The house smelled like wet linen and too many people sleeping in too few rooms. Practical poverty.
Goldanna was already watching them from the doorway, arms crossed. The look of someone who’d answered too many knocks and found nothing good on the other side. Her hands were red from work.
“You have linens to wash? Three bits on the bundle. Don’t trust what that Natalia woman tells you either, she’s foreign and she’ll rob you blind.”
Emma didn’t see this going well.
Alistair’s voice came out carefully. “I’m… not here for washing. My name’s Alistair. I’m—this may sound strange, but. Are you Goldanna?”
“I am Goldanna, yes… How do you know my name? What kind of tomfoolery are you folk up to?”
“I suppose I’m your brother.”
Goldanna went through suspicion and then recognition—one emotion draining out as the other flooded in. “You! I knew it! They told me you was dead—the babe was dead along with mother—”
And Alistair, who had been braced for nothing, who had no defenses prepared for this, went utterly still.
Emma said, “Just listen to him,” and Goldanna was already building steam. The babe. The coin they gave her. The castle, the lies, her five children, the years—all of it landing on Alistair like he’d personally arranged each one. In her peripheral vision, Emma tracked the careful hope in his face dissolving in real time.
“That’s not his fault,” Emma said, when Goldanna got to the part where he’d killed their mother by being born.
“And who in the Maker’s name are you? Some tart to follow him around?”
Alistair snapped to life. “Don’t speak to her that way. She’s my friend, and a Grey Warden.”
Goldanna was true to her name, transactional in the way only real desperation manages, just arithmetic. She wanted money. What she’d actually wanted was a different life, but that was unavailable, so money would have to do.
Alistair offered fifteen sovereigns with the air of someone hoping to be corrected, told it was enough, told he’d done well.
“For the children,” said Emma reluctantly, when he asked.
Goldanna finally threw them out, slamming the door closed on them. The street outside was Denerim-gray. Market noise from two blocks over. Someone’s laundry strung between buildings overhead, dripping.
Alistair said: “Well. That was.” He stopped. “I’m sorry I gave her any money. This is the family I’ve been wondering about. I thought—I suppose I expected her to just. Accept me. Isn’t that what family does.” He watched the laundry drip. “I feel like a complete idiot.”
Then: “The only person who ever cared about me was Duncan. And he’s gone.”
Something in her chest constricted, hot, with the frustration of watching him look directly at a thing he didn’t see. She’d told him, plainly, seriously—and he’d filed it under pleasantry, or mistake, or things people say.
“What did I tell you.” It came out sharper than she meant.
He blinked. “I’m—sorry?”
“I care about you.” It came out less playful than she’d aimed for. “I told you not to forget.”
He stared at her. The helm was under his arm. He looked very young and very tired and also like someone who’d just been blindsided.
“I… thank you,” he said.
“I’m not the only one,” Emma said. Steadier, now. She thought of Leliana and Wynne, who were warm with him. “You have people.”
And even Morrigan, which would have appalled her. The contempt between them was real and mutual and entirely unambiguous—but Morrigan had his back, freezing enemies before they could reach him.
He’d taken a hit for her in the Tower that left him staggering for ten minutes afterward.
The sentiment wasn’t there. The actions were.
“You have rivals who treat you better.”
He almost smiled. The strained kind that doesn’t quite make it.
“I’m glad you came with me.”
She looked at him thinking about the fifteen sovereigns he’d handed over without hesitation. The way his voice had pitched into careful hopefulness when he’d said I’m your brother to someone who was never going to be glad to hear it.
She reached up. Her gloved fingers slipped under the mail at his neck—the articulated links warm from his skin despite the air—and she felt, even through the leather, the frantic beat of his pulse. His heart working too hard. Body still in the aftermath of something it’d been bracing against for years.
He bent toward her. She pressed their foreheads together. He closed his eyes as the blood rushed to his cheeks. She let him have a breath of it.
