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Riona feels miles away from her body as she steps out of her quarters, closing the door behind her with a care for its silence that is almost foreign. She can hear her pulse rocketing through her body but it's as if all the nerves in her limbs have been cut at the root. She is numb to the core. Her legs are moving, her feet are connecting quietly with the stone floor, momentum propelling her towards the end of the hallway, and she can't feel any of it.
The distance between her body and Alistair's door feels insurmountable.
Morrigan is in still Riona's quarters, probably standing again by the roaring, stifling fire that had done nothing to lessen the icy chill that gripped Riona's spine the moment Morrigan had laid out her plan like fanning out a pack of Wicked Grace cards.
Alistair is in his own quarters, probably reassuring himself that Riordan is a skilled Warden and would reach the Archdemon before any of them.
In her eyes, glowing coals cover the stones that lead to Alistair, and the soles of her shoes feel as thin as cotton. Vines seem to curl iron-thorned and deadly around the handle, and her hands, clenched at her sides, are bare. Morrigan's words behind her teeth are shards of glass, promising to cut her if she opens her mouth. Promising to cut her if she doesn't.
Her legs take her to Zevran's room instead.
It's unclear whether Zevran being given his own quarters separate from her is an innocent gesture of welcome, made because Eamon has no idea that it's not necessary, or as deliberate a slight as Alistair being assigned a room much smaller than Riona's own, obviously courtesy of the Arlessa. Regardless of the intention, this time the privacy is a blessing.
She needs someplace to breathe without Morrigan staring expectantly at her. Without the promise of Alistair's revulsion and horror.
The thing is, Riona doesn't care about the baby, tainted or possessed or half-dragon or whatever. She isn't remotely concerned about what power it might contain, or what Morrigan might do with it. To it.
Truthfully, Riona has had Morrigan read like a book since Lothering, when she plucked a feather straight off her own clothes and gave it a shy, curious little girl who told her they were pretty. No one does that without kindness. Overturn the rock she pretends is her heart, and Riona knows Morrigan has love in her like a blind, soft, crawling thing. It's delicate, it scatters in the light, but it exists.
Whatever Morrigan has planned, it won't be to harm the child, and whatever its power may be after passing from the archdemon, it would be better off in Morrigan's hands than anyone else Riona can think of. The unknown magic is not Riona's concern.
With a detachment that would be uncomfortable, if she could register such a thing, Riona thinks about how Morrigan had defended hiding it from her. Would you have trusted me if I'd told you before? she'd said, dismissive as a flick of her hand, and Riona had wanted to grab her, shake her until all her necklaces rattled, and shout Of course I would have!
Of course she trusted Morrigan. Riona loves her, fiercely, bottomlessly, with blood and teeth and triumph in battle, as much as any of her alienage sisters.
Maybe it wouldn't have helped, knowing early. Maybe Alistair still would be the only Warden within a thousand miles capable of performing the ritual. But maybe it would have, and they'll never know now. Would you have trusted me? Riona always trusted her.
Morrigan had called her sister, called her friend, spoken to her with a warmth Riona had never expected from the harsh, prickly woman in the marshes. The sudden chill between them called to mind her early behavior, before Riona had peeled it away.
Maybe it was an act. Not the friendship, but the dismissal. Pretending to be cold and removed again, to protect herself from the fear of losing Riona to this sacrifice.
But act or not, the bitterness is still there, souring Riona's mouth with the transparent manipulation of Morrigan telling her instead of approaching Alistair directly. Alistair hates Morrigan but loves Riona. What better way to make a poison taste sweet than to put it in the mouth of his fellow Warden, make her feed it to him from her own lips?
There's no movement from behind Zevran's door, at least that she can hear. Hopefully the door is still unlocked.
Though it's strange, she thinks, distantly, that Zevran had not already been in her quarters waiting for her in the first place. Morrigan had made no mention of having asked him to leave, and Riona had not passed him in the hall when she left Riordan's room, so many years and scant few minutes ago.
It takes three tries before her nerveless fingers can grip the door handle enough to pull it open, and once inside she lets the door fall closed behind her with far less grace than she had done her own.
