My Love

by Sabrina Zbasnik

  Nathaniel yanked her closer to him, her chest bouncing against his shoulder from the force. He whispered in her ear, "You missed it, Commander. I'm sorry." Pain shattered through Lana's stomach and she broke away from the mad man's eyes to discover a dagger jammed below her rib cage. Nathaniel's hand guided it in, her blood dripping from the wound across his once noble fingers. White hot pain shredded through every muscle in her chest as her once second in command twisted the blade deeper. A red haze circled around her vision. Summoning her mana through the pain, Lana blast an icy force against Nathaniel and the other wardens. His hand slipped off hers and the dagger as his body flew through the air trailed by shards of ice. But the damn man was agile, and he twisted into the flip to landed on his feet. Water splattered against his eyes from the force, which quickly froze from Lana's spell. The other wardens were struck with the cold, both of them tumbling to the ground like rag dolls, but they didn't even blink as the frost of the lake crusted over their faces. Makers sake, what were they?

  Now Nathaniel slipped off his bow and notched an arrow. Lana threw up a barrier with her right hand while trying to hold the dagger with her left. Breathing dug the blade in deeper, slicing apart her insides and clawing more searing pain across half her body. The red haze increased, narrowing her vision. Her ears hummed from the blood pounding through her beating heart and sliding down the dagger across her palm. If the ringing increased, she knew the threat of blood-loss dragging her down to the abyss. She tried to slide back through the water as an arrow struck into her barrier. It hung suspended in thin air before the undulations of the energy faltered and it splashed to the ground. The agony ripping apart her flesh chewed through her focus, her barrier twisting below her hand. She was always shit at them.

  One of the backup wardens drew daggers and came for her, but Lana sneered at the attempt and blasted the woman with an ice fist thick enough to crack open a skull. She dodged, but not fast enough as the ice shattered her in the shoulder sending one dagger flying. The splintering bone sound echoed across the pond. Unfortunately, that spell drew her attention away from the barrier, leaving Lana exposed. Her eyes whipped back in time to watch Nathaniel draw his bow. His thumb quivered for a heartbeat against his cheek. Was it regret bubbling to the surface or could she hope still to find him? He released his grip sending the arrow for Lana's exposed shoulder. She gritted her teeth, prepared to take the hit, when a shield snapped in front of her taking the blow of the arrow. The momentum caused it to smash into Lana's chest, but she could deal with bruises over an arrow.

  Cullen yanked his shield off her and raised his sword at the third player in the game. They met blow for blow, the warden nowhere near as skilled. Darkspawn didn't train every morning the way the commander did, and wardens weren't used to facing a talented foe. Lana rolled the water up from beneath her feet, spinning it into a vortex nearly ten feet tall. Each twist froze it solid. Hardened to a point, she lifted the ice spear into the air and drove it at the female warden. The woman rolled away, her knees skittering through the pond, but as the massive ice spear impacted against the ground, shards shattered into her eyes.

  "It takes the warden commander thirty seconds to recharge her mana after a spell like that," Nathaniel cooly called from his vantage point. "Attack now!"

  Lana whipped around at him, her fingers still clinging to the dagger he tried to kill her with. He wasn't about to show mercy now, and with Cullen embroiled with the other warrior no one was going to pop out with a shield for her. Aiming for her head, his steel eyes cut through her without concern or care. She was nothing more than a target dummy to him now. Lana sighted down the arrow back to Nathaniel's eye. There was nothing she could reach, nothing human remaining in them as he released his grip.

  Drawing upon her hidden reserves, Lana raised up her barrier. Sticky hot blood gushed out of her wound from the struggle, the red haze twisting to a hot white as her ears peeled like chantry bells. She screwed her face up tight, unable to watch death from her old friend. When she opened her eyes, she found the arrow dangling an inch from her face. She willed herself to stare past it and shout at Nathaniel, "You do not know me as well as you think you do."

  "I know you cannot kill me. You couldn't before we even knew each other. Before you left me in charge of the Keep and the wardens, your people, during your many, many absences," he gloated. Nathaniel Howe gloated. Whoever and whatever this person was, Nathaniel was long gone. Either buried in the depths of his own mind or worse...

