Fragility.

She is the best kept secret in Thedas.

Lavellan looks down at the sleeping child nestled in the crook of her remaining arm, hot breath on her collarbone, tiny grasping fingers searching for her chin as if afraid she will leave. "I will never leave you, Da'len," She whispers fervently, placing a kiss upon her forehead.

It had been hard, to hide her pregnancy, the swell of her stomach and the morning sickness and the hollowness just above her ribs that remained, painful and vibrant, until her daughter's first cry echoed in her rooms, held up by Mother Giselle, bloody and so small, so very small.

It is Leliana who comes up with the cover story. It is simple. An orphaned babe she takes as her own and grants with the name of her clan. It makes sense—of course it does, Leliana knows how to spin lies into truth—clan Lavellan is gone, and here is a chance to rebuild it anew. She has always prided herself on her culture and her history, it makes sense that she would try and pass it down, even if to a strange babe with no blood connection to her.

But she is no stranger's babe. She is the daughter of the man the world now fears and despises, and they all know that if it became known, the child will be killed in a fit of rage. Or worse, perhaps—to the others, not to herself—the child's father will learn of her existence.

She wonders, sometimes, if it would change his mind, to know that this tiny life in her arms is half his doing. That he can create life where he thinks he is only capable of death.

"You weren't enough to convince him," a dark part of her whispers when she is at her weakest. "Why would a strange child he has no emotional tether to be any different?"

She wants only happiness for her little girl and knows that their future holds nothing but pain. It is an injustice, to be born here, of all times, but it is also a gift more precious than any she has received.

She becomes hope. A symbol when they are tired and defeat rears its ugly head. They stand taller in her presence, smile and laugh and even if they are just shadows of their former selves, it is enough to keep them going as the world falls around them and the small girl stands in the center of it all like a lighthouse steering a ship away from rocky shores.

Wolf Eyes.

She is an exceptionally bright five-year-old. Like an old soul trapped in a child's body. There are flickers of age-old weariness that do not fit the bright child that bakes cookies with Sera and rides atop Iron Bull's shoulders, shrieking in delight as he throws her into the air, up up up and away as she flaps her arms in an imitation of a bird and squeals, "I'm flying! Again!"

But sometimes she glances around Skyhold's courtyard and she looks tired and ancient. "I wish no one would ever hurt," She whispers.

Lavellan wishes that too. It is what she fights for, what she will die for. She knows it as surely as she knows the sun will rise. She will die for this cause, in saving her daughter and her heart from himself as he tries to right wrongs he has created in his prideful youth.

She wonders if her daughter knows it too. If that is the reason for the tired look in her eyes that does not fit her face.

Then one morning she comes across her daughter idly picking at the embrium flowers in the garden. She is alone, and Lavellan feels panic and anger rise in her throat. Her child was alone and unprotected and something could have happened to her—until she notices Cole sitting on a bench to her left, his eyes following the young girl.

"Wolf eyes. They scare the other children. Cook says they are like his eyes. Today I learned about the wolf with eyes like mine. I do not want them to be afraid of me."

Lavellan can't breathe. The pain in her chest increases with each shaky inhalation as she watches her daughter tug at her ear with one hand and trace circles in the dirt with the other. She is crying when she drops beside her daughter and gathers her close.

"He was not scary. The wolf was not scary at all. He was lost and alone and afraid." She whispers hoarsely into the thick curls of her daughter's hair.

"I know." She answers back simply. "I asked Cole." And the finality in her voice makes Lavellan tremble.

Sparrow.

She hates her name.

"Little bird," Her mother explains one day. "It means little bird." What a stupid name. She does not wish to be a little bird. Little birds do nothing but flutter and sing and peck seed out of willing hands. Little birds live in gilded cages, if they're captivating enough, or their songs are particularly melodious.

She'd rather be a hawk, like the woman who walks the ramparts with Varric, daggers at her hips and purpose in her steps. Hawks are birds of prey. They hunt and kill. They are fierce and beautiful in their strength.

