Quique protested being left behind, but ultimately bowed to Valentia's will as he always did. He waited with the Bright Star's dinghy while she made her way down an almost invisible track to a hidden cove at the bottom of one of the Wounded Coast's many treacherous cliffs.
The winter wind cut through her, making her ears ache and spread their pain out into the bone, but she ignored it as she did all things that came between her and her goals. Gulls cried and wheeled in the air above her while the rising wind whipped the sea into white-topped waves. There was a storm coming, but she would leave the Free Marches before it struck.
She carried the coffer she had gone to such trouble to retrieve; finally paying a debt she had accrued as a young woman facing a vision of herself barren, with no children to continue her line. She owed a debt, and she would see it paid.
Valentia bowed to no man or woman, but she bent her head as she held out the stone coffer to its rightful owner.
"I told them what I could. It is up to them if they will choose those branches of the tree of fate or not."
The dragon took the coffer in her talons, sniffing the stone before delicately nipping it between her teeth to toss it high in the air with a flick of her head. Valentia and the dragon watched it spin to the top of its arc and start its tumble back toward the ground.
The dragon rose up on her hind legs, balanced by the great length of her tail and snatched the coffer out of the air, crushing it in her jaws.
The air thrummed with a sudden release of power that blew Valentia's hair back in a streaming tangle before the world went still around them, the wheeling sea birds stopping in their flight, the waves stilling as though a winter freeze had left everything caught in ice after it passed by.
The dragon dropped back to her forelegs and sucked both the magic and her own mass into a human-shaped hole in the air, in the end leaving only a human woman in a mean gown, her hair grey, her face lined, but she held herself straight and strong, and looked at Valentia with a dragon's yellow eyes.
The world drew a collective breath and came back to life around them.
"It is always so," the woman who was and was not a dragon said when the change had passed, a glimpse of a dream dragged to this side of the Veil. "They will choose, and choose, and choose again. In this world, and in all the others they cannot see."
"And my daughter...?"
The woman smiled a dragon's smile. "Our daughters do as their natures dictate. As do we all." She turned to leave Valentia for the shelter of a cave that had been hidden by the dragon's bulk, but paused to pass a last command over her shoulder. "Don't forget to send someone to return my token. The boy may have need of it in the future."
• • •
The atoll receded into the distance, no longer unnoticeable with its magical heart removed. The Rivaini ship's sails were barely visible silhouetted against the horizon, and all Anders and Fenris had to do for the next two days was rest. Once they reached Kirkwall, there would be work to be done, sailors to be hired, but for the moment...
Isabela held the captain's spyglass to her eye to watch the Bright Star until even the hint of its sails on the horizon was gone.
"Let that be the last I see of you," she said under her breath before lowering the spyglass to find Hawke watching her with that disconcerting intensity of his. "What?"
"About what your mother said," he began carefully, knowing he was treading a floor strewn with traps that were as likely to hurt Isabela as they were to hurt him. "After this trip, I tend to believe that she really does see things."
"She does," Isabela said, setting her hip against the rail while she faced Hawke.
"So what she saw for you?" he said, taking a step to close the distance between them. "Do you think she might have sent you away to—"
"Don't even think about taking her side," Isabela snapped, pushing him back with a hand on his chest. "She could have found a better way to 'protect' my children than selling me off like a piece of meat when I was just a child."
Hawke put a hand over hers and didn't move when she pushed. "I'm not taking her side, but I can't hate her."
"She took Flemeth's amulet," Isabela reminded him.
He shrugged. "She's the reason you'll be captain of a legendary ship. Captain Isabela, captain of The Lovers' Wake. You'll be the talk of every port from here to Par Vollen and beyond."
She smiled despite herself, knowing he was right. It wasn't every day, or even every age that someone brought a legend made real into port, even if the Dragon Age was shaping up to be an age of legends. "It doesn't make us even," she said stubbornly.
"If I could kill your husband again, I would," Hawke said, grim lines drawing themselves beside his eyes and along his brow. "But none of this was my point."
Isabela carefully extricated her hand from under his and put it on the railing, waiting.
"My point," he said, when she didn't ask, "was that if you ever do decide that you want to have little mage children, I'll be there for you." He hurried on when her face twisted, caught between shock and fear. "In any way you need. I'm not writing my name in as father, but you could put me on the list? I'm only half insane, I only beat my younger siblings with small trees when they needed it, and I can make at least three dozen silly faces on demand."
