A thin finger of draught passed through the Chantry Mother's chamber, slipping in beneath the door that led into the main hall and taking its leave through a crack in the plastered wall. It nudged the strewn letters across the dead woman's desk and harassed the slender flames that sprouted from the candleabra. The shifting light, pale as winter dawn, spilled over the flagstones like water: illuminating the lower parts of the bookshelves, the remnants of Alistair's discarded armour and the tapestries he had laid out on the tiles. The bookshelves seemed to draw together around the centre of the room; as though shielding the two young Wardens from further interruption.

As the bann closed the door behind him - the candlelight trembling precarious in the back draught - Alistair worried that he had been presumptuous. While Flora had been washing the residue of mending from her forearms, he had removed the two thickest tapestries from where they hung on the walls - a man of lesser height would not have been able to reach - and set them together on the flagstones, one on top of the other. Although he had just finished a tankard of ale, his mouth suddenly felt as dry as a Rivaini desert. He and Flora had come together in slow inches over the weeks until they shared a bedroll, but they had always set out a pair at the evening's outset. Even so, during daylight hours, neither one acknowledged the new intimacy that blossomed at night.

Caught in a net of doubt, Alistair failed to notice that his sister-warden had no reservations about the sleeping arrangements. Flora sat cross legged beside the makeshift bedding, holding her breath as she peeled the leather strap from her knee. To her relief the joint was not too swollen, and made little protest when she lifted the heavy weight of embroidery and manoeuvred herself beneath it.

"It was a good idea," she whispered, stretching her legs out beneath the tapestry. "To bind my knee. It was Sten's idea. I wonder where he's sleeping tonight?"

"I'm not sure," Alistair replied, distracted. "Is it comfortable enough down there?"

"Mm." Flora picked up a thick fold and squinted at the shadowy figure stitched into the weave. "Who's this? He looks miserable."

"Maferath, on trial for his betrayal. I think it's metaphorical."

"Ooh." Flora had only a rudimentary grasp of Chantry lore.

Alistair leaned over the desk, drawing a steadying breath. He had meant to extinguish both candelabras, but was no longer sure that he entirely trusted himself in the dark with his sister-warden. Heart beating a taut rhythm between his ribs, he blew out one and left the other standing in its tremulous aura. The makeshift bedroll beside the desk was now half in light and half in shadow; the girl within it painted similar.

"Maferath," repeated Flora, impressed at his ability to identify the nondescript figure. "Hm."

Curious as to the contents depicted on the tapestry that served as groundsheet, she rolled onto her belly. Her fingers sunk into the plush fabric; distracted, she pressed her face against the expensive wool.

"This is the softest thing I've ever felt," she said in wonder, voice muffled by the stitching. "I didn't know they could make cloth that wasn't itchy ."

Alistair lowered himself; such was the length of his body and broadness of his shoulder that it seemed as though part of the Chantry architecture had detached itself and settled down beside her. Flora lifted her face from the fabric, a strand of dun-coloured wool clinging near her nose as she rolled over. Propped up on an arm, Alistair touched his finger gently to her cheek, removing the stray fibre. She curled her mouth at him and the sentences he had been rehearsing earlier almost flew from his head. He kept himself raised on an elbow as she yawned, keeping a deliberate foot of air between them.

"Flora," he said in a low voice, and his tone was so uncharacteristically solemn that she peered up at him with curiosity.

"Eh?"

"As…"

The structural beauty of her face, undiluted by distance, was too distracting; Alistair decided to speak to her ear instead. Focusing determinedly on the side of her head, he pressed on.

"Flora, as… as a junior officer," he said, as Flora, slightly confused, looked over her shoulder. "Of the Wardens. I need to say something about the battle tonight. And how it went."

From the hesitant cadence of his voice, Flora realised that she was about to get told off. Glumly, she wondered if his complaint would bear any resemblance to the stream of criticism she had already received from her general.

Alistair paused, his brow furrowed in three plough-lines.

"Going up on your own to the bridge without saying anything," he said, softly. "Then running out - alone again - onto the lake to save that fellow."

