Love's Blush

by Sabrina Zbasnik

  "Daddy!" she squealed when the tickling began.

  "What was that?" he asked before tickling her harder. On his knees, Spud could easily slide out from under his pathetic cage but she kept rolling back and forth on her back.

  "Da-a-ddy," she tried again, before breaking into more laughs.

  "Still not getting that," he said. Tiny hands plopped onto the back of his head and he glanced up to find Cailan patting his skull as he tried to get into the game. Snorting, Alistair butted his head against the kid's stomach eliciting boyish giggles.

  Spud must have sensed them as she sat stock still and ordered, "No. This is vewy serious."

  Sighing, Alistair flipped over to his side to let her out. "Everything with you is very serious. You're gonna get an ulcer from how serious you are," he said prodding at her belly. She laughed a moment at his silly words, then folded her arms in a tight cross, the pout rising.

  "Spuddy," he warned even while scooping Cailan into his lap.

  She looked like she wanted to order her brother out of the room. If it was up to her, she'd probably stick him on a ship to Tevinter, but she knew whining would only get her put in the naughty chair. Her eyes glanced over to the dreaded lime green thing in the corner, and she dropped her chin. "I want to draw," she announced, turning away towards the desk stuffed with quills, vellum, and what had once been important memos for the King. If there were any classified state secrets they were long obliterated by child scribbling.

  Alistair wrapped his arms around Cailan while the boy fiddled with a wooden puzzle box in his lap. "What are you going to draw?" he asked.

  "It's a secret," Spud held up a finger to her mouth and then blew hard enough spit splattered against her father's cheek.

  "Thanks, Spuddy," he groaned, wiping it off. Unaware of causing any offense, she returned to the monumental task of uncorking the ink bottle. They'd devised a sort of trough to try and catch most of the runoff from a princess who was very into drawing and less into cleanliness. If she weren't destined to be Queen, he'd have put good odds at his daughter becoming a painter...who killed darkspawn on the side.

  Sounds of footsteps drew Spud's attention, splattering ink into the trough. "Mummy!" she squealed, her plan fully abandoned as she raced to throw her arms around Bea. The Queen dipped an arm down to cuddle Spud to her legs. Wanting to see his mother as well, Cailan squirmed out of Alistair's lap. For her boy, Beatrice fell to her knees, wrapping both of her children in hugs and kisses to their cheeks.

  "Have you been good today?"

  "Yes 'em!" Spud shouted while Cailan nodded his head vehemently. Still, the knowing mother turned to look over at the only adult in the room.

  "They were," Alistair said. "We had a minor meltdown as what happens when it's nearly noon and starvation sets in. But I'd say you were both on your second best behavior."

  Beatrice's eyes stared through him, nary a word slipping from her lips but volumes hung in the look. Self consciously Alistair tugged up his hair and stared at the border along the nursery's walls. Her voice slipped down to honey sweet as she looked at her children, "Why don't you two play quietly in here? Your father and I have matters to discuss."

  Ah, shit. He almost hoped for Spud to argue that she had to spend time with him, but his most trustworthy daughter shrugged, "'kay," and returned to her drawing. Cailan nodded his head, crawling hands and feet around the room like the mabari pups they visited earlier. Very aware of how much trouble he was in, Alistair staggered to limp legs and tried to hide away the blush.

  It wasn't that he meant to keep putting off the talk, he simply didn't want to have it. And making certain Reiss was far away from the palace when he did seemed important too. Still...time to be an adult. Dropping a hand to Beatrice, she stared in surprise before taking it and letting him help her up.

  "Where do you want to do this?" he asked.

  "This way," she commanded, turning towards her chambers.

  "Bye Daddy," Spud called out, those traitorous eyes not even glancing up once.

  "Bye!" Cailan echoed, his dirty fingers waving through the air.

  Trying to not imagine he was walking to his death, Alistair trailed behind Beatrice into her abode. She paused, her gloved hands pinned tight to her stomach as she glanced over at the handmaidens doing very little handing or maidening. Alistair was never certain what the full point of them was beyond filling a room and dresses. "Could you excuse us, Ladies?" Beatrice said in her sweet asking voice with just enough of a razor in it to be an order.

