Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“You’re gonna have to let me get up at some point,” Saar murmurs, “or we’ll get really stuck together.”

“I am not stopping you,” Solas says, unbothered. She can hear the smile in his voice. As if he doesn’t still have his legs hooked over her thighs, and one hand curled over the nape of her neck.

With the fire roaring, it’s not cold in the bed despite their drying sweat. Solas is so warm and relaxed and Saar really doesn’t want to move from where she’s lying on top of him, cradled and comfortable. But dried come is gross, cleaning a dried saartoh-nehrappan is also gross, and they’re getting closer and closer to that end of the scale.

With a groan, Saar pushes herself up on hands and knees. Solas makes a low, unhappy noise—very low. He lets her go, keeping his hands to himself now. Saar’s tempted to nix her plans and just stay curled up with him for the rest of the night, grossness be damned. But she’s done that once, and swore never again. As a compromise, she leans her head down against his, nudging their noses together.

“Don’t go anywhere,” she whispers. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

“Vhenan—”

She fadesteps across the room to the fire, where the water bucket got left. Behind her, Solas lets out a soft, surprised laugh, and a smile bites into her cheeks in turn. She hears him shift, the rustle of cloth—probably cleaning his belly. She unties the harness, separates the shaft, and dunks the latter into the water to soak, then gives her own belly a quick wipe.

When she turns around, ready to fadestep right back onto the bed, Solas has sat up. He’s staring at her.

When he speaks, his voice is quiet, but the words cut anyway: “You have a death name.”

Right.

She does.

Square in the middle of her back, a smear of pitchblack letters. She’s surprised he noticed it, against the backlight of the flickering fire, but he’s got better eyesight in the dark than she does.

Saar gets back onto the bed, more slowly than she was planning. “Yeah. And?”

Solas’ gaze flickers from her face down to where the name would be, if she turned around. He touches her waist, gingerly.

“May I…?”

Saar chews her lip, something inside her chest tensing up. It’s probably nothing to be worried about. Death names are rarer than love names, but hers is far from the only one. And given Solas’ previous comments on the subject, he’s hardly inclined to attach too much meaning to it.

“It is only curiosity, vhenan,” Solas says softly. “If you do not wish—”

“It’s fine.” Saar sighs. “You’ll get an eyeful sooner or later, I wasn’t planning on hiding it from you.”

She lies down next to him, but not before pulling him into a brief kiss. He melts into it just like he did at the start of the evening, which is both gratifying and a little heartbreaking. Still touching him, she settles on her belly, one shoulder angled up, and her face resting sideways on her hand. Solas gives her a small, grateful smile and scoots closer. His hand skates over her shoulder, down her back…

…and stops.

There’s an odd silence. A stillness. As if he stopped breathing.

Saar shifts, that tension back between her lungs.

“…Solas?” she tries.

Solas visibly shakes himself, blinking rapidly. “This…” He licks his lips, gaze flickering to Saar. “It is not written in Common.”

“No,” she agrees, slowly, quietly. His eyes have that silver shine again, the one all elves get in the dim and dark. But the fire’s strong, crackling. “Not dwarven runes either. Or Tevene, or Qunlat.” Or any language she’s ever seen. Any language anyone has ever seen. From a certain angle, the symbols look a little like they could be Elvish—but no Dalish clan Saar knows uses them, or even recognized them.

“Can you read the name?” Solas asks her, after another silence.

“No.” The answer is prompt. She hesitates, then: “And on the off chance you can, don’t tell me.”

Solas chuckles softly, gaze cast aside. “I could not. These symbols…” He drifts off. Almost absently, it seems, his fingers keep tracing the thick black lines on her back. His gaze unfocuses, staring into some unknown distance. Does he recognize them? He might, with what he’s seen in the Fade, how deep into those memories he wandered…

It doesn’t matter. She doesn’t need to know. She doesn’t want to know.

Saar gently cups his jaw, stroking her thumb over his cheekbone. “Are you gonna come back to me tonight, kadan?” she murmurs.

Solas blinks.

“I—” He lets out a low breath, leaning into her hand. “Yes, of course.”

Saar rolls onto her back and Solas curls up against her side, his cheek and palm resting on her sternum, one knee drawn up over her hip. The tension in her chest at last eases again, and turns to slow, liquid warmth.

Down in the valley below Skyhold, the wind is softer, and the air warmer. It is still not remotely sufficient to reliably farm the food required to feed the rapidly growing Inquisition. Josephine has done impressive work negotiating trade agreements to supply the Inquisition, but it is far from enough.

Especially since Saar declared she wanted, in essence, a self-sustaining city. A haven, protected by the Frostbacks’ sharp peaks, for all her people. In her dreams, it is already a reality.

Solas has seen it, walking the Fade with her. He has helped her build it. Lush forests, clinging impossibly to the sides of the mountains, full of birds and game. Caves carved into the rock to create shelters, to create houses. Earth turned dark and fertile in the valleys and along mountain terraces. In those dreams, Skyhold is watchful guardian and beating heart at once, overlooking the lands below, teeming with people and activity.

He knows it cannot be. Not in this world, ruined and shackled by the Veil. Not when so many who live in it fear and hate everything they cannot subjugate.

But when Saar’s eyes shine like that, her voice calling down dragons from the sky to protect her lands—

In such moments, it is terrifyingly easy to believe her.

“I know that’s not exactly possible,” she says now, helping Solas dismount his horse. “At least not with the tools we have right now.”

She drops a kiss behind his ear while her hand lingers at his waist, warm and solid.

“I have already agreed to help,” Solas says, unable to stifle his smile. “You need not seduce me further.”

“I like seducing you,” Saar whispers.

His face grows unreasonably warm at that, and he slips out of her hold with effort. “I shall hold you to that,” he says, throwing her a glance over his shoulder. “Later.”

Saar grins, easy and relaxed, managing somehow to sprawl vertically for a moment. It is more charming than it has any right to be. She takes her hart’s reins and leads it to walk beside Solas and his horse, and they make their way to what is to be a field for one of the newly-established farms.

The earth is thin and meager. Growing food here is possible, but very difficult. Solas has little personal experience with the growth of plants, or the bespelling thereof, nevermind new experience, working under the constraints of the Veil. But Circle mages, who have only recently been able to leave their prisons, both physical and mental, have even less. And Saar… she is optimistic. She always is.

One of the farmers shows them the turnip seeds they intend to use, and explains the process of planting, growth, and harvest. Saar appears to have some experience with that, making knowing comments here and there.

“Vegetable garden, when I was a kid,” she explains once the farmfolk have retreated a respectable distance, eyeing them both with a mixture of awe and nerves. Solas tries to ignore the attention, focusing instead on the seeds in his palm. He can feel the faint spark of life in them, dormant for now.

“One possibility would be to infuse the seeds themselves,” he muses out loud. “If they were able to grow with fewer resources…”

“Worth a try,” Saar agrees. She drafts a hoe from the farmers, then holds it out to him.

Solas gives her a look. “You are aware I have little experience with this?”

“No time to learn like the present,” Saar replies blithely.

And so, he spends half an hour making a fool of himself hoeing the field. At some point Saar takes pity on him and shows him the proper motions, using the opportunity to let her hands linger once more. Solas does not complain. How readily she touches him, never demanding answers as to why he shivers and sinks into her arms so often… It is wonderful. It is terrifying.

They spend even longer trying to work a spell into the seeds. Then, in a different patch of ground, magic into the soil itself. Into yet another patch, magic into both seeds and earth. By the end they are both sweating and exhausted, sprawled out by the edge of the field. At some point, one of the farmers brought water and food. Both are long gone, and they are nursing a new pitcher of water.

Saar, having long abandoned her coat, drags out the shirttails from her breeches, so the shirt hangs loose over her hips. The motion exposes her waist very briefly, and her back…

There is hardly a glimpse of the death name. Without already knowing it was there, one would likely not recognize it.

Solas knows it is there.

“Have you ever tried to find out?” he asks after a moment. “The name, what it means.”

Saar stares, caught off guard, before answering. “No.” She shrugs, rather deliberately. “I don't care. Never have.”

He ought to drop the subject. But, like worrying a healing wound, Solas finds himself probing. At least so far, she seems not to disdain the discussion.

“That is… a rather unusual position.”

“What, you expect me to go on a grand quest to kill whatever poor sop's name I've got, for no other reason than destiny or the Maker or the Old Gods say so?”

“…No. Not you.” He takes another drink of water, wetting his dry throat. It is true. Even before, he would not have expected it of her, even if his reasoning for it had been… faulty. “But you must admit, the story format is rather popular these days.”

Saar blinks at him. A cackle bursts from her, sharp and small, but the smile stays. "True," she grants, "but I think dramas about love names are pretty far ahead."

Solas grimaces, thinking of those tales. Lovers parting ways in misery, but rightfully so, because they never had each other's love names. Tortured souls at last finding the person whose name they carry, and suddenly all is well. Always, people are at the mercy of fate, or the Maker, or the Old Gods—and always, the evil is in trying to evade that higher will.

It is horrifying.

Saar's smile widens, watching him. “I didn't think you'd be this invested,” she says quietly. “Considering your, well—” and she mimics his previous expression, mouth curled with distaste.

For a brief moment, Solas considers answering with the full truth.

Because the name on your back is mine.

But as always, the moment passes, and he skirts the truth instead.

“A scholarly fascination,” he says. “Those letters seem very old.”

Older than he is, in fact. So old they had become the writing of the gods, reserved for only the Evanuris and a handful of their chosen. Letters to bestow blessings or curses, power or pain.

Fen'harel had been a frequent subject of those writings, once he had begun his rebellion.

“They do, don't they,” Saar mutters. “That's how I—ugh, Koslun's ass.” She rubs the back of her hand across her face, sighing deeply.

Solas sets aside the tankard. “Vhenan…?”

“I didn't have a death name for the first person I killed,” she says, hollow. “And that was—I chose my own name because of it, I left my family, but apparently that wasn't blighted important enough.”

Her name.

Saar.

He knows it means dangerous, as it does in the term the Qunari use for—

The lightning scars upon her thigh—

She fought a saarebas. She killed them.

His heart begins to thrum, beating a staccato against his ribs. He shifts closer, laying a careful hand to Saar’s knee. Trying not to think of how old that scar tissue is, how young she must have been. Of how she may have accomplished it, besting another mage…

“I… I am sorry,” he offers quietly. “You need not indulge my curiosity in this.”

Saar’s hand closes around his, the Anchor sparking against his skin. He shivers.

“It’s fine,” she says softly. “It was a long time ago.”

“Is it fine?”

She considers him for a long moment, the weight of her amber eyes heavy.

“Sometimes,” she decides at last. She shakes her head, looking out over the mountains. “It never quite fades, does it.”

It does not.

Solas keeps silent, lest he say too much, as he so often does with her. Only closes the distance between them, leaning against her side, keeping her hand in his. After a moment, Saar speaks once more.

“Have you ever seen turnips in the Fade?”

A startled laugh bursts from Solas’ mouth. He hides his face against her shoulder, until he has his breathing under control once more.

“No,” he admits. “I have not. A great failing, which I shall endeavor to correct posthaste.”

“Gonna fall asleep right here?” Saar is smiling again; it is obvious in her voice. Solas kisses her shoulder, relieved.

“Perhaps. Would you keep me company?”

“Definitely.”

Unfortunately, the farmers are a little too nervous to have the Inquisitor herself fall asleep in a turnip field.

When they have sex again later that week, for the second time, it is better than the first. It is close to midday, and clear warm sunlight floods in many colors through the stained-glass windows of the Inquisitor’s quarters.

Solas expects to feel some sort of apprehension at the prospect of being confronted with his metaphysical death-warrant again. To balk at seeing Saar naked, the death name easily visible, or to touch her and feel the ever so slightly differing texture where the letters mark her skin. Instead, a strange lightness fills his chest. He feels almost hollow, but not unpleasantly so. As though he is floating.

Saar is so gentle with him. Less hesitant than before, having learned a portion of the touches he enjoys just as he has learned of hers. Reverent is not the correct term—it calls older touches to mind, from those who knew him as a god. Nigh ruthless in bringing him pleasure, and yet… gentle.

“Let me ride you this time,” he pants, when she has used three fingers to make him come, the Anchor sparking right against his testes.

“Yeah?” she murmurs, voice low. Specks of color flow across her skin and hair as she moves between his thighs. “Sure you’re not too exhausted, little wolf?”

The pet name has light and heat bloom in his chest. Solas curls his arms around her waist to tug her close, fingers splayed wide over her back. Over the death name.

Saar lets out a rough breath and smiles, brilliant and pleased and sharp.

She will kill him.

And all he can think is that it will be a far kinder death than any he has expected to suffer—and he has expected many. Even if she were unmarked, bare of his name, death would still be waiting for him at the end of his path. For it to come wearing her face, her tender hands…

“I want to watch you come,” he breathes, arching up to brush the shadow of a kiss against her lips. “Is that certainty enough?”

It is.

The second mural is taking shape. The formation of the Inquisition, imprinted into the halls of Skyhold to endure the ages. The truth of it, not the story others will want to tell: the wolves of the mountains guiding the yet-to-be-named Inquisitor to safety. Her mark, blazing like a beacon. Her magic, wreathing her body, tall and broad and horned, so none may ignore what she is.

It is a gift. He cannot explain to Saar why it is one, nor why he expends himself so to give it… at least not without revealing too much. But she deserves to be seen as herself. To be remembered as herself. Not with the mantle of Andraste’s Herald in which so many try to cloak her, turning her into someone devoted, and pure, and convenient to their purposes.

He tends to forget the passage of time when he works like this. Only the paints and the ever-drying plaster, hurrying him along, exist.

That is, until someone enters the rotunda with heavy footsteps, loudly scrapes the chair by his desk over the flagstones, and climbs into it, followed by the sound of pages rustling.

“I did not take you for one interested in the intricacies of late Imperial Fade research, Master Tethras,” Solas says and dips his brush once more into the paint. Varric chuckles.

“If that’s not a magic trick, you gotta teach me that one, Chuckles.” He settles into the chair with a noisy breath. “How’d you know it was me?”

“You have a distinctive gait.” Solas eyes the wolf before him, considering. The shape is as he intended, but the richness of the color leaves something to be desired. “And most people know better than to disturb me when I am occupied thusly.”

“Too occupied to talk?”

“If I permit the plaster to dry without painting it, it is ruined,” Solas says while picking up the red pigment. “The section will have to be removed before I can start anew.”

Varric makes a low, thoughtful noise. “You really pick the easiest hobbies, huh? No mistakes allowed, ever?”

Solas presses down a little too harshly with the brush, and adjusts his grip. “Mistakes are… an unfortunate reality,” he says, quietly. This one is faint, a slight indentation in the plaster. Reparable, with a careful smoothing of his fingers. But other mistakes… “As is breaking what has been done, to repair it.”

“Ohh, don’t start with the gloom and doom again,” Varric calls out. The chair scrapes closer. “I just wanted to ask, because it’s been nagging at me, as a connoisseur of nicknames.”

Solas scoffs out a laugh, glad that the dwarf cannot see his smile.

“Where in the blights did yours come from?”

Solas blinks. “Are you referring to the one you bestowed on me?”

“Nah, I mean the one you’re painting right now.”

The wolf he has just embellished with an outline of red light, the red layered atop the dark fur to give the color more body…

“Y’know. The little wolf one,” Varric adds.

Ah.

The dwarf is gesturing as he speaks, it is audible in his voice. Solas is not quite sure when he learned how to recognize that.

“Saar picked it,” he says after a long moment. His voice has grown soft and his chest warm, remembering it. Another thing he cannot explain in full to her, how much it means to him, why it does so, and still…

“I’m well aware Teeth came up with it, I’m just curious how. You’re not exactly… furry? Or much of a people person. Pack person, I guess.”

Because Solas has let slip one too many details. Because he did not lie, when Saar figured out the jawbone he wears belonged to a wolf. Because he allowed old wounds to bleed out of him, when they dealt with the demon-haunted wolf pack near Master Dennet’s farm. Because he froze, when she told him to stop with the blighted lone-wolf act.

Because she noticed, and followed the trail like a wolf on the hunt herself. Offered the name up as a tease, half in jest. It struck him to the bone nonetheless.

She noticed that, too.

“Perhaps I was one, once upon a time,” Solas says, setting the brush to plaster again.

A wolf.

A monstrous beast, a god of nightmares.

He does not feel like one, when Saar kisses him, holds him, whispers little wolf into his skin.

Varric hums. “Out of curiosity, how drunk would we have to get you, to get a glimpse at that Solas?”

“I do not get drunk,” Solas replies. “Merely inebriated.”

Varric laughs, low and full, echoing through the rotunda.

The Exalted Plains are not a particularly pleasant destination for a variety of reasons. Still, there’s something wonderfully, achingly reassuring for Saar in how Solas tucks himself into her arms these days. So much tension leeches out of him it makes her throat close up just a little if she lets herself linger on it too long.

“I’d suggest we take a walk in the Fade,” she murmurs, “but I don’t think I want to know exactly how much blood was shed here. Right now, it’s…”

…quiet. Peaceful. Outside, a gentle rain patters down on the tents, but inside, it’s warm from their bodies and magic. Even if it’s a bit stuffy.

“Bloodshed is everywhere,” Solas says quietly. “If you delve far enough into the past… inevitably, you will find it.”

Her arms tighten around him.

“That’s grim, kadan.”

He chuckles, a low thing full of some raw, unnamed injury. “I believe I mentioned that at some point?” He glances up at her, a lopsided smile tugging at his mouth. It doesn’t quite reach his eyes, which are gleaming in the dark. “I am grim and fatalistic.”

…Well.

“Not on my watch,” Saar decides, and before he can stop her, buries her face in the hollow of his throat to blow a raspberry against his skin.

Solas’ entire body snaps with tension. A strangled noise makes it out of his mouth, and that’s definitely not acceptable.

Saar keeps him held close, shifts her mouth, and does it again.

This time, Solas shrieks.

And then he starts laughing.

Helpless, unrestrained, practically chortling. She’s never heard him laugh like that. It’s like watching the damn sun come up.

Maybe the glow inside her chest is magic, but it almost feels like the sun’s rising between her ribs too, and she forgets all about her plans to keep distracting him.

When Solas is chuckling—giggling—only slightly, his hands covering his face, a voice calls from outside the tent.

“Inquisitor? Is—is everything all right?”

“Everything’s fine,” Saar replies absently, not taking her eyes off Solas. “Had a lizard scare, that’s all.”

“You are a wretch,” Solas hisses, glaring up at her. That works for about half a second, before he hides his face again, shoulders shaking. Saar’s smiling so wide her cheeks hurt.

“Been called a scoundrel, too,” she says.

“An utter knave,” he supplies. “A blackguard of the lowest order.”

“You love me.”

There’s an odd pause, but then Solas’ hands are rising up to cup her cheeks. “Against my best judgment,” he whispers, and draws her down into a kiss. They’re both still grinning so hard it barely counts as one.

Saar keeps kissing him anyway, pressing her lips to the corner of his mouth, his dimpled chin, his sharp jaw, down to his throat.

“If you repeat that—that atrocity, I shall set something on fire,” Solas warns. “And I doubt I will be able to control what it is precisely.”

“Noted.” Saar goes back to kissing him, gently, but not so lightly she could be accused of tickling attempts. Solas lets out a soft sigh, one of his hands tangling in her hair. He arches a little, giving her more access to his throat, and that sends her heart into a whole new flutter. Considering some of the fights they’ve had, to have come to this point… She’s not sure how she got this stupidly lucky.

When she pulls back again, Solas just holds her face, watching her with an unfairly fond expression. His fingers are so gentle, moving across her skin, through her hair.

“What is it?” she asks quietly.

“I do love you,” he murmurs. “Even though you are a wretch and a scoundrel.”

Saar can’t help smiling. Bits of light start to float around them, and she’s not quite sure whose fault those are, but they make his eyes shine, illuminating everything with a warm glow.

“You forgot knave and blackguard,” she says, tapping a finger against his neck with each term. “And thief, and heretic, and—”

His throat is red.

Saar goes still. Blinks.

…It’s still red.

Her veins run cold. That can’t be blood. Can it? She’d smell it, and if he was injured he’d react, somehow, her claws are half blunt right now, it doesn’t even reflect the light like any sort of liquid would, and the shape is odd too, not like a cut at all—

It’s not blood.

It’s just… red.

A red dragon, stretching its wings along Solas’ jugular. The shape of its horns—

Oh no.

What.

How?

“…Vhenan?” Solas asks, frowning. “What is the matter?”

It doesn’t make sense. Why would that thing show up now?

“Uh,” Saar manages, very succinctly. “You have—there’s a—um. I think you have a name?”

He stares at her. For a split second, abject horror flickers over his face.

“It’s a love name,” she adds quickly, “if it is one, I mean, I’m not sure—”

It sure fucking looks like one. Most love names are names, written out in letters or runes… but not all of them.

It looks like it’s—

“Is there a mirror?” Solas asks, sounding way too calm. He comes up to a sitting position, his shoulders a flat line. Tension brimming in every muscle.

“Ah, yeah, kind of.” Saar hauls the bowl left from their dinner from the entrance of the tent, empties a waterskin into it, and freezes the surface. She has to do a few passes to get the surface properly smooth, which is not helped by Solas just waiting in silence for her. When it’s good enough to do the job, she hands it to him. The motes of light from mere moments ago have long extinguished, so she conjures two new ones to hover above his shoulders. Solas carefully tilts the bowl, then his head, until he gets a good look at his throat.

Something flits over his face, eyes shimmering, but it’s gone too quickly for Saar to figure out what it was. At least he doesn’t look afraid anymore, even if that hadn’t lasted long. After a long moment, his gaze flickers to her horns. Back to the mirror, then back to her horns again.

