A/N: Apologies for the delay; I've been traveling for work and they didn't afford me much time for writing. Their priorities are all wrong! Hopefully this long-ish chapter makes up for it.


It was one week until they left, and two weeks to the day after her first date with Cullen, when Aveline met her for her promised drink. They'd seen each other several times since the scene at the Gallows at the Viscount's seat of power. The Viscount was a drunk, as expected, and the Seneschal was surprisingly sanguine about his ruler's drunkenness, but Aveline had always made her welcome in her formal, cool way. So it was a bit of a surprise to meet her at the specified Hightown tavern and find her out of her armor and smiling broadly.

The tavern was bright and airy, designed for being seen rather than secret assignations. Cassandra knew enough to understand that the seemingly random seating of the occupants was actually a complicated social code, but she'd never been able to care much about those kinds of signals. Luckily Aveline had already chosen a place for them, off to the side near the card tables, and she wouldn't have to offend anyone with her ignorance.

"Glad you could make it, Seeker," said Aveline as Cassandra took the stool next to her. She signaled the bartender subtly, and two drinks materialized in front of them. When Cassandra frowned at the glasses, Aveline shrugged. "Guards always get good service in this place."

Cassandra took a sip of the pale amber liquid and raised her eyebrows. "Good quality as well."

"Exactly," said Aveline. "And don't be shy about having it. I feel I owe you after our first meeting."

"I'm never shy about good drinks, Guard Captain," she said, and took another swallow. "However, after so many trips to the Hanged Man I'm not sure my palate can be trusted to appreciate them."

The red-haired woman barked a laugh. "More than fair. Varric's concoctions have burned out many a tongue. Still, do your best," she said. "And call me Aveline, I beg you."

"Very well, as long as I can be Cassandra."

"If you like." Aveline leaned back and sighed. "Maker is it nice to be out with a proper woman again. You'd be amazed at how many here will turn up their nose at a good ale."

"You miss Hawke?" Cassandra sighed internally at the duty that she could never quite shed, even on a social call. "And your other friends?" she added, trying to soften the inadvertent interrogation.

"Ha! Hawke was the pickiest drinker of us all. Merrill, the Dalish girl, didn't drink at all, and the less said about Isabela the better," said Aveline, wrinkling her nose. "She certainly drank anything, so long as she was on someone's lap as she did."

"Leliana is much the same. But always for a greater cause."

"Isabela's only cause was her own pleasure," said Aveline darkly.

A groan sounded over the card players as a hand came in for a woman with a pile of gold in front of her, and Aveline cleared her throat meaningfully. The woman nodded imperceptibly and announced a break in the game, scooping up her winnings and heading for the exit. Cassandra smiled, and Aveline tipped her head.

"Anyway, I'm afraid my social circle hasn't ever been much to speak of. My lads and lasses do their best, but no one can ever really relax with someone who can put them on a month of Darktown patrols at her whim."

"You don't seem the type to do that."

"Every leader is the type, if she's had a bad enough day," she said with a rueful grin. "And a woman carrying twins has a lot of bad days."

Cassandra looked at her stomach, startled, and then the glass she held.

Aveline laughed. "Not anymore. Happy and healthy and with their father this afternoon." A happy smile softened her eyes. "He spoils them rotten, poor fool." She snapped back to the present. "But you didn't come here to hear about my family."

"I'd be very interested," said Cassandra. "You seem quite settled. As an agent of the Divine, I mostly see the beginnings and endings of relationships."

"Wouldn't it ruin Varric's novel for you?"

Cassandra kept her face carefully impassive, and Aveline laughed again. "I don't blame you for reading it. The man tells a good tale, even if it burns me that he's telling mine," she said. "I went to see him, you know. After you released him far too soon for my liking. We came to an understanding about what would, and wouldn't, be written."

"If I may say so, I'm glad that you did," said Cassandra. She spoke slowly. "I believe Varric is less content than he pretends."

