As Siobhan helped the laundress fold the clothes taken down from the lines that streamed like banners around their corner of the courtyard, she cursed herself and that thrice-damned Orlesian enchantress. Of all the times!

She had off time (Lavellan was fairly generous with this), so she had been chatting up some of Skyhold's other residents, thinking to gather some intelligence this way. She'd hoped to talk with the Chargers' lieutenant, who was such a fixture at the Herald's Rest she was sure he would have something to tell her, but the Chargers were out on a job. Realizing those whom the inquisitor counted as particular friends were dwindling by the day, she instead turned her focus to the servants, plying them with easy conversation and freckled smiles, hoping to wring something useful out of their otherwise dull yammering.

Once, she thought as she made her way through Skyhold's tangled halls, she would have engaged in such conversation earnestly. Sharing stories of cranky masters, burned skirts, over-salted meals…those bits and bobs had made up her days, and she had given them out as often as she had sympathized with her fellows on their own trials and tribulations. Now, listening to them made her want to claw the points off her ears. It was all so pedantic and irrelevant! Fen'Harel was come again, didn't they know? He was going to raise the elves and make the world anew, and she was meant to care that someone had used the wrong polish on Lord Shem's shoes?

When she couldn't take anymore meaningless babble from the ignorant rabble, she decided to try to get into Skyhold's prison. It was locked, unsurprisingly, and Siobhan's efforts in vain. Truthfully, she had never really learned to lockpick—only gotten lucky a couple times. Seeking another way in—surely, in this labyrinthine castle, there was another door—took up most of the rest of her day. No matter how steadily a hall progressed in the right direction, it invariably snapped aside at the last second, denying her entry, until Siobhan was incoherent with rage and convinced that there was in fact, only one door into the dungeon.

All that time wasted, and so when she finally made it to the inquisitor, she had been surrounded by others already, and Siobhan was shut out. After all she had done tracking this progress, and now, to not be there at the hour of the birth! It made her blood boil: she wanted to be able to tell Fen'Harel that she had been there, that she knew what had happened, not that she had heard it second-hand from some midwife!

Throughout the day she passed by the entrance to the inquisitor's quarters as often as she could, but there was always either Madame Vivienne or Seeker Pentaghast at the door. When they passed the fourteenth hour, the wheels of Siobhan's mind began to turn. She'd heard of labors this long, especially for the first child, but it was already a long one. A few more hours and she would be in dangerous territory, and Siobhan knew that little good came from prolonged labors (she had no children of her own, but living all pressed together in the alienage, it was impossible not to be intimately familiar with the business of one's neighbors, and children were always being born in the alienage).

When she was out of tasks for her job, she sat down on the steps to the throne, facing the Inquisitor's door, and waited. Every several hours, Madame de Fer and Seeker Pentaghast would confer and murmur to each other, and swap places. Once or twice Ambassador Montilyet appeared to talk with one or the other of them, and walked away chewing her lip.

Seventeen hours crept by them, and Seeker Pentaghast departed to go do whatever the seeker did when she wasn't hitting things or planning with Inquisitor Lavellan. Siobhan moved to the door the second the seeker was out of eyeshot, pressing her ear to the wood. There was no sound, but that didn't mean there was no activity—by now, Siobhan thought, the inquisitor was most likely too tired to keep screaming. She was debating whether to abandon post or try to sneak into the stairwell when another sound caught her ear—the sharp clack of heels on stone, and then, the voice of Madame de Fer.

"I am concerned with the way this is progressing."

"I understand, madame, but there is nothing we can do." That had to be Parvana, the healer. There was a cut of a Rivaini accent in her words.

"In a few more hours, it will have been an entire day. Does that not concern you?" Vivienne's voice was level, but Siobhan did not fancy being in Parvana's shoes at that moment.

"It does. This has been a particularly long labor, which can happen."

"There must be something we can do."

"We've tried everything we can, madame. We could give her some more of the teas, or have her do a few more round around the room—"

"She can barely walk!" Madame Vivienne's voice was flint at once, sparking on the edge of a wildfire. "At this rate, I don't see how she will be able to produce the child when it is ready!"