They’re the exact same bloody shape as those of the dragon plastered on his skin now.

“Well,” he says at last, “this is curious.”

Saar laughs, a little hollow. “I’d have said blighted weird, but yeah. I mean, we just established, you’re…”

You’re already in love with me.

He called her ‘vhenan’ for the first time months ago. They’ve been annoying everyone else for ages, with the flirting and the touching and the talking about things they found in the Fade, and magic, and everything else under the sun.

His mouth twists slightly, and he covers the dragon with one hand. It’s not enough to hide all of it.

“Does it hurt?” Saar asks, reaching out to carefully touch her fingers to the red skin that’s still visible. Solas shivers.

“It feels—strange. It itches somewhat, now that I am aware of it?” He straightens, then sets the bowl aside. “In any case, this does not appreciably change anything. Neither for better or for worse, however one might define these terms in such circumstances.”

Saar lets out a breath of relief, tension sapping out of her she hadn’t quite realized was there.

“Good,” she says, softer than she means to. “For a moment there, I thought I’d have to seduce you all over again. Y’know, properly this time, with poetry and jousting.”

Solas’ eyebrows climb toward his non-existent hairline. “’Jousting’?”

“Yeah, like those Orlesian chevaliers’ romances. Cassandra tells me they’re the height of romance.”

He smiles, small and crooked. “And here I thought you were being euphemistic.”

“Oh?”

He crawls closer, until he’s sitting between her knees. The motes of lights are scattering into countless smaller ones, as if fireflies have invaded their tent.

“Perhaps you should seduce me anew regardless,” he whispers, so close she can feel his breath fan across her collarbones. His hands trail over her thighs, up to her hips. “I quite enjoyed the jousting, the first time.”

Saar laughs softly, her chest full of little lights too. “I think you’re doing a pretty good job of seducing me already,” she murmurs. She does curl her hands over his thighs, lifting him up so he can straddle her lap. Like this, she’s got a disconcertingly good view of the love name, but…

He’s right. It doesn’t change anything. They’ll have to deal with questions and comments because there’s not really a good way to hide the damn thing, but between the two of them? Nothing’s changed.

When Solas leans in to kiss her, it feels just as heady as it always did.

The ramparts are burning and the dead no longer rise from them.

“Was wondering where you’d been hiding it,” says the Iron Bull. The words come out slightly slurred. His eye is bright, a faint red sheen to the iris. But the reaver’s strength has left him.

When he raises one hand to point at Solas’ neck, it takes little force to shove it down again. Solas returns his hands to the Iron Bull’s side, where the flesh is gaping apart from the arcane horror’s claws. Blood flowing freely still, all over Solas’ hands.

“Hold still,” he hisses, trying to concentrate enough to call upon a spirit to aid in healing the injury. It is pitiful, the kind of magic to which he is reduced. It takes every ounce of power he has to heal a wound that would have required hardly more than a thought before the Veil. And now, when he is already drained and exhausted…

“He’s gonna be fine, right,” Sera asks, appearing beside them. Bouncing nervously. Her voice is higher than usual. “You can fix it, right?”

“Yes, if you would stop interrupting me—!”

—there. A connection, however faint. Solas shuts out all else, drawing on the spirit’s power.

Thank you.

It will not be enough to heal the wound entirely, he can feel, but enough to stop the bleeding. To close it so it does not worsen, while they transport the Iron Bull back to the camp’s surgeon.

Once his focus softens, taking in more than the wound and his own blood-stained hands, he can hear Sera chattering about her ridiculous little invention, a long breathless stream of bees, and explosions, and did Bull see how well it worked against those gross undead fuckers, and—

“You’re done! Are you done?”

Solas simply nods, sitting back on his heels. The rocky ground is digging uncomfortably into his shins, but he is too exhausted to stand immediately.

The Iron Bull’s words come slowly. “Thanks, Chuckles.”

It takes Solas a moment to reply, panting for breath as he is. “Do not call me that.”

“Why not? Varric—”

Because Varric is—

“I do not appreciate it from him, either.” Solas glances about the ramparts. “Where is Saar?”

He can hear Sera roll her eyes. “Eugh, you two are disgusting. She’s checking the fires are burnin’ proper and all.” With that, Sera clambers—straining with effort, the fight left her in a state as well—up onto a nearby rampart. She proceeds to yell.

“Saar! Oi, Herald of Andraste’s knickers! Your beau’s worried about you!”

“Sera.”

“What?! You are!”

She is correct in her assessment, although he is not about to admit that to her.

“That’a get you sent back to th’ mainland, real quick,” the Iron Bull mutters from the ground. His eye has closed now. His chest rises and falls almost evenly.

In the distance, Solas can hear the faint pop of a fadestep. A knot inside his chest unfurls, and despite himself, he probes. “What do you mean?”

“Love name. Distracted.” The Iron Bull gestures vaguely, then drops his hand. “Major lia… liability to the Antaam. Death names too.”

“I would imagine the latter are far more common.”

The Iron Bull shrugs, then hisses. Before he can reply, Sera yelps. A wave of cold air blasts over them both.

“Hey, beau.”

Saar almost falls over Solas, barely catching herself with her spear. She is panting, and pretending poorly not to. The warmth that fills Solas’ chest in response unmoors him only slightly.

“Tell me you did not spend the last of your power to get here faster,” he says, but the words leave him far too softly to be the admonishment he means them to be.

“It wasn’t the last,” she says. “I just, haaa, need a minute before I can ferry anyone anywhere.”

“…Sit down, vhenan.”

With a laugh, she does, leaning against him. She inquires after the Iron Bull’s state—an affirmative grunt and more vague gestures are the response—while Sera climbs back down from the rampart to join them. Solas recalls just in time how blood-stained his hands are as he reaches out to touch Saar, but she takes hold of them regardless.

At first Saar thinks it’s a scratch. A squiggle of red on the inside of Solas’ lower arm. She digs out a tincture during a brief stay at camp and hands it to him. Solas mutters how he has no idea how he managed to acquire that kind of injury, but he accepts the tincture gratefully. For a few days, that’s the end of it. And then, while they’re taking a bath in a stream, warm from the sun, she realizes the red hasn’t changed. Hasn’t scabbed over, or healed in any way, because it’s not a fucking scratch at all.

“Is that another name?” she asks, incredulous, her head tucked over Solas’ shoulder. He stiffens momentarily, before relaxing back against her front. The water purls over his thighs, but the realization of the name has robbed the sight of the allure it held.

“It appears so.”

Saar’s chest twinges, and she soothes her hand over his belly.

“I’m not—angry, or anything,” she adds, softer. “Just surprised.” What the blight’s happening to him?

“I was as well,” Solas says evenly. “But considering the oddity of the first… an additional name is hardly a significant increase.”

Well. He’s got a point there.

“Can you read it?” Saar asks after a moment. “It just… looks like swirls, to me.” Even if it does seem oddly familiar, tugging at something in the back of her mind.

“I cannot.” Solas chuckles softly. “I suppose we have that in common, now.” He twists his head to kiss her shoulder, and Saar shivers a little.

They do. And with the names, not knowing is definitely better. No fate or doom or the Maker’s will hanging over you, if you don’t know.

And that’s how it goes, until Varric gets caught up in some utterly absurd issues with his publisher, and a murder, and Saar ends up skimming through ‘Hard in Hightown’, and in the back of the book is Varric’s signature.

She must have seen it before, but only in passing. Looking at it for longer now doesn’t change much in terms of legibility: it’s a horrid, unintelligible scrawl. Which seems to be the norm, for signatures of authors and other people who are required to sign things regularly. And she could swear she’s tried to decipher it before, it’s so familiar—

The scrawl on Solas’ arm. The second love name. It’s Varric’s signature.

She has to sit with that realization for a moment. She knows Solas and Varric got along right from the start, even if they’ve had more disagreements in recent months, so if this is working remotely off of actual feelings…

…Is it working off of actual feelings?

When she tells Solas, he’s rather unconcerned. Another oddity, but again—in sum, not stranger than the first name itself. Besides, it’s not like she’s worried he’d run off with Varric and leave her in the lurch. Solas is actually downright offended by the notion, which is very funny.

“As if I would elope with—!”

“Well, I hear Wycome is very nice this time of year.”

Solas gives her a disapproving look. His lips purse, but the corner of his mouth twitches.

“You are trying to make me laugh again,” he says, in tones of grave accusation. Saar just grins.

“Kadan, I would never.”

He scoffs, but he’s already smiling.

So.

Solas has two love names now.

Saar has a death name, and nothing else.

…At least she thinks she doesn’t.

It burrows in under her skin. Wondering. Maybe she missed something? It’s not like it would change anything, she knows that, she does. She does. But maybe—

It doesn’t fucking help that she keeps catching Cass watching her with searching eyes, like Solas’ name will bloom on Saar’s skin if the Seeker just stares hard enough. Make their love story-book perfect. Saar can hear the disgusted noise Sera would make over that phrasing, and has to smile. But… even Sera eyes her like that, sometimes. She never catches Iron Bull at it, but that doesn’t mean much. Blackwall and Dorian are less obvious with the looks, but they ask about it. Dorian talks about it like it’s a quaint little southern superstition, but he’s not as disinterested as he affects, she knows him well enough for that by now. From Blackwall she gets careful congratulations, and a question when the bonding ceremony will be, and Saar just stares at him for half a minute.

“Bonding ceremony?!”

“I meant to ask you about it as well,” Josephine tells her, “if you wished to make an official announcement.”

“Be careful, darling,” Vivienne says. “Even bolstered by love names, to wed an elven apostate… it is fertile ground, for those who seek to undermine the Herald of Andraste.”

“I’m not gonna fucking wed Solas,” Saar snaps. “We’re not Andrastian, and the Chantry can piss right off into the Void before I let it into my bed.”

Both of them blink at her. It’s the end of that particular discussion, but how they look at her, almost with pity…

She’d have expected Solas to be forced to deal with the most odd looks and invasive questions, given how blatant the love name is. She’s unspeakably glad he isn’t, but this? This bloody sucks.

Every time Saar thinks she’s put those thoughts aside, she catches whispers about it, or they meet someone who hasn’t seen them before Solas got plastered with red, and they… stare at him. Stare at her horns. Open their mouth, and not always think better of it.

The doubt stays, and burrows, and burrows, and then Solas walks in on her in her bedroom while she’s levitating a mirror to examine the backs of her thighs.

There’s a long silence.

“I can leave, if you wish,” Solas says, with a care and slowness that means he turned that sentence over in his head several times. Saar doesn’t know if she wants to kiss him or shove him out the door again. Something hot and horrible and choking is bubbling up her throat, and she has to swallow it down over and over, until it stays down.

“No,” she manages. She doesn’t want him to leave. It’s so ridiculous. It never got to her, she never let it, and now—

With a heavy sigh, she sits down on the edge of the bed. The mirror clatters to the ground, and she distractedly sends it careening into the couch cushions with a flick of her magic. She has her face in her hands. She can hear Solas move, his bare feet shifting over the thick carpets, until his knees touch the top of her shins and he so, so carefully lays his hand upon her shoulder.

Saar looks up at him. He looks back, expression serious. But there’s that tilt to his brows, that hint of tension to his eyes and mouth she really wishes she wasn’t so good at recognizing.

“I’m fine,” she mutters. “I just…”

His hand slides to her cheek, gentle. It makes her sigh, shivering a little. With the same, cautious tenderness, Solas lifts his knee onto the bed beside her, then slides into her lap. Both his hands are cradling her jaw now.

“Vhenan,” he says, with quiet insistence. “Do you believe my feelings for you are contingent on a certain… stain upon your skin?”

When he puts it like that—Saar draws a shaky breath.

“…No. No, ‘course not.” She wraps both arms around his waist, holding tight, and rests her cheek against his shoulder. “It’s just… difficult, sometimes. When in every story where this happens, it goes badly. When they’re all staring at me, wondering where mine is. Cassandra’s utter shit at hiding it.”

Solas lets out a soft, startled chuckle. His hands are in her hair now, stroking along the nape of her neck.

“That is true,” he murmurs. “She is not known for subtlety.” He takes a deep breath, chest expanding against hers, then…

“Ar lath na, ma vhenan.” His voice is quiet and sure. He kisses her temple, the top of her ear. “I love you, whether or not I am marked. I love you, whether or not you are marked. I love you, no matter what may happen.”

Maker’s tits. Saar has to swallow before she can answer. And even then, all she manages for a good while is little wolf.

From the way Solas trembles and wraps himself even further around her, he hears the unspoken rest too.

Chapter Text

She shouldn’t have brought Solas along.

It’s cold, it’s raining, Saar might end up murdering Iron Bull today, and Solas won’t stop sniping at the man. Not that Iron Bull isn’t doing his fair share of arguing back—even if it’s a lot more subdued than usual.

“Both of you,” Saar growls, “stop it.”

Solas’ mouth goes tight, a tense line, but he shuts up. Iron Bull grunts, scratches at his left shoulder, and keeps quiet too. Saar lets out a sigh.

An alliance with the Qunari. If her parents could see her right now, they’d have some questions.

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Iron Bull reach again for his shoulder—the left one, where he always wears the pauldron. It doesn’t seem to have a supportive function the way his leg brace does, but maybe…

“Iron Bull, a word.”

He follows her to something that can generously be called a somewhat secluded area. Close enough to the rest of their party they can get help if Venatori jump from the bushes, but far enough away and shielded by fir trees that they have a modicum of privacy.

“What’s up, boss?”

“What’s wrong with your shoulder?”

Iron Bull goes tense. Visibly tense. He’s usually better at hiding that shit, which does not raise Saar’s hopes for this entire endeavor.

“Nothing’s wrong.”

“That why you keep touching it?” A fat drop of cold rain slips right down the back of her neck and she swallows a hiss. “Because I swear on Koslun’s dusty corpse, if you’re going into a mission that’s already risky with an unknown injury—”

“It’s not—” He grunts, his gaze sliding away. “It’s not a bloody injury.”

“Then just show me! Did Sera slip in nettles while you were asleep?”

He laughs, but it’s brief, almost strangled. “No. Not this time, at least.”

“Iron Bull.” He looks back at her. “Show. Me.”

They stare at each other for a long moment, until he sighs, shoulders sinking. He opens the claps holding the pauldron in place, then shrugs it off, catching it before it can fall to the ground.

“Happy now, boss?”

Saar says nothing, just steps close and runs her hand over the muscle. She can’t see or feel anything on the surface, the skin slightly warmer because it was protected from the rain. She carefully presses her fingers into the joint, feeling for knotted tissue, tracing around to the back…

Iron Bull goes stiff all over. For half a second she thinks she’s hit some deeper injury, but it’s on the surface. Black letters, high on his shoulder.

Tevene letters. A pain to read, but—

Cremisius Aclassi.

…Shit.

“How long have you had that?” she asks quietly, once her heartbeat rights itself.

Iron Bull’s jaw clenches. “Doesn’t matter either way, does it?”

It doesn’t.

Saar covers the name with her hand, which almost works. Iron Bull’s skin is paler than hers, and the black edges stand out like brands.

“It doesn’t,” she repeats out loud. “And either way, he’s not gonna die.”

“I know that,” Iron Bull almost hisses. “Krem’s the toughest blighter of all of them.”

That has her smiling, even if it’s sharp. She slides her hand down to his arm, to help him put the pauldron on again, when the name… changes.

No, it’s not changing, but there’s—

—red.

Iron Bull lets out an unsteady breath as lines of bright red burn themselves right over the death name. “Boss? Should get back to the others soon, the time—”

“I, yeah, sure,” Saar manages. “Those Venatori won’t defeat themselves, I know.”

Iron Bull gets the pauldron back on while Saar steps away from him, her mind whirling. If she’d noticed it while it happened to Solas, would it have looked like that too?

Like fire, burning a path.

They go back to the rest in silence, the rain still beating down.

The new letters are not Tevene, but Common, and just one word.

Krem.

Saar sucks in a deep breath, reeling her thoughts back to the task at hand. It doesn’t matter either way. They’ve got a lot more important shit to deal with.

“You’d be declaring yourself Tal Vashoth!” Gatt barks, and Bull actually flinches. Doesn’t manage to hide it. Looks to Saar with an utterly lost expression.

Fuck. This is an unholy mess, but she’s actually relieved.

“You said it yourself,” she says. “They’re your people, so—we get them out.”

The horn rings out from their position, loud like rolling thunder. In the distance, Saar can spot the Chargers cluster and fall back. Behind her, Sera hisses in what sounds like relief. But she can’t relax. The dreadnought’s still out there.

“How much time does the dreadnought need to get away?” she asks Gatt, who’s practically trembling with rage.

“Too long—”

“Not what I asked.” It comes out as a snarl, makes him take a step back. Actually look at her, instead of Bull.

“A few minutes, if we signal them right now—but it won’t matter—”

All right. The Chargers are in retreat, Venatori reinforcements are nearly up the hill, the dreadnought dead in the water once they start hitting it…

“I’ll make it matter. Signal them.” She finds the vial of mana restorative, a new concoction from Dagna, and swallows half. It goes through her like lightning, makes sparks burst from her skin.

All right.

“Solas. How exhausted are you?”

He eyes her, shifting the grip on his staff from a resting position. “Do you have a plan?”

“Half of one,” she admits. “They can’t hit the dreadnought if they can’t see it. If there’s sea fret rolling in, maybe.”

“Boss—!” Bull gets between them, a wild light to his eye. “That’s insane, just the two of you—”

“Very well,” Solas says, as if Bull hadn’t even interrupted. He steps past Bull, throwing a hard glare up at him. Saar gives Solas the rest of the restorative and Bull a grin. Solas downs the liquid, eyes shimmering for a moment, and moves into her arms, staff in hand. She pulls him close. Together, they fadestep down the hill and to the shore.

Solas could sleep for a week. He will, the moment they make it back to anything resembling a proper bed. His hands and feet are freezing, and he has not a drop of magic left to warm them. Saar is in little better shape. She tries to remain upright, but keeps listing against the central pole of the tent. Solas is leaning against her, having long given up a similar attempt. Saar’s arm is heavy around his back. The blanket someone draped around them will hopefully fulfill its intended purpose soon, but right now, the places he and Saar are touching are the only parts of him that actually feel warm.

Iron Bull is pacing before them—or, trying not to, it appears, yet he is in near constant motion.

“Sit down,” Saar mutters. “Gonna make me seasick.”

Solas makes a muffled noise of agreement.

“That was reckless as shit,” Iron Bull mutters, not sitting down. “And it’s not gonna save the alliance, not after what I—”

Saar’s chest heaves with a deep sigh beneath Solas’ cheek. “I don’t give a fuck about the alliance, Bull.”

There’s a long, strained silence. Solas manages to blink his eyes open for long enough to see Iron Bull watching Saar with an ever so slightly squinted eye.

“You never gave a fuck about it, did you,” he says.

“Wouldn’t go that far,” says Saar. Voice low. Tired. But there is an edge to it Solas has heard before. “But I care a lot more that I didn’t have to kill you in front of your crew. Did you really think I’d hire a Ben-Hassrath agent and let him stay a Ben-Hassrath agent?”

Solas shivers. He could blame it on the cold and exhaustion, clawed deep into his bones, but he knows better. Unfortunately. That kind of ruthlessness is very familiar.

A grunt, followed by the sounds of Iron Bull settling heavily onto a stool. A sigh.

“You’re a real piece of shit, boss.” Despite the harsh words, he sounds… mellowed. Or perhaps fatigued. “If you don’t care about the alliance, or what Gatt and the rest of the Ben-Hassrath think—that was risky. For both of you,” Iron Bull continues. “Why bother trying to save the dreadnought?”

Solas has been asking himself that question too. He can feel the weight of an eye on him, and reluctantly opens his own again. Iron Bull is staring at him now, hands folded between his knees. His wide back bowed, his head bent. A man who just lost his place in the world.

Something below Solas’ ribs twinges in sympathy.

“I don’t want a ship full of people to drown if I can help it,” Saar murmurs.

“Yeah, but they’re not your people, they’re m—” Iron Bull breaks off.

Saar shrugs. “Maybe they will be.” The way she says it, there is no maybe about it. From the way Iron Bull peers at her, he heard it as well.

Solas shivers again. Saar notices, and gently hauls him into her lap, wrapping both arms around him. Her torso is warm, just like her breath where it fans against his temple, and Solas curls against her, helpless against the call of that heat. That small exertion is also enough to have another wave of exhaustion wash over him.

“I’ll find you guys another blanket,” Iron Bull says quietly, but Solas dozes off before he does.

They are eight moves into their chess game and two weeks into the Hissing Wastes when Solas wakes with a strangely itching right shoulder. Briefly, he worries the cause is remnants of vitaar paint. Saar and the Iron Bull have been wearing it nigh constantly out here, and the lack of brushes for application meant often-stained fingers for both of them. But a cursory examination by touch reveals nothing out of the ordinary.

Five more moves and a few days later, Iron Bull claps him on the right shoulder after a scuffle with a pack of lurkers, the way he has quite often in the past days.

“Nice work, Fadewalker.” He grins broadly. “Ben-Hassrath to H5, by the way.”

The pieces light up in Solas’ mind’s eye, shifting to accommodate the new position… and he freezes.

Iron Bull laughs. “All right, take some time. Think about your life choices.”

It takes several more days until they return to Griffon Wing Keep that Solas is able to acquire a mirror for visual confirmation, but when he does… It is almost no surprise anymore.

High on the back of his right shoulder, the letters IB blaze in bright red.

This is becoming ridiculous.

