When they get to Castle Redcliffe, Marian thinks long and hard about having Zevran condemned to the dungeons while they're there, but she sighs and directs a servant to take him to one of the guest rooms instead.
She sends Sten after him. She might be soft-hearted, but she's not stupid.
Then she joins Irving and the other mages in the hall, where they're speaking with Teagan and Lady Isolde.
"All has been quiet since you left," Teagan says, nodding to her as she meets them. "Connor has locked himself in the family rooms and will not come out." He sounds worried and impatient, but above all else he sounds tired. What must it have felt like, to live in the shadow of an abomination in the body of his own nephew? To fear every moment that the abomination might come out and visit some new horror on Redcliffe's people? Marian would be very much surprised if Teagan had gotten more than a few hours of intermittent sleep while they were gone.
"We should hurry," Marian says to them, but mostly to Irving, who holds the reins on this particular experiment. She has no idea how to perform the ritual that sends one's mind into the Fade.
Irving nods, gesturing to the other mages. "We have already begun the preparations," he says in his gravelly, aged voice. "We can start anytime."
"Good," Marian says with a firm nod. "Let's begin now, then."
"We haven't sufficient lyrium at present to send more than one mage into the Fade," Irving says. "I assume it will be you going into the Fade, or did you have someone else in mind?"
It's only then that it truly hits her: she has to go back into the Fade, where the demons live, where she was so recently tempted by some thing wearing the face of her dead father. They don't even know what kind of demon holds Connor in its thrall – it could be anything, even a desire demon, and then where would she be? She is so scared that next time, next time will burn up the last of her will, and she won't be able to refuse or resist. Oh, she doesn't want to do this –
But who else can she send? There is Morrigan, who Marian is still not sure she fully trusts, or Irving, who is far too old for this sort of thing, or Wynne, who'd had just as trying an experience in the Fade as Marian had – and she is theoretically younger and more resilient.
She needs to get the fuck over this. She cannot avoid the Fade for the rest of her life, and she's the best person for this job. Fine.
If only reason were enough to banish fear.
"I'll go," Marian says.
After that, things happen very quickly indeed: Irving and the other mages set up the same font she'd used in her Harrowing in a little storage room on the main floor while Marian and the others hang back and watch. Even now, Marian finds herself fascinated by the rituals they're using, catches herself trying to memorize the incantations, the runes, the spell geometry. Morrigan is standing in the doorway, watching with her arms crossed over her chest, and every so often she makes a soft, displeased sound like an angry cat.
When they're finished, Irving beckons Marian over, and at once she puts her hand into the font. The Fade drags her down, and perhaps it's her imagination, but this time it feels hungry...
When she opens her eyes again, she's back in the Fade. She's faced with one path this time, and she takes it, for a lack of any other options. She's hardly two steps in before a ghost that resembles Connor walks straight past her, for all the world like she's not there at all. She stops dead and watches him walk around a bend in the path and out of her sight. When she turns back around, another ghost, identical to the first, walks past her and around the bend in the road, just like the first.
What is this place?
She proceeds cautiously, peering around curves in the road, while ghostly forms shaped like Connor and Arl Eamon drift around her, calling out for each other, complaining and angry and scared. None of them react to her. She's not even sure that they're real.
Eventually she stumbles on an Eamon that looks more solid than the rest, who seems to see her as well. She can't be sure he's not a demon in disguise, but all he asks is that she help Connor, which she'd intended to do anyway. Still she's wary, and leaves him without learning anything new. He prays as she walks away, and silently she prays with him: Blessed art thou who seeks His forgiveness.
She finds Connor later, in a different place; but then as she speaks to him, she realizes that it's not Connor, it is his demon, trying to trick her, to delay her, to do anything to keep her from saving him.
And then Connor drops the disguise and turns into a desire demon in a heart-stopping flash of images. Marian puts her down, and it's easy, startlingly, worryingly so.
She moves on, and another Connor accuses her of his father's murder, begs her and orders her to leave. It changes into the demon, too, and Marian fights it and defeats it in just the same way as the first.
Where is the temptation? Where is the sweet, sickening seduction she'd expected?
There is yet another Connor down the path, and this one is so defensive of the demon's actions, and in such a flagrantly transparent manner, that Marian lights up her ice spell immediately. This battle goes much the same as the others. When it's done, Marian stares at the space where the demon had been, where it just disappeared, and wonders.
