But we are older,
I to love
and you to be loved.
We will it so
and so it is
past all accident.
—The Ivy Crown, William Carlos Williams

—

"Gods' breath and a thousand damns," Hawke murmured in his ear as they left the tavern. "Is your sergeant always such a rapacious cardsharp?"

"That Varric Tethras cheated," Fenris said. He held the bridle of Hawke's horse as she mounted, then climbed astride Lethendralis. "You should not have invited him. Or at least had him stake higher in the pot."

Hawke laughed, reached across the space between them to touch his knee. "You enjoyed yourself."

He had. Donnic had invited them both to an evening of company and cards, a surreptitious suggestion delivered with all expectation of refusal, but Hawke had liked the idea, and Fenris liked Donnic. One thing, including a small bribe to An Taigh Gheal's stablemaster, had led to another, and somehow the merchant prince of Ostwick had come by at the precise moment they exited the palace grounds, all winning smiles and easy confidence. Now they stood under a coin-round moon in the yard of a very small tavern on the city's outskirts, laughter still spilling from the windows behind them, their purses empty. His chest was warm with satisfaction and pomace wine.

It was their last night in Starkhaven. Tomorrow the ships would depart for Kirkwall. They had been loaded already, every possession of worth for both Hawke and Fenris boxed and stacked carefully in their great wooden bellies. There was nothing left tomorrow but to board—and tonight, to steal through the moonlit city one last time.

They wheeled the horses east. Few recognized them. The crown princess of Kirkwall and the captain of the White Guard were not expected to be in the city, and so they were not seen in the city; only the most observant guards noted the silver bells on the black gelding, the heavy gilt on the lady's cloaked hood, but they only raised fists in salute and did not stop them.

Warmly lit inns and shuttered storefronts yielded to stone cottages, yielded to shrub-choked hills. The beautiful stone archways of the outer gates passed over them and behind them, diminishing to shadow. Fenris led Hawke up the hill path and into the edge of the trees. A narrow trail had been worn into the underbrush, just wide enough for two abreast, and they followed it into a coppice of hawthorn and high, slender alders.

The trees opened to a natural glade. At the far end had been set a small, squat altar, little more than a flat rock raised on four square stones; nearby a river ran down from the higher hills, out of sight but just loud enough to soften any sound of the distant city. The moonlight fell clear and silver into the hollow, spread with cool loveliness over the stone altar. They dismounted and left the horses at the tree's edge.

"Beautiful," Hawke said softly. She went to the altar, knelt, and closed her eyes. A few moments later she rose and bowed, then turned. "I wondered why you wished to come here. I had always thought of it as Sebastian's glade, not yours. But the peace is soporific."

"We came here together the first time. Nearly ten years ago, now. He knew it from childhood; we found it again during the battles to reclaim his throne." He came to stand beside her. "His faith has always been stronger than mine. But in moments of weakness, or fear…I found it comforting."

She took his hand. "It will not be the same, but there are holy places on the mountain, too. I will show you."

"I would see them gladly." He cupped her cheek and kissed her.

When she let him breathe again, she rested her head on his shoulder. Moonlight strung itself between the white pins in her hair. "Tell me, what is Lann Tròcaireach like?"

"It lies at the southern border, almost all wild untended lands. Two dozen fallow fields and three days' rough ride through birch and thistle." He laughed. "At last census fewer than a hundred lived there. The last duke died childless fifteen years ago, and the crown has kept it since. Truly a bastion of nobility."

"Not such a bad thing, perhaps. If it were more important you might have felt bound to leave me."

The corner of his mouth lifted. "Do you think me so inconstant?"

"Not particularly, but I won't pretend the reassurance isn't nice to hear once in a while."

"Then let me make it clearer for you," he said, voice growing low and dark, and when he released her from his arms again they were pressed against the trunk of an alder, and the light of Hawke's eyes had grown hectic.

She kissed the side of his jaw, then his chin. "What's that you're always muttering under your breath? Festis bei—something. You will be the death of me? You said it just after we met in Kirkwall. After dancing one night, when we were going upstairs. I don't think you knew I heard." She turned within his encircling hold to lean back against his chest, and she drew out her little journal from her belt, worn now at all the corners. She searched back through some of the earliest pages and found a particular passage. The glade was dim, but enough starlight fell yet he could make out the characters over her shoulder. "Yes, here. I told you about the time I nearly fell off the side of the mountain going after climbing roses for Bethany, and you looked at me like I was the stupidest person in the world."