"But I have- "

"- a shield," he finished for her. "I know. But it doesn't make you invincible. You were almost caught by them when you were running back from the bridge. And then you - you fell."

Flora scowled, remembering her plunge into the cold and churning waters, lifeless fingers clawing through her hair.

"You need to tell us what you're doing, you need to stay with us. Communicate."

Alistair spoke with more confidence now that he knew she was listening, her pale eyes meandering across his face.

"It was - it was reckless. Flo, you could have died. "

The last word had a rawness to it, the emotion ragged and unrefined. The single syllable was anchored in fear; the disbelief and horror when his friend dropped into the lake with the enemy.

Reckless was indeed the term that her general had used earlier, but it stung more coming from her brother-warden. Flora propped herself up on her elbow, the loose folds of his shirt slipping off her shoulder. She caught his gaze with the ease of one used to attracting attention.

"I'm sorry," she breathed in her soft, hoarse northern cadence. "You're right. I didn't think. I don't really know the difference between being brave and being reckless."

Alistair touched his forefinger to the place where her hair met her forehead, the dark red in stark contrast to the blanch of the unblemished skin. He traced the half-oval of her brow, inch by slow inch. She held her breath, the air caught in her throat.

"I don't think there's much difference," he replied, honestly. "But I can't risk losing you, sweetheart."

Dropping her gaze to Maferath, whose penitence was still shown stitched into fabric centuries after his death, Flora remembered all that the young man beside her had already lost at Ostagar. She heard Alistair exhale, and looked up to see him settling back on the tapestry; his mouth taut with a tangled knot of emotion. He had not enjoyed reprimanding her, but he had seen it as necessary: she had been reckless.

Then, reflexively, he reached the broad bulk of his arm towards her. Relieved, she shuffled herself into his side, pressing her face into the hollow below his collarbone. Flora's brother-warden closed his grip tightly around her, his thumb finding the bare upper arm. His shirt fit no better than her previous garb; it had been stitched for a man several inches above six feet.

"Once we leave Redcliffe, there shouldn't be any more battles," Alistair said softly, wondering if she could feel the beat of his heart against her cheek. "Just formalities and diplomacy when we visit each faction. I know you don't like fighting."

His thumb traced idle patterns on her arm as he spoke: circles and slow, undulating lines.

"Mm," agreed Flora sleepily, soothed by the steady cadence of his pulse. "I hope - thereain'tmore - of it."

Her words collided with tiredness. She yawned; Alistair felt the swell and ebb of a small breast against his ribcage. His thumb drew the outline of a Mabari against her arm, testing the warm pliancy of the flesh.

"Anyway, there's no more fighting to be done tonight," he murmured, and there was a small part of him astonished by how at ease he felt. "Time to sleep."

Somewhere out of sight there was a heavy fold of drapery caught between Duncan's two youngest recruits, a layer of embroidered wool separating them. Alistair groped towards it - not quite sure what he was doing - and his fingers brushed over the back of Flora's hand: they had both reached down for the fabric simultaneously with the same end in mind. With the woollen crease smoothed, she was able to fit herself more neatly into the rugged landscape of his body.

"'Night, Alistair," Flora whispered into the darkness beneath her brother-warden's chin, her bitten nails snaking over his hand and into the gaps between his fingers.

"Goodnight, Flo."

"Oh," she added, sleepy and solemn, "and you don't need to use your… your rank to make me pay attention. Everything you say is worth listening to."

It did not occur to Alistair to make the usual self-deprecating joke; instead, her words sunk slender roots into his brain. He did not reply, but turned his palm over to snare her fingers in his; clasping their hands tight together.


Alistair awoke in the deepest part of the night, with an inkwell of darkness spilling around him. At first, he did not know where he was - tall silhouettes loomed about him like standing stones, while faint grey ribbons streaked the air - and then realised that he was in the study of the dead priestess. The shadows that reared above him were the bookshelves, the light came from slivers of the moon creeping through the shuttered window. The candles he had left burning on the desk had blown out, leaving the chamber in a gradient of grey to black. Dawn was still several hours away, the only sound was a faint sigh of wind through the rafters.

