And thread the Dews, all night, like Pearls—
And make itself so fine
A Duchess were too common
For such a noticing—
—Emily Dickinson

—

Days passed. The satisfied ministers finished their work, were joined by irate Kirkwall ambassadors fresh off their ships, and began the arguments again. Sebastian was needed by them more often than not, as were Hawke and her mother; Fenris, as yet uncrowned, was regulated to the formalities of identifying a successor for his duties and summarily dismissed. In the privacy of his office he led a difficult conversation with Lieutenant Rylen—difficult primarily due to the man weeping with honor and gratitude, which Fenris found alarming—and a warmer one with Sergeant Donnic, who had become as close to a friend as Fenris could name outside Sebastian. Rylen would take over as Captain of the White Guard; Donnic would stand as first lieutenant. They were good men; Fenris trusted them.

It was more than he could say for Starkhaven's court. He had not expected kindness; he had not expected malice.

Hawke took the worst of it once the news broke into broad circulation. Sebastian was handsome, kind, beloved; surely Hawke had coerced him into betrothal, used him for Kirkwall's sake, then cruelly thrown him over for some foreigner guardsman trotting at his heel. Fenris himself, when he was thought of at all, was too stupid to understand, or in league with Hawke since before Kirkwall, or some Tevinter spy at last revealing his true nature. Sebastian did what he could to mitigate the damage, more frank than Fenris would have been about his unbruised heart, on the ease of his decision to break the engagement, but that only went so far when the court knew him to be the jilted lover.

Hawke did not bend beneath the onslaught; if anything she laughed more often and more freely, danced with more dukes and barons and left them smiling. If occasionally she drove her horse too quickly when they rode out together into the hills above the city, or if sometimes she rested her head on Fenris's shoulder when they looked down at the distant palace, she did not tell him why, and he did not ask. A banner, he thought, snapping in the wind, colors flying, and he did not know if the pole would break before the storm eased.

Lady Merrill, oddly enough, was the one who broke the tide and turned it. Hawke had taken to walking in the mornings with Lady Elegant and the duchess of Tayglen. They provided armor of two sorts: first, they were eminently respectable in Sebastian's stable of housed nobles, both of families older than An Taigh Gheal; and second, Fenris knew Hawke liked them. They did not, strictly speaking, approve of Fenris, but neither did they reproach him, and when one morning he went to meet Hawke at the great balcony overlooking the orchards, they nodded to him in welcome.

Lady Flora, however, approaching at the same moment from the opposite hall with two baronesses and a minor earl at her flank, let out an unladylike scoff. Fenris met Hawke's eyes across the balcony. She lifted a brow; he shook his head; she smiled like cold iron and turned away. He gritted his teeth. Flora caught her look and covered her own smile with her fingertips, insensate to the danger.

"Your Highness," she said, voice light, and her gaze slid insolently to Fenris. "Dear Captain Fenris. What a lovely morning, isn't it? I hope you both have slept well."

"It is a little cold for autumn," Hawke said. "But I suppose we are more used to that on the mountain."

"Oh, yes, well. The mountain will be warmer now. At least, at night." She laughed, and the sound was beautiful and cruel. "Oh, how shocking of me! But then, your mountain people are used to such rough living. I hope you don't intend to steal away all our handsome soldiers for your own private use, Your Highness. They might learn to bear the cold in time, but they are so accustomed to the civility of a real court."

"Alas, I must restrict myself to what has been given freely," Hawke said. Her knuckles were white, fisted in her black samite kirtle. "A good man's heart. Respite from insipid prattle."

Flora's laughter ceased. Born a Harriman, now a Vael, she was not a woman of great insight; but she was a king's widow, even if she had stolen her throne, and she sensed the insult. "And you leave us all brokenhearted, especially the prince. But perhaps that is not so strange. I did hear you had begun to prepare him for disappointment the moment your carriage was attacked on the road."

The cool autumn air began to crackle with heat, and Fenris closed his eyes. Negotiations had concluded; the battle would begin shortly, bloody, unwinnable. Hawke would triumph, he knew, but the cost—

"Oh, but that's not how it happened at all!" A new voice, familiar. Lady Merrill, previously unnoticed, perched birdlike on the balustrade amidst the purple wisteria, her slippered toes dangling above the stone, her green and brown skirts flecked with autumn leaves. Her green eyes were very wide. She slipped from the balustrade and came to meet them, and the sunlight caught on the silver chain at her waist. "I was there, you know, at the attack. Didn't I tell you?"

The fire receded. Hawke threw Merrill a grateful smile; Fenris slipped through the watchers to her side. Lady Flora was eyeing Merrill now, her mouth pursed in suspicion. "I do think—yes, I suppose I had heard…"

"It wasn't like that at all, the ambush. I was in that great unwieldy carriage—awful thing—and Princess Hawke was riding my little pony, because she was withering to dust from being kept inside. I can tell you, if you like, Lady Flora. I can see you'd like to know. We talked so much, those days," she added to Hawke. "Do you remember?"

