Cullen tried to keep his face blank as his mind raced. She'd never mentioned any of her family to him beyond a cursory fact they existed. "You met him?"
"Yeah, met them all after..." The king bit down on his lip and then glanced up at the ceiling, "Lanny and I, well, I owed her for something and she needed help. After the blight was done and she settled in as Arlessa she got curious about her family. I couldn't blame her, really, getting back to the roots and all. A few letters were exchanged and then it was off on a boat trip to visit them. But, she asked me to come along."
"When she was an Arlessa," Cullen clarified for himself. She never explicitly went into her timeline with Alistair but he knew they sundered before the blight ended.
"Yeah..." Alistair nodded, then he threw his hands out, "friends and all, so...no messing around or that. Like I said, she did the same for me so I was happy to be there for her. She didn't have anyone else."
That stung Cullen deep in his heart even if he'd been in no state to change that fact while serving in Kirkwall. "Let me guess, the family was either unimpressed and wanted nothing to do with her, or intended to mooch off the hero of Ferelden and her newfound power."
"No, it was weirder than that. They were polite. Stayed there for three days, drank enough lemonade it's a wonder my eyes didn't turn yellow. All 'It's nice to see you again after nearly twenty years, dear. How are your studies?' If they'd screamed for her to get away, or tried to weasel a hundred sovereigns out of her, I doubt Lanny would have minded, but it was the cold and polite distance that struck her as if she was some fancy Duchess that dropped by for a place to stay. They were too afraid to kick out someone who killed an archdemon. Scared shitless of their own daughter because she had power, a different kind of power than when she left. She, uh, she never went back and I don't think they ever tried to contact her again."
"Did you have a point, or..."
"Ah right, I was thinking of her father, like I said huge guy that could crack coconuts with his fist and shoulders that barely fit through the door. Just, kinda funny."
"What is?" Cullen wanted to turn away and hide in his hammock until the man went away, but it would be impolite to do that to a king. He also doubted Alistair would leave him alone.
"They say women tend to go for someone like their father, but..."
Cullen twisted away before the king could see the anger burning in his eyes. People spoke of having a type, sure, that they'd enjoy blondes over brunettes, or voluptuous to slim. He never dwelled long upon what he shared in common with the king of Ferelden, physically or otherwise, until a year after Lana die...was lost in the fade. It was when he walked past a portrait of the man looking constipated while standing in a field that it struck Cullen. For a brief second he feared he was staring in a mirror and not a painting.
"You really enjoy twisting that knife, don't you?"
"What?" the king's haphazard smile slipped away.
Chewing through a thousand painful curses in his brain, Cullen rounded on him to have out what'd been haunting him for two years. "Why bring me along? I cannot understand it. If your endgame is to... why you feel you must drag up your affiliations with Lana every moment to prove you knew her. Yes, I am aware. And if your plan is to, if you want to..." He wanted to shout at him, to thunder that whatever the king's machinations were they would fail. Assuming they found Lana, and assuming she was alive and in a healthy mental state, two years had passed. What were the chances she would have any use for the man who broke her heart? What were the chances she'd have any use for the one she left behind? Cullen's fists folded up at that thought. His string of hope stretched thinner every day; he had no idea what he'd do if it ever snapped.
"Okay," Alistair held both hands up as if afraid Cullen would swing at him, "lot of assumptions in there, I think. My plan, if it could be called that, is to find her. That's it."
Cullen rolled his eyes into a glower at the king. In any other part of thedas it'd put him on execution row, but Alistair only shrunk from it. "You must think I am an easily bamboozled idiot, that you've moved past her and have no ill intentions."
"Can I vote on the idiot part?"
"If you do not care for her," Cullen released his fists and sneered past the king's shoulder, unable to stare into those similar eyes, "then why did you take everything she'd ever owned and lock it away in your palace? As if you had any right to her possessions. They were not yours." She wasn't yours.
