We're just going to talk.
He felt eyes burning into his back as he crossed the hall towards the door by the side of the throne. He was sure he was imagining it. Mostly.
We should talk. Clear the air. What happened last time – that was no way to end it.
Charsi, the Inquisitor's handmaiden, was oddly engrossed in cleaning the window near the hallway door. Cullen, suspecting there were do-not-disturb orders in place, decided not to say hello. Plausible deniability, wasn't that the phrase Josephine used?
He climbed the stairs quietly. It was silent, no sign of Aine. The curtains on the four-poster bed were closed. The mess caught his attention – papers strewn across the floor. Some were rumpled, some torn; a couple of boot-prints were in evidence, too. He bent and picked up a few sheets. Correspondence about her marriage. Of course. Heavy, expensive paper, ostentatious seals, superb (likely professional) penmanship. And the offers! Soldiers, resources, plain cash in some cases... he could see why she'd felt she had to accept one of them for the Inquisition. Seeing it in black and white, he felt his gorge rising. Was Cassandra the only one who'd tried to talk her out of this?
A glint caught his eye, and he nudged aside another sheet to reveal a silver coin. He didn't need to look closely to know which one it was. Where had he been? First prating about dragonbone hearts, then off on his high horse. He wasn't even conscious of his fist closing until he heard the letters' paper crumple.
Apparently Aine heard it too. The bed curtain was torn aside. "I said leave it -" She stopped short. Her eyes were puffy and red-rimmed, her skin splotchy. He thought she'd never looked so beautiful.
Just here to talk. What had he wanted to say, again?
He stepped towards her. His voice felt raspy. "They'll pay so much to much to marry the Inquisitor." Closer. "I will give everything to marry you."
His stomach was tight as he watched the struggle on her face. He'd seen it before. When he'd asked her whether to take lyrium, the Inquisitor had won; the time on the battlements when she'd admitted how afraid she was, the young woman Aine had been the victor. It seemed to take an age.
"Fuck dragonbone," she snarled, and grabbed him.
"Are you all right?"
"Passion and spontaneity are wonderful things." Aine extracted a rerebrace from beneath the bedclothes and deposited it on his chest. "But in future, I think all the armour needs to come off before you get into bed."
Cullen reached through the curtain to drop it on the mingled heap of clothes. "Fair enough. Speaking of things that shouldn't be in bed with us..." He pulled out half a dozen letters, now thoroughly crumpled and sweat-stained.
She grinned impishly. Maker, how he'd missed that grin.
"Let's see..." Aine took the letters from him. "Oh, this is an early one. I think we were still back in Haven when Baron Laufer talked to my parents to offer his third son. Haven't heard from him in a while – I guess he realised he was outmatched."
She discarded the letter through the curtains and turned her attention to the next one. "Tevinter, can you believe it? Did I tell you Dorian and I are umpteenth cousins or something? Maybe there's more magic in my pedigree than I realised."
"One of the anti-Venatori Tevinters, right?"
"Presumably. He was never considered seriously enough to be worth the effort of proper vetting." Then she smiled. "This one I might actually have been able to live with. Prince Shaun's a year younger than I am, and he didn't put on airs back when I was way too lowly for him."
Her smile abruptly disappeared when she saw the next sheet. She dropped the rest of the letters through the curtains with a shudder, then turned over and put her head on his shoulder.
Cullen held her tightly. "What is it?"
"He... he was a bad one."
"How?"
"Lord deVries. He wants a fourth wife. Known to favour spirited women, ones who'll talk back to him. The first two wives died in accidents, supposedly, but there are rumours they were either suicides or murders. And the third one was definitely suicide. She stepped off the roof in front of a whole courtyard full of partygoers."
"So why even consider him?"
"Because his bid was one of the best. Flames, after two suspiciously-dead wives I doubt he'd have got poor Lady Renee if he hadn't owned the biggest silverite mine in Orlais."
"We'd never have let him hurt you."