  The women both exchanged a quick look before rising from their various lute and weaving strings to slide to the door while bowing to her Majesty. Alistair stuck a thumb out and laughed, "You have to teach me how to do that. I ask any of the various men trying to stuff my boots on to shoo and they sigh before knotting the laces."

  Beatrice was unmoved by his quip, which wasn't too surprising. She never laughed at anything he said. After raising her neck even higher, the beleaguered Queen spun on her heels and said, "Talk."

  "Right here?" Alistair glanced around the room. For a moment he thought the rug might be new, but catching Bea's eye he realized it wasn't worth mentioning. "Okay, so...Reiss is pregnant."

  The Queen narrowed her eyes at that.

  "Uh, due probably around Satinalia," he continued to give out what little information he had. Aside from she's going to have a baby and when, Alistair didn't have a lot.

  Beatrice tipped her head to the side, "So soon? She's barely showing to be nearly five months along."

  "Maybe it's an elf thing," Alistair shrugged. His experience with pregnant women was getting Reiss knocked up and then every time there after with her. It was a small sample to pool data from.

  Once again his wife fell into a deathly silence, those sharp eyes trailing him as he began to pace like a caged animal. Maker, was this what she did to keep her ladies in waiting in line? Aware of the sweat dripping down his back, Alistair sputtered out, "I assume you have some questions..."

  "How?" Beatrice asked.

  The urge to launch into the birds and the bees withered on his tongue at her glare. "Well, turns out that potion I took to try and beat back the taint had some...unexpected consequences. We hadn't been doing anything to protect ourselves because there hadn't been much reason to and then, oops!"

  The Queen's glower sliced him into various consecutive chunks, each one scattered onto her new rug for dissection later. "It was an accident?" she didn't seem to entirely believe him.

  "Pretty much," he admitted, lost as to why this was such an issue for her. She was the one who all but encouraged him to go fully in with a lover and would even on occasion ask about his 'elven mistress toiling away in the slums.'

  "When you told me of your little...pseudo-marriage ceremony I considered it a lark. You want to play having a normal life, you're far from the first noble to do it. Who was I to judge? But then to pull this stunt..." Beatrice shook her head, raw anger snorting out of her little nose.

  "Stunt? It's a baby, not someone jumping a horse over a canyon."

  "Do you expect me to believe after all this time, all these years, all the other women you'd taken to your bed only to have nothing emerge, this is when it finally sticks? You have your pretty little elf wife, though I use the term wife very loosely, now to make the family."

  Alistair drew his tongue across his teeth, feeling a snarl in his gut as Beatrice danced around an assumption that if she voiced would set him off. "We weren't planning on it."

  "People will talk," she said.

  "People always talk, and if they don't have anything good to talk about, they make shit up. It's what people do."

  Beatrice blinked at his shocking logic. He'd been aware of the whispers for years, most of the citizens coming to accept he slipped in and out of the agency down by the alienage. It was a funny story and good to pass around the fire, but in the end as there were no great arguments bellowed on the streets, it grew boring for them. People only cared when their own liv
es were too dull or diminutive to focus on. In time, the knowledge of his having a...another child out there would fade.

  "How can you be certain this baby is in fact yours?" she voiced the question that'd been sitting on her tongue. Maker, if she'd said the same to Reiss...

  Folding his arms, Alistair glared down at the floor out of fear staring at her would set him off. "Easy, I'm not the only one who took the potion and wound up in this situation." Beatrice gasped as her little house of cards shattered. She'd obviously been expecting him to pin his assurances on trust. "Maybe on top of clearing out the taint it makes us extra fertile, I don't know. I'll put the question to my mysterious benefactor." No doubt Lanny was already hard at work figuring that out if only to keep her preoccupied. She didn't seem to be having as great a time with this pregnancy thing.

  "Then..." Beatrice sagged, seeming to finally accept that yes, he made a child with Reiss. "You will have one," she stuttered.

  "Yeah, hopefully, I mean. Don't want to jinx it or anything."

  "A true child of Theirin blood," she whispered seeming to fade deeper into herself.

