Three
Asariel, 9:37 Dragon
"Cassius, my son, I have something very important to ask of you."
Magister Flavius dabbed the corner of his mouth with his napkin, then used the cloth to cover his lips as he coughed that hollow, barking cough into it three times before wiping his lips again and folding the napkin into his lap.
Cassius had known something big was happening tonight. He had been told to dress for dinner, as had the Magister's entire family. Tonight, they dined in the manor's banquet hall, with extra tables and chairs pulled in. More distant relatives of Magister Arrentius had come into Asariel. Several of the Magister's lesser vassals and their wives and their children had also been invited.
It wasn't any known feast day or holiday, so the lavish dinner beckoned that something momentous was occurring tonight. No one, aside from the Magister himself, seemed to know what it was about. The cooks and servants and household slaves didn't know anything. Valerie hadn't heard anything. Not even Kordelia, who managed to drum up all of the household gossip, had anything.
And then, as they entered for dinner, Flavius had asked him to take the seat at his right side at the head table.
The entire hall quieted as the Magister stood up from his seat, extending his right hand down until it rested on Cassius' shoulder.
"Anything, my lord," Cassius said as he glanced down the table toward Valerie for any clue about what was about to happen. When she caught his eye, she quickly turned her gaze back to her plate. "I am ever at your service."
The Magister nodded, pleased. "Cassius, ever since you were appointed as my page at the Magisterium, I knew there was something special about you. I brought you to my home, sponsored you in the Circle at Minrathous, raised you here in my household among my own children. When I look at you, I think perhaps the Maker sent you here to be the son that I never had."
"You honor me, my lord," he answered, bowing his head respectfully before his patron. It was high praise to lavish on a Laetan, especially a first-generation from a peasant background.
"No, it is you who brings honor to me," Flavius said, tapping Cassius' shoulder.
Flavius turned, looking down to his wife seated at his left side. Junia smiled, glanced at Cassius, then nodded to her husband.
"I have no sons, but I have had the privilege of being blessed with five beautiful, intelligent, energetic daughters. As I've watched them grow up and blossom into young women, I've always known that there would be a day for them to be married and that I would need to find honorable and trustworthy men for them," Flavius said.
The Magister squeezed Cassius' shoulder as he gazed down, his eyes full of hope and love. "Cassius, I would be honored if you would take my daughter's hand in marriage."
An excited gasp quickly cut the banquet hall as Cassius could feel all eyes cast upon him. As soon as Magister Arrentius had begun to speak, he thought his words might lead him here.
But could he have ever hoped? Ever dreamed?
He was merely a Laetan, regardless of how much of a bond Flavius felt for him. To refuse such a generous marriage would be an enormous slight to his lord. There was no way he could say no to such an offer.
It was a moot point, because Cassius never wanted to decline.
It had been a dream, the wildest, most impossible dream he had ever dreamed. He had grown up working the land, a child of poverty, only to find himself blessed with the gift of magic. It had been fortune alone that had brought him to such a comfortable life in Magister Arrentius' home, but to ever conceive of the chance to marry his daughter?
He glanced down the table at Valerie, his heart nearly ready to burst at a forbidden dream realized.
"My lord," he said, not taking his eyes off Valerie, his face beaming from edge to edge. "I could ask for no greater gift in the world than to take the hand of your daughter in marriage."
The banquet hall erupted in a great cheer as Flavius pulled him out of his seat into a strong embrace. As they broke, Flavius wheeled his left arm around as his wife's hip and all of his girls stood up in their places at the table.
"Thank you, Cassius," Flavius said above the continuing applause of the family, friends, vassals and servants gathered.
"I can think of no finer man for my Andria."
Asariel, 9:41 Dragon
Cassius inched the door slowly with the knob turned until it shut and he quietly let the latch engage with a near-silent click.
It was past midnight and the Arrentius estate was quiet. Aside from the candles left alight to illuminate the large central staircase and the dim light of the sliver moon coming in through the large wall of windows behind it, all was dark.
He had not intended to arrive so late, but his schedule had been dictated by that of the Inquisition and not his own. True to the pledge of Dorian Pavus, however, the soldiers had taken him to the borders of the Empire, given him a horse and set him free to return. He had ridden hard and fast down the Imperial Highway to speed his return home before turning east off the road toward Asariel on the Water.
He had been close enough that he had decided against staying at one last inn and instead decided to ride into the night and complete the final leg of his journey, even if it brought him home at an unholy hour.
Cassius quietly bent to begin unbuckling his boots, taking the moment to admire the floor tiles, the grand staircase, the night-blackened hallways to his left and right. It had been some months since he had joined with the Venatori and traveled south, so simply being here to see the features of the house again was a welcome treat.
He had been out of contact with the household, as his assignments had taken him far away from the Venatori camps and deep into Ferelden. There were no lines of communication. He had been dangled out onto the frontier to fend for himself. It was a precarious situation for the Venatori, which had been proven to be thus by his defeat and capture.
