Serketin
There will be many months, many courted favors, and many boots licked before they’re able to get an invitation to Halamshiral. In the meantime, Adaar is handed to Leliana.
“It’s very…magelike,” Adaar says as the tailor flits about, measuring the first attempt.
“We’ll make sure they cannot forget you are one, much like how they cannot forget you’re Qunari.” Leliana taps her lip. “If we could get darker material for the bosom, like des Guenoles’ depiction in the Pastulaire cathedral?”
The tailor nods.
Adaar does not have the expertise to know when robes end and a gown begins, but she’s sure this is straddling the line obscenely. It is white with gold coins to hide its seams and huge billowing sleeves that are going to take a time and a half to get used to. It goes well with the new circlet—Adaar’s been wearing it while she’s being seen around Skyhold. If the goal was to downplay the regality of the image Hawke is crafting for her, then that’s sliding back inch by inch.
“That should be good for now,” Leliana nods.
Adaar lets out the gut she’s been sucking in. “We’re done?”
“Almost. Still a few more adjustments before it is Imperial Court ready. But let us see if we can make the tail end of small council.”
Hawke keeps her offices above Josephine’s, the mountains monitoring them from the sweeping windows. The light is nice, but the sheer drop always reminds Adaar how alone they are up here.
“The Prince of Starkhaven will,” Josephine holds up a letter, “be happy to accept any and all resources the Inquisition can provide for the reconstruction of Kirkwall.”
“He wants me to send my workers into my city just so he can take the credit for asking.” Hawke shakes her head. “It’s a wonder he ever made it as a Brother. He’s too good at this.”
“I have drafted a polite response indicating that the Viscount’s office will be happy to work with the Prince on reconstructing the Kirkwall chantry, as his friends in the Inquisition know he has a special interest in the location,” Josephine says, handing it across.
“Keep him cordoned off to one building,” Hawke nods. “I like it. Approved.”
“Weren’t the two of you friends?” Adaar asks as she and Leliana slide into the study. “You and the Prince before he was the Prince.”
“Something like that. And even that something gets more murky when you’re both all of a sudden leaders of opposing city-states.” Hawke glances up, then down as she lights a wax stick. “You look beautiful.”
Adaar folds her arms. “You could stand to say it a little more breathlessly.”
Isabela comes sweeping in as she always does—even Adaar’s tardiness can’t compare to the Captain’s consistency.
“So sorry I’m late everyone,” she says.
“No you’re not.” Hawke doesn’t even bother with the glancing.
“Adaar! What has our Spymaster put you in?” Isabela takes a full walk around, shamelessly inspecting every stitch, lifting up Adaar’s arms where she so fancies. “The threadwork is gorgeous. Real gold?”
“Indeed,” Leliana smiles, happy someone’s noticed.
“See, like that,” Adaar says.
“Have you ever thought about getting your ears pierced, Poppet?” Isabela asks, lifting a lock with one finger. The pads of them are calloused. Adaar can feel them with the sensitive flesh on her nape.
“I haven’t, no,” Adaar says. “But I haven’t not thought about it…I suppose I wouldn’t be opposed…”
“You know just how to tempt me,” Isabela purrs. “You should let me do it. I’ve done hundreds, no one’s ever complained. Your first time won’t even hurt.”
“Merrill cried the whole time.” Hawke presses her seal into crimson wax.
“That’s Merrill.” Isabela winks at Adaar. “Our Herald is made of much sterner stuff.”
“Ahem,” Josephine says, some color in her cheeks. “If we could look at the last item, then I will be able to meet with Duke Cyril in a timely manner.”
“Of course,” Hawke waves her hand.
“It will be quite quick. After our business with the Crows was concluded, Master Arainai had a few letters of direct correspondence. For you Leliana. And,” Josephine passes the second letter, “for Viscount Hawke and Captain Hawke.”
“You took her last name?” Adaar asks Isabela.
“I like taking,” Isabela says devilishly, and drapes herself over Hawke’s shoulder to read.
Leliana finishes hers quickly, snorting as she folds it half a dozen times and slips it into one of her pockets. Hawke and Isabela indulge however, creating the now familiar picture of Isabela leaning over an armored shoulder and whispering filthy tidbits into Hawke’s ear.
“Oh, Zevran,” Isabela sighs wistfully.
“For once I agree,” Hawke says. “Oh, Zevran.”
“Is something the matter, Josephine?” Adaar inquires, startled.
The Ambassador is in some kind of state, the darkening in her cheeks now in her ears as well. “No! No, I am quite alright.”
“Very sorry to keep you, Lady Montilyet,” Hawke says, completely deadpan as she passes the letter over her shoulder with two fingers. Isabela takes it with a flick. “We can conclude this week’s meeting. As you know, Varric has uncovered a promising lead on the red lyrium source, and the Herald and I will be gone for a short while to investigate. In the meantime,” she adds as everyone gathers themselves, “let Duke Cyril know he’s welcome to stay as long as he likes. I’d cherish the opportunity to become reacquainted upon my return.”