Alistair then felt the emptiness against him; he was no longer sharing the weight of the tapestry. The woven wool descended into a crumpled flatness at his side. He gazed at the space where his sister-warden had rested, then settled onto his back with his empty arms behind his head. He was not worried about Flora's absence - she had most likely gone to get a drink, or to the privy - but he would not return to sleep until she had returned.

As he lay there, he thought about the morning that lay ahead. Even though it had been a decade since he had last made the journey to Redcliffe Castle, he could summon a memory of each portion of the ascent: the juncture of the road between town and castle, the hairpin bends that had terrified the lady Isolde in her carriage, the old wooden boarding that Eamon had been about to replace for twenty years. Finally, the stone span that connected Idelson's Fall to the mainland would need to be traversed. When he was a boy - even with his additional height - it had taken him one hundred steps to cross the natural fortification.

It'll take less now, Alistair thought, and then realised that the bending of his arms behind his head had caused no ache across his chest. He shifted himself on his elbows until a thin bar of moonlight illuminated the skin: the bruised and dented flesh had returned to unmarried evenness. Only the old scars still remained, remnants of training accidents and glancing blows.

Alistair searched his memory of the evening and could not recall his sister-warden mending him; he was sure that he would not have forgotten it. He then remembered how Flora had fallen asleep, her face tilted on his chest; each unconscious exhalation rolling over the skin like a tide, or the curative hand of an apothecary.

The shadow and light scattered within the chamber; settling into new patterns as the door opened and quietly shut. Flora hesitated for a moment in the entrance - she had come from the firelit main hall - then, once she had regained her sight, padded over the tiles towards the desk.

Alistair propped himself up as she narrowly avoided colliding with a bookshelf. The tapestry gathered in folds at his waist, weighty and expensive.

"Did I wake you up?" Flora whispered, lowering herself awkwardly beside him. "The floor's really cold."

"No," he replied, drawing back the fabric. "Privy?"

"Mm, yes. But then, I thought I'd check on - on Hamunde."

Flora bent her knees beneath her chin so that she could wrap her fingers around her cold feet. "And… and he's dead."

"Right."

It came as no surprise to Alistair that the stubborn man had finally succumbed to his wounds; he had barely looked alive whilst Flora was mending the squire earlier that night.

"I put the robe over him," she continued, in a small voice. "But I didn't think he would want the farewell prayer from- from someone like me."

Alistair looked at his sister-warden, her chin still on her knees, expression hidden by hair. He sat up fully, then reached out and moved a thick rope of red aside. Her profile, limned in silver by the moonlight, was downcast, the full mouth drooping and the eyes wistful.

The young man did not know what to say to her - he wanted to remind her that Hamunde had been an idiot, but was doubtful that this would have any positive effect. Instead, he kept his hand at Flora's head; charting the fragile curve of her ear with his thumb.

"'Someone like you,' he said quietly after a few moments of silence. "Someone sweet? Someone kind-hearted?"

Flora swallowed - he saw the flex of her pale throat - and said nothing, but he could tell that she was listening.

"Someone who tried their best to help him?"

Alistair stroked her earlobe with the calloused ball of his thumb, wondering why such an innocent gesture felt so intimate. She half-nodded: three times, she had offered her services and three times, she had been rejected with increasing animosity.

You can't save everyone, her spirits had warned her. Let this be a lesson.

"He should be honoured to have a prayer said for him by a someone like you," Alistair finished, letting his hand drop away with some reluctance. "Flora."

Lifting her face, Flora beamed at him. It was as if the moon had erupted in brilliant luminescence from behind a bank of cloud. Alistair did not realise that he was holding his breath until his vision began to prickle with dark spots; he released the air in a rush.

"Do you think I should go back in there and say the prayer for him then?" she asked, looking ready to clamber back to her feet.

