9:33 Dragon, Winter

The cold was biting. It seeped through Samantha's hair to her neck, and she shrugged her shoulders to bring the fur collar of her velvet coat up to her ears. Her hands, even inside the fur-lined gloves, felt nearly frozen, but it wasn't the cold that numbed her legs. It was the polished brick walkway, the stone porch, the freshly trimmed shrubs that sat beneath wide windows which framed massive double doors. She looked up to the gray stone frame that arced up and around and back down, like a mouth without teeth. The archway of her estate loomed over her like a tombstone. Her last name was even etched into the stone above.

"It's clear." Ser Traven stepped through the archway of the Mayweather Estate and out into the grey morning.

"As it was six months ago," one of the other two Templars muttered.

Samantha didn't know his name nor did she care.

"Fortunately for you, or else we would all see what a coward you are," Keis remarked, stepping past the glowering recruit and into the estate.

Samantha watched her survey the entryway, cautiously evaluating the smooth tiled floor, pushing back the curtains around the windows that framed the doorway, looking behind plants, and lifting the corners of the rug.

"You think demons hide under rugs?" the nameless Templar asked.

"No." If Keis was bothered by the man, she didn't show it. "I think assassins set traps where they know facing their enemy would mean certain death." She stood up straight and looked over to Traven. "I thought there were tests to become a Templar."

"There are." He sighed, but before the young recruit could speak up, Traven shot him a look and he closed his mouth.

Goran squeezed her hand. "You want to go home?" he asked, and he meant the royal palace.

"No," Samantha whispered. "I've put this off long enough."

"Anytime you want to leave, just say."

With a deep breath of the cold air inside her, Samantha stepped through the archway of her estate. The first thing that caught her was the stale air, though it was obvious that the servants had tried their best to freshen it up. The railing to the stairs looked nearly new; someone had polished it to a shine. There were flowers on the entryway table, sitting in a new vase atop a thin tablecloth made of lace. The house was alight as well, softly aglow as though every window had its curtains drawn open. As Samantha looked around, everything seemed similar to the way she had left it, but something was off. The place had been cleaned, of course, and those things that she had disturbed as she fled her home had been set back in order. Still, it was missing something.

Samantha let her gaze wander up the stairs and she felt a surge of courage as she reached out to the banister to take that first step. Keis moved past her and ascended the stairs, reaching the top in record time before surveying the hallway and then disappearing down the corridor. Samantha held onto Goran's arm tightly as she turned the corner of the stairs and the steps turned routine.

She reached the top and came face-to-face with her parents. They stared out from golden picture frames, their shoulders square and their jaws set firm. Her mother was giving a faint smile and her father was lifting his chin in Mayweather pride. They weren't nearly as beautiful as anything Goran could paint. She had never given it much thought before, but now the portraits seemed so very dull, lacking character and color and movement. They were shades of themselves. These were the corpses inside the tomb, decorated in faded yellows and blues.

She looked down the hallway to her parent's room. "Is the… chandelier…?"

"I had it removed." Goran understood. When she started down the hallway, he said: "You don't have go in there."

"Yes, I do."

She held onto his arm as they moved down the hallway, past the dull portraits and that stupid painting of flowers that used to be Innley, past the lounges and the tables and finally around the corner to her parents' room.

It was full of light. She looked across the room to the wide-open curtains that revealed a pair of marvelously large windows set close to each other that she had never seen. Her mother always hated opening those curtains, because the room overlooked the gardens of the Tylers' Estate, and she hated the layout of their flowerbeds. It was a silly thing, Samantha had always thought.

She looked up at the ceiling and, sure enough, the chandelier was gone, replaced with a different one made of steel. It was an odd choice for a fixture.

"I didn't want the servants to have to lower it to polish the silver all the time," Goran explained from the doorway. "So, I had them fashion one with steel. It looks near the same."

Samantha figured it did – it was awfully clever of Goran to think of that. But she lingered on it too long and caught subtle differences in the way the light reflected off the metal. It had a flat sheen rather than natural silver's textured shine. It was altogether unremarkable, which didn't match the rest of the room's furnishings.

"Doing okay?"