"That's an understatement," said Aveline. "Not that the same thing couldn't be said about us all. But you're right that I haven't been the friend to him I might have been. That I should have been. That's my shame, and I'll fix it. Thank you for that truth, Seeker. Cassandra," she corrected.

The two women drank in silence for a minute before Aveline gave her a sly glance. "So. You and Cullen Rutherford."

Cassandra flushed hotly and stared at the table. "Did he tell you?"

"He didn't have to tell me. Half of Kirkwall is talking about it. And all of Hightown."

She nearly spat a mouthful of ale onto the table. "All?" she asked, coughing. "I find it hard to believe I am that interesting."

Aveline gave her a pitying look. "Cassandra. Cullen is one of Kirkwall's most influential citizens, and a notorious bachelor besides. All of his moves are scrutinized by the bored elite and those who wish to become it," she said. "So when he suddenly shows a preference for a beautiful stranger, especially one who turns out to be one of the highest-ranking, non-celibate members of the Chantry, the news spreads so quickly and so far that it can hardly be called news."

Cassandra scowled. "I'm not comfortable with my life being so public."

"You won't get much of a choice around here," said Aveline. "I can hardly sneeze without Donnic being offered a dozen handkerchiefs to wipe my nose. They held competitions to name our children, you know. Not that I took any of their suggestions. That's the trick. Be firm and ignore them."

"Did you ask me here to give me dating advice?" asked Cassandra, raising her eyebrow. Aveline was much more like her than she'd realized during their first meeting, and this level of interest in someone else's personal affairs was uncharacteristic.

"Not exactly," said the captain, and a touch of embarrassment crossed her face. "Not at all, honestly. I invited you out because, as I said, I haven't had good drinking company in some time, and I needed the distraction. But while we're here, I was hoping to help you."

"I wasn't aware I needed help."

Aveline snorted. "Which is exactly why you do." She leaned forward on her elbows. "I'm not much of one for the romantic arts, as anyone will tell you, but I do understand crimes that can't be punished. You can't get more underhanded than the upper class. And you've riled them up good and proper."

Cassandra stared at her, bewildered. "What have I done?"

"You've taken away one of Kirkwall's most eligible men. A highly sought-after prize. This is an offense greater than any abomination wandering the streets, believe me. The ladies' teas have been quite cutting."

It was strange to hear someone talk about Cullen so coldly, like he was a melon on a fruit stand. Besides, it wasn't as though he'd been surrounded by suitors when she'd arrived. Cassandra took a drink and considered her words carefully. "Cullen implied that his attempts at dating in the city were not received with permanent enthusiasm."

"Ha!" Aveline shook her head. "Typical. I say this as a friend, but he has the absolute worst taste in women of anyone I've ever met. Present company excluded," she added quickly. "But in a room full of a hundred swooning applicants, he'd unerringly find the one woman only interested in a few rolls in the sheets with a handsome man. I mean, for Andraste's sake, Hawke? And the dockworker, the one who had ten men on a string. Plus the Seneschal's cousin, who, I can tell you, lacks the responsibility of her relations. Cullen even courted Isabela for a time."

"The pirate?" Cassandra couldn't hide her shock. Perhaps she'd gotten the name wrong.

Aveline hardly noticed. "If you can call what she did courting. Indecent, really," she muttered. "Anyway. He's a good man, and it's obvious what he needed was a good, steady woman, one with a head on her shoulders and an eye toward the long-term. I'm married, very happily, or I might have done the job myself just to save him from himself. But I'm more glad for you both than I can say. And I'll be damned if a bunch of scheming ninnies are going to shake you loose from him."

They just need to wait a week, thought Cassandra dully. Heat flooded her face at the realization that Cullen had, once again, chosen a woman who was exactly wrong for him. Looking for a few rolls in the sheets with a handsome man summed her up very well, and to hear it said so plainly, and so unknowingly, hit her with the weight of a fist to the gut. She had always been honest, but somehow it had gotten away from her here. And it hurt that this woman, one she admired, would despise who she truly was.