  On her periphery she watched the female warden jump to her feet, blood pouring from her eyes. She blinked through the ice shards embedded in her eye sockets but wasn't backing down. Cullen hacked into the other warden's leg, but the man limped through the wound that would down most others. These weren't people, they were golems made of flesh. They didn't feel pain, didn't slow unless fully stopped. Lana reached her hand out and grabbed onto Cullen's hand.

  "What are you doing?" he shouted as she dragged him away from his prey.

  "Hold and don't let go!" she ordered. Releasing her grip on the dagger, Lana summoned every last ounce of mana from her withering pool. She glanced once more at Nathaniel who was notching another arrow. Her Nathaniel, the man who -- against all the odds from their start -- became one of the best men she'd ever had the luck to serve with. Forgive me.

  Gripping tighter to Cullen to keep him shielded with her, Lana poured every drop of lightning in her body directly into the water beneath her feet. Sparks shattered across the surface of the lake, leaping like dragonflies upon the lake in pursuit of food. Purple energy wrapped up through every body not connected to the mage, the power bursting through their insides and slowly cooking them. They struggled to scream, but the lightning twisted and warped their bodies, their tongues swelling and unable to speak, vocal cords popping from energy yanking their flesh apart. She didn't look up, couldn't, just kept the flow of energy from her hand into the ground. The wardens splashed in the throes of pain, but it wasn't until the final sparks sputtered out of her hand that she heard three bodies plummet into the water. Nothing more moved save the soft wind sweeping back her hair.

  She did it. She killed them. Killed wardens. Killed her wardens. Her fingers shook, still extended to the watery end as if she had any mana left to cast. He made her do it, gave her no choice. She wanted to find a solution, to save them all, had believed there was a way, but now... Lana released her grip on Cullen, the man fallen silent from the death around them. She stomped towards Nathaniel's corpse. From the fall he crumpled onto his knees as if in prayer, his hands dangling at the sides begging for mercy from the Maker. But his head was tossed back, gazing endlessly upon the scarred sky. The flesh upon his face was charred and blackened from her lightning bolt, the skin crackling like a pig roast, while flames licked upon that braided hair. Because she did it. She killed him.

  "Damn you!" Lana screamed at him. "How could you? Why didn't you wait for me to return?! What could have possibly pushed you to do this? To turn against...Maker, take you all!" She tried to reach for him, whether to shake the body or try to close the eyes boiled in the sockets she was uncertain. But the knife chewed up her side, the pain shooting anew through her not deadened nerves. Bending low was impossible.

  Instead, she kicked her boot through the water, splashing up Nathaniel's side. His skin hissed from the cold splattering against the charred remains. "What am I supposed to tell your sister? Your nephew?!" Lana wrapped her fingers along the dagger's grip, trying to steady it. The wise thing, the proper thing, was to keep it in place until someone was there to bandage and clean the wound. Leaving it in cut off the blood to a dribble from her wound. She tipped her head back to the sky, blinking against the rage of tears burning in her eyes. Sighing to the wind, she whispered, "I trusted you. Why didn't you wait?" Lana yanked the blade out of her side. Blood poured from the gash blooming across her tunic and up through the vest until it dripped to the pond. If it weren't for the dragon scale armor beneath her traveling clothes, she'd be
in far worse shape. Probably even dead.

  Raising the dagger to her face, Lana was about to toss it into the pond when a symbol on the pommel caught her eye. It was the grey warden griffin but flanked by the Ferelden dogs. One of Master Wade's works from their dark early days in Amaranthine. She'd had this blade forged specifically for Nathaniel. A shudder shook through Lana's body and she lurched forward about to plummet into the pond.

  An arm wrapped around her shoulder holding her upright in this cruel and unforgiving world. Cullen pulled her tighter, his arm folding fully around her into a hug. Still holding onto the dagger, Lana knotted her forearm up around his. Her other hand crept to her wound, trying to slow the blood that saturated her clothing and now dripped into the pond. Scarlett trailed through the pond, like little ribbons twisting in the water. "I failed them," she gurgled through a spray of tears. "Every damn one of them."