"Yes." Samantha was somewhat surprised as she surveyed the room, her eyes drawn to the corner in which she had crouched away from Innley. But the room was so bright, so different. She looked over to the bureau, where Innley would always hide when, ironically enough, they played Mages-and-Templars when they were kids, now stuffed with the clothes of the mother he had murdered. The bed was smooth, but the blanket was different; it was a shade of green her mother would have hated. Her mother's vanity still had all her rings on their settings and necklaces on their hooks, and Samantha was reminded of how often she had sat at that vanity back when she was too tiny for her feet to reach the floor, putting three rings on each finger and coloring her cheeks bright red with rouge. But something was missing in this room as well, though she wasn't sure what.

"Which way is your room?" Goran looked back down the hallway.

"First one to the left of the stairs." She gestured and he followed her down to her door.

Her room was a sight to behold. Her bed had been remade with fresh linens and another new blanket, this one was pale yellow. Her vanity was just as she left it, and whoever had taken time to dust each individual perfume bottle had replaced them in exactly the same spots. The curtains were drawn open of course, and the soft wintery light made everything seem clean and soft. Some leafy-green potted plant was set on the window sill.

This is very storybook of us. What will the bards say when they tell our story?

Keis appeared in the doorway. "There's no one here."

Goran nodded and Keis disappeared into the hallway again.

"You have a nice room." Goran was staring at her ceiling.

Samantha looked up to see the chandelier that she had never paid much attention to. It was a nice fixture, and she remembered how her mother had gone on and on about how many candles it would hold – thirty. Of course, her father declared it a fire hazard and no more than ten had ever been lit at once, and only because Samantha had begged to see it when she was ten.

"Is that you?" He pointed to a painting on the wall.

"Yes." Samantha had forgotten about it.

Her father had it commissioned when she had turned five in celebration of when she finished her very first book, a silly little collection of poems called Odes to Bees. In the painting, Samantha was sitting on one of the wrought-iron benches in her estate's gardens. She was wearing a light-blue dress with a full skirt, puffy sleeves, and a long ribbon in her hair, which had been nearly blonde in her youth. Samantha stared at the girl who had her gaze pointed down, her tiny hands holding a too-big book, one foot dangling down from the bench, not reaching the grass, and the other tucked underneath her, hidden from view. That little girl never saw any of this coming.

"It's very soft." Goran was talking about the brush strokes. "Look at the way the colors don't have clean lines. See how they bleed into each other a little bit? It's like someone painted this to look intentionally fuzzy. Like a memory."

Samantha stared at the little girl who was just a memory.

"It's beautiful." He touched the frame, making sure it was lined up right.

Only Goran would see this painting and think it was beautiful, but looking at it brought about feelings of dread in Samantha. It was like she was looking through a window and seeing the past, and she wanted to warn the little girl of what was coming, but she couldn't. She could only watch as the child tiptoed slowly through a darkened hallway to the soft light emanating from her parents room while loud booms from someplace close shook the floor.

"Sammie?" Goran placed his hand on her shoulder.

Maybe she knew she would cry all along, but she never thought it would be from looking at this painting. It came to her then: what was missing in her parent's room was her parents themselves. What was missing in the hallway was the sounds of people. What was missing in the entryway was the servants. The furniture was different, the linens were different, the air was still. The house was a tomb and Samantha wondered if she would die in it, too.

"How do you do it, Goran?" She let the tears fall, plunking down on her velvet coat.

His silence was enough to relay his confusion at the question.

"You live in the palace where you family died. How do you stand it?"

"I'm the prince," Goran said sadly. "I have to live there."

Of course he did. Generations of Vaels had lived in that place, and eventually they all died there; from war, from disease, or from old age if they were lucky. But, unlike Goran, Samantha didn't have to live with the ghosts of her family, instead feeling content to keep him company with the ghosts of his.

"How did we get here? One minute you're happy and everything is great, and the next…" She remembered her last conversation with Flora. "Everyone moves."

Goran gently extended him arm across her shoulders and said nothing, and they stared at the painting that was just a memory, the remains of her innocence blurred on the wall. Another corpse in the tomb.

She figured there were some manners that all men had, and some manners that didn't matter, but knowing when a friend needs a shoulder to lean on trumped all of it.

"I need to…" She took a breath to compose herself, turning away from the painting. "I wanted to get some things."

"Take your time."

