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Floriane’s first sight of an alienage is illuminating. They have walked a day and a night and another whole day. Some window of opportunity has presented itself to Maman to visit her old home. Young Floriane is uninterested in city elves. She is more curious about the humans she catches glimpses of through the gate. In the memory she must be young, only a girl. Her mother would not have brought her anywhere near Val Royeaux once her magic came in. Her mother has counseled her to be quiet, to not say a word about this trip. Her mother said, “If you tell anyone we went to the Val Royeaux alienage I will send you to live there with your aunt.”
There is great filth in the alienage, and many shockingly dirty children. Maman has said she must not be judgemental, that the alienage is a special and difficult place, but Floriane cannot help but flinch away. She lives in a red-hooded aravel, and she sleeps in a hammock. She can wash her whole body when they camp near a river, any time she wants. She can see the sun and the birds every morning.
The alienage is unbearably close and dirty. Much more interesting is the tiny bazaar, crushed into a minuscule space and running far down the alienage wall. There are many comparatively bright and appealing things to look at, women selling jewelry, men selling tools, everyone jostling and shouting about prices with great energy. Dogs chase each other in the mud, spraying fetid water.
Maman is quite fashionable and Floriane hopes the trip will end with them carrying home two bales of colorful fabrics, one for each of them. Instead they turn onto a dirt pathway between the ends of two broken fence posts. It is squalid, with towering slanting buildings and no light in the streets. In Maman’s old home, though, there is always a lantern merrily burning and scented herbs on the flame. The room is snug and just the size of an aravel interior. It is just like the stories she tells. In the stories there are three of them, Jeannette, Florence, and Armand. Chevaliers did something horrible to Armand; Maman will not tell her what.
The two women embrace and braid their hair together. They cry. They hold hands. Floriane climbs onto a wooden chair and kicks her feet.
“When will she get the marks, Jeannette?”
Floriane can hear in her aunt’s tone what she thinks of the vallaslin. Maman laughs, and says “Does she look like a woman to you yet, Florence?”
This is the aunt Floriane is named after. The two women laugh together, like gaily colored birds, and Floriane’s face grows hot. Florence asks, “And what color will they be? Ah. Her hair, her eyes. A shame.”
Maman tuts, “A shame…any color on her will be dreadful to match.”
Florence comes closer to Floriane with a sigh of skirts and slides one delicate finger down the length of Floriane’s ear to the point. This close Floriane can see the skirt is cheap linen with blobs of tangled thread and loose gaps in the weave, but the dye is a marvelously worked indigo. She wants to stroke it for the intensity of the color.
Musingly Florence says, “Oh, perhaps three, four earrings a side…do you have time, Jeannette? I have a darling set of copper rings. It can be her feast day gift.”
“That is very sweet of you,” Maman says, and she and Florence move aside to the hutch and then to the lantern. Maman said she must be good in the alienage, that she had not seen Aunt Florence since she left to seek the Dalish. This was ancient history, years before Floriane was born. Her mother comes around the table and takes Floriane’s head in her cold iron grip.
“Hold quite still, da’len,” Maman says, and kisses her forehead. Florence takes her ear, and drives the hot point of a bronze needle straight through. Floriane screams. Her eyes water, and thick tears fall.Maman’s grip loosens mildly when she does not flinch or jerk away. Her ears are pierced three more times. The earrings are quite darling, with little copper spangles hanging flashing from them, and Floriane is so pleased with her own reflection in the glass that she soon forgets the pain. They cannot take the risk of remaining past nightfall, and Maman cries lustily when it is time to say goodbye to Florence.
Florence strokes Floriane’s hair. She says, “Goodbye, sweet girl.”
She never sees her aunt again. Many years later, she will learn that her aunt died or disappeared in the pogroms after the Blight. Maman takes leaving her sister very hard, and takes to her bed for many months, as she did when Papae died. Floriane’s magic erupts around this time, and she is suddenly very busy. The more magic she learns, the more stories she memorizes, the more Maman decorates her clothing, the more Maman insists on only speaking Orlesian in their tent. Floriane stops spending time with the other children. They look at her strangely, anyway. She must fill her head for the good of the People, and she must be stern and serious and self-controlled enough to ward off the temptations of demons. Floriane interprets this to mean if one wants nothing, one is tempted by nothing.