“You wanna talk about it?” Saar murmurs that evening, moving to lie beside him. Solas reaches backwards to catch her by the waist. A moment of stillness, before she settles atop him once more. Moving with such slow care it has Solas’ heart ache. Her left hand finds his, their fingers tangling.

“It has no bearing on my feelings for you,” he says quietly. None of it has. He will love her still when she pushes her spear through his chest.

“I’m not saying it does, I just—” Saar sighs, her chest expanding against his back. “I’m worried, I guess?” Her voice is almost small. “That you—I don’t know—you’re pushing something down because you don’t want to hurt me?”

“Are you saying it would not bother you?” he asks, unable to keep a note of incredulity from his voice.

Saar nuzzles his ear. “I’m not saying I’d never get jealous—I hope I wouldn’t, at least—but I’ve got three parents.” She lets out a soft chuckle. “I’m the last person to claim you can only love one person at a time.”

“It is not a matter of love.” Regardless of what the red-inked name on his shoulder would declare.

She shrugs. “Lust, then.”

That has him chuckling. “Iron Bull may be very attractive, but not to me personally.”

“Really. The big buff vashoth with a killer smile isn’t doing it for you?” Saar’s tone is fond, teasing, but there seems to be genuine curiosity underneath. This aspect never came up, Solas realizes. Another piece of him no one remembers. Then again, it was hardly part of the persona of the Dread Wolf, traitor to the gods.

“No,” he affirms. He might leave it at that—Saar has rarely dug deeper than he was willing to offer—but this is… What risk can there be, in revealing it? In allowing her to see this part of him as well?

And so he continues: “Because he is not you, vhenan. Whatever feelings I harbor, they are utterly unlike those I hold for you.” He laces their fingers together properly, squeezing gently. “I love you, and thus…”

Saar issues a very soft sound. Solas attempts to twist his head to meet her gaze, but she buries her face against the nape of his neck, her skin flushed hot. Her heartbeat thuds against his spine like a pulsing star. For a long time, they lie together. Solas could melt into the mattress from the embrace and Saar’s warm weight blanketing him.

“So…” Saar breaks the comfortable silence at last. “You think Bull is ‘very attractive’?”

“Abstractly speaking.” He can practically hear Saar’s lips stretch into a grin. “Do not tell him.”

“I would never.”

Leaving the desert behind is fucking wonderful. Even if Saar carries sand in unexpected places for far longer than she’d hope—and just like the sand, a not-quite-festering worry about Solas. She watches him, and how he acts around Bull, with more concern than she’d like. But they’re unchanged. Well, they have changed, in their attitudes toward each other. Except the new ones seem to stick.

The chess game continues with the same subtly delighted fervor from both of them, intense silences followed by quick bursts of back-and-forth moves. Saar hasn’t bothered to keep track—she barely knows the rules anyway—but it’s reassuring nonetheless.

On the Imperial Highway, the sun only shining down gently instead of burning, it sounds like the game has come to an end.

“Who won?” she asks, glancing back at them both.

“Solas,” grunts Bull. “Ruthless little fucker.” He sounds almost impressed, and Solas has that mild-mannered expression on his face when he’s pleased and trying not to smile.

“What did you do, kadan?”

“Sacrificed half his bloody pieces,” Bull cuts in before Solas can answer.

“The strategy succeeded,” Solas says with a shrug, still with that almost-smile. Saar’s tempted to kiss it from his mouth. It’s a good look on him, and even better when it breaks into an actual smile. He can tell, probably, because his eyes go a little wide, and his ears twitch.

“Well,” Bull mutters, “it’s not gonna work a second time.”

Solas’ gaze swings back to him. “Let us find out, shall we?”

“Let’s.” Bull’s single eye glints. “Pawn to E4.”

“Pawn to C5,” Solas replies, and they’re off again.

Saar grins.

Outside the tent, a snowstorm howls, bitter and relentless. Inside, the sizzling brazier is not quite sufficient to keep the cold at bay. Solas feeds the fire with his magic, a thin and slow thread. He has to conserve his powers. The night is early yet, and Saar has been asleep for hours already. He cannot smell blood anymore, but only because the stench of cleaning liquor and herb poultices overpowers everything else. When he closes his eyes, he can still see it. Shards of red, in Sahrnia Quarry. Liquid red, spilled wide across the snow. A Red Templar who got lucky, though not for long.

Saar lost a lot of blood, before Solas could close up the wound. His heart trips inside his chest at the thought and he forces himself to take deep, even breaths. She is alive. She is not feverish. Her chest rises and falls. Where his thigh touches her hip, seated as he is upon the edge of the cot, the warmth of her body seeps into him.

Not for the first time since she fell asleep, he considers walking in the Fade to find her dreams. To reach out to her by any means possible. But the thought of falling asleep himself hollows out his chest—to be unaware, if anything were to happen to her physical self…

And so, he sits beside her keeping watch, holding her hand gently in his lap. Listens to her breathing and the storm outside.

Eventually, a different noise penetrates through the storm’s whistling: heavy steps, crunching on snow, someone cursing. Then the tent flap opens. A gust of freezing air whips inside. Iron Bull maneuvers himself inside too, then hastily closes up the entrance again. Solas spares him a half-hearted glare for the intrusion of cold. Then his attention returns to Saar. He stokes the brazier a little higher, to compensate for the momentary drop in temperature.

“Try not to scatter snow everywhere,” Solas mutters.

Iron Bull says nothing intelligible in response, but for a moment, the sounds of his movements do not come nearer. Then, a sigh, and more footsteps.

“How is she?”

“Not worse than before.”

Iron Bull hums thoughtfully. “You look worse,” he says. “Like shit, actually.”

Solas chuckles hoarsely, his throat raw. He has not slept in… too long. “You don’t say.”

Iron Bull seats himself on the fur below the cot. Right next to Solas, his side pressing against Solas’ legs. Solas wonders whether it will have any effect to tell him to mind his space, when Iron Bull produces a bundle of waybread and holds it right in his face.

…Ah.

Murmuring a quiet thanks, Solas accepts it. The warmth of another body is pleasant, as well. They are silent while Solas eats, his stomach clenching. It has been a long time since he last ate too, evidently. And when he is done…

“Tamassran to C4.”

That—

Solas straightens abruptly, turning to Iron Bull.

“Are you serious?” he hisses, keeping his voice low. “You believe now is an appropriate time to—”

“Yep.” Iron Bull’s voice is considerably gentler than Solas expected, and his own mouth falls shut. “You’re all stuck in your own head, thinking about the worst ways this could go. It’s not helping anyone.”

“I…”

“It’s not helping her, either,” Iron Bull points out, motioning with one horn in Saar’s direction.

Curse the man for being sensible.

“…Fine.” Solas draws a shuddering breath, pulling his thoughts to the task at hand. “Mage to C4, you said? Knight to D4.”

The smile that spreads over Iron Bull’s face is… disconcertingly soft. “I’ll take your other Knight, then. Ben-Hassrath to F6.” He smirks, his expression returning to far more familiar waters. “Better watch out, I’ve got your King in my sights now.”

Solas grimaces, but does not hesitate in his response. “Pawn to D5.”

“Gotta do better than that, Fadewalker. Tamassran to D5.” He nudges his shoulder against Solas’ knee. “Maybe your King should start running.”

Iron Bull has maneuvered him into a precarious position. There are only two paths his King can take. But still…

“Running is not—” He cuts himself off as Saar stirs beside him. Her eyelids flutter and she shifts slightly onto her uninjured side. Her breathing deepens. She does not wake, but relief blooms hot and burning in Solas’ chest regardless. Her strength seems to be returning.

“King to G6.”

“Arishok to H5.” Iron Bull looks from Saar up at Solas. “Only one way out of that one.”

“I’m aware,” Solas mutters. “King to F6, captures Knight.”

Iron Bull leans back on his hands, another thoughtful noise rumbling out of him. “Pawn takes Pawn at E3. Watch your horses.”

Solas rolls his eyes, without any real annoyance. “No need for coddling, Iron Bull. Knight to C2. Takes Pawn, threatens King.” He raises an eyebrow at him. “Perhaps you ought to start running.”

Iron Bull simply shrugs, but his eye remains watchful. “Fair enough. King to E2.”

Solas opens his mouth to reply—and closes it. His mind hurries through the progression of the game, the movements of the pieces, and… snags.

He made a mistake. If he had taken the other path when saving his King…

But now, there is no way out of it.

“I resign.”

Iron Bull stares at him. “You do?”

“Would you prefer I let your Queen chase me across the board in some futile attempt to procrastinate defeat?”

Iron Bull eyes him for a long moment. “I thought you liked that,” he says finally, with a pointed glance at Saar. “Y'know, with the right queen.”

Solas’ entire body goes stiff with tension. He has to force himself not to clutch Saar’s hand too tightly.

“That,” he very nearly snaps, “is none of your business.”

Iron Bull holds up his hands. “All right, all right.” He puts them down again, but he has not moved away. “Sorry.”

Solas says nothing, something roiling beneath his skin. This closeness is too much, near suffocating. At the same time… it feels as though he may fly apart without the weight of Saar’s hand in his lap, of Iron Bull leaning against him. He concentrates on the brazier instead, on ensuring the fire remains steady. It begins to flare in time with his breathing…

…and then in time with Saar’s, because he is matching hers.

“She’ll be fine,” Iron Bull says after a while. His voice is quiet, and he claps Solas on the shoulder. Leaves his hand there, for long seconds. “Takes more than a puny sword to bring down a dragon.”

A different storm howls across a different mountainside.

“You fool think fate is on your side!” Corypheus rages. “You deluded, foul-blooded creature, that you would be granted the power to kill a god—”

When he dies, it is with Saar’s spear inside his chest. Her hand grips right below the head, covered in guts and blood, calling down lightning from the sky into the metal.

“I don’t need fate,” she spits at his smoldering corpse. The orb lies shattered at her feet, already half buried in the snow. Regret lances through her, at what Solas will think with this ancient artifact of his people destroyed—but then her own injuries rob any coherent thought from her. Exhaustion, or maybe blood loss, or the freezing cold, or all fucking three, send her to her knees. She manages to stay upright and use a flicker of magic to send a bright blue flare up into the storm, but nothing else. She clutches her spear, using it to hold herself up, its end jammed into the snow.

She can’t move like this. Now that she’s not fighting for her life anymore, she’s feeling the cold. And the exhaustion, and the pain. Andraste’s ass, her entire body is one big, freezing bruise. She needs to get her strength back to get back to Skyhold, after Corypheus threw them both from the fortress walls into the mountainside. Or at least conserve whatever energy she has left, until the others find her. The flare should help, but with the storm…

Something is moving inside the storm. Someone.

A slight frame, with a bald head, elven ears.

The moment she thinks it, magic unloads with a scent of lightning, and he nearly bowls her over.

Solas.

“Saar, are you—you’re injured—vhenan, say something—” He’s babbling, she realizes distantly. His voice is frantic, his hands flitting all over her.

“Been better,” she manages. Loud enough that he hopefully hears her over the howling winds. “Orb’s not—augh, shit—it broke. Cory’s dead though. Very dead. Ran him through with, with lightning…”

Somewhere in that mess of a ramble, Solas goes utterly still against her. But by the time Saar notices, he’s already in motion again. Her brain’s fuzzy anyway. The snow is so cold and he’s so, so warm. She can feel his magic seep into her, soothing her wounds if not outright healing them.

“You’re so good at this,” she mumbles into his shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” Solas says in response, nonsensically. “I’m so sorry, I—I must leave, I’m sorry—”

What?

She forces her hand to relax, releasing her spear, so she can wrap an arm around him. More or less. Saar can barely keep hold of a thought, much less make her body move the way she wants it to. But she manages something close enough to an embrace. Solas twitches in her hold, again and again.

He’s crying.

“Solas,” she gets out. “Kadan, what d’you mean?”

He stills again, and that’s somehow worse. His hands press to her belly, sending a wave of healing through her.

“I made a mistake, a long time ago,” he tells her. He’s not babbling anymore. His voice is hollow. That’s worse too. “A mistake for which countless suffer still, today.” Another wave rushes through her. Saar gasps with it, but he’s already speaking again. “I must undo it. I cannot remain.”

The storm shrieks around them. Saar can’t move, her throat sticks closed. When she opens her mouth, it’s like ripping open a just-sealed wound.

“No,” she whispers. “No, whatever you did, stay, we can, can fix it, just tell me—”

“I cannot. I’m sorry.”

“Little wolf—”

He trembles, but it’s not enough. She’s not strong enough to hold onto him when he pulls away. The storm is everywhere, rushing between them the moment there is space. Solas' hands are on her cheeks now, sticky with her blood.

“I love you, no matter what happens,” he breathes, barely audible over the wind. His voice cracks, and it breaks her heart all over again. “Ir abelas, vhenan.”

“I’ll find you,” she promises hoarsely. It’s all she can do. “Little wolf, I’ll find you again.”

Solas smiles, eyes glinting with tears.

“I know you will.”

“I’m not sure you should be walking around yet.”

Iron Bull’s voice is casual, but his eyes lock onto Solas like a cat lurking on an unwary mouse.

“All that cold, y’know,” he continues. “You nearly froze to death too. Should be huddled up in bed next to a fire, just like Saar.”

“I am well enough,” Solas manages at last. The words leave his mouth brittle. He should not have relied on the flurry of repairs and festivities to disguise his departure. Should have slipped out in the dead of night, under cover of magic. Should have ran from the damned mountainside, without a look back.

The orb is shattered. What else is there to stay for?

Even thinking it has his throat ache. The back of his shoulder, the inside of his arm, his ankle. An ache like raw skin being touched—gently, but the pain flows through him heedlessly.

“You are not without injury, either,” he points out.

“Not as bad as you, I think.”

Solas draws a deep breath, casting his eyes down at the table in the rotunda. Why did he even come here? What was so necessary that he risked being discovered? Now Iron Bull is circling him, the cat moving in for the kill. Leans against the table. It creaks.

“Pawn to C3.”

Solas freezes. Stares up at Iron Bull.

“I—”

“No need to be rash,” Iron Bull says, uncharacteristically quiet. Reaches out with his injured hand to touch the red dragon arched over Solas’ throat. Gentle, and careful. “Think about it. Don’t wanna make it too easy for me, do you?”

“Oh, old friend,” Mythal says softly. Her eyes sweep over the blood-red burned into the skin of his throat. “You bear such cruel marks.”

“I know,” answers the Dread Wolf heavily. “But I shall bear them. The people—they need me…”

Chapter Text

When Saar wakes up, Bull and Sera are playing cards beside her bed.

She shoots upright—or would, if her body remotely obeyed her. Everything hurts. She groans, rolling onto her side. Her brain truly registers her surroundings at last: she’s in her own bed, in the Inquisitor’s quarters. Bull and Sera are sitting on the fur beside the bed, quietly playing cards, no drinks or odd trinkets to gamble in sight—

Things must be bad.

I cannot remain.

Shit.

Things are bad.

“Saar! You’re awake!”

Sera scrambles onto the bed, vibrating like a hummingbird. Hands flitting like she doesn’t know where to touch first, or whether she can touch Saar at all.

“Wish I wasn’t,” mutters Saar. “How are you—oh, nugshit that hurts—are you holding up? Everyone else?”

There’s bruises on Sera’s face, and the way she’s holding one of her arms speaks to some injury in the joints, while Bull is covered in a disconcerting amount of scabbed-over wounds and bandages.

“Pffft, we’re fine!” Sera exclaims. “Never better!” She winces. Saar can’t help cracking a smile, even as she winces half in sympathy, half because of her own aches.

“How about telling the others she’s awake?” Bull suggests, the first words he’s spoken.

“Oh yeah, right! They’re all freaking out like little ninnies.” Sera hugs the air around Saar and Saar sighs, relaxing as if the embrace is an actual touch. Then Sera hops off the bed again, and darts to the stairs.

“Walk slowly,” Bull calls out. “Don’t trip!”

“Whatever, Tiny!”

The door closes behind Sera. A wave of crushing exhaustion washes over Saar, smothering and bitter.

I cannot. I’m sorry.

She draws in a trembling breath.

“Solas is gone, isn’t he.”

Bull nods slowly, head turned so she only sees his eyepatch. “Did he say anything to you?” he asks. “I know he patched you up, before the rest of us found you.”

She doesn’t remember that part, but it makes sense. Her brain still feels scrambled. She eyes Bull. “You saw him after that?”

Bull shrugs. Turns, ever so slightly. His jaw is set tight. “Looked like he was walking to the bloody gallows.”

Saar’s heart wrenches inside her chest. It’s worse when she realizes she’s not exactly surprised.

Oh, little wolf.

“He said something about an old mistake. Something he had to fix.” She laughs wetly. “Alone, obviously, the fucking martyr.”

“Sounds like him.” Bull lets out a slow breath, shoulders sinking. “I’m sorry, boss. It’s a shitshow.”

Her eyes sting. She swallows and casts about for something to say, anything to distract her from the knot of grief growing in her throat.

“How long was I out?”

“Three days.”

Saar blinks. Three whole days? That’s… a lot. Means someone had to have fed her, and cleaned her, and changed her clothes because the shirt she’s wearing right now was not what she wore underneath her armor. And that means—

“There’s something else,” Bull says, low. “Quite a few people saw your death name.”

…Great.

Just. Great.

“Couldn’t just be one blighted disaster at a time, huh.” Saar sinks into the bed, covering her face with her hands. “At least no one can read it.”

“Uh. About that…”

Oh, no.

“Cass got her teeth into it, sign from the Maker, something something. There’s sketches underway to several scholars.”

“…I’m going to murder her.”

Bull laughs a little, rasping.

“No offense boss, but right now? Don’t think you could take her.”

Saar doesn’t admit he’s probably right. Every part of her hurts, inside and out. The blighted knot in her throat refuses to go down.

“I don’t give a shit about the name,” she says. “I need to find Solas, before he gets himself killed trying to fix whatever he fucked up.”

Bull gets up and gently touches her arm. “I’ll let Red know.”

Unfortunately, the rest of the world apparently cares a great deal about the name. The Herald of Andraste has a death name. Fated by the Maker himself to slay… who?

That’s the question, isn’t it.

It’s not Corypheus. The name’s not written in Tevene. Not in any of the old dialects, either, as far as the scholars’ opinions go. Suggestions crop up all over: one of the Old Gods. A monster from the Deep Roads. A king or queen yet to be crowned.

It makes Saar’s skin crawl, the first time she’s subjected to those suggestions. She almost wishes it was Corypheus’ name. He’s dead and burned already, no one could clamor for her to kill whoever the person making the suggestion would benefit from having killed. A murderer specifically ordained by the Maker to do someone else’s murdering is evidently real fucking appealing to a lot of people.

But Saar’s heart beats faster with stubborn hope every time new messages arrive anyway. Leliana has sent her scouts after Solas, trying to track him down. So far, they’ve only found… ruins. The village where he supposedly grew up, sunken into the marshes ages ago. No trace of Solas himself.

“You knew he was lying about his past,” Bull mentions while he’s helping Saar walk a circuit of the battlements. The healers weren’t pleased with the idea, but Saar was ready to set her room on fire. For days, she hasn’t seen anything apart from her quarters or the view of the main hall from the Inquisitor’s throne to receive envoys and visitors.

“Don’t tell me you didn’t,” Saar grunts. “Ben-Hassrath training and all.”

“Sure. Just… wasn’t sure which parts exactly.”

“I thought there would be time.” She exhales noisily, resting against the crenelations. Stars, she’s exhausted. “Time to ask him, and not have him wriggle out of it. D’you remember how he acted in the Temple of Mythal?”

Bull laughs drily. “Yeah. Not sure how he ever managed to con Rainier out of anything, he’s got a shit game face.” He nudges her to sit down, and they both slump against the stone.

“Pretty sure he’s a lot older than he looks,” Bull says, casually.

Those letters seem very old.

Saar’s insides twist.

“Maybe,” she says quietly. “He’s something, at least.”

There is no other way to describe it: it is a bee. A tiny, childish scrawl of a bee, made up of red lines. Right on the inside of Fen’Harel’s ankle.

A week later, the elegant cursive swoop of Josephine Montilyet joins it.

The Dread Wolf tries, both times, to remove them with magic.

It works—until he sleeps, and wakes with the same red etched into his skin. He stares down at the new names for a long time. Then, he ensures they are covered by his clothes just like the previous names are, and goes to meet the Sentinels who left the Temple of Mythal behind.

“He’s a bloody pissant,” Sera says, mouth full, gesturing angrily with the piece of cake she’s got speared on a fork. Saar can’t help but smile at the sight. “Ditching us without a fucking word—I haven’t put lizards in his bedroll for months!”

“I don’t know about months,” Saar teases. “I remember one in the Arbor Wilds—big one, red, with that frill?”

“Can’t prove that was me.” Sera swallows, and stabs at another piece of cake.

They’re both sprawled out, along with the cake and a considerable stack of letters, on Saar’s bed. She’s not bed-ridden anymore, but reading for long stretches is still vastly more comfortable in her bed than at her desk. Her back starts twinging when she sits for too long and her left hand gets sore, even though she’s not using it to write.

And sometimes, she thinks she can still catch something of Solas’ scent caught in the curtains and pillows of her bed. Pigments and plaster and fur. Reminds her of waking up with him in her arms, after they’d walked the Fade together and built Skyhold into a shining haven. As much as it hurts, it helps her focus on translating those dreams to the waking world.

“Anyway,” Sera continues, pointing at Saar with her cake-tipped fork. “Point is. Fucker doesn’t deserve you moping over him, or your loooove name, and it’s a good thing you didn’t get his, ‘cause he wouldn’t’ve deserved that either.”

Something cold fills Saar’s lungs. Bleeds right out of her chest and onto the sheets, frosting over paper, fabric, and the remains of the cake.