It was sitting upon her vanity, untouched by anything but time. Sliding it off the smooth glass, Samantha marveled at each diamond's perfect clarity, the band of promises that never was: her engagement ring. She had taken it off the night before, setting it in a ring-stand upon her vanity where it had remained for years… until this moment. She tilted it in her fingers, the gemstones caught the light and twinkled optimism, a bright promise of a future that now seemed like a lie. But if she believed as strongly as Goran, perhaps not. She slid the ring onto her finger.

The drawers of her vanity were sticky, and she yanked them open with effort. Ruffling through her stale underthings, she came to a pile of letters – Corbinian's letters – tied together with a lace ribbon. They were still here. She brought them up to her chest and silently thanked the Maker for sparing this last piece.

She turned back around. "I'm ready to go."

She leaned on his arm all the way back to the Royal Palace, but couldn't get that painting out of her mind. Why had it had such an emotional effect on her?

"That painting on the wall, the one of me sitting on the bench, it was clearer than that time in my own memory," she said to him. "What does that mean?"

Goran gave his usual pause, thinking about her question. "My uncle once said that if you think really hard about something for too long, it'll change in your mind. It's why he said not to wait too long before you decide what to do about it, because the details often fall away."

Samantha smiled at his memory. "When did the prince say that?"

"Uh." He fidgeted. "One time when I was a kid. I guess."

That was a strange answer. "You guess?"

"Well…" They rounded the corner to the palace, and the iron gates came into view. A group of guards saw them coming, and began calling for the massive gates to be opened. "I was thirteen."

Samantha did the math in her head and realized: "When Sebastian was exiled?"

A guard nearby turned his head sharply, hearing the exiled prince's name, and she and Goran both turned a few shades of pink, hurrying to get inside. But Goran remained quiet, and she could see that he was not prepared for the question.

She placed a hand on his arm, trying to prevent him from running off in the name of princely duty. "Please Goran. Beenie never wanted to talk about it."

"That's because we were told not to," he said shyly as he handed his coat to a female elven servant who never looked away from her toes. "But I suppose it can't hurt. Everyone who was in that room is gone…"

He led her up the stairs and down the hall into his private study. It wasn't the Office of the Prince, which was near the center of the palace, nor was it the Palace Study or the Prince's Study, but rather, the Prince's Private Study – Samantha had been working hard to keep all the different rooms straight. They both set themselves on a thin-cushioned sofa, and then Goran took a deep breath. What he remembered was fragmented, but it was the first time he had ever been to a meeting of the royal family and thus the event was vivid in his memory.

He told her about the room, the Grand Room, and the intensity of it. He had been seated next to his mother during the meeting, and she had kept her hands on his shoulders – he remembered her grip was tight. Corbinian and Sebastian, both sporting bruises, stood at the front of the room while the prince was seated at the front of the table, his chair turned to face them. The same chair that Goran sat in every day – he remarked that the first time he sat in the chair as prince, he had felt so overwhelmed, he'd had to retreat to the lavatory to vomit.

"Bruises?" Samantha asked.

Goran smiled at the memory. "Yeah, they got into a big fight right in the front hallway. Took four guards to pull them apart. Keis was there, I think. She's been everywhere."

I don't duel cousins for just anyone.

Goran continued to explain: "Beenie and Sebastian were given the opportunity to explain themselves. Sebastian said… " Goran glanced at Samantha, an embarrassed flush blooming in his cheeks. "I only really remember what Beenie said."

He paused again, but Samantha was too eager and prompted him in a tense whisper, "What did Beenie say?"

"Well, he yelled actually. He screamed like an Alamarri barbarian. He…" Goran fidgeted. "He said that… that Sebastian had… well… he used the word rape."

Samantha's mouth dropped open, her breath catching in her throat and, for a moment, she thought her heart would stop at the shock. Sebastian did not rape her!

Goran spoke quickly after that. "Sebastian's mother was in tears. No one could believe it. But Sebastian, he didn't deny any of it. None of it. He stayed completely silent while Beenie described what happened in detail. He wasn't passed out on Lord Garrity's porch, but he was so drunk that he couldn't move to do anything about it. That's why he was so mad. Mostly at himself, but also at Sebastian."