This sends Josephine from the room in a flurry of blushing of courses and ruffling skirts.
“You can be quite cruel,” Leliana says, but she’s grinning as she takes the opposite exit.
“Did I miss something?” Adaar asks, half wondering how she’s going to get out of this stupid gown without the tailor’s help.
Isabela just pats her cheek. “Don’t worry about it, Poppet. Fill your mind with shiny red things. That’s what Hawke’s been doing for two years now, and it distracts her just fine.”
Isabela’s right enough about that. Valammar empties her mind of mischief and fills it with images of fungal lyrium growing on palms.
“Alive?” she asks. “How can it be alive?”
“How is bread alive?” Bianca shrugs. “I can’t explain it other than that’s what every experiment keeps coming back to. I have a room like this one back at Estate Vasca, chock full of research validating it.”
“And you’ll be sitting tight on that research,” Hawke warns. “The last thing we need is fools trying to create their own red lyrium on top of the crop already out there.”
“I’m not an idiot, Inquisitor,” Bianca says, “but I’m not going to just hold onto it forever either.”
“You will until we figure out exactly how this is going to affect the crisis at large,” Hawke says. “Need I remind you that your carelessness directly resulted in the destruction of Haven, and countless other red templar instances besides. I’m being very generous with you here, Davri.”
“Oh, don’t go easy on my account, Hawke,” Varric scoffs. “She’s been hiding this from me too. Go have a trial for her, I don’t give a damn.”
Adaar glances between them. “You’re not serious?”
“Of course he’s not serious.” Hawke pinches the bridge of her nose, deflating slightly. “Alright Bianca. You can share your research, but only with an Inquisition approved Arcanist. Is that fair?”
“Now you’re the one who’s not serious,” Varric says. “You’re giving a slap on the wrist just because I said not to? I should try this reverse psychology shit more often.”
“Whose side are you on Varric?” Bianca asks.
“The side that didn’t give away one of the secrets of life to the first darkspawn who asked?”
“Uhg,” Isabela says. “Knew there was something wrong with. That guy. Larry.”
“Larius.” Hawke massages harder. “The Grey Wardens. Damn it all. I suppose I owe Leliana a drink.”
“Leliana?” Adaar asks. “Why?”
“Wardens have been going missing all across southern Thedas, since before even the Divine’s death. She insisted it was connected. I disagreed.”
“You disagreed?” Adaar reproaches.
“Yes?”
Adaar grinds her teeth, the bands of darkspawn the had to fight through just to get here fresh on her mind. “Just like you disagree whenever someone points out something you don’t want to hear? That’s not a disagreement that’s being blind.”
“It was a tenuous lead at best,” Hawke says.
“How could you not have mentioned this once?”
“It wasn’t relevant to our hunt for the lyrium source.”
“And because it wasn’t relevant you just stuck up your ass and sat on it, never inviting the rest of us in on what may or may not be critical information because you alone know what’s not important. Nobody else! To the point where you’re keeping things from us because you know if we heard of its mere existence, we might worry our pretty little heads about it.”
Her chest is alight like after casting a spell beyond her limits, leaving her prickled and numb. It’s also heaving, the silence that follows her voice clouding the small room.
“And I thought we had problems,” Bianca whispers discreetly. Varric nods.
“If you’ll excuse us for a moment,” Isabela says as she places a hand on the smalls of each of their backs. “It looks like we all have some things to work out. You two go snog or whatever it is you do when you meet up.”
“Always a charmer, Rivaini.”
When they’re on the lower terrace, Adaar braces, fully expecting Isabela to begin ‘mediating,’ which for her means making enough crass jokes until you’re too annoyed to be mad.
What she doesn’t expect, when they’re standing with the splash of the waterfall thundering in the distance, is for Hawke to say, “I’m sorry.”
“You are?” Adaar blinks.
“Yes. I made a mistake. Every minute that the Grey Wardens have been out there acting unopposed, that was due to my bad call.”
“Oh.” Adaar folds her tongue a few times before speaking. “I…I don’t think you need to apologize for that. It was a screw up, but you can move on from it. I’m more upset about the fact that no matter how far up the chain I go, you’re still keeping me out of the loop.”
“You’re not the only one,” Isabela hums. “Though I do like all this talk of chains and loops. Could we focus on that instead?”
Hawke glances away for a moment, down into the ravine. When she looks back she says, “Then I’ll try to work on that as well. I do value your input. I can learn to hear it before I make the final call.”
“…Wow.”
“What?”
“I just, never thought I’d hear you apologize,” Adaar admits. “Like, ever.”
“It’s not in my repertoire of skills,” Hawke shrugs. “I was raised in an environment where no one really holds a grudge, no matter how much you bust one another’s balls.”
“‘Bust one another’s balls?’” Adaar has to ask.