Sera stares at the ice, going pale.

It’s miserable being angry with Sera. But Saar’s angry with everything, an exhausted kind of anger that quietly boils away inside her, and she doesn’t know how to fucking stop. It’s not just the constant speculation and suggestions of what her death name is, the hollow in her chest where Solas used to fit, it’s…

Sera just said it because she thought it would help. But plenty of people genuinely believe it. People who don’t have the good grace or common bloody sense to shut up where Saar can hear them.

Such a shame, but, well—at least she never had his love name, right.

Probably a good thing. Love like that doesn’t last.

Like a lost limb, she wakes up and forgets for a moment he’s not there anymore. She sees vines crawling over ruins, a drake soaring between the mountains, the spark of magic in a young mage’s hand, the awe in their eyes… She wants to turn to him and show him, but she can’t. And all these people, all the whispers of her lacking—

It makes her want to set something on fire. Like stones, or the rock of the mountains. Turn them into magma.

“Teeth,” Varric says one evening, “join me for a drink, will you?” He gives her a determined look across the war table, where she’s been sitting and going through correspondence. Her bed feels dangerous now. The war room usually does a good job of affording her privacy. Barris and Josephine are her most common visitors, and they’re both tactful enough to leave her be when she needs it. But Varric wouldn’t know leaving-someone-be if it bit him in the chest hair.

“Not if you intend to drag me to the Dragon’s Rest,” Saar mutters. She does get up, because her legs and back and shoulders are getting stiff.

“Oh, I’ve got a different plan.”

The plan is apparently one he stole from Cole, because they end up sitting on the balustrades. Legs dangling and drinking sweetshine while watching the sun set under a distant storm. The sweetshine tastes different to what Saar’s used to from home, more tart than syrup-sweet, but the familiarity makes her eyes sting a little anyway. She needs to visit her parents, somehow, and soon.

“Buttercup means well,” Varric says eventually, soft and deliberate.

Saar rests her elbows on her knees, letting the bottle hang from her hands. “I know,” she says. “I know. But I’ve had to listen to that shit from half the world, and I just—I didn’t think I’d have to hear it from one of you.”

He knocks his knee against hers, and keeps it there. “It’s flaming rat turds. Trust me, I know.”

There’s a subtle edge to the last sentence. Saar peers at him. “You do?”

“Yep.” He takes the bottle, takes a big swig, sets it aside, then starts opening up his shirt even further than it’s already gaping apart. “I’m gonna let you in on a big secret here, Teeth,” he continues, “absolute top-tier Varric Tethras exclusive knowledge, my publisher will have my head if it gets out, all right?”

Saar just blinks at him. Maybe the sweetshine’s already getting to her. “Yes…?”

“Here.” Varric taps the skin on the far left side of his chest, where a bright red name is written in dwarven runes. The proper kind, not the ones used to write Common. Saar squints at it.

“Bianca Davri,” Varric translates, voice quiet. “You remember her, Valammar, red lyrium, inventor of groundbreaking machinery?”

Oof. That had been… complicated.

“I’ve had the name since I can remember,” he says. “When I found her, and she’d had mine since forever, too—you know how the stories go. And I thought we’d make it, even with the whole world against us.” He lets out a dry, painfully sober laugh. “Turns out we don’t work, when we’re not fighting for our lives. We don’t.”

“What about the bird?” Saar asks softly. It’s red too, like blood, and stretches its hawk-sharp wings along Varric’s ribs. Saar can imagine who it’s for.

“I got it in Kirkwall, after the Qunari invasion.” Varric eyes her, a small, wounded glint in the gaze. “I got it done, I mean.”

“You… mean it’s not real?”

“It’s more real than the other one.”

Saar doesn’t disagree. She’s heard how Varric sounded when Hawke, incognito, visited Skyhold. How he said their name.

She reaches past him for the sweetshine to take a long slug. Puts it down, the sweetness and the liquor burning down her throat.

“So… what? You’re suggesting I get a fake love name, reveal it in a way the Dowager Quarterly’s sure to write about it, or…?”

Varric laughs. “Not quite your style, I think,” he says. “I just mean… Fate’s a strange and fickle mistress, over both kinds of names. If you gotta coax it or lie about it or ignore it, then do it. Don’t apologize to no one.”

The sun’s disappeared under the horizon line, bathing them both in streaks of ruddy gold. It’ll turn freezing cold soon, too. Saar watches the jagged line of the Frostbacks, glinting with the last light of the day.

“I’ve been trying to ignore it,” she mutters at last. “But it’s fucking exhausting.”

“That’s why you’ve got us,” Varric says, smiling. Elbows her a little.

Saar grins, small and sharp, unable to stop it. “Don’t make me shove you off the balustrade, dwarf.”

The names do not cease.

Dagna writes itself along the inside of his fingers in chicken-scratch runes as he is adjusting a Veil-measuring artifact.

Cassandra Allegra Portia Calogera Filomena Pentaghast curls from his left palm around his wrist as a bracelet, or a fetter.

Dorian Pavus burns itself across the Dread Wolf’s collar bone, itching just like the man’s presence did.

More, and more, and more. Staining his hands and wrists, his shoulder, his ankle, spilling down onto his chest from his throat. Eventually, he makes no more attempt, however cursory, to decipher them. There are too many. Overlaying one another to the point of illegibility.

But as he once told the Inquisitor, as she once told him: they do not change anything. A strange occurrence, but the task before him surmounts all else. To allow himself to be distracted by such things, when he must undo the horrific damage the Veil has done, that he has done…

It is unthinkable.

It’s Fen’Harel.

The death name on Saar’s back is for the Dread Wolf. An actual, straight-up god.

Saar laughs in the messenger’s face when she hears it.

Not her best moment, in terms of diplomacy, but the sheer notion is—it’s absurd. It’s like claiming she’s destined to kill the Maker.

Granted, if what Abelas said in the Temple of Mythal is true, the elven gods are mortal—in a sense. If the wrath boiling away inside Flemeth is anything to go by, some part of Mythal is still alive and very much kicking.

Unfortunately, the explanation is less absurd. Some scholar dug out ancient ruins underneath other ancient ruins, found similar reliefs carved into both that used different writings, and got to translating. Most people thought they’d gotten too deep into elfroot smoking, or were a secret heathen obsessed with the elven pantheon and therefore to be ignored forever, but now…

The letters on Saar’s back are a match for the writings in the older ruins.

After first being branded a heretic just for existing and then several years of denying Andraste at every turn she could afford, she’d really thought that she’d done enough to get the Chantry clerics off her back. But now they’re all dying to talk to her. To talk at her.

How it’s her duty to kill the Dread Wolf. How she will at last bring about the return of the Maker, once she slays the last of the heathen pretender gods.

Nevermind that no one’s seen Fen’Harel in millennia. There are only stories, tales and legends both, and wolf statues in odd, odd places, like the Temple of Mythal…

This is not a place to stir up old stories, that is all I will say.

Even if Solas is that old, it doesn’t mean this has anything to do with him. Even if he actually knew Abelas, or any of Mythal’s Sentinels, or was involved in some huge catastrophe… The empire of Arlathan was vast. There was a lot of room for mistakes to be made that would haunt someone for so long.

Right?

She just has to find him again.

Someone convinces a group of Carta dwarves to retrieve the red lyrium idol that has sat in Meredith Stannard’s chest for more than five years. Her statue has been untouched since it was created, but now…

Somehow, the dwarves manage to take the idol. Almost all of them end up dead. Getting that much information out of the survivors is already close to impossible. At the first opportunity, they disappear, just like the idol does.

Whispers of the idol crop up in Tevinter: House Qintara, House Danarius. Houses going up in flames. But little reaches past the Imperium’s borders. Though what the Qunari may have gleaned, none can say.

A faint trail, barely connected, of something nameless and unknown. Made of whispers and glimpses. The silence of the dead left behind, where one would hope to find answers.

Until the Grand Necropolis in Nevarra burns.

The Fade opens up. Miles and miles to the south, across the sea and towering mountains, the Anchor shrieks within the Inquisitor’s hand, ripping her from sleep.

The roofs of the Necropolis collapse, burying countless beneath the rubble. An army of spirits, demons, both and neither, surges out of the gap in the Veil. The deafening clamor awakens the entire city. Panic floods the streets.

Amid fire and darkness, a great, six-eyed wolf rises above the ruins of the Grand Necropolis. It glows with rage as it howls to the sky.

In the aftermath, those who survive disagree on what it speaks. The words like terrible blows falling upon them. Of treachery, of threats to the world, of ancient powers. But in one thing, all are in agreement:

Inside the Dread Wolf’s maw, there is a red, shining gleam.

In forgotten catacombs below Cumberland, Fen’Harel rests. Inside his chest, the sliver of Mythal simmers. She does not speak, but he can sense her disapproval.

“I knew the risk,” he says quietly. “But I have delayed long enough.”

Between his hands, the idol sits, heavy and singing.

As harrowing as the news from Nevarra is, a part of Saar is downright relieved.

Solas is an accomplished mage, but this… he’s not powerful enough to pull off something like that. Wherever he is, whatever he’s doing, whatever he thinks he has to do alone, it’s got nothing to do with the Dread Wolf.

Unless he’s working for the Dread Wolf, Bull points out. Saar counters that, really, has Solas ever acted like he’d be willing to put himself in service to a god? In the end, they both agree that’s pretty damn unlikely.

“So,” Bull says, pushing a tankard at her over the war table. “What are you gonna do about this god, huh?”

Saar shrugs. “Depends on what he actually wants.”

She takes a sip, then sinks back into her chair with a sigh. The Grand Necropolis’ destruction was horrific, but there’s no easy answers to be had the way there were with Corypheus. No mad claim to godhood, no grand announcement to restore some ancient world order. Just destruction and chaos that almost feel like… a mere side effect. The red lyrium idol…

“I asked Loranil if he had any idea, based on the Dalish legends. He kind of panicked? Said he’s not a Keeper, so now we’ve got letters to Keeper Hawen and a few others on the way. They’re probably organizing an Arlathven before those letters even reach them.”

Bull eyes her, considering. “You think Nevarra’s gonna let the elves hash this out in peace?”

“Wrote letters to Nevarra, too.” Vivienne helped considerably with those. Saar’s a lot better at getting her point across in person than in writing.

“Not sure letters are gonna cut it, boss.”

“I know.” However it goes, there will be a lot of political visits soon.

Of course, Bull’s not the only one who’s curious about what she plans to do. Saar isn’t sure herself, if she’s honest. She’d had a plan. But then Solas left, everyone started obsessing about her death name, and now the person that name belongs to is actually around. Not an abstract figure in an old story. A god, walking the world.

It’s like a vise clamping down around her heart. Always a new enemy. Always someone new to strike down, in order to restore order.

She never cared for the old order in the first place.

Building a new order is a difficult mess on the best of days. Roads need to be built and maintained for the trade access Skyhold needs to survive. The spells Saar and Solas tested ages ago helped for a time—but amidst the war against Corypheus the plan of improving them, nevermind teaching them to someone else, just fell by the wayside. Food isn’t as scarce or as monotonous as it used to be, but if the Inquisition loses its trade agreements, or if Orlais or Ferelden decide to close the roads into the Frostbacks…

Saar wants to be ready. With everything else brewing in her mind, the things she’s trying to build now, those possibilities isn’t as unlikely as it was. Killing the Dread Wolf doesn’t even make the list. Skyhold needs a hospital, a proper one, where everyone gets cared for. Mage children—blights, all children—need to be taught how to handle magic without fear. And not just here, but everywhere the Inquisition can reach. Saar has almost convinced Vivienne that the Circles aren’t the way to do that. They need a different legal system too. Saar’s skin crawls every time she’s pushed onto the throne to single-handedly decide someone’s fate, like she’s some bloody queen.

There are never enough houses. New ones are built almost constantly. The Inquisition has plenty of active soldiers left who are manning the forts in Crestwood, the Western Approach, and in the Hinterlands, but so many of them are settling in Skyhold. Coming home, to the fortress on the pass and the valleys below.

Saar wants to be able to offer that, to anyone, more than anything. Skyhold will be a haven. And once she finds Solas again, they can build it together.

The temperature rises as the Inquisition delegation makes their way to Nevarra City. Eventually, Cumberland long since disappeared behind them, Saar dismounts her hart and walks beside it. Hooves and feet alike kick up dust on the path. A flick of her hand heightens the wind, a cool breeze soothing through the group of envoys and servants.

After a while, Cassandra joins her on foot, leading her own horse by the reins.

“Inquisitor, I…”

Despite the hot, dry air, a shiver bites between Saar’s shoulder blades. That’s Cassandra’s especially earnest voice. Considering where they’re going right now…

“Yeah?”

Cass takes a deep, steadying breath. “I want you to know that I am here for you,” she says. “The Maker has set a very difficult task before you, and…”

Saar could leave it at that. Say thanks, and move on to the looming negotiation. But The Maker, in that tone of voice, the implication behind it—it makes her hackles rise.

“You’re that sure the death name comes from the Maker?” she asks.

“I may not know for certain,” Cass replies, a shadow passing over her expression, “but after what has happened to the Grand Necropolis…” She shudders. “I was never fond of the place, but to call this anything but an act of war against the people of—”

“They pulled Tevinter slaves from the rubble too,” Saar cuts in. “With their throats cut.” She guides her hart to cross Cassandra’s path, bringing them both to a stop. She leans down, into the other woman’s space. “You’re not answering my question.”

Cass’ eyes flicker. “I have faith that the Maker wishes to guide us, even in His absence.”

Saar scoffs. “If he wants his competition dead so badly, he can come back and do it himself.”

“It is not about competition!” Cassandra exclaims. “The elven ‘gods’ are only—”

“What? Superstition?” Saar hisses. She flings out her free arm. The Anchor crackles. “You saw the temple, you spoke to Abelas!”

The horses are getting nervous. The rest of the group is eyeing them the same way. With effort, Saar breathes more deeply, calling her magic back to herself. She can’t afford to snap like that in Nevarra City in the middle of negotiations.

“Devotion, however true, can be—” Cass swallows, “—misplaced.”

“Yes, exactly.”

Cassandra’s eyes widen; her grip on her reins tightens. Crackling silence hangs between them for long moments.

When she speaks again, her voice is softer: “Solas didn’t believe them to be gods, either.”

Saar stares at her.

“Fuck you, Cass,” she bites out at last. A step and a leap get her back up on her hart, looking back at her entourage. Most of them have stopped several paces away, watching her and Cassandra with open alarm and worry. “You know who has the most grievances with the Dread Wolf?” Saar calls out. “Elves. As far as anyone knows, he locked away the rest of their gods.” She focuses her gaze once more on Cassandra. “And yet they’re not the ones beating down my door to kill Fen’Harel, you are.”

“I am only trying to offer strength to a friend in need!”

Saar laughs, sharp and bitter. “You and the rest of the Chantry! Half of Orlais is gearing up for an Exalted March, no matter what Leliana says! Nevarra’s about to exile the Dalish from their territory!” She sucks in a shuddering breath. “I need your strength for that, not for some blighted crusade!”

A different kind of silence rings out after the outburst. Saar eventually sighs and turns her hart back onto the path. Slowly, the noise of everyone else falling into step once more sounds from behind her. Then, the clatter of quick hooves.

Cassandra catches up to her, mounted on her horse again. Guides it close, until their knees almost brush.

“You do have my strength in this,” she says, with quiet intensity. “It is—whatever I believe, you carry a great weight. If I can help shoulder it, I will do so.”

The vise around Saar’s chest eases.

“Thank you,” she murmurs.

The printing presses operate ceaselessly. It is not long before the first broadsheets declaring the destined death of the Dread Wolf begin to circulate. The prints praise the Maker’s name, they invoke Andraste’s blade, they call upon the Inquisitor to act.

It is all rather trite and predictable. Compared to the stories the Evanuris created about Fen’Harel, the way they warped the truth and with it the world to suit their purposes, these attempts are downright childish. Lacking in subtlety and cunning. All of it only builds on what already exists: fear and disdain of elves, of their heretic beliefs, of things unknown and misunderstood.

Fen’Harel knew it was a risk that elves would be blamed for his actions, despite them having cursed him since the Veil rose. They are not his people, but still they bleed for him. He revives as many of his old sanctuaries as he can, though they are few in number. But still, he is able to grant shelter to some. It is a poor balm, but he cannot afford to spend more. All his remaining power, he sinks into furthering his plans.

He is close.

Propaganda as paltry as this is far too trivial to stop his work from progressing. Thus he ignores it, until a different sort of broadsheet makes its way into his hands.

The Inquisitor must be stopped! it declares, in bold letters.

Fen’Harel quirks a brow in surprise when he first sees it. He keeps hold of the broadsheet, taking it with him to a secluded area apart from the main roads. He is in Hunter Fell at the moment, coordinating efforts between several groups of his agents. Suspicions against elves rose most sharply in Nevarra, requiring his personal efforts to establish connections between his agents.

He seats himself in an alcove, shielded from view, to examine the broadsheet. The text includes a small, crude woodcut of a snarling head, jagged horns twisting from the temples.

With gloved fingers, Fen’Harel traces the line of the cheek. His heart twinges beneath his ribs. He had hoped that, if nothing else, the Chantry’s newfound fervor in the Inquisitor would shield her from such portrayals. That, if she had to bear the weight of knowing the truth of her death name, at least she would not continue to be treated like this. Painted as a creature instead of a person.

The Dread Wolf is used to it; she does not deserve it.

He skims the remainder of the text, morbidly curious what reason the authors have concocted to justify this depiction, considering all else sings praises to the Herald of Andraste.

The Inquisitor is a false prophet, guided by demons…

The Dread Wolf acted on behalf of the Maker, guided by His hand—

Fen’Harel stills.

That is… a new position. To claim he is nothing but a servant to the Maker, sealing away the elven gods to make way for the Chantry, betraying his own people on behalf of—

Smoke drifts up from the ground. His hands are stiff, clenched tight around the paper. Slowly, he relaxes his grip once more. Breathes deeply. Embers flit from his tongue, but the smoke fades in the wind.

He does not go himself—but it is easy enough to trace the origin of this particular set of broadsheets. An Andrastian splinter sect, who are quickly finding themselves branded just as heretical by the Chantry as they branded the Inquisitor. Losing their access to a printing press might even be a blessing in disguise.

For a time, the propaganda of the Chantry continues without distracting him. He continues his preparations. His robes require higher collars, his gloves longer sleeves, to conceal the ever-growing red burned into his skin. Undeterred, he continues on. His plan takes form, spreading its web across the continent.

Until at last, a piece of news manages to snag his attention once more.

Inquisitor Adaar is to be gifted a painting…

In some of the other broadsheets there had been woodcuts as well. Evidently someone decided a mere palm-sized image was not enough. A grander declaration of the Inquisitor’s coming victory is required.

The final piece will be unveiled in a month’s time at the Montfort estate in honor of the Inquisitor…

The idea of attending the unveiling himself is, of course, ludicrous. Unnecessary. Like the countless broadsheets, the painting is a maneuver that was to be expected, but not one that bears true response. What could he even hope to learn through the event? How deeply committed the upper echelons of southern Thedas are to ensnare the Inquisitor in holy duties?

That is a question to which he already has ample answers.

The Montfort estate sprawls over the surrounding countryside, gilded with old, bloody riches. It’s the seat of a member of the Council of Heralds, and situated close to Nevarra, from where many nobles are also in attendance. A fitting environment for the unveiling. If Saar wasn’t the guest of honor, she might even appreciate the political savvy of the move. As it stands…

Vivienne and Josephine are holding conversational court around her. Expertly so; Saar can recognize that these days. Involving her superficially in whatever topic is currently discussed, but never letting the focus linger on her. It means Saar has to fake a minimum of pleasant smiles, for which she’s inordinately grateful. But none of it is quite enough to distract her from the canvas looming on the far wall of the hall.

The painting is huge. Even taller than Saar herself, and almost wide enough to fill the whole wall. She has no idea how the fuck they plan to transport the thing. The frame alone has to weigh as much as her, thick and heavily ornamented. And how quickly they managed to finish it—the first rumors of it came not long after the broadsheets with the original woodcut reached Skyhold. She vaguely remembers mention of a team of painters, which would at least explain that part.

It’s a lot easier to focus on peripheral issues than the actual subject matter.

In the painting, the Dread Wolf’s teeth and claws are far too big to pass for anything resembling an actual wolf. He’s a slavering monster, black-furred and red-eyed. In his shadow, the silhouettes of armed elves are visible. The white shape of Andraste stands behind the Inquisitor, her glow nearly eclipsing the Inquisitor’s form. All that’s legible is the stalwart stance, right arm outstretched towards the Dread Wolf. As if that alone would stop him.

In the painting, the Inquisitor has no horns.

“It is a stunning work, is it not?” A voice cuts through the din of conversation. A noble flutters her fan, eyeing Saar with undivided attention. Clearly Josie and Viv didn’t manage to deter this one. “Only the best, for our Lady’s Herald.”

“Yes,” Saar says slowly, tonelessly. “I really have no words.”

“Utterly speechless,” Josephine cuts in. “Madame, you have picked masterfully in choosing the painters.”

Oh. This is the patron? Saar racks her brain for the name, but comes up empty. Glancing to Vivienne at least gives her a reprieve, because Vivienne inserts herself smoothly into the conversation once again. She suggests they speak to the painters themselves, which gets them in motion and closer to the painting. Thankfully most of the nobles get out of Saar’s way without trying to get her attention, with the exception of one who lingers as though he’s considering throwing another marriage proposal at her. She’s had to decline three already today.

The painters look as out of place as Saar feels. The tailoring on their clothes is neat, but they don’t move like they’re used to the style of clothes. Vivienne’s elbow brushes Saar’s waist, and she realizes everyone’s watching her expectantly.

