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I hid in my room, pillow over my head. What a pathetic way to spend my last hours alive. Alistair would see, he'd show the pictures to Cailan, and I would die. If I was lucky I wouldn't get the entire family disgraced. I'd be thrown to the wolves, Elissa would have to work in a cheap whorehouse in Redcliffe, and Mom would dig up my corpse to kill over and over again.
So when Gilmore said I had company, I slunk out to be executed.
Alistair smirked when he saw me. "I want you to know, Fergus, that we had to buy every bit of film in the store, plus all the film in the machine, and everything they had developed since yesterday. Then we had to buy all the cameras, all the candy, and all the beer. On top of that we had to make him sign a confession so he'd never, ever talk. Oh, and flowers. We had to buy flowers for Anora."
"Sweet Andraste…"
"Oh, but there's more. We took it all back and destroyed everything. All the negatives, the pictures, people's other pictures—and mind you, there were some very interesting pictures in that pile—anyway, all that had to go. Then we had to take the ash down to the main incinerator to have it burned away. That was quite the task you gave us, you know? Might have been easier to make a desire demon wear a three-piece suit.
"Anyway, when we were done we took the best picture of Anora—you know the kind I mean? One of those moments that you'll treasure forever? The ones you want to share with Grandma and the rest of the family. Well, we put it in an envelope, Cailan planted the Royal seal on it, tied the flowers to it, and left it on her pillows. Which were unused, of course. Those tense fellows who follow her around weren't going to deny us access to her holy of holies, now, were they? Especially since they were the ones who lost track of her.
"So you're a free man, Fergus. We'll be giving away cameras and beer for days, I think, but that's hardly going to be a problem with this crowd. Anyway, I'll see you downstairs later, right?" He walked off, whistling.