She grows strong and strange like a weed, and she learns as much and more as the Keeper can teach. She is well-spoken and finely formed, and liked by children and halla lambs. She is a fine example. She is miserable and lonely. Her only company are two old women and the halla. She is known to the clan but apart from them all. She has never had a friend of her own.
When she is a woman it is time for the vallaslin. Maman is there, of course, holding her hand, whispering strengthening words in her ear. The Keeper has explained the process to her, and she is not frightened. The Keeper is dear and familiar, and holds her other hand before they start. They pray together, and the Keeper retrieves her equipment.
She applies her ink with a long, long bronze awl, with a very thin tube that runs into Floriane’s arm and vanishes under her skin. Floriane feels a snap of magic, like a snap of fingers, and the tube fills with red ink.
“Aneth ara,” the Keeper says. “Are you ready to begin?”
“Yes,” Floriane says.
Maman smiles a bit stiffly and says, “Hold quite still, da’len.”
It is a burning brand from the first instant. There is magic in the ink, and the magic in her own blood calls the burning down into the flesh around it. It does not take long. June’s mark is not complicated. In the glass Floriane sees herself; the vallaslin are only a rose madder outline, and will be filled in over time. She is quite pleased, turning her face back and forth with her earrings tinkling.
She feels the cold of Maman withdrawing.
“Well,” Maman says. Floriane’s pleasure is spoiled before Maman can even continue. She knows that Well. “Your father would be proud. I suppose we cannot do anything about the color.”
Floriane meets with the Keeper two more times. Maman does not come. In fact she never makes another reference to Floriane’s vallaslin. Her eyes linger on Floriane’s face, thinking poisonous thoughts. Maman has long despaired of Dalish fashions. She left the alienage for love, and stayed for her child, but she has always been clearly ill at ease. If she harbored some secret impossible dream of returning home and installing her mage daughter as a servant in some wealthy household it is well and spoiled. No rich dowager wants an elf with face tattoos skulking about.
Floriane has always thought Maman planned on returning to the alienage with her in tow. Her magic put a great damper on this idea, but it would not have dissuaded Maman, who is uncommonly determined. Floriane does not know if she would have gone, but now that she is a woman Maman will no longer decide. She takes great pleasure in deciding for herself.
When Floriane goes to the Conclave, Maman stays with the clan in Wycome. She says to Floriane, “Ma vhenan, your heart will point you to me. When this is done, I will await you here at home.”
Maman is thinking of husbands. Floriane is thinking of tanning leather. She always thinks of tanning leather when Maman alludes to this kind of thing.
There is a great deal to see in the human lands to the south. Everywhere elves suffer. They are servants, they are slaves, they are passing unnoticed through every staircase and doorway. The city elves are bent like wheat in a hailstorm. Floriane passes among them, and she arrives at the Conclave having learned to bend her neck if she doesn’t want to be watched closely. She is not tall for an elf, but she has a proud nose and a proud neck. She has never needed to be ashamed of who she is, only of how she looks.
When she falls out of the Fade-when she bursts out of the Fade-she is screaming hideously from the pain in her hand. When she comes to in Haven’s sad little prison, she has forgotten all about it, but her palm is scintillating in the dark. She is chained to the floor, one cuff on each wrist, and she yanks at them in a blind panic. Cassandra and Leliana interrogate her like the terrorist they assume she is.
Their first impression of each other was a bad one, and this one is worse. All of Floriane’s instincts say “enemy”. In six months she will be willing to die for these women.
She is surrounded by foes. She is cold and alone. Her hand hurts so fucking badly. She cannot think, so she does what Maman might do. She blubbers and whimpers on her knees on the floor. When Cassandra marches her, hands bound, out to see the gash in the sky, she could faint.
She stops choking on her snot and comes back to herself the minute she sees a demon. This she knows how to do. Magic, her first friend, comes roaring out of her, and the pain in her hand makes her scream. The mark is doing something to her magic, or sucking it out like a parasite. The torrent keeps flowing, though, and so she keeps casting.
+
She picks one of the withering wildflowers off the edge of the path and sticks it behind her ear. There are many people awaiting her at the entrance of the Haven chantry, a woman and a man alongside Leliana and Cassandra and the crowd of locals behind them. It is good to see familiar unfriendly faces.
