Thank you all for reading!
Corentin Trevelyan looked down at his youngest daughter with distaste. "Imagine my surprise at finding you here." He glanced over his shoulder at Cadoc, raising his eyebrows. Ren's brother flushed and seemed to shrink in his seat, as though he wanted to disappear completely.
"I'm sure I was more surprised you were here than the reverse," Ren said dryly.
"Indeed? And yet these are halls where the powerful wield influence—you are neither powerful nor influential, so I cannot imagine what drew you to such a gathering."
"Trust me, it wasn't my idea." To protest that Morris seemed to need her to make all his decisions and do all his dirty work was beside the point—she didn't value being needed in this instance, and would have preferred to be far from here, reveling in her lack of power and influence, not to mention in her distance from her father. "And you, what stake do you have in the continued existence of the Inquisition—or in its demise?"
"I have many interests in Ferelden and Orlais, and the Inquisition encroaching upon both countries is bad for business."
"So the father of the former Inquisitor is here to dismantle the Inquisition. I'm sure you find that irony entertaining."
He raised his eyebrows, unamused. "I find very little about you entertaining." His jaw twitched. "In fact, I find the utter failure of your mother's entire line highly disappointing indeed."
Ren didn't mind the slur for herself, but Cadoc felt it, she could see by the way he flinched at the words. After a lifetime of being cosseted as his father's heir, to be cast aside now for something he had no control over must be a difficult pill to swallow, and she was even more impressed at how self-possessed her brother seemed—or had, before their father appeared. But even more than the sharp jab in Cadoc's most sensitive place, she resented his implication that Cadoc's sexuality, her own willfulness, and their brother Gawen's tragic early death were somehow to be laid at the feet of a mother none of them could remember. "Possibly," she said hotly, "if you had actually done your duty as a parent by any of us, things would have been different. Instead, you sheltered the boys until they were too weak to stand up to you—or to anything or anyone—and you ignored me entirely and left me to bring myself up. If I turned out a disappointment, please, do feel free to blame yourself."
Her father's nostrils flared in anger. "You insolent child."
Ren raised her left hand, showing him the Anchor. The green had started to bleed over onto her wrist now, and was creeping its way up her fingers, the spread seeming inexorable, but she wasn't going to worry about that now. "Perhaps you've forgotten, but I saved all of Thedas from being swallowed up by the sky and defeated an ancient darkspawn magister who wanted to rule the world. Your thank you note must have gotten lost on its way to Skyhold."
He looked down at her, pursing his lips in disgust at the reminder. "An accident, or so I understand. What were you doing, wandering the halls looking for something to steal?"
Since that was exactly what she had been doing at the Conclave when she walked in on Corypheus's ritual, Ren let the comment pass, staring at him with as much calm as she could muster.
At last her father raised his eyebrows triumphantly, as though somehow he had achieved some manner of victory. He turned on his heel, muttered "I will deal with you later" at Cadoc, and stalked out of the tavern.
There was a nearly audible sigh after he left, as though everyone in the room had been holding their breath. Ren raised her eyebrows and looked pointedly around, and those at the other tables returned to their conversations, pretending very hard that nothing had happened.
Cadoc got up from his seat, looking uncomfortable. "I-I-I … I should go."
"I'll go with you." Ren walked him out. In the darkness outside, the competing scents of ale from the tavern and wisteria from the gardens confusing their senses, they stood looking at one another awkwardly. "You'll be okay, you know."
"Will I?"
"If you want to be. It can't be easy to be out of Father's good graces after a lifetime in them … or so I imagine." Ren had never been in her father's good graces in her life, so she really had no idea what that was like, but she was willing to pretend, for her brother's sake. "But there's a whole world out here waiting for you, and I can help you, if you want."
"I—think I'd like that. Can I—" Cadoc hesitated. "Dorian. He's like—me?"
"Very much so, yes."
"And … he was rejected by his father because of it?"
Ren nodded. Dorian's father's reaction had been worse than their father's—he had tried to change Dorian with blood magic, which had led to Dorian fleeing the Imperium entirely. "I'm sure he can help you learn how to adjust." She'd have to give him some warning about being gentle with her brother, she thought, not certain if Cadoc was ready for Dorian's particular brand of awesomeness. Then again, maybe he was. She trusted Dorian to know.
"Thank you, Ren."
"Anytime."
She watched him walk off into the darkness in the direction of the palace, hoping she could help. He looked happier now than she'd seen him since they were children, but a lifetime under someone else's thumb wasn't gotten over easily.
The Iron Bull left the tavern, finding his kadan standing there with her hands in her pockets, looking off into the dark. "Something out there?"
"Just watching Cadoc off. I hope … Well, it would be nice if he could learn to be comfortable with who he is."
"That's what we need, another Dorian on our hands."
Instead of smiling, she looked up at him with sadness in her eyes. "Since he's leaving us, maybe that is what we need."
"He's going to be all right," he told her.