"An unfortunate impression. I have since learned otherwise."

"You needn't sound so put-upon about it, my darling. Oh, but look at this. How prescient. 'If I weren't an engaged woman, and if he didn't despise every inch of me, this captain they sent from Starkhaven would put my heart in real danger. Such a handsome man for all his eyebrows are always beetling down in irritation.'"

"Beetling?"

"Handsome. Why couldn't you focus on that part?" They sat together under one of the spreading alders. Fenris crossed his ankles out in front of him; Hawke curled into his side, her head on his chest, her cloak over his knees, the little book open where they could both see her narrow, elegant script. "Look, here's another one. This was the night before we left. 'Fenris is a kinder man than I realized. Good looks and a good heart, only he refuses to show it. Incidentally, the moonlight does remarkable things to his skin. How flagrantly unfair.' And here I sit admiring its beauty once more, only now I can do with it what I like."

She drew her fingers down the line of his jaw. Fenris laughed. "How restrained, as always."

"Fenris, I am the very embodiment of the idea." Her forefinger slipped, just for a moment, beneath his toggled collar; he caught her wrist unwillingly and she kissed his knuckles instead. "Anyway, let's see what else I wrote about you."

They paged through the journal under the moonlight. Here, under the clear starry sky, the affection that grew across the weeks was apparent. Fenris transformed from a stolid, slightly ridiculous caricature of an unhappy soldier to an equally fantastic figurehead, a man worth great respect and admiration. Again and again she commented on his eyes, the strength in his hands, his commitment to his duty; again and again he blushed at the encomia.

The week of travel after the departure from Kirkwall but before the carriage burned was thick with homesickness and despair. Hawke moved through those days quickly, past the long break where they had been in the woods and she had had no pen, and found the journey across the sea. It marked a boundary in the Fenris of her writing as well; at some point, between one page and the next, the man she wrote of had become someone real. Someone he recognized.

The pages of Sebastian's courtship blended joy and sorrow in every line. Her determination to love the prince of Starkhaven, her recognition of his kindnesses, could not triumph over the pain of keeping Fenris's heart. Indeed, each meeting with Fenris had been faithfully recreated and diligently torn apart for every shade of meaning in his brow, his voice, his turns of phrase. She had even copied down his most upbraiding invective and took great pleasure in repeating it back to him now, and it was easier than he expected to laugh at words that had then been open wounds.

The world seemed to diminish to only this little place. The silver moonlight stripped the color from the trees; the hidden stream ran burbling and merry on its way. An owl lifted from a nearby branch, the leaves trembling just for an instant, and starlight fled down white, soundless feathers before it winged into shadow.

He felt her voice more than heard it, soft murmurs against his chest, his own answers just as quiet. I nearly kissed you here. On this day I thought I might try to hold your hand; I was afraid then. This was the day the storm came, and I saw you in the starlight that comes after the sky clears. This was the day I saw you beside Sebastian and knew I could not stay. This was when I knew I loved you. Do you remember? Do you remember?

She came to a page near the end, an entry with only one line: He loves me. She ran her fingers over the black ink, turned to press her forehead against his neck. Fenris drew her up, tilted her head until he could touch his mouth to hers. The kiss was gentle, sober; when it was over he met her eyes. She looked serious and strong and glad; she was not afraid. It gladdened his heart in turn.

"Hawke," he said quietly. "Meeting you was the most important thing that ever happened to me."

"Fortunate indeed that I love you, then," she said in answer, as soft and as true, and kissed him, and then she tucked her head beneath his chin once more. "Tell me about Sebastian."

He smiled; he shut his eyes. "I told you I met him on the ship in my escape. I had nothing, and he took me to their little camp that night where his few supporters slept. One had found a greatsword she could not use, and Sebastian gave it to me…"

The moon glided on. The stars turned; the altar in the glade slipped silently with the cool night breeze from light, to tree-shadow, to silver light once more.

—

For two weeks they sailed the Waking Sea. The weather favored them with clear skies and smooth waters; on the tenth day another ship drew up beside their fleet of two at a close but respectable distance, a swift-lined clipper with white sails and the hull painted a royal blue. She took down the blue stripes and stars of Rivain and ran up a white flag instead, one with something very crude hand-painted upon it, then set her sails east and faded away. Hawke laughed, delighted, and waved as if the pirate captain could see her across the sea. The king looked very much like he would have liked to laugh himself; the queen, just emerging from the hold, appeared significantly less impressed.

