Disclaimer: I don't own Dragon Age or any of its related characters. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other fans like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.

Rating: T

Spoilers: May contain spoilers for Origins, Awakening, and Dragon Age II as well as the novels The Stolen Throne and The Calling.

Chapter Forty-Three: Bedtime Story

Snowfall in the city was very different from the snow that fell over Lake Calenhad. Around the Circle Tower, the constant heavy winds whipped even light flurries into something cruel and frightening, but here, protected by the high city walls and great buildings, the goose feather flakes fell softly. Seanna was enchanted.

For the last two weeks she had enjoyed a freedom she'd never known. She had her own suite of rooms in the palace just a few doors down from Elilia, new clothes provided for her by the Crown, and coin in her purse with no one to tell her how she ought to spend it. Best of all, Elilia had destroyed her phylactery. As long as she met no templar who knew her personally, and was careful to conceal her magic, she had free run of the city. And the honorary title of Royal Attaché to afford her some degree of respect and cooperation from guardsmen and shopkeepers. She decided that today she was going to take full advantage of it. She was going out into the city, and she was going out on her own.

She threw her fine new winter cloak - woolen, but excellent quality and lined with real fur - on over her crimson dress robes. She met Elilia in the hall, coming out of her own rooms dressed for the day indoors in one of the fine linen shirts and leather vests the Queen had provided for her. She looked as boyish as ever, but very pretty in Seanna's opinion.

"Hello, Little Bird," Elilia greeted. "My, you look festive. Where are you off to?"

Seanna gestured toward the nearby window. "Its snowing."

Elilia laughed. "Yes, it is, but if you were hoping to get in a snowball fight or make snow spirits I'm afraid you'll be disappointed. It's too warm for this to stick."

"Oh, I don't mind. Its just…I looked outside, I saw the snow falling so prettily, and every face I saw had a smile on it. Smiles! Fereldens don't just smile. I want to go out and enjoy this."

"All by yourself?" Elilia asked. "I'd offer to go with you, but my brother is supposed to be arriving today and I want to be here when he shows."

"All by myself. I've never been out - anywhere - on my own before. It'll be an adventure!"

Elilia laughed. "All right. Have fun, but don't get too adventurous. Parts of Denerim I wouldn't go to alone."

"Oh, don't worry. I expect I haven't the courage to wander far. The Palace District, and maybe the High Market Commons; that's enough for me." She went to the window and looked out. "Everyone just seems so happy, and Denerim hasn't exactly been a happy place lately. Is it always like this when it snows?"

"I take it you don't know the old adage."

"What old adage?"

"'Orlesians don't fight cold.' Even during the worst of the Rebellion, unless Maric's army forced them into it, the Orlesians wouldn't fight after the first snowfall, and that was with mostly Ferelden foot soldiers. Just refused to face it. They don't have our weather, you know, and I guess they can't deal with real cold. I traveled with an Orlesian during the Blight, and believe me, wintering rough with her was an experience in itself. I daresay that this little flurry wouldn't be enough to stop the chevaliers, but it foretells the onset of real winter. People feel…safe, now. The threat is abated, temporarily at least. The Empress won't risk her ships to the ice and storms, the mountain passes will snow in, and we'll still have to be on our guard but most likely we won't have to worry about any real possibility of further invasion attempts until spring thaw."

"Is that why the King and Queen have gone ahead with so many plans for the holidays?" Seanna asked. "I confess I did wonder about the advisability of having feasts and festivals with an Orlesian sword dangling over our heads."

"They're trying to maintain morale," Elilia said. "Loghain would rather everyone just knuckle down and spend those monies on more practical purposes of national defense, and certainly he has a point, but the Queen does, too - feasts and festivals help people remember what they have to fight for."

"Spirit is important."

"Right."

"Well, I'll see you later tonight, I suppose, Elilia. I hope your brother arrives safely and you have a happy reunion," Seanna said.

Elilia chuckled. "We will, right up until he finds out that he was invited to the city early so that the Queen can spring the news of my impending nuptials upon him. He doesn't approve of the idea of me and Loghain together."

"Could he stand in your way?" Seanna asked, concerned.

"He could try, but though my brother is a courageous man, I don't think he quite has the stones to stand against Queen Anora, Loghain, and me all together. He'll just be very upset. Have a good day, dear heart."

Queen Anora entered her sitting room to find it oddly chilled. She glanced at the fireplace and found it blazing properly, so she cast her eyes to the doors that led out to the balcony and found them standing wide open. Her father leaned upon the parapet, one boot kicked out and crossed over the other at the ankle, watching the snow fall silently over the city. Great flakes landed in his hair and stuck there momentarily before melting away. He was not wearing his cloak.

"Father, come in before you make yourself sick," she said crossly. "And do close the doors."