But "little bird" sticks, and they all call her that, until Varric calls her Sparrow, and at first she thinks it is an improvement, until she discovers it is just another little bird, and a particularly dull one at that.

And she puffs up in anger and he laughs, delighted, and there are off-hand comments about "ruffling her feathers" that has her pouting every time someone says it.

Then one day Dorian returns from Tevinter under the mantle of Magister with mages to fortify their border and he stills when Varric calls her Sparrow, and something flickers in his eyes that looks like both understanding and scathing condescension.

Varric is the one who notices, because she is only six years old and Varric has called her by that stupid name again so she simply glowers on Dorian's knee, trying not to muss the new dress he's bought for her even as she twists the skirt in little angry fistfuls.

Varric asks him about the face he's pulled, and Dorian blinks. "It's just…Spero. The word in Arcanum it means…"

It means pride, she learns later, after asking one of the Altus that came with him. Her father's name meant pride. She overhears Varric and Dorian speaking of it later with her mother, and Varric apologizes and says "little bird will do just fine, then" but her mother shakes her head.

"Spero is a beautiful name. She is our pride, after all."

Ours. She is too smart for six, and so she knows who her mother means when she says that word.

It is the first time she learns to hate something…and to this day she does not know if it is the name or her father that she hated first.

Magic.

"Your father is a mage," Her mother tells her, when she is seven and lights the curtains on fire in a fit of temper when her mother denies her sweets.

She doesn't want to be a mage, then. She looks at the fire cupped in her hands and lets it disappear like a candle blowing out with an errant wind. She will not be a mage, if he is one. She hates him.

But Dorian is a mage. If he were her father, she would be ok with being a mage. So she pretends, while she learns wards and lightning and ice. If Dorian were her father, she would want to make him proud.

"You'll be Archon in no time, my little bird." Dorian reaches out and tugs on the ribbon holding back her hair.

Yes. It would be nice if Dorian were her father. She wouldn't hate magic so much, then.

Swords.

She loves swords.

She loves the greatsword that Hawke's husband carries and wields with two hands. She loves the tempered blade Cassandra uses to hack at the straw dummies in the training yard. She loves the thin and sharp blade her mother practices with when she thinks that no one is looking. She loves the wooden one that Blackwall makes for her and presents with a flourish and a bow and a "my lady". She clutches it to her chest and grins, the tip of her tongue pressing out of the gap where her two front teeth had been a week ago.

She spends the entire morning waving it around, fighting invisible bandits and slavers until she trips over an uneven flagstone and skins her knee, the sword still held tightly in her grip. Later, when she's finished sniffling and her mother places a kiss over the newly healed skin, she asks her why she didn't let go of the sword to catch herself.

She sighs, a long-suffering sound as if she cannot comprehend her mother's foolishness. "A warrior never lets go of their weapon."

Lavellan hides a smile as she nods seriously, "Of course." She does not laugh until Spero has left the room, dashing off to ask Blackwall to make her a shield to go with her blade. She wonders who it was that taught her daughter that, and decides it is probably Cullen. It sounds like something the former Templar would tell a young, eager recruit.

The next day she finds her daughter standing across from a seasoned veteran in full mail, holding a flimsy wooden branch in one hand and his shield in another, as Spero lunges with her blade held high and Iron Bull yells from the sidelines, "Go for the ankles!"

Bedtime stories.

She wakes one night, restless, phantom pains lancing up an arm that no longer exists. It is not the first time it has happened, and she finds herself heading into the small room adjoined to her own where her daughter sleeps to find solace in the even rise and fall of her chest.

The bed is empty.

She panics. Ridiculous and unneeded worry. Her daughter is in a stronghold surrounded by people who would give their lives for her; she is alright. She is safe. But she is not in her bed and Lavellan's nightmares are still fresh in her mind and so she searches frantically anyway.

