She loved him. Loves him. Always and forever. To the moon and the stars and the sun and the sky and back and back and back and back again.
Repeatedly; forever.
She knows this and as she stands on Fort Drakon with this hot wind that burns like dragon-fire in her hair and the sounds of blood gushing through her ears and screams and cries and clanging and banging, she knows what she must do. What she would always do. Over and over and over and over, however many times it took until this world she loves is safe.
Until the man she loves is safe.
And she wonders, as she has many times, what it would have been like to be normal. To live that normal life that her father wanted her to live; probably still hopes for her to live.
Had circumstances been different, she could have been there, back in that Alienage. Had she let herself be taken that fine day, and had Nelaros and Soris let them all be taken. She could be married right now. Maybe with a child on the way. Maybe Nelaros still would have died with all that's happened; she reasons it likely.
She realises, as she has many times, that she would have hated it. There was never freedom in that place. Forever and a day she would have lived a life she never felt was hers to live. Perhaps loved a man who never truly would know her.
It wouldn't have been worth it.
What she had with Alistair was worth it; even if it hurt to let him go. Even if it hurt to realise who she was and who he was changed everything; made what they were pointless, but not pointless because he had given her this need. This hope.
She remembers all the things good in the world because of him. All the laughter and all the tears and all the faces of those who had lives to live; lives she could save with just a simple heavy blow to that struggling demon writhing before her.
He will be a good King, she thinks, not for the first time, but for the last time as she heaves the sword from a dead man`s chest.
And it was fun.