She finished her drink to push the ache away. The city pined for him. At least he wouldn't be left alone.

"They're just spreading rumors now, but soon it will be the seductions," Aveline continued, oblivious. "And after that will come the accusations of wrongdoing, the calls for your arrest. Baseless, but well-designed."

"I wish you luck in attempting to arrest me, Captain. My blade remains sharp," said Cassandra, smiling, and Aveline grinned. She asked more seriously, "What rumors are they spreading about the Knight-Commander?"

"None about him. Just you."

"Oh," said Cassandra, waving her hand dismissively. "That's of no consequence, then. I pay no mind to rumors. And Cullen is not one to fall prey to seduction. Poor planning, in all phases. These women lack skill at waging a campaign."

"So you're not royalty who ran away from her family to pursue a scandalous relationship with a commoner, who abandoned you pregnant and penniless in Nevarra?" asked Aveline with a small laugh. "That was one of the more ridiculous ones."

Cassandra froze, just for a moment, before forcing herself to relax and laugh as well. Aveline moved on to more advice about Kirkwall nobility, but her words were distant and incomprehensible. Was it only a coincidence that there was a rumor so close to her own history? Perhaps. It wasn't exactly an unheard of idea for a story, and the fact that she'd been royal was known to at least some of the city. But even that much similarity took her inexorably back to the small village where she'd learned that truth was a thing best sought outside of the heart.

She sat lost in the past until she heard, "Varric also told me he's had a new idea for a serial. Woman Seeking Templar, he said he'll call it."

"He what?" asked Cassandra, snapping back into the moment. "No. Absolutely not. I will break his fingers."

Aveline snorted into her drink, and they traded ideas of appropriate dwarven punishments as the shadows lengthened around them into night.


The trip back to the Gallows was sweltering turmoil, the past and the present roiling together in her mind. She was a scandal. She was no better than a pirate who preyed on men to abandon them. She was stealing a life that was no more substantial than the air. She was a Seeker of Truth who had turned herself into a lie.

So when she saw Cullen waiting for her at the end of the pier, that brilliant, youthful grin on his face, it twisted inside of her until she could barely look at him. He loved the wrong Cassandra, the shadow Cassandra, and the jealousy roared through her. It mingled with the ever-present envy of a distant village girl with hair clenched inside a fist.

Cullen pulled her out of the book with ease and kissed her softly on the cheek. "Welcome back, princess," he said with a smile. "Did you have fun with Aveline?"

His face changed as though by magic and became the boy from her past who'd seen her royalty as a challenge, who could never forget what she was until she was far enough away to forget her entirely. Had Cullen heard the rumors? Was he trying to remind her of her unsuitability? Did he finally understand who she really was?

Nonsense, all of it, from his broad smile and light tone, but the ale and the heat and the faces that mixed and danced meant the dock was shifting under her as though it followed the whims of the sea. She couldn't steady herself against the storm.

Instead she pulled away sharply, and his smile vanished. "Don't call me that," she said. The ice in her voice came as a surprise, given the flaming heat she felt on her cheeks. She stalked up the stairs and to her room, fighting desperately to keep the pain of memory at bay.


A knock came at the door, as insistent and annoying as only one person could be.

"Cassandra, it's me," called Leliana from the hall. "Open the door. You know I won't stop until you do." The knocking broke into a dancing rhythm before moving back to its more stable, droning beat.

Cassandra knew all too well that Leliana told the truth about her stamina, so she wrapped her robe more tightly around herself and rose to answer it. Her bed was more nest than anything else by now, a circle of blankets where she'd sat, staring into the middle distance and unbraiding and braiding her hair with nimble, unfeeling fingers. She felt wrong, and when she felt wrong the only solution was to be inside herself until she felt right again.

