curve of her mouth tight with distrust. "I still do not know why you spared my father, Warden," she admitted, sounding small. "But I do thank you."
"Maybe we'll get lucky," Alistair bit out. "Maybe he'll die yet." Anora gave him a sharp look, the corners of her mouth turning down in feminine dissatisfaction, but Alistair paid her as little attention as he would a buzzing fly in a stable. "There must be some justice left in the world."
Amerana favored him with a cool stare. "Justice? You would speak of justice, after leaving your order and breaking your vows? I can't afford to hope for Loghain's death, Alistair. Stew in your own petty juices, if you have to, but some of us have responsibilities to live up to." Sorrow clanged within her breast, a hollow feeling that was nearly more than she could bear. She had grown to love him over their months together, a feeling which had invigorated her with purpose and hope. Bereft, she clamped her feelings closer around her, and determined to stay strong.
Alistair's head jerked back while Anora's lips curled. "You would accuse me of deserting my responsibilities, Amerana? You were there while that bastard hunted us and sent assassins after us, while he painted us as criminals and let the whole country spit at us! And you are ready to embrace him? Who is deserting responsibilities here — and common sense?"
"I cannot afford to lose the second Warden," Amerana said, keeping an iron control on her temper while everything in her wanted to weep and throw herself on the floor. How dare he! "I'm not keen on being left with only Riordan at my side. Or do you like the man?" she added with an attempt at levity.
"He is a brother Warden, a reliable man," Alistair snapped. "Which is far more than I can say for some," and he gave the antechamber door a hard look.
The door chose this very moment to open and Riordan's head appeared in the shadows. "He..."
Amerana held her breath.
"He will live," Riordan pronounced.
Amerana exhaled. Anora started weeping quietly and Alistair's face twisted before he stood up and stalked out of the chamber.
"I will notify you before we leave, your majesty," Amerana murmured to Anora as Riordan grimaced and followed Alistair. "You will have a chance to say goodbye."
Anora's sobs only intensified.
Sighing, Amerana straightened up and walked into the room that had been appropriated for the Joining ritual, closing the door firmly behind her.
The sight of the man before her bore little resemblance to the towering vision he'd appeared during their duel. Then, he had shone with vitality, with health and breadth and a masculine force that she'd found as terrifying as it had been formidable. Now he appeared a shell of himself, pale against the stone of the floor, face limned in gold from the torchlight. His raven locks fell across his sweaty, white face, obscuring the dark pools of his eyes but not hiding lines of pain and fatigue. His breathing was labored, loud, giving birth to sighs that echoed through the small chamber and seemed to rattle at the windowpane.
Despite herself, drawn by an almost magnetic force, she was pulled to his side and knelt there, robes whispering on the stone. "Loghain?" she ventured, putting out a hand with a tremor of uncertainty. "Are you—"
"Fine." His voice was low and rough and at her touch he rose, shoulder straining against his armor as he gathered himself to his feet. Cold dignity created a stony mask of his face, a hard, resentful expression that only seemed to ease a little once he realized he'd survived the Joining and was — for the moment — safe.
In the next moment his expression twisted into surprise and momentary pain and he wavered, almost crashing into the wall. Quickly, Amerana moved her shoulder under his and grunted in surprise at the heavy weight of warm man and hard, freezing armor as it rested on her and then slid to the floor as her muscles gave out.
"This is how you could have defeated me," she murmured, balling up a convenient tablecloth to use as a makeshift pillow. "Fall on me and I'm in your power."
Loghain didn't reply, merely turning his head away from the torchlight as if hurt his eyes. His eyelashes trembled against his pale cheeks.
"Anora has been told that you survived," Amerana said after another moment of his silence. "You will be able to speak to her again before we—"
"Does it ever go away?" he rasped without opening his eyes.
Amerana blinked, taken aback. "Does what go away?"
"The voices.." He squeezed his eyes closed tighter and raised a hand to rub at his forehead. "The screams."
"Oh." Amerana sat back on her haunches, robes pooling around her in a sea of dark velvet. "It's the darkspawn. They—"
"I know it's the darkspawn," he interrupted impatiently, "otherwise I would not have started to hear it when I drank their blood!"
Amerana moved back, grimacing. "Yes, indeed. Well, we — Riordan and Al — Riordan and I hope that it will fade once the archdemon is defeated. And you do get used to it."
