Freedom's Price

A New Dawn

At first I was reaching, and the need was screaming through me, and then I was falling.

Breath catches and I gasp awake.

This room is new.

Beneath me, a stuffed mattress and cotton blankets. Sunlight pours in from a small window, overlooking white mountains stuffed with greenery and a tinted sky. Half-stuck in a hazy daydream, I gaze at my palm and half expect it to explode. Emerald sparks shine through pale skin. The mark's still there, then. No soft release from whatever burden that was.

An elf enters, quick in her pace, before she sees me and stops. The crate in her hand drops to the ground, shattering into pieces, and she grasps hands to her mouth.

'Maker!' She breathes, and drops to her knees instantly. 'Forgive me, your most Holy. I didn't know!'

I try to understand what's happening, pulling myself from the bed with the ease of an overstuffed turkey. 'Forgive you?'

'I am but a mere servant, Herald of Andraste!' She glances up as if she's remembered something and pulls herself to her feet. 'I must inform our Council. The Commander said at once!'

'Wait!' I call, but it's useless. She's gone, door closed behind her. 'Where...'

Holding my weight up against the wooden wall, I rise to my feet and test out standing. There's a rash of blisters on my heel, wrapped where chains bound me, but they aren't hot and sore like they were, rather itchy instead. I pull my body across the cabin-like structure, towards the window where a stack of boxes and barrels acts as a sort-of desk for whoever was scribbling away in my sleep; there, neatly-written words describe a patient with fever, brief summaries of what must be my state in various levels of distress.

Day 5, fever subdued but she still sweats. The mark has not spread, contained to her left arm.

Day 5?

Shit.

I look up, the sting of my reflection staring back. Beyond the pane of glass, green streaks slash through clouds. 

Maker, I look like shit. I have to run a hand across my face just to convince myself it's truly me.

Paper-white skin is now freckled with light scratches and scars. Copper hair limply hangs from my skull, where gaunt cheeks are framed by two thin eyebrows, one now sliced through with the pink of a scratch. Everything about me looks stripped-bare and thinner, like there's hardly any of the person who was thrown out of Ostwick circle left.

Ostwick.

Kit.

The thought of my circle engulfed in flames, of me abandoning it to serve some ridiculous duty to the Divine – one I knew I could never serve... only to find her dead, plus the entire world around her. 

Kit, I'm sorry. I hope you can hear me and I hope you know, I'm sorry.

Distress doesn't have time to settle; the door opens with a quick creak and I swing to find a Templar bundling through.

No, the Commander. That's what they all called him, wasn't it? Only now he doesn't have the lion's helmet on his head and now I can see him for who he is; all flushed cheeks and breathless.

The Commander nods to somebody beyond the door and shuts it behind him, leaning slightly forward. Beneath his gaze I feel entirely naked, and wish pitifully that a week-long coma was better for the looks than mine has been.

He's handsome. Not typically so, but in a bookish way.

I think of Reira in those pages of my well-worn novel I will likely never hold again, lusting after the archivist when she could have royalty.