"To keep her belongings safe. Because the idea of some snot faced rich twat with more coin than brains owning one of her staves, or robes, or even a quill off the Hero of Ferelden makes me see red and then yell at a few walls because it gets expensive patching them. I made sure to collect all of Lanny's things in one place, one public place, so they all knew anything sold as a 'genuine relic of the Hero of Ferelden' was full of shit."
"That..." Cullen swallowed hard against the bolus of rage festering in his throat. "I didn't realize."
"And rather than have all her things shoved off in some attic in Fort Drakon, I put it on display so all of Ferelden has a reason to want to do what's best for her. To keep her safe -- her things, I mean -- her memory," Alistair's voice drifted away as he shuffled his bare feet around the deck. A sorrow twisted down that eternal smile and, for the first time since they began this journey, Cullen saw the traces of two years of mourning mar the king's face. "Besides," Alistair shook his head, knocking away the pain, "once we find her, she can have all her stuff back. There are enough books to crush a mountain, by the way."
"You kept everything of hers despite her ordering you out of her life," Cullen spoke softly, unable to let the hurt go.
"Sorry, I was thinking kingly at the time with lots of orders and commands and scepter waving. Figured there needed to be decisions made fast before the grave robbers moved in. Lanny, she..." he shrugged his nude shoulder, "she wasn't the type to kiss and tell much. I had no idea that she'd found someone else until nearly a year ago."
"And I am to believe that?"
Alistair shrugged, unimpressed with the threat in Cullen's voice. "It was Divine Victoria who told me so if you can't believe her, you might as well give up on Andraste herself. Leliana said that, uh," he coughed and spat the next part out quickly, "Lanny was in love with you."
He couldn't know the truth of it. Cullen repeated that a few times to himself to keep from smashing his fist against the king's smug face. Alistair had her love, her whole heart, and he crushed it twice. All she could manage to give Cullen was a possible promise, one she failed to keep. Even after knowing that she didn't love him, knowing she went to her death with a darkness in her mind, Cullen couldn't stop. He sure as hell couldn't move on. Ten years of loving someone didn't vanish in the night.
"She was wrong," Cullen whispered to himself. Alistair blinked a few times from the confession and shook his head, either taking it as humility or denial. "Is that why I am here? Your way to apologize to her?"
"Sure, why not," Alistair threw his arms up and stamped around in a circle, "Maker's breath, you do go on, don't you? What's your real motivation? I don't believe you! I know you're lying. Swear to me! I bet you regularly shout 'I work alone' to your soldiers."
"And you regularly obfuscate with jokes and misdirection."
Alistair reared back from his sloppy impression of Cullen brooding on a rooftop. "That's a big word. Maybe, just maybe I figured I needed help and thought who out of all of thedas could I trust to have Lanny's best interests in heart? How about that templar she was sniffing around."
"I am no longer a templar," Cullen rounded upon him, exhausted from having to defend himself. Three years since he'd been freed of the lyrium, nearly five if one included when he abandoned the order after Kirkwall's circle fell. He was not the man he'd once been.
"But you were not just any templar, either. You wanted all of Kinloch purged, had a real hate for mages. Thought I forgot about it, didn't you? It's all right, most people think I'm an idiot."
"Most people
are wise," Cullen muttered while digging his arms across his chest. This was his worst nightmare come true. Lana remembering how he reacted after she saved him in the tower stung his heart; this man doing it mashed his brain into a raging headache.
"And the stories of you out of Kirkwall, burning mage's minds, killing 'em outright, they'd turn some of the chantry sisters grey."
"I..." it was true, all of it. He'd carried such a hatred for mages that no one should have forgiven him, should have trusted him. But Lana did. Against all sense, she listened to his sins and then she absolved him. More than absolved, she told him she understood.
"Lanny, she... She can make her own decisions in life. Love you, not love you, whatever. That's her business, but... Maker does that woman have a blind-spot for templars. You'd think a mage would go the opposite way, but not her, and it nearly..." Alistair lapsed into silence and he glared through Cullen as if he could peer into his skull and wiggle out all his secrets. "After Amaranthine fell, some of the chantry weren't happy to have a mage sitting pretty on the Vigil's throne. So, a few of the sisters got themselves a few templars and planned to teach her a lesson."
