Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Alena

From where she sat, Haven seemed far away, its gates firmly closed, the army’s camp obscured by a hill. The dock was old and half-rotted, sprawled over a frozen lake. It was uncomfortable. She never wanted to leave.

She could see the breach—or at least she could see the sickly green light it cast over the landscape, brighter than a full moon—but she’d only escape that by going back to Haven and locking herself inside. She couldn’t bear the thought. At least here the thing itself—the swirling, terrifying tear in the sky—was at her back. 

She traced the journey home in her mind, as she had many times over the past day: a snowy hike east to the highway, then a lengthy but easy run north-east along the coast of Lake Calenhad and on to Portsmouth. A ship across the Waking Sea. The same way she had come. 

But how could she leave such chaos behind her?

She squeezed her left hand into a fist. It didn’t hurt anymore, not precisely, not since Cassandra and Solas had dragged her through yesterday’s nightmare to thrust her hand towards the sky and stabilise the breach. But it buzzed incessantly, and she had the constant skin-crawling sensation that her body was no longer hers—that it had been colonised by a magic she did not understand and could not control.

When she turned, now, she saw shadowy corners at the edges of her vision. She felt phantom fingertips sliding over her hips, her waist, her shoulders. She felt herself trapped, the familiar cold tendrils of despair crawling up her spine.

Prepare her for Val Royeaux to face execution. Roderick, his eyes glimmering with hate; the Templars stepping towards her without a moment’s hesitation; Cassandra’s snapped order the only thing holding them back.

Alena stood. She’d wanted to run earlier and felt too exposed, certain that Leliana had spies trailing her and that the eyes of the lookout towers spaced out around Haven were fixed firmly on her. She didn’t care anymore. Let them think her mad. She went slow on the far side of the lake, where there was no more than a rough goat path through the snow. On the townward side, though, was a broad flat road. She went all out: arms pumping, feet heavier than she liked in knee-high leather boots but she was flying in the cold night air, and each step was a reminder that her body was her own.

She thought again of fleeing. Perhaps to Redcliffe and the rebels? Or perhaps she should flee home, perhaps Rogier and the others would understand the mark. She could come back to Haven, armed with knowledge, and close it with their help.

It was a pleasant fantasy; she let herself live in it for a while. But the Inquisition would follow her. She couldn’t outrun the Nightingale: who had somehow known Alena to be a Trevelyan despite the fact she’d been going by Dawson since the tower fell; who’d known Alena to be a mage despite the fact of her daggers and leather armour. Solas had determined the latter, the distant rational part of her knew, but Alena couldn’t help but attribute it to the spymaster. Leliana, all-knowing, would find her and her people and drag her back.

She circled the lake many times—here slowing, there speeding up—until her legs were burning with effort and her heart was too wrung out to ache.

Then, for the first time, as she turned her face towards the little cabin she’d been assigned in Haven, she let herself think about Cullen: the way his face had turned from disbelief to joy at the sight of her on the battlefield outside the Temple of Sacred Ashes; the relief that had flooded her own treacherous heart when she looked back; the easy, confident set of his shoulders as he gathered his soldiers about him before the final push into the temple. His soldiers, with their unmistakeable stances—relaxed but terribly alert, death held on a loose leash—of Templars in the circle, waiting for a mage to stray.

He'd made his choice, and he'd come south to join his comrades. She mustn't trust him. She'd survive this, as she had everything else. If she were careful.

She slipped in through Haven’s main gate, ignoring the respectful salutes of the women stationed there. This Herald business, too, was dangerous; she needed to plan for the day reverence tipped into disappointment that Alena was just another mortal woman, as lost and unholy as the worst of them.

And Maker, even without that absurd title, she was suddenly Lady Trevelyan again, the hated surname following her everywhere. Josephine, asking if her parents might support them, blinking at the vehemence of Alena’s “They won’t.”

Cullen was waiting at her door. She wasn’t surprised. She unlocked it and let him trail inside after her. 

“Thank you for the flowers,” she said coolly, nodding towards the vase of snowdrops he’d left with a note by her sickbed. 

“Alena,” he said, hovering by the door. “Would you like me to go? We can talk another—”

“Let’s talk now,” she said. 

“Alright.” He leaned against the back of an armchair by the fireplace. Somebody had been in her room, lighting the fire and turning down the bed, leaving a bottle of wine on the mantle. It irritated Alena. It felt like her whole self had been scattered out across Haven for the assembled pilgrims to pick at; surely she could be allowed a small inviolable room of her own. 

Still, she snatched up the bottle and poured a glass for herself and another for Cullen. 

“Tell me what’s wrong,” he said as she handed him the glass.

She huffed. “I thought… well. I didn’t think this was what you’d choose.”

“What do you think I’ve chosen?” he said, voice still carefully mild, which irritated her further. 

“The Templars.”

“No,” Cullen said. “I’ve left the order. But many of my soldiers are also former Templars. I can see why it must seem like—”

“Why the Inquisition, then?”

“I believed Divine Justinia wanted to make something better. I believe that Cassandra and Leliana want that, too.”

Alena took a long drink. “I’ve heard the sales pitch.”

“You don’t believe them?”

“You haven’t been briefed on my response yet?”

“I’d like to hear it from you.”

Another sip. “They say they want to close the Breach, wonderful. So do I. They say they want to make peace between the mages and the Templars, but there are two mages in this camp and neither of us were invited. Lots of Templars, though. I can’t help but draw conclusions.”

“I understand that,” Cullen murmured. 

Alena closed her eyes. “Don’t be kind to me,” she said. “I’m trying to be angry and suspicious and a survivor.”

She heard him get to his feet. “Alright. If ever you want to talk, come find me. Goodnight, Alena.”

She felt like dirt when he was gone: ungrateful, rude, suspicious, unpleasant. It was for the best, probably, that he should see her for what she was. She swallowed the last of her wine, put the glass back on the mantle, and crawled fully dressed into bed.

Her dreams that night were a riot of painful memories and fearful imaginings: Cullen in her tiny room in the Wet Chain, murmuring I like you, wrapping a fist around her neck to squeeze; Roderick snapping the chains closed around her wrist; Cullen carving a jagged line into the flesh of her face, speaking with Robert’s voice (don’t need you pretty anymore); a mob baying for her blood; Val Royeaux for execution; the mark on her hand flaring back to life and consuming her. 

Cullen

Forty hours, give or take. Forty hours that Alena had been back in his life—or at least that he’d been aware she was back (and oh, he couldn’t bear to think of the three days that she had lain unconscious and chained while he just shrugged his shoulders at Cassandra’s messages about her prisoner). She had reappeared like an amputated limb that was suddenly restored to him, her face reflecting back all the joy and relief that flooded him. Then she’d collapsed, and when she woke again it had all gone wrong.