The room is — empty. The fire has been banked in the fireplace, untouched since a servant had lit it and left it for its future occupant to control as he saw fit, and the air is so much cooler than the suffocating swelter of her own had been. The bed looks untouched. If not for Zevran's pack in the corner, she'd think she slipped into the wrong room.
Riona takes a deep, sharp breath, clenching her jaw tightly to keep it from trembling.
One of her earliest memories is of her father, crouching down to her four-year-old eye level, his hands warm and heavy on her little shoulders. He had looked so tired, he was still wearing his servant's livery straight from the estate where he worked, and he had told her gently, "Sometimes it's safer to just let things happen. It's easier not to fight."
The next morning her mother had bundled her up and carried her out of the house, and they had slipped together through the alleys under watery pre-dawn light. Inside one of the empty back-alienage warehouses, Adaia had closed Riona's small hands around the pommel of a blunt practice dagger. "Sometimes you don't want to be safe," she had said. "Sometimes you want to fight."
Riona has never not fought. So is she supposed to put her hands on Alistair's shoulders and tell him to let it happen? Is she to tell him to stay quiet, to close his eyes, to think of anything else until it's over?
The door opens again behind her, and she whirls around, nerves jangling discordantly —
Snake-quick, Zevran catches her hand before she can do more than raise it in a fist. He pulls it to his chest, cradles it gently against his leather cuirass, lacing his fingers between hers. "I'm sure you like my pretty face too much to do me harm, but let us not risk it so soon before battle, hm?"
"Fuck!" Riona explodes. To his credit, Zevran doesn't so much as raise a brow. "Sorry, I — Where did you even — fuck —"
She pulls her hand away from his loose grip and bursts into movement, pacing abruptly across the room. Seeing him suddenly makes her feel like she can't be near him right now, like she doesn't deserve to. It's all she wants in the world, to sink into his arms, it's what she came into the room for, and now that he's here, she can't make herself do it. To give him something she'll have to take away, to become another lover he may lose. She's been so cruel, loving him, and has never known.
Her father, too. He thought her dead, thought her returned, and now — she might —
She drags her hand over her face. "Sorry," she says again, "I just. I spoke to Morrigan and I, I need a minute." A minute is all she really has. Whether she's to convince Alistair or to tell Morrigan she won't do it, there isn't much time.
"Of course," Zevran says, his expression mild, impenetrable. He shuts the door behind him again while she launches from one side of the room to the other, barely contained in her own skin. Something about his stony look strikes Riona as off, but she can't think about that now. She has so little time.
"If something goes wrong," Riona finds herself saying haltingly, unable to keep the words from tumbling, "will you go to my father? You're part of the family now. He'll look out for you, I promise. Shianni too, she likes you..."
"Why do you talk as though you're certain to die?" Zevran asks, his voice barely inflecting. "You have survived this long, you hardly have reason to get nervous now."
If he only knew. "Zev, any of us could die."
"I have it on good authority that such is true in any battle. Do you not trust Riordan to do his job?"
"That's not it," although it is, a little bit, because — "I just. To put so much on one person? The entire army will be between us and the archdemon. If he falls — if he falls —"
She falters, stops, frowns at him. His stony face doesn't shift a fraction, but suddenly its unreadability becomes a clear sign on its own. If she hadn't been so wrapped up in her horror she wouldn't have ignored it.
Flatly, "You were listening." Not a question.
Finally Zevran's expression changes, and it almost would have been better if it hadn't. He peels her a winning smile so painted on it could barely be said to alter the flat blankness of him. It looks wrong on him, settling poorly on his skin. "Of course I was listening. Some strange man calls my Warden into his room? I had to be sure he wasn't planning anything fun you'd leave me out of."
"Zevran. This is serious."
The rictus grin falls so immediately that Riona almost expects to hear it shatter on the stone floor. "Alright. You want serious? You cannot be thinking of sacrificing yourself to this."
How easily he can predict her. Riona takes a breath, squares her shoulders. "It can't be Alistair. If Riordan doesn't make it, Alistair can't be the one to die." She can't sacrifice him for herself. She loves him too, her shemlen little brother.
"And why not?" Coolly, as if they spoke of a stranger, not a brother in arms. Riona feels ill. "Is it not equally his responsibility? He is a Warden the same as you — in fact, I believe he is your senior in that regard."