“I taught her that one,” Isabela says proudly.
“It’s more natural to simply move on from an argument when it’s over,” Hawke goes on. “However, I understand not everyone can function that way, and I’ll do my best to address these things in the future.”
“I…okay then. Apology accepted I guess.”
“Chains? Loops?” Isabela asks. “Anyone?”
No one answers her, but the silence that follows is peaceful, oddly so. Adaar thinks she’s right where she’s supposed to be: here, waiting with them under a layer of cool rock while the sun sends faint lines through the far distant foliage. When Varric and Bianca rejoin them, the feeling doesn’t fade, but settles into a drumming in the back of her mind as they swing back into their saddles.
It hounds her to Skyhold. Hawke and Varric go to brief the war room, but Adaar finds herself following Isabela into the Herald’s rest, catching a drink and watching the Captain schmooze with the regulars.
“People really like her,” Adaar says. “Without even her trying all that much. Or they don’t, and she doesn’t care at all.”
“That’s what happens when you’ve got a nice butt and you decide to get cozy with everyone,” Sera sulks. It makes her look even smaller than she usually does, with her too big shoes and her too big tankard. Though she puffs up bigger when she says, “Doesn’t work on me though, not that she didn’t try it.”
“I didn't mean it like that,” Adaar stutters, then her brain catches up with her mouth. “Wait. You slept with Isabela?”
“No I said she tried it, didn’t I? Weren’t you listening? Always talking funny with your big words contusion this and in-ravenous that-”
“Intravenous.”
“-and letting all those clutter up your head instead of thinking.” She reaches over and knocks on Adaar’s horn. “Sera to Herald! Pay attention.”
Adaar swats her away, remembering now why she rarely spends time at the tavern. “So what did Isabela actually do that pissed you off so much?”
“It’s not just her. It’s her and ‘ole Inky. Running around with everyone which way, which happens yeah, but you should be honest about it. Meaning should be caring, yeah?”
“So they’re not…committed?”
“That’s what I’ve been saying! They act like they are, but they’re not, and I don’t want someone to sit on my face so badly that I’d do it without caring about her. Not playing those games. So there. And anyone who wants to try and get me doing otherwise can stick it.”
With rounds about the bar, and betting in the corner, and a song on everyone’s lips but hers, Adaar watches how Isabela slings herself over the bard and declares a toast for whoever or whatever. Maryden smiles serenely, and Adaar suspects she might have seen that same interaction happen often and not noticed. How much else has been running by her?
“I…guess I still don’t know what Isabela said to you,” Adaar says. “Specifically.”
“You’re rubbish to talk to.” Sera downs her drink.
Adaar excuses herself with a, “likewise,” and decides it’ll be easier to think in her room.
The Wardens’ trail goes cold in the Western Approach. Ironic really, as Adaar gets her first near brush with heat stroke and an even nearer brush with a flame viper in rapid succession. Frederic tells her that it shouldn’t be fatal to a mammal of her size, but it does mean she has to lie in the heat and Vivienne’s company for some time while she recovers, neither of which are pleasant experiences. The Enchanter barely talks to her, which is a small mercy. She only comes by to flush Adaar’s system every half hour or so, tutting that her expansive skill set is being used on something as mundane as field medicine. The only thing that actually makes her happy is the promise that one of her Circle books is out here somewhere, and she instantly brightens when the party returns and Hawke hands her the tome she’s been missing so badly.
“For you, Madame Vivienne.”
“Inquisitor, dear, you are a treasure.”
Adaar perks up too. At least, she does until the better company she’d been looking for swipes her waterskin and begins guzzling it with barely a word.
“Hey!” she tells Isabela. “Leave me some. I’m sick!”
“That naturalist said you’d experience mild dizziness at worst,” Isabela says. “You got to have a lie down while I’ve been trekking all over this bloody desert!”
“I also had heatstroke,” Adaar complains.
“Near heatstroke.”
The skin is dribbled onto Isabela’s bandana, the pirate flipping her hair back to retie it with a glistening flourish, the sun radiating behind her. When she stands it is a bright red splash against a swath of near-black, striking enough to draw attention to her from anywhere in the desert.
“What?” she asks.
“What? What do you mean what.”
“You’re staring Poppet.”
“I can’t see anything else. You’re standing right over me.”
“Well then get up! The Seeker’s back, and Hawke’s not going to let you sit out the next round of Warden hunting as well.”
Adaar reckons Hawke would let her sit around all day if she asked, but she dusts herself off to go connect with the incoming scouting party. Hawke’s already got a map open, Cassandra tracing her route across it with a finger. They’d been hoping to find the Wardens before the grand ball in Halamshiral, but that’s becoming less and less likely. Even If they pick up the trail again within the next few days, odds are they’re going to have to return to Skyhold before they can divert their entire effort.
“There’s still this area, here see, between Fredric’s camp and Griffon Wing,” Hawke says.
Cassandra frowns. “Not a terribly large one.”