A number of unexpected guests had joined them on the journey to Kirkwall. Orana had been one, apparently not at Sebastian's suggestion but at her own; Donnic had been another. The sergeant had met Fenris at the doors of An Taigh Gheal that last morning, his hand scraping with embarrassment over the back of his neck, and had asked if Fenris would mind the company of a friend. Kirkwaller guards had accompanied Hawke on her initial journey to Starkhaven, after all; it was not right that Fenris go alone into a strange land with no one but glittering royals for his society. Besides, plains-born Donnic had always wished to see the mountain.

The realization that Fenris did very much wish Donnic to come astonished him more than the sergeant. He'd thanked him, sent him to pack; Donnic had returned in ten minutes with a bag he'd clearly prepared days before, grinning and unashamed. Sebastian, who had himself come through Fenris's window the night prior with one last bottle of wine, had only sighed and smiled and waved him along.

Of greater surprise was the lady Merrill, who appeared in the crow's nest two days into their journey, and who seemed quite amazed that anyone might have doubted her coming. Oddly enough, she could not always be found after, even in such a limited space, and more than once Fenris wondered if she simply turned into a fish and followed the ship's rudder like streaming seaweed.

On some evenings he stood with Hawke at the ship's prow, watching the moon waver in the black water before them; others he spent ensconced with the royal family in the finely decorated captain's cabin. Even on a ship grand enough to transport kings, the quarters were tight, and the height and broad shoulders of Malcolm and Carver especially drew them tighter. Elbows knocked compasses and pens to the floor, made the little astrolabe tremble; goblets of wine and beer were set perilously close to the now-useless articles of lineage and succession covering the polished oak table, then rescued by a neighbor.

Here, in a too-small stateroom on the grandest ship Fenris had ever seen, he had expected to at last feel the strain. He was not a fool. One thing for Kirkwall's royal family to be kind to him in Starkhaven, where foreign servants had listening ears and eager, wealthy patrons; another altogether in open water with even their cabin boys loyal to their bones. He had known far too many senators in Tevinter to display magnanimity in public to their erring slaves, only for those slaves to emerge again a day later, black-eyed and cringing.

How many hours of work had been wasted? Months? Years? How many of Kirkwall's ministers wished to throttle him and throw him off the mountain the moment they arrived? He could not regret it even so, not with Hawke's fingers linked through his beneath the table as she argued with Carver, not when Hawke found him in the last moments before sunset and kissed him, her blue eyes blazing. Neither was he naïve enough to think the censure would not come eventually.

Except—it never came.

Even without Hawke they were not cruel. Sometimes in the mornings Carver joined him in his training on the forecastle, bleary-eyed and grumbling, when his mother forced him to rouse. They said very few words to each other—few were needed—but the steps through sword forms were smooth and fluid, made better in partnership, and very quickly Fenris grew disappointed when he did not arrive. The prince was an excellent swordsman, even half-asleep; there was opportunity there for real mastery, and Fenris found himself thinking idly of certain practices he could teach that might help the prince improve.

He came upon the princess Bethany sometimes, in odd places on the ship: the stern deck at dawn, tucked beneath the horn timbers in the early afternoon hours, once on the heel of the bowsprit. She liked to draw, and her little book was filled with pages upon pages of sketches of the sailors at work, the clouds when they were lovely, the start of Sebastian's familiar nose—though she turned away from that one quickly—and often Fenris himself. Sometimes he stood with Hawke at a rail, their heads turned towards each other; sometimes he was alone, his face in profile at a meal, his hand in isolate grip around a sword's hilt. On one page she had depicted the last moment Fenris had seen Sebastian, when the shining river had begun to broaden gently between their ship and the pier where the prince stood, and she had captured there the understanding which had passed between them even at a distance. He did not know much about linework and drawing; he knew enough to tell her pencil held no hate.

Even Hawke's royal parents did not limit themselves to only civility. They were warm, kind in their attentions; they sought out his thoughts even in passing conversation and gave them the same due weight as any other. They did not wince at the places where he was ignorant of rule; they came alongside him instead with proffered wisdom and experience. They did not teach in the same way—Hawke's mother stern and exacting, her father cheerful and boisterous—but they taught as if they knew he was capable, as if they did not doubt either his commitment or his competence, and that alone gave comfort.

