Nathaniel handed the message to Elissa. "Denerim," he said. She stared at it and turned it over to see the royal seal on the back. She sneered and handed it back to him.

"I don't want it," she said.

"Liss, you have to open it, it's from the King."

"No, I don't have to do any such thing." She turned away and strode off to the courtyard. A training dummy was destroyed in short order.

Nathaniel took the message and put it with the rest. A pile of them had been growing in the last few months. Every time a new one came his fingers twitched. He wanted to know what the King was writing. He could open them and tell her he had thrown them away. It got harder to resist each time. This time he placed this one on top of the others and turned to leave. He nearly got to the door when his curiosity finally got the better of him. He went back to the desk and started with the oldest message...

Elissa, my love, I am sorry for what I said. I was angry with you for thrusting me into this position so I used duty to push you away. Perhaps the Wardens were wrong about having children. Or maybe Avernus could help us. We could adopt a child. There are solutions, I see that now. Please, forgive me and come back.

Nathaniel pushed his hand through his hair. Maker's breath! Elissa and the King had been in love? Why hadn't she ever said anything? They had been together for a few months now. He thought after the Mother was killed she would let down her guard and let him in, but it seemed she still had this barrier. Now he had found at least one of her secrets. Was it because she still loved the King?

He opened each of the other messages and they got progressively more urgent and desperate sounding. This last one was a last final plea. He promised he would plague her no more but she needed to answer him or he was going to come to the Keep and confront her directly.

He cursed himself for opening them. Now he would have to decide whether to tell her what he did or not.

Nathaniel was an honest man and he confessed his crime.

"Do you love him still?" he asked, his gray eyes wouldn't let hers look away.

"I didn't want to know what they said, Nathaniel," she scowled at him. "No, I don't love him. He rejected me like a broken broodmare after telling me we would be together no matter what." Her face hardened even further, if that was possible. "He rejected me in front of everyone, my friends, Arl Eamon... I can't ever forgive him for that."

She yanked the pile of letters from his hand and put them on the hearth and used a burning stick to light them. She watched them burn, her eyes drawn tight at the corners. When it finished burning she got a little dustpan and broom and scooped up the ashes. Nathaniel watched her deposit them into an envelope and address it to Alistair. She crossed the hallway to Varel's office.

"Okay, that's done. Hopefully the bastard gets the message before he comes here. I'd hate to be hung for regicide."

Nathaniel looked at her in surprise. "You're joking, right?"

She laughed. "Of course, silly. If I wanted him dead I'd probably have had Zevran do it already."

"But Zevran works for him, I thought?" Nathaniel looked confused.

She just smiled. "He does, of course."

"Then how..."

"Loyalty, friendship, sexual favors. Any would probably work with Zevran. They'd probably work for Alistair too, if he pulled his head out of his ass and treated Zevran as a friend."

Nathaniel choked. "Um, you wouldn't...?"

She finally couldn't hold it back. Her face broke into a big grin. "No, I'm not going to kill Alistair and I'm not going to sleep with Zevran." She cocked her head and looked at him intently. "Could we just pretend we just had a huge fight?"

"What?" he asked. "Why?"

"For the angry make-up sex, of course."

Nathaniel was still getting used to Elissa's mercurial moods and quirky sense of humor. It kept him feeling off-balance, but most of the time it ended delightfully. He tried to school his face into an angry scowl, but half of his mouth refused to stop smiling. He crossed over to the office door and latched it against unwelcome interruptions. He realized a little late that Elissa had successfully deflected him from a topic that made her uncomfortable.

Across the hallway Varel heard the sounds of things falling to the floor followed by other sounds he really didn't want to hear. He shut his office door.

...

The old manor house was overgrown with ivy and wisteria. Elissa's window was nearly completely blocked off with a green twisting mass of growth. She had a toy in her hand, a doll with a painted wooden face. One of its wide blue eyes was flaking off. It looked like it had a cataract. She clung to the doll and played almost silently, too afraid to make noise lest she miss the sounds of footsteps. Then she would hear it. The soft susurration of silky robes and pad of slippered feet coming down the hallway leading to her room.

The door opened slowly and a stream of yellow light fell on the man in the robe. He had something in his hand. A vial and a long brass device that made her whimper in fear.

"It's time, Elissa. Be a brave girl, now. Let's have no more tears this time."

Elissa shrank back, back, back, trying to be not here, and the brass thing came closer to her and she screamed and the man frowned and then a splash of red and her body was not hers.

No, no, no! It was a chant in her head but her body was not hers. It gave willingly whatever the man wanted. Today it was blood, more blood. Some days it was her lessons. Lessons where he smeared blood across her face and made her recite:

"They treated me well..." the litany began, "I wasn't harmed. I was given a nice room and toys..."

"What does the room look like, Elissa?"

"It was a big room in a big house. The window showed a field that had been harvested recently of wheat."

"No, Elissa! Not wheat. Oats, girl."

A mistake. No, no, no! The pain would come and she would have to start over.

But today it was the blood and the brass thing was piercing her arm and her blood was dripping into the vial.

NO! NO! NO!

Nathaniel watched Elissa twist in their bed, murmuring. "Liss, wake up." He shook her and she trembled with fear. "No! No! No!" she cried in her sleep. She had been doing this anytime she was particularly tired lately. She would have some horrible dream and be almost impossible to awaken. He wrapped his arms around her and mumbled reassurances until she finally quieted and her sleep seemed more normal.

He would ask her about it the next day but she wouldn't remember anything. But all day she would act oddly. Staring out a window, sometimes feverishly drawing strange drawings. She would suddenly stop drawing and look at them with a puzzled expression, wad them up and throw them away. But Nathaniel collected them and saved them. He wasn't sure why. There was something remote in Elissa, like a piece of herself she withheld from everyone. Even after nearly a year together, he still hadn't penetrated that portion she had walled off. He thought the drawings held the key to her secret.

One drawing was of a doll dripping blood, she repeated that theme often. Another time there was a man holding a vial. Sometimes the picture was a scratchy line drawing of a girl hiding in a corner, vines or tentacles threatening to grab her. They had to be related somehow to what had happened to her when she was abducted as a child, but the story she told was always the same... "They treated me well. I wasn't harmed. I was given a nice room and toys."

The terror in the little girl's eyes in the drawings did not sound like anything Elissa had told him about her abduction. Something was not adding up.