“Until we find the Wardens, we’ve got to scour every inch. Not to mention we still haven’t mapped Dustytop Fort-”
“I could check it out,” Adaar pipes up.
“You?” Hawke lets the very top of the map droop to look at Adaar over it.
“Yes, look there’s a rift the scouts marked. If Cassandra’s tired of being sent all over, I could lead the other party instead.”
“I am not tired,” Cassandra protests.
“But you don’t enjoy leading the scouting parties,” Adaar says.
“I…” Cassandra glances at Hawke, “simply feel I lack the direction our Inquisitor does. I am not even sure what I’m looking for at this point.”
A moue dimples Hawke’s cheek. Adaar knows what this is really about, that Hawke wants to keep her Herald close and always has, but she has promised to start trusting her with more responsibility. Adaar hangs in anticipation, waiting to see if the practicality is enough to erode Hawke’s lingering stubbornness.
“I suppose I can’t fault your logic,” Hawke says at last. “There’s no reason to drag you where there aren’t any rifts for you to close. If you’d like to take the lead to Dustytop Fort, the command is yours.”
The triumph lasts up until Adaar is half a mile from camp and realizes she has no idea what she’s doing.
“Uh,” she says, drawing her draft up short. “I may have forgotten to grab a map on the way out.”
“I have one, Adaar,” Solas says, bringing his horse beside hers, and never has she been so grateful for aloof elven mages since he found her a castle on top of a mountain. Especially since she can hear Isabela chuckling, and would probably expire right there if she embarrassed herself anymore.
It gets easier during the skirmish at the Fort. She knows battle better, known it since she was a kid disappointing her mother by saying she wanted to see the world. The world is certainly more dangerous than their corner in Hambleton—and temperamental, as the sun beating down on her won’t let her forget—but it’s worth it for width and breadth all. She knows how her comrades fit together in combat, playing to their strengths to stem the tide as demons flood from the rift. Isabela dispatches Despair with alarming speed, moving until there are doubles of her. Adaar and Solas coordinate to dispel new ruptures before they can burst. Within half an hour, they’re riding jubilant from the Fort; Isabela even has a new bottle of terrible swill she found while rooting through the garbage.
“You know it’s going to be awful,” Adaar laughs.
The clop of hooves is barely anything in the sand. It’s soothing almost. Even the usual sounds of desert creatures seem to have all disappeared.
“That’s what I like about it,” Isabela grins.
“Aren’t pirates supposed to like rum?”
“The Wardens distill the hardest whiskey you can imagine. They’re practically famous for it.”
“And ending blights, that’s just a footnote in their notable accomplishments,” Adaar says.
The desert heat makes its own bizarre sound, one that Adaar’s learned to tune out, but Solas has his head cocked, transfixed on the horizon.
“See, you get it,” Isabela smiles. “Point is, Warden whiskey is enough to take barnacles off the hull, and I’m not passing up on a chance to try that out.”
“Whether you found it under a pile of bones or no?”
She nods. “Whether I found it under-”
“Dragon!” Solas barks, mere seconds before the roar of wings extracts itself from the Abyssal Rift.
“Go!” Adaar screams over the wind.
They break into a gallop, soft hoofbeats turning to panic, their pace barely increasing as the horses struggle to gain footing on the unpacked sand. The dragon dives at them, a raptor falling on a rabbit. Its mouth spews a wall, which only Solas clears, Adaar stopping short as the flames shoot up into the sky. Her draft rears, throwing her, sand splattering as it catches the crashing framework of her body.
The back of her head colliding with the earth brings temporary silence. The crackle of fire and the shriek of the horses is replaced with ringing, a silent tableau as the dragon snaps up her terrified horse and drags it up into the sky. Luck and some practice at falling means she’s landed on her back—Qunari who fall on their sides end up with cracked horns, so most learn young. She’s still dazed though, possibly concussed, and fighting vertigo means it takes her an awfully long time to notice the true extent of the attack.
Isabela’s horse hadn’t thrown her when reaching the dragon’s fire. Worse, somehow. It hadn’t even stopped: charged into the flames anyway, then careened panicking through the blaze with its rider still in the saddle. It’s lying a few feet away, neck snapped.
The terror of what Adaar might see if she turns and looks further almost keeps her from doing it.
Almost, but not really. She twists, showering sand everywhere as she yells, “Isabela!” scrambling toward the flame pillar.
The landing has not been as kind to Isabela. She is dragging herself out when Adaar gets to her, skin blistering on one side, one boot still smoking and mostly turned to ash. Adaar chases away the last of the blaze with a cone of icy wind, but that doesn’t do anything for wounds already inflicted, earth already scorched, and all the while a voice in the back of her mind is warning her the dragon could be back any second. It could be hungry for the second horse, and oh fuck, Isabela, oh fuck, and where the hell is Solas? it shouts, so she falls down beside Isabela with her limbs shaking.