"They were going to kill her?" She'd spoken of assassins with the same lackadaisical response Lana had to every threat to her person but she never went into detail.
Alistair shook his head, a sneer obliterating his smile now. "No, no, they weren't going to kill her, they were going to do much worse." Rolling his hand into a fist, he pressed it against his forehead and made a sizzling sound. "Leave behind the soulless puppet as a warning or something. But she was in such a state after the city fell, after saving as many as she could but not everyone, I was afraid she'd let them do it out of her Andrastian guilt. Like I said, templars are her blind-spot." His slipped his eyes shut and a voice that commanded countries spoke, "Know that if you have any intentions of labeling her a blood mage or...or branding her, you'll have me to answer to."
He hadn't thought of what they might find at the end of this. Cullen was scared to even draw upon the idea of her being alive and safe. But two years in the fade, physically inside of it... What toll would that have upon her? He'd not entertained the notion, but the king had and seemed prepared to fight for whatever piece of Lana remained. Was Cullen?
Nodding his head, Cullen slipped away from the man, "Understood."
Chapter Seven
Memory - Branding
9:33 Denerim
Denerim hadn't been this fancied up since the last time someone convinced him they needed to have a party or there'd be revolts in the gilded bath houses. Banners of silver and blue decorated the path along the main road; with miniature flags jammed into every windowsill, flower pot, and unclaimed bread roll. He hadn't meant for it to go so overboard, but Alistair wasn't a party planning type and mentioning the idea to Isolde led to a flurry of activity that he ran scared from. He had bigger problems anyway.
"Why am I here?" she asked. Despite the invitation stressing so fancy you'll probably be buried in it attire, Lanny wadded the suggestion up, set it on fire, spat on the ashes, and wore her usual robes. They were clean this time, not even a speck of blood along the sleeves. Either she took the chance to launder them before attending, or the crown's attempts to clear up the roads were working.
"Because this is a party in your honor," Alistair answered. He should have been enjoying the rare moment of her in his arms swaying to the frilly music Isolde chose, even if it was with enough distance between them to let a boat through, but Alistair had other matters on his mind. His eyes kept hunting around the edges of velvet and silk ringing the dance floor searching for the signal. The rest of the dancers were polite enough to move out of the way of the distracted king lest he trample over them. More than a few skirt hems trailed off his boots.
"Why is there a party in my honor?" Lanny tried again. She was growing her hair out, already it was past her shoulders and expanding like a dandelion about to seed.
"Because people like to party," Alistair countered with. They were here, he knew it. When the Dark Wolf approached him he thought it was a joke. He remembered Lanny's little forays into larceny as a small joke against the gentry, though she was nimbler with her fingers than he'd have thought. Okay, maybe not as surprising, in retrospect. But the clearly elf-sized man in full armor interrupting his breakfast was not Lanny baring her underworld title. When the Dark Wolf revealed a list of names, Alistair stopped joking about tossing the man to the vengeful granddaughters.
"And we are back to the crux of the argument," Lanny continued. She folded her arms above her head to follow with some dance pattern even Alistair barely knew as the rest of the floor stumbled to mimic. They were quite the pair, like a bird trying to teach a rock how to swim. Neither cared about the steps for the dances, but they both had to fake it. "Why am I here? You could have hosted this for any other reason beyond we have a Hero. I hear cherry blossoms are popular. People would've drank in their honor."
"It's late fall," he turned to her fully now, breaking from his hunt for the conspirators moving through the crowd. Even with her lips pursed in annoyance, her eyes rolling upward at an impressive rate, and a swipe of accidental candle ash for rouge she was the most breathtaking woman in the room.
Lanny shrugged, "All the more reason to toast to them. Absence makes the heart grow fonder."