  Alistair scrunched his face up, "What? Sorta, but..."

  The shock seemed to wear in an instant, the hawk-like stare winnowing down upon him. "What shall become of my children? Of me?"

  Alistair blinked in surprise, his eyes darting around the room to see if there was someone hiding behind the curtains to leap out and shout this was all a prank. "Uh, you'd continue on as before. I mean, I figure the kids will play with the baby. Have to watch 'em, Cailan's a bit young and Spud gets excited easily, but...the baby will grow or be swaddled in padding."

  Beatrice snorted at that, her tiny feet clipping back and forth across the rug, "You expect me to believe that? This will be your child, a child of your blood. Not some...other forced into your house under the guise of maintaining the line."

  "Look," Alistair slapped his hand into his palm, sick and tired of having to explain this, "I'm not going to turn my back on Spud, or my little radish. She'll be Queen, she'll lead Ferelden once I'm ash and Cailan will, I don't know, do her maths or something. That kid's hard to pin down. Nothing's changed."

  He expected that to soothe over Beatrice's worries, but when she slid up beside him with a tenderness in her eyes framed by fluttering lashes, Alistair reared back at how good it worked. "Perhaps..." she drew her gloved hand up his crossed arm and Alistair's tongue ran dry. No, she couldn't possibly be...

  Her lidded eyes opened with a spark, "If you are truly free of the blight in its many forms, then it may be time for me to perform my wifely duty."

  "What?" Alistair threw his hands up, staggering back from the woman all but pressing her body to his. "No! Are you insane? What about Cordell?"

  "He's aware of our arrangement," she purred as if talk of contracts and negotiations was a turn on. Catching on that seducing him was going nowhere, she slapped her exhausted hand into her thigh and groaned, "Was I not chosen specifically to give you a child to continue the line of Calenhad?"

  "Pretty sure you were chosen to sit around being liked by everyone while I mucked things up," Alistair admitted. He wasn't stupid, but he played it well in the throne room. "Maker's sake, Bea, you cannot be serious. You do not want to sleep with me."

  "It..." she started, her lip jutting out, "it can't be that bad, given your history."

  "Not sure if that's a compliment or an insult," he admitted. Beatrice groaned, aware she was losing this fight fast and Alistair felt a moment of pity for the woman trying to ransack his family jewels. "Look," he picked up her hand and patted it, "I get that this whole baby thing threw everyone for a curve. Maker, and here I thought I was nearly done with nappies. But I won't make another with you for the sake of appearances."

  "Why?"

  "One, I'm not going to hurt Reiss like that." Which it would, big time. "And two, you nearly died with Cailan. Even if, Maker protect me for entertaining this, Reiss gave her blessing. Which, trust me, no. And she's got a kick like...anyway. Bea, you don't need to risk your life, not when there are two kids already yelling and screaming in this world that need you."

  She stared at his fingers locked around hers as he comforted her like an elderly aunt. "What about those children?" she asked. "Do you expect me to believe that once you have a child, a baby truly of your own, from a woman you love, that you will not turn from them?"

  "Those children meaning the ones I just spent the day with while one stuffed grass down my pants and the other insisted I fling her through the air until I nearly dislocated my arm? The ones I cover in kisses and hugs until they ask me to stop because it's too slobbery?" Alistair slapped his hands to his knees in shock at her assumption. "I want to check you mean those that are my world and not some other children no one's told me about. Because, I don't think a little baby is going to up and erase six years of loving my kids."

  Beatrice stuck her chin out and looked so startling much like Spud as she tried to protect her Daddy. "There are many men who have left their families after far more years of being together for fresher pastures."

  "Maybe," Alistair said, "but those ones don't know what it's like to grow up without a mother or father. I'm not ignoring any of my children be they bastard by marriage, or bastard by blood."

  Her eyes narrowed at his cold summation, but it was true -- technically Spud and Cailan's mother and father weren't married. It was a family of bastards all the way down. Folding her arms tight to her chest, Beatrice cooled as she glared at the floor. Maker's breath, they'd been married...far too long for him to remember, and he had no idea she had this bone shattering tenacity. It was like trying to play chess with a broodmother.