“Isabela! Isabela, are you with me?” she asks, helping her to roll onto the hip isn’t as badly burnt.
“Is my,” Isabela coughs. “Is my vintage alright?”
“…No. The horse smashed it.”
“Balls,” she says, then her eyes roll back in her head.
“Isabela!”
But she’s alive, her chest still rising with gravelly intakes, pulse thrumming under Adaar’s fingers. Just passed out, from the pain most like. The skies are empty, blue and wisp streaked, but they’re alone aside from the crackling remains of the dragon attack and the smell of singed horseflesh. Solas’s horse is probably still bolting. It was one of the more skittish ones, and Adaar now knows from experience that it can take ages to regain control of one of the beasts once they’re spooked.
She cranes her neck around, just to be sure. The flats stretch on and on around them.
Can she afford to wait for him? Can she do anything besides wait? She’s in the middle of the desert with an injured comrade, and her waterskin was on the horse which is now ten miles in the air and-
She’s hyperventilating. She can tell it in the way none of her gasps actually make it to her lungs, the way her chest feels like it's trying to crush her. She took this mission and screwed it almost immediately—no water, no map, and even her sense of direction is degraded by the anxiety settling into her.
Isabela groans. A little noise of pain in her sleep, her forehead transforming into a series of waves.
Adaar has to get a hold of herself. She reaches up, touching the yet-unhealed stud that’s been jammed into her ear—not so long ago, Isabela was pressed against her shoulder, humming innuendo about flesh and stabbing and all was right with the world, in a time centuries past—and lets the pain ground her. The immediate danger is gone. What’s priority is getting to the Keep, or running into Hawke’s party if she can’t manage that.
Solas would have poultices and a horse, but Solas isn’t here. This is her command. She’ll make do.
“Sorry,” she says to Isabela’s horse and she lifts her hands.
Past it, she reaches, grabs fistfuls of fade and yanks it back down into the poor creature. It lurches, then brings itself to a stand on half-broken legs. The neck pops into place with a wet squelch.
When it looks at her with its glowing, purple eyes, it makes her hate herself. She hates herself again when she has to lift Isabela—unable to avoid touching her burned side—and she whimpers even through unconsciousness. There is no graceful way to hold her while in the saddle. Adaar has to grip the reins with one hand, the marked hand, keeping Isabela upright in front of her with the other arm wrapped around her middle.
She kicks her heels, and the horse runs across a wasteland that was once as full of life as it was.
A place that truly wants us dead, Adaar worries as they become a singular dot of color on an empty expanse, just like Isabela’s red-on-black. She hadn’t truly thought it the first time they’d seen the dragon when leaving the Pass. She hadn’t even thought it when the flame viper had struck from the sack she was searching through. She only decides it now, when they are alone, and the rising heat claws up to eat her.
No, she can’t fall to pieces now. Her heart is pumping but Hawke’s voice says, take the reins, and she squints against the setting glare.
The Hawke in her head must be calling to the Hawke out in the real world. The shape of riders form out of the mirage, their paths back to Griffon Wing intersecting. It mustn’t look too strange, mustn’t look like anything’s wrong from a distance with Isabela sitting in front of her, because Hawke does not break into a gallop to meet them. Not until they’re perilously close and Adaar still hasn’t slowed. Only then does she lose composure.
Hawke does not shout Isabela’s name as she kicks her horse up beside them, though she obviously wants to, the word is half formed from her bared teeth, eyes wild but locked on the slumped form in front.
Instead, because she is Hawke, she demands, “What happened.”
“Dragon.” Adaar is out of breath. “Where’s Vivienne?”
“I sent her ahead to the Keep-” Hawke cuts off, calculations already twisting behind her amber eyes, making a decision a half-second later. “Pass her here, I’m a better rider than you.”
Adaar would rather get off the horses to do it, would feel safer that way with a droopy human she can barely balance, but one look is enough to tell her she will not question Hawke on this one. And it’s funny how that becomes a relief. How the physical burden is metaphorical too, hopeless anxiety passing upward, onward, a broken toy handed to her mother to fix while she’s almost in tears. She’s handing over the person she might now just care about most in the world, but it will be okay because the Inquisitor is there, and the Inquisitor will take care of Isabela.
They don’t drop her in the handoff. Hawke turns her mount, bellowing a, “Hi-ya!” and charges toward the fort in a cloud of dust.
She rides with a farmgirl’s confidence. Adaar forgets she was one, sometimes. She was a farmgirl and a mercenary and a soldier. She was a Viscount and an Inquisitor, and Adaar is being tugged after her by a bonehook in her shoulder.
Cassandra keeps her from charging after. “Solas?”
“I…” Adaar shakes her head, not in denial but to dismiss what’s come over her. What’s been coming over since that dragon first crashed down. “His horse panicked during the attack, I didn’t see where it ran off to.”
“We should look for him.”
Adaar glances toward Griffon Wing.
“Adaar. You have done what you could for her. Let us go help our apostate.”