"In a moment, my dear," he said quietly. He stood up and turned to her, crossed his arms and leaned back against the wall heedless of the fact that it was far too low for a man his height to do so safely. He jerked his chin in the general direction of the falling snow. "First snowfall, people are meandering about town looking like they've gotten their Satinalia presents early. It may be a false sense of security, but it's borne out by history. Even I feel relieved."

Anora's scowl softened. "I know what you mean. It would be pleasant to believe that we have several months' respite from worry, several months in which to complete our preparations for the worst case scenario."

"We probably do. I'm not going to relax - I never do. But it would be a good idea if His Majesty managed to do so. Poor lad has been using himself rather too freely of late, I think."

"I agree. Is that why you're here in my rooms, father? Concern for your son-in-law's health?"

He grimaced. "If only."

He came into the room and closed the balcony doors carefully behind him. He stood before them in an attitude of indecision that worried his daughter greatly. She'd seen her father in a lot of moods, she'd even been just the slightest bit genuinely afraid of him during the last dark days before the Warden faced him at the Landsmeet years ago, but she had never seen him indecisive. It worried her at least as much as the strange deep brooding melancholy that had gripped him during the Blight.

"I…have some things to tell you, and I don't really know how," he said.

Anora swallowed her worries and gestured to the low couch. "Sit with me. I'm listening."

They sat together, Anora primly, with her skirts smooth and her back straight, and Loghain leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and his big hands dangling. He sat with his head lowered and a look of consternation on his face for a moment before he smiled and chuckled. "I don't know if you remember that far back, but when you were just a little slip of a girl - " he held one hand out before him, indicating a height about three feet off the ground - "I caught you wakeful late one night and you demanded of me a story."

Anora smiled slightly. "I remember. I remember you turned my demand around on me, and made me tell you a story instead."

He laughed. "You should have been a bard. That story has stuck with me through all these years. In the half hour or so it took for you to fall asleep on my lap you slew more dragons and rode more unicorns than any fairy tale princess in history, not that that ilk spends a lot of time slaying dragons typically."

"As I recall my story's 'heroine unknown' rode a few dragons, too," Anora said. "And I also seem to recall that she did so always with her father by her side."

"She did at that. He was quite the legendary figure, as I recall. Never could live up to him."

"All little girls, I think, see their fathers as the biggest, strongest, best men in all the world," she said. "Some learn otherwise all too quickly, others don't find out differently for a long while. I never was completely disillusioned on that score, father, and at risk of sounding immodest I do not believe it is because I am stupid or but poorly attuned to reality."

He shook his head. "You are neither, dear, but still you hold an altogether idealized view of me that simply isn't truthful. But that's as may be. I remember that for all the hard work she did your 'heroine unknown' was rewarded with not gold or jewels but chocolates. That surprised me, I'll confess. I hadn't known you'd ever encountered chocolate before then."

"Blame King Maric. You weren't at home for my Name Day celebration that year - " she carefully avoided mentioning just how seldom he was home for her Name Day celebrations - "so you didn't know that His Majesty sent me a gift box of Orlesian chocolates. They were shaped like seashells, and very realistic with their mottled colors of white, milk, and dark chocolate. Filled with praline cream. They were almost too pretty to eat - almost. Mother let me have one each week, after services at the Chantry. I became quite the model little Andrastian while that box of chocolates held out. Mother made me promise not to tell you about them. You wouldn't have minded that I had sweeties, she said, but you might be angry with the King because they were Orlesian."

"Ha! I probably would have been," he said, a bit shamefacedly. "Anyway, I guess that when I told you, back then, that I didn't know any stories, I wasn't being entirely honest. I do know one, although it certainly isn't anything for a six year old girl to hear at bedtime. I could tell you parts of it now, though…but I warn you, much of it is fairly ugly. And a lot of it you won't like."

"What story is this, father?"

"My story. And yours. The truth behind all the lies and legends."

"That is…a story I have longed to hear my entire life."

He sighed. "It's a damned hard story to tell. But you have a right to it, and maybe it is even something you need to know about." He turned his face to look her in the eye. "Just know that no matter what you think about what you hear, none of it changes you."

"I'm not so certain of that myself, father," Anora said. "History has influence. It might change me quite a little."

"If you take some sort of lesson from it, that's one thing," he said. "But there are things you don't know that are probably going to shock you, maybe make you question yourself. I don't want that."

"Sometimes it's good to question."

He sighed, then put an arm around her shoulders and drew her in close. "Very true, my dear. But I ask your forgiveness in advance: for telling you this story, and for not having told you it before. Now…now I just have to figure out how to begin it."

"Begin at the beginning, work your way through the middle, and when you come to the end, stop," Anora said, lightly despite the strange apprehensive flutter in her stomach.

"Sage advice. I shall attempt to follow it." He kissed the top of her head, then smiled. "'Once upon a time…'"