"No," he said, then again, "No. Stay here with me. Tell me the story of Old Agamemnon. You said that you would earlier, remember?"

Flora nodded, recalling their conversation on the bridge overlooking the lakeside town. The exchange felt like it had taken place more than a day ago; a lot had happened since their arrival at Redcliffe the previous morning.

"Old Edemonem," she corrected as Alistair lay back on the woven tapestry, his eyes expectant. "The king beneath the waves."

She settled down beside him, resting on an elbow. One shoulder emerged from the slack neckline of her shirt; she pushed her hair back impatiently. The terrain of Alistair's bare chest - the sculpted muscle delineated like a cartographer's inking of plateaus and ridges - caught her attention. As a mender, she was deeply familiar with human anatomy: never before had she seen the musculature of the torso augmented with such precision.

"Have you forgotten your story?" her brother-warden asked, mouth twisting in amusement as he gazed up at the underside of her chin.

"No." Flora was indignant. "'Course not. I was just distracted by you."

Alistair's smile widened, swift and startled. "You were?"

"Mm," she replied, with her usual lack of dissimulation. "They don't make people who look like you in Herring. I ain't used to it."

In deference to their surroundings, he muffled the laugh in his elbow. The warm flood of pleasure in his belly was punctuated by a fishhook of a question, one that snared and stuck fast.

So they don't make people who look like you in Herring?

Rousing herself from preoccupation, Flora set her gaze on his face instead, hauling up the story he had requested from the well of her memory. Alistair, seeing her inhale, tucked his question away for later. He settled back on the tapestry, watching her shift on her elbow above him until she found a comfortable spot.

"Old Edemonem," she said after a pause; letting her eyes drop until they found his. "Ruled the Waking Sea before the first Age was named. He kept the waters tame so there were no waves, and no wrecks; the sea was as flat as the back of your hand."

Flora lifted her own hand to illustrate; the slender and nail-bitten fingers held rigid.

"He lived on the bottom of the sea, where there are caves like cathedrals, and castles built from coral reefs," the girl continued in a whisper. She had never seen a cathedral, nor a coral reef, but that was how the story was told and so that was how she told it. The words were far older than her, and she did not need to understand them to use them.

"His walls were built from seashells, and the pillars were made of pearl. The floor was a thousand pieces of seaglass. But Old Edemonem could never move from his throne because if he did, the water would become wild again. He had to sit and be still; so that the waves would also be docile. And as the years went by, seaweed grew over his throne and limpets stuck to his skin, and no one visited his halls."

A golden sheen gleamed dully beneath her nails, and as she gestured, the air was streaked with dissipating trails of light. Her illuminated expression was solemn; though her face was naturally built in a somber vein.

"But he had taken a queen," Flora said, her words displacing the remnants of her magic. "And his wife grew tired of a husband who sat on his throne and did not move. So one night, she turned herself into a herring and escaped. But Old Edemonem knew every creature in the Waking Sea, and he realised that it was not really a fish, and that his wife was fleeing him. He tore himself free from his throne in a rage, and went after her. The water grew wild and vengeful as the old king hunted the queen, and the angrier he got, the higher the waves grew. In the end, he couldn't find her and so he cursed the sea that had let her escape: cursed it so that it would never be at rest."

Flora's voice had taken on a practised rhythm as she recited the folktale: like a priestess declaiming the Chant, she had learnt the formalities of the story by heart. The hoarse airiness of the north ran through her voice; each word resonating a coastal echo.

"And that's why the Waking Sea is always in a rage," she finished, barely above a whisper. "It won't grow calm until Old Edemonem returns to his throne."

Alistair's eyes were closed, and she thought that he had gone to sleep; until he opened them, and smiled slowly at her.

"I was just picturing his palace in my head," he said, softly. "With the floor made of seaglass, and the overgrown throne."

"I never seen a palace," Flora confided, reverting to her natural commoner's patois. "Ain't it like a… big castle?"

"Yes," he replied, having once glimpsed the Royal Palace on a journey to Denerim with Duncan. "Lots of towers. Lots of flags."

