BioWare owns all but my character's and her dog's names. : )
Thanks again for all your support! And thanks for your putting me on as a favorite author and your reviews. I hope you continue to enjoy. : )
Oh, I don't want to give away the surprise guest, but I am basing it on Mr. Gaider's books. : )
Sorry about the delay in this chapter too. My aunt died on my birthday yesterday and it has taken me a little to get moving. She was very sick so it was a blessing of a sort, she isn't suffering, so please don't feel bad. I just wanted you all to know why I was a little behind. : )
Blessings!
Kai sat with her back leaning against Alistair's muscled chest while he read aloud from a book. They were leaning up against a tree while sitting on a blanket in the grass in the garden. She could smell the scent of him, the grass and the apple bees hummed back and forth, and it felt so good. "You know you are going to have to help me up from the ground; I'm as big and unwieldy as a bronto." She felt rather than saw him set the book down, and the arm that he had draped around her moved so his hand could rest on her large rounded belly, caressing it. The baby moved under it in response to his touch.
"I think you look beautiful." She could feel his grin in the back of her head as he smiled into her hair.
"My belly button may never go back in at this rate. My whole body is so round so you would think I never wielded a weapon. And despite using the creams Leli and Wynne made for me, I have stretch marks because your child keeps getting bigger. It also seems to take after its father and have this huge appetite."
"And?" She could feel him grinning more.
"And I am so completely happy," she laughed and leaned back so she could look at him. He bent down and kissed her lingeringly, one hand supporting her head and the other still stroking her rounded stomach. Then someone started knocking on the gate in the garden wall. She tried to ignore the sound, as Alistair's tongue was doing very enticing and arousing things to her mouth, but the knocking didn't stop. "By Andraste's flaming knickers, come in!" Kai found herself yelling out loud, and then she woke up. Kai groaned as the feelings of intense love and happiness following her from the Fade collided with reality. Her eyes teared up with an agonizing longing, and she felt her heart would break.
"Damn, just when we were getting to the good part," Alistair's voice spoke in her ear, and she couldn't help but laugh. His humor always soothed her.
She took a deep breath and realized that a servant had stuck his head into the room, "My lady? I am so sorry to wake you, but we have an unexpected visitor, and Arl Eamon and Ban Teagan asked me to fetch you? They know you need your rest, my lady, but they said it was very important?" The servant looked positively horrified at having woken her, so every statement came out as a question.
"Very well, I will get dressed and come down. Are they in the dining hall?"
"Yes, my lady! I will tell them you will be on your way." The poor man closed the door.
Kai felt a hand on her belly over the covers, Zev's hand. His face was buried in her hair as he breathed into the side of her neck. Just as she had expected after her visit to the Fade, Zev continued to shadow her closely. That is, when he wasn't training a core group of volunteers in the finer arts of spying and the ways of the assassin, or practicing those same arts. He told her he wanted to have more feelers out and more people to protect her. It was a plan that Eamon and Teagan supported wholeheartedly for multiple reasons, the most important being to protect Kai and the last of the Theirin line.
Zev still slept on top of the covers wrapped in a blanket. Well, now a feather filled duvet due to the Winter chill, almost as if he were afraid she would take advantage of him. This thought caused her to smile. He had snuggled close, probably for warmth. Fereldan Winters were hard on people from places like Antiva. Kai remembered her sister-in-law's first Fereldan Winter and how miserable she had been. Kai wished he would just get under the covers; it would make him more comfortable. In her state, she couldn't take advantage of anyone even if she wanted to. All they would have to do is walk at a normal pace to get away from her. Her lips curved in a rueful smile. When walking, she thought she must look like a ship under sail.
Zev had come in late last night through heavy snow after a mission in Denerim. He had been gone over a week and had caused Kai to worry herself into a state thinking he had gotten caught, tortured, and/or killed. She had almost gone out the door herself to find him and had to be restrained and convinced to wait. It had only been Leli's promise that she, herself, would go after him if he didn't show after the Solstice celebration tomorrow.
