Unknown - Dragon Age

Loghain slapped Maric, hard.

The ringing sound of the blow hung in the air, and Maric stared at Loghain in shocked disbelief. Loghain crouched down, his face close to Maric’s and his eyes intensely ablaze. “There was a man,” he whispered in a bitter voice, “a commander among the Orlesians who sacked our farmhold. He told his men to take whatever they liked, and then laughed at our anger. He found it amusing.”

Maric looked about to speak, but Loghain held up a hand. “He said that we needed to be taught a lesson. They held us there, me and my father, and made us watch as he raped my mother.” He shuddered. “Her screams were . . . they are burned into my mind. My father raged like an animal, and they knocked him out. But I watched it all.”

Loghain’s voice became hoarse and he swallowed hard. “The commander killed her when he was done. Slit her throat and then told me that the next time we forgot our taxes it would be death for us all. When my father awoke he cried over her body, but it was worse when he saw me standing there. He left and was gone for three days. I didn’t know until he returned that he had followed after the Orlesians and had killed the commander in his sleep.”

“That was why we had to flee,” Loghain sighed. He closed his eyes for a long moment and Maric simply stared at him silently. “He was a wanted murderer. He thought he had failed

her, failed me, but not for one moment did I ever think that what he did to that Orlesian bastard wasn’t justice.” He gestured to Katriel’s slumped corpse. “Tell me, Maric, that her treachery didn’t call out for blood.”

“You wanted this,” Maric realized, his voice quiet.

Loghain looked him in the eyes, unrepentant. “I wanted you to see the truth. You told me you wanted to win this war. This is how it must be. The alternative is to be done in by treachery just as your mother was.”

Maric looked at him reproachfully but said nothing. Absently he wiped his hands on the floor, and uneasily got to his feet. Loghain stood and watched him, but Maric only turned and stared helplessly at Katriel’s body. It remained slumped where it was, a great red stain on her back where the sword pierced her, and a pool of blackness around her.

He looked sickened. “I . . . I need to be alone.”

Maric stumbled to the door leading to his bedchamber and quietly went inside, shutting the door behind him. Loghain watched him go. Outside, lightning flashed again and lit up the darkness.

Rowan stood at her window, restlessly watching the lightning.

The patter of rain against the stone eased her nerves, but it couldn’t make her want to sleep. Her muscles ached from the days of marching and fighting, and while her wounds were healing nicely, they itched under their bandages and threatened to drive her mad. She assumed that Wilhelm would want to see to her injuries personally at some point, but she almost wished he wouldn’t. Some scars are deserved.

When the knock came at her door, she didn’t respond at first. The chill wind blew in through the open window and tugged at her nightgown, and the lightning flashed again. She

felt the rumble of thunder that followed in her chest, and for just a moment it filled up the emptiness. It felt good. It felt right.

The door opened, hesitantly at first, and then he walked in. She didn’t need to ask who it was. Taking a deep breath, she turned and watched Loghain as he closed the door behind him. His grim expression said a lot.

“You told him,” she said.

He nodded. “I did.”

“And? What did he say? What did she say?”

Loghain seemed uncertain, pausing for a moment to choose his words carefully. She didn’t particularly care for that idea and arched a severe brow at him, prompting him to hold up a hand. “Katriel is dead,” was all he said.

“What!” Rowan’s eyes widened in shock. “She didn’t return? Did the usurper—?”

“Maric killed her.”

Rowan stopped short, stunned. She stared at Loghain and he stared back at her, his icy blue eyes unswerving. Certain things began to fall into place, and her heart went cold. “You told Maric everything, didn’t you?” When he didn’t respond, she marched up toward him angrily. “You told him that Severan has put out a price on her head now, that she must have—”

“It doesn’t change anything,” he stated firmly.

She shook her head in disbelief. Loghain was all ice and sharp corners now, staring at her like a man whom she didn’t even know. She tried to imagine what must have happened, what Maric must have done. She couldn’t picture it. “Loghain,” she could barely get the words out, “what if she really loved him? All this time we thought she was just using him, we thought she could hurt him—what if we were wrong?”

“We weren’t wrong.” Loghain’s look was intense, and he set his jaw stubbornly. “She did hurt him. We thought she was a

spy and we were right. We thought that she had been responsible for West Hill and we were right.”

Rowan took a step back from him, horrified. “She saved his life! She saved our lives! Maric loved her! How could you do this to him?” Then she realized the part she had played in this. It was her scouts who had spotted Katriel sneaking away. She had conspired with Loghain to have her followed, had kept the information from Maric to prove that her suspicions were correct, and they had been. But Katriel had surprised her, too. Even so, she had let Loghain go to confront Maric alone. Despite everything that had happened, the thought that Maric might forgive her, that Maric might choose her . . .

“How could I do this to him?” she breathed, sickened.

Loghain strode toward her and grabbed her by the shoulders, his fingers digging in. “It is done,” he snapped. He stared down at her, his face steel, and for a moment she was reminded of the moment at West Hill. She had rushed to him to make the decision she could not, and he had made it. They had abandoned their men and run to do what they felt they had to.

“Rowan,” he began, his voice filled with anguish, but then he banished it completely. “It is done, and it can go one of two ways now,” he stated. “Either Maric wallows in self-pity and is no use to anybody or he realizes that being a king and being a man are not always the same thing.”

“And why do you come to me, then? It’s done, as you said.”

“I cannot reach him now,” he said evenly.

It took a moment for her to realize what he was suggesting. “But I can,” she finished for him. She stepped away from Loghain, her eyes narrowing at him, and he let her go.

“You are still his Queen.” His voice could not hide the ache when he said the words, try though he might to hide it.

Tears came unbidden to her eyes. Grimacing, she folded her arms and stared challengingly at Loghain. “And if I do not wish to be his Queen?”

“Then be Ferelden’s Queen.

She hated those eyes that bored into her relentlessly. She hated his arrogance, that he assumed he knew what it meant to be a king and what it meant to be a man, as if he knew anything of either. She hated his strength, the strength in those hands that had held her in utter darkness beneath the earth.

And most of all she hated the fact that he was right.

Rowan rushed at Loghain to pound her fist angrily into his chest, but he grabbed her wrist. She tried to punch him with her other hand and he grabbed that, too, and then she struggled with him and burst into furious tears. He just held her wrists, stoic and unmoving.

She never cried. She hated crying. She had cried once when her mother had died. She had cried a second time when her two younger brothers had been shipped off to the Free Marches to be kept safe from the war. Both times her father had stared at her, so mortified by her tears and so clearly incapable of assuaging her grief, she had sworn that she would never cry again. She would be strong for her father, instead.

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