My Warden (COMPLETED)

Shadows

At least she waited for someone to say come in, Cullen thought as he watched Leliana enter the apartment. She was still dressed in her Divine robes, with a tweed traveling cloak knotted across her shoulders. He sat perched at the breakfast nook, his work spread out around him. As nonchalantly as possible, Cullen placed a boot down to try and cover the stain neither he nor Lana could get up by alchemy or magic. Even Detan seemed perplexed by it after using some special cleaning agent that was supposed to work on demon blood. In the end, she suggested they slide a stack of books in the way and pretend it never happened.

"Afternoon," he smiled at the Divine. "How was your trip to Jader?"

"Boring, and a waste of a week," Leliana sighed. He hadn't seen her since the birthday incident, the Divine suddenly needing to head to northern Orlais for a vitally important meeting. Cullen floated the idea she was doing it to avoid him, but Lana shook her head at that. Leliana wasn't the type to avoid the shit she started.

"Lana's resting at the moment, but you can take a seat and wait for her to wake," Cullen offered up the other chair. For a moment, the Divine's crystal eyes wandered over him, no doubt trying to see if he was planning some retribution for her lie, but she had no other recourse and tumbled down to the chair.

After unknotting her cloak off and rubbing her throat where the clasp pulled, Leliana said, "You say she's both resting and sleeping..."

"Originally, she planned to lay down on the bed and do some reading, but when I went to unearth a book left in the room I found her face down in the pillows."

"Interesting," the Divine eyed him up. "Long day?"

"We visited the catacombs under the city," Cullen explained.

"For the Maker's sake, why?"

Smiling at Leliana's look of disgust, Cullen tipped his chair back, "Lana found mention of an old symbol in one of her books being located amongst the piles of bones below the city and she wanted to see it for herself to cross reference with another symbol designed during the...at that point I stopped paying attention."

Leliana laughed at that, her bell like chuckle ringing in her nose. "I've found that's the best approach when she starts hopping back and forth on her feet in ecstatic glee over a moldy old parchment that's barely legible."

Bobbing his head, he was glad the Divine didn't expect him to share in all of Lana's hobbies and interests because he'd have to learn a lot more of magic and its history a lot quicker. "She did stumble across an old mage circle drawn, Maker, it had to be ages and ages past."

"Was it still active?" Leliana sat up at that, but Cullen waved his hand.

"No, the magic itself was long disrupted. I made certain of that," he added getting a nod of approval from the Divine, "but she was bubbling over in glee at the language used for the runes. Apparently, you can something something very important something else. Either she's completely altered everything ever known about the history of ward crafting or is about to."

Leliana reached over and patted his hand, "Lana always seemed to be at her most focused when she had a cause driving her. Without one her attentions become erratic and divided. If I were you I'd find one cause to hone her and quickly lest she wind up digesting the entire library of Minrathous."

He nodded his head, his hands parting over the remainder of his work. While Cullen could easily whittle away a few hours of each day upon it and know more remained, a small part of his brain questioned what he would do once he was finally finished with the Inquisition. What would he be like with no cause to steer him? As if sensing his thoughts, Leliana gestured at the works, "You'll be leaving soon?"