Malcolm's guidance especially became invaluable. He, more than any other, even Hawke, saw best the uncertainty in Fenris's heart, and he came to him often after some chance comment had been made at dinner of this law's changing, of that minister's duties. He ensured Fenris's understanding of each situation; he clarified the muddier places with all goodwill when it was needed, as if it were expected he should do so, and it were easy in the doing. Through the bruise to his pride, Fenris was grateful.

Still, not all his education came so easily. The king found him one night after a particularly bureaucratic supper at the aft rail. The stars were out, the moon a sliver; Fenris had excused himself from Donnic's card game with Hawke and her siblings and had escaped to the clear night air. To brood, he thought she would have said, and could not particularly fight the description. He did not speak as the king leaned his elbows on the rail beside Fenris and looked out with him into the dark.

He had embarrassed himself twice during dinner. The first time had been simple enough, some question that displayed his ignorance of Kirkwall law and required immediate clarification from the queen. He had known those moments would come; he had prepared himself long ago for the sting of that humiliation. He had learned the vagaries of Starkhaven rule eventually; he could do so again for Kirkwall, and his ignorance would be mended with time regardless.

The second had been more painful. The conversation had turned with the courses, Hawke relaying instead some story of their forest travels when they had thought Tevinter close at hand and Fenris had stayed awake all night to ensure their safety, then led a full day's walk after without complaint. Fenris had scoffed at the retelling, though he had been privately pleased at her admiration. One night without sleep—nothing at all, he'd told them, given his history. At one particular time Danarius had forbidden him sleep for three days for no reason but caprice, then set him to battle against a rival senator's favored warrior. The victory had still been effortless, himself wholly uninjured as the man lay bleeding at his feet, though at first the fatigue had made it difficult to tell which figure to strike.

He had been proud of his skill, of the mastery over his body's weakness. Then he had seen the horror on their faces, and the pride had slid like mountain mud into sudden shame.

The conversation had eventually resumed, more limping than before, and he had not been able to bear speaking again. He had fled for solitude the moment he could do so without offense. Hawke had not wanted him to go—he'd seen it in her eyes—but she had not asked him to stay.

The night sky was cloudless, the stars sweeping by in steady course. Waves washed against the ship, traced down the wooden beams and braces and receded into their wake. He stood in silence with the king so long he thought the world might have become stone around him without his notice; then, at last, the king spoke. "I've seen that look before," he said, and his voice was kind. "In the mirror, more often than not."

"Your Majesty," Fenris said, and then nothing.

"I know it's overwhelming. You don't have to pretend otherwise, even for their sake." He jerked his head back towards the captain's cabin, where candlelight gleamed through small iron-framed windows. Inside, Donnic cried something in triumph; three muffled voices groaned. "In fact, I suspect my daughter would be quite displeased if you did."

A muscle jumped in his jaw. "She doesn't understand. The traps that can be seen are easy enough to avoid. But the others…" His skills had been founded in horror and honed by cruelty; he had spent his life prying their worth away from those thorny roots. For so long his excellence with a sword had been the only safeguard against his master's whip, or starvation, or death. He had known himself superb because to be anything less would have been fatal. How could he explain his value when they had no frame of reference at all for his slavery, when they could not understand what it meant for him to have excelled within it? How could he be useful to their kingdom when the world that had shaped him was so alien to them?

He looked down at his palms, flexed his fingers until a dim white glow trailed along the markings there. Malcolm watched with interest. At last, Fenris said, "Many of my…talents were learned at great cost. In these last years with Sebastian they were used more lightly, but they were still so often bound to violence. I struggle to see what use they'll be to your country." The words were difficult. "It seems more likely I will make some error to send the castle crashing into the sea."

The king made a noncommittal noise. "Remind me to tell you of the time I once nearly started a diplomatic incident over how to baste a goose. Eleven people had to go to the healing houses, and my wife tried to throw me off the mountain."

His mouth turned up unwillingly. The king shared that with his daughter, some knack of drawing Fenris out of temper even when he was determined to be angry. "And yet here you are."

"She couldn't lift me. Besides, I do what I can to learn from my mistakes." The king looked at him. "They cannot be avoided, Fenris. Even if you had been raised with a crown from the cradle you would still occasionally stumble. It is a set of skills like any other, honed with practice and repetition."

He was encouraged and disheartened at once. "I spent a handful of years as the friend of a prince. Hawke grew up in your castle. The disparity is—" overwhelming, impossible, beyond measure, "—difficult to overstate."