“It’s… an incredible work,” she says, “in terms of technical skill.”

“Thank—thank you, Herald,” the shortest painter says, color high in his cheeks, his voice almost cracking. His gaze flits from her face to her horns, her shoulders, like an uncertain bird looking for a steady perch and finding none.

“A fated creation,” effuses the patron, fluttering her fan. “Prophesy by the Maker’s hand has joined us all in common cause, against the dreadful demons those—those elves, call gods…”

Your victory will be glorious.

At last, the Maker shall return to us.

The Chantry waits only on your word, Herald.

Saar stares up at the painting again, trying uselessly to drown out the barrage. The pressure, masquerading as support.

In the painting, Fen’Harel is nothing but a monster.

In the painting, Saar has no horns.

In the painting, she is—

The Inquisitor. A weapon. Wielded by Andraste on behalf of the faithful.

Saar can feel lightning in her throat. She’s so fucking tired of swallowing it down.

Under very different circumstances, Fen’Harel might even enjoy this. A court in full regalia, intrigue and double-entendres in every spoken word. All desiring, all lying for it. So swathed in their masks and other disguises it is a wonder they do not forget who they are themselves.

It is a world he has not had cause to navigate in a very long time—that is, a long time. The Winter Palace, so few years ago… Fen’Harel pushes the memories aside.

He has donned Orlesian garb. The mask, wig, headpiece, and ostentatious clothes make it easy to hide his ears and disguise his frame. Posing as a servant may have afforded him more anonymity, but it was not a risk worth taking with the Inquisitor herself in attendance. For her to recognize him here is a far too dangerous prospect.

He watches her move among the crowd, towering above all around her. Shining and regal, in a suit of the Inquisition’s formal uniform. He can see the touches of the Herald of Andraste worked into the outfit—doubtlessly due to the efforts of Madame de Fer, who has accompanied the Inquisitor. Threads of gold woven into her white hair, catching the light in a halo around her head. The white jacket, also embroidered in gold, with long tails near trailing the floor.

But the jacket hangs open, every last button undone. If it was ever tailored to hide the width of her shoulders, it does not do so now. The shirt beneath is soft and loose, utterly unlike the starched ruffles gracing the throats of so many Orlesians. Instead golden paint has been applied to the Inquisitor’s neck, giving her skin the appearance of being flecked with dragon scales.

Even at the current distance, it is easy to recognize the sharp lines of her jaw, the midnight-black sweep of her horns. To feel the power sleeping beneath her skin. She is a dragon, moving amongst mortals.

“They are coming this way,” Abelas murmurs beside him, pulling Fen’Harel from his observations.

They feign conversation, moving aside with the curious yet cautious eagerness the nobility tends to display toward the Inquisitor. He should avert his gaze lest he catches her attention, but…

For a moment, she is close enough to touch. Then, the Inquisitor sweeps past him, along with her entourage of Madame de Fer and Ambassador Montilyet. The Enchanter’s gaze swings to Abelas, and Fen’Harel nudges him further, away from their keen eyes. Melting into the safety of the crowd once more, he turns around.

Even standing below the massive painting, Saar is such a sight to behold. The long line of her body, the broadness of her back. The threads of gold in her hair, which spill shining down her spine.

As she speaks to several persons he assumes to be the painters, along with their patron, her posture seems oddly… brittle.

Brittle, but not fragile. Fen’Harel recognizes it: anger.

No. Not mere anger—

The air tastes of lightning.

—wrath.

The fine hairs upon his neck raise. Gooseflesh coats his spine like a hungry lover’s touch. Murmurs break out across the room. Even as blind to magic as they are, the assembled nobility of Orlais and Nevarra recognizes the shift in the air.

“Saar—” The Enchanter’s hand is outstretched, but even she does not dare touch the dragon.

The Inquisitor’s shoulders shift, backwards and out; she inhales; her back arches, her head raised. All noise seems to die, sucked into her lungs. The Anchor crackles, sparks racing up her arm.

Blinding light.

Thunder cracks, shaking the entire room.

Shards of wood rain down from the wall. Sudden heat is everywhere, almost scorching skin. The metallic taste of a storm unleashed fills the air. The painting hangs in pieces, ripped and tattered. In flames. Fire and smoke curl up in clouds, licking black and red over the canvas.

Fen’Harel’s heart thrums as though it is about to tear loose from his ribs. That immense painting, even the stone wall behind it… scorched as if from molten claws.

She spat lightning at it.

Somewhere, someone whimpers. Glass crashes.

“He-Herald—”

“Don’t call me that.”

She turns around, and the weight of her gaze is like a crashing wave, sweeping through the hall. Those amber eyes burning as the sun.

“I’m not your blighted attack dog,” she growls, deep and low. In the thunder-struck silence, the words ring out as if she had shouted them. “I’m not some holy weapon you can point at whoever you want murdered next. I am Ataashi. I fight for my people, not your crowns or your gods.” Her steps strike like another thunderclap. The nobles scramble away from her, fish fleeing the bow of a ship. “Andraste didn’t choose me. The Maker didn’t send me. I don’t answer to them—” the glow of lightning still blazes in her throat, “—and I do not answer to you.”

The ground moves beneath Fen’Harel’s feet. The world tilts, he is in motion without his intent—an arm, slung about his middle.

“Forgive me,” is a hissed whisper from Abelas’ lips as the Sentinel drags him backwards. “Forgive me, they are all—fleeing—”

He is right. Chaos grips the crowd, sending lords and servants alike tripping, stumbling. Fen’Harel absently touches his opaline mask. The disguise he chose, turned into a cage. But then—he has seen what he came to see.

The web that has been spun around the Inquisitor by the revelation of her death name, of his own appearance. The lack of any real knowledge on the instigators’ parts, hunting after shadows of the Dread Wolf. They present no threat to his plans, even now.

It takes a long time for him to lose sight of the Inquisitor, looming tall and bright as a beacon above the rest.

Chapter Text

Mother Giselle watches Saar warily. It’s subtle, not quite hiding in the corners of her smile.

“May I ask… what do you hope for from the Exalted Council, Inquisitor? Truly?”

Saar doesn’t return the smile. “The Winter Palace burning down would be a good start.”

“It is a pleasure to see you again, Inquisitor,” Duke Cyril de Montfort says. Below the edge of his mask, his mouth tugs into a functional smile. He even sketches a small bow, but his gaze never leaves Saar. “Orlais has no desire to disband the Inquisition—there is so much good we may yet accomplish together.”

Saar doesn’t smile.

“I am here as a favor to an old friend,” she says. The air of the Winter Palace crackles with energy around them. “I did not come for you. This is a courtesy.”

The Duke swallows, not subtly enough to hide it even behind his mask.

He’s afraid of her.

He should be.

Arl Teagan seems mostly angry. Then again, he wasn’t there in the Montfort estate. When Saar had her… misstep, as Vivienne so delicately calls it.

It was a mistake, Saar knows that. Too blunt. Too obvious a denial. She made it clear where she stood, and it was not with those who now call for an Exalted Council. Leliana tried to hold it off—but even the Divine can’t fight the rest of the Chantry.

The list of accusations is expected: trespassing on sovereign land, the unlawful seizure of abandoned fortresses, the sheltering of terrorist fugitives—a list in itself which has grown to include any and all elves—on and on it goes.

And through it all runs ‘You refuse to hunt down the enemy we want you to kill’ like a riptide current. When the enemy was Corypheus, or dissident Templars, or a cult of Tevene mages, nothing she did received this level of condemnation. Yes, she got called a heretic and an oxman—but once it became clear what a threat Corypheus was? Those calls turned to whispers. Never gone, but spoken behind careful hands. They needed her too much. Needed their weapon.

But now that she’s loudly, unambiguously refused to play the part…

Montfort argues, so unctuously it makes Saar’s skin crawl, for the Inquisition to be put under new leadership. To put a leash on Saar herself. Teagan nearly froths at the mouth at that. Orlais wants nothing but another cudgel in their arsenal, he argues. Better to dissolve the organization instead, and trust in the Maker to deal with the Dread Wolf. And the most dangerous parts of the Inquisition, those that pose a threat to the security of everyone else, ought to be locked away.

It’s a leash too, just of a different kind.

But what he said sparks a thought Saar follows like a beacon. The Inquisition is their issue. The Inquisitor.

She stands up, startling the current argument into dying down.

“You want the Inquisition gone? No problem, it’s gone.” She sweeps her gaze over the assembled ambassadors. With flashfire satisfaction, she watches some of them shrink back in the face of her attention. “Never liked the name anyway. We’ll take down the banners, change the sigils. You can even have the throne!”

Arl Teagan’s voice is thin and sharp like flint: “And what of your soldiers?”

“Oh, them? They’re mine.” Saar bares her teeth in a wide, unkind smile. “They took my mark, they sat at my fire, they built their houses. They’re my people, and they’re staying.”

Silence rolls through the hall. Josephine looks like she could strangle Saar. Leliana’s face is blank, unreadable. Teagan seems stunned, mouth working soundlessly. Montfort sits motionless.

“Inquisitor, it…” The Nevarran Ambassador at last breaks the leaden silence, voice tremulous. “It almost seems as though you are attempting to build your own nation…?”

A scattering of faint, nervous chuckles rings out. The smile wipes from Saar’s face.

Deathly quiet, she says, “I am.”

Josephine hasn’t stopped muttering to herself for the past two minutes, pacing in the small room the Inquisition has requisitioned as an impromptu war room. Saar sighs quietly, then raises her hand to lay it on Josephine’s shoulder. “I’m sorry—”

“Are you?!” Josephine bursts out. She whirls around, takes a step into Saar’s space. “You keep doing this! You do not warn me! I am your ambassador, how can I—”

Saar drops her hand.

“No,” she admits. “I’m really not.” She leans against the wall, arms crossed. “Just tell me if I fucked it up beyond repair this time.”

Josephine freezes, her face crumbles. “I didn’t—this could—I only—”

“You don’t need to apologize either,” Saar interrupts her softly.

Josephine buries her face in her hands. Her shoulders shake, her chest heaves with a long, deep breath. When she meets Saar’s gaze again, her eyes are clear and sure.

“No,” she says. “You have not. But it will be most difficult, to negotiate for—”

A rapid knock comes from the door. And again, with hardly a pause in-between, the door opens. Lace Harding is on the other side, cheeks flushed, breath puffing from her mouth.

“There’s something you have to see,” she hisses. “One of the palace servants alerted me, I think they trusted us more with weird magic than the Halamshiral guard, but—uh.” Lace swallows, gaze darting between both Saar and Josephine staring down at her. “There—there’s a giant glowing mirror hidden away in one of the old guest chambers?”

“Oh, I do not like this place!” Sera exclaims. “There’s colors everywhere, can’t see anything properly.”

Saar, Bull, and Varric stare at her for a long moment.

“You’re seeing colors?” Saar asks, careful. Sera’s head snaps around, her eyes going wide.

“Don’t tell me you’re not! They’re all over!”

They aren’t. At least, not to Saar. White and grey clouds roll between floating paths of stone. Bare-branched trees cling desperately to the rock faces. Ruins and unworked rock mingle like a child’s clay plaything. The air shimmers, like oil on water, but never where Saar looks. Always at the corners of her eyes.

“If these are the Crossroads between eluvians, this space was made by elves,” Saar says. “For elves, apparently.” Whether that means Solas lied when he told her vashoth had been created by Ghilan’nain, or that dragon blood is stronger than elven magic, is a question she’s not inclined to puzzle out right now.

Sera grimaces. “Really don’t like this place.”

No one disagrees.

Bull steps further down the stairs, glancing around at the branching pathways. One of them spirals up to another floating platform. In the distance, the gleam of another active eluvian is visible on top of it. When Morrigan had shown Saar the Crossroads from her eluvian, all others had been dark. Silent and barred.

Varric follows Saar’s gaze. “This is starting to feel like an invitation,” he murmurs. “Or a trap.”

“A weird trap.” Bull tests the floor on the path to the other active eluvian with his greatsword. It doesn’t react. When he puts his weight on the stones, they hold. “If you wanted to actually murder someone, leaving that thing open and unguarded is the dumbest thing you could do.”

“Maybe Abelas decided he wants to talk after all,” Saar suggests as she goes past Bull. Hoping her voice doesn’t sound as desperate as it does to her own ears. “Or some of the other Sentinels.”

“Ugh, that pissant can stay gone and moping,” Sera grumbles. She affects a theatric tone of dripping arrogance. “‘You are not my people’—Andraste’s tits, what a nughumper.”

The rest of them laugh, but quietly. All moving with care while they go up to the second eluvian. Passing through it is the same as the first: like a cool wash of rain, without any wetness. It leaves a tingle on Saar’s skin and a humming within the Anchor. Green sparks dance up her arm, stinging lightly. She shakes out her hand to make it stop.

The sun is in a different position.

“Long way from Halamshiral,” Saar says, eyeing the sky. Here, there are no clouds. Only the bright glare of the sun.

They’ve arrived in a long valley, its floor filled with a glittering lake. In the center of the lake, a towering building, massive like a fortress, sprawls out over an island. The architecture, despite its disrepair, reminds Saar of the Temple of Mythal. Tall and graceful, tiered arches, vines and other greenery creeping along the walls. The eluvian they emerged from stands on a raised stone platform, flanked by slim statues of howling wolves. These are characteristically elven in their design too. The platform flows down into stairs and then into a bridge that connects to the island.

And before the bridge is a huge black stain burned into the stone. Remains of… something, charred and misshapen, are stuck to the parapets of the platform.

Saar takes a deep breath. A barrier flows down her body. Splits, and covers the others too. Behind her, the twinge of Varric readying Bianca is audible.

“Are those people?” whispers Sera.

“Corpses.” Varric sounds hollow.

Saar steps closer, surveying the destruction. A cold shiver blankets her shoulders; she meets Bull’s eyes. He’s spotted it too.

“Qunari,” he says, nudging the unmelted hilt of an Antaam blade with the tip of his boot. “Been dead for a while, probably. Look at the moss creeping up on there.”

“This wasn’t gaatlok,” Saar murmurs. “A spell.” The shape of the blast mark could pass for that kind of explosion, but… the Anchor seethes in her palm. Magic was used here. Powerful magic.

“What the fuck are Qunari and the Dread Wolf doing in the same place?” Varric asks.

“We don’t know this was him,” Saar mutters, walking towards the bridge. From the hum of her barriers, the others are trailing behind her, if hesitantly.

“Teeth. That’s an elven ruin. Those are wolf statues. And a spell this strong, that you can still feel it? Who else could manage that?”

“Same kind of security measures we saw in the Temple of Mythal,” Saar fires back. “A Tevene mage juiced up on lyrium, a Qunari mage set loose… the list goes on.”

“And which one of them could open a bunch of eluvians and conveniently direct them to the Winter Palace?”

“Leave it,” Bull cuts in. “Boss? We going in or not?”

Saar squares her shoulders, flexes her left hand. “We are.”

They cross the bridge. On the other side, there’s another wide set of stairs rising toward the main gate of the fortress. On the top landing, the forms of spirits shimmer. Shaped like Sentinels, armed with glaives.

Bull goes still, then moves in front of Saar.

The spirits call out, speaking in Elven.

“Did anyone understand that?” Varric asks quietly.

“Not really,” Saar mutters. It was too low, too quick. She only knows bits and pieces anyway. But the spirits are just… standing there. Armed, yeah, but not attacking. She gives Bull’s back a reassuring touch and circles around him. Holding up both hands in what hopefully reads as a peaceful gesture.

“An… Aneth ara?” she tries. Shit, what was the other one? An something else. “Andar a… atesh’an?” The Anchor throws sparks. She grimaces. With effort, she draws its power back inside, so it doesn’t look like she’s gearing up for a bloody fight.

The spirits float closer. They have elven shapes, but they don’t move like elves—more like fish underwater wearing an extra set of legs. Feet sliding over the ground, torsos swaying side-to-side as if propelled by invisible fins.

The largest spirit raises its glaive… and sweeps it to the side. Moves to the side too, its companions mirroring the motion. Like it’s presenting the fortress to Saar.

A different kind of shiver works its way down her spine.

“I’m revising my opinion,” Varric announces, shouldering Bianca. “This is absolutely an invitation.”

A short time later, it becomes clear it’s not just an invitation.

It’s a fucking guided tour.

The gate of the fortress is a massive mosaic that melts open at the touch of the Anchor, writhing like veilfire. It fills Saar’s head with images, thoughts, and voices.

This is a sanctuary under the protection of Fen’Harel, it whispers.

It’s not the last such mosaic. The spirits flit before them, never quite in reach but never truly disappearing either. Leading Saar through the halls of the fortress, through and past more of the mosaics.

Fen’Harel is no god, they whisper.

The other gods are no gods either, but merely mortal tyrants.

Their slaves will be free and protected here, under the care of the Wolf.

All who are willing may fight to aid Fen’Harel in combating them.

Every time, the Anchor brings forth the information buried in the mosaics. Every time it brings more sparks too, biting painfully up Saar’s arm. She grits her teeth and continues. At one point, they even pass through more eluvians, which lead out onto watchtowers on either side of the lake.

“What the shit is this?” Sera asks after yet another veilfire mosaic gives up its secrets. “‘Ohhh look at me, I’m a good guy, please don’t kill me’? Didn’t know Fenny was this desperate for approval.” She glances around then ducks closer to Saar. “You don’t think he’s watching us right now, right?”

Saar gives the wolf statue in the central hall of the lake fortress a measured stare. “If he is, I hope he’s at least having fun.”

But her mind’s whirling. In her chest, her heart aches dully. All these mosaics, the story they tell, of someone climbing to power to protect those who cannot protect themselves…

She’s still not remotely convinced Fen’Harel set up the eluvians, or would even allow the four of them to tramp around in his sanctuary, but if—if he did…

Why are you showing me this?

Because we fight the same war?

She pushes the thoughts aside. Whatever strange seed of kinship is taking root in her chest, it won’t help them figure out what’s going on here. And something is going on, because they keep finding more dead Qunari.

These ones aren’t charred to pieces at least, but they’re long dead too. With some of the corpses, they can still see what killed them—weapons, from behind. They were either surprised or already fleeing when they were cut down.

Saar uses her power to burn the bodies once they’re done examining them. Blue fire licks up to the ceiling of the tower room they stand in, turning the corpses to ash. They watch in silence, Sera half-turned away. Varric looks a little pallid too.

There is no wind, so Saar calls one down, to carry the ashes away into the sky.

“You know this won’t do anything for them,” Bull says quietly. “Without their weapons… It’s just flesh.”

“It does something for me,” Saar replies, just as quietly. Her eyes sting from the smoke, her throat tight, as she turns to the eluvian that leads back into the fortress. “And this way at least some part of them gets to fly again.”

In the bowels of the sanctuary, there are yet more dead. Saar incinerates them, guiding the smoke outside. She can feel Bull’s eyes on her. Perhaps it’s a waste of her energy, but the thought of leaving them here to rot… No.

There’s a letter as well, written in Qunlat: the Qunari planned to use the eluvians to get into Halamshiral.

Bull throws the letter back down on the table where they found it. He stomps away, turns, picks it up again, lets out a ragged noise.

“That’s insane!” he barks. “They’re acting like we’re at war!”

“Acted, Tiny,” Varric suggests carefully. “This place looks like it was abandoned months ago. I’d venture they don’t have another eluvian infiltration route lined up. Those things are hard to come by.”

“That’s good though, right?” Sera asks. “Means there won’t be a war after all!”

“It means whatever killed them here was bad enough for them to abandon the plan entirely,” Saar mutters while she eyes the letter. Crushed silence is the only response, and she glances up to find all three staring at her.

An ancient god would be bad enough.

“Don’t say it,” she snaps. “This isn’t evidence of anything but what the Qunari were up to.” She drops the letter and stalks back up the stairs.

In the topmost room of the fortress, once again lured by eager spirits, they find yet another eluvian nestled between the paws of a wolf statue, and a mural spanning half the wall.

“Those are… Dalish? Or, not-Dalish, the Dalish came later?” Sera points up at the wolf-pelt-clad elf in the image. “What’s he doing, removing vallaslin?”

“Maybe they meant something else in those days?” Varric wonders. “I remember Chuckles got into some weird arguments with Loranil about it once.”

Bull just stares at the figures, eye roving.

Saar glances away from the mural to the eluvian. One of the spirits hovers beside the wolf’s snout, then floats down to gesture at the mirror.

“Andaran atish’an,” the spirit greets them. “I am Study, I am Ghil-Dirthalen.”

Sera sucks in a noisy breath between her teeth.

“That’s… not how you said it, innit,” she whispers to Saar.

“No, it’s not.” Saar keeps her eyes on the spirit. “Let’s discuss my poor pronunciation later, all right?”

“But those other spirit-demon-thingies—” Sera cuts herself off, her voice going high. “Right. Later. Right.”

Ghil-Dirthalen is accommodating, just like the other spirits. It tells them of the place they now stand in, what it once was before it fell to ruin. It tells them… memories.

Screams and panic and anger, burned into the air. Piece by piece, they wander the ruins and collect fragments that eventually form a picture. One that’s a lot closer to the stories the Dalish tell of the Dread Wolf.

Fen’Harel locked the gods away.

Fen’Harel created the Veil.

Fen’harel doomed us all.

“Fucker pulled that off and still claims he’s no god?” Varric mutters. “Maker’s Breath, if I wrote that…”

“No one would believe it?”

“Hah, much worse, Teeth. They’d call me a hack. Delusional world-reshaping villains are tricky to get right.”