"No." She took a step back and shook her head hard, sending locks of hair flying. "Uh uh. Just because Valentia said that my children would be mages doesn't mean I have to have any at all. I don't want children. They tie you down. They need things. They—"
"Grow up to hate you?" Hawke asked when she faltered.
"They aren't part of my life," Isabela said.
Hawke nodded slowly. "Okay then. I won't bring it up again, but I won't be sorry if you change your mind either."
"If you get much sappier," she said, "I shall either have to be ill or throw you over the rail, and I hate being ill, so let's find something more fun to do."
"What do you have in mind?"
Hawke followed Isabela's gaze when she started to grin and shook his head, already beginning to smile himself. "What are you going to do?"
• • •
The ship's captain leaned on the railing next to Anders, grinning in a way that made Anders vaguely uneasy. "Finally got your sea legs."
"You could say that." Anders patted the belt pouch that held Valentia's powder. "I like your ship a lot more now that I'm seeing more of it than a grand tour of its buckets and heaving over the railing."
"You know that you and your husband are welcome here, even if I didn't get you the warmest send-off last time. Old Arn's leg's as good as new thanks to what you did the last time you were with us, and don't think the men haven't told me about you seeing to a few other things for them this time around."
Anders let the last part slide. What he cured for a sailor that did not affect his work was between him and the sailor, and maybe the sailor's bed partners. Indirectly at least.
And someone on this ship might as well be getting sex, since apparently Fenris had secretly sworn himself to the Chantry. He and Sebastian probably got together to talk about the sanctity of having blue balls for Andraste.
Which... was probably unfair, but Anders' own case of blue balls was making him feel uncharitable.
"Anyway," Mustow said, pulling Anders out of his musing, "Isabela reminded a few of the lads that you missed that traditional dance thing she told us about, so we thought we should do it now."
Anders craned his neck until he spotted Fenris where he was helping sailors coil rope. "I don't know..."
"Come on," Mustow said, tugging on Anders' elbow to pull him away from the railing. "Stefan's the best accordion player you'll find for miles and our lot can keep a good beat going." His smile took a more serious cast. "I'll break out the rum and it will get their minds off the atoll that appeared out of nowhere today in the middle of a sea too cold for coral. A little healing magic's one thing, but this was big magic and I need their minds clear."
He gave Anders' elbow a light squeeze. "Do you understand?"
Anders had to pull his eyes up off the deck to meet Mustow's gaze. "I understand." It was always about soothing people's fears, about showing them that not all mages were the way the Chantry painted them. He should be grateful to the captain for wanting to see mages differently, but it only made him tired. It felt like a fight that could never be won, or even fought to a draw. Dal had tried and even with a king on his side he was only making small improvements for mages.
"Then go get your man and we'll be ready for you."
Speaking of losing battles.
Anders dragged his feet over to Fenris while the captain stuck his fingers in his mouth and gave a piercing whistle that instantly got his men's attention. The deck hands abandoned Fenris to the rope while they went to gather around their captain.
"What is that about?" Fenris asked, looking past Anders. His eyes slid to the side when Anders moved to intercept his gaze and slid again when Anders moved again until he finally frowned when Anders moved in his way a third time.
"Oh good, look who's decided I exist." Anders folded his arms, knowing his smile showed all the hostility his frustration had been building for weeks. Every time he thought they were going to take a step forward, Fenris decided to take two steps back and he was tired and frustrated. "We're to give a command performance."
"What does that mean?"
"It means that the captain wants us to do our special newlywed dance," Anders said. The absurdity of the situation left him torn between anger and laughter. For weeks Fenris treated him as though he were some magister to bodyguard and not like... like... He did not know what the like should be, but he did know that whatever it was, it was not this.
Take the excuse. Just take the bloody excuse, I know you want to.
He held out his hand. "We're supposed to be keeping up appearances, Sweetheart."
Fenris' lip pulled up at one corner in a faint sneer before he reluctantly put his hand in Anders'.
Even his hand was a study in contrasts - cold and sharp on the top where he was exposed when holding his sword, warm, and even with a swordsman's callouses on his bare palm, softer underneath.
Fenris squeezed his hand a little too hard and said, "Do not step on my feet."
Anders laughed and squeezed back just as hard. "Don't give me a reason to."