She dealt her pretty words like Blades—
How glittering they shone—
And every One unbared a Nerve
Or wantoned with a Bone—
—Emily Dickinson

Fenris was unhappy.

This was more than the shock of returning to Starkhaven, more than time allotted by patience. Sebastian had known his friend nearly ten years, been knocked to the ground by him both before and after his crowning, and he did not know what to make of three weeks of grave glances, pointed silences, and curt withdrawals from every meal. The pain of betrayal, perhaps, but that did not fit; they had been betrayed before. Missing the travel of the woods—impossible. Fenris guarded his creature comforts jealously and treasured nothing so much as a glass of rich wine and the solitude of his rooms. Only one other alternative presented itself, unhappy as it was, but Sebastian would not know until he asked.

He found Fenris in his rooms one night before dinner. His friend sat moodily in the armchair before his fire, arms folded, brow furrowed, his bare feet crossed at the ankles and pointed towards the flickering heat. Fenris heard the window-latch click—Sebastian saw his head begin to turn—but he only gave a sigh instead and shut his eyes. "Your attendants will be furious."

"I don't care," Sebastian said, shutting the window behind him. Fenris did not rise; he never did when they were alone, and Sebastian was grateful for it. "You should stop sulking and put on your boots."

"And you should stop wearing white in the dark."

Sebastian sat on the footstool, bumping Fenris's heels to one edge of the cushion. His captain opened one eye and glared. "I'm sorry," Sebastian said, not sorry at all. "I think you're angry with me, my friend."

"If I say no, will you attempt to argue with me?"

"Angry with Lady Hawke, then."

That struck truer. Fenris's jaw clenched. "Don't you have a dinner to attend?"

"We could hardly start without you. What is it? You don't like her?"

"No!" Fenris said quickly, then slumped back in his chair. "Why should you care? It's your throne she'll be sitting on."

"And your arm at her back to protect it." But that made sense, Sebastian thought, the events of the past three weeks rapidly reorganizing themselves in his mind. Not withdrawing from him after a meal; not sitting stone-faced and silent at the meetings with the Kirkwall advisors because he was there. But because Lady Hawke was. Because it pained him to be near the princess. "That's it, isn't it?"

"Your blindness—" Fenris began sharply, but he cut himself off and pushed up from his chair to pace the room in silence. At last he said, "There is nothing wrong with the princess. I do not dislike her."

"Was it something that happened in the woods? Was she unkind to you?"

"No."

"Fenris," Sebastian said, standing now himself. He crossed to where Fenris stood stiffly at the window and rested his hand on his shoulder. "My friend, I trust your judgement like few others. You have saved my life a hundred times, and I hope I have paid you back a tenth of the kindness you have shown me. But if I am walking blind into some trap, for Starkhaven's sake if not my own I beg you to tell me."

That caught Fenris's attention. He turned, looked up, and his green eyes were grieved. "I'm sorry, Sebastian. It was not my intention to make you doubt yourself. Or to doubt the princess Hawke. There is no trap for you." He looked back to the window. "She is exactly as she seems. She is forthright, brave. She can be kind, even when she chooses to be absurd. She has no great motive aside from saving the kingdom she loves."

"But you avoid her at every meal. You refuse to dance with her. If the ministers didn't demand your presence at some of these trade meetings we would never see you. You were so glad that day in the courtyard. I thought…"

Fenris threw up his hands. It was, Sebastian thought with no small alarm, a gesture of desperation. Fenris was not desperate often. "I don't know what to tell you, Sebastian. I have no grievance against the princess. She is not here to harm you."

Sebastian hardly knew himself. He could only say that the tension pained him, and that was too unkind to voice aloud. "Just tell me—tell me you'll try. That you'll be civil. It brings me no joy to step into a marriage and lose my brother in the process."

Fenris grew very still. The silence stretched long between them, the fire crackling merrily, and then he sighed. "Fine. For you." He snorted. "Civility."

The victory felt hollow. Sebastian winced, but he could not ask for more. "Come then, Captain. Put on your boots. The chef will eat my heart if we're any later."