He doesn’t sound as light as his words make him out to be. Saar can’t pretend to be casually interested in that line of conversation either—not when the person in question is very much real, and potentially around the corner. But they’ve been traipsing around the eluvians for what feels like hours. If Fen’Harel is around, he’d have shown his face by now.

They continue their exploration, finding more memories of horror. But also bits of light: a memory of what sounds like a child, hiding amid the stacks in a game. Scholars caught in a lively debate. The hum of magic, practiced eons ago.

“There’s so much history here,” Saar murmurs as they climb a newly-formed flight of stairs to an upside-down platform. Vertigo seizes her for a moment, and then gravity reasserts itself. “Even now, what the world could learn from a library like this…”

“Solas would piss himself with excitement in here,” Bull grunts.

“Maker’s tits, yeah.” Saar can’t help smiling. Stars, she’s gonna tell him about this the second she finds him again. “Would have to drag him away from something every five minutes.”

Bull chuckles softly. “Try every two minutes.”

They round another corner and come face to face with the remains of a wide hall. A mural graces the plaster. In the center of the hall stands the sculpture of a tree, wrought from gold, with a hollow crown. The branches encircle nothing but empty air, but the Anchor starts humming in Saar’s palm.

“That thing looks like bad news,” Sera decides. “Let’s just turn around, there’s not even another stupid mirror here, yeah?”

“Hold up, that mural…” Bull circles around the tree, moving closer to the wall that’s still standing. Saar goes to follow him, but Varric catches her sleeve.

“Your mark’s been acting up.” He looks to the tree. “Especially around these ancient artifact-type things.”

Saar curls her left hand into a fist and slowly releases it again. The humming quiets. “I’ve got it under control, Varric.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah. Come on.”

He frowns, deep enough to make her hesitate, but at last he nods.

“Boss, any chance for a bit of light?”

Saar calls up a ball of light in her left palm—it flares into bright green flames when she goes past the tree. She barely manages to keep a shout of pain inside, staggering a little. The green fire—veilfire—surges into the empty tree crown, blazing bright like a beacon.

“Teeth—!”

“It’s fine.”

Saar sends Sera, who has darted from her perch by the far wall, a reassuring nod. Sera wraps her arms about her middle, but stays put. Saar walks over to stand beside Bull, both of them bathed in the flickering glow of veilfire. They look up at the mural. Saar’s stomach drops.

“That looks like the orb, doesn’t it,” Bull says.

“…Maybe,” Saar grants. “Or an orb. Solas said it’s one of the ancient elven foci. There were several, I’d assume.”

Bull gives her a long look. “But your mark came from a specific one. And it’s been doing fireworks around all this old elf shit. Around the Dread Wolf’s old elf shit.” He gestures up at the mural. “You wanna tell me this guy doesn’t have a wolf head?”

“Oh that’s Fenny all right,” Sera chimes in, slipping between Saar and Bull. “That creepy study-spirit-whatever is watching us,” she whispers, brows drawn tight. “Want me to shoot it? I’m pretty sure I could shoot it.”

“No one’s getting shot,” Saar hisses. “And you’re saying, what? Corypheus’ orb came from Fen’Harel?”

“It’s not just that.” Bull roughly rubs a hand over his face. Sighs. “Look at the painting style. Real familiar, huh?”

Saar stares at the mural, until a shock of ice-cold lightning goes through her. She rips her gaze away, glaring at Bull.

“That’s absurd.”

“I—”

“You’re so good at finding patterns you manage it even when there isn’t one! So Solas mimicked every aspect of ancient elven murals! Who’s surprised by that?!”

“Not me,” Sera grumbles. “Nerd.”

“Exactly! And the only thing we’ve figured out about Fen’Harel is that he had a reason for locking the other gods away, beyond sowing chaos!”

“Fine, but maybe he ended up here anyway? This place has to be catnip for Solas—”

Sera blurts out a high chortle, then flinches at her own outburst. “What. What are we even arguing about?” she asks, very quietly.

Saar grits her teeth against the scream building in her throat. “All right,” she says tightly. “You’ve got a point. Let’s find out.” She whirls around and calls out: “Ghil-Dirthalen! Was an elf here in the past few months? Or years? A mage, bald, freckles, very skinny, goes by ‘Solas’?”

Ghil-Dirthalen flickers.

“I cannot answer that,” the spirit replies. “I do not know. I am—I was—apart from myself. I cannot recall.”

…Fuck.

Saar’s shoulders sink. Her chest feels like it’s trying to cave in. For a moment there, she’d actually hoped—

Varric touches her back. “Worth a shot,” he murmurs. “He’ll turn up eventually.”

Saar doesn’t say anything in response, because she’s not sure what might come out if she opens her mouth right now. Just breathes heavily through her nose, wipes a hand across her face. She’s almost got herself back together when Bull takes a few steps toward Ghil-Dirthalen.

“Different question, uh, Study?” he says. “Was the Dread Wolf here in the past few months?”

Ghil-Dirthalen freezes in mid-air.

“I cannot answer that,” it says. Its voice comes out wrong. “There is a further eluvian, if you wish to continue exploring?”

The eluvian leads into a cavern. The ground is hewn into wide sweeping stairs, it almost looks like the Deep Roads—if it weren’t for the murals plastered onto the walls. Fen’Harel gazes down at them, a wolf stalking after prey. In the mural, waves of color, perhaps magic, flow through hulking, sundered figures. The air tastes of a strange damp, like lightning in a swamp.

And there are… statues. Armed and armored Qunari. They look utterly lifelike, captured in the motions of combat—

The blood in Saar’s veins turns to frost.

“Teeth, what's… wrong…”

“Bull,” says Saar. Her voice comes out hollow, bouncing off of the walls. “I need you to do something for me.”

The reply is instant: “Tell me.”

Sera's hand lands on Saar’s elbow. “You’re talking all funny, what’s going—”

“…That’s Qunlat, Buttercup.”

“Grab them and go back to the other side. Now.”

“Qunla-wha? Why—hey!!” Sera's voice cuts off in a yelp.

“Oh no Tiny, you're not—blights—”

“You’re coming back, boss.”

It’s not a question, even if Bull’s voice wavers in the middle.

Saar forces herself to turn her head, catching Bull’s gaze from the corner of her eyes. Sera, thrown over Bull’s shoulder, and Varric, nearly hoisted off of his feet by the belt, stare at Saar, mouths open and eyes wide.

“Of course,” she says. Somehow, her voice doesn’t shake. “Might just take a while.”

“We’ll handle the Council,” Bull says softly, already moving. Sera shouts, struggling again, but the hum of the eluvian swallows the words. Swallows all three of them.

Saar is alone.

She looks up at Fen’Harel’s image on the wall. At the wolf, not the slender elven figure between its forelegs, bare-headed and clad in muted robes.

“You practically invited me,” she tells it sharply. “You better act like it too.”

Saar descends the stairs. The eluvian’s glow behind her fades quickly so she conjures balls of fallow light to follow her, lighting the descent. The scent of magic grows stronger, thicker, the deeper she goes. Down, past new murals, past animal shapes cut into the walls, as if they’re trying to emerge from the rock. She tries not to look too closely. She’s not ready to think about what it could mean that the ancient elves built down here too.

Not looking at the statues of Qunari is harder. They’re mostly scattered in clusters., but sometimes she passes a lone fighter. Every time, the Anchor flares and hisses, reacting to the magic still lingering here. Something’s off about it—it hurts, the way it did in the very beginning. It slips out of her control again and again, throwing a flickering green glow over her surroundings.

The stairs even out and the walls retreat as the cavern widens.

Something moves between the statues before her.

“Your path ends here, shemlen.”

It takes her a moment to place the voice, but then the figure emerges into her light and draws back his hood.

Abelas.

He looks exhausted. Shadows smudged under his eyes, his cheeks wan. His pale blond hair is tied back in a braid that’s feathering apart. Mythal’s vallaslin covers his skin, unchanged. He still wears the Sentinels’ armor.

“What are you doing here?” Saar asks.

“That does not concern you. None of this concerns you. Leave, while you still can.”

Her gaze slips past him—the cavern continues on behind him, narrowing again into a passageway. A light flickers there, faint and red.

She adjusts the grip on her spear. “Are you working for Fen’Harel? Mythal’s still out there, you know.”

“Leave.”

“Not until I get some bloody answers!”

He startles at her shout, just enough for her to notice. Saar takes a step closer.

“Mythal wants revenge. What does Fen’Harel want?” She draws her power into a barrier, flowing over her body. “He made the Veil, he locked the gods away. What, is he trying to unmake it again? ”

Abelas’ jaw tightens, his mouth works.

Oh, that is not good.

“That’s it, isn’t it?” Saar asks, horror turning her voice shallow. “He tried to save you. And he messed it up.”

“He will restore the world!” The words punch out of Abelas like whip cracks. “The work is done. He is ready. You will not delay him further.”

“I think I will,” Saar spits back. “I like my world in one piece.”

Abelas moves like lightning.

His magic flickers out of him, a whip of fire lashing from his hand. It catches Saar across the arm. Sears through her coat, down to her skin. She snarls. A barrier erupts out of her. Shoves him back, but he’s already moving.

Shit, he’s fast.

A blade of light grows glowing from his fingers. Saar barely dodges to the side. She brings her spear down between them. Forces him to keep his distance.

Saar fadesteps behind him and delivers a ringing slap to the side of his head. Manages to get his ear, to make it really hurt. It works to disorient him, rocking him with the force of the blow.

But he’s not disoriented for long enough. Another fire whip flies out at her. Saar stumbles backwards. It’s bigger than the first, and it fucking explodes. She loses her balance. Falls.

Then the damn sword is back. He’s hacking at her. Slashes like he’s trying to bring down a giant. Her barrier catches most of it, screaming under the assault. But the part that makes it through hurts. Like hot needles piercing her shoulder.

She rolls to the side, comes up on hands and knees. Her spear flies to her; the Anchor crackles. She’s panting.

With a shout, he sends another wave of fire at her. Saar takes it, feeding her barrier to the breaking point. She can smell singed hair, burnt leather. Her skin cracks.

When she gets her spear up again, Abelas doesn’t stop. She almost runs him through. The spear point slices along his waist, right below the chestpiece of his armor. That doesn’t stop him either. But he wavers. They’re both panting for air now.

All those pyres may have been a mistake.

Saar drags her mind back. No use thinking about it now. No use wondering.

“I’m not here to kill you,” she bites out, keeping her spear aimed at Abelas and her barriers ready. “Just get out of my way.”

Abelas glares at her, his eyes bright and wild. “You may kill me,” he tells her through heaving breaths, “but I will not allow you to pass.”

Oh, for—

He’s right there again, inside her reach. Keeps attacking, with fire and that blade of searing light. It doesn’t fucking matter that Saar manages to evade more and more of his strikes. The ones that do hit slice right through her barrier. Burn through the few reserves she has left. She has no time to be precise. No energy left to be overwhelming. Even when the strength goes out of his attacks, he just doesn’t stop.

“I’m not here to kill you!” Saar spits again, shoving Abelas away once more. He staggers, his mouth dripping blood like the cut below his ribcage where she got him earlier. It’s seeping down his armor, staining his left leg red. Leaves rusty splotches of it on the ground as he stumbles his way closer again, expression grimly determined. Saar sidesteps a wavering bolt of fire. He sways, almost falls, but catches himself on an arm of stone.

Her heart pounds in her chest. Her eyes ache, trying to focus on Abelas, and not—not the… statues.

They’re not statues, a voice at the back of her mind screeches, and Saar blinks until it stops—

“Abelas.”

The voice is calm, quiet. It carries—it echoes. Sounds as though it comes from everywhere, all around them.

Gooseflesh bites into Saar’s shoulders. No. No.

“Let her come to me.”

Abelas almost flinches. His eyes are desperate. “But—”

“Let her come to me.”

She knows that voice.

Abelas goes to his knees. Saar darts to him with a fadestep, gripping his wrists so he can’t try something stupid like try to fight her again.

“You’re bleeding out,” she tells him, voice hard. “Let me help.”

It’s so much easier to focus on him than on anything else as he stares at her, dumbfounded, trying to weakly wrest himself from her grip as if it’s poison. To focus on him, on the scent of his blood, instead of the murals staring down at them. The people turned to stone mid-motion. The voice, and who it belongs to, and what him being here means—

Abelas exhales, shivering. “Do what you will, shemlen.” The insult comes out by rote, his voice faint.

“Stop being a blighted martyr,” Saar grunts, ripping open his armor. She doesn’t have proper supplies, and too little magic left to try and heal anything, even if she was any good at it. She carves apart his cloak and fashions it into a bandage that does the job for now. Rummaging in her pouch yields one more vial of restorative.

…She can do without it. Even at her full strength, she couldn’t do much against someone who can turn people to stone.

She has to take a breath, eyes clenched shut, pushing the thoughts away.

“Take this,” she says, folding the vial into Abelas’ hand. “Get up the stairs, through the eluvian. My friends are on the other side. They can help you.”

Abelas stares at her. She shakes him lightly. He blinks.

“‘Help me’?” he echoes.

“Yes.”

“Will they?”

“If you manage to be less of an asshole, yes. If you hurt them, I’ll kill you.”

A strange expression passes over his face. Under a different sky, she might’ve thought it was amusement.

“I understand why you have compelled him so,” Abelas murmurs, and accepts the vial. Saar lets him go as if she’s burned herself. She’s on her feet a moment later, stepping back far enough she collides with a—with stone. A person-shaped stone.

No—

Let her come to me.

Stop. Stop.

Her mind’s racing off without her permission. She drags her attention back to what’s before her. The cavern, with light at the end. Red and green, and flickering.

“Go up the stairs,” she repeats to Abelas finally, and turns toward that glow.

She keeps hold of her spear, more as a crutch than a weapon. Still ends up leaning against the wall half the time, too exhausted not to. Her left arm hurts, leeching her strength.

There are more murals. More people turned to stone. Qunari soldier after Qunari soldier, fighting against some invisible opponent. Reaching out, brandishing weapons. When Saar’s gaze wanders to their faces, she sees a similar desperation to the kind that warped Abelas’ expression earlier.

Hopeless, but unable to give up.

Her claws dig into the stone wall; plaster breaks away beneath her fingers. Chips of old, ancient colors rain to the ground. For a split second, she clings to this horror: the destruction of something that old, something that has survived for so long…

She goes on. The glow grows stronger. It shifts and shivers, moving through the air as if borne on clouds. Soon, she comes through a passageway.

The walls fall away. The cavern opens up again, into something mountainous. Lines of red light arc through the space, flickering green, pulsing like a heartbeat. The arrangement is reminiscent of a web, disappearing into the stone. There are no murals here but one, a massive silhouette of a wolf drawn upon the far wall—

…No. It’s not a mural.

It’s a shadow.

Saar’s breath stalls in her lungs.

No.

But the denial is weak.

Her eyes follow the shadow to its source: an elf, standing before a hovering shape of red lyrium. Slight, bald, with sharp shoulders.

It’s a frame she could recognize in a snowstorm.

Solas turns around at the sound of her steps, and her heart tries to leap into her throat.

His eyes are—new.

There’s more than two.

Opened up all over his forehead and his cheek. Shining silver, despite the light from the red lyrium. It’s a sight she recognizes, a pattern repeated in mural after mural, the wolf with countless eyes…

“Vhenan,” he says softly. “I have missed you.”

His eyes glow like six moons for a second. Saar gasps. Her body seizes as power courses through it. Her skin mends, her bruises heal. The exhaustion is driven from her muscles by a pack of hounds. Her magic rises like floodwaters inside her, damn near overflowing. Everything she spent paid back in full and more.

The Anchor wells up her arm, a wave of green, but it doesn’t burn. It feels… different. Akin to the way it did when she fought Corypheus. The Anchor had been hers then. Only hers, no matter what he’d tried with the orb. Now, it pulses in time with her heartbeat.

She looks at Solas. At all of him. The painfully familiar frame, the unhappy set of his ears. The clothes he’s wearing, reminiscent of the Sentinels’ armor. Cut close to the torso but loose around his legs, with a high collar. His hands are gloved too. He looks like he’s trying to wear darkness as a robe.

“You left.”

The words just spill out of her. Desperate. Like that’s the one and only thing she could throw at him.

“I know.” His gaze, from all his eyes, slides away. “I could not stay.”

Why claws its way up her throat, and Saar swallows with effort. She knows why. She thinks she knows, hopes against hope she doesn’t.

“Tell me you’re not him,” she manages, faintly.

Solas says nothing, but his expression is full of sorrow.

“Tell me I don’t have your fucking name on my back!”

His answer is so quiet, and it echoes anyway.

“I cannot.”

Saar’s ears ring. Her lungs are too small. It takes three tries to wrench her mouth open again.

“Did—did you know from the start?”

“When I first saw it, yes.” He sounds so calm. How can he be this calm?

“Why didn’t you say something?!” Saar takes a step towards him, and another, and another. This close, she can see there’s a barrier set around the red lyrium idol. Then she notices he moves in counterpoint to her: the idol remains between them at all times.

“It would not have changed anything,” Solas murmurs, “only brought you grief.”

Saar laughs sharply. That echoes too. It feels like there’s glass shards in her throat. “And this doesn’t?”

Half his eyes skitter away for a moment. “I am sorry for that as well. But I had to speak to you, at least this once, before I enact my plan.” His shadow wavers, moving upon the wall. The wolf turns. “To show you what I was unable to tell you before.”

“Why? Why now?”

Solas tilts his head, like the answer is obvious. “You deserve the truth.”

Saar stares at him, her stomach filling with ice.

“Right before you rip my world apart?! I thought you were kinder than that.”

His ears flick up, his eyes widen. “Thank you,” he says, very quietly. His mouth widens into a horrible, wounded smile. “Keep hold of that anger, vhenan. You will get your vengeance in the end.”

“…What?”

“I only have to hold you at bay until I correct my mistake.” He glances at her spear, and moves again to keep distance between them. She’d almost forgotten she was still holding it. “But I can imagine far worse deaths.” Solas’ face grows even softer than before when he looks back at her. It’s like being fucking stabbed.

“To be killed by your hand… it will be a comfort.”

Saar’s brain slams to a screeching halt.

No.

He can’t mean that.

He can’t mean that.

He’s watching her like he really, really means it.

“Solas.” She stumbles closer, and again he circles to evade her. “Solas.”

His name makes him pause, but nothing else. Saar wants to scream at him. Nothing gets past her aching throat. How can he still look at her like that when he’s waiting for her to kill him? He moves with a certain wariness, his posture that of someone ready to fight, but his expression—

Saar never wants to see it again.

She feels like she’s bleeding out. What the fuck does he expect her to do? Actually fight him? Kill him? When they both know she has the barest of chances, he turned an army to stone, even now that she’s healed, her reserves brimming with power, she—

He healed her.

Not just that, he gave her so much power it’s damn leaking out of her. The Anchor’s glow rivals that of the red lyrium idol.

The spirits in the lake fortress guided them, guided her, even after she butchered that bloody greeting.

The Qunari corpses they found were months old. But all those eluvians were still active. All of them unlocked. All of them pointing her to what he wanted to show her. Pointing her right here.

And which one of them could open a bunch of eluvians and conveniently direct them to the Winter Palace?

He invited her.

The work is done. He is ready.

He waited for her.

Let her come to me.

He waited for her.

“No,” says Saar, the word steel. A sword sliding back into its scabbard. “I’m not doing it.” She drops her spear; it clatters on the stone floor. “Fuck the death name. Fuck fate and all the rest of it. I’m not killing you.”

Solas’ mouth drops open.

“What do you—you know I must bring down the Veil,” he says, voice hoarse like sand. His eyes are stark and wide, silver and bright in the unsteady darkness of the cavern. “You said it yourself, I would rip your world apart unless you—”

“Then do it,” hisses Saar. She gestures at the idol, at the web of red light spanning the cavern. “You’re all ready, aren’t you? Abelas was pretty explicit about that.”

She sits down on the ground, legs crossed, and rests her elbows on her knees, looking up at him.

“Do it. I’ll wait.”

Solas reaches out his hand toward the idol, to set in motion what cannot be stopped. He has spent so long to come to this point, spilled so much blood. All to correct his worst mistake. The sundering of the world, the dying of his people. It is all he must do. It is the only thing he can do.

Saar only sits there, watching him. Waiting for him to rip the world apart.

The breath stalls in his lungs. His fingers shake. He—

He cannot do it.

He cannot do it.

The idol is screeching within the spell he has been weaving, the web connecting it to the even greater web of his artifacts. Spanning the continent, all ready, all waiting, and—

—he cannot do it.

Like a wave, the tremors crash from his hand into his body. His legs give out; he sinks to his knees. Staring sightlessly. The barrier around the idol evaporates. The web collapses. Arcs of magic lash into the walls of the cavern, the stone groans like a living thing. All shudders, as power flees its bounds, finds escape to the sky like smoke, deeper into the earth like groundwater.

When it ends, his voice leaves him as an echo, hollow and thin: “I will not resist.”

“You—” Saar’s voice is faint. Then, louder: “You utter piece of shit. I’m not bloody killing you!”

It is as though the ground drops away beneath him. As though the world unravels around him, despite the Veil still being in place, the Fade locked away.

His head lurches up and his eyes find Saar. She is on her feet again, face twisted in stunned anger. Her eyes burn like suns. It hurts to behold her. It would hurt more to avert his gaze.

What can he do?

What can he even say?

“Where do you wish to go?”

Saar only stares at him. He cannot read her expression. Has she at last learned to wear a mask worthy of the Game, or has he forgotten how to discern her mood?

“Just like that?” she asks finally, with an edge that is perhaps somewhat hysteric. “You’re just gonna play courier service for me?”

“I—” Solas swallows. For a long moment, his mouth refuses to obey. He stands up slowly. “I did not expect to still be alive to have this conversation.”