  "Am I to take it on faith that you will not remove me from the palace or my position?"

  Blinking a few times, Alistair tried to play back where this was coming from. "Wait, you think I'm going to run down to the Grand Cleric, demand a divorce, and then stick Reiss in your place?" She didn't answer, but the frost thickened at her glare.

  "Maker's bloody anal polyps," he groaned, Beatrice scowling at the visceral curse, "you've been doing this politics shit far longer than me. How long do you think the Bannorn would accept an elf as Queen? Cause I'd put it at my head being cut clean off between the 'I' and 'do.'"

  "You love her," Beatrice breathed, her eyes shut tight.

  Since when did she give a nug's fart in winter about who had his heart? She knew about all the other mistresses before, would often speak to them at court civilly and not in that passive aggressive 'oh, aren't you darling while I poison your cake' way. Just how bad had this baby spooked her?

  Alistair reached out to grip onto his wife's arm, pity swirling in his gut, "And you love Cordell."

  "That's up for debate," Beatrice admitted, knocking Alistair for a loop. He'd been noticing a wane in the Brother wandering around the castle, but it wasn't that surprising. It wasn't that often he'd cross the Queen's path much less her ex-tonsured lover. "You are lucky with her," Beatrice said, "there are not many who can stand remaining in the shadow."

  "Bea, I had no idea," he said, feeling a fool.

  "It would be impolite to inform the King of such matters," she didn't cry. Alistair realized he'd never actually seen his wife shed a tear, the patrician mask always slotting into place to hide any great emotion.

  "Has he fully gone?" he asked, getting a slow nod followed by a shrug. It was impossible to keep continual track of someone unless you had their phylactery. "What about the kids? Surely he wouldn't abandon them..."

  "There were promises made, but some of them have already been broken. I do not anticipate him to visit much, if at all," she stared through the air, her fingers flexing tight to her stomach.

  "That stuff-shirted, proselytizing son of a bitch," Alistair snarled. Cordell wasn't the best at playing father to the kids, but he'd been in their lives. They were going to notice and wonder where he went. Perhaps even blame themselves. "I should send out a search party of well armed knights and
drag him back..."

  "Stop," Beatrice commanded, her eyes slicing through him and squelching his anger. "That will solve nothing beyond exacerbating the issue. You cannot force someone to be a parent."

  "I dunno, I think if I leave a few of the royal guards alone with him and a tray full of pliers," Alistair half joked, tipping his head to the side.

  "Not every man can embrace the idea of another raising his children," Beatrice whispered.

  It took the bastard damn near long enough to decide that. Maybe it was the fact he didn't get instant riches and titles for being the secret lover of the Queen. Cordell was a wet fart stuffed inside a cassock, about as interesting as over-salted oatmeal that crusted to the table. No one in their right mind would happily give someone like that power unless it was afforded to him by birth.

  And the second the real father skips town to try and find himself, Alistair goes and creates the miracle baby with the woman he loves. No wonder Beatrice transformed into a snarling mountain lion in an expensive dress. Feeling sheepish, he stepped away from his wife and sighed.

  "I'll get in contact with the official bursars, and notaries, and clerks, and what not to declare our daughter the defacto future Queen of Ferelden. I should probably put that in my will too, just to make certain. That way, even if rumors swirl about the validity of who the throne passes to, I declared my choice. Can't go back on that. We can have a big party where everyone wears their shiniest tiara."

  "You'd do that?" Beatrice stuttered, seeming to be in surprise as if they hadn't been grooming Spud to sit in the chair for six years.

  Alistair shrugged, "It was never going to be anyone else. Maker's sake, the way you people keep flooding me in potential matches for my six year old daughter, as if that's not creepy. I'm not suffering meeting various Arl's and Bann's sticky palmed sons just to have the throne fall to another."

  "What of Cailan?"

  "He'd be considered second in line. In the event the Queen can't perform her duties, blah blah blah. Not sure if it's wise to go pinning Regent or Commander of the armies on him until he's fully mastered that we pull down our pants before peeing. Karelle will know, and I'm certain Eamon will throw his two cents in. Man retired a year ago and somehow he's still involved in everything."