Samantha retreated to the back of the sofa, slinking down and shifting her eyes around the room until they found a painting of calla lilies encircling a great fountain – it was the fountain in the palace gardens. The same fountain at which she and Beenie had often paused to rest on countless summer strolls. She could hear Goran talking, she could hear him mention Sebastian's name, and she could hear him describe the events as Corbinian saw them, but she felt no panic at Goran's misunderstanding of the events of that night, and instead she felt warmed by the memory of those afternoons at the fountain.

"Finally," Goran said, "they came to an arrangement, everyone was sworn to secrecy, and they said their goodbyes. And that was it." He let out a deep sigh, as though relieved the story was over.

The word arrangement pulled Samantha back into the room. "What arrangement?"

"Beenie never told you?" Goran seemed impressed with his brother. "When he volunteered to take the Oath of Starkhaven, our father offered to send Beenie away to Nevarra to live with the Pentaghasts. To prove he could reform his behavior."

"Why didn't Sebastian have a similar arrangement?"

Goran paused, frowning in thought. "He didn't seem to want one. Beenie had been so… loud… during the meeting. He didn't want to be sent away."

Samantha remembered what Corbinian had told her about that night. "You mean, Beenie argued that he shouldn't be exiled, but Sebastian didn't?"

"I've never seen my brother so mad," Goran remarked quietly. "But I guess so. I mean, Sebastian didn't… At least, not in front of me."

"He said nothing?" Samantha reached up and placed a hand over the locket that always decorated her neck.

"He didn't even apologize."

Somewhere inside, someplace deep, a once-tiny dark hole began to widen. It crept up her neck and into her mouth, and for a few brief moments, she wondered if she was going to cry. Disappointment, fear, panic, helplessness; like tides of black water, the sensations washed over her and then began to recede as a warm fountain's wet memory blanketed her anxiety.

When she spoke next, her voice was measured and sure. "He behaved poorly, but he did not—"

"Poorly?" Goran sputtered. "He forced himself on you and only stopped after you bit him!"

The untrue words forced himself stung her ears, and she shook her head violently. "It wasn't like that—"

"Why do you defend him?"

"Because that's not what happened! Sebastian is a good person, he wasn't himself, but—"

"I can't believe this! You are defending him!" Goran was interrupting her again. He did this when he got flustered or angry.

She was growing irritated as well, and when he finally paused, she threw the truth from her mouth before he could stop her. "He did not force himself on me. He was very drunk – so was I, by the way – and he kissed me. I tried to push him away, but you know Sebastian – he's strong! So, I bit him, and that's when he stopped."

Goran's pause was longer than usual, and when he spoke next, he sounded greatly offended. "He kissed you without your consent?"

Samantha let out a frustrated growl. "You're not listening to me! It was nothing but drunken stupidity! Besides, doesn't Andraste teach us to forgive? He apologized sincerely to me, and I forgave him. It's been ten years, Goran. Surely, you look in the mirror and don't see a thirteen year old boy."

"No," he said frankly. "I see a man who has never forced himself—

"He didn't do that!" she yelled, feeling attacked.

Goran cringed at her verbal assault, and when he looked down at his hands, she felt terrible for losing her temper. She opened her mouth to apologize, but he interrupted again.

"I'm sorry for upsetting you," he said earnestly. "But, this wasn't some—" Goran paused, searching for the right words. "—failure at etiquette. No prince – no son of the prince – should behave like he did."

She tried to reconcile the look he was giving her with the forcefulness of his words. It reminded her the way her father would look at her when he talked about Adain, like he wanted to protect her from all the bad things in the world, as impossible as that was. Goran clearly wanted to protect her, too. All she had to do was look at Keis to see that.

"He didn't injure me," she insisted, now attempting to comfort Goran. "Beenie may have seen more than what was there because of his feelings for me. If he were here today, he would tell you that Sebastian is very different now. He is devoted to his vows, to living a holy life. Believe me, we've exchanged many letters."

"Are you still?" Goran seemed very interested in the answer.

Samantha snapped her mouth shut, instantly regretful that she had just admitted to corresponding with Sebastian – something she hadn't told anyone about because of her promises to both Sebastian and Taletha. She didn't want to lie to Goran, though. "A few. He is—"

"When was the last one?"

Samantha sat up. "Why?"