The path ends in a large, round clearing. The desire demon is waiting there, her hands on her hips, watching Marian with a cool, calculating look that promises things Marian won't enjoy. The demon tries to speak to her, but she's most emphatically not listening. A well-placed winter spell does half of her work for her, and after that it's easy, no matter how much wool the demon tries to pull over her eyes with her clones.
When the demon dies, she can feel it reverberate out through the Fade, erasing this wasted dream as it goes. Everything here begins to dissipate, subsuming back into the dank mist that stretches as far as the eye can see, and hastily she wills herself to wake up.
When she wakes in the littlest guestroom she'd been assigned to before, Irving and Wynne check her over straightaway and even as Wynne is scolding her for her current state of exhaustion, Isolde and Teagan move straight from effusive thanks to asking her to perform yet another impossible task.
"You want me to what?" Marian says in disbelief.
Isolde frowns. Clearly Marian has deviated from the script. "The Urn of Sacred Ashes," she repeats, like she thinks Marian just didn't hear her clearly. "It will save Eamon. It is the only thing that can now."
"The Urn is a legend," Marian says flatly, pulling her hand out of Wynne's and giving her a quick, grateful smile that she lets slip off her face when she gets up from the bed and turns back to Isolde and Teagan. "You want me to ignore the Blight, my sworn duty, to look for a myth? Lothering is overrun," she says, and this time, for once, she's expecting the desperate unhappiness that tries to climb up her throat and strangle her. She swallows past it. "Lothering is overrun," Marian says, softly, but with no less insistence. "Alistair and I have a responsibility we cannot neglect."
"Eamon is the only one who can pull Ferelden together in this time of crisis," Teagan says, reminding her of why they'd started here in the first place. "If you wish to fight the darkspawn with Ferelden armies, you will need him."
Marian hates it when she comes up against an unassailable truth. She takes one steadying breath through her nose, and then another, and when she feels less like she might start screaming hysterically at all the people who expect her to do the impossible and save them when she's only an eighteen-year-old girl three weeks removed from her Harrowing, she asks, "What would you have me do?"
"My husband funded the research of a scholar in Denerim – a Brother Genitivi," Isolde says, pressing her folded hands against her stomach.
"Brother Genitivi?" Marian says, suddenly excited. "Brother Ferdinand Genitivi?"
Isolde nods, her forehead creased in puzzlement. "Do you know him?"
Marian laughs. "I know of him, of course," she says. "Doesn't everyone?" Genitivi's written nearly a quarter of the Circle library, damn near half if you're only counting the academically rigorous portion. Suddenly her errand doesn't seem so bad.
"He has been studying the inscriptions on Andraste's Birth Rock," Isolde says, glancing at Teagan. "When Eamon fell ill, I sent the knights to speak to Genitivi. I hoped that he had finally discovered the location of the Urn of Sacred Ashes itself. They were unable to locate Genitivi. In desperation, I sent more knights in search of the brother or some clue of the Urn's location."
Marian sighs. "I have to insist that we stay here for at least two nights before we leave again," she says, surrendering implicitly. "And many of my companions need outfitting."
Teagan agrees easily, gratefully, and Marian arranges to leave the First Enchanter here to watch over Eamon while she's gone. She's more surprised than she ought to be to find that Irving and Eamon know each other well. Irving will take good care of his friend.
Then everyone files out of what she's pretty sure is her room again, and she's left alone with her thoughts.
She's been suckered into a fool's errand, and not all of her companions are going to like that. Sten doesn't seem like the type to chase after rainbows, and Morrigan has already loudly proclaimed her opinion of Andraste and the Maker. Even more worrying is the viper in the grass, the assassin she'd taken in on not much more than his word and the sight of his pale fingers clenched against a wound in pain. She'd also allowed herself to grow fond of Leliana, and Marian's quite certain she's hiding something, though she cannot figure out what.
She takes her armor off, her movements slow and leaden with exhaustion, all the while thinking hard about leaving Zevran here, with Teagan and his guards. It's a tempting thought. But he swore to her and Alistair, not to Teagan. If she leaves him behind, he might think himself free to hunt them again. If he plans to break his oath, she would rather have him under her hand.
Now that she's had time to think about it, she's less worried about whether he'll go back on his word. She is never truly defenseless, except when she's sleeping or in the case of magebane, and Alistair is pretty handy with his sword.
It might be wise to make sure she and Alistair are never asleep at the same time, though.