And yet, that stroke of poor fortune had swung to become a better one. Although the young lord remained under key in the custody of the Inquisition, he had been allowed to return. His sense of duty dictated that he should want to return to the battlefield, but stepping inside the manor had proven that his heart longed to be home.
As he looked at the darkened staircase, he wondered if he should quietly wake one of the slaves to have them rouse Magister Arrentius. It would be poor form to arrive at the lord's house and not inform him of another soul bunking.
On the other hand, he doubted his lord would care much if Cassius found his way to bed and did not make his presence known until morning. It had been a long journey and the hour was late. Beyond that, Magister Arrentius' health was not what it had been and he needed his rest more now than ever.
Cassius stepped out of his boots and bent down to pick them up, making sure to hold the buckles so that they did not rattle against each other.
"Well, well, well," a woman's voice from the right said. "What have we here?"
Cassius glanced up from his bent position, caught red-handed in the doorway to the woman leaning against the wall with a midnight snack in her hand.
She was draped in shadow, the dim of the household making her curly dark hair look nearly black, her long nightgown darkened in the corridor leading to the east wing of the house. Half a head shorter than Cassius, she was leaning with one shoulder up against the wall, her arms folded over her chest, her left foot raised off the floor as she scratched the back of her other leg with her toes.
Cassius watched as she took a bite of the fruit in her hand and wiped a bit of juice from the corner of her mouth, leaving the signs of a smirk as her fingers moved off her face.
"Valerie," Cassius said, seeing that smirk and knowing better. "Don't."
That only made her lip bend upward a bit more. "Don't what?"
Cassius straightened, holding his boots in front of him. He only needed to tip his head slightly to remind her she knew exactly what he meant.
She was Magister Arrentius' oldest, the first of his five daughters, and his direct heir, although that status was more complicated in practice than on paper. A year younger than Cassius, she had been his peer when her father invited him into their household in his youth. Despite being the first daughter of an Altus magister, Valerie, like her father, had never looked down on him, although she had good cause to at the time. They had almost immediately bonded as siblings, with Valerie's quick wit, smart tongue and shrewd mind her greatest assets.
Somewhat to her father's dismay, she had also grown up headstrong. She had grown up with the knowledge that although she was first, she was still Flavius' daughter and that meant that she would be immediately supplanted as soon as she was gifted with a younger brother.
Then came Andria, then Kordelia, then Servilia and Flavia.
The magister and his wife were aging. Yet they persisted, they never abandoned hope of having a son, an heir, the next main-line Arrentius to carry forward the bloodline. After years without success and as hope had begun to fade, Junia became pregnant once more.
Valerie finally received the brothers she had long been waiting for.
That day, late in her teen years, she had finally come to realize that she was not just Flavius' first daughter. She was, and would remain, his heir. And in what seemed like a day's time she had changed and fully embraced the responsibility of that title.
She had never truly lost her playful side, only that it was now bifurcated by the reality that she was the future of House Arrentius and her father's legacy and that came with its own set of burdens and pressures.
"You've been gone so long," Valerie said as she sauntered over, "that you're lucky it was me who caught you sneaking into the house and not one of the slaves."
She stopped in front of Cassius, reaching up to adjust the collar of his coat, refolding the fabric and gently patting it down. She smelled like the sea and the wind and home. "They might not have recognized you and mistook you for a burglar."
Valerie smiled as she raised her fruit and took another bite.
"Pear?" Cassius asked as he looked over the oblong green-yellow-red fruit half-eaten in her hand.
"What can I say? I've had a taste for them since your letter arrived," she said, offering it to him for a bite.
"No thank you," he politely declined. "What are you doing awake?"
"You know I don't sleep," she said. "Too much on my mind. Worrying. Wondering when you'd be home."
"I hope you aren't depriving yourself of sleep on my account," he said as Valerie nibbled her pear.
"My father is the one who's been a wreck since you left," she said. "Not a day goes by that he doesn't seem to wonder aloud whether you're well. As for me, I can't say you've been completely off my mind these past few months."
"I've missed you all terribly, too," Cassius said, "more than I realized, the closer I got to home."
"I'm glad you're back," Valerie said.
"I'm glad to be back," he agreed.
Valerie patted the collar of his jacket again, looked over the face she had not seen for months and smiled.
"For what it's worth, Caz, I'm sorry," she said.
Before Cassius could squeeze the word "don't" out of his mouth again, Valerie pushed her palm off his chest, leaned back, took a deep breath, tipped her head up toward the ceiling and raised her voice as loud as it could go.
"WAKE UP EVERYONE! CASSIUS IS HOME!"
Cassius slumped as he could hear noises of people stirring upstairs.
Valerie grinned widely, took another bite of her pear and patted him on the shoulder.
"Welcome home, Caz," she said, mouth half-full of chewed up pear, as her siblings and parents started to emerge at the top of the staircase.