  Cullen didn't speak a word, only gripped tighter to her. She couldn't see his eyes as he faced behind her, but his cheek pressed against the top of her head. How could she face any of them ever again? How could she wake knowing that it was her selfishness that put her wardens in Corypheus's path? The dagger slipped from Lana's fingers as she dug into Cullen's arm. She pinched tight below the metal vambraces needing to anchor herself to something real, something that couldn't be yanked out from under her with a whim. He didn't yelp or shrug her off. He only held her tighter.

  "Ser! We heard the play of magic and came as soon as..." Nobby and/or Collins' shouts tumbled to a halt at the sight of their commanding officer clinging to a bereft warden, her own sobs gurgling with cries of pain. Lana couldn't see them but she felt Cullen stiffen below her fingers.

  "The warden is injured," Cullen ordered, his voice emotionless, "Return to camp, fetch a healer! And someone else to take care of the bodies."

  "I, uh..." the pair stuttered, bouncing around in the water to get a good view.

  "Now!" Every ounce of his wrath burst into that one word. Both soldiers all but yelped, scurrying away fast. They took the quicker path down to the hinterlands by leaping from the cliff's edge.

  "We're all right, Ser!" one of them shouted up. "Off to find that healer now."

  Lana would have laughed from their incompetent determination but her brain was numb. Even the feel of her own hot blood trickling through her fingers meant nothing. If Nathaniel was turned, then...then they all were. Ten years, a decade spent building up the wardens, her wardens, and for what? What was the point of it? What was the point of her?

  "Lana," Cullen whispered her name as he pulled her tighter to him. His stubble scratched up her cheek.

  "It's my fault." Her lip wobbled from a hundred tears crashing in her heart, a thousand cuts to her skin deeper than any dagger could reach. "I failed them, I turned my back on them. I did it."

  She heard Cullen cough to bite back his own emotional purge. He wrapped his arm closer to her and whispered, "You're hurt."

  Her fingers stretched against her side, but she didn't dip into her filling mana to fix the wound. Would the spirit even come to her now? Would they trust her knowing what she was? "It doesn't matter," she said, true defeat overflowing off her.

  "It does to me," Cullen hissed beside her ear anger pummeling every syllable. But it broke as fast as it rose to be replaced by a heartbreaking sorrow. "Please," his breath shuddered, "heal yourself."

  Lana didn't answer him but the powers of the fade cracked below her hand. She blinked through the never ending tears while stitching up the wound in her side left by Nathaniel. Maker only knew what would stitch up the one in her soul.

  Chapter Five

  Healing

  Lana sucked in a steadying breath as she attempted to drop the tiny screw into place, unfortunately that tugged upon the wound on her side. The tweezers slipped from her fingers and clattered to the desk, sending the screw rolling across the polished wood. Pain walloped the left of her body, but the throb was dulled from bone shattering thanks to a bit of time and her own personal poultice recipe. It wasn't as potent as she'd like due to Skyhold's surprising lack of elfroot, but she made due with it and a bit of help from the fade. She lifted up the hem of her nightshirt to inspect the bandage but no blood pooled into it. Without having any proper clothing while on the run from the wardens she wore the borrowed tunic from Cullen. Despite the deep neck, it reached to the tops of her thighs and was softer than the fanciest underthings in Orlais. It also helped how much it yet smelled of him.

  After being banished to her not-state room for rest and recuperation, Lana lasted all of an hour in bed alone before she had to get up to do something. Her traitorous thoughts trailed her every move, the memories unwilling to shake free no matter how far she ran from them. The shock of what happened wore to a nub when she limped to the Inquisition camp near Redcliffe. Cullen finally released his hold upon her as the healer patched her up, but she felt his eyes scouring over her from the side. Lana couldn't lift her head to face him, to admit to herself what she'd done. Burrowing under a nest of shock was preferable to the blame threatening to crush her chest. After that it was a long wagon ride up the mountain to Skyhold with more than a few guards being extra watchful. The commander remained behind to take care of things, but she knew his word traveled with her. People were quick to offer help to the stabbed woman and never leave her alone. Leliana greeted her, doing her best to downplay what occurred, but Lana shook off her ignorance. They needed a plan, they needed to find a way to cut back at the monster who did this to the wardens. To her people. She'd stewed about it the entire trip, but Leliana wouldn't have any of it. During all of Lana's attempts at bringing up Corypheus, Leliana shifted to innocuous topics -- or worse -- memories of old times. Memories were what Lana was trying to avoid.