By this point she's down to her smalls, staring blankly at her hands holding her leather pants. She shakes her head and redresses in her soft shirt and trousers. She'll have to find Alistair and steal some of the saddle soap and oil she needs for her armor, but... Marian picks up her Circle robes, the ones she'd been wearing when she left, and wrinkles her nose. They haven't even met a bar of soap since, and they're nasty. She couldn't wear them right now even if she wanted to, which she most emphatically does not. Unfortunately, she also knows she can't just hand them off to the castle washerwomen and let them handle it. The magic impregnated into the fabric resists traditional methods of cleaning. She'll have to ask Wynne what to do with them. She drops them back into her packs with a sigh.
She goes out to find her companions and tell them the good news.
Everyone seems to have something to say to her today.
Wynne wants to talk about Jowan and her precipitous departure from the Circle; Marian listens for as long as she can bear before she excuses herself and makes her escape. Sten flat-out asks her if she's a woman, which makes no sense to her until he goes on to explain the role in which women serve under the Qun. She's too shocked to be properly angry while she tries to explain the flaws in his logic, but he's doubtful, uninterested, and finally leaves her grinding her teeth while she stalks down the hallway. She doesn't bother informing Zevran, since she thinks that he wouldn't care if she took them straight to Tevinter, and she has no interest in indulging him in his suggestive banter right now. Alistair has gone down to the village with Teagan to oversee the long-delayed funeral pyres. Leliana is blessedly uncomplicated, though she looks like she has something on her mind; she shakes her head when Marian asks her if something is wrong, so Marian leaves her to it. She has to ask several guards before she finds one who saw where Morrigan went. Apparently she's taken to haunting the ramparts. After a brief detour to her room, Marian drops off Flemeth's grimoire with a smile and flees back inside, where it's warm.
On the way back, Marian filches Tales of the Destruction of Thedas and several other books from Eamon's study and reads in her room for most of the afternoon, curled up on the bed with Cú draped over her feet. She's warm and cozy and once in a while, she even manages to forget.
It's not a bad way to spend an afternoon.
A maid brings her a borrowed dress for dinner, and afterward Marian returns to her room, which is now hers alone. Someone has lit a cheerful fire in her absence, and she changes into an old shift and curls up in front of it with her dog and a book.
After a few hours of this, it becomes apparent that she hadn't eaten enough at dinner. Her stomach is growling so loud that it wakes Cú and startled, he growls back. He gives her huge, pleading eyes when he realizes what he's done, and that's when she starts to laugh.
"If only that worked," she says to him, standing and dropping the book on her bed. "I'll bring you something from the larder, shall I?"
Cú barks once in happy agreement and she grins at him before slipping out through her door, silent in bare feet. The other doors in the guest wing are closed, and she imagines that most of the castle has gone to sleep by now. She remembers where the kitchens are, so it's a simple matter to find them again, and then the larder is off to one side, easily located in the dim light of the banked fire.
Marian casts her little wisp light to help her see. Against the far wall there's a huge, gorgeous meat pie that she has to have, so she cuts a wedge of it, then spots a bit of ham for Cú. She piles two apples and some dry, crumbly cheese on top of all that, and thinks seriously about a plate of delicate honey cakes before giving herself a mental shake. She cannot possibly be this hungry, not after the dinner they'd been given. She turns to put the apples back and nearly drops everything when she sees Alistair leaning in the doorway, grinning at her. He's wearing the same shirt and trousers he'd been wearing in the library that day. His shirtsleeves are rolled up to expose his forearms, and Marian's mouth waters in a way that has nothing to do with food.
"Hungry?" he asks, looking down at the haul piled in her arms with raised eyebrows.
She swallows. "Yes," she admits, looking down at her snacks so she'll stop looking at his arms. That's when she remembers what she's wearing, or more precisely, what she's not wearing, which is anything that could be considered proper clothing. She can feel her face turning red. She tries to surreptitiously shift the food in her arms to provide more cover, but... her shift is cut rather low, and there's a lot to cover. It's not working. Marian sneaks a look at Alistair's face, and while he's gone red, too, he isn't looking away like she expected, but he is keeping his eyes very intently on her face and nowhere else.
"Me, too," he says, low, like it's a confession. It takes her a minute to remember what they'd been talking about.
"There's part of a pie back there," Marian offers, jerking her head toward the other wall. "It smells amazing."
Alistair blinks at her for a second before he glances over her shoulder at the pie and grins. "Wait for me, will you?" he asks her, and then slides by her to get to the pie. Marian shrinks into herself to avoid touching him, but she still catches his scent as he goes by, and even though he smells like cold metal and sweaty man she can't stop herself from breathing him in.