"By six mo — Zevran. He is the king."
"Only at your hand," he points out. "Why the sudden patriotism? He is not the only regent this country has available. I seem to recall a woman, very cunning, very put out by your change in regime —"
Riona can feel herself going cold and steely, and she closes another step of space between them. Even before Loghain had sold the alienage to profit the war he started with his petty bitterness, the five years of Anora's supposed true reign had seen Vaughan thrive unchecked with it as his hunting ground, its women his prey. The Mac Tir line has two strikes against the elves of Denerim, and Riona would never let it have the chance to make a third.
"I will not give that ignorant shem my alienage again," she says, voice low.
"You can't protect it if you are dead."
Her vision goes straight past red into stark, explosive white-hot.
"Damnit, Zevran," she roars, "don't talk to me about what I can't protect!"
The ringing silence spins out between them like a wire, neither of them willing to move or breathe to break it. Zevran's hard eyes bore unblinking, unapologetic into hers, his jaw working tightly.
She's done so much. She's tried to do so much, and in the end everything is still out of her hands. The hopelessness is overwhelming.
Riona finally sucks in a breath, sharp and sudden, and it becomes a sob on its way out of her mouth, entirely out of her control. "No," she says to herself fiercely, turning away from Zevran as if she could hide it, "no, damn it," holds her hand to her mouth and presses hard, trying to force back the flood that's building in her ribs, but it's too late. The knot of rage and fear in her throat chokes her breathing. Tears flood her eyes so suddenly they don't even have time to blur her vision before they're pouring down her chin in a rush.
It's been so long since she's cried she doesn't even know what to do with it. Her lungs burn treacherously with the unfamiliar need to start weeping and never stop.
Zevran steps back into her line of sight and pulls her to him, solid arms coming up around her shoulders to ground her. For a handful of heartbeats Riona lets herself finally sink into him like she had wanted. Her hitching breaths fog a damp patch on his leathers, and her tears are smearing darkly down the front.
The battle could go exactly as planned. Riordan would die, Alistair would take the throne, and Riona would... something. Sink into the anonymity of Warden ranks, with Zevran at her side. This entire display could be unnecessary.
But. But battles are never exact. Riordan could fall too soon, as easily as any other man.
If Riordan fails, she doesn't want to die. But neither does she want to make Alistair — to force Alistair —
Void take her for this — this weakness. There is no time for this.
She fists her hands at Zevran's sides and takes a few sharp breaths, holding them in before exhaling to get herself back under control.
Without giving her the chance to pull away again, Zevran says softly, "You did not look so upset until you left your room, amora. What did Morrigan have to say to you?"
Of course he wouldn't have missed that. "You weren't listening?" she asks, but without any heat.
"I was... already reacting poorly to your fellow Warden's secret," he admits darkly. "You had gone before I could follow."
Riona could lie. She could. But she is not in the habit of lying to loved ones, and she presses her forehead against his collar and says, "She... said she had another option. A ritual to make an empty vessel for the archdemon's soul, so a Warden doesn't have to die."
Suddenly Zevran's hands are on her shoulders, holding her out to look her in the eyes again. "Do it," he says, firm, eyes wide. "Amora, do it."
"You don't understand —"
"I don't care. Is it blood magic? Brasca, she can have mine!"
"She has to fuck Alistair to do it," Riona snaps, still too nauseated by the thought to prevaricate.
In any other universe, the way Zevran goes goggle-eyed and slack-jawed would be amusing. Now it only serves to make Riona feel worse. Then he sucks his lips between his teeth and knits his brow, and Riona knows he's getting there, because he is sharper than he lets anyone even guess at. "An empty tainted vessel," he says slowly.
Numb, she nods. "How can I make him do that?" she whispers.
"Make him do what?" Zevran says, blank. "Spend a night with a beautiful woman and ensure that no Warden need die ending the Blight?"
Horrified, Riona steps back. "He hates her," she says emphatically, "he would never touch her. How can I force him to do that just to save us?"
Zevran still looks bewildered at her reluctance, doesn't seem to understand. "I don't think even Alistair hates her enough to turn down something that can help you both."