The man is big and blond, with a charming scar in his top lip. He smiles at her. The flower falls out of her hair, and she suddenly feels like a silly child. He is still smiling at her, and when she smiles back he stops. Is it a game human men play? He stands tall and healthy. He has all his teeth. Her face is hot but he keeps looking at her. He may be unfamiliar with the vallaslin. He opens and closes his mouth. Eventually he settles on a form of address.
“My lady Lavellan,” he says. “You are not what we expected.”
“Obviously,” she says, surly from the repetition. She is not going to bow or curtsy. His gaze moves from her face downward to her waist, down the slant of heavy wood staff behind her back to her glowing hand then back to her waist to linger. What is he looking for? She clicks her tongue at him, like a dog, and he comes to attention though he does not look kindly at her for it.
She is no better. When he swallows she watches his throat move. His hair drifts nobly in the breeze. With difficulty she says, “I have not had occasion to make much conversation with your kind. I hope you are not nervous around magic.”
“I can’t say I’ve met many Dalish apostates,” he says, with something like a stiff smile. His teeth are bared. She does something like a stiff smile back. They would have stayed there awkwardly until the end of time without Leliana intervening.
“Your embroidered shoes are very Orlesian, my lady Herald,” she says, indicating the beads, silver and sleek as salmon flickering in the river’s current. They are a Dalish style, with a thin sole, and she wears them sporadically. Maman embroiders anything that will hold still long enough. Floriane has acquired all kinds of the beads that Maman is mad for; Maman will be apoplectic with joy when she returns.
“Yes,” Floriane says. “My mother is Orlesian.”
“We are not nervous around magic, here,” Leliana says firmly, and gives Floriane the gift of efficiently escorting her into the Haven chantry on her elbow. She does not have to face a room of strangers alone. She does not know Leliana, but she is familiar. Even Cassandra would be better than being alone. Leliana continues, as they walk briskly, “So you must not be nervous around us. You are the Herald. That will be stress enough.”
The chantry is full to the gills with flat eared humans. She is their savior. They believe in her. They believe she heard their prophet. They see Andraste’s likeness in her profile, and she cannot make them blind to it. If the ears and magic will not do it, neither will her words. All she can do is fill the role she has been given.
Do her people believe in her? She has not made space among her gods for the human god. She hopes they know that somehow. She is only the vessel of another. She has a job to do, and then she will go home.
“Is it not strange for you that I am an elf?” Floriane murmurs to Leliana.
“I imagine you are sick of hearing that.”
“Yes, I am. But are there any elves here at all?”
“Certainly. Some servants, mostly.”
“I see.” Floriane stops walking. The ceiling of the chantry is painted in plaster relief, not unlike the old Dalish frescoes. It is a lime plaster, requiring the artist to paint into a freshly laid lime plaster wall, while the plaster is still wet. It is work that requires a careful hand and patience. To avoid the crowds she looks at the paintings. There are more advisors standing close by, and servants ready to receive her. She fears she will never truly be alone again. The commander is right behind her, practically breathing down her nose while she gawks upward. She gets the hint and hurries along.
+
It is only one step. She must move her feet, or she will die in the caves under Haven. The wind outside the cave hits like a hammer. She takes many, many staggering steps. She has never been so cold and so tired. The stars are high and indifferent above the storm lashing her to and fro with wind. She is going to die and she does not care. She only wants to lay down. After the first time she falls it happens again and again. She has lost all sense of direction in the haze of snow.
A steep slope opens up below her. She starts on a long slant. Her feet are very heavy. It takes all of her weight to step into the snow. There is only darkness before and behind. She must keep going.
Faintly, in a dream, someone calls “There she is!” and she staggers back across the slope towards the voice. There is a candle’s worth of light far away. She collapses down the slope and slides. She can go no farther. Someone has seen her. Someone is coming for her. She is lifted from the snow.
+
Floriane is lost deep in the guts of Skyhold, not for the first time, when she hears a deep voice echoing from the most isolated washroom in the hold, with a warped door that doesn’t seem to close all the way. It sounds like someone practicing chantry chorals. The flooring is uneven and prone to creaking. She creeps closer, ready to leap. She knows that voice. It is Cullen. He seems to be shaving. The floor creaks under her foot, and they make eye contact in the glass on the wall. He stops singing to turn around in a great hurry.