Forty hours and then she’d left again, left for the Hinterlands the morning after that terrible conversation in her cabin, grim-faced and uncomfortable on a gentle roan pony the soldiers had found in a field by a burning farmhouse. He’d relived it many times since then, imagining how things might have gone if he’d stayed by her bedside after her assault on the breach. If he’d refused to be drawn away by the demands of training and supply lines and requisitions.He might have explained things to her: that he’d thought of her every day since they met; that he’d left the Templars, renounced lyrium; that he’d joined the Inquisition because he believed it offered him the chance to become a better man than the Chantry had made him. And, perhaps, to make the world safer for Alena and the people she loved.

Perhaps, hearing all that from him before Roderick could threaten her again with execution and Cassandra could tut impatiently at her doubts, she might have been able to catch her breath. Might have let him shoulder some of the weight that had been so unfairly thrust upon her.

Instead—Don’t be kind to me; I’m trying to be angry and suspicious and a survivor—she was alone.

Cassandra’s reports were spare: these rifts closed, those bandits routed, this many rebel supply caches taken for the refugees. Two small factions of mages and Templars had refused the temporary truce agreed upon for the Conclave and were attacking one another and any unfortunate civilian they came across. Alena and her party were whittling down the numbers of both groups. Cullen wasn’t sure which idea distressed him more: that she was facing Templars who hated her with such relentless venom that even a brief pause in their quest to purge the mages had been intolerable, or that she was forced to kill her own, however maddened they might have become after two years of war. 

Cassandra’s detached analysis of Alena’s combat-worthiness—no defensive magic, inefficient and idiosyncratic bladework, far too reliant on her speed and agility, in urgent need of training, Cullen—stoked his fear. In his dreams they caught her, and he watched as a Templar hissed filth and slit her throat or a mage spat traitor and set her alight.
But the Inquisition marched relentlessly on and Cullen had no choice but to do the same. A few new recruits arrived each day—a trickle that would need to last for months before it made up for the men and women that had been lost to the explosion and its aftermath, but welcome nonetheless. All needed training and equipment and accommodation. He discarded the force structure he had developed prior to the Conclave and mapped out his army anew.

He tried not to think what would happen if she never returned. When he’d first agreed to join the Inquisition he’d known full well he’d be doing it without Alena—more, that by leaving the Free Marches he was extinguishing any chance of ever seeing her again. But now that she had so improbably reappeared in his life, it seemed an extraordinary hardship to continue on this quest if she should abandon it. 

She won’t, he thought. She won’t leave as long as that thing on her palm is the only way to close the rifts. She stays where she’s needed. Guilt came hot on the heels of his relief.

He signed his name to the requisition list with so much force the quill tore through the parchment.

“Commander?” Rylen asked, more gently than Cullen liked.

“It’s fine,” Cullen said briskly. “If the quartermaster has a problem with it, send her to me. What else?”

“Nothing. So I thou—”

“Very good.  Drills at dawn as usual and then please advi—”

“So I thought,” Rylen repeated, “we could go get a drink and you could tell me all about it.”

Cullen scowled.

Rylen grinned, an expression incongrous with his heavy brows and tattooed chin. “Come now, Commander. It’s absolutely crucial for my morale. We haven’t been for a drink since Kirkwall.”

Cullen cast about for any other demand on his time, but there was nothing to call him away. “Fine,” he groused, and let Rylen drag him off to the tavern.

It felt good to talk about it, he found. He’d gone back to the Gallows after his night with Alena with a vague lie about too much ale in the Hanged Man and lived for months after that with the constant sensation that perhaps she was in Kirkwall, watching him, timing her visits to Lonnie’s warehouse around his, without his ever admitting it to anyone. Now, Rylen offered a sympathetic ear. He chuckled at the appropriate moments, grimaced at others, and refrained from offering platitudinous advice.

“Maker,” he said instead, “quite the fucking mess.” And he waved for Flissa to bring another jug of ale to their table.

Chapter Text

Alena

“Absolutely not,” Cassandra snapped. “We’ve sent scouts. They haven’t responded to the messages and they won’t open the gates. What use is there in—”

Alena said, “I’m a mage. Perhaps they’ll open for—”

Cassandra’s expression grew even more severe. “I thought you weren’t part of their rebellion.”

Alena’s jaw tightened. “I wasn’t. But there’s bound to be someone from Ostwick still alive in there. You want to go all the way to Val Royeaux when they might just agree to help now?”

Varric, sitting on a log fiddling with his crossbow, said, “Blue’s got a point there, Seeker.”

“Nobody asked you, Varric,” Cassandra snapped.

“Nor me,” Solas said mildly, “but the Herald is right. It’s worth a try, at least.”

“Fine,” Cassandra ground out. “We’ll fight our way to Redcliffe’s gates for the barest chance of success.”

“Isn’t that what we do every day?” Varric observed.

Cassandra just rolled her eyes and stalked off to write her daily report to Haven. Alena slumped by the fire and flopped backwards to stare at the sky. She regretted it immediately, the churning green light making her sick to her stomach. She sat up and poked at the fire with a stick instead. Her entire body prickled with dread. She desperately wanted to avoid Val Royeaux and its legions of priests, but Redcliffe suddenly felt nearly as frightening. She couldn’t bear to be rejected by the mages. Any of the Ostwick mages who’d come south to fight would recognise her, of course, but they still might not open. They barely knew her, even the ones who’d grown up with her. Why trust her when she showed up with the Chantry—the Inquisition—at her back?

Or perhaps they would open, and they’d tell Cassandra what Alena had done the night the tower fell. What she could do.

Alena shuddered. Across the fire, Solas raised an inquiring eyebrow. “Are you well, Alena?”

“Yes. Thank you. For the support, too.” Her gut churned. She wanted to run, but it was a new moon and the terrian was unfamiliar. And Cassandra would have a fit. She pulled out her daggers instead and set to sharpening them. Solas drifted away, to sleep probably. He always escaped into the Fade as early in the evening as he could. She couldn’t imagine feeling so at home there.

“So, Blue,” Varric said. “Been meaning to ask. What’s with the daggers?”

She shrugged. “A staff stands out.”

“Yeah,” he laughed. “I was always saying the same thing to Daisy.”

“Daisy?”

“Merrill. Sweetest Dalish mage you’ve ever met.” He chuckled. “Cost me a fortune keeping her out of trouble in Kirkwall.”

Alena smiled. She liked Varric. She was pretty sure he was responsible for sourcing some of the lyrium she’d bought from Lonnie. She was tempted to ask, and to tell him she’d helped shore up Kirkwall’s fresh water supply. I’m useful, see? But she held her tongue and listened to his stories about Hawke and their friends until it was time for bed. Three times he mentioned Cullen, and three times she fixed the same mildly entertained expression on her face. She was trying very hard not to think of Cullen.

It took several hours to fight their way through to Redcliffe. Alena’s party had uprooted the rogue mages and Templars, but the last strays fought with enraged ferocity. Add in a few bandits—they really needed to get to the bottom of the bandits—and fade rifts, and they were all exhausted. And wounded.