"If she can find it," Fenris grumbled, but he put on his boots and went with him to dinner.

True to his word, at dinner that night Fenris made a point of speaking to the princess across the head table. "Good evening, Your Highness," he said, implacably polite. "I trust your day has gone well?"

"Yes," said the princess, visibly surprised, but with a bright flash of a smile that Sebastian had not seen in days. "I thank you, Captain. And yours?"

"Unremarkable." He took a sip of wine. "The weather was fair today."

"Yes. The prince and I went hunting, and the skies were so clear you could see for miles. The hounds were beautiful in the morning sun."

"Yes, of course," Fenris said, and accepted from a servant a plate of brown bread and soft white butter. "I heard the dogs baying."

It was a stiff start, but Sebastian allowed himself to hope, briefly, that this enigmatic animosity might be overcome, and he broke the golden crust of a tart with his spoon. Surely a step towards friendship at last. Surely whatever strain the woods had brought between them was not so strong as good food and good company, as the safety of the palace and its gleaming torches. He leaned forward. "I told Her Highness of the time you and I slept three days in that cave above the river," he said. "When Goran had sent out his hounds to hunt for us instead of foxes."

"Yes," Fenris said coolly, and the princess winced. "Custard, Your Highness?"

The princess shook her head. Merrill, on Fenris's other side, tried to stoke the conversation herself. "Didn't you say you were going to go to the library as well today, Princess Hawke?"

Their eyes caught and held a moment, and the princess rallied. "Yes, I did. It's truly a beautiful collection, my lord. There were volumes there I've only heard whispers of in dark, worshipful corners. It must have taken some time to amass so many books."

"Most of my great-aunt Maud's life. She and her husband Eochaid were great readers. Fenris has spent many days in those stacks, too, for all he professes himself uninterested in the written word."

"Oh? What do you prefer to read, Captain?"

"Anything at hand will do."

"Biographies? History?"

"Of course, Your Highness." Fenris emptied his wineglass, signaled a servant to bring the ewer. "And you?"

"Novels," the princess said evenly. Sebastian felt as though some unseen arrow sat nocked and ready, pointed at his heart. "How is your wine, Captain?"

"Satisfactory, Your Highness." Perfectly civil. Perfectly disinterested.

Sebastian had been mistaken. It became painfully clear with the changing of the courses, beef and pork platters replaced with sugar-glass towers, discussion of the library replaced with a discussion of the difference between sheep's wool and that of mountain goats. Fenris listened as little to Hawke's answers as his own questions; when she tried to turn the conversation he gave thoughtless half-answers and little more. It was banal courtesy without interest, filling painful moments with empty talk, and by the time a servant placed a bowl of frozen plums before the princess, red fury stained high on her cheeks.

The princess of Kirkwall could bear many things, Sebastian thought, wine like vinegar in his mouth. She could not bear indifference. Even hatred would have been better.

"Fenris," Sebastian said at last, when the horns called for dancing and the princess's hands had knotted white at the knuckles. But he did not know what caution to give, what attack had been made here over gold plates and white wine. Fenris's eyes glittered in warning. At last, grasping for sanctuary, Sebastian offered, "Perhaps you will have a dance, my lady."

"Yes," she said abruptly. "Dance with me, Captain."

Sebastian should have seen it coming. Fenris had; he was already standing, jaw set like iron, and he ignored Merrill's despairing "oh, dear," as he rounded the table and offered Hawke his arm.

For the last three weeks, the musicians had opened with Kirkwall fifing and Fereldan stamping songs in tribute to the princess who had left them both behind. Tonight Sebastian saw her speak to one of the violinists, and a few moments later the strains of a light Starkhaven waltz floated out over the assembling crowd. There was a murmur of approval—Kirkwall dances made them sweat—and then skirts swirled around slippered feet and gloved hands descended to their partners' shoulders, and the waltz began.

To watch them dance together—hurt. Sebastian could not explain the ache.

