It's several minutes of weeping against him before she can even begin to think of taming herself back into speech. The long, hideous stretch of time during which she'd been surrounded by acquaintances and near-strangers, a time in which she was inevitably the Herald of Andraste as well as a mother, cost her most of her poise. Through those minutes, she's leaning against him, relying on him for any comfort he can give her.

Eventually, she quiets, though she can't stop crying entirely. She can only manage to do it a little less noisily.

"I left my book on my desk," she tells him, the words rushed and low in her mouth. "I walked away from him for a minute, Cullen, and when I came back--"

It would have happened anyway, she knows. But she can't stop thinking if I hadn't gotten up. "He couldn't breathe. The healers said he--he came too early--"