Leliana often interrupted the process.

When Cassandra yanked open the door with a scowl, Leliana melted back into the hall without so much as a glance and left Cullen staring at her with nervous eyes. Cassandra pulled her robe further closed, ridiculously. He'd seen her undressed more than once, in full streaming light, but she was somehow ashamed to be exposed in front of him now.

"I brought you dinner," he said, holding the tray in front of him like a shield. "You weren't there."

"Why did you have Leliana knock?" asked Cassandra, ignoring the offering.

"Would you have answered me?"

Because the answer was no, and because there was no reason it should be anything but yes, she said nothing. He gave a tiny, helpless shrug that was more eloquent than any speech, and she couldn't look at him anymore. She turned around and moved back to her nest of blankets, unwinding her hair once more. Cullen followed slowly, his movements deliberate and delicate as he set the tray on her table, then pulled a chair up next to the bed. The scraping sound of wood on stone was a lonely one.

To her surprise he said nothing, and she sensed his eyes on her. "What do you see?" she asked.

"Strength," he said. "Beauty. Intelligence. My own heart, beating in your hands." Her fingers stuttered in their motions before continuing. "And too much pain to bear. I'm sorry for my part in it."

"You have no reason for apology," she said. Her braid was half undone. "My irrational reactions are not your responsibility."

Cullen released a breath. "I would like them to be," he said. "Though I know that isn't fair to hope for so soon." He paused. "You never talk about your past."

"It is of no consequence. You know the things that are of any interest."

"I'm interested in all of you, Cassandra." She finally looked at him sidelong, and he leaned forward to capture her without touch. "Tell me about your family," he said, in a command so gentle it couldn't be ignored.

"I have no family," she said evenly. "They're all dead."

No response, just that empty, yawning space waiting to be filled. She tried to stay inside, to heal herself, but wisps of Cassandra floated out into the comfort of his concern. "My parents died when I was just a child. They rebelled against King Markus and were executed for it. My father was ambitious, they told me, but what little I remember of him makes that seem unlikely. He liked books and the way the water sounded when it sang over stone," she said. She smiled suddenly, and it hurt. "He gave me a wooden boat to sail in the brook on our estate. I dropped it in the river when we left."

"Who was we?" asked Cullen, his gentleness still a scalpel, cutting her open and releasing words unbidden.

"My brother, Anthony, and my uncle Vestalus. He took charge of us. He is alive, but he wasn't family," she said bitterly. "Anthony was killed by mages for his dragon hunter's blood. Our blood is said to be a hallmark of the Pentaghasts. The death was supposed to be mine, but somehow I have never had to pay for my own sins." She blinked to stop a tear from forming. "I often wonder if that sacrifice is what allowed me to defeat my own dragon. Maybe the mages knew something after all. Perhaps I always lived inside of the blood that flung across me when they slit his throat, and I used the last of my brother's life to kill."

She shook her head. "But either way, I have no family now." Her braid was finally gone, and she began the painstaking business of recreating it once more.

With unexpected speed, Cullen was next to her, and he stilled her busy fingers. "Don't," he whispered, staring at her without blinking. She wet her lips, expecting him to kiss her. It would be welcome, the distraction, the replacement of all of this past with a present full of pleasure. She was already turning towards him, lips parting, when he pressed against her side and wrapped his arms around her. His kiss only found the top of her head, and she closed her eyes.

"Why do you wear your hair in a crown if you despise your birth?" he asked quietly.

An image rose behind her lids of a perfect afternoon, of speaking of weddings and futures with a mother who would fall to the Maker's side a year later. "My mother gave it to me," she said quietly. "To hold the princess that I can never be rid of. The rest is Cassandra, but I cannot escape it all."

You are so loved, she heard from a great distance, and her face twisted away from the memory. "She was the last person who saw me as I am."