“Inquisitor?” he asks, sounding as confused and panicked as she is. “What brings you down here?”
“Um,” she says, intelligently, and flees. She hears a faint “Wait!” but she is too far down the corridor to be caught, and she bounds away like one hunted for sport. She cannot think straight. She can only run.
Floriane is even more lost by the time he catches up, clothed this time. An ever present gape in the wall lets in cold air, and she is shivering both from nerves and cold. Half his chin is unshaven. She could warn him. She doesn’t. She has never been so humiliated in her life.
“I’m sorry!” she yelps. “I did not mean to-I was lost and I heard you singing.”
“Pray keep it to yourself,” he says sharply. He pinches the bridge of his nose and inhales.
“Certainly,” she says. “If I may go-“
“You are going the wrong way,” he says, and takes her firmly by one arm. Her arm is on fire where his palms and fingers touch her. They march together out of the bowels of the hold in silence and then he lets go as if burnt.
“You should try and get your bearings in Skyhold,” Cullen says. “No more wandering about. Good day, Inquisitor.”
To give the man credit he treats her as neutrally as ever at the war table. One would never guess, and anyway Floriane would hear Leliana or Josephine snickering if she had anything to be worried about. He often gives her looks laden with meaning that she does not understand. When she looks back with an eyebrow lifted for clarification, he rolls his eyes and looks away. She has a hard time focusing; she knows that voice very well. She is going to have to go back. Cullen need never know. She can be very discreet.
Some days later she manages the timing again, and in a moment of peace slips through a doorway and scampers down into the hold. She trails her hand along the stone walls on the way down the spiral stairs. She approaches the door on cat feet. She leans against the wall in an agony of interest, hands and ears pressed tight to the stone of the corridor. He seems to know a great many chorales and ditties, some of them bawdy Orlesian classics Maman sang but most new to Floriane. After this she follows any chance she can get, despising herself, but feeling like a huntress following prey.
Floriane takes great precaution to be silent, magical and practical. She would die before she is caught again. He is just so irresistibly serious every other minute of his life. It is the only blackmailable behavior she allows herself. It becomes an escape: the two of them entombed so deep into Skyhold that she is almost alone, no one following her or asking questions or staring at her starry eyed. As long as she escapes fleet-footed before he finishes washing up no one is the wiser.
Otherwise she is waking in shivers in the middle of the night, confused and longing, bowing under the weight of the title Inquisitor. She is so homesick that dreams of the Keeper or Maman leave her retching bile every sunrise. Her hand continues to eat itself, sometimes stinking like meat up close, sometimes audibly crackling like embers. Her behaved, orderly magic senses freedom and begins to twist spells unpredictably or explode out of her hand.
There is no one she can tell. There is no one in Skyhold that sees the scared woman behind the Inquisitor. She has to control herself. She has to control her magic. It is the oldest problem in the grimoire. If she wants to go home, she has to keep her head on straight.
All she can do is pray, at first to June and Sylaise and then any she can think of while she rocks back and forth. As if they can hear her through the caul of magic over this hold, amidst a flood of voices raised in praise of the Maker. When no one answers she must resort to the oldest solution she has: she simply does not want anything, and the suffering stops.
+
On another evening she is about to pass the chapel when she spies the shadow of a figure by candlelight. She sidles up to the door to peek inside. At the far end, in darkness from the waist up, is the familiar statue of Andraste, head bent over her sword. Below in the smear of light is a figure kneeling with hands splayed open on their knees. She creeps a little closer into the chapel. It is Cullen, of course. Everyone else in Skyhold closes the door when they want privacy. He is praying, very obviously and with great fervor, but she can’t hear about what. There is a desperation to read in the angle of his bent back. She doesn’t want to listen, but she is compelled to move nearer.
He whips around and throws an object in a tight arc into the wall. It clatters and falls aside. Now that he is on his feet he sees her almost immediately. Once more Floriane yelps, caught in another’s private moment, and flees. She is very fast on foot, and when he snatches her by the wrist she is practically pulled out of the air mid-leap. The candle gutters but does not go out. She didn’t make it to the door.