She finds her curled up in a chair in the great hall, a mug of hot milk clutched in her hands as she listens with wide eyes and open mouth to Varric as he tells a story that Lavellan knows well.

"…and the giant qunari hefted his blade high to land the killing blow to the Champion of Kirkwall."

"Oh no," Spero whispers in horror, nearly dropping her mug. Varric catches it, places it on the corner of the table without missing a beat. "And then the Champion turned to the side, blades whistling from the speed, as she buried them both right between his eyes."

"That is not a story for a child." Lavellan calls out dryly from the doorway.

"I'm seven, mamma." Spero groans.

Varric smiles apologetically. "I thought she deserved to hear a story where the hero wins."

Lavellan tries to swallow, but her throat is tight. She crosses her arms over her chest and gives a tight smile and a shaky nod.

Knife-ear.

She hates her ears. Hates that they're too long and too pointed. Her mother finds her one day, at the age of ten, with a knife in one hand and her left ear in the other and she's never seen her mother so terrified and so angry.

She wrenches the knife from her daughter's grasp and throws it across the room. It skitters on the stone floor and lands somewhere near the fireplace. Spero doesn't look at her mother, even as she holds her daughter's chin in hand. "Why?" Is the only word she manages, fingers trembling.

Spero lets her eyes focus on the twist of her mother's mouth instead. She sees how furious her mother is in the tension in her shoulders. She can only be honest. Her mother deserves honesty, and they'd promised to never lie to one another. The truth is the most important thing to her mother, always has been. "I don't want to be an elf. I hate him."

The words strike her mother like a physical blow. She recoils, hand dropping from her daughter's chin. Spero bows her head, hair falling in front of her eyes to hide her face from view. They are silent for a long while, save for her mother's shaky inhales and the crackling of the fire.

She wishes her mother would let her cut them off. She sees the way people look at her. She can't stop them from remarking on her eyes, but she can keep them from talking about her ears. There are not many elves in Skyhold. Just her and her mother and Sera and Fenris and Merrill and a few scouts that she doesn't know the names of.

The other elves are hiding, afraid; or they are working with their enemy. The man she does not want to name. A man whose name also means pride.

"I'm an elf."

She pauses at her mother's words.

She knows that too. Her mother and Fenris and Merrill and Sera are all elves. But somehow to her it is her being an elf that seems wrong. Like it will fix things if only she weren't an elf. If only her father was not also a man whose name means pride.

"Promise me you won't ever do that again."

She nods her head, still bowed.

"Promise."

"I promise I won't ever do it again," She whispers, loud enough for her mother to hear. She never breaks a promise, ever. Promises are too important to break. So even if she hates her ears and hates her name and hates her father, she won't try and get rid of them.

She loves her mother more than anything. Maybe it's alright then, to be an elf.

Apologies.

"I'm sorry." Her mother says hoarsely, lips pressed to her forehead. "I am sorry. I have to."

She closes her eyes. She wants to cry but she is too numb. Her entire body is cold, like one of her frost spells is wrong and started in her stomach instead of her hands. It laces through her with chilling clarity and it's all she feels.

She is twelve and far too young to feel so cold.

She knows why her mother has to. She can feel the veil twisting in the air around her. This was his plan. To destroy the veil and renew the world of the Elvhenan. This is what her mother and Dorian and all the mages in Thedas have been trying to stop.

Cole is dead. Or gone. Spirits can't die, she doesn't think, but they can cease to exist. The veil is weakening and it has taken him with it. It was a quiet and sudden thing. She thinks she cried then, but she can't remember. It feels so long ago. It was last week.

Blackwall is dead too. And Vivienne. And Harding, who taught her how to read maps. Dead months past when the man who shares her eyes attacked Skyhold with an army of ancient Elves and creatures she cannot name.

He has enough power now to do what he needs to. And they will have only one chance to keep him from destroying everything. It might work. If it doesn't work then it won't matter because they'll all die. It is supposed to be instantaneous, when the veil rends and the Fade crashes back into the earth. They will all simply cease. Pain and then nothing in a matter of seconds.