Fortunately, he had shown, dragging himself in with a goodly amount of snow. He had been exhausted and half frozen, but promised to debrief them. Kai insisted he get warm, dry, and rested before he did.
She tried to move his hand gently without waking him, grasping his wrist and lifting his arm up so she could slide out of bed. The only problem was that her sliding out days were long gone. All the fluid grace she had as an athletic rogue had disappeared as her belly had gotten bigger and bigger. Had she said she was a bronto in her dream? More like a drunken bronto.
"You're still beautiful, for a drunken bronto," Alistair's voice teased in her ear. Gee, thanks so much. Next time I meet you in a dream I am going to smack you. But she said it with a mental smile.
Kai couldn't sleep on her side anymore, so she was lying on her back. In fact her lower back was killing her, and she couldn't get comfortable. Rolling over to get out of bed was not an option. She tried to scoot sideways, like a crab, gently pushing on the down filled mattress with her other arm, but she wasn't making much progress. Zev's hand grabbed her wrist and gave it a gentle tug. "You do not need to struggle so, I am awake, my dear Gray Warden." He removed his hand and used it to rub his eyes.
"I am so sorry, Zev, I was trying not to wake you."
"Are you well? Is the baby coming?" Suddenly, Zev was sitting bolt upright. Kai laughed at him. All of her friends kept watching her like hawks. If she made any kind of motion of distress, they all descended on her asking her if she were in pain, did she need anything, was the baby coming. The only two who didn't were Sten and Shale. They would just stare at her until she told them she was okay, and that didn't always convince them, sometimes they would continue to stare.
"I am fine, Zev, no labor pains." She started to tick off on her fingers, "Just a sore lower back, a constant need to use the privy, heartburn, oh and my lungs are being squeezed while the child kicks my kidneys. And I swear this infant is going to have me eat the woodwork. But no, nothing you need to worry about. Apparently, we have an important visitor and Eamon wants me there. Go back to sleep, you need it." Kai did a half roll and grunted as she tried to twist herself upwards over her expanded abdomen. She felt a hand under her upper arm pulling her forward. Nimble Zev had come to her side of the bed without making a sound. Kai looked at him with envy.
Zev laughed, "My dear Gray Warden, you will get your agility back when you longer look like a child stealing a watermelon."
"Ugh, thank you so much," Kai gasped as he pulled her to her feet. She touched his face. "Now go back to sleep. You scared me half to death taking so long and you were half frozen. And Zev, it's too blasted cold for you to be sleeping on top of the covers. Just get under the bloody duvet from now on."
"Is that an order, my dear Warden?" he asked with a smirk.
"And if I said yes?" She cocked an eyebrow at him.
"Then I would say I love to take orders from beautiful women. Do we have any rope and perhaps a whi..." she stopped him with a fingertip to his lips.
"Really, I am so pregnant I can hardly move and you are making sexual innuendos? I don't know whether I should be flattered or disturbed," Kai laughed at him.
"Disturbed, definitely disturbed," Alistair's voice responded to her statement. Considering what you were doing in the dream, you're just as bad, she replied. "Hey-y, that was different." She could hear him smiling. Uh huh, sure it was. She laughed again.
Zev kissed her fingertip, but did not get back in bed. He pulled out a simple robe, similar to the ones worn by mages, along with some doeskin slippers for her feet and helped her get dressed. The robe was even snugger around her belly if that were possible. Any bigger and she would pop. This infant was going to have broad shoulders and a barrel chest like Alistair, of that she was certain. She had a momentary flutter of fear. How was she going to get it out of her? Oh my, not going there, panic time. Instead, she concentrated on Zev.
"Zev, I know you will tell everyone about your trip, but are you okay, was everything all right? You took so long, it really frightened me." Kai watched as he pulled on pants and boots.