Cassandra took the brunt, as always, the only warrior in their party. Between fights, Solas healed her wounds and tipped elfroot potions down her throat, and then she would stride furiously into the next fight to get hurt all over again. Irritation radiated from her. She said little to Alena.

Alena tried to help as best she could, darting around the edges of the melee, striking with her daggers and a trickle of lightning. Once or twice things got so dicey she was about to grit her teeth and do what needed to be done, but then Varric got off a particularly lethal shot or Solas threw up an ice wall right where it could do the most good, and the fight settled back to grueling instead of potentially fatal.

Even so, even spared that, the nausea she felt every time she channeled even a little had stopped going away between fights. Her skin tingled with ceaseless panic, and she’d begun to feel terribly light. Insubstantial.

Redcliffe’s gate was formidable, set in tall grey stone walls, and very firmly closed. Alena could see movement in the watchtower of the gatehouse, but nobody hailed them.

She cleared her throat. “My name is Alena Da—Trevelyan,” she called up to the tower. “I was in Ostwick Circle. I need to speak with Grand Enchanter Fiona.”

More activity, but no reply.

Alena’s back prickled. Cassandra, she thought, must be staring daggers.

She raised her voice a notch higher and pointed back down the road. “You saw me close that rift. I need your help to fix this.”

At last someone leaned out of the top window. “Yes. We got your messages,” he shouted down, then disappeared.

“Friendly,” Varric observed. Alena suddenly felt she might cry.

A woman leaned out this time, and Alena’s heart sank. Of all of them, of course it would be her.

“Alena.” Even shouting down from above she managed to say it flatly. Disdainfully. “Quite the surprise.”

“Hello, Idrelle. Would you open the gate, please? I’d rather not shout.”

Idrelle laughed. “Look at you,” she said. “Not such a mouse anymore. I suppose the priests have been coaching you.”

Alena burned with humiliation. The silence was stretching too long, and she couldn’t find the words to fill it.

“The Herald can close the rifts,” Cassandra called up to the tower, voice tight with anger. Alena, for once, was grateful for it. “Do you plan to hide from demons behind these walls forever? The Grand Enchanter must speak with us. Where is she?”

“Busy,” Idrelle snapped. “Meeting with someone who came to offer us aid. We’ve none to spare for you, little mouse.” She withdrew from the window and nobody replaced her.

Alena pressed her fists hard against her thighs. Then she turned stiffly around, said, “I’m sorry,” and began to walk back up the road towards camp.

After a moment’s silence, Cassandra said gruffly, “It was worth a try. And we needed to clear the road sooner or later, anyway.”

Alena, pathetically grateful, took a deep breath and said without looking back in a voice that didn’t shake at all, “Thank you, Seeker.”

Mother Giselle departed the next morning with a pair of Inquisition scouts, promising to work with Josephine on preparations for Val Royeaux. Alena and the others went west towards the horsemaster’s ranch, and for once, all their fights were with demons or wolves. Alena could almost enjoy the fighting, or at least appreciate the distraction.

When they were done, Dennet gave her a magnificent chestnut stallion. He was the sort of horse that belonged on a book cover—but she wasn’t in a story, and she couldn’t ride, and he threw her three times that evening as Solas, inexplicably a superb rider, attempted to teach her.

They spent another four days in the Hinterlands, finally getting to the bottom of the ‘bandits’ and clearing out their lyrium operation, closing rifts, and making sure the refugees were safe. Alena lay awake at night imagining all the ways the grand clerics in Val Royeaux might murder her.

Solas kept up her lessons, and by the time they rode back to Haven she was at least mostly staying on the horse. And he was stunning, with an earth-eating gallop that, as her confidence grew, came to thrill her as much as her first long solitary runs across the Marches had. She named him Comet and hoped her legs would soon stop aching.

In Haven, Cassandra led her straight to the war room. Cullen was there, debating something with Josephine while Leliana stood over the map with three rift markers in one hand and a sheaf of papers in the other. She nodded a greeting but said nothing until she’d scanned her notes and placed the markers down. There were many, many more of them than there had been. They radiated out from Haven across Ferelden and Orlais. Alena squeezed her left fist closed and schooled her face into calm. When she lifted her eyes, Cullen was watching her, brow furrowed, dark circles under his eyes. Even exhausted he was beautiful. She looked away. She could do this. She had done this: seen him from a distance in Kirkwall and smothered the craving.

Only it was easier when he wasn’t looking back.

Alena listened as they laid out the plan for Val Royeaux. First, a demonstration: a rift had driven an entire neighbourhood from their homes, and Alena would close it with as much pageantry as they could manage. Her fear ebbed a little: at least she’d provide the priests a very good reason not to just execute her. Next, a meeting with the handful of mothers that Giselle had contacted who were amenable to it. “We hope,” Josephine said, “that more will be inspired to join after your performance.”

Cullen leaned forward, resting a hand on the table. “I’m coming, too. With a squadron. You’ll be perfectly safe.” His voice was low and fervent; the same voice he’d used in Kirkwall to tell her he’d never join the Templars’ war. She dropped her eyes, confused.

The briefly ended shortly after that. Cullen approached her, rubbing the back of his neck. “A word? It’s not about—It’s Inquisition business.”

“Of course, Commander.”

The others filed out. Cullen cleared stacks of documents off a pair of chairs and placed them in the corner a professional distance apart. “You’ve asked us to call you Alena, but it feels a little strange if you’re calling me by my title.”

She sat, pressing her hands flat on her thighs. She wanted the distance of his title, but said, “Of course, Cullen.”

He hesitated. “How are you?”

She gave him a bright smile. “I’m fine. As well as could be expected. How are you?” She wasn’t sure when she’d gotten so bad at lying.

“I’m well.” At least she wasn’t the only one. “I wanted to talk to you about combat training. We have some dual wielders who could work with you, if you like, and you’ve got a few days now before we leave.”

Oh. She papered over the embarrassment with wry self-deprecation, “I suppose Cassandra sent reports. I’m afraid I haven’t been much help with the fighting.”

Cullen looked dismayed, so apparently she’d fallen short. “You could hardly be expected to,” he said emphatically. “You weren’t trained for war. She thinks you have talent. Says you’re very quick on your feet. A bit of training can help fill in the gaps. I just—We just want you to be safe.”

It was worse when he tried to make her feel better. “Alright. Thank you.”

“I could set up a spar for tomorrow? Away from camp, if you like. Some privacy.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Of course not,” he murmured. “Although, well, perhaps you’d prefer… All of my trainers are ex-Templars. If you’d rather not, we could—”

She sighed, suddenly exhausted. Of course they were. “It’s fine.”

“Would you prefer to spar in camp?”

“No.”

“Alright. Ten bells? That clearing down by the druffalo?”

She nodded.

“We’ll meet you there.”

Cullen

“Wait up, Curly!”

Cullen pushed the gates back open. Varric barrelled through, nodding to Rylen and Matilda, clapping Cullen on the elbow.

“Let’s go take in a show!” he declared merrily.

