K is for Kiss

She has said these words before, when she was younger and had both more and less of an idea of what she was committing herself to; the ceremony is the same, although the name she says is different.

In his golden armor and his crown, he looks so much like Cailan.

He slips the little braided ring onto her finger, and again she puts aside her father's name and colors for those of the house of Theirin. Father is dead and buried now, though, and she has no living kin left to take the bride's cloak from her back. The Warden-Commander offered to stand in, but given that she had killed Father it somehow seemed inappropriate- Anora had asked Cauthrien instead, as the captain of her household guard, and the knight nods solemnly as she unfastens the clasp.

For the second time in her life she is a woman wed. It's a great relief when she kneels before Her Grace, when the ermine-edged mantle slips around her shoulders and her crown- her crown, the crown she's worn for the last six years- settles back on her brow. The off-kilter world rights itself into proper order.

"People of Ferelden," Alistair says, and takes her hand to help her up, "I give you your queen."

She bows to her subjects and smiles, then, though she knows what's coming.

"Your Majesty," the Grand Cleric says, "you may kiss your bride."

She closes her eyes, but she needn't have bothered; he smells of sweet herbs where Cailan smelled of wine, and their kisses are only a little alike.

This wedding feast is rather more meager than her first. Most of the roads to Denerim are still in ruin and the darkspawn seem to have eaten every cow from here to the Bannorn, but they have fish and fruit and a cellar full of wine. Her dress, too, she had refashioned from her first, carefully preserved but now too large on her after a year of war and grieving; cloth of silver is dearly bought, and perhaps the nobles will appreciate the concession.

She dances, as is proper, although the music has suffered somewhat from the Blight (the court harpist had joined the miltia and died at the west gate; the lute player lived, but lost three fingers on her hand reloading a jammed ballista) and the court's mood is somber.

The wine, on the other hand, has improved with age, and she's more than drunk her fill before they retire for the evening. By the time her ladies strip her of dress and skirts and stockings, unpin and unplait her hair and belt her robe around her waist, her head is swimming.

She can hear the men coming down the hall, raucous as always, and the women usher her from the dressing room as the door bursts open and Alistair lands, rather unceremoniously, on her bedroom carpet. The party lifts them both into the bed, joking and teasing (she loses a ribbon from her sleeve, he the tie of his nightshirt), and then they are gone, and they two are alone.

Alistair squirms out from the blankets almost immediately. Seen so close he's thinner than Cailan, but broader at the shoulders and taller- but still, so similar; she resolves herself.

"You're leaving already?"

"What?" He pauses, looks at her for the first time since entering the room. "You want me to stay?"

She stands, sighs, walks across the room and hangs her robe on the cabinet-pull. "They're likely all still standing out there, and if you slip away now they'll gossip. More to the point, Alistair, you don't have an heir, and we need to remedy that."

"I've only been king three weeks."

"I'm your queen." Her earrings weigh on her lobes, forgotten in the haste of everything, and one's gotten caught in her hair as she unfastens it. "While I'll still be helping with governance, of course, the matter of inheritance israther my job. The last thing I want is another crisis, if you-"

He chuckles. "A cheerful topic, for a wedding night."

"I'm being serious." Her earring untangled, she sets it aside. "This is our last chance, Alistair- yours and mine both."

"I like your hair that way, you know. You should wear it down more often."

She looks up at him. "You're changing the subject. Thank you, though, but you know I can't. Married women don't wear their hair loose."

"So change the fashion." He crosses his legs, but stays sitting on the bed. "Isn't that what kings and queens do?"

"Not really," she says. "Mostly we do what we must, whether we like it or not."

"And that includes..."

She shrugs. "Close your eyes and think of Ferelden, as they say, though it needn't be unpleasant."

He nods. "It always comes back to that, doesn't it? Although I don't think I'll need to close my eyes."

"I can blow out the candles, if you'd prefer."

An odd expression- panic, almost?- crosses his face for a moment, and he shakes his head, emphatic. "No- leave them."

"As you like," she says, and sits on the bed beside him, one hand on his shoulder.

In point of fact, she decides much later that night, he isn't like Cailan at all