She isn't supposed to know that, but she has learned from the best how to sneak around unseen and listen to conversations behind closed doors.

She also isn't supposed to know about their one chance. About the old arcane lore that the Imperium has been collecting and the blood magic that will be involved.

About her mother being the anchor. She remembers her mother's laugh, face half-hidden in shadow as she looks over the table at the others in the war council, "It won't be the first time it's happened. What's one more destructive arcane magic ripping through my body?"

This time her mother won't come back. She knows this too. It's why her mother is apologizing. She'd promised she wouldn't ever leave her and she's breaking that promise now. She knows her mother needs her to say something but she can't. She can't find any words.

She hears yells, shouts, the creak and groan of trebuchets and tastes the tang of magic in the air, and she can do nothing but let her mother hold her. "I need you to promise me one more thing, da'len." A tear slides down her mother's cheek and hits her nose. She nods, because it is all she can do.

"He will be so lonely now." Her mother sighs. "Love him for the both of us, little bird."

No. No that is something she cannot do. She cannot love him because he is killing her mother. He has killed her family and wants to kill them all. He has destroyed everything. All she feels is anger, like hot flames licking up her throat, seeking release in bitter hatred filled words and denial.

"I promise." She manages, because it is her mother's last request. "I promise." She repeats brokenly, and she thinks she might cry. The fire has melted the ice and there is too much water in her now. It needs release.

"Ir abelas." Her mother kisses her one last time and leaves. She watches her back. Her squared shoulders and her purposeful stride as she heads to her doom to save a world her heart wants to destroy.

She watches until her mother's back disappears down the stairs. Leliana grabs her hand and tugs softly. "Come on. We will only have control of the eluvian for a while longer." She lets her pull her through, and the magic brushes away her tears like a caress.

Then they are through, on the other side of the eluvian so carefully and meticulously rebuilt and fixed. It is Merrill's, she remembers. They are in a small cramped home in the alienage in Kirkwall. Leliana leads her out and through the crowd gathered outside. She recognizes people, flashes of recognition that do not go far.

Leliana leads her up to a place called The Gallows and all she sees is an ocean stretched across the bright expanse of her vision. The waters surrounding Kirkwall are full of boats of all shapes and sizes. Their decks are crowded with people. Everyone is look out at the waves, as if they can see the land across the sea.

Big strong hands grab her and lift her onto shoulders, settled behind a pair of large horns. She is too big for this to be comfortable now, but she clutches his horns tightly and wills herself not to cry. Cassandra reaches up and pats her leg.

She does not know what they are waiting for, only that waiting is torture. The minutes stretch and they hear footsteps behind them. She glances back. Merrill, Cullen, and Hawke stumble up the last flight of stairs, out of breath and covered in blood and smoke.

"The eluvian is sealed." Merrill gasps out.

"The spell?" Cassandra asks.

And that is when the sky cracks. It is awash in a green glow that is painful to stare at directly. People are screaming. The cracks in the sky look like one of Vivienne's barriers when hit, brittle as ice, fracturing conchoidally outward in arcs of magic.

And then the light is pulled across the sky, across the sea, and centers in one small pinprick of molten heat in the distance before it explodes. The light is too much. Her face is buried in her hands and the light shines through them as if they were glass. Nothing can keep out the light.

As suddenly as it began it stops and the world seems utterly dark. She knows it is not. The sun is still shining above her but it seems dimmer somehow, as she blinks spots from her eyes and looks back across the ocean.

There is a faint, hazy wall of light glittering in the distance.

"It worked." Someone whispers, and the silence is broken. There are whistles and cheers and someone is shouting. It is her mother's name, a roar tumbling from the crowd in zealous, fearless relief.

She keeps her eyes trained on the faint glow across the sea. "I hope he died," She states, and no one asks her to clarify. Cassandra's grip on her leg tightens for a moment, then eases.

