Wicked Graces

Chapter Three

Hawke was too exhausted to explore the suite of rooms she claimed as her own after retaking the castle. Directly across the halls from the royal apartments, she was quite content to have easy access to her husband, while enjoying a little privacy if she so chose. She liked privacy, room to breathe and move. It made her feel less like she was less confined; Hawke hated feeling trapped.

It seemed Sebastian and the servants went to a great deal of trouble to make it feel like home while she was away, but she was too tired to truly appreciate the finer details put in place. In fact, the only thing she wanted after a warm bath was to curl up in bed beside her husband and forget for a while they'd ever been apart. The prospect didn't seem likely. His chancellor drew him aside to discuss some urgent matter of state during the banquet in her honor, and he was forced to excuse himself hours before she and Varric finally managed to slip away from the festivities.

She spent so much time smiling and nodding and having her hand kissed by randy nobles her face and neck hurt. Thank the Maker for the mask she was born with. It was all too easy to smile, even when she didn't mean it—which was more or less most of the time. She was so good at faking it she might actually survive Orlais if her travels ever took her southeast again.

So many nobles, so many faces and names she was never going to remember, and all of them wanted to get close to her, catch her ear and win her favor.

Maybe Varric was right. He hadn't said as much, at least not out loud, but every time he looked across the table at her she knew what he was thinking: She was not cut out for the royal life, no matter how much Amell blood ran through her veins. She was no princess, any more than she was qualified to play Viscountess of Kirkwall, and yet that was the life she'd chosen.

For love.

It sounded silly when she thought about it that way, like some romantic tale Bethany might spin while daydreaming of the life she'd never get to live. Bethany. Now she'd have been a right royal princess, one to be reckoned with for sure. A place for everything in Bethany's world, and everything in its place. She was so much like their mother that way.

Then there was Hawke: a bull in an Orlesian ceramics market all her life, charging straight for all the breakables and leaving nothing but dust and rubble in her wake. She had no business being in charge of one city-state, let alone two. And yet, there she was. Try as she might to imagine her life on another path, she couldn't see it clearly at all. Not without Sebastian. They were meant to be together, just as he was meant to take back his city and his throne.

She would get used to all the pomp and ceremony... eventually. Her children would be raised with every privilege and freedom, not just noble brats, but royal ones at that. Her mother would be so very proud; Uncle Gamlen ridiculously jealous.

Stripping out of her tunic, she dropped it on the floor behind her and turned toward the full length mirror propped in the corner of the room. She lowered a hand to her midriff, fingers stretching open across flesh still muscular and taut; it was hardly altered enough to give away her condition, the barest hint of swelling only noticeable to a woman who knew her own body better than anyone else, and yet she felt it in her very core.

A child.

They'd spoken of having a family as they lay twined together on their wedding night six months earlier, clinging to one another in the shadows while the early morning sun began to nudge chaotic Kirkwall's horizon. One day, they said. Perhaps once things were calmer, when they were both established firmly in their new positions they could begin the long process of rebuilding the vast families they'd lost.

But life had other plans. It always had other plans. Would Sebastian be pleased? Would it worry him as much as it began to worry her in the months they were apart? Night and day she fretted over the child in her womb, fearing for its very life before it was even born. She had no right to be anyone's mother. As she and Varric liked to remind one another often, they were terrible people. Murderers, thieves, nobility...