Ethan's false smiled twisted up to a sneer, "You can do that, can't you, Reiss?"
His words snuffed out the fire in her belly, casting her into darkness. Those same ones he'd use to belittle and bully her into warping herself to being something to prop him up. She was never right, too tall for his tastes, too small breasted, too thick thighed, too brash, too smart, too much better than him in the field. A woman who was brave and powerful would have shouted him down, she'd find the steel in her spine and throw off the chains of her oppressor. The fact Reiss couldn't, even now, all these years later, drew her deeper into the pit.
She lifted her head, about to agree to the worst possible decision -- one certain to make the King not only hate her, but question her competency -- when a new hand landed not upon her body but Ethan's arm. It picked it off Reiss and with an extended pinkie tossed it to the side. Ethan snapped up, his snarl in place to shout down anyone that dared to touch him, when it faded in an instant, "Your Majesty."
"The one and only, in here at least," Alistair quipped from behind. Reiss wanted to turn back to look at him, but whatever she felt radiating off him - anger, disgust, curiosity - she couldn't tell. He tilted his head down and spoke to Reiss, "I was wondering if you had a chance to try the pie yet? Renata said it was going to go lightning quick, which may mean she put wraith juice in it now that I say that."
"I..." Reiss gasped, her breath staggered as she tried to shift to the competent professional mask she tried to wear.
Ethan leaped forward, all but plowing Reiss to the side, "Sire, if I may while you are here. I'd like to take a moment to discuss a few important issues with you."
Seeming entirely unimpressed with the man, Alistair slowly blinked, then returned to talking to Reiss, "And the cake's to die for. Not literally, food taster made certain of that."
"Your Majesty, please," Ethan continued to wheedle, the man barely aware he was talking over royalty.
Something in the tone finally snapped through Alistair's attempt at being nice, "Are you blind or did you ram head first into the door? I'm talking to my bodyguard at the moment. If I think you're worthy of attention I'll try and pass it along later."
Reiss knotted her fingers together, praying that was enough to send Ethan scampering away with his tail between his legs. Then she heard the scoff building in his lungs, "For what purpose? She's nothing more than a refugee knife-ear?"
She felt the King seize up behind her, a finger coming near Ethan's face, but it was Reiss who snapped. Knife-ear? Knife-ear? You think that can cut me, Ethan?! That I haven't heard ten times worse words, been watched and followed since I was a child? Had grown men threaten to fix me because I dared to exist while not human? It wasn't any of that that came out of Reiss' throat.
All she could manage was to pivot up on the tips of her toes and with hands extended scream as loud as possible in Ethan's face. No words, no witty retorts, nothing but pure primal rage in that smug, human face. The raw power of it was enough to knock him off his pedestal, real fear rippling across his cocksure features. Ecstasy flooded Reiss' veins from having finally struck back at him, when she realized every sound in the great hall died from her scream. Even the band held its beat at the mad woman shrieking her lungs off.
"Oh Maker," she groaned before taking off on a run through the hall. People were quick to leap out of the way, everyone watching the crazed elf hell bent on ruining their evening and escaping into the night. She didn't wind up where she wanted to be, which was on a boat far from Denerim, Ferelden, every damn inch of her embarrassing display. Somehow she found herself in one of the antechambers, a small one with a clock that no longer worked. It hung silently at five minutes 'til midnight, a few candles giving the flickering illusion that the minute hand danced back and forth in anticipation.
What have you done?
A third time? You blighted well went and destroyed your life a third time? How many chances do you think elves get in their lives? Certainly not as many as the Maker keeps gifting you, rabbit. Reiss felt herself sinking to the floor even as her fingers clung tight to the mantle with the dead clock. Worst of all, Ethan was back there with a no doubt confused King telling him all about how Reiss was unstable, she couldn't be trusted in the Inquisition. Or worse. Sweet Andraste, what would he say about why she left Bann Declan's service? What lie could he concoct that, of course the King would believe. He was a decorated soldier who became the head guard for a Bann and she was...she was a crazy knife ear.