There was no semblance of joy in their movement—neither laughed, neither smiled—nor was there any elegance to them that was not echoed a hundredfold by Starkhaven duchesses stepping gracefully into their element, by his royal cousins in their doublets and jewels bowing back to them in turn. The floor gleamed with brocade and rich velvet and soft white miniver. They might have been any other pair, partnered by chance and happenstance, two in a company of hundreds.

They drew his eye all the same. Perhaps it was the white of Fenris's hair, shocking against Hawke's thick black; perhaps it was the smooth matched movements they made between and around the other dancers, as if they knew too well where the other might go and found it easy to follow. Sebastian thought instead it was the way they watched each other: grave, angry, opaque in turn. They danced like a tidal wave swept over a city; they danced like fire which burned through a forest and left only ash.

It was not the look of enemies; nor was it the look of friends. He could not read it.

Time escaped him. It might have been hours later, or seconds, before Merrill laid a hand on his arm to mark the end of the waltz. He had lost himself in violins, in fifes, as the woman he would marry danced wreck and ruin with the captain of his guard. Now the motion had stopped, and like a man too long at sea Sebastian found himself stumbling on the dock after. Hundreds of gloved hands applauded, and in the stir Hawke leaned forward and kissed Fenris's cheek. Her hands rested politely on his wrists; he froze as if poleaxed, and in the moment after she withdrew and disappeared into the crowd.

Fenris shook his head violently. With a black scowl, he stalked to one of the hall's great double doors and disappeared out into the night. Other dancers filled in his stormy wake without notice of the thunder, delight closing over wrath like water over the head of a torch.

No onlooker could have mistaken that kiss for affection. It was a kiss, Sebastian thought, designed to harm, but he was not sure who had been meant for injury. He did not know what war they waged under his nose; he knew only that Hawke had triumphed in the skirmish, though not without being bloodied herself. He could not make peace if he did not know the stakes.

All at once, the princess emerged from the courtiers milling about the head table. Sebastian barely rose in time to help her with her seat, and she sank into it gratefully. She was very pale.

"Are you all right, my lady?" he asked in an undertone.

"Yes, my lord," she said, but her hands clenched in her lap, and the red stone in his ring caught the light like fire.

For two weeks Fenris avoided Hawke. He had behaved shamefully at dinner, and he knew it; he had not known what else to do, Sebastian looking at him in hope and Hawke staring past his every defense. It would have been easier, he thought, if she hated him. Instead she had taken him down to the dance, had rested her hand on his shoulder, her palm pressed over his heart, and every ember and spark of torchlight in the hall had blazed in her blue eyes.

He had known his indifference would hurt her. He had not meant to be so cold; he had gone to dinner with every intention of fulfilling his promise to Sebastian, for the prince's sake if not his own. And then he had looked into Hawke's face and he had known in that moment that he was not strong enough to be gentle, not strong enough to give her kindness and watch it break her heart open like a robin's egg. Her hope had been too plain, his ounce of warmth as terrible and damning as a single drop of water in a desert.

He had chosen to protect them both, knowing she would see it, knowing it would hurt her. She had been cruel to him after, and he had expected that, too. She had known the dance would hurt him, had known the kiss on his cheek had been a knife to his heart. He had seen it coming and had allowed it because she could not mirror his indifference and because she had no other recourse for her pain. Because he had walked together with her into this agony; because he deserved it, and he could bear a blow without breaking.

He could see no other road. He would withdraw, because there was nothing else to be done, and she would wound him with her affection at every step, day by day, until the scars became real and the love had worn itself thin and ragged with time.

At least it was easier now to hide this evasion from Sebastian. Wedding preparations, almost four months stalled, had creaked and lumbered into motion again. Pâtissiers seized the kitchens from the bakers, who enlisted the aid of the scullery maids and reconquered the territory. Seamstresses and tailors descended in clouds of frothy tulle and endless white bunting, and chandlers erected gold candelabra in every corner of the castle which might have ever once dreamily considered casting a shadow.

