#ladygriffon

❛❛ alys ! ❜❜ the horror burns a bright blush through the youth's bronzed cheeks; a rare humiliation conjured only by a kid sister and her infernal determination to stick her nose where she shouldn't ! ❛❛ you weren't supposed to -- it's not . . . it was a first draft ! ❜❜ a beat . . . and then he sighs, relenting: ❛❛ maybe the third. ❜❜ what use was there in lying anyway? clearly, if she found the rest, she had seen every bad iteration of what his noble education had amounted to. like his father, fergus was never good with poetry; nor his words, it seemed, when faced with his heart's first delight: a trader's daughter, so careful with her own, whose eyes lit up at the sight of the cousland library and its full collection of works from all her favorite poets.

the marquis gapes, taken for the briefest moment by her conviction. if the heedless heart were to read too much into a choice of words, if someone were to have walked into the room right then, it could almost have sounded like a confession. but a spy knows better . . . context matters. ❛❛ you want callum, you mean. ❜❜ he returns, but behind the correction, a double life takes a double meaning, and he only speaks to the one he finds most relevant. ❛❛ we may be alone, but there are ears everywhere -- -- clearly. ❜❜

the conversation between him and the queen was meant to be in confidence, but of course, william's protege found a way to eavesdrop. behind an alcove tucked beside a marble bust, she corners another one of his favorite birds into letting her in on the conspiracy. it would have made the man proud of alys, but all too disappointed in twilight. a grimace takes shape as his attention escapes through a window. down there, he sees a glittering reception, overflowing with all the diamonds the queen expects him to filter through tonight.

it unnerves him in a way no mission ever has. he had never considered to take a wife; much less one that he'd need to fool for the entirety of the arrangement. how would he manage that ? the exhaustion weighs on a tinkering mind already, picturing all the ways a woman might resent his absences, his omissions, his masked affections. one complaint at a luncheon and all eyes would be on him. one slip, and the ruse would be over, his identity had. ( but she already knows who i am. . . and more importantly, i know her. )

❛❛ if i were to marry you. . . ❜❜ his absent gaze returns to the duchess, dilates as it adjusts to the closeness he's suddenly too aware of. a scent catches him here, mid-thought: her hair, steeped with sweetness, reminding him of english roses after sun showers ( of an evening spent drowning in it, teaching her how to overcome a man who tries to subdue her from behind. . . ) he considers her, cooly, with a cant that pretends at pensiveness and ignores the ill-considered desire.

❛❛ you can't be serious. . . ❜❜ it's a dry laugh that futilely tests the room, but it's met with not a drop of humor from present company ; only a heavy silence that meant she was perfectly serious. asteria's entire posture stiffens, the way it usually does when she senses an evil beyond sight. ❛❛ is amaranthine to become the next soldier's peak then ? ❜❜

loghain's lies were spreading faster than the blight itself. the proof was in the hastily etched wanted posters nailed to lothering's town bulletin. righteous though alys' threat may be, a sworn ( albeit wayward ) warrior of the kingsguard is not so easily prone to standing behind this fight. ❛❛ it will not come to that, ❜❜ mhairi strains under her breath, trying to assure herself more than anyone else.

it was strange to think that only days prior the korcari wilds had been no more than a green-grey stain on a map, hung over the windowless walls of the apprentices' study hall. stranger still for a circle mage to think she'd never set foot outside kinloch hold, and yet here she was : roaming the damnable country of apostates with not a templar in sight. ( well, there was alistair, but an initiate who refused the oath was a far cry. )

now the junior warden led their mission through the misty swamplands with his recruits in tow: two nobles and two conscripted criminals. it didn't sit right that asteria should be grouped with the latter, but how else could it be put ? she lost any right to a noble name after being found out as a mage, and she was no longer welcome in the circle after unwittingly facilitating the escape of a maleficar, which left her to make an impossible choice no different than daveth's: die for your treachery or die fighting darkspawn.

she wonders what choice the lady cousland had in all this, watching the girl stray from the group in search of something, but hardly anything to do with the task that was given it seems. in fact, when alys walks right over the carcass of a genlock with total disinterest, all asteria can manage to do is bawk. she sees the girl crouch over a soldier's body, and only then does a regretful understanding set in.