“Uhhh,” Cullen hedged. “Does Alena know you’re—”

“What do you take me for, Cullen? She knows. I’m her backup!” He winked at Matilda. “Blue went on ahead, one of those weird runs of hers. Huh. I really should’ve looked for the nickname in there somewhere,” he mused.

“Let’s go, then,” Rylen said. They arrived as the bells began to ring. Alena was already there, tying her bootlace, a pair of light leather dancing shoes on the ground next to her.

She looked up and smiled warmly. For Varric, Cullen thought. But she turned it briefly on him, too, and it only faltered a little at the sight of the others. She pulled the knot tight and straightened, coming to join them in the centre of the clearing: windblown and a little flushed, eyes bright, strands of hair floating around her face.

Rylen cleared his throat. Cullen realised he’d been staring. He introduced Rylen, then Matilda. “She was a Templar in Kirkwall. I’ve known her a long time,” he finished, trying to press as much reassurance into it as possible.

“Hey, Blue,” Varric said. She grinned at him.

“I’ll be your partner, Alena,” Matilda said. She was a little shorter than Alena, heavily muscled, her blonde hair cropped short. Cullen had known her since she was a recruit, and even then she’d been cheerful but unfailingly disciplined. Not one to react unthinkingly with a dampening if Alena’s mana surged.

“Come on, Curly,” Varric said. “Let’s get the good seats.” The men retreated to the edge of the clearing while Alena and Matilda drew their weapons.

“Five gold on Blue,” Varric said. “She fights dirty.” He sounded impressed.

They began, and it was impressive; Cassandra had been slightly unfair in her reports. Alena was unschooled and inefficient but astonishingly fast and light on her feet. The incoherence of her style kept throwing Matilda off: feinting here in the manner of a Rivaini water dancer before slicing at her opponent’s throat like a back-alley ruffian. She had a very nasty little flanking spin maneuver that she couldn’t possibly have learned from an Antivan Crow.

“I’ll take that bet,” Cullen said. Alena had more raw talent than he’d expected, but Matilda had a lifetime’s training. Any moment now she’d adjust to her opponent’s idiosyncracies and—

“Maker’s balls,” Varric grumbled, as Matilda feinted and doubled back, knocking one dagger out of Alena’s grip and forcing her to a knee. It was over quickly after that: once Alena’s mobility was snatched away, Matilda’s superior strength and skill gave her a clear advantage. Alena laughed, scanning the ground for her fallen weapon. “There y’go, Curly,” Varric tossed Cullen a coin. “Don’t spend it all at once.”

Cullen chuckled and pocketed his winnings. Matilda and Alena spoke for a moment in the centre of the ring, Matilda demonstrating some footwork, then separated to circle one another again. The fight lasted a little longer this time, but Matilda was never in danger of losing. By the third bout, there was a moment or two that Cullen thought Alena might have her—Matilda had slowed very slightly while Alena’s energy was apparently boundless—but Matilda prevailed in the end.

They shook hands and turned towards the watching men. Rylen leapt up and went to shake Alena’s hand. “Well fought. Matilda’s a crafty one. Didn’t expect to see an amateur last so long.”

Matilda laughed and clapped Alena on the shoulder. “Not an amateur for long.”

Alena grinned.

He’d chosen well, Cullen thought, with Rylen and Matilda. They could put anyone at their ease. Except, apparently, Cullen; he felt terribly awkward as he sidled up to say, “That was impressive, Alena.”

She gave him a look he couldn’t make sense of. “Thank you for organising it.”

“Of course. We’ll talk, figure out what we can do for you.”

She nodded, flashed a final smile and a thanks to the others, then walked off towards Varric on the edge of the clearing. The dwarf punched her side gently, and she scooped up her running shoes and followed him back towards Haven.

Rylen was grinning at him a little too widely when he looked back, and Matilda had a hand over her mouth.

Cullen rubbed the back of his neck, cheeks hot. “What did you think, Matilda?”

“I wish we’d gotten to her before two dozen different mercs taught her half a move each,” she said, “but there’s potential. She’s quick, confident, agile as you like. Just inefficient—she wastes a lot of time and energy stringing all those unrelated moves together. They don’t flow.”

“Agreed,” Rylen said. “She can’t adjust, either. Once you figured her out it was over.”

Matilda bobbed her head. “She hasn’t got the instinct. But she takes instruction. Tightened up her footwork pretty well after the first fight.”

“She casts as well, usually?” Rylen asked Cullen.

“Not much, according to Seeker Pentaghast. Just electrifies the blades, mostly.”

Rylen hummed, thoughtful.

“Strong discipline,” Matilda said. “Didn’t feel a flicker of her mana.”

Cullen raised his eyebrows. A disciplined mage wouldn’t cast on instinct, but even so their mana would often spike with adrenaline or strong emotion. He’d assumed he never felt Alena’s because his sense for it was dulled without lyrium. Although… he hadn’t in Kirkwall, either.

“She needs a specialist,” Rylen said. “To make something out of the hodgepodge. Work in her magic, maybe. Matilda or I would just have to train her back up from scratch.”

Matilda nodded.

“Alright,” Cullen said. “Thank you both.”

Matilda saluted briskly and set off back to camp. Rylen just grinned at him.

“I’m glad you’re enjoying this,” Cullen said stiffly.

“Quite a woman, Commander.”

“Enough.” He marched back to camp, Rylen at his heels.

The next day and a half passed in a flurry of activity. Alena was, for Cullen, almost as imaginary as she’d been in Kirkwall: a dark-haired woman disappearing around corners; a figure glimpsed on the far side of the lake, moving fast; a voice somewhere behind him. She met with Josephine and Leliana; he wasn’t invited. He met with them; she wasn’t invited.

He didn’t get a chance to speak with her until their first night on the road, when she appeared unexpectedly at the trestle table he’d piled with reports. “May I?”

“Of course.” She held a bowl and a small paring knife, and as soon as she was settled she began peeling potatoes for the stew. Her hands were pale and long-fingered, nails short, only the slightest calluses from wielding blades.

“Thank you for organising that. With Matilda.” A few loose strands of hair were curling around her ear.

“Of course. We’re looking for a specialist for you, but Matilda will work with you in the meantime, when she can.”

“She told me. We’re going to spar a bit before dinner.”

“You’ve a very eclectic style. Who trained you?”

She gave him a wry sidelong smile, genuine, a slip of the mask. “Lots of people. Trained is a strong word, though.” Cullen chuckled and stacked his paperwork away. He took an unpeeled potato from the bowl and a small knife from his belt, a sign that he was settling in to listen. Alena, with another sideways glance, continued. “Couldn’t wander about with a staff. My people enchanted the daggers to focus magic and whenever I met somebody who could fight, I asked them to teach me a little. Mercenaries, merchants’ bodyguards, some Dalish hunters once.”

“An Antivan Crow?”

A faint trace of mischief curled the corner of her mouth. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

He laughed again and dropped the peeled potato in the bowl, taking another. “Your people are alright, still?”