“You won’t forget?” she asked.
His eyes were still closed. She could feel him swallow.
“Emma…” Just her name. Like that was the only thing he had.
“When she blamed you for being born.” Her voice was quiet. Even. “You didn’t say a word.”
He opened his eyes. “What was I supposed to say?”
“Anything.” She didn’t move away. “You defended me in a breath. She called me a tart and you snapped. But you–” she paused. His pulse under her fingers was still so fast. “If you don’t want to defend yourself—do it for me.”
They stood there.
“Let’s go,” he said finally, voice rough at the edges. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
She dropped her hand.
Somewhere behind them the city kept its noise—shouting, commerce, the particular hostility of individuals who knew something was wrong but hadn’t decided what to do. Here, at the edge of it, a fire, a dog, and two Wardens.
Emma heard him sit next to her. Quiet, for him, now unarmored.
“I’ve been thinking,” Alistair said.
She’d known since the street outside Goldanna’s house. The way he’d gone silent and then stayed silent.
“You’ve been circling the fire for awhile.”
“Those aren’t mutually exclusive.”
“No,” she agreed. “They’re not.”
He was quiet long enough that she glanced up. He was watching the fire, forearms on his knees, hands loose.
“Em, Look… back there,” he said. “With Goldanna. I kept thinking about what you said after. About standing up for myself.” He turned a pebble over with his boot.
He looked up then. “I’ve been through that whole house in my head, thinking—she blamed me for existing, and I just–And then she called you a—” He stopped.
“And… Maker, I never even thought about it. Funny. She can say whatever she wants to me. I’ve heard it my whole life, from different voices. But you—” He shook his head. “That I couldn’t let sit.”
“Like when that blood mage had you frozen behind the barricades,” Alistair said, quieter, “I stopped thinking. I just went.” He looked at his hands. “I cut through the whole line. I do that for you—I go, every time—but if I don’t protect myself— then you have to.”
Emma slipped her arms around him. Something she’d been longing for outside Goldanna’s house, when he was plated save for the helm he’d removed to meet someone who did not care for it. Without the armor there was just him—the give of a linen shirt, warmth that shouldn’t have surprised her but did.
“I don’t want to be someone who only exists to absorb things,” he said, his voice going rough as he hugged her. He held on. “I mean, I’m pretty good at it. I won’t stop. There’s a difference between stepping in front of a sword and just…I don’t know. I’ll try. To pick my battles. I think. I’m working on that.”
“And I don’t want you thinking you don’t matter when I say something like—” He winced. “—Duncan was the only one who cared. You were standing right there.”
“You are a true friend,” he said. “The first real one I’ve had. Meeting you has been the one bright spot in all of this. And… I love you.”
He didn’t look away. Didn’t qualify it or immediately find something self-deprecating to say.
“Good,” Emma said.
He blinked.
“Is that—” He seemed to recalibrate. “Is that all you’re going to say?”
“What else? That covers it.”
“I don’t know. Something. Anything. You could—you could tell me I’m an idiot. That would feel familiar.”
“You’re not an idiot.” She squeezed him for emphasis. He let out a long breath. “And I love you.”
“Right,” he said. “Okay.” Something in his chest unknotted. “Good.”
He squeezed her back, and rested his chin gently on her head. They settled there. The fire crackled. Muffin snorted in his sleep. Somewhere past the edge of camp, Denerim continued its argument with itself.
“For the record,” Alistair said, after a while, “I thought there’d be more fanfare.”
“Sorry to disappoint.”
“And I had a whole speech.”
“I could hear you rehearsing.”
“Maker’s breath.” He shuddered. “How much did you hear?”
“Enough.”
“Was it—”
“It was good, Alistair.”
“Okay,” he said again, softer.
She could feel him thinking—the slight shift of his jaw, more words, before they became words. Then he stopped trying to think and just stayed. She could feel his heartbeat against her temple, steady where it hadn’t been.