Loghain rubbed his forehead, grimacing. He looked pale as paper. Still, there was something arresting about him. His eyes were brilliantly intelligent, glowing with a savage inner fire. Amerana felt for a moment like a moth, drawn in to something...
Dangerous, she thought with a shiver, cold crawling across her skin. Loghain was not a man to underestimate, not even for a second, and he certainly wasn't a man to admire, even if the sight of his profile in the torchlight did strange things to her stomach. Surely he hadn't been admirable when he'd consorted with Rendon Howe to destroy her family. Surely he hadn't been admirable when he divided the country for his own selfish causes, throwing away thirty years of peace and King Maric's lifetime work on a gambit that had only endangered his country, endangered his daughter, and left a nation bereft of their king.
Amerana steeled her resolve and squared her shoulders. She could not afford pity for this man, nor any other feelings of a softer nature. Alistair had not been entirely wrong. Keeping Loghain close would be like keeping a hungry wolf on a chain, nestled close into the bosom of their cause. As long as he remembered that they shared an enemy, as long as his immeasurable talents were put into the cause of slaughtering darkspawn, then he was welcome. Any more than that, Amerana would not give him, not one inch, not one hour.
"We'll be leaving Denerim soon," she made herself say, voice cold in her throat. "I trust you won't be a burden and slow us down."
His eyes narrowed and his lips drew back. "I trust I will be able to keep up, Warden," he replied coldly. It would have sounded more convincing had he not been still flinching from the light.
Rolling her eyes, Amerana run her hand over his forehead, channeling a burst of healing energy that spilled thickly from her fingers and disappeared into his skin. Loghain gasped, his head tilting back in relief from pain and his back arching. Despite the stern talking-to she had just given herself, his gesture fluttered deep in her belly, pulling at something inside her.
When his eyes opened again they were a clear, cold blue, the color of mountain springs. His face, for all its sour expression, looked relaxed and calm. "Thank you," he said quietly, already moving to sit up. "I trust you won't slow me down, Warden?"
Amerana suppressed a very inappropriate laugh.
On the lower floor of the Palace they parted, Loghain to pack his possessions and speak with Anora and Amerana to meet her companions at Arl Eamon's estate. She had barely taken a few steps outside the Palace, however, when she almost literally ran into the Revered Mother who had attended the Landsmeet.
The woman's grey hair was tidily pulled back and her Chantry robes without a single fleck of dust. Her eyes burned with an unholy fire, igniting everything in their path. "Mage!" she said loudly, making the guards at the Palace entrance turn their heads. "I would speak with you!"
Amerana turned slowly, the old fear of Chantry and templars curling like a stone fist in her stomach. "Yes, Revered Mother?"
"You think you are so clever, don't you? You solved the riddle, installed a new king, and ran away with the regent," the priest said, her lips a thin, angry line.
Amerana's control, already worn thin from the events of the day, felt more fragile than ever. "No, Revered Mother," she said, trying to be polite even though she feared nothing she could say would satisfy the priest. "I only did what I had to." She felt disturbing quakes in her serenity as the old woman gave her the evil eye. Amerana knew that to the Revered Mother, she was already an abomination in the sight of the Maker, and it tore at her. But there was nothing she could do. Her course had been set months before, when Howe and his men had taken everything from her, and Duncan had stolen her from her dying father's side to become a Warden.
The Revered Mother did not look assuaged in the slightest. "The Chantry had given its blessing to Queen Anora and her chosen Regent," she hissed, a froth appearing at her lips. "You have interfered in larger matters than you know!"
"Then perhaps you should have kept your interfering nose in your own business," came the dry, sardonic voice, a moment before Loghain himself appeared around the doorframe. "Last I knew, the Chantry was to keep its sticky fingers out of politics - and out of Grey Warden business. Unless you wish to Join as well, madam," he offered with a sneer. "There may well be enough poison left for you."
Caught speechless for a moment, Amerana felt like a bubble of air was expanding, ever expanding in her breast. Biting back a triumphant laugh that wouldn't stay in her throat she turned to her savior. "Warden Loghain," she said, keeping her voice calm with the utmost effort. "I have been waiting for you. We meet at Arl Eamon's estate."
With a brief nod he followed her as she made a hasty bow to the priest and walked away from the oppressive mountain of the Palace.