“They were,” she said, smile flickering. “Very well. Before all this.”

Cullen’s questions suddenly seemed dangerous. The silence stretched out as first she then he finished their potatoes, Alena snagging the last unpeeled one in the bowl. “Will you go back there, when this is all over?” Cullen asked, staving off the end of their conversation.

She turned the potato over, peeling the skin in a long, looping strip. At last she said, “It feels like this may never be over.”

“Perhaps closing the breach will close the other rifts, too.”

“Perhaps.” She dropped the peeled potato and her knife into the bowl and turned her face to him. The firelight softened the edges of her scar. “Thank you for the help, Cullen” she said and rose.

He stood too. “Of course, Alena.”

She hesitated for a moment, on the verge of speaking, her face more open than he’d seen it since Kirkwall. Then it shuttered; she smiled brightly, and was gone.

He was in the rearguard as they approached the village of Airbourg in Verchiel. It was early afternoon of the third day of their uneventful journey. He’d been having small groups of soldiers do all the fighting at the rifts and was mentally going over that day’s skirmishes, planning training adjustments and considering reforms to their assignments.

The column faltered suddenly, a call to the commander being passed down it, Matilda waving her arms at the head of their line. They’d fallen some distance behind Alena and her companions and Cullen could no longer see them, only the supply carts pulling up short, Mother Giselle climbing down. He galloped up the lines, pausing long enough to deliver a quick order to Matilda—two sections on the supply carts, another following him—then raced across the remaining distance to the priest. She was striding back towards him as quickly as her robes would allow. “A scream from the village,” she called. “The Herald galloped off. The others followed, but—”

“Stay here,” Cullen said, urging his horse forward again. The road sloped up, and as he crested the hill he saw the village spread out below. Alena was alone in the centre of the village green, a group of five or six men—bandits—in front of her. Others were gathering from the edges of the square and the surrounding streets. Cassandra, Varric and Solas were just leaping down from their horses, several metres behind Alena, their weapons not yet in their hands.

One of the bandits stepped forward, drew his sword and placed the point under Alena’s chin, tipping it up. Cullen urged his horse back into a gallop. A woman screamed, and he saw on the far side of the green a group of villagers cowering away from their captors. Across from them, the bandits held a struggling young woman. Among the main body of captive villagers, a young man elbowed his assailant in the gut and had his throat slashed open. Another man wailed, a child sobbed, and the separated girl tried to run.

Cullen was almost there, about to leap from his horse, when a bandit fell on the fleeing girl with a roar of anger and the sky darkened, a savage wind gusting out of nowhere. Alena twisted under the sword, crouched to pull a dagger from her boot and drove it upwards through the man’s skull. There was a moment of terrible silence, heavy with imminent storm. And then a howl of rage from the bandits and a muffled cry from the girl who’d run and Alena flung her arms wide and lightning snapped down all around them and he was there

the static cage
the bright sharp pain
the smell of ozone/ the smell of blood
the blood
the grasping sparking tearing claws
the—

and then thunder cracked, pulling him back to this day, to the brief agonised screams of the bandits as they dropped, all of them, two dozen at least, dead. There was another moment of silence, all the violence sucked out of the air in an instant: the wind dying, sky clearing.

Alena gave a ragged sob and ran to the edge of the green to vomit copiously into a flower garden. She stayed crouched there, back to them all, shuddering. Cullen dismounted and wrapped his trembling fingers around the hilt of his sword.

“Well, shit,” Varric said weakly.

Cassandra gave Cullen a long look and then turned to the villagers, all varying degrees of shaken, the girl who’d tried to flee trembling in an older woman’s arms, a couple keening over the body of the slain youth.

Cullen looked back at Alena. She looked very alone, her arms wrapped tightly around her knees, body wracked by sobs. He wanted desperately to comfort her, but his presence hadn’t been soothing to her in a long time. Had it ever been? “Solas,” he muttered, but the elf was already going, handing the reins of both his and Alena’s horses off to Varric.

The section of soldiers Cullen had ordered to follow crested the hill, useless.

Chapter Text

Alena

“Alena?” Solas said.

She pressed her face hard against her knees, fighting to convince herself that she was here, and whole, and her own. She lay a gloved palm flat on the icy earth and let the chill ground her. Then she raised her head, dashed the tears brusquely away and said, “Sorry.”

“What for?” he said mildly. “You’ve saved the day again.”

“Everyone’s alright, then?”

“Shaken but alive.” He paused. “You’ve been holding back.” His tone was light, without a hint of blame, and she had the distinct impression he hadn’t been surprised.

She glanced at him. He was looking out towards the western hills, face smooth.

“You’ll need to calm Cassandra,” he said.

“I know.”

He unclipped a flask from his belt and handed it to her. “Water.”

Alena rinsed her mouth and splashed some water over her face and neck. Solas helped her to her feet. She swayed a little, lightheaded, feeling she might be torn away by the wind at any moment. There’s no wind, she told herself firmly, spreading her toes in her boots, trying to convince herself she was firmly anchored. That she was here, today. 

“Come,” Solas said. He led her back across the village green. The villagers were still mostly gathered together on one side, talking with Cassandra. Cullen and his soldiers were carrying the dead bandits away.

The villagers saw Alena approaching, a few taking a step back with horror on their faces. Cassandra turned to glare, jaw so tight it made Alena’s ache in sympathy. The girl who’d been separated flew across the green to take Alena’s hands. She was sixteen or seventeen, a bruise flowering over her eye and blood seeping through the strip of linen someone had wrapped around her forearm. “Merci beaucoup,” she said. “Merci. Vous nous avez sauvé. M’avez sauvé.”

Alena wasn’t sure if the girl’s hands were shaking or her own. “De rien.” Her throat felt like sandpaper.

“My name is Acelina,” the girl said and led her over to the group. Her hand tightened around Alena’s when several of the villagers recoiled. But a middle-aged woman bustled forward with profuse thanks and then there were people all around her, the Orlesian coming too thick and fast for her sluggish mind. She gathered, though, that they hoped she was hungry because a grand party was being planned, that those bandits had been terrorising the duchy for weeks, that thank you, thank you, thank you.

“That’s very kind,” she said in stiffly formal Orlesian. “But we are many people.”

There was a fresh flood of reassurances. Alena was getting light and fluttery again, the very soft and entirely natural breeze on her cheek sending a shudder of panic down her spine, when Cassandra broke in, her own Orlesian impeccable, sternly announcing that the Inquisition would be pleased to celebrate with the people of Airbourg and would send out a hunting party. The villagers mustn’t slaughter any of their own animals. In the meantime, she needed to speak with the Herald. Then she grasped Alena’s elbow firmly and guided her back to the horses. Cassandra snapped an order about the hunting to a hovering soldier before springing into the saddle, far too lightly for a woman in heavy armour. Alena followed suit with much less grace.

Cassandra took her to a hill overlooking the town and dismounted. “You are much more powerful than we realised."

