"Fifteen years!"
To say that Alistair was... upset, was a severe understatement. He was angry, and though Verthandi wanted to deny he had every right to be, she knew deep within her heart she had been wrong. There was nothing left now but to sit and bear the full brunt of his anger.
"Fifteen years, Verthandi-"
"Just Andi is-" She tried to cut in quietly, sitting in an overstuffed arm chair of his personal quarters. Alistair wheeled around and grabbed the arms of the chair before leaning down and glaring into her eyes. They were barely a breath apart.
"Do not interrupt me." He pulled back, still very angry. "Fifteen years, and you never thought to write a letter, send a messenger. Maker's blood and Andraste's tears, I would have taken a dead cat with a note sewn into it's rump!"
"What would you have had me do?" Verthandi replied in a strangely still voice, staring up at the king with angered eyes. "Would you have believed me, if I'd told you that night I was with child? Or would you have seen it as a desperate act by a desperate woman?"
"She thought I was dead! You never, not once, told her anything about me; only that I was a human that had fought alongside you at the end of the Blight!" He began shouting, and Verthandi stood up indignantly in her defense. "All these years, I've had a daughter and she's had a father, but you kept us apart out of spite because of the actions you took years ago!"
"MY actions? Who threw me to the street like a dirty maid, Alistair? Who decided it was more important to placate the nobility, rather than assume the power you were born to?"
"Oh, drop your holier-than-though attitude! Like you didn't have your own designs for the throne!"
Verthandi saw red for a moment, so incited by Alistair's words that she tried to slap him. He easily caught her clumsy swing, squeezing her wrist just hard enough to make it uncomfortable. She yanked her hand away from him, turning on her heel and retreating to the window overlooking a beautiful section of courtyard.
"Don't you dare run away from me, Verthandi Maharial!" He followed her to the window, grabbing her shoulder and forcing her to face him as she pressed against the wall. How she wished she could just sink into the walls and away from him.
"I imagine if I ran, you would hunt me down." She hissed at him sarcastically. "You've made such efforts to stay in contact over the years after all, I don't think you'd have any trouble at all finding me!"
"You were the one who left without saying a word to anyone. Not even Wynne or Leliana knew where you'd gone. When you want to vanish, you can make it impossible to find you so don't try and claim I could have approached you whenever I wanted!"
"Wynne knew." Verthandi spat back at him. She was hurting, ever so slightly, and it made her want to hurt the one causing the damage however slight. "Wynne was my midwife and her grandmother, didn't she tell you? Or maybe she knew as well as I did that you were... unfit to raise her."
"That's not true." He almost sounded as if he believed it.
"Wynne was with me through it all." Verthandi continued, her voice going lower and hissing almost like a dragon as she drove the spines of betrayal deeper. "It was a troubled pregnancy, between the existing taint I bore and the added burden of being a warden. I almost lost her; not even born and I wondered if I was going to bury my daughter before she had her first breath."
"You could have told me!"
"And told you what, Alistair?" Verthandi had stepped away from the wall now, forcing Alistair to back away from her or find her pressed to his body. "Would you have believed it? You were so quick to take her for Zevran's bastard." She laughed, bitter and dark with angry fire dancing in her eyes. "A bastard's bastard, the apple truly doesn't fall far from the tree!"
"That's enough, Verthandi." Alistair stopped, holding the woman back, but she wouldn't not listen to his words.
"I kept her from you, for both our sakes." She brushed his hands aside and stood within a breath of him, but there was nothing tender or romantic in the moment. Her voice was flat, and dead, the anger smoldering just beneath. "She's a relic, from a time long past. What I did was wrong, I won't deny that. But you have no connection. I've raised her as an elf, kept her from the people and humans of your realms.
"Do what is right. Send her home, with me. Where she belongs."
Alistair sighed and stepped back, turning away from the woman and falling into the chair she'd left. "She's my daughter too. By rights, I should send you back to your trees and horses and elves alone. She may be a bastard, but she's a royal bastard, and I won't do for her what my father did for me."
"The two of you know nothing of the other." She came to stand before him, blocking the hearth and its comforting fire from view.
"Because of you!" The king sighed, not meaning to speak so forcefully. "You've had her for fifteen years. Half of our time is gone; and you tell me after all this time, I do in fact have a daughter. A true blooded heir, and you expect me to walk away? No, Verthandi."
"I will not leave her here, Alistair. One Landsmeet at court was enough for me; its more vicious and deadly than the forests and you know it. She won't make it here, a bastard but an elf aswell? They will not accept her."
"You made me King, remember? My word's law."
"So now you flaunt your title? Where was this confidence fifteen years ago?" Verthandi turned with a sigh, staring into the fire. "They're just words. If you think you can sway the fickle hearts of the nobles, that is your trouble. But I won't have you drag my daughter into this little flailing display of royal power."
"Our daughter. And if you're so concerned about her, why don't you stay?"
Her head snapped back, eyes narrowed with suspicion and, something else. "What?"
"Stay at court." He leaned forward, watching her
"I won't be your mistress. You've made your bed with Anora; now you'll lay in it."
"I've never touched Anora, not that its any of your concern." Another deep sigh, while he rubbed his face. "Andi, I'm tired of fighting. Stay as my advisor, or don't. But you will not be taking my daughter from me, not again." He stood up and went to the door, leaving Verthandi by the chair staring after him.
"That sounded like a threat, King Theirin."
"That's because it was."