At least the woods were unchanged. At least the moors still waited with heather and prickly hawthorn; at least the wind still whipped at him mercilessly as he leaned over Lethendralis's neck and pushed him ever higher into the hills.

The trees did not care about the wedding. Hollyhock and alder looked on impassively over palace walls draped with roses; oak and hazel watched without comment as the river grew choked with the ships of wedding guests. There were still two weeks yet to the ceremonies, but Starkhaven's generosity to her friends was renowned, and at least Nevarra and Cumberland would wish to negotiate new trading routes with the council before the last papers were signed.

Somewhere in those ships would soon be Hawke's family. Orana had told him of the letters that had made the princess weep from joy and grief, of the heavy red ribbon that had come in a later parcel, enclosed in gold cloth for her to bind herself to her bridegroom. He knew they had taken the fastest ship in their fleet and, despite disastrous weather, expected to arrive in Starkhaven in less than a week.

Fenris reined his horse at the top of the hill and looked down to the palace, down further to the road that lay before him.

Sebastian would marry Hawke. That could not be changed. Hawke would live here with him in Starkhaven, far from her craggy mountain, and bear him children who would grow tall and strong with their father's kindness, their mother's fire. The bonds between the countries would be reforged. Kirkwall would send Starkhaven steel for their swords and gold for their crowns; Starkhaven would send back bread and apples in return, and boar, and venison, and cockerels with their broods.

And Fenris would—what? Stand by in silence until he died?

He had spent ten years escaping Danarius. Now he found himself just as trapped, though these chains were gold rather than iron. He had thought a prince's friendship an easy thing to bear; instead it fell on him with the weight of a blade, and he had bound himself willingly to its falling.

He had been wrong. There was no peace in these hills any longer, not for him. He rode down to the city again, thinking of nothing but the beat of his horse's hooves on earth.

At least in the Guard there was purpose. He stabled Lethendralis and moved quickly through the palace. He ought to find Donnic. They had resolved the theft at the winery, but a baron's son had taken to defacing a country chapel. That was not strictly within his office, but it would take him down into the valley lowlands, away from the palace. Away from—

A door slammed open into the hall and nearly struck him. A woman emerged—a seamstress, if the thousand pins stuck haphazardly into her apron were any indication—and she hurried down the hall without seeing him. "Samite," she muttered to herself, her eyes a thousand miles away. "Samite, tiretaine, the cream georgette—white netting—no, ivory—"

She had left the door open behind her. Fenris edged around it gingerly, glanced in, and went very still.

Hawke was inside, alone. She stood before two towering brass mirrors, and she wore her wedding dress.

It was made of gold silk and slashed with white satin on the sleeves. A thousand seed pearls like grains of sand had been embroidered over the skirt and bodice in elegant blooming lilies, in rays like the sun's across her breast, in the Kirkwall wings over her back. A thin layer of lacework lilies, so delicate a cough might tear them, fell from her shoulders to pool at her feet. Her black hair had been bound atop her head, braided intricately around a slender golden diadem flecked with diamonds. Her neck was unadorned by jewel or chain, her lips pressed tight together, and—

She was watching him in the mirror.

The weight of her gaze was heavy, the blue of her eyes made strong by gold. It pressed on his chest like a weight, hollowing out his heart and thinning his breath to nothing. She would not speak, he saw, until he did; even now he could hear her maids chattering in the room beyond, some living movement extant yet outside their frozen tableau.

At last, with great difficulty, he found his tongue. "You…are beautiful, Hawke."

"I wish it were you."

He recoiled backwards, clutching the doorframe. His fingernails scraped into gilt wood. "Never say that again," he gasped, overcome by horror and longing, and in the mirror he saw her shut her eyes. "Do not—never—"

But the far door was swinging open, the birdsong of her ladies-in-waiting growing louder, and Hawke turned to them in a sigh of silk. The lace fell down her back like water. Fenris stumbled backwards into the hall, one hand over his mouth.

"Was someone at the door, my lady?"

"No," he heard her say, "no one at all," and then he turned on his heel and fled.