"I'm curious." He narrowed his eyes.

"You see the post come through every day—"

"But never a letter from him."

The sudden tension between them was unmistakable; it was the first time that Samantha had ever felt it. Always so open, so transparent in his emotions, but now he looked to her like a frozen pond, opaque with suspicion.

The sudden revelation of her secret brought about tremendous guilt, and the way he was regarding her with trepidation seized her heart with panic. Why was she trying to force Goran to forgive Sebastian, anyway? That was his decision, just as it had been hers. Sebastian was her friend, wasn't he? No matter how great the folly, a singular night of drunken stupidity – Sebastian had mistaken her drunken revelry for a flirtatious invitation – wasn't reason enough to give up on him. Hadn't she committed sins in similar revelry?

If he had wanted to commit himself to the act, he could have advanced upon her even after she'd bitten him, but he hadn't. He had walked away. He had stopped.

"I am sorry," Samantha said but Goran didn't seem ready to accept it. There was only one thing that she was good at: the truth. Goran was her family, and she owed him that. She took a deep breath and said, "You're right. I've been writing to him, sneaking letters through a chanter so they won't be intercepted by the Knight Commander. She has been carrying our correspondence back and forth between us for a year. I told him about the Flint Mercenaries—" Goran's gaze sprung back to her as if from a slingshot. "—and about Lady Harimann. I overheard you and I found a letter from Kirkwall that I thought was from Flora. I wasn't spying. I found these things accidentally. I'm truly sorry that I didn't tell you about it then."

She felt afraid that he would think terrible things about her because she had deceived him. Afraid that he would kick her out of the palace. But it wasn't the living arrangements that made her tear up – it was the idea of losing Goran Vael, her best friend. Mostly, she was afraid he would think their friendship had been a lie, too.

Once he saw her tears, he pushed his fingers through his hair with a tired sigh. "Sammie… You endanger yourself for a—he's not who you think he is."

"He is my friend. Just like you are," she said sincerely. "He didn't deny what he was accused of, did he? He didn't call Beenie a liar?"

"No…" And then he shook his head. "I'm not going to stand aside if he decides to come back. I don't care how terrible I am at being prince. What he did… There are consequences for that. He lost his birthright. He accepted that punishment. If the prince's seat is to mean anything, it's that decisions aren't made meaningless when the prince dies."

Samantha thought that was the most eloquent thing Goran had ever said.

"What if he comes back, but not as prince? What if he asks to come back?"

Goran hemmed a little, eventually bringing his eyes back to hers, but they were hardened in decision. "Stay here. I'll be right back."

He disappeared from the room, and Samantha noticed Keis watching her from the hallway; she had heard the whole thing. She had been right, too; Keis had said that Samantha would tell Goran about her discovery of Lady Harimann's letter when the right moment presented itself. And it had.

Goran returned in short order and sat down next to her, looking somewhere between guilty and shameless as he handed Samantha a carefully folded up bit of parchment. It had a broken seal – Sebastian's seal from Kirkwall. Samantha's mouth dropped open.

"What is this?" she asked him.

"It's a letter from him," Goran said self-righteously. "I knew you were exchanging letters. I've known for a while. But when… well, read the letter."

Samantha couldn't remove her eyes from him as she unfolded the note. Its corners were worn like it had been read again and again.

Dearest Sammie,

I'd been staring at this page for a long time, unsure what to write, until it occurred to me that you have lost as much as I and deserve to know who was responsible. I want you to prepare yourself, because I intend to tell you the truth about what happened.

After I received your letter, I decided to confront Lady Harimann. It was reckless, but I asked for help from the Fereldan refugee that I hired to hunt down the Flint Mercenary Company, a colorful character named Hawke. It turned out to be a wise decision.

First, I want to reassure you that Flora, Ruxton, and Brett are all safe and mostly unharmed.

When we first entered the estate, we found there were no guards. Some rooms were well kept and others were in a shambles. We found Brett boiling the Harimann's golden heirlooms down to a liquid. It looked like he intended to pour it over some unfortunate servant girl's head. We found Ruxton in his quarters with an elven slave, and he was forcing her to do unspeakable acts of a sexual nature. We found Flora down in the wine cellars, more compromised than I have seen anyone, mumbling to herself. But perhaps the worst thing we found was in the basement.