Alena straightened her shoulders. The brief ride had helped, forced her to focus for a time on the unfamiliar mechanics of riding. She’d regained a little surety in her own body. “Yes.”

“Why keep it a secret?” Cassandra demanded. 

“I don’t cast, as a rule. It didn’t seem… relevant.”

“Not relevant,” Cassandra repeated incredulously.

Alena pressed her palms flat against her thighs. “I haven’t used more than a trickle in a long time.”

Cassandra huffed disbelievingly. “And the mark? You still maintain you know nothing about it? You just happen to be a spectacularly powerful mage pretending to be mediocre, with a spectacularly powerful artifact on her palm?”

Alena made herself hold Cassandra’s gaze. The Seeker was furious, but she had been on the day Alena met her, too. Her fury was white-hot and terrifying but had subsided quickly, then, into simmering irritation. It would again. “I can barely cast from the other schools, Seeker. That part was real. No barriers, no healing, weak fire, perhaps a little cold water instead of ice.” She held up her left hand. “And I have no idea what this is.”

Cassandra snorted.

“What are you worried about, Cassandra?” Alena said, though she already knew.

Cassandra glared. “I’m worried you’re vulnerable to demons, about what an abomination could do with that mark. I’m worried that you refuse to be honest with us. I’m worried that you’re reckless, that you’ll lose control, that—”

“I just killed every bandit without harming their captives. Or us,” Alena said stiffly. “How much more control do you want?”

Cassandra made a disgusted sound and mounted her horse. “Fine,” she said, face set in anger. “Perhaps you will bring some of this extraordinary control to bear when the rest of us are risking our lives to aid you.” She rode away. Alena took a deep breath. The sky was a soft clear blue, the town spread out before her, the Waking Sea a shimmering line on the horizon. A short ride north, she thought, and I could find a boat in Falfort. The path spread out before her. Her palm itched. She sighed and remounted her horse, following Cassandra back to town. 

Cullen

Airbourg that evening was full of good cheer: three trestles groaning with wine and ale and cheeses; two roaring bonfires, with four rams roasting on spits; a village woman with a vielle playing some merry pastoral that Cullen didn’t recognise.

The bodies had all been removed, the blood mopped up. 

Alena stood by the largest of the trestles with Acelina. Looking at her, he could still smell the ozone of her lightning, feel the bright sharp pain of demon claws in his neck.
He sat down heavily on an empty stool at Cassandra’s side. She cut him a furious glance. “You don’t have an opinion about any of this? Did you know?”

He sighed. “I didn’t know.”

“And?”

“I don’t know what you want me to say. I’m not a—I can’t let myself get angry and start seeing abominations everywhere. Not again.”

“Nor can you let guilt keep you from seeing the risks.”

“I’m not,” he said firmly. “I see them. Haranguing her isn’t going to make them go away.”

Cassandra huffed. “Perhaps it makes me feel better.”

“Did it?”

“No.”

Alena and Acelina drifted a little farther into the shadows. The Orlesian girl was speaking intensely, head bowed, and Alena’s face was etched with some complicated emotion, eyes wide, lips pressed thin. Cullen looked back at Cassandra to find her watching him with exasperation. 

“I don’t know what you see in her,” she said.

Cullen bit down a sharp reply. He wished Cassandra could like her, at least a little. “You don’t know her.”

“She won’t let me know her.”

Cullen gave her an appraising look. “You’re not dissimilar, you know. Perhaps that’s the problem.”

Cassandra tutted, but there was a dash of amusement in it. Her anger was beginning to shift. “You mean she’s stubborn and quick to judge. Maker help us all.” 

“Determined. And committed to her principles.”

“Fine. I’ll talk to her tomorrow.”

Cullen nodded and turned the conversation to tactics, though his eyes kept drifting back to Alena. She seemed so gentle in the firelight: soft and sad with Acelina; the cloud clearing a little when she sat to listen to one of Varric’s stories. It was hard to reconcile with the terrible violence of her power. Since Kinloch Hold, the merest touch of magic sent his heart galloping off in one direction, his breath in another, every muscle in his body bunching against the pain that was coming; not even a decade of continual exposure to mages had quelled the fear, but he’d learned to function in spite of it.

Alena had a been surprise, that’s all. He’d reacted so strongly because of the surprise. She was who she’d always been, and he wouldn’t let himself fear her.

Alena

Robert was in Alena’s nightmares that night, all twisted up with the face of the bandit who’d held his blade to her throat. More of us than you, ma cher. Maybe we’ll take you with us too, hmm? Acelina, whispering how afraid she’d been, how powerless, how vulnerable. She woke before sunrise, feeling as though a booted foot had been stamping on her chest.

The village gathered to say goodbye, with a few final gifts of wine and fruit for the journey. Acelina squeezed her hand, looking very young, shredding Alena’s papier-mâché heart. Alena folded the girl into a hug, and then pulled one of her sheathed daggers out of her boot and pressed it into her hands. She said firmly, “A last resort. You try to run, first. A knife fight is dangerous even if you know what you’re doing. Find someone to teach you a little if you can but even so—”

“Run away,” Acelina promised. “Merci, Alena. Merci beaucoup.” She pulled Alena into another hug, then thrust the sheathed blade into her own boot. 

Alena turned away, saw Cullen watching her. There was something new in the way he looked at her now. She’d noticed it last night. A faint… apprehension.

Outside Airbourg, the countryside had been ravaged by demons, bandits, and the civil war. They passed several rifts, and Alena was grateful for the soldiers Cullen sent to dispatch the demons. The thought of summoning so much as a spark raised her gorge. In the late afternoon, they turned northeast for the final journey along the coast of the Waking Sea.

Cassandra rode up beside her. “Herald, might we talk?”

“Of course. But please don’t call me that.”

“Why do you dislike it so?” Cassandra’s customary tone when speaking to Alena was suspicious, but now she just sounded curious. 

“Because it’s ludicrous.”

“You don’t believe in the Maker?”

“I believe He exists. And that He has far better judgment than that.” She delivered the second sentence lightly, as though it were just a little jest at her own expense.

Cassandra made a thoughtful noise. “I was angry yesterday. I was not fair to you.”

“You had cause.”

“Perhaps. But I didn’t care to notice what that casting cost you. Is it always like that?”

“Yes. A little trickle, like in the Hinterlands, is uncomfortable. It makes me a little nauseous. A big casting takes me out of the fight entirely and then I’m shaky the rest of the day.” She gave Cassandra a long look. “I know its been hard on you, being the only warrior. You take the brunt of it and I’m less help than the others.”

“You exaggerate.”

It was as close to a compliment as Alena thought she’d ever receive from the Seeker. She grinned. Cassandra rolled her eyes. “Has it always been like this?”

“Yes.”

“Your instructors didn’t help you work through the block?”

Alena thought of the years and years of lessons, the gradual decline in her instructors’ interest in the face of her mediocrity. She’d never known the extent of her own power, just known with unshakable certainty that there was something terrifying inside her that must never, ever be allowed to hurt anyone again. “Nobody ever knew."

