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"The arl used to come here in the winter when I was small,” Alistair confesses, as their party rounds an ornate fountain outside Arl Howe’s estate. “I, uh... slept with the hounds.”
His voice is noticeably chagrined, even while slightly muffled behind an ill-fitting helmet, and Surana nearly blows their cover.
Her blood boils under her skin, ready to be pulled and stretched and shaped into submission; her skin tingles in a brewing storm. Her feet falter, and she envisions her own hands around Arl Eamon’s neck, his restored life the price for a stolen childhood—
She yelps, shocked out of her brooding, when Zevran treads on her toes and murmurs, “Excuse my clumsiness, my Warden.”
Alistair glances at them but must not notice anything amiss; he shrugs and turns back to Wynne, listening to her quiet comment about the fountain’s history. Surana glares at Zevran’s hidden face and the sharp shake of his head, but there’s no true heat to it because damn him, he’s right. There’s too much at stake to be thinking of anything except freeing Anora, especially now Erlina has the guards distracted...
But the decision Surana made the moment Eamon announced his plan to put Alistair on the throne settles even deeper into her heart with absolute certainty.
You will never be king, she vows, the four of them slipping unseen through the unguarded entrance. You may never be mine, but I will not let them have you any longer.