We discovered Lady Johane on her knees begging for power from a demon. The discovery that she was a mage was shocking enough, but it was the demon that surprised us all. It had a name. I thank the Maker that Hawke was with me, for I don't think I could have survived the encounter alone. It used Lady Johane's desire against her, promising her power to rule Starkhaven while feeding off her family. I had heard that my father asked her to leave, but I sincerely doubt that he thought she would use these methods to return.

I killed her, Sammie. I put arrow after arrow into her chest until she was dead.

That's not the worst part, either. Before I killed her, the demon spoke to us, but it was the things that it spoke inside my head that have shaken me to the core. I have felt things that I haven't felt in years; jealousy, avarice, vengeance. I know that demons can often see into the weakest parts of us, but somehow everything felt wrong. Even now, after hours of prayer, I don't know if what I have done is a sin or if it is justice. Are my plans to return to Starkhaven born from sin as well? I thought the Maker wanted me to be prince, but now I wonder if he was testing my faith.

Flora came to me on numerous occasions and I turned her away every time because of my selfishness and shame. What kind of leader turns away from their friends? I told her we were friends, but I haven't been a very good one. I will visit her soon. No doubt she is shaken with her own experience and the loss of her mother.

I'm sorry to burden you with my own personal struggles, Sammie. I thought that avenging my parents' murder would bring me peace, but it has only brought more anguish. I don't expect you to have the answers, and it pains me to bring you this news, because the last thing I want is to cause you any more pain.

Please write to me.

Maker guide us through this difficult time,

Your friend, Sebastian

After the relief that Flora was alive washed away, Samantha lifted her palms to her eyes and started to cry. Goran reached over and did what came naturally: he hugged her close. His embrace was comforting, but in that moment she felt like a failure. Goran was her friend more than Sebastian had ever been, and yet she had deceived the former to conspire with the latter. Friendship wasn't always a two-way street, as sometimes it was more important to give than to receive, but aside from the locket that she wore around her neck – that Goran had never mentioned and now she knew why – Sebastian had only taken.

Why couldn't she be mad at him? The things Sebastian spoke about – his vanishing certainty about his life – made her remember the boy she knew before the brother he had become.

Sebastian Vael was polite and kind when his parents were watching, but every girl and boy in Granite Circle knew that when the prince and princess turned their heads, he was trouble – and not the bad kind. He was fun; just the right amount of brash and always up for a challenge. Corbinian had once said that Sebastian was everything a Vael really was but will never show, and eventually she got to see it – in more ways than one. Corbinian was just the same, but somehow he had learned to find the balance between the brash and the pretension, and turn it into character. Sebastian always had a hard time figuring that part out, and it seemed that hadn't changed.

Some of the nobles had called it the Third Vael Syndrome, meaning that once the heir and the spare were taken care of, he was just dead weight. It was a callous thing to suggest, especially about a prince. Sebastian had ignored the gossip, declaring that his parents were just traditional, which meant that they didn't have children for love – they had children to fill roles and Sebastian's role was to lead the archery regiments. Corbinian disagreed, having later claimed to understand the value of titles.

To think that Sebastian Vael had used his skill with the bow as part of some mercenary group was utterly appalling. He was a prince of Starkhaven, not some common street thug. Then again, what did Samantha really know about common street thugs? She certainly had never met any – maybe they had reasons, lives that were littered with unfortunate tragedies that led them down a mercenary's path to slaughter for sovereigns. She supposed every Champion ever named was likely a mercenary of some kind – certainly Champions are never named from amongst polite society. No, she supposed that Champions and mercenaries needed to be hardened by bloodshed, to face demons and live to tell about it.

It was unbelievable that Lady Johane had given herself to such a monster; no doubt she'd thought she could resist its influence. It made Samantha's heart ache to think that she had given her children away to such a creature. Flora and Ruxton.

Suddenly Flora's letters began to come together like a ball of yarn that had been tangled, and Samantha had found the knots. Flora's headaches, Ruxton's perverse behavior, Lord Harimann's detachment, Brett's preoccupation with wealth, Lady Johane's obsession with renovating the basement; it was all at the behest of a demon.