"I remember."

"We talked about Prince Sebastian. Oh, and a hundred other things, but mostly him." She turned back to Flora. "She had written him letters, you know. She even wrote him one while we were in the carriage, but I suppose it's all burnt up now."

The little crowd had grown, almost a dozen listening. Even as Merrill linked her fingers together, a guard passed by the balcony, saw the throng, and joined, standing on her tiptoes to peer over shoulders.

"She showed me the letters," Merrill continued. "Or some of them, I suppose, at least. It was all about what she wanted to see when she arrived here, all the things she wanted to do with Prince Sebastian before the wedding. Do you remember everything you said? I remember a little of it. To see the great library, to go on a foxhunt—poor little fox—to go with the prince to the glade where he likes to pray and sit with him there in the evenings."

She turned to Hawke, whose face had gone pale. "I remember you said you wanted to make him take you to the poorest places of the city, and then to the most remote villages in the country, even if the ride would be very long. You told me that was where you had learned how Kirkwall needed most to serve her people, and that you thought you might be able to see it here, too. Do you remember?"

"Yes," Hawke said. Her voice was low. Between them, hidden by her kirtle, Fenris took her hand.

"And then," Merrill said to Flora, perfectly oblivious to her growing audience, "we came upon the fallen tree, and the lieutenant shot Petra dead off her horse, and killed Sir Hanley with a host of arrows and a sword, and tried to kill Captain Fenris. And they did kill my pony, which was awful, the poor thing." Her green eyes darkened with memory. "And then the air was full of smoke—because the carriage was burning, gone up in flames just like a bonfire, only with such terrible screaming—and the road was full of dead people and horses. Dame Murena shot me in my arm with an arrow and it hurt dreadfully. And I found you, Captain," she added, and looked directly at Fenris.

He could not be sure—for a moment, he thought he saw that same terrible vining strength from that long-ago path surge behind her eyes, that force which could heave boulders from the earth and split worked metal into pieces given enough time. He blinked and it was gone. "Yes," he said. "I had been unhorsed. I was looking for the princess."

"Only I hadn't found her yet, so I couldn't tell you where to look. And you went away, and then she found me instead, and I sent her to you."

Startled, Fenris looked at Hawke. Her eyes had closed; she squeezed his hand. "Yes," she said.

"Do you remember what you said?"

"I said there'd been nothing worth anything in that carriage but Sebastian's letters and the lark, and now they were both gone." She opened her eyes. "I said I would be bringing Sebastian nothing but death."

"Do you remember what I told you?"

"You said that I was being very stupid while a great many people were dying around us, and that if I was so worried about what Sebastian thought, I ought to just go ask him myself." A corner of her mouth lifted; her eyes shone with tears. "You told me to find Fenris. You said he would keep me safe."

Merrill cocked her head. Her voice was so clear, like the cut of a stream. "And I was right. Wasn't I?"

"You were, Lady Merrill."

She smiled, her cheek dimpling, and turned back to Flora, who stood very still with her hands knotted at her waist and her lips pressed white. "So you see, Lady Flora, it wasn't at all like you said. In the end it was just people being very unkind and hurting others. Not for any real reason, but just because they could."

Flora swallowed hard, tried to lift her chin and hold Merrill's level gaze, but she could not match the measured green. Her eyes dropped, her cheeks blooming scarlet; something gave way in the watching crowd all at once, some great tense trembling harpstring struck to resolve a chord at last. Flora touched her lips with the backs of her fingers, glanced up at Hawke, and dipped into a brief, low curtsey. "Your Highness," she murmured—Fenris thought she meant it—and then she stood, graceful and lovely, and went with her companions into the palace.

The crowd dispersed in ones and twos like falling leaves, whispers no louder than their rustling silks, until the only ones left on the balcony were Fenris, Hawke, and Merrill. Even the duchess of Tayglen had departed with Lady Elegant, and they looked at him with new appraisal in the leaving. He did not particularly care.

Merrill touched Hawke's arm. The winds tossed her black hair, drew her braids across her cheek. "I'm sorry if I hurt you. I didn't mean to."

"No," Hawke said, though her smile was crooked. "I'm grateful to you. I had lost my temper."

"I saw it. You could have burned her up quite easily, but that seemed like it would only have really hurt you in the end."

"You're right, of course." She looked over. "Myself and Fenris."

He scoffed. "Do what you wish with Flora. I don't care."

Hawke laughed, squeezed his hand again; then she let him go and walked to the balustrade and leaned forward into open air. The autumn sky was blue, cloudless; the trees below had just begun to edge orange and gold. "I think I've been in Starkhaven too long," she said, and the wind tugged in turn at her own hair, at her kirtle. She turned, blue eyes bright. "Fenris—"

"Hawke."