"The gold got distributed where it belonged. Many families will have a good Winter Solstice and a good winter, and they know it is thanks to you, or at least thanks to the 'Silver Griffon'. Your idea of doing as the 'Black Fox' did was inspired. It is a good thing you read so much, no?" He gave her a reassuring smile and continued, "It took so long because I was caught in a blizzard outside Lake Calenhad and had to stay at The Spoiled Princess for more days than I liked. Ceffyls are hardy but a blizzard is not good for them either." Zev tossed off his sleep shirt and put on a cotton shirt, a thick woolen shirt, and a second woolen shirt on top of that one. Kai suppressed a giggle.
"In fact, Rhia has more sense than most people, and elves apparently. She started acting strangely and would not stay on the road. Finally, I just let her go where she pleased. She bypassed the road, taking a shorter route overland to the lake. We made it to the Princess just in time." Zev smiled, "She is very clever, my Rhia; she knew the storm was coming. I think another storm is following me inward from the Waking Sea. After the snow started falling more slowly, I went out to see that she was being cared for, and she was all but breaking down the stall door. She grabbed the bridle in her teeth and shook it at me. It was obvious she wished to set out. Her insistence is why I showed up so late last night."
Kai went and hugged him as best she could with her belly in the way. "I am glad you made it. Remind me to give Rhia an extra apple as a thank you," Kai smiled at him. "Shall we go see who this important visitor is? It's someone so important they woke us before the sun has come up." Zev smiled and offered her his arm.
They made their way downstairs to the dining hall of the hunting lodge they were currently using as a safe house. As Anora's mind seemed to be slipping further and further into insanity, the banns and arls had started to look to Arl Eamon for help. Only the most trusted of these had been let in on the secret of Kai's being alive and her carrying the Theirin bloodline that could make Anora's spiraling-out-of-control rule collapse. They offered their homes and hunting lodges and even trusted freeholder's homes as places for her safe houses. Anora still did not know she was alive, and they meant to keep it that way.
This particular lodge was close enough to Highever that her brother Fergus had been able to come to visit for the Solstice celebration without rousing suspicion. It had been hard having to stay away from him now that she had him back in her life again, but his visit was making up for it. She smiled and hugged Zev's arm, thinking that she and Fergus should go out in the snow today and sled down the hill behind the hunting lodge as they had when they were children. Of course the sled she got on might just sink into the snow and not move. Perhaps she would just let Fergus sled and she would watch. Not to mention that all of her very protective friends and Eamon and Teagan would put the kibosh on any such possible dangerous activity. Kai sighed to herself.
Her thoughts were interrupted as she and Zev walked through the door of the dining hall to see Eamon and Teagan, as well as her brother, which surprised her. They were speaking to a figure Kai couldn't see standing on the other side of the doorway. As she and Zev entered, Fergus came forward to take her hand. His face didn't look alarmed but it did look...grim? Zev picked up on that and stayed close in behind her, probably making ready to pull one of his daggers if necessary.
Both Teagan and Eamon also looked worried and nodded in greeting as she came further into the room. Kai turned towards the visitor, seeing a small elven women looking at her. She was beautiful, and age had only made her more so rather than diminishing or softening her beauty in any way. Her eyes were a startling dark brown or black. Kai was drawn to them; most elves seemed to have exotically colored eyes like Zev's amber ones. But this woman's eyes were dark pools in her almost unlined skin. She had dainty, softly tapered ears that kept back her silver white hair. Kai also noted she was a mage carrying a staff of white wood, well used. She wore a grey cloak pinned with a brooch with a rampant griffon on it, a Grey Warden, then.
Kai moved forward, her hand outstretched, "Greetings, Grey Warden. Since I know Anora has denied the Wardens leave to come to Ferelden, despite her earlier promises, I take it you slipped in?" Kai smiled. This woman must have come from Orlais or Weisshaupt. She was going to guess Orlais as Weisshaupt was a journey of thousands of miles, and she doubted they sent a Warden from so far away simply to see what was going on in Ferelden. "So they sent someone to find out what has been happening? I take it you have heard that all the Grey Wardens in Ferelden are dead?" Kai was not about to blow her cover to some stranger just because she was wearing the griffon on her clothes. Kai watched the mage give a sardonic little twist of her lips.
"Actually, my fellow Grey Warden, I am here looking for my son, Alistair."