“What the fuck, Solas.” Saar starts to pace, but shortly grinds to a halt again. “This is bloody insane,” she mutters. She whirls around and stalks into his space, looming over him. “You’re bloody insane.”

He nearly laughs. He feels like it, as though the world twisted suddenly up on itself, and his mind can no longer grasp hold of it.

“I could say the same,” he manages. ”You could have killed me. You were meant to kill me. Why didn’t you?”

Saar shoves him backwards, her large hand on his chest. He almost topples over. “Why should I?” she bites out. “Just ‘cause some nugshit higher power says so?”

“Because I would have ended your world!” The words leave him as a scream. The Veil trembles. “Because you would have died just like countless others, thousands more would have suffered, and I accepted it!”

“Did you really?!”

“Yes! For long enough to get this far, to stand on the precipice—”

She grabs the front of his cloak, fist tight, and reels him close. Shouts.

“Why are you this fucking keen to die?!”

His feet lift off of the ground. “I—I am not—

“And force me to do the dirty work!!”

Saar is crying.

Anything he might have said dies stillborn in his lungs.

“I’m tired,” she rasps out. “I am so. Tired. The Qun would've turned me into a weapon too, but it might've been easier to bear than this shit.” A horrible wet laugh works its way free of her lungs, and he flinches. “Do you have any idea what it's like to have the whole world tell you your only purpose is to murder someone?”

Before he can think to reply, she lets him go. He staggers, nearly falling again. He almost reaches for her to steady himself, but smothers the impulse in time. He has no right to that. No matter how close she dragged him. No matter how close they stand now, where it would take little more than a step to bring them into contact.

She looks tired, down to her bones. An exhaustion no amount of his power could cure. Behind him, the idol sings weakly. His chest is hollow, his mind unmoored.

“Where do you wish to go?” he asks again.

Saar blinks. She gazes past him, into some unknown distance.

“I’ve gotta leave a message first,” she says slowly, at last. “But then… there’s a place I’ve been meaning to visit.”

Chapter Text

Afterwards, Solas takes them to a tiny speck of an island in the middle of a mirror-flat, lead-grey sea.

“What are we doing here?” Saar asks, following him down to the rocky beach. There’s barely anything that would even qualify as sand, and few pebbles—just big slabs of dark stone, angled as though they’re about to slide into the water.

“I assumed you would not want me to bring this—” he lifts the red lyrium idol, which floats a few inches above his upturned palm, “into the home of your parents.”

Bloody right she doesn’t want that thing anywhere near them—but that still leaves the question…

“So… where are you gonna put it?”

“Somewhere no one can reach it, and where it will not continue to poison those in its proximity.”

Saar eyes him. “Why not destroy it?”

He lets out a low breath. “I… cannot. Not safely.”

“Because it’s blighted.”

“Yes. To destroy the idol would release the blight—”

“And you don’t have any Grey Wardens handy to soak it up for you.”

He gives her a flat look and mutters, “Unfortunately, I do not.” Rolls his eyes, even, and for half a second it’s like he never left—and then the moment passes.

Solas turns away. The urge to drag him back itches under Saar’s skin. But he’s done nothing but flinch away from her the second she got close, since the cavern. So she doesn’t reach out. Just watches him draw stone from one of the slabs, shaping it into a ball around the idol. It looks—easy. Maker’s tits, what happened that he can just do that? The question is halfway up her throat when Solas, stone-encased idol floating beside him, starts to wade into the water.

For a short moment, Saar is terrified he’s going to keep going until the water closes over his head.

Solas lets out a small yelp when she grabs him by the back of his robes and drags him to a standstill. He twists around, wide-eyed, staring at her in confusion.

“What…”

“I—” Saar swallows. She can taste salt on her lips, and doesn’t know whether it’s from her earlier tears or the spray of the sea. “I thought you were gonna. Keep walking.”

Right after she told the entire world to go fuck itself, she would not kill him—not for fate, not for vengeance. To lose him like this…

It must show on her face somehow, because Solas’ expression cracks.

“I would not,” he whispers. “If I can promise you nothing else, I can promise that.”

He stares at her, she stares back. She doesn’t know what to say. Her tongue’s tied up in knots, too many words clamoring at the back of her mouth. Solas turns toward the ocean again. Saar unclenches her fingers with effort, letting him go.

Solas opens his mouth, and a noise comes out of it that doesn’t sound like it belongs to this world. Neither this half, nor the Fade.

“Gonna tell me what the fuck that was?” Saar manages to ask after a moment of echoing silence. Solas’ gaze slides away, glinting silver.

“I am… calling in an old favor.”

The water before them starts to churn, like it’s… getting displaced. Displaced by something big. The pull of it drags at them both, but they keep their feet. Something is moving below the surface. Rising toward the surface. A huge, scaled coil breaks out of the water. And another, and another. And, at last, a head. Atop a long, endless neck, a maw filled with rows of needle teeth, shimmering black eyes set to either side of the skull, a fringe of colorful fins framing the jaw.

Aban ataashi.

It’s beautiful.

Saar only realizes she’s taken several steps forward when Solas lets out a very mortal noise of alarm.

“Please, let me,” he says, “let me deal with this.” For a brief, brief moment, his fingers touch her elbow, before he snatches his hand back again. Saar draws a deep breath, flexes her fingers. Takes a step back to let him pass.

More of those noises spill out of him. Aban ataashi responds in kind. Saar watches, stunned, as Solas hands over the encased idol, aban ataashi takes it in its teeth, and disappears again beneath the churning waves. Once it’s gone, the water calms, until no trace of its passage is left.

Saar eyes Solas, her mind whirling through even more questions. At last she manages to settle on: “An old friend?”

One of his eyes flicks to meet her gaze. “In a manner of speaking.”

“…Good thing you’re still alive to see them again, huh.”

All his eyes close. “Yes.” He says it so softly, as if it’s an admission of guilt.

The sun is setting when they arrive at the homestead of Saar’s parents. It is a small farm, tucked into the edge of the forest, close to one of the tributaries of the Minanter River. Solas spots a vegetable garden, a coop for chickens, and a pen with a handful of goats. The beams carrying the structure of the house and the lintel are carved in a variety of styles, with geometric imagery in one spot, animal shapes in another, and curling florals in yet another. It seems… homely.

Saar comes to a stop amidst the garden. She simply… looks.

“Saar… is everything all right?” Solas tries after a long moment. She shakes herself, drawing a deep breath.

“Yeah, I—just haven’t been here in a while.” She chuckles, unbearably soft. “They got new goats.”

Solas swallows. The power slumbering below his skin feels out of place here. As though he is one of the Evanuris intruding on the hovel of peasants. There is no part of that thought that is not distasteful. But before he can suggest he distance himself, Saar strides up to the door and, after a second of hesitation, knocks.

A brief silence follows, broken only by the occasional bleating of the goats and the clucking of the chickens. Then the door opens. Solas cannot see who opened it because Saar’s body is blocking his view—but he hears the gasped breath.

The crack in Saar’s voice when she says, “Hey, Mama.”

“Oh, Sunspot—”

Saar pulls her mother into a fierce embrace. Pulls her right off of her feet, even. Both of them are laughing, crying, as Saar spins them around. Solas has to close his eyes against the sight. More even than his mere presence, to bear witness to this reunion feels painfully intrusive. Although he cannot shut out the noise—Reth! Ari! Our child is home!—he can at least avert his gaze.

Soon two more voices join in, similarly disbelieving, then weeping with joy. Bits of Common and Qunlat overlap, frantic and delighted, asking if Saar is hale, if she is safe, why she did not send word… and who her companion is.

Solas opens his eyes just as Saar lets out a long sigh. All four are watching him, and it roots him to the spot.

“It’s… complicated,” Saar says quietly. Her voice is still thick with tears. “What have you heard?”

“Apparently you’re destined to kill the last of the ‘heathen gods’ threatening the world? Something like that?”

“You forgot ‘chosen by the Maker’, kadan.”

“Right. The Maker chose you to kill the—which one was it?”

“Dread Wolf. Only one still running free, as I remember?”

Saar laughs, wooden. Glances back at Solas. His heart leaps into his throat.

“Are you certain—” he manages, and she nods.

“Yeah. Show them the eyes, will you?”

Taking a deep breath, he does.

“Vashedan.”

“What the…”

“How in Koslun’s name does that work?!”

Saar laughs again, but it is softer. “There’s gonna be time for interrogations, Mama,” she says, coming towards Solas again. He almost retreats from her, before forcing himself to remain standing where he is. She did not tell him to leave. Not yet.

“This is Solas,” she says, laying a light, light hand on his shoulder. His knees do not buckle. “Also known as Fen’Harel, the Dread Wolf. We need a place to lay low for a while.” Her parents stare, wide-eyed. On Solas’ shoulder, Saar’s fingers tense slightly, before falling away. “We can… we can go elsewhere, if you don’t—but I didn’t—didn’t want to hide this from you.”

Saar’s mother is the first to break the silence. “Oh, you’re staying, Sunspot. Both of you.” She glances over at the others. “Besides, it’s hardly the weirdest thing she’s dragged home, right?”

Solas blinks.

“I think he is, actually,” says the taller of Saar’s other parents. He cocks his head, regarding Solas. “But not by much.”

The name of Saar’s mother is Tehenan. Reth is her father, Ari her parent. Solas recalls the names from what feels like a different life, but Saar had never specified. They all regard him with a certain caution, yet not fear. It is the way one watches a wounded animal. He cannot reproach them for it. He feels as though he is bleeding still, his chest filling with hot blood.

They prepare a bedstead for him in the main room, beside the fire.

“This is more than enough,” Solas tries, when Ari carries in a fur. Ari eyes him, considering.

“You’re very skinny,” they say eventually. “Nights can still get cold, at the moment.” And with that, they drop the fur onto the mattress. Solas ducks his head, whispering quiet gratitude.

He tries his best to stay out of the way while Saar and her parents prepare for the night, sitting with his legs tucked underneath himself on the bedstead. His gaze wanders through the room. A kitchen with a stove fills one corner, while another corner appears to be a woodworking space. The air smells of smoke and sap, pine and dried lavender. The room from which Ari emerged must be the actual bedroom, Solas surmises.

Currently, Saar and Reth are standing half within the tall doorframe, talking. Of all her parents, she most closely resembles Reth in terms of physicality. Solas remembers Saar had mentioned how she shot past even her father in height when she was still young—but the similarities go far past mere height. Reth has the same broad shoulders, the same sharply-defined jaw and cheekbones. Were it not for the moonsickle-curve of his horns and the gentler slope of his nose, he could be an aged mirror to his daughter.

Solas averts his gaze, the corners of his eyes stinging. But that still leaves the sound of their conversation—his ears flick in surprise. They are speaking Qunlat.

“Are you worried about him?” Reth says. “That he’s going to… do something dangerous?”

A pause.

“I don’t want to be,” Saar replies, her voice tight.

“I can keep an eye on him.”

“…Thanks, Papa.”

Out of the corner of his eyes, Solas can see Saar embrace her father, her face buried in the crook of his shoulder.

Later, Solas does not bother to feign surprise when Reth, a witchlight conjured by Saar hovering over his shoulder, comes to sit on the other side of the dying fire. He settles down between the fire and the door, a length of unbraided rope in his lap.

“Don’t mind me,” he says. “I’ve been meaning to work on this.”

“You need not fear me,” Solas says quietly. “I have no intentions to harm you, nor Saar.”

Not more than he already has, at least. He tries not to think about how his mere presence evidently pains her.

“…You understand Qunlat, huh?”

“Yes. Although only recently.”

“Hm.”

Reth braids through several turns of the rope in his lap, then glances over the fire at Solas again.

“Saar’s afraid you’re going to hurt yourself, not anyone else.”

Solas stares at him.

“She—” He must swallow, and start anew. “I promised her I would not.”

“Ah.” Reth smiles sadly. “That’s maybe why she’s afraid.”

Solas finds no words in response. Only a deep well inside him, the void within pouring out. Swallowing all words, all clear thoughts. None of this was part of the plan. He had considered possible failure upon failure, but never this.

“Just sleep for now,” Reth says. “You look like you need it. And tomorrow always comes.”

Silently, Solas does, curling up beneath the fur. It smells of lavender as well.

In the morning, Saar takes Solas out to the vegetable garden to collect onions. The task hardly requires two people, which puzzles him until she looks over at the house, takes a deep breath, and fixes him with an unyielding stare.

“You did something to my arm,” she says. “To the Anchor. It was throwing sparks everywhere, it hurt, but then—nothing. Now it’s fine.” She glances down at its steady green glow. “Better than fine.”

Solas sets aside the onion he had pulled out at her direction.

“The Anchor was meant for me,” he admits quietly. “Anyone else… it would have consumed them, eventually.”

“‘Consumed’?!”

“It will not, now,” he rushes to reassure her. He almost reaches for her hand, but stops himself in time. “I kept watch over its state while I was with—with the Inquisition. I knew it would not deteriorate before I could alleviate the issue.”

“Solas. What did you do?”

“It… it is subterfuge. To the Anchor, it is now bound to me. To my flesh. It will no longer resist you.”

Saar watches him for a long time. It has not become easier to bear the weight of her gaze, but he bears it.

“And how the fuck did you pull that off?”

Warmth rises to his face, unbidden. The muscles in his thighs clench, remembering old sensations.

“Your body—it recalls my blood.”

Saar blinks.

“Are you saying you tricked a piece of ancient magic into thinking it’s stuck to your body instead of mine because you like getting bitten?”

“Because you indulged my fondness for it,” he corrects. “But yes.”

Saar frowns at him, her mouth twisting. The sight lances his heart as surely as an arrow.

“Ir abelas,” he whispers. “It was the best way I knew how—”

“That’s not it.” Saar deftly plucks several more onions from the ground, picks up his contribution, then rises to her feet.

“I didn’t indulge shit,” she says, her voice as thin as he has rarely heard it. “I was as fond as you were.”

Another arrow, piercing through heart and lungs. It takes Solas a long time to trust his legs enough to carry him, rising from his knees in the dirt, and follow Saar.

Days pass. Solas aids when he is asked, fetching water or collecting eggs from the chickens, who cluck suspiciously at him. When he is not, he tries to meld into the background, giving Saar privacy with her family as best he can.

It rarely works. They are always in motion, shifting from room to room. Even when they are not, someone calls out to him, for this task or another.

Solas finds himself cataloguing echoes of Saar in everything. The faded markings beside the doorframe, tracking her height. They rise slowly, evenly, until about his chest-height, from where they progress in massive leaps. The painted suns scattered everywhere in the house. A collection of pretty or interesting rocks on the windowsill.

Tehenan is intently curious about Solas. She corners him by the well while he raises the water and asks after his eyes. He is helpless to answer her—they are a part of him. They are always there. No, it is not an illusion hiding them at the moment. Tehenan purses her mouth, considering him. She is surprisingly thin, for a vashoth, and her black hair is streaked with silver. Solas suspects she is not related to Saar by blood, but how she smiles, spreading slow and wide across her face… There is no doubt Saar is her daughter.

Reth keeps watch every night until Solas falls asleep. It is disconcerting. It is—Solas’ chest feels full to bursting, no room left for air. He recognizes the motions. Saar moved like that, in uncertain places. She approached the doors first, kept her body between the windows and everyone else.

When Ari stokes the fire, it tends to move with their breath. The deep black of their horns is nigh the same as Saar’s. Solas can only speculate whether their shape would match as well, for Ari’s horns are sawn off.

Solas’ heart aches, thinking of a former saarebas being able to raise a mage child in freedom. To raise Saar, who is—

She has not ceased tinkering with magic since they arrived. The globes of light illuminating the house in the evening. The cold cellar, filled with ice to store food. Shaping stones to serve as tools, to sharpen the chisels in the workshop. Experimenting with runed spells to protect the chicken coop. One evening, she sat in the garden and conjured colorful specks of light to amuse her parents and confuse the goats. He has had to stop himself so many times from kneeling by her side, magic sparking beneath his skin, slipping into how they were before he abandoned her.

She looks so at home, in this place. Among her parents. Among those she loves and who have never betrayed her.

He cannot fathom why she would permit him to be witness to it.

“All right, that’s it,” Saar says, putting down the shirt she’d been mending. “How are you still wearing gloves?”

Solas flinches like she slapped him. All his eyes open up, staring at her.

That’s—that’s not good. He’s been avoiding her for days, ducking away from anything that could turn into a touch. And that was fine, really, he’d spent Stars knew how long believing she’d kill him. Saar understands if he doesn’t want her nearby after that. She can’t stand looking at him sometimes either. Thinking about how he knew, and just… decided her eventually killing him was fine too.

But this, right now, his entire body locked up like a startled deer—this looks worse.

“I mean.” She swallows, trying and failing to get rid of the knot in her throat. “There’s clothes you can borrow. Something from Tehenan should fit you, if you cuff the sleeves.” She gets up, slowly. “You’ve been wearing that thing for days. Could use a good airing out, at least.”

The room’s gone quiet. Reth has stopped rubbing balm into Tehenan’s horns. She’d been sprawled in his lap, but now they’re both sitting up, watching. Ari, who’d recruited Solas to help them with something by the workbench, has set down their tools.

“It is not necessary,” Solas murmurs. “I can—cleaning it is not an issue. I do not wish to impose.”

“You’re not imposing—” Solas fidgets with the edge of one glove, his eyes darting all over. Saar goes quiet, then opens her mouth again. “Why are you still wearing gloves?”

His eyes focus, all six snapping to her.

“And the high collar,” she continues, voice turning hollow. “You hated that part of the formal uniform. I remember that.”

Unless he’d lied about that too, but why would he—

“I did,” Solas agrees lowly.

More silence.

“I know you’ve got a love name there. Can’t exactly hide that from me.”

“…I know.” He looks down at his hands. “It will not change anything,” he says quietly, and removes the gloves.

The skin below is red like blood.

His entire hands are red.

Saar is on her feet and across the room in the same breath, the displaced air of a fadestep hitting the walls. She grabs Solas’ hand, half expecting to touch the stickiness of old blood—but it’s dry. Solas tries to jerk away, but the wall’s in the way.

“This is—” Her throat is dry. Her ears ring. She drags open the clasp at his throat, tearing open his robe. There’s the dragon. Half swallowed by a sea of red, reaching up from behind his shoulder and spilling down onto his chest.

His chest, heaving beneath her fingers. She snatches her hands back, stumbles backwards.

“What the fuck, Solas.”

He stares at her. Unmoving, like she pinned him to the bloody wall. She’s seen what multiple death names look like, but these? She can’t even read any of them.

“Are those… love names?” Ari asks, quietly.

“Yes.” Solas’ reply is just as low.

“When did they show up?” Saar demands hoarsely. There are so many.

He hesitates. “After I left the Inquisition. Not all at once—piece by piece.” He sighs, shuddering, and tucks the closure of his robe back into place, though he doesn’t do up the entire collar again. “As I said, it matters not. None of it does.”

“‘None of it’?” Saar echoes.

Another sigh, one that turns into a wretched, bitter laugh.

“I murdered my people, Saar. I destroyed our world. The blood on my hands is made visible now—but it does not change that I failed. Now, nothing will bring it back.”

Saar’s chest hollows out, her insides turning cold.

“You wanna know something about mattering?” she bites out. “After everyone found out about my death name, nothing else mattered anymore. When you pulled that stunt in Nevarra, the one thing anyone cared about was that I’d kill you. That would save us all. That would make the world perfect. And I—” She draws a ragged breath; her eyes sting. Solas looks at her like he wants to run, and can’t. “I’d thought at least you believed in me. That you, of all people, understood. That it mattered, that I could promise people they’d be safe with me, and not be made a liar. That we sat in the fucking dirt trying to make turnips grow on a barren mountainside. But it doesn’t.”

He lets out a wounded noise. “That is not—”

Solas looks stricken, as if he’s actually bleeding, but she can’t take it back. Doesn’t want to take it back. She could scream fire over it all. Thin wisps of smoke are rising from the floorboards.

“Not the lullabies the Dalish managed to claw back from the ruins, not a single vhenadahl tree in the alienages! Nothing anyone has ever done to make this world a kinder, gentler place means anything, because none of it restores your glorious lost world!”

Tehenan rummages in a trunk in the bedroom.

“Sit down,” she says, not looking up. ”I can feel you hovering.“

Solas looks around. There is neither chair nor stool. Only the bed, a massive thing with an oaken frame, piled with blankets and furs.

“Not on the floor.”

Gingerly, Solas sits down on the edge of the bed. He keeps his hands in his lap, away from the mattress. To sleep in their house was one thing, but this room…

It smells like Saar. He knows the familiarity is an illusion—it is only the scent of dragon-blooded vashoth, of mages—but his heart lurches against his ribs regardless. If he were to close his eyes, it would be an easy thing to pretend he is seated upon the Inquisitor’s bed in Skyhold.

If he closes his eyes, he sees Saar. The rage and grief. The betrayal. Every hurt he has inflicted on her.

Solas keeps his eyes open, staring at his knees.

A pair of trousers lands on the bed beside him. “How do you feel about skirts?” Tehenan asks. “Might have to belt it high, but it’d be easier to fit one.”

“I can be gone with ease,” Solas offers quietly. “When Saar… she has suffered my presence long enough.”

Tehenan stops, turns around, and stares at him. “From what I understand, you already left her once. I don’t think doing it a second time is gonna help.”

“But—”

“I know our Sunspot, even now.” She gets up from the floor with a low groan, stretching out one shoulder. “Even if she’s angry, she wouldn't have brought you here if she didn't trust you. And she wouldn't have brought you either, if she didn't want you here.”

Solas’ throat closes up. Tehenan considers the items of clothing in her hands as though she had commented on the weather.