“…Yes, yes you’re right.”
It takes them the sun’s journey from kissing the Keep walls to the horizon, but they find Solas no worse for wear an hour later. He is ruffled, keeping it under wraps with a layer of polite gratitude, and is more concerned with Adaar’s state than his own. It’d be sweet under normal circumstances. She’s not used to her company caring about her—easy camaraderie, yes, but not affection, and it strikes her that not only does she have someone who cares about her but multiple someones. It almost offers enough distraction.
She doesn’t know she’s been stealing forlorn glances at the horizon until Cassandra gently directs her shoulder back to the present.
When they ride back into Griffon Wing Keep, night following them, she has resolved not to worry about what she’ll find. Surely if the consort of the Inquisitor were dead, there would be banners flying half mast, a somber miasma drenched over the Keep that would leave no doubt something terrible had happened. Funnily enough, this line of thinking does not comfort her much, and she walks into the sick ward with stomach squirming.
“Finally decides to pay me a visit,” and oh how it solves some hitherto unknown puzzle in Adaar’s heart to hear Isabela greet her, no matter how weakly. “After nearly getting my tits blown off, you don’t even do me the decency of wasting away by my bedside until I wake up?”
“You’re blaming me?” Adaar says, grinning back into the comfortable pattern.
“I won’t blame you if you tell me the reason you’re late is because you were out there killing that bloody lizard for me.”
“Sorry to disappoint then.”
“Hawke was here waiting for me when I woke,” Isabela points out. Indeed; Hawke is still there, still in her armor and leaned so close to the bed she’s practically level with. “Unlike you, Hawke loves me. Isn’t that right, Sweet Thing?” The last diminutive is accompanied with a clumsy pat on Hawke’s cheek.
Hawke tells her mildly, “Stop trying to sit up, you’re tiring yourself.”
“Spoilsport.”
Though, Hawke’s not wrong. Isabela’s rich skin has taken on smears of grey in the torchlight, her eyes darkened in their sockets from the effort of suffering whatever healing they’ve put her through to make the burns on her side look several days old. When she’d risen to Adaar’s arrival a sheen of sweat had broken on her brow, which Hawke now frowns at. Hawke’s armor—Adaar’s never looked at it much. It has a scarf, or perhaps the remains of a shawl or cape resting tattered around its shoulders, which Adaar only now takes notice of because Hawke pulls it off with careful fingers in order to twist it into a ball. Reverently, she dabs at Isabela’s forehead, a frown barely tugging one corner of her mouth. Isabela flops back with a sigh.
How easy they make it seem. The simplicity of duty. Its raw honesty makes Adaar believe she shouldn’t be here for this, even this simple act of tending a loved one. Gauntlet and skin separated only by a scrap of royal blue, the fabric padding gently, gentleness ineffable.
She wants something easier, the casual back and forth made of simple emotions she doesn’t have to untangle. She takes a seat, swiping the waterskin beside the cot and helping herself to a much needed drink.
“Hey!” Isabela peeks through her lashes. “You’re stealing from the dragon victim?”
“I’ve been out in the desert hunting down that dragon,” Adaar smiles, “and you’ve been lying here getting a nap in. I think I deserve it.”
“Bad girl. You’re not allowed to use my own lines against me. Naughty.”
It’s good, close enough, but falling into it doesn’t chase away the uncertainty in her gut the way she hoped.
Halamshiral is beautiful the way Orlais is beautiful, the way Adaar knows that she is, now, beautiful. The way that humans appreciate things is a methodology she can almost understand but not grasp in its entirety. She is decked and resplendent; there is no pretense at subtly now, leaning into the imagery for all she’s worth. Even her hair is arranged like Andraste’s in her most famous depictions, voluminous and falling to her chest, stark white instead of blonde but shockingly close all the same. Though, hell, even in some murals the Bride of the Maker looks so platinum she might as well be Qunari, towering over her followers in a hierarchy of scale that turns them into ants before her. When Adaar entered the garden in circlet and robes and sensed every eye on her as she spoke to the Grand Duke, she had not felt beautiful. She had felt maddening.
It will only be more potent when she reaches the ballroom proper. Josephine has briefed her, but she still lingers outside the doors, wondering if she really has to be the one to go in first.
“You’re meant to be provocative, Poppet,” Isabela says. “Go on now, provoke them.”
“Shouldn’t I follow the Inquisitor?” she tries vainly.
Unconcerned, Hawke adjusts her cufflinks and says, “You’ve come this far, Adaar. Buck up.”
It’s not unkind, though. Adaar knows enough of Hawke now, knows enough that she doesn’t rankle even though she’s basically being told to stop being such a big baby. She’s not the only one meant to provoke, after all. The women of the Inquisition are suited in militarism and formality, resplendent in ceremonial tassels and round buttons in the Orlesian style, uniformed right down to their normally ladylike Ambassador. Bellicose. Masculine. Compared to the ladies of court, they have shed attempts at individuality, of fashion, arriving as one unified front upon the Winter Palace. Besides Adaar, they act as one.