"We will get her through this," Parvana replied. "I have seen it happen before." So had Siobhan—once, the babe was a stillborn, and the other, the mother lingered a few days, and then expired. They never had managed to stop her bleeding. "I know this is a frustrating time…" Parvana's voice grew so soft Siobhan struggled to hear. "…there for her is more important than you might imagine."

There was silence in the stairwell, and then: "It's a damn stubborn thing, isn't it?" The fight had gone out of Madame Vivienne's voice.

"This is a very stubborn one," Parvana agreed. "But we will do our best to ensure it is delivered safe and healthy."


"Vivienne." Guinevere's voice croaked out from among the pillows, and Vivienne turned her wandering gaze back to her ailing friend. Guinevere intertwined her fingers with Vivienne's, and held Vivienne's hand to her damp breast, fighting what seemed to be a losing battle to keep her eyes open. Loose strands of hair were stuck to her face and neck, no matter how many times Vivienne brushed them away, and she could see the shadows deepening under Guinevere's bloodshot eyes.

"Yes, my dear, what is it?" She leaned closer, and the young elf paused to gather her strength.

"I'm so tired."

"I know, dear, I know." Vivienne squeezed her hand. "But you can do this. You've done more impossible things before." The light that streamed through the chamber windows felt terribly at odds with how exhausted everyone in the room was. Hours ago, Parvana had remarked on how beautiful the sunrise was from the Inquisitor's bedroom, and Guinevere murmured some generic reply, though Vivienne was certain she had seen tears in her eyes.

"I find I have a great deal more respect for my mother," she said with a feeble exhale that imitated a laugh.

"I am beginning to agree on that." Vivienne had not thought of her own mother in years, and then, only in passing, but she did wonder now: had it been this hard, for her? Had she lain in bed for hours, cursing the child causing her so much pain? Had she cursed again when she realized what she had birthed, years later?

"Can you do me a favor?" Guinevere rasped.

"If it can be done, I will do it."

"I need help. Please…there is dragonthorn in the pantry. Would you burn some of it? Tell Mythal…I need her." For a moment, Vivienne wracked her brain trying to remember what Mythal was the goddess of—motherhood? Protection? Revenge? Then she snapped out of it—it didn't matter; this was something she could do. "And…Ghilan'nain…" Guinevere's free hand touched her chin, where she'd once born the curling, intricate lines of her vallaslin.

"It will be done," she promised, peeling her hand away from Guinevere's sticky grip.

"Thank you, lethallan."

Not pausing to find a servant, she strode down to the kitchen herself, giving the cooks a near heart attack, and retrieved the dragonthorn. Unwilling to leave Guinevere too long, she took it back upstairs and ignited it on the balcony, where the smoke would not bother the laboring mother. Troublingly close to the walls of the fortress, a chorus of wolves keened a melancholy song.

Maker, or Mythal, or whatever gods are out there…she thought. Keep her safe. Don't let her die this way.


Siobhan was falling asleep on the stairs when Madame Vivienne came for her.

"You." She snapped her eyes open to see the mage gesturing at her. "We need more hands. If you want to help, now is your hour." Siobhan was on her feet at once, trotting up behind Madame Vivienne, taking the stairs like she was racing her shadow.

The atmosphere in the inquisitor's room was grim and pretending not to be, and even the late pinkish glow behind the mountains, remnant of the fading sun, could not alleviate the feeling. The noises coming from the bed were those of a woman too exhausted to think, let alone wail to sufficiently express her pain. Something twisted in Siobhan's stomach; she did not like spending time at such bedsides. Death seemed to hang a specter over the expectant mother's bed, as if there were a game of tug-of-war going on in the room. But this was no time for squeamishness—she brushed off her unease, and took the towels Madame Vivienne handed her, approaching the bed to help with placing them.

"Parvana wants you on your side now, dear," Vivienne coaxed the Inquisitor, taking her place at the edge of the vast bed, where the Inquisitor grasped her hand. "Kiki and I are going to help you."

"Okay." The Inquisitor's bedsheets were drenched in sweat, and her voice came feeble and compliant, too wrung out to argue. Madame Vivienne, Siobhan, and the assistant helped turn her, while Parvana spread her legs to examine her. Kiki then sent Siobhan for the bucket of water by the fireplace, which she set beside Parvana.