“I do not deserve it,” Solas rasps, the words barely scraping out of his lungs.

I do not deserve any of this.

Tehenan gives a thoughtful hum. “Does that matter?”

He gapes. “It does! You have no concept of what I have done, how can you think to—”

“You’ve killed people.” Tehenan tosses one of the shirts back in the trunk, the other over her shoulder, then rolls back her sleeves. “You’re not the only one.” Solas is about to respond that murder is the least of his offenses, but the words die on his tongue.

Like shackles, death names curl around Tehenan’s lower arms. Karashok. Bas-taar. Sten. Tinker. Karasaad. Sataari. Sparks. Karashok. Mera. Shell. Karashok…

“Those are… Qunari names,” he observes quietly.

“I was supposed to stitch people back together, during battle,” Tehenan says. “I was good at it, but not that good. We’ve all killed people. Ari’s entire purpose was to kill people. Reth’s purpose was to make sure they killed the right people. And I…” She drifts off, lifting her arms to display the death names.

Solas stares at her, even more blindsided. “Reth was an arvaarad?”

“Yes, and that’s not the point.” She holds a shirt under his nose. “Here, this one was always a little small for me. The point is, you don’t get to deserving it without first not caring about not deserving it.”

He blinks at her. “I… what?”

Tehenan squints back at him. It seems more considering than irritated, but the unabashed regard has his heart thud unevenly nonetheless. He still does not know how to act around them, beyond behaving as unobtrusively as possible. Which, currently, is not exactly an option.

“I’m going to hug you now,” Tehenan announces, and does.

Solas nearly fadesteps away. He tries to push her away, and only achieves squirming his hands up within the circle of her arms before all strength leaves him. He—he is trembling.

“What are you doing,” he manages, his voice thin.

She sighs. “I’m not good at explaining it with words. Do you want me to let go?”

Yes—

No.

Against his will, he sinks against her. Manages to shake his head, ever so slightly.

No. Please.

His lungs are heaving.

I do not deserve this.

Does that matter?

“It’s messy,” Tehenan says after a while, still holding him. Solas has not been able to extricate himself. Everything inside him is a muffled scream. If he moves, he fears it will burst out. “Your world, or time, or—I don’t know. I don’t have a concept.” She lets out a long breath. “I just know sometimes I miss Par Vollen like a lost limb. But that doesn't mean I want to go back. That I'd do anything different.”

Her hands shift upon his back. With the way Solas’ face is turned, tucked against her shoulder, he can see the stark black of the death names now, marking her skin. “Did… did the names stop? After you left?”

She nods; he feels her chin move against the back of his head. “They were messy too,” she says absently. “Half the time they showed up late, or I didn’t even know who they were for. But they stopped when we left.”

Something inside Solas’ chest tilts sideways.

The brambles are flowering. From underneath Saar’s feet, smoke rises in wisps as she stalks past them. The river’s rushing is already audible. She’d almost caught the house on fire; she needs to not set the blighted forest on fire.

No matter how much she wants to.

“Is there anything we can do?” Reth asks from behind her. She hesitates, long enough for him to catch up. To lay a gentle hand to her shoulder.

Saar shudders, feeling the fire inside her roar.

“I don’t know,” she manages. “All they wanted was a killer. Every time they looked at me, all they saw was just a weapon. And now, I’m—” She laughs, choked. “I wanted to burn Halamshiral to the ground. I still do. Every last blighted chantry, every house with a fucking bloodline.”

“You’re not a weapon,” Ari says softly. They move around her, laying their arms around her middle. The scars around their mouth shift with a sad smile. “Trust me, I’d know.”

Saar’s heart climbs into her throat. “Tama—”

“The burning passes. I know that too.”

Her chest heaves, her throat hurts. The tears, when they fall, aren’t a surprise. Just hot, burning trails down her cheeks. Reth wraps his arms around them both, murmuring her names. All of them.

Adaar. Imekari nadimraas. Sunspot. Saar. Ataashi.

Saar doesn’t know if her legs give out, or if they just collectively decide that standing takes too much strength. The path is strangely soft underneath her shins, earth and old leaves and sprouting grass. There’s still smoke.

A ring of blue fire burns around them, making the air waver and shimmer. The flames surge and settle with every one of her hitching breaths.

Black earth remains when the burning passes.

Reth takes a deep breath, squeezing her tight.

“I knew you were strong,” he breathes, “but you’ve grown so much.”

“Sorry, should’ve warned you,” Saar mumbles, exhausted.

“You didn’t burn us,” Ari says. “It’s… it feels better now, does it?”

Saar rolls her head around. “I didn’t get the brambles, so that’s good.” She rubs one hand across her face, drying her tears. “Yeah. Not—it’s just. I’m. I’m not sure—I’m not sure Solas ever saw anything else either.”

“The way he looks at you, I don’t think he sees a weapon,” Ari says quietly.

“Of course it’s not the same as some blighted Revered Mother, but—!” Saar rubs both hands across her face. Her legs itch, restless, but she doesn’t want to move away from between Reth and Ari. “He slept in my bed, in my arms, and the entire time he was convinced I’d end up killing him! How the fuck can that happen?”

Slowly, both Reth’s and Ari’s arms sink from the embrace. They’re staring at each other, and a seed of frost settles under Saar’s lungs.

Reth breaks the silence first: “Easier than you’d think.”

Saar flounders. “…No. What. You—” She looks between them, finding the same ragged expression on both their faces, “—both of you?”

“I wasn’t convinced, but…” Reth trails off, his gaze falls to Ari’s mouth. The puncture scars there, however faint. “Enough. After what I did.”

“Kadan—”

“I don’t anymore, Ari. Not in a very long time.”

Saar drags them both into a hug, because otherwise she’s going to set something on fire again. It’s a little awkward with how they’re sitting, but neither of them resists.

Reth chuckles, low, and twists his head so his horn stops digging into her cheek.

“It’s all right, Sunspot. I don’t know when it changed, but I noticed when you were toothing.”

“And you toothed early.”

Saar just holds them tighter, but a small helpless laugh crawls its way out of her lungs too. That was a long time ago.

“How.” She has to swallow, her tongue sticking to the roof of her mouth. “How do you stop thinking like that?”

The river rushes in the distance. Wind rustles the trees, carrying the scent of blooming brambles to them. The smoke no longer lingers.

“I don’t know how to make it stop.” Ari reaches out to lace their fingers with Reth. “It was just… time. Waking up and still being alive and you still being there. Over and over and over.”

Memories of Solas jerking away from her bite at her like hounds chasing a fox. Of his face, illuminated by the glow of the red lyrium idol. The face of someone relieved to see his death standing before him.

It matters not. None of it does.

Saar grits her teeth, closes her eyes. Breathes deeply, the Anchor humming.

“I can do that,” she rasps. “If he lets me.”

If he lets me, we can do that.

The night is cool and young, the sky washed purple to the west. Ari had pushed a cloak on Solas before allowing him to depart the house. He has cuffed the sleeves of Tehenan’s shirt and belted the skirt she had him borrow high enough so its hem does not drag along the ground.

“There’s an oak,” Reth had told him. “Huge, you can’t really miss it if you follow the path.” He had regarded Solas for a long moment.

“Come back.”

He follows the path, darting along with fadesteps wherever possible. All too soon, the oak looms up within the forest. An ancient, knotted tree; its branches splay out wide like a dome.

In a fork between two massive branches, Saar rests, gazing up through the canopy at the first stars winking overhead. Her hair is a spill of moonlight over the bark. Wisps of fire dance around her body like fireflies, never burning her or the tree itself.

Solas’ heart climbs into his throat. He staggers to a stop, clutching the cloak tight around himself. There is a scream coiled inside his lungs, and he must speak first, tell her, before it comes free. He has to. He does not know whether he will be able to stop.

“Saar,” he breathes. Swallows, and raises his voice. “Saar?”

The wisps startle; she turns her head toward him. Something he can pretend is relief sweeps across her face; then her expression shutters.

“What?” She sounds so hollow.

I do not deserve this.

Does that matter?

He closes his eyes, drawing a shaky breath.

“It did mean something,” he gets out, every word like barbed arrows pulled from his flesh. “All of it. I told myself it did not change anything. That it could not change anything. I told you.” His voice breaks, but he cannot stop. “I didn’t permit myself to consider what, what it truly meant, but—the names. I. I believe they came from the part of me that knew. That you, that everyone—that you were, are real. That it changes everything.”

“Solas—”

The words spill in a torrent. He cannot breathe, and he cannot stop. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I believed in you—and I pushed it down. I could not—if I allowed this world to mean something, then—then I would betray my people once again. But it does, and I have.”

Saar knocks him over. Solas’ feels himself fall, his body weightless. The air tastes of cold lightning, the aftermath of a fadestep.

Saar catches him.

I do not deserve—

Does that matter?

He clings to her; they collapse into the grass, spring flowers crushed beneath their weight. The scent is everywhere, of new life. All his eyes are open, his mouth is open. Something inside his lungs uncoils.

The scream finally comes free.

Birds startle out of the trees. In the underbrush, something rustles frantically. Saar does not let him go as he keens, only holds him tighter. His fingers helplessly dig into her shoulders, unable to let go. When his voice gives out, it happens in fits and starts, choking him to whimpers.

“Hey, hey, just breathe, breathe—”

He cannot. His insides seize; he retches, nothing but wretched sound leaving him—

No. Something more.

Blue mist spills out of his mouth. Power spills out of him with every heave of his chest. He manages to shove away from Saar, landing bent over in the grass on hands and knees.

“Solas, what is—” She tries to pull him close again and he is too weak to keep her away, to keep her safe. His entire body convulses, pain shooting through every nerve.

“So much for that, old friend.”

Mythal’s form rises out of the mist. Old and new, mingled into a strange chimeric being. Her kaleidoscope eyes, in a human face. Ears, morphing between shapes. Her hair flows out into a mantle, into wings, behind her.

“What the fuck.” Saar shoves between Solas and Mythal, gaping at them both in turn. “Mythal!?” One of her hands is still on his shoulder, attempting to steady him. Solas’ heart clenches all over again.

“Ir abelas,” he tells Mythal. His throat hurts. Breathing hurts. “I cannot. You—”

“No no no, hold up! She was inside you?!” Saar’s head whips around to Mythal again. “Were you just a passenger, or did you—”

Mythal laughs, bright and sharp.

“That would be easier, would it not? My dear, poor wolf, still on a leash.”

“No. We had a bargain,” Solas says quietly, “and I broke it.”

“You did.” Mythal regards them both, sorrow seeping into her expression. “There will not be another. Goodbye, old friend.”

In a light breeze, the mist dissipates, losing itself between trees and underbrush.

“What the fuck,” Saar says faintly, watching the space where Mythal vanished. A second later she whirls around, and suddenly her hands are all over Solas.

“Are you all right? I don’t see any blood, but maybe internally—Tehenan’s better at this, we can get her to have a look. At least you don’t feel like you’ve got a fever…”

“I am—” He swallows. “Considering the circumstances, I am well.”

Saar nods, and does not cease her examination. Her touches are light and careful, feeling along his ribs now. The wisps of light have gathered into a halo around her head, above her shoulders, edging her in silver. Her expression is so intent. So worried.

Solas shivers; his eyes sting. “How can you be this… this gentle?”

This gentle with him. How can she care this much, after everything?

Saar stares at him.

“You really don’t…?” She exhales sharply, then cups his face in her hands. The Anchor pulses softly against his cheek. Her eyes shine like twin stars in the dark.

“I don’t want to lose you now that I’ve got you back. Shit, I never wanted to lose you in the first place! Maybe I’m still angry, but—” She presses her forehead against his, and Solas’ throat locks up. “Kadan. Come home with me. Remember what we built in the Fade? We can build it on this side too.”

“How?” he gasps. He is weeping, small ragged sobs hitching out of his lungs. When did the tears start?

“We figure out that bloody turnip spell,” Saar says, “and go from there.”

For a moment, it all feels like a dream. Not a deliberate wandering in the Fade, but something lost, helpless, under the power of the Veil. As he felt when he first awoke, foundering, unmoored, and then—

His hands in the dirt, the cold earth beneath his shins. Saar as she sat beside him, the warmth seeping from her body. Their combined magic flowing into the seeds. He remembers flashes and slivers: fording a river, all of them up to at least their thighs in the dragging water. Every step heavy, and heavier. No one had magic left to spend. A winter wren, hopping on the battlements of Skyhold. Swallows, building their nests into the highest nooks of the fortress’s walls. The sun shining on the burning sands of the Western Approach, the rampant bloom of life around the watering holes. Blood on the stones at Adamant, the scent of cleansing liquor and poultices in the aftermath of the siege. The high dragons soaring over the Emprise du Lion, how fear had given way to awe at the sight. His hands on bloodied, feverish skin, over and over. Healing and healing and healing, even as he knew it would not change anything. It would not save them. It would not save him.

Saar’s body is warm, a steady fire. Her hands have wandered, the right is upon the nape of his neck, the left cradling his back. Cradling him close.

There had been more wrens, after that first winter.

“Turnips,” he croaks, “cannot be enough.”

Not enough to repair what he has broken, twice over. What would ever be enough? If he cannot pay with his death, then…

Saar laughs softly, wetly. “Didn’t say they were. But they’re a start.”

His hands in the dirt, healing and healing and healing. He could—without Mythal’s power, he is weakened, but—he could. His hands in the dirt, red with…

“So—are you—will you…?” Saar watches him, her eyes hopeful. It undoes him all over again, setting a tremble into his bones and a shiver into his heart. The tears have not stopped, but—

He nods, their noses sliding together. ”Yes. I will.”

Saar carries Solas back to the house. He allows it silently, his breathing still uneven. When he rests his temple against her shoulder, it feels like a bloody victory.

“What happened?” Reth asks when they arrive. His gaze flickers from her to Solas and back, his shoulders sagging with relief. “Ari heard… something, and just now some kind of fog rolled through?”

“Solas puked out a chunk of an ancient god,” Saar mutters, “and he says he’s fine—”

“I am—”

“—but can you check him over too, Mama?”

All three of them stare at her and Solas.

“Sure,” Tehenan says after a long moment, rolling her shoulders. “Get inside, I’ll have a look.”

All of them trudge into the main room. Saar sets Solas down on the makeshift bedstead and conjures balls of light to float all around them. She lets her hands linger, and Solas tenses, as if he’s ready to bolt—but then he relaxes. Leans ever so slightly into her touch. That feels like a victory too. She settles down next to him, their hands almost touching. Hers pulsing green, his a stark red.

“I am truly,” Solas starts once it becomes clear Tehenan is taking the examination seriously, “well enough, I have healing capabilities, I can—”

“Reth said that too,” Tehenan says absently, prodding his sternum, “and then he spent almost a month bed-ridden coughing his lungs out.”

“Still on about that, huh,” Reth grumbles, before crouching down beside them. “How does he look?”

Tehenan hums thoughtfully, feeling along Solas’ jugular now, below his jaw. “Fine, at least as far as I can tell,” she says. “Sharp teeth for an elf, but with being the Dread Wolf and all I suspect that’s normal?”

Solas startles, drawing in on himself. The eyes on his forehead snap shut, and he covers his mouth for half a second, before dropping his hands again. He nods wordlessly, but doesn’t relax again.

Saar bites down the urge to pry open his jaws and see for herself. Wants to touch him all over, to remind herself he’s still here. Still alive. It hasn’t quite sunk in yet.

“Good, because all of us need sleep,” Ari says as they come out of the bedroom, holding a bundle of blankets and furs. They deposit them next to the bedstead, then give Reth a nudge with their foot.

Oh.

“Good night, Sunspot,” Reth says softly, rising. “You too, Solas.”

Tehenan pats both their shoulders, before joining Ari and Reth in trundling into the bedroom. The door closes with a small thud. Saar stares after them, her throat suddenly dry and her skin prickling. The fire crackles gently; her witchlights shiver.

She glances over at the bundle Ari dropped. Solas is staring at it too.

“Do you want to…” Saar hesitates. “Sleep together? Just sleep, I mean.”

Solas blinks, his brows furrowing with confusion. “You are still angry with me. Why would…?”

Saar leans into his space before she can think better of it. “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t miss you too.” Very slowly, she puts her hand on his where it’s resting on his knee. “That I don’t miss you right now.”

For a long moment, Solas just stares at her. Then he lets out a small, choked noise, and his hand turns underneath hers to lace red fingers between hers. He folds into her arms with the barest tug and Saar has to take a deep breath so she doesn’t light up the entire house with stars. Or hold him too tightly, but he doesn’t seem to mind the near-crushing embrace.

“Vhenan,” he breathes, like that one word is a whole sentence. He wraps his arms around her waist. There’s a brief moment where his hands waver over her back, before settling across its center. Right over the death name.

Saar slides her left hand to cover his shoulder blade, the one where his love names have spread. They sink into sleep as the fire smolders and the witchlights slowly fragment into countless tiny sparks.

Solas blinks up at the ceiling. It is a wooden ceiling, the load-bearing beams carved and painted with a flight of birds. The scent of an old fire lingers at the edge of his senses. The windows are opened wide; clear warm sunlight floods the room. Outside, the faint voices of Saar’s parents are audible in the distance. The bleating of goats, the chirping of insects. He lies upon a thick fur. Beside him, Saar shifts in sleep.

The moment is at once familiar and utterly foreign. He inhales a frantic breath, but the room remains unchanged. Quiet and warm. Slowly, he raises one hand against the light. His red hand gleams like fresh blood.

There are a few names which are almost legible, though he knows none of them. Yet—no, that is not quite true. A flicker of a memory rises towards the light… A peasant, he does not recall where, with a mangled leg. Recalls only their voice, the feeling of torn flesh beneath his palms.

His hands on bloodied, feverish skin, over and over. Healing and healing and healing, even as he knew it would not change—

No. It did change something. It saved them.

Perhaps—

His mind shies away from the thought. He watches the light change as a cloud drifts before the sun and departs once more, the red of his hand turning deep and dark like a flower in bloom, before brightening once more. Saar shifts again, turning over. Shifts closer. Until her cheek rests upon his chest, her right arm curled over him. She is so heavy and so warm…

Solas keeps still, unsure if she is yet asleep, unsure which would undo him more. But then a sensation pierces through the staggering, fragile beat of his heart: the soft pressure of her thumb, stroking back and forth along the bow of his ribs. She does not speak, only breathes quietly.

“What are you doing?” he asks at last, once his tongue obeys him once more.

“Listening to your heartbeat.” Saar’s fingers tighten, ever so slightly, before relaxing again. “’S good to hear it again.”

Perhaps it—

His mind shies away from the thought once more.

It floods into him regardless: Perhaps it saved him too.

“…Solas? Kadan, what’s wrong?”

He shakes his head, unable to speak. The tears come heedlessly, his chest hitching with sobs, like a dam broken. His heart beats and beats and beats.

Both of Saar’s arms are around him now, her magic pulsing out of the Anchor as a third touch. She is crying too, her tears wetting the side of his throat. He can only cling to her, trying to hold her as tightly as she holds him.

He does not know how much time has passed when he is washed empty, exhausted from weeping, with only enough strength left to hold onto Saar. The scent of lightning is thick between them, fading as her breathing calms in tandem with his. She settles down beside him, both of them still entangled. Her eyes are wet. The amber in them burns regardless.

“Little wolf?”

“I do not know,” he rasps, his throat too thick for anything else. She has not called him that since he left the Inquisition behind, when Corypheus’ corpse still smoldered upon the mountainside. “Vhenan, I—I…”

He has no words for it. Only the feeling of his chest being at once empty and full, as though a great fire has burned through him. Saar leans her head forward, gaze intent just before her eyes close, and kisses him. Softly, as if he might break otherwise.

Without thought or permission, his arms wrap over her shoulders. His fingers tangle in her hair, bumping against her horns. But she does not pull away, only kisses him deeper. He trembles when they part, and does not let go.

“You’re alive,” she murmurs. “You weren’t planning on that, but you are.”

He is. He did not, but he is.

His heart beats, and beats…

Is this what relief feels like?

Another swell of tears surges out of Solas, though less overwhelming than before. Saar keeps hold of him still. He cards his fingers through her hair, along the nape of her neck. They stay like that, wrapped around one another, breathing together, for a time.

“When do you wish to return to Skyhold?” Solas asks eventually. Saar is Inquisitor still, and her prolonged absence will have consequences.

“Not right now. I… I don’t want to have to deal with everyone else yet. Keep you to myself a bit longer.” Saar places a light, careful kiss against his throat, sending his heartbeat skittering. “Or do you have urgent business I don’t know about?”

Solas closes his eyes, unable to keep his last memory of Iron Bull at bay. Of the watchful intent in his expression, the resigned slope of his shoulders.

“There is a chess match I must continue.” He sighs. “But I cannot imagine anyone will be particularly enthused to see me.”

“Nonsense, Sera’s gonna be ecstatic she can prank you with lizards again.”

Solas blinks at her. His ankle tickles, like a bee landing there.

“Your boundless optimism continues to be rather disconcerting,” he says softly, the words leaving him laden with affection and wonder.

Saar smiles like the sun.

“I’d say I’m bloody justified,” she whispers. “I was right. I found a way that isn’t bloodshed. You’re alive, you’re here.”

She nudges her forehead against his, her broad hands splayed wide over his back, holding him close. The urge to touch her in turn wells up in Solas like a wave—he does not resist it, laying his hand to her cheek. Sunlight bleeds into him from Saar’s smile, widening impossibly.

“We’re both alive,” she continues, “and we’re gonna change the world. Even—even if you don’t believe that quite yet.”

It strikes him like a bell, echoing in his bones.

“I do,” he breathes, meaning it with all his wounded heart. “Vhenan, I do.”