Even Isabela hasn’t escaped it, though her admiral’s coat is loose and unbuttoned, a new and fancy hat to accompany it. It’s amazing that even with her chemises showing off a generous amount of cleavage, she manages to look remarkably dandified.
Hawke offers her arm. Isabela takes it. The Inquisitor says, “After you, Herald.”
She manages to keep her head held high through the long, slow walk to the Empress. The trail of her dress follows her across the marbled floor, glitz and gold around her, the titles applied to her sounding as though they happened to someone else.
“Most Radiant Sunburst of Her Holy Voice,” the court announcer declares. That’s a poisonous one. Leliana’s idea, no doubt.
More interesting to her is Hawke’s string of names, which she focuses on to keep from going dizzy as she bows before the Empress.
“Viscount Heloise Amell-Hawke, Champion of Kirkwall, divinely appointed Inquisitor, and vanquisher of the mage rebellion. Accompanying her, Admiral Isabela Hawke of the Felicisima Armada.”
Hawke doesn’t bow to Celene. She can’t technically, something about foreign leaders not being allowed to bow to one another except under specific circumstances—Josephine had explained this along with a jumble of other information on the journey up the palace steps. That and all the other social graces compete for space between her horns as Hawke and the Empress exchange barbs and innuendo, testing and retreating, and she is monumentally grateful that all she has to do is stand here and be Radiant. A useful mask to slip behind. Leliana must have known how much that would suit her in practicality: the Herald isn’t hiding from them, no. She’s just aloof. Party to divine conversations beyond all these mortals, even puffed-up nobles who’ve been filling their heads with air for as long as they’ve been alive. She is content to provide distraction with her mere presence while Isabela scales the garden trellis, and otherwise serenely redirect all attempts to engage her toward the on-hand Inquisitor.
It culminates spectacularly, farcically, in the middle of Tevinter assassins and dubious court magicians, with some cretinous little nobody telling Adaar, “If you were a woman of honor, you would meet my blade with yours in this very hall!” who immediately pales when Hawke replies with, “As the Herald’s champion, I will gladly accept on her behalf.”
Adaar was barely paying attention. She’s fairly sure ‘oxman’ was thrown around a few times, so she doesn’t pity him terribly when it becomes clear that Hawke isn’t bluffing. She shrugs off her jacket—doesn’t hand it to Adaar, can’t have the Herald of Andraste seen holding her Champion’s coat—but Varric tucks it over his arm with mild amusement as he watches his favorite Killer do what she does best. This is what gets him sales, Adaar supposes as the Inquisitor cracks her neck. The jacket had only barely disguised the hardened, war-made muscles of Hawke’s upper body, and her tunic doesn’t even manage that, her trapezius contracting visibly as she reaches to the ceremonial sword at her hip.
At least, Adaar assumed it was ceremonial. The Inquisitor carries a longsword most of the time, which makes the rapier look comically thin as the duelists begin to circle each other. Adaar revises that estimate as soon as Hawke makes the first cut, lightning quick and flowering the Marquis’ doublet with maroon. She duels as brutally as she spars. Adaar recognizes Isabela in the movements—she wonders if she trained her, can see in her mind’s eye the pair practicing blows on the deck of a pirate’s ship.
When the Marquis falls over, dead, there is enthusiastic clapping from the gathered guests.
Adaar slips their attention long enough to find Isabela, who’s been all about the palace tonight but has still managed to catch the tail end of the fight. She is leaned, cross-legged, arms folded, her shoulder keeping her precariously upright. She doesn’t look pleased.
“She was dueling over you, wasn’t she?” Isabela demands, surprisingly harsh.
“I wouldn’t say over me.” Adaar resists the urge to scratch the back of her neck. Ladies don’t do that. “More like for me.”
Isabela motions that it doesn’t matter. “Hawke.” This she says with enough spite, enough isn’t that just typical to make a flame viper blush.
“What’s she done this time Isabela? Honestly, I thought it was fairly noble of her.”
“That’s because she’s a noble, Poppet.” Isabela scowls.
“You’re asking me to dance without telling me what the song is here.”
“I’ll put it this way: if you asked her to back off, would she have?”
“Backed off?”
“Dropped the duel. Just because you asked.”
“Maybe?” Adaar says. At one point she would have said definitely not, but the Inquisitor is harder to pin down these days. “I know she’d at least consider it…”
“If she thinks something’s right to do,” Isabela says, “there’s no force in Thedas that will keep her from intervening on your behalf. Even if that force is your own choices.”
“Isabela,” Adaar asks, has been wanting to ask for some time, “if that drives you so crazy, like all of her seems to drive you crazy, why do you put up with it?”
This, Adaar guesses, is a question Isabela doesn’t want to hear. Her head thunks back against the pillar she’s leaned on, staring up at the net of stars that have abased themselves over Halamshiral.