Goran spoke into her hair as she worked to regain her composure on his shoulder. "I learned Lady Johane was killed a month ago. My agents said… they said Sebastian had done it, and I kept trying to figure out how he knew."

Samantha sniffled, and when Goran didn't offer it, she asked for his handkerchief. He fumbled an apology as he handed one over. "Keis said you made visits to the Chantry behind closed doors with a girl, some chanter, but you never cried when you came out of those visits. I'm sorry, Sammie. I know that I've invaded your privacy but I talked to the girl, Taletha. She told me about your letters."

Samantha felt cold. "Taletha?"

"It took some… influence to get her to part with this one—"

"Where is she?" Now Samantha was interrupting.

"In confinement."

"What?" Samantha imagined the poor girl sitting on the floor of a dank cell, the water dripping and her hair matted to her head. Echoes of Innley.

"We couldn't let her go back to Kirkwall! What's she's done—" His hands began to shake. "It's tantamount to an attack on the city. What Sebastian has done… it's treason!"

"She's just a girl!" Samantha cried.

"She is unharmed. As are you!" Goran suddenly seemed so angry. "He has no idea what he's doing! He puts people in harm's way for his own selfish reasons! Can't you see that?"

"What are you talking about?" Samantha yelled back.

"Who do you think was confiscating his letters after our family was murdered?" Goran was trying to calm down. "Our family – murdered by people we didn't know – and he and I are the only two left, and who does he write to? You, Sammie. Why not just paint a target on your back?"

"You took his letters?"

"Yes!" Goran said in frustration. "And I'd do it again. How he could put you in the middle of this… it's beyond selfish."

Samantha felt very confused. "Where is Taletha now?"

"Under guard. She's in a room in the southern wing of the palace." He brought his hand to his forehead, exhausted. "It's where my niece slept, actually. The room is decorated for a little girl… I thought it appropriate."

She leaned back in her chair, sharing in his exhaustion.

He shook his head. "I'm sorry, Sammie. But I had to. The council wanted to execute her, but that's not right. They wanted to detain you, too."

A streak of fear ran through her, imagining herself in some dank cell with water dripping.

"At first…" Goran's voice turned soft, almost kind. "I thought maybe you only lived here to spy on me. Get information and give it to him."—Samantha shook her head—"But then I remembered that you really aren't very good at keeping secrets. You can't hide anything to save your life. You never could."—And she let out a sigh of relief—"but then I understood. You were trying to save him. You've always been trying to save him."

"What?" The word came out thin.

"He takes advantage of you, your kindness," Goran's voice was kinder than before. "You make excuses for him, you forgive every indiscretion, every change-of-heart you accept without question. You never challenge him. He can do no wrong."

"That's not true," she said quickly, but right as the words left her mouth she had to stop and reconsider. Was that true?

"Everyone is angry with him except you, you know."

That was probably true.

"Why?" he asked her.

Samantha wanted to have an answer, more than she had wanted anything in a long time, but she could only think of one thing to say: "He's my friend."

"He's not Beenie." Goran's words carried so much weight, they dropped into Samantha's stomach like rocks.

She blinked and when her eyes fully closed, the warm tears turned cold and slipped out. "But…"

"I think he's out there, too." His voice was as soft as his hands, wrapped around Samantha's. "My guards scour the country to this day, but Beenie will save himself. He always has. Sebastian… he's not like Beenie."

"I…" Maker… she missed Corbinian with a splitting ache that flowed through her, jagged and rushing like the Minanter River. Was Goran right; was she expecting Sebastian to come back with Corbinian in tow? Was she expecting Sebastian to be like him? Now that the question was inside her head, the answer came loudly: it's not possible. Corbinian could be cunning and clever, but sneaking through a girl's window was not the same thing as plotting to overthrow a prince. How could Sebastian not see that?

It occurred to her then that she and Flora never did answer that question that had plagued Flora for all those years: What did Sebastian want? Samantha had to wonder about his indecisiveness, and what it would truly take for him to march back into Starkhaven.

"I read that letter," Goran continued. "He still can't make decisions about his own life – how is he supposed to govern a city? He sits there in Kirkwall, wallowing in his own troubles while the rest of us have moved on. Starkhaven has moved on. She doesn't need him. She doesn't want him."

Samantha felt terrible, mostly because she knew that Goran was right.