She steps back again, separating his hands from her arms, throwing her own hands in the air to punctuate the retreat. "That's just it! He would do it, I know he would, because between death and anything else there's no choice! And what kind of monster would that make me? To force him to have sex so he doesn't have to die? Zevran, you know that's no kind of choice."
"Amora, that's not —"
"The same? What makes it different, then? If I make him do this, what makes me different from the shems who make us lay with them because we aren't allowed to say no?" Her voice is cracking around the tightness growing in her throat again, and she sees Nola's dead tear-stained face. She sees Shianni.
The space between them closes again as Zevran pushes forward, hands coming up to cradle her cheeks. They're damp where her skin is still streaked with tears, and he strokes the calloused pads of his thumbs under her eyes, with a tenderness she knows he still doesn't believe he possesses.
"I understand what you are thinking, but that isn't forcing Alistair," he says, gentling her, "that's giving him better odds."
Riona frowns belligerently. "How is that —"
"You're not telling him to lay with her or he'll die. As it stands now, he has a one in three chance of being guaranteed to die already, yes? The same as any of you." He pauses for a moment, looking down at her directly for confirmation, and when she nods, her mouth tight, he carries on, "If he says he won't do it, his odds will be no worse than they are at this moment. It's not taking away his choice, my love. It's only offering him a way to make his chances better, not worse."
Could it really be that easy? Offer him the choice with her hands open, all exits clear, so he knows he won't be punished for saying no? Or is it just rephrasing something terrible as if it changes the horror?
Riona presses her lips together tightly, uncertain.
Zevran looks at her intently. "If you will not let him make his own decision," he says, "are you not still taking the choice away?"
She screws her eyes shut hard, drops her forehead against the collar of his armor again.
Maybe he's not wrong. Maybe Alistair should at least have the option to answer for himself.
For the last year, complete strangers have put their lives, their homes, their kingdoms in her gauntleted hands and asked her to make so many decisions with so little. To choose who lives, who dies. Who triumphs, who falls. Who sacrifices. She has almost forgotten how it feels, to not be in control of something. She has almost forgotten how to ask for help.
Finally, "I'll... I'll tell him what Morrigan told me," she allows. She hears Zevran's huff of relief, feels it brush against her hair, sees his chest collapse with it in front of her when she opens her eyes again.
With a quick squeeze, he lets her go, steps away from the door and pulls it open for her.
Before, the castle halls been cavernous and hollow, endless miles between herself and her destination, and everything had seemed hazy, incomplete. Now she is too aware, too present, and there seems to be no space at all. One moment she is stepping out of Zevran's room, and the next, she is staring at the fine wood grain of Alistair's door. The walls on every side of her seem to press hard against her ringing ears.
She knocks. The sound is deafening in the empty hall.
Alistair answers immediately, and steps aside for her to come in without a word between them.
For a moment, as Riona follows him into his room and watches him close the door behind her, she allows herself to reflect on how unspokenly open and easy the silent exchange is. Alistair doesn't question her presence at all.
If she'd been told a year ago that one day she would have bled for a soft human boy and been bled for by him in return, she'd have blackened a few eyes at the insult. As if she would ever waste herself on a shem. Now she counts almost half a dozen humans among her closest, most beloved friends. Now she and Alistair are so familiar to each other that their own living spaces are only separate by walls and not by intention. Her shemlen little brother.
He's speaking now, leaning sideways against the bedpost and making jokes Riona can't really hear over the sound of her own throat constricting around her breath. Her lack of response must be obvious, because he finally stops, his smile faltering, and asks, "Are you alright?"
He's still wearing his armor, which makes Riona feel unaccountably more at ease. She feels more secure in her own armor. Maybe he does too. Maybe it will help him feel safer.
It's important that he feels safe.
"Yes," she says thickly, because her feelings are not the issue. Then, "There's something you need to hear."
"Uh oh," says Alistair, shoring back up the uncertain smile still flickering across his mouth. "That never leads anywhere fun. No one ever thinks I need to hear, ‘Alistair, I've brought you a cake!' Which isn't true, by the way. I always need to hear that."