"Are you okay?"
Maker, no. Reiss' stomach dropped at the King's words wafting through the air behind her. He sounded like he was approaching a feral animal about to lash out from its den. Then again, maybe that was apt after her actions.
"Forgive me for that frightful display," Reiss mumbled out. She should stand, should rise up and accept her punishment like an adult, but her legs were custard, the muscles refusing to budge from her squat.
To her surprise, the King didn't stomp his foot at her crumbling but squatted down to her level. He remained a few feet away, his mouth opening and closing as he swallowed down the words. "I spotted you looking terrified from across the room." Reiss groaned at that, she didn't wish to make it obvious, to make it his problem or anyone else's. "I don't know what happened, but if you want to talk about it, I'm here. Or, I could go get your friend. She went the other way. Maker's sake, you are fast."
He had to want to know, was most likely making up his own wild theories without her offering anything to combat them. Trying to shake off the tears in her soul, Reiss whispered, "I'm sorry."
"I'll admit, that was surprising," the King said. "Not the most shocking thing to happen at one of our parties by a long shot. Maybe in the top ten. I dunno. Where would you put having a halla leap through an open window, scatter around the dance floor, lap up alcoholic punch and then crash on the throne?"
It was stupid, but a giggle broke through her throat - the solitary laugh swaddled in pain. She wanted to give in the madness, curl up on the floor and roll around with laughter while...no, what she really wanted was for none of it to have happened. Not just her outburst, the very reason she did it, her never ever having met Ethan in the first place. "He's why I left the Inquisition," Reiss gasped, her breath jagged, the words feeling like broken glass wedged in her throat.
She expected the King to turn around and leave, or interrupt with a dozen questions, but he waited, his hands splayed out across the ground for balance. Struggling against the embargo she'd put on herself, Reiss begged herself to not let loose on the secrets in her life certain to damn her. But she couldn't stop it any longer.
"Ethan, was, is... I'd always been little more than a pair of hands before. Hands to smelt the iron, arms to cart the cargo, feet to thresh the wheat, a body in a sea of others that filled workhouses, as replaceable as any other broken cog. No one had ever looked at me before, it was always through and then..." Maker's sake, Reiss. Stop blubbering. You have no excuses for your actions. Boo hoo, you're far from the first elf to have a sad backstory, much less a refugee from the blight.
Her arm began to burn from the stretch but she ignored it, "I loved serving in the Inquisition, it was a home of sorts, but I left it because...because Ethan said we would do better serving in the watch for a Bann, together."
The King groaned, his eyes screwed up tight as he pinched the top of his nose. Reiss waited for an admonishment from him for wasting his time, but none came. There was still time to stop, to laugh it off and bury her heart back in its grave, but no, this had to come out. All of it.
"I was such an idiot, because I..." no, not the tears. Not now! They came, no matter how hard she pinched into her side. "I thought he loved me." She saw it now with hindsight blanketing the rosy glow of youthful lust. Ethan didn't care about her, he liked the idea of her, of someone on his arm to shine but never brighter than him. No, that was when he'd snap and snarl. Some of the others in the group tried to warn Reiss but she'd excused it all away. He was tired or maybe she
did do something wrong and it was right of him to correct her. Foolish little rabbit trusting in the farmer's hand without noticing the other holding a hatchet.
Wiping at the tears, Reiss spoke instead of Declan, "When we arrived at the Bann's holdings I realized what a mistake I'd made. The Bann he...he is a man who thinks he can take whatever he wants, and deserves it all."
She tried to be vague because voicing any real accusations against gentry, in particular from an elf, would be disastrous. Her bringing them to the King...she couldn't imagine what they'd do with it. Most men would think that meant Declan was brutish or perhaps gruff with his people, rough yet forgivable, but Alistair gnashed his teeth together and hissed, "Did he...hurt you?"