"She was not so young when we came to Kirkwall. For the first part of her life she knew very little beyond a ramshackle farmhouse in a Fereldan countryside. She spent most of our first year in the castle asking to go down and live with her uncle in the lowlands. But she learned the law and the throne, as we all did, and found practical use for the weight of a crown." The king laughed. "I will say that you will come to it now from a nearer place than me. Gods above, what a wreck I nearly made of it."

His laughter was warm in the night, comforting. Fenris gripped the wooden rail. "I know you met the queen at a feast at the Fereldan court. Little else. You knew someone there?"

"Oh, no, not at all. I was in abject flight, actually." He held out his hand over the water. An orange spark ignited at the tip of his forefinger, danced down to the heavy gold rings he wore, and flitted back up across his knuckles. "Winters in Ferelden are very cold. I had come across a farmer and his cow trapped in an abandoned barn behind snowdrifts as high as the eaves. I meant to help them; I frightened them instead." The spark leapt from his thumbnail down, down, down to the churning surface of the sea. "They called the town watch, who called the guard of the nearby city. A terrible misunderstanding, but not one I thought could be easily explained. I ran west, tried to hide myself in Denerim. One thing led to another, and I happened to be in the courtyard when the servants began taking the platters and plates into the feasting hall."

His tone drew out another reluctant smile. "By chance, no doubt."

"Astonishing, I know." The king looked up to the stars. "I went in for pheasant and mead. I did not mean to steal a woman from her kingdom and hide her in the hinterlands with three squalling children and the most stubborn mule on the continent. Nor did I mean to saddle her iron throne with the least suitable set of skills imaginable." He laughed softly. "I will tell you now, if the chief geologists ever come to you with plans for adjusting some road into the mountain, it's best to ask no questions and sign wherever they say."

"A queen come down from a mountain to be a farmer." His mouth had gone dry. "Because she believed you worth the cost."

A quick, unoffended smile flashed across the king's face. "Yes. And because I believed the same of her, I went with her when her mountain called her home again."

"And you love her still."

"Yes. And she still loves me, though there are some days I ask the gods why." He shook his head. "But affection by itself is not enough. It is a cruel thing to pin all your happiness on one person alone, Fenris. Even if she loves you just as much, the weight will become unbearable. There must be something else, something more."

He thought abruptly of Danarius, and then of Sebastian. "Yes. There must be purpose also. Work worth being done." Not because he was nothing without the work, but because the work was good and needed doing, and he was willing to learn how to put his hand to it.

The king smiled. "Exactly. This is not the last time we'll tread clumsily upon each other. I'm sorry for that. But if you can find the patience to move through it regardless, to try again even when it is difficult, then we will eventually find some part of Kirkwall you can bear to love, some place you'll decide is worth the tending. It's up to you whether that place comes with sheep shears or a sword."

Fenris's chest ached. He was understood. The king understood him, his fear, not with the polite concern of his wife but with the real empathy of one who had stood exactly in his place. "I have no wish to…I cannot bear to make her less than what she is."

"She would not let you. As Leandra did not let me." He laid a great hand on Fenris's shoulder. "You will have to grow instead. It will be painful, sometimes. Almost always, it will be hard. But it will always be worth it." His hand tightened. "I swear that to you, Fenris. It will be worth the pain."

His throat was tight when he swallowed. "Thank you, Your Majesty."

"Call me Malcolm, if you can stand it."

He paused. "Malcolm." Briefly he remembered Minrathous summers, white linen shifts, a silver carafe in his cupped hands, the belly cold and beading with water against the heat. The chain around his neck had been bronze, then; he had known not to lift his eyes higher than his master's feet. Stronger, he said, "Malcolm. My gratitude."

The king waved it away. "None of that. Not between family."

Fenris looked back to the sea, to the white-capped wake they left behind them. He cast his gaze further still; even in the thin starlight he could find the place where the churn diminished into spindrift, and then only ripples, and then into dark, smooth waves once more. That was the crux of it, he thought. To stay with Hawke meant to join not only her kingdom but her family. He would have to learn not only how to rule, but how to accept that their kindness was not offered through the gritted teeth of heavy weight, was not only tolerance for the sake of peace.

It was simply welcome. He had known so little of it he had not recognized it when it came.

"I will give you my best," he said at last. The night winds stole his words, curled them back into his face. "Malcolm."

"Good," said the king, and let him go. "Besides, you have us with you. You'll never have to go alone."