Riona huffs an almost-laugh impolitely through her nose despite herself, and it comes with a rush of unfathomable fondness for Alistair, that he can still drag a spot of lightness from her when she is so despairing.
But she can't put it off forever. "It's about what Riordan said, about killing the archdemon," she says, her hands clenched and frozen against the silverite plates belted to her thighs, and Alistair immediately looks tense, unhappy — "There's a way to keep any of us from needing to die."
"Oh?" Alistair sounds almost cheerful, but his eyes are still wary and sharp, because like Zevran, he is also not as foolish as he likes for others to believe of him. He crosses his arms defensively over his chest. "Why don't you sound thrilled, then?"
The empty pit of dread at the bottom of her stomach turns ravenous, gnawing its way up her ribs and to the back of her throat. She forces herself to open her hands, to be unthreatening.
"Because it's a ritual to create a separate vessel for the archdemon's soul, and a Warden has to lay with Morrigan to create it. So that the... the vessel is tainted enough to draw the soul."
For the second time that night, Riona's words are met with a thin, tense silence. Then Alistair barks a laugh, too harsh to be real.
"You're kidding, right? Maker, that is the ugliest joke I have ever heard from you."
Riona flinches hard, and Alistair drops all pretense of acting like he thinks she'd make a prank of this, recoiling away from her. "Are you seriously asking me to —"
"No," Riona rushes, because he has to know, she needs him to know, "no, Alistair, I'm not asking, I'm just telling you what she told me, this is your choice. Please believe me. This is your choice." The way to the door is clear. He can walk away. He can say no. She needs him to understand he can say no.
"Why not Riordan?" Alistair demands.
"The taint has... progressed too far in him," Riona says heavily, recalling Morrigan's own defense when she'd asked the same. "Too degraded, I think. It wouldn't... it wouldn't be viable."
Alistair's mouth twists gruesomely at the word viable, and every part of Riona's ribs ache for him. She wants to fly to him and kiss his forehead and reassure him, like her mother used to do, like the older alienage girls used to do, like she herself did for Soris when they were children. The poison is no sweeter from her mouth. She knew it wouldn't be.
"So let me get this clear," he says, level, "you want me to have sex with Morrigan — Morrigan — and get her pregnant with some... some empty demon baby, so the archdemon somehow skips all the Grey Wardens and darkspawn at its disposal and goes straight to it? And then what? She gives birth to a dragon?"
"I don't want you to do anything," Riona says emphatically, "this is your decision. I promise, I promise, the choice you make is your own. I won't let anyone force you to do anything."
"Good," Alistair says, sharply enough that Riona flinches again.
Maybe she shouldn't have said anything. Maybe she should have stuck with her assumption that he would say no and not have put this on him. Could he possibly forgive her for even coming to him with this? Riona backs away toward the door.
"I'm sorry," she says. Never in her life has she felt so unbalanced, so heartsick. She swings around to leave. "I'll tell Morrigan you said no. She'll survive. You should — get some rest."
"Riona, wait."
She pauses, turns back to him.
He shifts uncertainly, and he opens and closes his mouth a few times before, "If you knew I'd say no, why did you ask?"
"... I talked to Zevran —"
Alistair looks dismayed at her dismissal of Warden secrecy. "Zevran knows?"
It's hypocritical of her, to level a flat, pointed look at him, as if she hadn't been just as dismayed at Zevran listening in, but she does it anyway, and he tips his head in concession. Of course Zevran knows. Then she softens, and sighs. "He said... he said that performing the ritual would make our chances of survival better, but not doing it wouldn't change anything from how it is now. You'd lose nothing by saying no, there would be no difference than if it hadn't been offered. And... he said that if I didn't at least give you the choice, I would still be making the decision for you."
She looks down at her hands. "I've made enough decisions for other people that you deserved to make your own."
Something complicated and considering shifts across Alistair's face, but he doesn't offer anything else. Riona turns to leave again.
"You've been a good leader, you know," he finally says, as her hand closes around the handle. "The choices you've made... I don't know if I would have made them, but you did, and they worked. You've done so much. I can't imagine following anyone better."