That word, hurt, was a placeholder for a dozen more darker options; all of which the gentle King seemed unable to voice. Reiss shook her head, "No, not that. He'd reach out often with his hands, where they need not be, but..." she wanted to say it wasn't so bad. It could have been worse. But it was, in all those moments she felt paralyzed and filthier than when she washed ashore as a refugee outside Kirkwall. The cruelest cut came from Ethan, the man she followed because she thought he loved her. If she brought up any mention of the Bann's wandering hands, he'd either laugh at it or insist she was wrong, that her memories had to be false because the Bann was good to him. How dare she demean someone so great to him?
"I left because, because I was fired," she sneered. It wasn't the firing that was her greatest shame, but the fact she hadn't been strong enough to go on her own. "The Bann resented the fact I made a fuss, and Ethan...he preferred to side with the man keeping him in coin." Reiss knew it was wrong, it made her sick to her stomach to wake every day not knowing what awaited her for work. If the Bann finally felt bold enough to push further than she feared. A rash began to cover her body wherever the uniform touched her skin, as if it was trying to warn her and still she couldn't go. She feared the unknown more than the hell of her own choosing.
"I'm..." she collapsed into her lap, her arm plummeting off the mantle. It bounced against the floorboards, pain trying to echo up her arm but her mind was too numb to feel it. "I'm sorry, Sire. For not...for being..." every word crashed to an incoherent whimper.
The King gulped and dug his fingers through his hair, yanking it ever upward where it spiked from the pomade left within. "Reiss, I..." he began to surge forward, when his knee popped. Groaning, he sank to the floor and sat hard upon the stones. With one hand he tried to rub the aching joint, while gesticulating to her as if afraid she was about to fly out the window like a scared bird.
"You never have to apologize, not for that. Ever. It's...uh," he breathed deep, his eyes wandering around the room at the severity of her words. "I'd like to pull out the old drawing and quartering leather wraps for Declan right now, but that's not your fault."
"Isn't it?" she turned to face him, the tears glittering in her eyes but refusing to fall. Sometimes her stubbornness won.
"Blaming yourself," Alistair sighed, nodding his head up and down as if to a slow song, "I get that one. Know it rather well, you could say we're on a first name basis, but...I don't hold it against you. I don't think lesser of you for it, either."
Reiss scoffed, whipping her head away from him. Even Lunet asked her a few times why she didn't leave, if not after the first time Declan's hands wandered, then when Ethan disavowed her? She had no answers, her own brain screaming at her for not doing it. The guilt wore a hole in her gut down to the void itself.
The menial King, gentle and unassuming, lifted his head high and in a voice that could crack mountains thundered, "I mean it. You weren't chosen on the assumption that your personal life was perfect, which would be an odd way to pick any guards. You saved my children's lives, my sorry life twice, and...I've enjoyed getting to know you. Which was not the time to say that, sorry," he winced and pawed at his shoes, but the sincerity made Reiss snicker. It caused her few tears to drip down her cheeks, one pooling at the side of her laughing mouth. Maker's sake, she was a mess.
"I was weak," she whispered.
"We all are sometimes," he said so certainly it broke through her fog. "Flames, you've watched me break down on occasion. And, I happen to know even the great Hero of Ferelden makes mistakes. Not often mind, but there were a few."
She wanted to reach over and hug him, to curl up into the embrace of someone willing to brave the filthy cold floor for her. Instead, Reiss wiped at her tears and tried to summon up her guard facade. "I'm sorry, Ser," she said. Alistair looked about to argue, when she tacked on, "for my outburst dragging you from the party."
"That's all right, it saves on me having to dance with the Arlessa of Guerrin. Maker, the woman moves like a horse wearing armored boots five sizes too big."
Reiss giggled at the image, her heart lightening. It wasn't cleansed, not by a long shot, but she felt the invisible corset she always wore loosen a tie or two. Breathing in, she staggered to her feet. After checking her sword, she dropped her hand to the King. He gazed up at her with what appeared almost like adulation brimming in his eyes. Before a blush at the thought could take hold, he gripped to her hand and she helped him to his legs.