  Digging her palms into her forehead, Lana glared at the mechanical device blasted apart across her desk. Golden gears and silver screws rattled across scraps of metal molded into six squares of varying size. It looked as if someone cracked the gilded mechanical box in half and dumped all the innards out. Which was in a round about way what she'd done, but with a bit more precision than applying a hammer. She reached for the cup of tea Leliana refreshed before returning to her spymaster duties. Placing the edge to her lips, Lana tipped ice cold water into her mouth. Shaking her head to clear the bitter, frozen tea, she cupped her hand under the mug and pulled the power of fire through the fade. After a moment the nearly blackened tea boiled. She smiled from the simple spell when a knock broke against her door.

  "Enter," Lana called while placing the cup down to cool. Without looking up she said, "But if you've come to play 'the worst ever' again, I should warn you I have in fact seen the Duke of Jader's underthings and I'd prefer to not...not, uh..." Her words drifted away as she stared up at the commander and not Leliana filling the doorway.

  He cocked his head to the side, but his face was stern and unbending, as unreadable as a stone. Weary and coated in red dust, he was still without his furred surcoat. Behind him, the last vestiges of the sun crested over Skyhold's garden. "I wanted to see if you were all right," Cullen said knocking into his sword.

  Lana dipped her head down and waved him in, "Please, come in. You don't have to stand in the door."

  He nodded primly, but she swore she caught a smile as he slipped inside and shut the door behind him. "Do I wish to ask about...?"

  "No!" Lana interrupted, knowing what flitted through his mind. She twisted in her chair to face him but didn't rise. Standing was still tricky. "It is a very..."

  "Long story?" he said, a whisper of a smirk lightening his face.

  "I was going to say disgusting tale. If the Duke of Jader asks if you've seen a pink dragon answer yes and walk away."

  Cullen bobbed his head and swallowed, his eyes dancing back and forth to try and piece together what that meant. "I..." his fingers knocked about that sword while his brain struggled to find the words, "I wanted to see--"

  "If I was all right?"

  Cullen grimaced, "And I
said that already. Your wound was not as deep as I'd feared, though it must have been painful."

  "Stab wounds typically are," she smiled softy.

  "Ah yes," Cullen sneered at himself. His eyes lifted to her and his face washed to concern, "But there was...what happened with the wardens--" Now it was Lana's turn to grimace as her happy facade cracked. She was no player of the game the way Leliana was, but she knew how to put on the show when it was necessary. No one wanted to see their leader scared, no one needed to see her break down, and no one wished to see her human. She'd cried, of course, but the tears silenced so abruptly when she willed it there was almost no balm in their falling. Sometimes she wondered if the decade of playing the stoic leader had leadened her heart to stone.

  Lana twisted her forefinger around her other hand's middle finger. With each thought she gripped tighter, strangling her own fingers. What was there to say about the wardens? They wanted her dead, needed her dead. All of them. Even hers...

  "Nathaniel," Lana began, her eyes boring past the commander as she took herself back to those first says at Amaranthine, "he was...very set in his ways. Determined I think is the nice way to say it. When we first met he was in a jail cell, caught for breaking into the keep and plotting to kill me." She laughed at his stubborn insistence he'd rather hang than be conscripted.

  Cullen gasped, then paused at her laugh, "Does that...happen often with wardens?"

  Lana shrugged, "It was only fair, I did kill his father." She stared down at her hands. Red welts rose off the fingers twisted together, and she glared at them. So much killing in her past; it seemed all she was good for anymore. Licking her lips, she continued her story, "He was the third person I ever conscripted into the wardens and he hated it. Hated that I made him do it, that I didn't kill him on the spot. Hated having to follow my orders, and yet, he'd do it. Snicker, and mumble under his breath, but he'd listen. Best damn archer I had, and a hell of a tactician when he'd speak up." Lana paused and giggled from the memory, "He was so soft spoken and sure footed, Oghren threatened to hang a bell off his neck. I never expected him to come around. I needed wardens, that was all there was to it, but over time we formed a...a friendship of sorts."