"Those damn wolves…" Siobhan heard the midwife mutter to herself, and Siobhan lifted her head to the balcony doors, through which she could catch the tail end of a choral howl. Odd—they weren't usually so close to the castle walls.

"It's coming!" Parvana's shout seemed to rouse everyone in the room, as if they had hitherto been preparing for something they didn't believe was actually going to happen.

"Can you manage?" Vivienne asked her, and Parvana gave a brisk nod.

"With Kiki's help, yes, we should be able to get baby presenting correctly. I think we'll manage with just the two of us." Is it pointing the wrong way? Siobhan wondered. If it was, no wonder she had been in labor so long—and she wasn't in the clear yet.

"Maid." Madame Vivienne was looking at Siobhan again. "Find Seeker Pentaghast, if you can, and Ambassador Montilyet, if she's still awake. Tell them it's coming."

"But I—"

"Go, or I'll toss you off the balcony myself!" Siobhan bit her tongue and ran, hearing the first of Inquisitor Lavellan's renewed screaming as the baby started to crown at last. It echoed down through the stairwell, and Siobhan remembered as a child, racing to get the neighborhood midwife when some woman in her building began her birthing. Hopefully this one turned out as well as most of those, Siobhan thought. If the baby was stillborn, the inquisitor would go right back to the way things were, with the addition of her personal grief. The presence of a living child would force her to change her methods, which would destabilize her in the way Fen'Harel needed.

"Mythal, keep that child well," Siobhan muttered as she took the steps two at a time.


The inquisitor's chamber maid came to her in the early hours of the morning, shaking her awake to tell her the baby was on its way. Torn between relief that it was almost done, and shock that it had not already come, Cassandra opted to dress and go up immediately—she didn't see how she'd be sleeping much after that. The maid darted off on some other task, and Cassandra hurried up to the inquisitor's chambers.

It was not yet over when Cassandra arrived. So much pain, she marveled as Guinevere convulsed on the bed, forcing herself to adhere to Parvana's cries of "Push just a bit more!" So much pain for such a small thing, for when the baby finally slipped free, it was so little. It hardly seemed real (was it meant to be so small?). Guinevere collapsed against the pillows, and Cassandra had a sudden thought of her mother, screaming in that same way, with her father shouting for the driver to make the carriage go faster. An unceremonious start in the world, but she'd recovered.

"Now it's just the afterbirth," Kiki reminded her, and Guinevere made a noise between a moan and a cry, tilting her head back into the pillows. Beads of sweat slid down her slick throat and pooled at her collarbone.

"It's almost over," Vivienne said. Kiki rose to take the baby from Parvana and clean it while Parvana oversaw the aftermath. Cassandra took her place at Gwen's left side, sitting on the bed and taking her hand to give it a brief squeeze.

"Are you feeling alright?" she asked quietly. Gwen gave a feeble nod and rubbed Cassandra's fingers lightly.

"It's a girl!" Kiki announced cheerfully as she wiped the baby clean. When all was cared for, she brought the little bundle over. Guinevere finally let go of her friends and reached for the baby, immediately loosening the swaddle so she could lay the babe against her breast, skin to skin. The child seemed to be all her mother, with her coloring just a few shades lighter than Gwen's, and the same curly black hair cropping up on her head. The only thing hinting at her parentage was the shape of her ears and the bridge of her nose, the telling signs her father had also been an elf.

"Hello, baby," Gwen breathed. "You took your time."


"She's calling it Nimue," Siobhan said. For a moment, Fen'Harel just blinked at her, and so she clarified: "The baby. It's a girl." She'd arrived just at the end of the birth, so it wasn't a lie when she said she had been there, even if most of what she'd seen was the forty minutes it took for the afterbirth to come.

"The baby? It's been born?"

"A few days back, yeah." Fen'Harel took a deep breath and began pacing about the table, but it was not his usual slow, thoughtful movement: it was quicker, jerkier, and lacked his customary grace. His eyes seemed incapable of focusing on any one thing and he looked over at Siobhan with an intensity she could not read, but which she half-feared might sear her to ash if he kept up with it.