In the alienage, she ran a gang of more than a dozen other elf girls roughly her age; she only really led them because her mother had been the one to train them all, and it made sense for the other girls to look to Adaia's daughter for orders. When she and Alistair became the only surviving Wardens in the country and he made no effort to take charge... it was a role she thought she knew how to fill. Not that different from her old gang.
In the end, she never really knew what she was doing any more than him. She was just better at pretending. Neither of them can afford to pretend anymore.
"You never just followed me, Alistair. You've been with me from the start. You've done as much as I have."
She shuts the door behind her quickly when she leaves, so she can pretend not to hear him murmur, "No, I haven't."
The lamps flicker low as she passes through the corridors again. Morrigan is waiting.
Maybe Morrigan will understand. She has to know that she never made it easy for Alistair to want anything to do with her. She has to know that she could have tried to be less sharp with him, that he could have been more open to the idea if she hadn't been so deliberately hostile.
But maybe not. When Riona pries open the door and Morrigan turns around, her golden eyes narrow sharply at Riona's lack of company.
"Taking his time, is he?" Morrigan says archly. Maybe Riona is imagining it, but she thinks a flicker of fear shifts across Morrigan's face.
If she doesn't get this ritual, she doesn't get the archdemon vessel. She loses the potential for all that power.
But, Riona thinks. But Morrigan might also lose a friend.
Part of her wonders which is of those is more important to her. Either way, it doesn't matter. Morrigan is scared for her. She wishes she had better news.
"Morrigan," Riona starts, and Morrigan's shoulders stiffen, draw back. She opens her mouth to interrupt —
The door swings open again, and Alistair stomps inside, boots heavy and loud on the stone floors. "I'm here," he snaps, not looking directly at either of them when they whirl around to gape. "Let's get this over with."
"Alistair —"
He bristles, and holds up a hand to stop Riona's protest. She shuts her mouth with a click, obedient for probably the first time in her life. "You said this was my choice, right? I'm making it. Ferelden has lost enough Wardens. If this can keep us from losing more, I'll do it."
For a moment when Riona turns to Morrigan, the witch's face is open and unguarded in the firelight.
That's her earlier question answered, then. There is no triumph in Morrigan's expression, only the exhausted relief of someone who knows a close call when they see it.
As soon as she sees Riona looking, Morrigan rearranges her features back to haughty indifference, but Riona wraps her heart around that look and tucks it behind her ribs.
"A wise decision," Morrigan says. Alistair frowns darkly.
"I don't want to hear it, alright?" he tells her. "I said let's just get this over with."
They glare at each other, neither of them moving.
Finally, Riona edges toward the door.
"Be gentle," she says to both of them, a little desperately. "Don't hurt each other."
They each look like they're torn between reassuring her and being offended by her concern for the other, and she takes advantage of their distracted silence to duck out of the room entirely.
When she gets there, Zevran is still in his room — their room now, Riona supposes, since it's clear she won't be getting hers back. Not that she'd want it, after — after.
If she had to put money down, she would bet that Zevran hasn't moved an inch since she left before, still standing by the door waiting for her. Watching her expectantly.
"He's doing it," she says, shoulders bowing.
They say the ancient elves were immortal, living endlessly for countless millennia. Riona can't imagine it. She already feels a thousand years old, and she's fraying with it.
Lifting one arm up toward her, Zevran silently invites her to approach him if she wishes, and she falls immediately into the embrace without a thought.
Eventually he walks her across to the fireplace, where she quietly lets him puppet her through the motions of stripping off her armor. His hands are gentle and methodical on the buckles at her hips, the laces at her chest. When he pulls away the last layer of clothing, she hardly has the time to shiver in the air before he slips one of his own tunics over her head. He pushes the sheets of the bed aside and leads her into it.
They settle together under the blankets after Zevran has unbuckled his own armor, limbs coiling around each other a little too tightly for regular comfort, her mouth against the hollow of his throat, his fingers tracing the sharp shell of her ear and lingering on the golden hoop of his earring. It's nothing less than a desperate, undisguised cling. Neither of them expect much real sleep.
"Am I doing the right thing?" Riona murmurs, shutting her eyes. "Letting him go through with this? Just in case it saves us?"
Zevran presses his mouth hard against her temple. "I suppose we will only find out tomorrow, one way or the other."