Wicked Graces

Chapter Six

By no means had Varric Tethras ever given anyone cause to call him slow. Under ordinary circumstances he was generally very observant, quick to the uptake, often figuring things out long before anyone else and piecing them together so he could sit back and say, "I knew it from the start," while everyone else was making sense of it way after the fact.

But Hawke had thrown him for a complete loop with this one.

Maybe because in all the years he'd known her, he never once imagined her in that light. She was definitely a sexual being, which was one of the reasons he struggled so hard to understand it when she relentlessly pursued Choir Boy all those years ago, but he never thought she and Sebastian would actually ever... sleep together, much less procreate.

Despite her vigilance, the care she took to see everyone else's needs met, he never pictured her as the nurturing type, so when it dawned on him that she was ascending to whole new level of care that involved patience, acceptance, nurturing, he felt a little... stupid.

He told himself at first that maybe even she didn't know—accidents happened all the time, and if she'd really gone all those years without having her needs met, maybe she and Choir Boy both forgot how easily such mistakes could be made without proper precaution—but the number of times he watched her hand absently drift to rest over her womb the last few weeks suggested otherwise.

The real question was: Why hadn't she told anyone? Most especially her closest friend and trusted companion? So what if he was writing a book about her exploits in Kirkwall, and always pumping her for details to make sure he got every word just right, but her love life always seemed far too boring to include within the pages—until now.

He reasoned she probably wanted to tell the father of her child first, but judging from the frigid atmosphere at breakfast when Varric finally stumbled to the table she hadn't yet told him either. Sebastian's ability to take a ridiculous amount of joy in the simplest of pleasures suggested he would receive the news of an unplanned heir well, probably declare a Starkhaven-wide holiday, complete with parades and a banquet so lavish it would be the talk of the Free Marches for years to come.

So yeah... She definitely hadn't told him.

Again, the question of why niggled in the back of the dwarf's mind. But he said nothing, not at first, anyway. He walked the streets of Starkhaven beside her, noting a silence most uncharacteristic of her and the tight muscles of her jaw leaving a constant frown where her generally sarcastic smile tended to linger. They admired the brilliant colors and well-stocked wares of the marketplace, remarking at how quickly the city-state had recovered from the chaos of Sebastian's reclamation of the throne. They sampled every delectable treat offered to them once the vendors in their stalls took note of the squadron of soldiers assigned to escort them and realization dawned they were appealing to the better nature of the very woman who would govern over their affairs beside their prince.

The weather was beautiful, not nearly as stifling as the heat and humidity they left behind in midsummer Kirkwall, with a slow, balmy breeze fragrant with colorful flowers, rich spices imported from Antiva, and the sticky, roasted fruit dripping from skewers and jutting out of every other stall in the marketplace. Despite the breeze, the heat seemed to bother her, winding her just a little as they moved from stall to stall, but her only real complaint was that so far the food in Starkhaven was too rich for her palate. All of it, she declared, was making her stomach feel warbly and off.

Varric couldn't agree more. And to make matters worse he felt naked. The guard insisted he leave Bianca in the armory, and while they hadn't exactly come upon anything suspicious in the streets of Starkhaven, if there was anything the dwarf hated it was being unprepared for the worst.