As soon as she said it, she wanted to take it back, terrified that Cullen would contradict her and say that he himself knew her. To remind her that he'd so fully fallen in love with her pretense that he believed it was all she was. But instead he said, "Why do you sound so angry about her?"

And she realized that she did, that she'd growled out the words in the same tone she used in the fighting ring. "I don't know," she said, turning aside. Her chest was tight and binding.

"Why?"

"Stop asking why! There is no why of me, there's just me," she said, trying to leave the circle of his arms.

He didn't let go, and his voice was strained and low. "I love you, Cassandra. I do, and I have, from that first minute you stepped into my life. I hate your pain. I hate it, and I can't fight it, and when I don't understand it I hurt you. Help me."

Her chest contracted still more, an unbearable tension with nowhere to release. He didn't push again, but she was already pinwheeling over the cliff, and perversely she wanted to fall. "She left me," she said harshly. "I didn't understand then. I was too small. I thought it was right, the way they went together. I watched them die, in love. But I learned later - I know now - that she could have stopped it. She could have turned on him and stayed, but she was loyal to my father until death. My mother loved him too much to think of me. And so I lost my life, too, only I had to keep living. I have done it, but I refuse to let nobility be my legacy. If I must be a princess, I will fight against it. I will be valued as myself. And my mother will know I didn't need her, after all."

"I'm sorry." And he did sound sorry, an ache in his voice almost as strong as the one she was containing with all of her strength. He didn't say that her mother had loved her. He didn't say that she should forget, or accept, or any of the expected things. Instead he pulled away and brushed the pad of his thumb over her cheek, as though he saw the unshed tears that burned inside her eyes. "Will you show me how to make the braid?"

Cassandra touched his hands, guiding them into the long, dark weave of her hair, and showed him the movements that would bring the separate strands together into a whole. He urged her to lay back, and she let exhaustion take her away as his fingers wove through them, tugging softly and soothing her into peaceful sleep.


She woke in the dark, unsure of the time, and Cullen stirred around her. He'd stripped off his shirt, and he was so warm, like a furnace against her back. It was a welcome heat, as gentle and undemanding as its creator. Still, she tried to sit up, stopping only when her bedmate yanked her back down. Her robe had drawn apart as she slept, and he'd slipped a hand inside to rest over the slow beat of her heart.

"I'm hungry," she whispered when he made a sleepy protest at her movement.

"Wait," he answered. His voice was graveled and rough, but he swung up and lit the candle by her bed without pausing. His face glowed in its light, all the lines and worries of a Knight-Commander erased, and her breath caught in her throat as he lit another and carried it to the table where he'd left the food.

When he returned, he fed her by candlelight, careful offerings of breads, fruits and cheeses. All her favorites, things he'd learned without words and seen without telling her. She didn't know when she grew tired of the food and began tasting him instead, small licks to his fingertips as he brought them close, kisses to his palms when his hands were empty. The world narrowed again until it was only them, his scent and touch and the safe bubble he carried around him like armor. She relaxed and teased him mercilessly inside of it, drawing his fingers into her mouth with increasing force as her longing grew.

Cullen shivered and darkened at every touch of her mouth, but after he finally set the light aside and swept the food away, he touched her face with tender care. "My turn," he said and smiled at the questioning look she gave him. He kissed her eyelids, then her mouth, before opening her robe with strong, urgent hands. He coaxed her to lay back, against her strong objections since it took her mouth away from his, but when his tongue traced lines down her body after his fingers, she relaxed and let him go where he would.

And he went everywhere. Cullen bathed her body in touches and kisses, and she moaned appreciatively at every new place he set aflame. The curve of her hips. The underside of her breasts. The crease of her elbow, the spur of her ankle, the tips of her collarbone were all ignited as he traveled. He pushed away any attempt to reciprocate, so she curled her fingers desperately in his hair instead, when he was close enough. When he wasn't, he reached up with a hand to squeeze her own, keeping them together while he made her fall apart.