"Come with me to Kirkwall. Please."

Merrill smiled, sudden, proud. Fenris left her behind, crossed the balcony with quick steps, lifted his hand to Hawke's cheek. "Nothing will keep me from you," he said fiercely, and kissed her. She gripped his arms and held him to her, and when it was over he rested his forehead against hers. "I am yours, Hawke," he said softly, and he could not stop the chuckle. "If nothing else, I enjoy following you."

She took in a shallow, shuddering breath. "To Kirkwall, then."

"To Kirkwall."

—

The day of the wedding-that-was came upon them. Foreign dignitaries, including the heads of state of Ferelden, Nevarra, and Cumberland, descended upon the palace. The lack of a wedding did not dampen expectations of a wedding feast, and they had journeyed too far to be denied a goosedown bed and iced, sugared cherries. More surprising, Varric Tethras had arrived at the same time as the delegation from Nevarra, a merchant prince apparently in more than name; he clasped Fenris's hand briefly, bowed to Hawke, and winked with a satisfied, unnerving perception.

The ministers of Starkhaven had, with reasonable success, reframed the wedding-feast as a broad concordat. Here was an opportunity to reaffirm bonds, friendships; to look at lines of trade and communication and strengthen them in the face of unspoken threat. Sebastian and the king and queen of Kirkwall had spent the day in recess with every royal in attendance; Fenris happened to pass by when the door opened that afternoon for a departing servant, and he was pleased to hear the ripple of laughter within.

For the most part, Fenris did what he could to fulfill his duty to the White Guard while still avoiding extraneous conversation with every curious visiting noble, soldier, and servant. Not, when he considered it, so different from his previous habits. He had long ago perfected a particular speed of stride that suggested haste without inspiring comment—or worse, accompaniment—and he kept to it diligently when forced to brave the overstuffed, glittering seas that the halls of An Taigh Gheal had become.

He did one afternoon collide quite badly with the king of Ferelden, who had hastily turned a corner in the west wing while calling back to his wife the queen. That had been embarrassing enough, for all the king had claimed full fault and set Fenris upright again with rustic, gawky charm. Worse had been the arrival of Hawke just after, who of course had known the king for years, and who after introductions spent several minutes relating various narratives of their travels which made Fenris look very good indeed. To know that if all went according to hope he might help shape countries with Alistair Theirin kept him from outright incivility; but Fenris knew even at the best of times he could not be called warm, and he hoped Alistair could be satisfied with courtesy.

Perhaps there was something to be said for that—that Hawke could be warm enough for the both of them—that to make a marriage meant one could be weak where the other was strong. That to be a helpmeet did not require perfection of self, only the good work of tended growth.

But Fenris was not willing to indulge in such introspection when kings and marquesses lurked around every corner, and he spent the rest of the afternoon comfortably glaring at Varric instead, who was engaged in deep conversation with a lady knight from Nevarra who wore a thin black braid like a crown and blushed when she glanced at Fenris across the hall.

Fortunately, the malevolence of Sebastian's court had faded quickly. He had not really expected otherwise without Flora's stoking hand—the nobility of Starkhaven were, if nothing else, easily distracted—but he was glad to meet Hawke when he could within the palace walls without whispers at her back, without tension in the lines of her mouth. All the same, the sun kept its path in time with little regard for the shining crowns beneath it, and eventually, the sky faded purple, blue, lovely with dusk. The lamps and torches lit in pools of gold; the golden palace doors were thrown open in unconstrained welcome to the feast.

The great hall filled with royalty and all its court: light, dark, pale, brown with island sun. The silks ran rich in both dye and embroidery; doublets were pinned with medals and ornate sashes; gems and jewels of every color, set in every precious metal, adorned ears, throats, and noses. Only the rare table did not see at least one brow bear a crown. Even Hawke wore a silver tiara set with opals to match her dress of grey and silver.

Fenris, seated across from Hawke at the high table, warred silently between a bone-deep gladness and the strain of endurance worn thin. On his left was Carver, prince of Kirkwall; at his right sat Kirkwall's queen. Sebastian, one last time beside Hawke, was in his element; his tourmaline blue eyes were bright and merry, his attention spread freely among his neighbors and friends throughout the courses, his hands expressive and welcoming. He looked, Fenris thought, as though all had gone right at last, which was enough to spark in him a quiet concern. He had spent too many nights with Sebastian in lonely caves and on bleak, wind-scoured hillsides to believe the prince had no grief here at all. And yet, he—the cause of sorrow—surely had no right to ask.

The dinner began to conclude, tiny spoons laid to rest in fluted gold cups, glass bowls still dazzled with frost pushed away. Sebastian stood. He spread his hands; the glittering sea grew calm.