"That's not the problem. The problem is what I'd have done to him."
"What?"
She pulled free of his arms and repositioned herself so that they were face-to-face. "If I found I couldn't stand him, I'd have killed him. Hopefully after a decent interval, but I had thought of the possibility of him going over the balcony on the wedding night."
"So... you were plotting to marry a man for his wealth, then murder him."
"I wouldn't put it as high as plotting. Just 'considering as a possibility'. If I'd agreed to marry him, then it would have been a plot. All for the greater good, of course."
"Meredith and Anders both thought they were acting for the greater good."
"I know. Mayor Dedrick too, for that matter. So where do you draw the line?"
He twined his fingers with hers. "It's a difficult question sometimes. If it's any comfort, I don't think contemplating the murder of a man who sounds like he's got it coming makes you a terrible person. Oh, and it does help if you're not surrounded by idiots who blather on about dragonbone hearts."
"You're not an idiot. It was what I needed to hear right then. But maybe I took it too much to, uh, heart. And then there's Envy."
"The Envy? What about it?"
She paused for a several moments. "Are you sure you want to hear this?"
No, I don't. But it'll help you. "Yes."
"It... showed me what it meant to do with the Inquisition. It all seemed ridiculous at the time, as if I'd ever get that kind of power – helped me keep my head while I was watching myself torturing and killing my friends." Her flippant tone didn't hide the brittleness, and she wasn't quite meeting his gaze.
"And then Leliana handed you the sword."
"Bit of a bad moment."
"Do you really think you could be that terrible?"
"Sometimes. When I've woken up in the middle of the night and can't get back to sleep."
"I..." He stopped short his instinctive dismissal. It wasn't right, and it wasn't what she needed to hear. "You could be. I don't believe you will."
"Why? How can you be sure?"
"Because you're worrying about it. And because you've got us."
"So the time to start worrying would be when I stopped worrying."
"Well, yes."
"Hm." She mulled it for a few moments, then said, "If Envy had got what it wanted... would you have noticed?"
"Likely. Demons don't know how it feels to be human. They can do a good imitation if they work at it, but they slip up on simple things. More than one has tipped off the templars by not paying enough attention to its host's eating habits. It's the kind of thing we're trained to spot."
Her eyes narrowed. "So you think the thing could have imitated my dazzling charm and deep compassion well enough to fool you, but you'd have noticed I was eating the wrong breakfast?"
"I'm on dangerous ground here, aren't I? To be honest, even now I'd be more likely to notice that you - it - had gone out to the range without arranging all your arrows just so. Dazzling charm and deep compassion are things they watch out for. You want to catch a demon, think mundane."
"You are entirely too honest for your own good sometimes."
"I know. Aine... what happened?"
"Narrow it down a bit?"
"In Redcliffe."
"Dorian had a row with his father – well, Dorian yelled a lot at his father and then was uncharacteristically quiet the whole way back."
"And how did all this relate to us?"
She sighed and arranged the covers around herself. "I guess I do owe you an explanation."
"It's not about you owing me anything. I just want to understand."
"That's sweet. Anyway, the bone of contention was an arranged marriage Dorian didn't want."
"Ah."
"He finally talked to me after we got back, and he... said something. He said he supposed it was selfish of him, not to want to spend his whole life screaming on the inside. And when he put it that way... I realised I'd been screaming on the inside for weeks. I'd been screaming so loud I couldn't hear my own conscience. And it seemed so clear he wasn't being selfish... so where did that leave me?"
"Screaming? You seemed so casual about it all."
"Like I said, I wasn't listening to myself." She broke eye contact and pressed her face against his shoulder again. "When it felt like half the world wanted me strung up for killing the Divine, and the other half were making me out to be some kind of saviour, you were there for me. You acted sure of what we were doing when even Cassandra and Leliana were confessing doubts to me. The thought of pledging myself to some other man – letting him touch me..."
He tightened his his hand on hers and lost himself in the scent of her hair for a few moments.