Cassandra tutted. “I thought the Ostwick circle more competent than that.”

“They couldn’t be expected to read my mind,” Alena said, defensive of Rogier especially, but of all the senior enchanters through the years that she’d never once confided in.

“It was their job to read your mind. You were a child in their care.”

“Let’s not,” Alena said firmly. She didn’t discuss her childhood in the circle with anyone, and she wouldn’t be starting with Cassandra Pentaghast.

“Very well.” They rode on in a silence that was almost companionable.

They made camp a few hours later in a green field overlooking a beach. Alena turned down Matilda’s offer of a spar and and played a few desultory hands of cards with Varric and a pair of Fereldan recruits. When at last the soldiers sloped off to their patrol assignments, she said, “Varric. I’ve a favour to ask.”

“Alright,” he said, with exaggerated suspicion and—catching her furtive mood—a lowered voice. “What d’you need, Tempest?”

The new nickname had appeared last night. She didn’t like it. “I’d like to send a package to a dead drop in Wycombe. Without the Nightingale finding out.”

Varric grimaced. “Any other spymaster I’d say no problem, but uhhhh…. shit, maybe I’ll get lucky. Not implicating me in something terrible, though, are you?”

Alena bit back the instinct to conceal. “I wasn’t alone in the Marches. There’s a group. Mages. Refugees. I came south on their behalf and then,” she gestured vaguely at the entire nightmarish situation. “I want to get word to them, send along some of my pay, but I don’t… I’m not ready to trust a group of Chantryfolk that much.”

“Yeah,” Varric said, eyes flicking to Cassandra. “I get that, believe me. Look, I’ll do what I can. I’ve got some contacts in Val Royeaux. We’ll find an excuse for me to slip off. Can’t guarantee one of the Nightingale’s little birds won’t slip off after me but hopefully they’ll be distracted by you.”

“Thank you.”

Varric winked and dealt a new hand.

Val Royeaux came into view the next afternoon. They made camp that evening an hour’s ride from the west gate. Alena saw to Comet first, taking comfort in his solid presence and the monotony of grooming him. The city squatted on the horizon like an ogre. Since Airbourg, her thoughts had been all tied up in the past; now they snapped firmly back to the present: a hostile city full of priests, all of whom believed she should be locked in a tower even without the mark of heresy stamped into her palm. And the people, thousands of them, primed to explode by the chaos and fear that had seized their city and their country. She closed her eyes and pressed her face into Comet’s neck.

Cullen cleared his throat.

She turned. He looked tired and nervous, one hand working at the nape of his neck. They’d barely spoken since Airbourg, but she’d caught him watching her a few times, the same faint apprehension in his eyes that she’d seen there.

“Uh, hello, Alena,” he said.

“Hello,  Cullen.”

“I know I said you could come to me when you were ready to talk, but…” Alena was silent, her voice bunched uncomfortably in her throat. “But I… would you like to talk?”
She found, somehow, the wherewithal to nod. 

Cullen took a few steps towards the distant city then sank down in the grass, legs stretched out, weight in his palms, head tipped back. 

Alena dropped the brush she was using into the grooming bucket and ducked through the bars of the temporary corral to join him. 

“I saw,” Cullen began, then hesitated. “You gave your dagger away.”

Alena, cautious, said, “Ye-es.”

“I wanted to give you mine.” He took the poignard from his belt—long for a dagger and finely tapered, unmistakeable even without the sword of mercy etched into the hilt. She’d been trying not to look at it since the Temple of Sacred Ashes. “If you want it,” Cullen finished in a raw voice.

Alena took the weapon, unsheathed it, watched how the blade caught the dying light. She felt barely anchored to the ground, this weapon not substantial enough to hold her in place.

“Why?”

“You gave one of yours away,” he repeated. There was a note of exasperation in his voice. She was grateful for it. It stole some of the strange profundity of the moment. It’s just a blade, she reminded herself. A tool.

She sheathed it. “And what if you’re disarmed?”

He frowned at her. “You can’t go into Val Royeaux with one dagger.”

“I have my magic as fallback, even without a focus. They can’t disarm me.”

“Please just take it, Alena.” 

She tucked the weapon into her belt and sighed with mock resignation. “I suppose I’ll just have to save your life, then, if you get into trouble.”

He laughed, warm and open. She liked it. It sounded like a tiny room in Kirkwall’s dingiest inn. “I’d be very grateful,” he said.

Maker help her, she wanted to touch him. She let herself: dropped a brief, feather-light touch on his knee as she said, “Thank you, Cullen.”

He stared at the place her hand had been, mouth turned down. “I miss you.”

She sighed. “I miss you, too. But—”

He turned to her, taking her hand in both of his. “I don’t know how to make you trust me.”

“I do trust you. That’s the problem. I’m afraid I’ll—”

“I’d never hurt you. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

She shook her head. “You can’t promise that. I can’t promise that to you. I’m a mage. You were—”

“I’m not a Templar anymore. I thought we—I thought in Kirkwall we—”

“We did.” Alena brushed his cheek with her free hand. “But the war felt much further away there. And it was one night. And I wasn’t terrified all the time.” 

“Let me help you bear it.”

Alena sighed and looked to the city. It was all lit up now, a dense constellation against the wide night sky. She was lonely, even with Varric and Solas—far more lonely than she’d ever felt on her weeks-long solitary journeys in the Marches. And she’d felt so safe with Cullen in Kirkwall, those final hours. She craved that sense of safety now. She didn’t want to go into that city alone; she didn’t want to let fear drive her into a mistake, either. She turned to face Cullen, tucking her hands away. It wouldn’t be the same, now, anyway, not now that he’d seen what she could do. There would be a part of him, however small and well-leashed, that thought perhaps she was too dangerous to be walking around.

She could say that, prod him into an argument about it, until they both said something cruel enough to smother whatever this mad thing was that drew them to one another. That might even be kinder, in the long run.

Instead she said, “I’m sorry,” in as firm and final a voice as she could muster, and retreated to her tent.

Chapter Text

Alena

They entered the city a few hours after dawn. Alena was in the lead in a lazurite breastplate that Josephine had commissioned from Herrit, polished to a high shine, heavier than her usual battered leathers. She felt ridiculous.

Cullen’s poignard, too long for her boot, was clipped to her belt. His eyes had lingered on it as they prepared to mount up, but slid away from her own. Now, he and Cassandra were riding on each side of Alena, a half-length behind. She’d tried several times to slow her horse and allow them to catch up, but eventually she got the message, gritted her teeth, and led. Varric and Solas were close behind them with Mother Giselle. One of Leliana’s spies had turned up before dawn with news of Templars in the city, and she’d been turning it over in head since then, searching for any reason other than kill the heretic mage for their return.

She was tired now, her throat dry. The column of infantry at her back, most of them former Templars, only made her feel more exposed.