"And how is it? And the inquisitor?"

"Still under watch, but they seem okay enough. It was some birthing though; I've never seen a woman go that long in labor. Too tired to even howl by the end. Took a full day! I was starting to think neither of them was going to come out of it." She almost mentioned about the positioning, then figured a man—a god—wouldn't much care whether the baby had been pointing the wrong way, or why and how it gave the inquisitor so much trouble.

Fen'Harel turned to the window, as he often did when Siobhan reported, and his voice was unusually low when he spoke again.

"It was a great pain for her, then?"

"Judging by the yelling." Siobhan suppressed a snort in the presence of Fen'Harel. "All birthing women are in pain, my lord. This one just went on especially long. More dangerous for mother and baby that way. Usually means something's gone wrong."

"I have requested that you not address me that way. How is her health now?"

"Sincerest apologies. She's mighty tuckered out still, and working out how to break this baby to the rest of the Inquisition. Everybody and their mother knows something's up now; she's been in her room most of the time since. Sleeps a lot. Hasn't let that baby out of her sight, either."

"And the child?"

"Quiet, for a newborn," Siobhan said, after a pause to consider how best to describe the new child. "Probably tuckered out too; don't imagine such a welcome to the world was easy on her either! She should rosy up in a few weeks."

Fen'Harel nodded, flexing the fingers of the hands behind his back, and seemed to mull over Siobhan's report. There was a restlessness in him that day, as if his spirit refused to still.

"You know what's odd?" she volunteered. "She hasn't got vallaslin. The inquisitor. But she's Dalish, clan Lavellan. I never met a Dalish what hasn't got vallaslin. I asked her about, and you know what she said? She got rid of it! How—"

"That is of no concern to us." Fen'Harel's voice was as harsh as he had ever addressed Siobhan, and she silenced immediately, chastising herself for becoming too familiar with him. Lowering her gaze, she waited for direction, but the Dread Wolf offered her nothing more. He paced the room and Siobhan watched the movement of his feet.

"Has she given any indication what she plans to do with this child?" he snapped at last, though they had talked before about her keeping it with the Inquisition.

"Raise it alongside her duties I believe, my—ser. She hasn't parted with it once yet, I can't imagine her taking much to having it rehomed someplace else." If anything, the Dread Wolf's pacing became more agitated.

"And still you know nothing of the father?"

"No." She bit back another honorific. "She never gives him a name, for all she's aching."

"Aching?"

"She sings these old elven lullabies to herself, when she thinks she's alone. All lost loves and broken hearts and come back to me on the wind and all that. I think she thinks this fellow might still come back." Poor sod—counting on some errant man to come back now that she'd had a baby? Fat chance! No man was ever so loyal. "And there's this halla statute on her desk—I think he must have given it to her—she touches it a lot. Threw it at the wall once too, though. Busted off one of the antlers. We never did find it. Seems a fool thing to me. No man's walked out on a woman ever came back, least not to stay. Lucky she's got so many friends. Still, seems like whoever busted up her heart did us a favor. Makes it harder to think clear, that way. You make more mistakes, get clumsy, thinking too much about your own hurt."

When she was done, the only sound in the room was Fen'Harel's breathing, almost like panting.

"Thank you, Siobhan," he said tightly, sweeping past her and throwing the door open. Without waiting for her to go, he strode into the hall, and when Siobhan peeked out the door, a massive black wolf was sprinting down the stone corridor and vanishing down the stairs.

With Fen'Harel out of the room, Siobhan found she couldn't resist a look at the papers on his side of the table. What she found was sheaves of notes in a script she didn't recognize—ancient Elvish, perhaps? Scattered on several of the pages were loosely-drawn images of a slender halla, half-hidden among the trees, or standing alert at the peak of a hill, or basking in the sun. Over one, a great dark shadow was thrown, dwarfing the graceful creature, devouring it with darkness as it passed blissfully ignorant through the woods. Along the margins, the same geometric patterns she recognized from the murals around headquarters.

"Never would have guessed the Dread Wolf for a doodler," she remarked to herself.