Denerim Castle - ancestral seat of the Theirins, and built on the old bones of an Alamarri clan hall - loomed above the canal city on an elevated thrust of rock. It was an ugly, sprawling and half-ruined fortification; whole sections had fallen into decay while new ones were added with little thought to overall cohesion. The most recent addition to the basalt walls was a set of decorative brickwork crenellations: personally designed by Cailan. Orlesian inspired and entirely impractical for defence purposes, they were despised by all save for the king himself. Loghain Mac Tir had ultimately resolved the matter during a training exercise with siege weaponry, when one of the ballista was subtly re-angled towards the 'aesthetic battlement'. When Duncan learnt about the incident, it prompted some rare praise: one of the few times that Alistair heard his commander compliment the general.

"Lots of rooms," he said to Flora, who was squinting towards the ceiling and unsuccessfully trying to envision a palace. "Lots of self-important people."

As Alistair spoke, he reached up and found her hairline with his fingers, pushing them deeper into the mass of burnt red. He could feel the warmth of her head and the gentle contour of her skull beneath the skin. He wondered when he had grown so comfortable with such closeness; at what point he had learnt that if he touched Flora, she would smile.

Sure enough, the corner of her mouth curved upwards and she canted her head a few degrees to the side; enough to rest her cheek in the hilt-worn curve of his palm. Alistair's thumb traced the bone beneath the skin; the delicate architecture upon which her face was built.

"I don't see the purpose of lots of rooms," Flora said thoughtfully, having grown up within the four damp walls of a fisherman's hut. "You can only be in one room at a time. Why have more?"

She looked so genuinely perplexed that Alistair had to laugh, the sound echoing between the bookshelves that surrounded them. He realised then that he did not want to say goodnight to her, because when they woke up next it would be morning; and they would revert to the polite, tentative formality that existed between them during the sunlit hours.

"Thank you for the story," he said, quietly. "I wonder if there's any truth in it?"

Flora shrugged; her clear irises like polished chips of sea glass.

"Dunno. They say the queen came ashore where Herring is now. That they named the village after the fish she turned herself into."

Alistair put his arm around her and eased her down into the crook of his shoulder, she tucked herself against him like a crab within a new shell. Her hand groped for the tapestry that served as blanket; it was beyond her reach and so he retrieved it, tugging the heavy fabric up over them both.

"I can see both sides," he breathed into her hair as a curious palm wandered over the terrain of his chest. "Edemonem had a duty as a king to stay on his throne and keep the water calm. But, as a husband , he had certain…. obligations to his wife."

Both young Wardens fell silent as they thought about the nature of these obligations. Alistair's gaze dropped and his eyes tethered to Flora's; she was looking up at him with the full mouth slightly open. He could feel her bare thigh against his leg, her knee bent over his own with casual intimacy.

Then, with a suddenness that even took her by surprise, she yawned. Alistair, resigning himself to the night's resolution, returned his eyes to the ceiling.

"We... should get some rest," he said, a touch wistfully. "Maker knows what's waiting for us inside that castle."

"Mm," agreed Flora, somber and sleepy. "Better not be ghosts."


AN: Ha ha ha at Alistair predicting that there'll be no more fighting after they leave Redcliffe! Haha! As far as he knows, they're just going to go to the mages, dwarves and elves and get their promises of aid! Hahaa! Unfortunately it's not going to be that simple.

Ugh the problem with making your own folklore up is keeping track of spelling the weird names you invent! Had to go back and correct the million ways I'd spelt Edemonem: edememnon, edamemon, etc! Pretty sure I've missed a few too lol.

Not going to lie, I love the idea of Loghain deliberately firing a ballista towards his son in law's fancy and useless decorative battlement XD

Flora's two fears: seagulls (bane of all fishermen!) and ghosts (she assumes they can get through her shield)

Thank you for reading! This was a long chapter but important for developing the relationship between Alistair and Flora, and building their characters more (especially Alistair - him feeling confident enough to point out her mistakes in battle is important I think!)