“No running this time, rabbit,” he says. He sounds tired. He has to lean closer to see her in the gloom, and she would take a step back if she could. She is terrified he will lean still closer and do-something. She does not know what. The ring of his thumb and index finger is the hottest part of her body. He is so sweaty his hair is dark and wet. His eyes and mouth are set stern and cold, but she has never learned fear of the templar. She cannot say he is a friend, but she is sympathetic to suffering. He snaps, “Can you not stop yourself from spying?”
“No,” Floriane says with great fervor, “I truly don’t think I can.”
The smallest mercy is that he takes her behavior as general, instead of realizing she is only following one person around like so. He says rabbit but not like the Orlesians do; it’s not a nice word when he says it, either. What would Maman say? She must say the opposite. Maman would have kicked him at rabbit, but Floriane was raised strictly.
She says, “Are you well, Cullen?”
Cullen lets go of her wrist. He didn’t grip hard but she rubs it anyway. He says firmly, “Quite well. Simply taking a moment for contemplation. But you aren’t Andrastian, are you? Why are you here?”
She opens her mouth to make an excuse, but what comes out is, “You look very ill.”
Cullen visibly reorders himself, straightens up, flattens his hair. He asks, “You want me to believe you are spying out of compassion?
She says, “No. Forgive me. That was not on purpose. I will leave you to your contemplation.”
Before she reaches the door of the chapel he says, “Wait. I should not have said rabbit. I am sorry. That was not kind.”
She pauses and looks back. She has nothing to say to that. He is right. She asks, “What did you throw?”
“An awl,” he says quite shortly. His jaw is moving again. She considers asking more questions, but it will do no good. He will have to deal with his miseries privately. His eyes look very tired.
“I see,” she says. “It was unkind of me to intrude on a private moment. Good evening.”
“Inquisitor,” he says. “It is a fine night. Would you like to accompany me outside?”
“Whatever for?” she asks, appalled. Something has spoiled in his head if he thinks she’s going out alone, in the dark with a templar, retiring or otherwise. She takes a small step back, but he sees it, and winces.
“I only…” he trails off uncomfortably. He sighs. “It is a fine night for a walk, we are both here, and you have little enough peace in your life.”
“Oh,” she says, “Alright.”
He blows out the candle and takes her by the arm to steer her out. Her mouth is dry. His hand is very warm, and it might linger longer than truly needed. It is a nice night, with the magic of Skyhold’s walls keeping it temperate. If she had a moment to orient herself she could name the constellation overhead. The smell of early spring is in the air. They are both quiet for a long moment. Floriane’s head is completely empty. Some red-hot line in her is oriented to point to wherever he is standing.
“I have never met anyone like you,” Cullen says eventually. His voice is soft and thoughtful, and this does very upsetting things to her stomach and pulse. Then he stops it cold by saying, “You are the only mage I have ever been friendly with.”
“We treat mages differently,” Floriane says archly. “We don’t cage or mutilate them. There are no Circle mages like me.”
“I imagine the magic you learned is not much like what they teach in the Circles,” he says.
She asks, “How would I know? The Keeper knows much and more of spirits, and of healing. I learned all she knows, and all the stories as well. I prefer more exciting magic.”
“I don’t like the sound of that, I’ll admit.”
“I don’t care,” she says, and laughs.
After a moment he laughs too, and says, “I am not a templar here. You don’t need to skulk about.”
“I do,” she says. “It’s the only time people leave me alone.”
A brief pang of guilt. The skulker’s dilemma. She is only ever truly alone when she is sneaking around, keeping someone else from being alone. Looking and sounding reluctant, Cullen says, “I am not always in my office. You are welcome to hide in it.”
“Oh, no,” she says immediately. He is so perfectly and rigidly polite she knows he is lying. She is not in any way welcome to it. “It is kind of you to offer.”
He looks greatly relieved. Floriane teases, ”You don’t want me moving things around in your desk drawers.”
Cullen turns red at this. He looks sick in the stomach. Her heart seizes and keeps beating. Perhaps the desk is too personal a topic. Cullen says, “Yes, let’s forget the office.”
Floriane has never told a joke successfully, and it appears it will not be happening with Cullen, either. Maman would try again, but Floriane is a coward. Maman learned to flirt in Val Royeaux and her wiles are wasted among the Dalish, her daughter especially.