"Yes, why wouldn't he be? He's only going home to a country that rejected him entirely, amongst people who already had his father killed, armed with a whole lot of southern ideas and new knowledge about long-held Tevinter beliefs. What's to worry about?" Her sarcasm was so exactly Dorian's flavor that the Iron Bull had to chuckle.
He put his arm around her shoulders. "He's also going with the spy network of the Inquisition working for him, with his eyes wide open. And he needs to do it. We all have to confront our pasts in our own ways."
"I've never had the slightest interest in confronting my past, and yet somehow it keeps popping up in front of me," Morvoren said bitterly. "Sometimes I wonder how I could possibly have come from that man."
"Do you?" the Iron Bull asked mildly. He didn't wonder. He saw a great deal of her father in his kadan—her strength of will, her certainty that hers was the right course, her refusal to back down in a fight. He would have laid pretty heavy odds that the only person Corentin Trevelyan had ever backed down for was his daughter. But Morvoren wouldn't have appreciated the comparison, so he kept it to himself.
"As if we didn't have enough trouble before this. You really don't have any idea why there was a dead Qunari in the Winter Palace?"
He could tell she was grasping at straws, but it stung that she needed the reassurance anyway. "Do I look like a fucking Qunari to you?" he snapped.
Morvoren looked up at him, startled. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean—"
"No, I'm sorry." He squeezed her shoulders in a second apology. "I'm sensitive about it. If I hadn't burned all my contacts in the Ben-Hassrath, I might have some idea what they're up to right now. Of course, I might also be dead," he admitted.
"I prefer you clueless to dead."
He frowned at her. "I'm not so sure."
Morvoren smiled. "Of course you're not. You're used to knowing everything."
"Yeah, I guess I am."
"Are you about ready to call it a night?"
He grinned down at her. "No, but I'm ready to go to bed."
"As always."
"Wearying of me already, kadan?" He gave a mock sigh. "I suppose I'll just have to work harder."
She stopped, turning to him and taking both his hands in hers. "You know that's not true, right? There's not a day that goes by that I'm not grateful for you and everything you are. I don't know what I would do without you."
The Iron Bull hesitated. He had been thinking about something for a while, not certain if it was what he wanted, definitely not certain if it was what she wanted … but he hadn't been able to get it off his mind. "What would you say if I wanted to get married?"
Morvoren's eyebrows flew up in surprise. "Where did that come from?"
"I don't know. Just something I've been thinking."
"I thought you felt the binding was unnecessary." She winked at him. "The invisible binding, that is."
"It is. That is, I know it isn't necessary. I make the choice every day to be with you; it's the only thing I want. But …"
She shook her head. "Next thing you know, you'll be wanting a baby."
"Well … I wouldn't say no. Except that I'm not the one who'd have to carry it, so it's not really my call."
Morvoren tugged on his hands to bring him down so that she could look him in the eye. "Maker's breath, you're serious." When he didn't disagree, she sighed. "Ashkaari, I can't … I mean, this is—it's lovely that you would want to take a step so far from what you grew up with for me, but that kind of thing has never mattered to me. I ran away from marriage. Twice!"
"Arranged marriages," he pointed out. "You love me."
"I do love you. Absolutely. Completely. But I'm happy the way things are. I want things to go on the way they are. I just don't think I …" She winced, yanking her left hand out of his grasp, the flare of the Anchor lighting up the space between them. Morvoren cradled it in her other hand, biting her lip as she waited for the pain to subside.
When it was gone and she was breathing normally again, the Iron Bull put his hands gently on her shoulders. "I'm not sure going on the way they are is an option anymore, kadan," he said.
Morvoren's mouth fell open, and she stared at him in shock that quickly turned to anger. "That's what this is about, my damned hand? You think if you shove me in front of a Revered Mother and let her mouth platitudes at me that I don't even believe in that it will change anything about this?" She waved the hand in his face, the palm facing toward him. "There is no fucking Maker, Ashkaari, and no magic cure. I'm not even sure there was ever such a person as Solas. Maybe we all just made him up, him and the Breach and Corypheus, too. But I am damned sure that getting married isn't going to make this go away, and if that's what you're thinking, then maybe you're not the man I fell in love with." She shrugged his hands off her shoulders and turned away, stalking off into the dark, only the faint glow from the Anchor marking her path.
The Iron Bull stood and watched her go. Yeah, maybe some part of him that had possibly embraced the romantic religious notions of the south too fully wanted to marry her as some way of keeping her with him … but he didn't see any other way. That thing on her hand was growing, faster all the time. The pain when it flared was increasing. He couldn't stop it; no one he knew could stop it—and Morvoren was probably more right than she knew when she said there had never really been a Solas. Certainly there didn't seem to be one now, at least not in any recorded area of Thedas. He was looking down a bleak, dark tunnel, at the end of which was the certain knowledge that he was losing her. Could anyone blame him for grasping at any straw he could reach in order to keep her with him?