“Because I’d rather not be who I was before I met her,” she says with an aggressive rub of her eyes. “Because even when she isn’t stepping over you because she thinks she’s right, sometimes she is right. And it’s good to follow someone who’s right for once. Unlike this lot. Which is why we’re bringing them down.”
“Have you found something then? To deal with ‘this lot?’”
“Possibly. If you get Hawke and Varric, I’ll grab Lady Mai Bhalsych, and we’ll meet back up at the servant’s quarters at twenty to?”
Deal struck, Isabela departs, and Adaar tries to find Hawke only to be found instead.
“Eager to escape your chaperone, Your Worship?” Hawke asks.
Hawke’s jokes take strange shapes, Adaar is learning. Delivered with utmost seriousness, but internally amused nonetheless.
“Just touching base with Isabela,” Adaar says. She weighs it for a moment, then says, “She seemed rather upset you were dueling on my behalf.”
“…Ah,” Hawke says.
“Just ah?”
“I see you’re digging for context, which means Isabela didn’t provide it. I believe she’d call it a ‘sordid tale.’” Hawke frowns. “During the Qunari invasion, Isabela ran afoul of their Arishok, and he wouldn’t agree to negotiate unless we surrendered her as a prisoner. I believe he explicitly referred to her as the ‘prize.’ He offered a duel. I accepted.”
“Blood and spite, I can see why she’d be pissed off,” Adaar says.
Hawke grimaces. “There was a lot on the line. The city, and her, and I saw it as a way not to lose either, even with her protests. It was…a regrettable circumstance.”
“The fact that she hasn’t forgiven you after all these years makes it seem it was more than just a ‘regrettable circumstance,’” Adaar says. “To her.”
“Yes, it would seem so.” Hawke wipes absently at the blood on her tunic. “I did resolve to apologize more, didn’t I? Perhaps I’ll start with that.”
Adaar rolls her eyes. “If you’re serious about turning a new leaf, don’t put it off Inquisitor. Do it tonight, after we save Celene.”
“…You’re right of course. Tonight.”
“Good,” Adaar says with satisfaction. “And promise to let her have the next duel for my honor, as an apology.”
“Did I do such a poor job this time around that you’re outsourcing it to my thief?” Hawke smiles lightly. “I’m starting to think you just want her out there being daring.”
“What can I say? I like to watch her duel.”
“I’ve noticed.”
Hawke says so directly and so wittingly, Adaar can’t help but flush. She clumsily redirects the conversation to Isabela’s findings on the servant’s quarters, and loudly proclaims they should go find Varric. By twenty to, they’re in place and ready to find exactly how many Tevinters are running amok tonight.
It amazes how well thief can translate into spy, even with knowing that Hawke has trusted the night’s machinations to Isabela implicitly. Adaar is caught up in her, this thief, the way she pretends to care about nothing but ultimately cares far too much. She thinks about it while Hawke is dancing with a Duchess, while they all discuss the future of Orlais in the middle of a crowded ballroom. Adaar thinks about it as she sneaks away, for just a few minutes, and tries to press the locket she found into the palms of an Empress.
She mulls on what Sera told her, months ago. She thinks, I need to…talk to Isabela about this, to which the more rational part of her asks, about what? She doesn’t know. She only knows that when Hawke saves the Empress with only a few words and not a drop of blood on the ballroom floor—when afterwards Celene and Briala pull away to talk in painful and long-needed words—she has the need to explain something she can’t even begin to name.
The ballroom is mostly clear now. She leans on the handrail, trying to take deep and steadying breaths. From a distance, she probably looks like she’s surveying the scene, taking in her victory. That’s fine. No reason to stop keeping up her appearances.
She wishes she could ask someone if she’s going crazy, but that someone would usually be Isabela, and that’s out of the question for obvious reasons. Varric perhaps. But, when her eyes fall on the dwarf, he’s at ease and distracted, chatting with…Cassandra? Of all people.
That’s odd. But it also means she’s on her own. You’ve come this far, Adaar. Buck up.
The Empress and her Ambassador aren’t the only ones who’ve slipped off. Hawke and Isabela have claimed the balcony, most likely taking a reprieve in one of the few sources of cool air in the palace. She steps to the glass shutters and prepares to announce herself.
Hawke and Isabela are busy.
They are dancing. Their palms against each other, moving slow and methodical, stepping to a waltz only they can hear. Not talking, not bickering, just leisurely swaying as Isabela rests her face on Hawke’s collarbone.
Their expressions are exhausted, but at peace, reveling in this victory with a moment of intimacy that Adaar very undeniably realizes she cannot intrude upon, now or never.
Neither human has noticed her. She is still standing in the shadow of the palace, untouched by moonlight, safely in the dark where they cannot know how the simple sight of them has nearly brought her to tears. She steps backwards, out of the scene and out of the lives she has no business meddling in.