"Your Majesties," he began, and smiled. "Your Royal Highnesses, Your Highnesses, my lords, my ladies. My friends. I thank you above all else for coming, for joining me at my table. Starkhaven is honored by your company tonight, even if the original purpose has been altered." Laughter, smiles. Fenris clenched his jaw, but Hawke touched his fingers across the table, and the mortification eased. "Soon the harps will strike for us—" the musicians began gathering obediently at the far end of the hall— "but first I must beg your patience a little longer."

Abruptly, Hawke seized his hand. "Be brave," she whispered. "Watch him only—forget the rest."

"Captain," Sebastian said, turning suddenly back to look at him, and Fenris froze in horror. Sebastian saw it; his face softened, and when Fenris rose woodenly the prince squeezed his shoulder. His fingers were hard, warm: comfort and restraint. "To all of you here today: I have known this man ten years. I deeply wish I could tell you of the thousand ways he has saved my life and provided wise counsel in moments of profound darkness. However, every minute I prolong this hastens my death." A roll of low laughter from the audience, a warm smile from the prince, invitation into his intimacy. "It is a custom in Starkhaven that those who have performed great service to the crown are rewarded at the end of their duties. It is my great pleasure and honor, therefore, to bestow upon this man, my brother, command of the duchy of Lann Tròcaireach, and to confer upon him the title Duke of Lann with all its attendant authority, honors, and obligations. I commend it to your charge; may you keep it wisely."

Sebastian met Fenris's eyes. The fear receded, as did the gloved applause, the calling shouts, even Hawke across the feast-table.

He could see it clearly now. Sebastian had not buried his sorrow. He had only put it aside for a little time, like the weight of a cloak folded over his arm, neither brandished nor hidden if one thought only to look.

Was this duty or friendship? Fenris had stood in his place only a scant few days ago, and that had been agony enough. Sebastian had been grieved at the mere thought of Fenris's departure to the north. Now Fenris and Hawke both would leave him to bear the white beauty of An Taigh Gheal alone. And yet—the prince still stood with him in glad friendship, still wished him well in his leaving and meant it. The depth of his love frightened him.

His blue eyes were gentle, his chestnut hair swept back from his face, as always; the lines at the corner of his mouth grew deep as he smiled. He blinked, and tears stood at the corners of the prince's eyes. "It is a small pittance for the great debt I owe him. As he goes with stalwart courage to the southern mountains, I pray he will think fondly on those of us he leaves behind."

More applause: only some distant rain. Watch him only. He seized Sebastian's forearm, was drawn into a brief, hard embrace. "Your regard honors me, prince," he managed, and found the rest choked by the lump in his throat. The title did not matter. The deeds, the lands—he did not care, and the crown would quietly manage the duties regardless. But this—Sebastian, here in the familiar great hall with so few evenings left between them—that mattered. That was worth the grief.

"I hope it may bring you home often," he said softly, to Fenris alone. "I will miss you, my friend."

"My friend," Fenris said fiercely. "As often as I can."

Sebastian gripped the back of Fenris's neck and pressed their foreheads together just for an instant. Then he tore away, thrusting one hand into the air. "There! Strike up the music, harpers! Clear the floor! We will have one last night of dancing here like the palace has never seen."

The music rose; the bustle and noise of the hall grew loud. Fenris retreated with alacrity to the head table, avoiding as best he could all congratulations and handshakes, and took the empty chair beside Hawke where Lady Merrill had gone to dance with Carver. Hawke linked her fingers with his beneath the table immediately, quelling the tremble. "Well done," she said softly. "You're through the worst of it. I'm very proud."

"You're not surprised."

"Not really. He asked me if I thought you'd be angry."

"What did you say?"

"That if he really loved you, he'd do it in private with no one watching, and if he really loved me, he'd do it at dinner in front of everyone."

His mouth twisted. "Cruel."

Her smile faded. "Yes," she said soberly. "To say nothing was impossible. To make a joke of it would be weak. He would have given you the duchy regardless, but every act in the crown's name has power. It could not be only a private gift from one man to another; it had to be princely generosity, largesse. Public affection, for one who had served him well. Even if he meant every word." She touched his cheek. "I'm sorry, Fenris."

Not so different from Tevinter after all. No matter; Fenris learned quickly, and the sooner he understood that unwritten governance the sooner he could shape it. He found his voice, slow but strong. "It seems I've survived regardless. All is well, Hawke. Truly."

She smiled; the musicians struck a flourish and all the rest of the hall turned away, cheering, and in that moment of privacy she kissed him. "Dance with me, Duke of Lann," she breathed against his mouth.

He shook his head in amazement. Her eyes were shining. "I will, Hawke," he said at last, and she drew him laughing into the sea.