Stop it, she scolds herself. Marian takes two quick steps to the door and puts her back to the wall next to it, watching Alistair take a plate for his pie, and two slices of roasted duck, and some crusty bread she'd missed. She frowns. She has no hands for bread now, and that's a sadness. Alistair finishes off his plate with three or four of the honey cakes she'd salivated over before holding it out to her expectantly. She stares at him, confused. "Do you really want to carry all that?" he asks, frowning. "I wanted to talk to you, anyway. We can go eat in Arl Eamon's study, or there's another room down the hall with a table, if you'd prefer."
"A table, if you please," Marian says, dropping her spoils onto his plate, including the apples. She lets her arms drop, feeling peculiarly uncovered, and now Alistair's eyes do drift downward toward her breasts before he jerks his gaze back up to her face. He flushes again and pushes through the door, leaving her to follow. The tips of his ears are red, too, and the back of his neck.
Marianswallows. She can feel her nipples tightening. What possessed her to come downstairs in little more than her smalls? She follows him, glancing around for anything she can use to cover up, but no one has thoughtfully left a dress lying around that she can wear. Only direct divine intervention is going to help her now. Maybe she should go up to her room first? Or they could eat in her room, where she still has one of the waterskins with her things?
Of course, her bed is there, too, Marian reminds herself. No. Instead, she does her best to pull the neckline of her shift up toward her throat and achieves all of an inch of extra coverage before Alistair turns into a small room off of the hallway. It's obviously the family's private dining room, with a small, round table and a sideboard wedged up against the wall.
"Here we are," Alistair says, dropping the plate on the table. He glances at her again, smiles faintly, and then he pulls out the chair in front of him and gestures for her to sit in it. His ears are red again, and his cheekbones are burning. This is as awkward for him as it is for her.
This is exactly what she didn't want her feelings to cause. She has to fix it.
She moves closer, her feet soundless on the stone floor, touches his hand to draw his attention, and smiles at him. He smiles back, relieved, and then she sits down and he pushes the chair in to meet her. He hovers behind her for a moment before he moves away, and Marian takes the opportunity to close her eyes and take one deep breath for steadiness before he's back with a decanter and two delicate goblets from the sideboard.
"What's that?" she asks, deliberately bright and cheerful, as he pulls out the chair next to her and sits.
"No idea," Alistair says with a shrug. He pours her a glass of something thin and sweet-smelling, shining gold in the candlelight.
Marian lifts her little wisp light and sticks it in midair where it hangs like a chandelier, then takes the glass from his hand and raises it to him. "To snack raids," she says, her mouth curving.
He laughs and toasts her in return. "To Eamon's best," he says, and they both drink. It's a lovely and crisp honey mead, bright with spices and the bite of cider apples. She takes another sip and then snags her wedge of pie off their shared plate.
"I don't know why I'm so hungry," Marian complains between bites of pie and pastry crust. "I feel like I could eat all of this myself."
"Have you felt like that often lately?" Alistair asks, stealing one of her apples. If they're sharing, then she'll have some of that bread, thank you... "That you could eat a horse, I mean."
"More and more," Marian admits. She eyes him. "Is this something Warden-related?"
Alistair nods. "Sounds like the Joining is taking," he says. "It takes longer for different people, but two weeks sounds about right. I think that's how long it took to kick in for me."
"So when do I get magical darkspawn-sensing powers?" Marian licks crumbs of pastry off her fingers.
Alistair clears his throat and she looks at him curiously, but he's already nose-deep in his goblet. When he resurfaces, he puts his goblet back down. "Probably anytime now," he says.
Marian turns in her chair to sit sideways, focused on Alistair now instead of the food. She snags a piece of cheese and savors it, taking slow, tiny bites as she brings her knees up to sit curled into the chair. "What does it feel like?" she asks, hoping that he's feeling up to talking.
"The darkspawn?" Alistair asks, and she nods. He picks a slab of duck and rips a bit off, chewing slowly as he thinks. "Honestly, it's a bit like being sick," he says with a grimace. "Nausea, but inside your mind. Lovely, isn't it?" She makes a face. He laughs.
"So I've been wondering... what else can I expect?" Marian asks him. He passes her a honey cake and immediately she bites into it. Redcliffe's cook knows what she's about; everything is delicious. "Does Redcliffe have an apiary?" she asks curiously.