"Your mother would want him to live." She thinks it's Varric who speaks, she can't be certain. Her ears are ringing, and she is trembling with the effort of holding back tears.

"I am not my mother." And then she folds over, sobbing. Iron Bull pulls her from his shoulders and into his arms. She doesn't listen to the words of comfort. Even with her eyes closed all she can see is that barrier separating the world across the sea from the one she lives in now.

I hate him. I hate him. I'm sorry mother. I hate him.

Home.

The blood magic that her mother and the Tevinter mages used couldn't stop her father's magic. It only contained it. Focused the veil and its rending to the land across the sea. When she dreams now, the Fade is a very different place.

It is like two worlds existing in one. The places she knew as Ferelden and Orlais are now transported back to a time when Arlathan stood bright and beautiful and proud. They'd gotten as many people out as they could before it happened, the army leading people through Deep Roads and across mountain passes and over oceans to safety.

Not everyone made it across the sea before the Fade slid back into place. Dorian remained with her mother to see the blood ritual through. So did Dagna. And Sera who stayed with her to buy them time and to get the others to the Eluvian in those final moments.

The next two years of her life go by in relative peace. Kirkwall is a city that keeps her busy, becoming the center of the new government of the displaced peoples from what they are now calling the Diaspora. The border of the Fade barrier trails the Ferelden and Orlesian borders along the Waking Sea and across the Western Approach just south of the Nahashin Marshes.

Most of Orlais is gone, save for Val Royeaux and the upper northern half of the kingdom. Ferelden is completely lost. The Ferelden's in Kirkwall walk the streets lost and confused, unsure of where they now stand with no country to call their own.

The barrier is not a physical one, in the sense that it can be traversed. But it keeps the rupture of the Fade back from the rest of Thedas. She wonders if her mother's soul lingers in that green glow of magic. If she has become trapped in the making of it.

The border remains silent. Those guarding it report that they can see movement on the other side sometimes, but there is no attempt at crossing from the Elvhen side.

She helps the remnants of the Inquisition establish peace and some semblance of order. They are her family, all that she has left now. She has nowhere else to go. She trains in swordplay with Cassandra, Cullen, and the captain of Kirkwall's guard, a woman named Aveline.

She sleeps in the Hanged Man in a room next to Varric. She falls asleep at night to bawdy tavern songs and the smell of ale and vomit. She is invited to live somewhere else—anywhere else. Merrill suggest the alienage, so she can be around other elves. But she has never been comfortable around elves. They remind her too much of her father.

Aveline and her husband Donnic say she can live with them. They cannot have children and she is still young enough to be considered a child. She declines politely. She is no longer a child. She has not been one since she was ten years old and she tried to saw off the ends of her own ears. Or perhaps when she was six and she learned that she shared the eyes of a murderer.

Hawke offers her a place in her manor in Hightown. But Hawke is just beginning to show signs of her pregnancy, and she does not think she will survive seeing Fenris dote over the swelling of her stomach without thinking of the lack of her own father. Of how her mother went through it all alone. It is not her family. She does not have a right to that house.

She likes Varric's tavern. It is familiar. It reminds her of the Herald's Rest. It is as close to home as she can find at the moment. When she goes downstairs she can find Iron Bull and what is left of the Chargers and she can almost imagine she's in Skyhold.

The remnants of the Inquisition are flung across the city, meeting in unorthodox places as they try and get their bearing. As they try to find a place they can call their own to set up the power structure that Thedas so desperately needs now.

Near the end of the second year Leliana has found them a new base of operations. An Orlesian manor house outside of Val Chevin. The owners died during The Rending and no one has a claim to it anymore. The original name of the chateaux is something disgustingly Orlesian that sounds like the name of an expensive perfume.

She stands in front of the gates, Cassandra to her right and Leliana to her left, and Varric rolls his shoulders. "I think the little bird should name it."