Maker was that true. He hadn't seen her since she'd begun her work as the Warden Commander. Even then, she'd been less than ecstatic to have him "stop by" and "check up on her" one time. They'd written, especially after the fall of Amaranthine, after months her letters slipping away from the cold distance of politics into her warm cadence as she informed him of her days struggling with things only Alistair would understand. The Arlessa visited Denerim to request aid, but this was the first sighting of Lanny he'd had in over a year and a half. It was good to have her back, and Andraste take pity on anyone who thought to take her away.
"Planning new holidays for Ferelden? I could give you my calendar to spice up," Alistair smiled, his eyes back to digging through the crowd.
"No thank you, I have my own mess to..." Lanny's words faded away and she whipped her head around. "Is that Zevran? By flames, it is. Zevran!" She shouted, waving to the elf who was supposed to be working through the crowds anonymously.
He perked up from within a circle of nobility, his blonde hair shining by the chandelier light, and the assassin slid into the middle of the dancers. "Why you look enchanting as ever, my dear warden. Have you done something with your hair or does the slaughtering of darkspawn make it grow so lush? If so, I may need to accompany you into those deep roads again."
Zevran's compliments splattered against Lanny's wall. She yanked her hands off of Alistair's back and eyed up the elf. "Maker's breath, what are you doing here?"
"Me? What am I..." His eyes only darted to the king for a second before he turned fully to Lanny, staring at her as if she was the only woman in the room - which was true to Alistair. "Why, we Antivans love nothing more than an excuse to celebrate, of course. Wine, women, dancing, sometimes at the same time if you're rather limber and don't mind a bit of drink going up your nose. They're the Antivan pastime. "
"Don't you have something you need to be doing, Zevran?" Alistair failed to fall into the assassin's smooth cover story. His skin itched under the surface where no powder would reach. He needed to do something, anything -- even having Lanny close, knowing they'd have to go through him to catch her still put him off. He'd been a jittering, nervous wreck the hours before this little game began. When he had to put his shoes on for the party, he jammed them on the wrong feet five times. Eventually, a servant took pity and double laced them just in case. It was a wonder they didn't pin mittens to his shirt as well.
"Ah..." Zevran nodded at the king then wrapped his hands around Lanny's. She didn't yank them away but she had that look on her face. The one that said she knew she was being messed with but would wait to see where it was going before things caught on fire. "Forgive me, my
dear. The king and I need to discuss a matter first."
"I know you're both up to something," she said.
"Me? Why I am the perfect picture of innocence," Zevran insisted as he batted those massive elven eyes. "King man, if you please..." he gestured his head towards a sidebar and Alistair followed. Lanny stood in the middle of the dance floor uncertain if she should leave as the guest of honor or keep swaying without a partner.
"Tell me you have good news," Alistair whispered near the elf.
"Yes and also not entirely. Oh, do not make that face, you'll grow wrinkles. We moved on the Sister's location. She thought she could conceal it behind a bookcase lever. You Fereldens are so delightfully simple."
"Zevran, the point," Alistair hissed. He didn't have time for the elf to show off, he needed to know she was safe from them.
"My people infiltrated the chamber and confiscated that branding iron of theirs. I'm not sure what the point of it was. If they wanted to drive information from her, you can do much more with splinters of wood hammered under fingernails. All you get off an iron is a fascinating new scar."
The elf whimsically spoke of his own opinion on torture, but Alistair couldn't hear it, didn't care. When the Dark Wolf told him what the conspirators intended to do to Lanny, rage boiled through his soul. He'd only felt the same level bubbling in his blood before, and everyone knew better than to even whisper Loghain's name near him. It wasn't enough that they kill her, oh no, they wanted to send a message to all mages. If you dare to use your powers to help people, to save them, to make the decisions that others won't... If you do something they don't approve of, then they'll burn away your soul and leave only the empty husk tossed upon the throne ready to obey orders from anyone who gives them. "Where are they?"
"...And of course the rack provides, uh, what?"
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