"Holme keeps some bees up north a bit, outside of the village," Alistair says, distracted by his own cake. "Mmm... I have to admit, I did miss these when I left for the Chantry." He finishes it, licking his fingers. "As for what's coming... Nightmares, for one thing. Duncan said it was part of how we sense the darkspawn. We tap into their..." He trails off, looking for the words. "Well, I don't know what you'd call it. Their 'group mind'. And when we sleep, it's even worse. You learn to block it out after a while, but at first it's hard." He falls silent, playing with a knob of cheese that's slowly crumbling to bits between his fingers. What sort of nightmares has he been having, to put that look on his face? Then he looks up at her. "It's supposed to be worse for those who Join during a Blight. How is it for you?"
Marian curves her mouth in a practiced smile. "Believe me, I've had worse," she says, forcing her voice light and amused. She doesn't want to tell him about her strange dreams, about the way she'd been the archdemon. She doesn't want him to worry.
He eyes her, then shrugs, ripping off another bit of duck and offering it to her. She takes it, watching his hands, his fingers glistening with rich juices. For a moment, she imagines seizing his hand, the surprised way he'd look at her, turning swiftly into shock as she pulls his fingers to her mouth and starts to lick the juice off of his fingers with delicate little laps of her tongue. Would he let her? Would he blush? Would he watch her with huge eyes? Would he -
She eats the duck. It, too, is delicious.
"Some people never have much trouble, but that's rare," Alistair says doubtfully. He rips a chunk of bread away and squashes it onto his cheese crumbs, cleaning them off the table before stuffing the whole thing in his mouth. "Others have trouble sleeping their entire life. They're just more sensitive, I suppose. Everyone ends up the same, though. Once you reach a certain age, the real nightmares start. That's how a Grey Warden knows his time has come."
"What are you talking about?" Marian asks, frowning.
Alistair glances at her, confused, but when he realizes she's serious, he winces. "That's right, we never had time to tell you that part, did we?" His hand slips into his pocket, and Marian just knows he's got his worry stone in there from the way he's fiddling his fingers. He's a born fidgeter. It also lets her know that she's probably not going to like this. He says, so bluff and hearty she wants to smack him, "Well, in addition to all the other wonderful things about being a Grey Warden, you don't need to worry about dying from old age!" He drops the cheerful sarcasm when she gives him her best unimpressed face. "You've got thirty years to live. Give or take."
What? All the blood rushes out of her head, leaving her feeling terribly unsteady even though she's sitting down.
"The taint... it's a death sentence," he says, so serious, looking down at his hands. "Ultimately your body won't be able to take it. When the time comes, most Grey Wardens go to Orzammar and die in battle rather than... waiting. It's tradition." He looks at her now, to gauge her reaction, but he can't hold her eyes, glancing away again.
She doesn't know what to say. She can barely think for all the white noise rushing through her head. "Maker," she breathes. "Why didn't you tell us?"
"You think if we asked for volunteers, that Grey Wardens would exist?" Alistair asks, looking at her again with his eyebrows raised. "Maybe a few. You wouldn't be here. Neither would I, probably. And the Blight needs to be stopped."
He's not wrong, she supposes, but that doesn't make what they've done palatable... But it's done now, and she's not going to blame Alistair for what was most likely Duncan's decision. Or perhaps this is standard Grey Warden practice. Either way, as the most junior Warden, there wasn't anything he could have done, and he hadn't owed them anything more than basic courtesy.
In any case, her preoccupation with the idea is putting the cart before the horse – first she has to make it through the rest of the Blight, a task which is looking more and more difficult every day.
"You know," Alistair says in a low voice, staring up at her light. He startles her out of the hazy thoughts she'd been preoccupied with, but if he notices her twitch, he makes no mention of it. "Duncan... he started having the nightmares again. He told me that – in private. He said it wouldn't be long before he'd go to Orzammar himself." Alistair glances at her. His grief echoes within her, so close to what she's feeling that impulsively Marian reaches out and takes his hand, just to hold. They touch so rarely that his skin still feels strange and unfamiliar against hers, but she brushes that away and hangs on, squeezing gently. Alistair needs a friend, and she could do with one herself. The look he turns on her is strange, one she can't decipher, and she starts to let go, but he shakes his head and clings to her hand.
Alistair laughs, a bitter thing born of his sadness, his hand tightening around hers. "I guess he got what he wanted. I just wish it had been something worthy of him."
"We can do one thing for him," Marian says, staring at Alistair and willing him to meet her eyes again, waiting patiently until he does. "We can finish this. For Duncan. And we can make him proud."