Finally his face looked up from the juncture of her thighs, and despite the raw need on his face he said, "May I?"

The sweet desire he'd awakened in her melted into a liquid heat that pooled deliciously in her belly. Cullen always asked. "Please."

He grinned, once, at the strain in her voice, then tasted her in earnest. After the first kiss to her core, he wasn't gentle any longer. His fingers dug into her, pulling her toward him, and she gripped the sheets beside her helplessly as her hips bucked and spasmed underneath his ministrations. He'd spent a patient evening learning every trick of his lips and every flick of his tongue that drew a response, but now he was no longer learning. He was the master, the instructor, and he strung together pleasures like beads on a necklace until there was no separation between the peaks. His fingers and tongue explored her with violent, focused energy, and all she could do was hold on and call his name into the darkness.

Each repetition of it seemed to drive him onward, like a spell that she was weaving with her voice. Cullen, Cullen, always Cullen. She looked down with great effort, to remind herself of his beauty, and she watched his jaw flexing and working in the dim light, seeking only her pleasure. The thought was enough to destroy her control, but she held on grimly, wanting the moment to last. This man taking care of her and making a part of her loved once more.

She cried his name again when he curled his fingers inside her, and he glanced up to meet her gaze with terrifying hunger. It wasn't just for her body, but her spirit, and she couldn't look away. She only broke eye contact when his tongue traced a deliberate circle around her core and sent her tumbling over the highest edge she'd ever reached. He rode it out with her, twisting and kissing and soothing her as she crested, but as soon as the storm was past he was on her again, his cock pressed to her slick thighs.

"Yes," she said before he could ask, her voice cracking, and he took her swiftly. There was no pause to feel her, no stopping to savor them together, just relentless movement that had her flying once more to the open sky.

Cullen's voice was a rough song in her ear, singing her name over her like a prayer. His sweat mingled with her own until there was no separation, and her hands roved over his slick body, even hotter than before. Snatches of the Chant mixed inside her name, and for the first time she felt she might almost be as holy as people assumed she was.

"Call me princess," she said. She breathed in sharply as he stuttered and stopped moving. "You make everything beautiful, Cullen. Make it beautiful, too."

He gripped her shoulder tightly and kissed her neck before settling back in to his steady pace. "Princess," he said softly, and she arched up to him like a dancer. Cullen groaned into the night. "Cassandra, my princess. Mine. Oh please. So beautiful. So good. So -" He broke off with a gasp and his fingers tightened dangerously. "I'm so close. For you. You're… oh Maker you…"

She leaned up to bite at his jaw, needing the reality of his maleness, the coarse feeling of his burgeoning beard on her tongue. His hips rocked and thrust against her uncontrollably when her teeth found his neck, releasing his trapped need with a beautiful violence. "I love you," he cried, and that broke the wave inside of her once more, crashing her into the rocks and breaking her to pieces.

When they were finished he collapsed onto her, for once not worrying that his weight might crush her. For once her not worrying about this wrong, stolen love.

She stroked his back gently as he breathed, and when he kissed her earlobe she sighed. "Sleep here tonight," she said. She felt him tense, and she rushed to fill the space before he could argue. "Please, Cullen. I don't want you to go."

It wasn't a lie. She couldn't remember the last time she'd felt so open, so raw, so susceptible to pain of the outside world. If he wasn't here, who knew what might come into this vast space the shadow Cassandra was leaving behind her? She wasn't real enough to keep the parts of her separate and protected from harm.

There was a long silence as Cullen considered her words. Eventually he rolled away, and Cassandra's heart raced in panic, afraid that it wasn't enough that he loved her and that she needed him. So much fear, hammering at her heart, and it silenced her as nothing else could. She had only one thought, bright and shining - if he left her now, she would find no more sleep here.

But he only blew out the nearby candles, then came back to settle her against his side. "Of course," he said, his voice strained but sure. "Anything you need."