“Perhaps we should call it a night,” Floriane says. When she looks up he is staring at her. She asks, “What? You are very sweaty. Surely you want to go to bed?”
“I will return to my contemplations,” he says. His voice is choked. He must be very ill, in fact, for the fresh air to make him so much worse.
“Poor dear,” she says. Instead of going inside they both continue to linger in uncomfortable silence. It’s easy to stay out in the cool dark. It’s almost like being alone. After working his mouth for at least two or three failed attempts, Cullen manages to ask, “Does the mark bother you?”
“Sometimes,” Floriane says. The marked skin feels flayed, morning and evening, any time she uses magic in particular. She keeps her pains close to her chest. “Was it very difficult to be a templar?”
Cullen laughs at this, humorlessly. “Yes and no. More than you can imagine.”
“Were you kind to the mages you policed?”
She asks sarcastically, but he considers before answering. This is a daring question, but the peace of the quiet between them holds. He says, “Sometimes.”
Floriane says, “I like who you are now.”
Even in the dark she can see how red he turns. With great effort, he says, “I like you, too. I admire your determination to succeed.”
“Maman would say I am not smart enough to know how to quit,” she says. “But we have a job to do. I intend to do it.”
“Is it only you and your mother?”
“My father died when I was very young. He was an orphan,” she says. “I had an aunt in Orlais, too.”
“That’s all?”
“Have you ever been in an alienage?” she asks. “It is not a place full of big happy families.”
“You are Dalish,” he says, casting a lingering glance at her tattoo. His eyes are softer than Maman’s. “But your mother is from an alienage?”
“When I was small she said she left for love,” Floriane says, with a little shrug. “She did not mention the chevaliers riding with swords aloft until I was much older.”
“You would have ended up in the Circle before long, if she hadn’t left,” he says. He sounds very strange when he says this.
“My mother wouldn’t have let that happen,” she says. “Maman is a lion.”
“People find ways to hide it,” he says. “But few are strong enough to resist the kind of temptation a demon can offer.”
And again she has nothing to say to this and she lets the breeze carry their words away. They stand in silence awhile longer, not looking at each other.
At length, Floriane says, “I am unusually strong willed. I think it's less inevitable than you seem to.”
“I didn’t mean to imply…” Cullen trails off and hesitates. “Well. I suppose I did. I know better than most what it is like.”
He is starting to sweat again, talking about magic. She steps back a little more and asks, “Why are you looking at me the way you are?”
He looks deeply conflicted about answering. Quietly, hardly a whisper, he says, “I am no longer taking lyrium.”
This is not an explanation but a confidence, she understands, and she must keep it to herself. She puts her hand on his arm, sympathy overcoming the lurch in her stomach. At the same volume she says, “You were praying over it?”
“I was,” he says. They are not friends, and he must not fear her judgement. He stands very still under her hand. Even without the pauldrons his shoulders are broad. She despairs for herself. Outside of a game of chess this is the longest they have spent in each other’s company. The wind whistles clear through her head. Floriane’s ears are so high and tense her jaw hurts. Cullen asks, “Do you truly believe you heard Andraste? Even though you don’t believe?”
“I am a messenger,” she says. “That requires no belief.”
“Your clarity of purpose is commendable.”
“I want to go home,” she says. Her voice is controlled. “I have to fix the Breach to do that.”
He puts his hand over hers, lightly as if afraid. He swallows. He says, “You can go back, but it isn’t the same.”
“I want my mother,” Floriane sniffles. Then the moment passes, the ripples on the surface still, and she is calm again. She says, “I have never been away this long.”
She does not say, And there are too many humans here, but she feels it urgently. And they all have problems they need me to fix, while they look at me like dirt on their shoes, she could say. It is ungrateful and ill-mannered. She has never been as anti-human as some among the Dalish, but she is tiring of their small eyes and round ears and the derision in their voices. They say An elf? like they might say A dog?.
And yet they believe she can save them. And yet Cullen believes she can save them. Tasty thoughts to savor. In this light maybe she can be more forgiving. Cullen’s hand presses down on hers.
+
After she knows about the lyrium, Cullen is happy to talk about magic, when she feels like punishment. It would be impolitic to tell the apostate Herald that you disapprove of apostates and yet he clearly wants to. She has flounced out of his office after an argument more than once. The only solace is that he gets as angry as she does, and he is very good looking when he is angry.