His eyes warm and one corner of his mouth tugs upward in a half-smile. "Somehow you always know what to say," he says. "That's a strange sort of magic."
Marian snorts. "If only that were true," she says. Before he can ask her what she means, she asks, "Anything else I should know?"
"Hmm," Alistair says. Marian loosens her grip in a subtle signal that he could let go if he wanted to, but he holds on like he hasn't noticed. Maybe he didn't? Marian dithers, incapable of making up her mind whether he wants to sit there holding hands or if his callouses mean he can't feel what she did. Maybe it was just too subtle. Maybe she should do something instead of working herself into a lather over nothing.
It doesn't feel like nothing, though. She loves his hands, with long, square fingers and broad palms that fit around hers delightfully, and his skin is so warm. Maker, she never thought she could be aroused just by holding someone's hand. This is becoming a problem.
"Well, there is one more thing," Alistair says, glancing at her warily. "With the taint in our blood, it's hard for a Grey Warden to have a child. Every Grey Warden I knew who had children had them before they took the Joining. I think there have been a few who bore children afterward, but... they're rare at best."
She sits there for a long time, trying to decide how she feels about this. She's never thought about having children. Most of the time she still feels like a child herself. She doesn't even know if she wants children.
That's the point, though. She hadn't decided. She'd never had the chance to make up her own mind on the idea, and now the decision's been taken from her.
Alistair's watching her uncertainly, like he thinks she might explode. She digs up a smile for him, but she's afraid it's a poor effort. "Oh, well," she says. "I wasn't really planning on it anytime soon, in any case."
He doesn't look as if he believes her, but she's not sure she believes herself, so it's all right. She thinks he understands.
Marian doesn't want to think about this anymore. She rests her chin on her knees and asks him, "Is this what you wanted to talk to me about?"
"Oh, no," Alistair says. He lets go of her hand then to reach for cheese, and if she's honest with herself, she's feeling a lot of disappointment over that. She tucks her hands between her thighs and her calves, accidentally brushing the sensitive skin of her inner thighs on the way. She shivers.
"Are you cold?" Alistair asks, and she's quick to shake her head. She doesn't want him to fuss. "All right," he says dubiously, looking at her shift. "If you're sure... I want to talk about what happened, about Connor."
"All right," Marian says, confused. "What's the matter?"
"I just wanted to thank you," Alistair says, so seriously that she's caught off guard. "You went out of your way to save the arl's family and you did it, even though it would have been easier not to."
"It wasn't exactly out of our way," Marian points out. "We had to go to the Circle eventually anyway."
"You can't tell me you wanted to, though, at least not in a way I'd believe," Alistair says with narrowed eyes, daring her to try. She acknowledges the point with a wry smile. "And you're the one who thought of appealing to the Circle to save him in the first place." He sighs. "There's been so much death and destruction, it... well, it makes me feel good that at least we were able to save something, no matter how small. I owed the arl that much."
"I'm so tired of killing people," Marian confesses in a tiny voice. She closes her eyes. "I couldn't bear it if we'd killed Connor, even though I know we probably should have."
"You think he's still possessed?" Alistair asks, disturbed. She opens her eyes to find him looking at her with no little concern.
She lifts her head to look at him. "It was too easy," she says, upset. "What if I was wrong? Desire demons are smart enough to hide if they have to, to wait as long as they need to to get what they want. If she's still in there with him, we'll never know unless he explodes or something."
"Morrigan agreed with you, and while I might think she's a heartless bitch, she does seem to know what she's talking about," Alistair points out, and it's so like them that she has to laugh. "First Enchanter Irving seemed to agree with you, too, and Wynne." He pokes her in the shin, and she scowls at him. "I think you've forgotten how much you've grown as a mage since you left the Tower. You're a lot different than you were, you know."
"Compliments will get you nowhere, ser," Marian says with narrowed eyes, but inside she's quietly pleased. She feels better, too, about Connor and about life in general.
"Are you sure?" Alistair says with a leer; she kicks him and they both laugh. It's surprisingly nice to just sit here and talk to him. She'd never imagined having anything in common with him when they met, though she might have been biased by his being a templar. A little bit. She knows that she has her reasons for keeping him at a bit of a distance, but here in this room, those reasons are far away and unimportant. It can't ever be, but... could it really hurt to pretend, just for a little while?
They talk long into the night and when Marian finally goes to bed, she has far more pleasant dreams than she'd expected.