Vengeance, she thinks immediately. Something to do with righteous fury for all the lives lost at Skyhold. Then she remembers her mother, and can see her shaking her head tiredly as she brushes hair from her eyes. "Do you want the foundation of this place to be anger?"

Yes. She does. But it is not what her mother wants, and she is her mother's daughter above all else.

"Fortitude." She says at last, swallowing back anything else she wishes to say. Josephine comments that the name is fitting, and someone pats her on the shoulder. She merely walks forward past the iron gates into the courtyard.

Swords II.

"This is Blackwall's sword."

Spero wipes sweat from her forehead and turns to Cullen. Her back and arms ache from her practice, but it is a welcome ache. It reminds her that she is doing something. She glances down at the sword in his hands. It is a simple blade. Well-made and sharp. The hilt is undecorated same for a small griffon burnt into the leather of the pommel.

"I think you should have it. You're strong enough to wield it now." He continues, holding it out for her to take.

She doesn't ask why he has it. They didn't have time to grab much that last day in Skyhold. All she'd had was a rucksack filled with things her mother had placed inside that Leliana had shouldered with her own bags. She reaches out and takes the sword. It is heavy, but it is a good weight. It fits well in her grasp. She holds it out, testing her grip. It is perfect.

"Thank you." She whispers.

Cullen reaches out as if to ruffle her hair but stops himself. She is fifteen now, and she hates being coddled. He squeezes her shoulder instead, a quick gesture, before he lets go. "I expect you in the training grounds tomorrow at dawn. We need to put you through your paces with the new weight."

She nods absently and he leaves her. She looks down at the blade once more.

She will need a sheath.

War.

They know that the Elvhen will not remain silent for long. They want to reclaim the rest of the land they believe belongs to them by birthright. It leaves a sour taste in the back of her throat. These are the people her father believed were worth the death of everything she knows.

War is on the horizon and everyone looks to Fortitude and the forces within it for guidance. But there is no Inquisitor any longer. There is no time to worry about it, though. Cullen, Leliana, Josephine, and Cassandra split the leadership role between them.

When Cullen leads their troops out to the borderlands near Val Royeaux, Spero is at his side. The others protest at first. She is too young, even at sixteen. They have promised her mother they will look out for her.

She was not old enough to fight before. She is old enough now. This time she will not allow others to sacrifice themselves. She has inherited the blood of the Elvhen. It is her job to end their tyranny. This is her inheritance.

So she marches at Cullen's side with Blackwall's sword upon her back and bloodlust filling her veins like a lyrium drought.

There is no turning back.

Battlefield.

She is good at killing, she learns. Stronger than her form suggests. Killing ancient elves is easier than she thought. Perhaps it is because they are still weakened from their long sleep. Perhaps it is because she and her people fight with the desperation of those fighting for what they hold dear against those who want only to claim and destroy and domineer.

She does not meet any of the Evanuris. If they are awake they do not appear on the battlefield. But the vallalsin clad slaves they send in waves and she braves the ocean of their magic like she is born to it.

The further from the barrier they go, the weaker the Elvhen's magic is. It becomes like any other mage's gift. The playing ground is equal now. The Elvhen focus too strongly on their magic. It becomes a crutch that the army uses to their advantage.

She cuts them down and imagines every face belongs to her father, knowing it does not. The Dread Wolf is a coward. He will not attend the battle if he does not have an advantage. She stands back to back with Krem and ducks as he swings his sword and disembowels an Elvhen in the shape of a panther.

She steps in and beheads it cleanly before wiping blood from her cheek with the back of her glove. She lets out a roar and charges. She is not a bird. She is a lioness, fierce and proud and strong.

The Elvhen learn quickly enough that they cannot rely on their magic. It does not take them long to regroup and change their strategy. They send out a contingent marked with the vallaslin of Andruil and it is a massacre.