The chantry explosion in Kirkwall seems to Floriane to show the scale of the suffering. It was an act of desperation. She would not have done it, but she can understand the apostate’s choices. Somehow Cullen, who had seen Kinlock and Kirkwall both purged of their mages, takes a moderate position. She is able to admit that. The southern mages are free, however, and it sickens her to think of enclosing them like livestock. Soon, she will be home, among civilized folk again.
Over a game of two-in-the-hand Floriane asks, “What do you think happened to that apostate? The one you knew in Kirkwall?”
“The terrorist?” Cullen asks, without looking up from his cards. His face hardens. “If he’s managed to keep Hawke as his guard dog, I think he’s likely doing well.”
“I find them to be terribly romantic,” Floriane says boldly. This is not a tack she has chosen before.
“You have notoriously poor taste, Inquisitor,” he says. “Some would call you a romantic.”
“Say it if you must, but the two of them running away is like a story,” she says. She puts two cards down. “It is your move.”
“You have read Varric’s book,” he says, and flicks through the cards in his hand. “I knew the two of them. It is not as romantic as all that. What else could the Champion have done? She hardly could have stayed in Kirkwall.”
“I think Hawke was very lonely,” Floriane says, with feeling. Cullen looks at her, and she looks away. She says, “And if I trap an animal, I expect it to bite me.”
“The man was already free,” he says wearily. He matches a card to one on the table and sets the pair aside. He replaces it with another from his hand, and says, “Your move. Any other apostate that flashy would have been clapped in irons.”
“Am I a flashy apostate?” she asks, amused.
He considers her for too long. The silence drags and stretches. Her face warms. At last he says, “Yes. But why would you be otherwise?”
She could tell him that ought to apply to every mage, but she lets him keep looking at her. She sorts among her cards. None of them are good options. She sighs and picks up another. She is perilously close to losing.
“The book certainly made them sound happy together,” she says doggedly.
He says, “I suppose they seemed happy enough. Is that your takeaway of the situation? Do you want to forfeit? Or play to the end?”
Floriane says, “No, I yield. I suppose it matters because it seems desperately sad otherwise.”
She folds her cards together and sets them down.
Cullen says, “I think they are two very dangerous people.”
“Am I dangerous?” she asks.
He says, “Yes. But I am among your faithful, regardless.”
“Oh, Cullen,” she says in dismay. “Not you, too. Can’t anyone be normal?”
He seizes her hand. He says, “You need not believe you were chosen for this. I do. It changes nothing.”
“I want one person to treat me like a person,” she says. Swiftly she takes his hand. She can seize an opportunity as well as anyone. She says, “Andraste says you ought to let me win more.”
He laughs, but there’s a frightful edge to it. He says, “I am not yet falling to my knees in rapture.”
Floriane says, “Can you not simply say, I believe in you? I am not the come-again prophet.”
No one takes Floriane seriously on this. She knows it is bad politics but she cannot stop pointing it out. She is alone, on all the earth. She is tired of worship. Sweat prickles on her neck and back.
When he does nothing but look at her she says, “Can we not just play another game?”
He says, “Of course,” but he does not let go of her hand.
She says, “You must stop looking at me like that. Right now.”
He says, “I must tell you something.”
In a kind of terror she says, “I must go.”
Yet she clings to his hands like a lifeline. She does not stand up. She lets him continue though it fills her with a confused, longing fear. He looks as sick as she feels. He says, “Can we meet in the morning? I cannot bear to tell you now.”
Yet he does not move either. Emboldened by this she says, “Tell me now, Cullen. You know how I feel.”
His grip tightens. “Yes,” he says, “I do. I’ve thought about it, too.”
He takes her by the jaw and kisses her soundly.
+
Not very long after losing her arm she decides it is truly time to go home. The south will have to solve its own problems. She has settled all her debts and more. The many voices of the Well argue the topic in her head. She brings the problem to Cullen.
“I must return to my people,” Floriane says. In the words she cannot say: the voices of the well, her missing arm, and a child’s wish to go home to mother, to take her place as First again. She will put on her old life like a soft leather coat. “Will you come with me?”
“Yes,” he says, easily, confidently. It is time to find her mother and the Keeper.