Epilogue

Leonie was as surprised as she was grateful that the letter found its way to her. She carefully folded it and placed it in the small chest where all of Duncan's letters were kept. There were forty seven letters in all and she had memorized each one of them.

They were bivouacked along the border, just east of Jader. A sea of tents, interspersed with islands of small campfires. They had been there for three months, waiting for word from King Cailan. The waiting game was destroying her carefully constructed optimism.

Riordan delivered the news about Ostagar, discovered by questioning the ragged refugees streaming across the border. She had known. Somehow, she had always known that when Duncan most needed her she would fail him. While Riordan tried to comfort her, to assuage the guilt that began to gnaw away at the edges of her sanity, she found no solace in his words. She let him comfort her because it gave him comfort to do so and he had loved Duncan as much as she had.

She should have been there. She should have just ignored Loghain's orders to turn back at the border and Celene's orders to hold position until permission was given to enter Ferelden. She should have been there come what may, but she had been a dutiful Grey Warden and stayed with her men for months, waiting for some word.

Nothing she did seemed to alleviate the anguish, the twisting painful grief that tore through her flesh and bone to settle in her very marrow. There were days when she could deny it and on those days she was convinced that she was merely waiting for word from Duncan himself. Those days found Riordan hovering nearby, with a worried look in his eyes that she refused to acknowledge. Seeing his grief only brought hers back to life.

When she could no longer deny the truth, she walked quietly to her campfire and stood looking into the flames as if somehow she could conjure Duncan from them, have him rise like a phoenix from the ashes. She could not and the truth weighed heavy and certain in her. He would not have wanted her to lose herself in her grief, he would have wanted her to continue doing what she had always done, be what she had always been. A Grey Warden. It would dishonor him to continue weeping and wailing and ignoring her duties.

Finally, Leonie performed the ritual that centuries of Orlesian women before her had performed at the death of their loved ones. She took out her dagger and holding her hair away from her neck, she cut the long braid off. Having no funeral pyre to place it upon, she dropped it onto her campfire, signifying to all she was in mourning. And then she did what she had to as a Grey Warden. She did what Duncan had taught her.

She pressed forward, always forward.

Fin