Iron Bull falls when the famed Hunter enters the field herself. An arrow through the throat that he chokes on, even as he cleaves through three more archers with his battle axe. They are forced to retreat when the front line wavers and breaks at the appearance of the goddess of the hunt and the warped, monstrous creatures created by her wife Ghilan'nain.

She last thing she sees as a cruel smile stretched across red lips and gold eyes glittering in the fading afternoon light. She points Blackwall's sword at her in defiant challenge, a promise, and she sees Andruil's smile widen before Spero finally heeds Cullen's call for her to fall back.

Andruil is not at the next battle, but she beheads a general who wears her vallaslin and feels the edge of her fury abate. It still simmers beneath her skin, but she does not feel like she will be consumed with the heat of it anymore.

Her Mother's Daughter.

She is eighteen before she sees her father for the first time. She wonders why it has taken him so long to join the war. The part of her that sounds like her mother tells her he does not want war. This is the opposite of what he desired. But his plans have never worked, have they? This is just another mistake on a long list of them beneath his name.

He does not seem to take joy out of the death he causes, but that does not abate her fury. If anything it intensifies it. He is so apathetic to the suffering of people he should have protected. She will end him herself. End their horrid line so that it cannot produce any more regrets.

It takes her a long while to reach him on the battlefield, but she moves with a single-minded purpose. The last elf that stands between her and her quarry cuts her deep along her stomach, blade laced with magic slicing clean through her chainmail. She ignores it, leans into the blade so she can grab his face with her hand and burn it beneath her fingertips.

He drops to the ground with a wail and she stumbles, catches herself, and looks up. He is not looking at her. She is a fly to him, to be squashed with impunity, without a backward glance. A warrior elf is no opponent for an Elvhen god. The Dread Wolf need not concern himself with flies, but he will kill this fly if it continues to pester him.

And she does pester him. She charges once more and is thrown back by a barrier of magic so strong and potent that her minds reels from more than just blood loss. They are too far from the barrier for that kind of strength. Secrets and old spells. He has always twisted the world for himself.

She hits the ground and she cannot find the strength to stand. She sits up, coughing up a mouthful of blood on the mud at her feet. He has turned from her, back toward the thick of the fighting. To where Cullen decapitates an Elvhen with his shield and skewers another with his sword.

He will kill Cullen and he will not mourn his loss, despite their history. Just as he will not mourn her mother.

And so she throws out a handful of lightning and that catches his attention. A mage with no staff who fights like a warrior, who throws lightning from her fingertips. And as she lies there, blood pooling from her stomach, hand outstretched to him in defiance, a storm brewing in her heart and in her palm, he turns and sees.

She will never forget that look on his face, burned into her memory like so many other faces. The cool nonchalance slipping free, washed away by the rain that pelts them both. Recognition dawns as he takes in her hair—the same color as her mother's—and her eyes—they are her father's eyes and she hates them, hates them so much—and the curve of her cheek and the fullness of her lips that belong to his heart that he allowed to wither and die to save the world from his pride. And the pain that twists his mouth and shines in his eyes is excruciating. She feels a moment of pity for him, that he sees what his love has wrought too late for there to be anything but hatred.

He falls to the ground beside her, magic filling his hands as he presses them to the wound in her stomach. "No," He whispers, and then words in Ancient Elvhen that she does not know. He is close, so close…the storm in her hand is unrelenting and cruel and all she has to do is reach up to where his heart still beats in his chest and unleash it…

"He will be so lonely. Love him enough for the both of us, little bird." Her hand falls uselessly to her side. If she were her father's daughter she would have done it without a second thought. But she belongs to her mother, and so she does not, even as darkness claims her and strong arms hold her against wet fur and rain-slicked steel.

"Ma' ashalan," is the last thing she hears, and the words ring hollow in her ears.

Part 1 of Pride's Folly.

Notes:

Ultima Ratio: The last resort. Short form of the metaphor "The Last Resort of Kings and Common Men" referring to a declaration of war.

Ir Abelas: I'm sorry

Da'len: little one

Ma' ashalan: my daughter