A New Hero

Trust

By the time Rosie made it out onto the terrace she wanted to scream, to tip her head back to the unforgiving stars and howl about every unfair matter in her life. There was a growing list so it might take some time. But she knew better, everyone was on edge as the two royal highnesses seemed to be duking it out verbally. The air tingled with fear that it could turn to the physical.

During dinner she thought she overheard some talk of civil war and Rosie nearly snorted out her soup. As mad as she was at her father, she'd never...she'd never stop loving him. The devotion of the Theirin children to their dad was often confounding to many of the upper crust parents who'd ask how the silly Alistair accomplished such a feat. Loyalty was almost impossible to come across for them from spawn they barely stomached. It was often worth it to watch their faces drop when he said love, and being there to clean up his kid's shit and/or vomit at 2 in the morning after they'd been sick.

Why wouldn't he listen? He used to be so great at listening to her, but... She went away to Kirkwall for a three month trip abroad. It was meant to teach her how to present herself not as a lady, but a head of state. Rosie was so proud of how good she got at keeping herself level headed, when she returned home she managed to maintain the greeting to her parents as a simple, "Hello, Mother. Hello, Father. Pleasure."

Her dad didn't look at her quite the same after that. Sure, he didn't stop caring, often finding ways to yank her out of schooling along with her brother to get up to mischief in the Denerim market. But it was different. Maybe he saw too much of himself in her, too much of her future and his...

Rosamund groaned loudly, her head tipped to the stars. "They say royalty can't look at their children because all they see is their own death."

"Here I assumed it was due to all the inbreeding."

She whipped her head to find the voice, not meaning to speak her inner thoughts aloud. Sliding out of the shadows emerged Anjali, a hand wrapped around the wound on her arm. She didn't make a fuss about it, but Rosie could tell it had to sting by how often she kept favoring the injury.

"Not that I think..." Anjali blinked a moment in Rosie's eyes. Barely a flicker of torchlight lit up from down below, requiring both women to stand rather close to see each other. "I mean, there's no way the Ferelden crown suffers the same as Nevarra."

"Oh?" Rosie placed a hand on her hip, her lips lifting in a curious smirk, "You seem rather certain of that."

Bright white teeth cut through the dim shadows of the night like the moon's embrace, "I am, because you are far too beautiful for your parents to be related."

"Good call," Rosie said, her hands flattening over her stomach to cut off the flutters. "My father, actually, he has no living relatives."

"None?" Anjali bunched her eyebrows in surprise. The one with the scar almost tipped far enough over for the gash to run parallel. She wanted to dip the tip of her pinkie through it, to feel the dark hairs cup against her skin, but that was uncalled for.

Unaware of Rosie's silly thoughts, the assassin bumped her hip into the railing, "Here I thought royalty pushed out as many kids as they could to keep their hooks in the crown and all."

"It's..." Rosie knew it all, the old civil war, the Orlesian occupation. How King Maric only produced two sons and lost the legitimate one during the blight while her father had the job land upon him. Maker was there a lot of history to Ferelden regardless of how the rest of thedas treated them like some nobody. "A long story."

Anjali's beautiful head bobbed as if she expected as such, her eyes turning out to gaze towards the village of Redcliffe itself. A few lights sparkled out of the trees, most near the tavern and one beside the chantry. How many of the villagers were awake, wondering about both the King and Princess in their neck of the woods? How many were already gossiping about the great row they watched? Maker, her poise tutor would have whacked her knuckles bloody for that.