After patting off the invisible dust upon his breeches, Alistair turned those warm brown eyes upon her. "If you're not up to it, you don't have to go back in there. It's not much of a party anyway, and I think the only one trying to kill me in there is Isolde for accidentally breaking the foot off her ice sculpture."
Reiss swallowed at the kind offer, "Thank you, but...I'd prefer to do my job to the best of my abilities."
He looked as if he wanted to argue, but the King closed his eyes and slightly bowed his head, "As you wish, far be it for me to keep you from the sight of Teagan slipping a sconce on his head and dancing a waltz with one of the stuffed bears."
Out of all the elaborate stories the King painted, that was the one that caught Reiss. "You...you cannot be serious."
Snickering, Alistair leaned close to her ear to whisper, "He doesn't do well with wine." Reiss turned her head at that and found his face barely a breath away from hers. Sweet Andraste, her stomach did a full cartwheel as his lips lifted in a gentle smile, those eyes sparkling. How easily it would be to press forward and taste him in a kiss.
Before she did anything incredibly stupid, Lunet came skittering through the room. Her friend didn't even stop to check, just barreled through causing both elf and human to slide apart. By the time Lunet thought to turn back, she found Reiss a good few feet away from the King absently checking her sword's sheathe. "Maker's jangling coin purse, here's where you are."
"Jangling coin purse," the King mused to himself, "have to remember that one."
Lunet cast a quick eye to him and gave a wide berth before reaching over to pick up Reiss' hand. "Are you all right? Do you need to talk or go somewhere else?"
"I'm fine, don't fuss, please," Reiss tried to shake it off, doing her damnedest to be a professional. She shifted her eyes over to the King and back to Lunet hoping her friend would get the hint. Either catching on, or not in the mood to argue, Lunet staggered back, her hands lifted.
"I should probably be heading back myself before the whole castle comes looking for me," Alistair said, his eyes fully upon Reiss. "I trust I leave you in far more capable hands," he glanced a moment at Lunet before returning to his bodyguard. Adjusting the cuffs of his doublet, the King sidled to the door and turned to say, "Hope to see you soon," before walking through it.
"What in Mafarath's tiny pecker happened?" Lunet gasped.
Reiss was glad she saved that one away from the King. Wrapping her arm around her friend's, Reiss began to follow Alistair back to the great hall, "I'll tell you along the way. And please, try to refrain from killing anyone after."
"Fine, but no promises."
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Another Taste
Only a handful of people had the gall to ask the King what happened with his bodyguard. Alistair threw on his dumbest smile and said
they were playing a game of who can scream the loudest. Turns out he's terrible at it, and she won. That earned him a few "Okay, Sires" but no one was in the mood to push it. There was a lot of wine remaining to drink, cake to eat, and a dance floor to spin around on until that wine and cake returned. While he did his Kingly duty of giving the few on the list a turn or two around, Alistair found a bit of time to slip over to Declan and have a tiny chat.
The man was practically wetting his hose in excitement at the King selecting him specifically, right until Alistair jabbed a finger at that growling worm, informed the Bann that he made a threatening move to the King's bodyguard which is the same as attacking the King himself and if he was smart, he'd peddle his little feet out of the palace. Now. It took a minute for Declan to register all this, Alistair's words having to fight through piles of earwax and idiocy to reach his weasely brain, but once it did his cheeks burned bright red. He could argue that it was nothing, little more than a friendly grip onto the woman's shoulder, but Alistair had his own response to that. More or less in the summation of he was blighted king and if because of the shiny crown he decided what was and wasn't acceptable.
Luckily, Declan had enough sense to know when he was truly licked. Snarling under his breath, he stormed to the front door, barreling though a trio of dwarves that were kind enough to let the human pass. He eyed up the king once before turning all the wrath he wanted to spend on royalty upon that guard that started it all. Feeling rather proud of himself for handling that, Alistair caught Reiss' eye for a moment.
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