Then he decided to distract her. "So how do you plan on letting them all down gently?"
"Half the castle saw you come in here, right? And haven't seen you come back out again?"
He groaned.
"If Josephine doesn't have some pleasant lie ready that'll allow everyone to save face, I've overestimated her entirely."
"And your parents?"
"Oh, they'll be disappointed. But frankly, while I'm the Inquisitor I could drag some half-wit gongfermour out of the worst alienage in Orlais and announce he's going to be my husband, and they'd put up with it. Don't hold out for them ever liking you very much, though."
"I think I'll live with it somehow."
"I'll write to them later and get it over with." She prodded him in the ribs. "And you'll write to your sister. Tomorrow. This is going to get around, and she should hear your news from you for once. Are your family going to have a problem with me?"
"Oh, no-one's ever been good enough for Mia's baby brothers at first. Just be your usual charming self, she'll come around."
She took a breath, and Cullen felt her shudder.
"What's wrong?" he asked.
"I might never meet her. I don't know if we should even be talking about this. Planning for the rest of our lives together when either of us could be dead... soon."
"Don't think like that. You could destroy Corypheus and the Venatori and get kicked in the head by a horse the next day. Getting on with our lives, planning for a future without them in it... that's a victory by itself."
"But – what if...?"
"Then it happens. And if one of us gets left behind, we remember what we had and not what we missed out on." He hoped his cold horror at that prospect wasn't showing.
"Easier said than done."
"I know." He decided to shift the conversation to less upsetting topics. "Just promise me something, will you?"
"What?"
"I won't treat our children like thoroughbred horses. I won't mate them with whoever's got the most power or land or... whatever."
"I understand. Look, it's not as inflexible as I might have made out. Most arranged marriages, the parties do get a say. Nobles want their children to be happy too. But you're right, I can't ask my children to make a sacrifice I wouldn't make myself. I promise that if our daughter comes to us and says she's got her heart set on spending the rest of her life with the stable boy, I'll allow it."
"And... that thing you said, about being married not being a reason to stop sleeping with other people."
"Oh. Well, remember I was operating under the assumption that I'd end up given to some man I've barely met, probably one twice my age. Being exclusive with you is a completely different matter."
"Good. It just... worries me. I never realised how different we were. What other... gaps are there we're not going to see until we step in them?"
"Hey. We've agreed on the big one. For the rest, we'll talk. We'll find the gaps and we'll build all the bridges we need."
"I hope so. We're going to be pledging ourselves to each other in the Maker's sight and I mean to take that seriously. I can't believe you thought I'd be okay with adultery."
"I know. That was stupid. Thoughtless. I'm sorry."
"Yes. It was. Don't do it again."
"I won't."
"All right then."
"Cullen?"
"Yes?"
"What if our son comes to us and says he's got his heart set on settling down with the stable boy?"
He groaned and pulled away from her. "That's enough planning the future for now. I should get back to work. So should you, for that matter."
"Ah yes. Monsters to kill. People to charm. Better make sure I don't get them mixed up."
Cullen extracted his shirt from the heap and pulled it over his head. "If in doubt, that's what friends are for."
They dressed swiftly – there was a chill in the air and the fire had burned low – and she helped him into his armour.
"Right," he said at last. "Now I have to go... walk along the Great Hall. And out to my office. And do the evening briefing..."
Aine laughed. "Does it really bother you that much? Maker, how are you going to handle it when my belly's out to here?" She retrieved the coin from the midst of the scattered papers and held it up. "Sure, they'll smirk and they'll gossip, but you are the one man in all of Thedas I want to be with."
"Hmm. That is a good thought. I'll hold onto that."
Impulsively he grabbed her waist and pulled her close. The kiss was lengthy and fierce, hot with hurt and heartbreak and forgiveness. He crushed her against himself, felt her fingernails digging into his scalp. Empires rose and fell before they came up for air. Then she smoothed his hair into place and he went back to work.