She noticed, dimly, that the city was beautiful, all ruby silk and ostentatious gold. She’d dreamed of visiting, but it felt now like looking at a painting on a distant wall. The only things that felt truly present were the people, so many of them, muttering and staring and flinching out of the heretic’s path. All wore masks. She longed for one of her own, respite from the effort of keeping her face calm and still. 

As they entered the bazaar more fully, Alena felt the weight of the crowd closing in behind them. Blocking the exit. Her skin crawled.

The handful of Revered Mothers that had been persuaded to hear Alena out were to meet them in a plaza just west of the garden district rift, at the very edge of the area that had been hastily evacuated when demons began pouring into it. Alena had dutifully memorised the route Leliana and Josephine had planned for her: entering the city at the west gate, proceeding through the open bazaar and along the main boulevard for several blocks, then turning north into the side streets of the garden district. Drawing the city’s attention before she slew its demons and sealed the tear in the veil. 

But when they rounded the bazaar’s central tower, she saw a platform set up on the far side, a crowd gathered before it and a severe middle-aged priest standing above them, flanked by two Templar knights. Alena’s hands tightened on the reins and Comet’s stride stuttered.

“We got this, Tempest,” Varric muttered at her back, voice just loud enough to reach her. “They should be fucking terrified of you.” Cassandra tutted disapprovingly. Alena found her irritation reassuring. 

The priest pointed an accusatory finger at Alena. The crowd turned, their fear and anger palpable. Alena felt the people behind her shifting, too.

“Behold,” the priest cried, voice ringing out, “the so-called Herald of Andraste! Claiming to rise where our beloved Divine fell. We say this is a false prophet! The Maker would send no mage”—and here her lip curled in contempt—“He would send no mage in our hour of need!”

This was not the plan, but Josephine had prepared Alena for it anyway. She dismounted, passed her reins to Cassandra, and took a step towards the platform. She spread her empty hands wide and bowed deeply. “Revered Mother.” She was grateful to find her voice more or less steady. “A rift has driven many of your people from their homes. Demons are spilling into your city. Allow me to close it and I will be glad to speak with you.”

She didn’t wait for a response, dropping into another bow and turning back to remount. More royans ducked out of her way as she nudged Comet towards the exit onto the boulevard. She heard the hoofbeats of the others falling in behind her.

“How long will you maintain this charade?” the mother called. Alena heard a shifting of armoured boots on the wooden platform, but the knights weren’t in pursuit, not yet. She kept her gaze forward. “The Templars have returned to the chantry!” the priest exulted. “They will save the people, not this ‘Inquisition’ and its pet.”

A dark-haired man with acne-scarred cheeks appeared in the gate to the boulevard with a company of Templars at his back. Alena pulled up short, Cassandra and Cullen reining their horses in beside her. The man gave her a long, appraising look. His face tightened in fury at the sight of the poignard. Then he sneered dismissively and strode towards the stage. Cullen and Cassandra dismounted; Alena followed suit. Cullen hewed close to her side, his attention fixed on the mass of Templars as they split smoothly into formation: one small team following the man to the stage, the rest forming up in sections to hold each of the exits from the bazaar. Trapped!, Alena thought, the breeze picking up with her surging fear. Cullen said under his breath, “We’re alright,” and she smothered her mana with a flicker of shame. Her control never slipped. Must never slip.

She turned back to the stage. The Templars’ leader strode past the priest without looking at her—she was smug, now, smiling at Alena in triumph—and one of the men at his back punched her square in the face. She dropped like a stone. The dread drained abruptly from Alena, replaced by contempt. “How dare you!” she shouted.

Around her, the crowd roared its disapproval and surprise. A younger priest rushed to the aid of her sister, the two Templars who’d been there when the Inquisition arrived making no move to stop her, dismay evident on their faces. The dark-haired man clapped one on the shoulder bracingly. 

“Still yourselves,” he told them, voice raised for the crowd to hear. “She is beneath us.” He turned to gaze disdainfully down at Alena. “Her claim to ‘authority’ is an insult, much like your own.” The crowd surged with renewed anger. The recently arrived knights stepped down from the platform, drawing their swords halfway from their sheaths. Cullen stepped forward too, placing his body between Alena and the approaching Templars. She let him, breathing deeply, taking the opportunity to prepare herself. To balance her fear and her fury.

Cassandra began pushing her way forward through the retreating crowd. “Lord Seeker Lucius, it’s imperative—” 

“You will not address me,” Lucius spat.

“Lord Seeker?” Cassandra pulled up short. She sounded almost comically confused. 

“Creating a heretical movement? Raising up a puppet as Andraste’s prophet? You should be ashamed.” He drew his own sword fully, swept it in an arc that took in all the people gathered before him. “You should all be ashamed. The Templars failed no one when they left the Chantry to purge the mages. You are the ones who have failed. You, who’d leash our righteous swords with doubt and fear. I will make the Templar order a power that stands alone against the void.”

Fury won out. Alena’s mana spiked again, and this time she let it simmer a moment, let herself imagine burning through this hateful, cowardly little man, searing the life from all his hateful, cowardly little shadows. Let herself imagine sinking a Templar poignard into his throat.

Cullen made a sound like someone had punched him in the gut. He strode forward, crossing the now-empty space in front of them to stand before the platform. He looked past Lucius to the knight who’d been most dismayed by the attack on the priest. He was young and dark-skinned, face tight with distress. “Templars!” Cullen called, voice thick. “This is madness! Did you join the order to let anger and hate guide your swords? To strike unarmed women? To stand over the people you vowed to protect? I joined to serve, not terrorise. Join me now. Join us. Join the Herald and help her bring peace.” Above him, the young Templar radiated doubt.

“Knight-Captain Cullen, I presume,” Lucius sneered. “Trotting along at a mage’s heels, doing her bidding. Traitor!”

“You’re the traitor. To everything we stood for,” Cullen's face was twisted in grief. 

Alena’s heart see-sawed wildly: Her fear of the Templars, dented by Cullen’s stubborn kindness and the misery in the young man’s face. A lingering vicious urge to call the heavens down upon them, to purge the world of their violence and hate. And shame, that all these people would see in her the same monster Lucius did, and that Cullen would know it was she who’d driven the Templars away, she who’d forced him to draw his blade against his once-comrades when Lucius inevitably came for the Inquisition.

“Templars! Val Royeaux is unworthy of our protection,” Lucius called, with a final dismissive sweep of his sword that took in the entire bazaar. “We march!” He stepped off the platform, the others falling in behind him. The sections at each exit began to move, too, the crowds springing open before them. The two Templars who‘d been with the priest when they arrived hesitated, looking back and forth between Cullen and Lucius and the section of Templars down by the southern exit to the docks.

Alena summoned her courage. She stepped up to Cullen’s side, forcing her voice to gentle, forcing herself not to see them as Templars. To see only confused young men. “Are all these people unworthy of your protection?” she asked, her question barely reaching them over the unfolding chaos, her arm sketching a broad arc that took in the whole city.

They straightened immediately, their attention fixed on her. “No,” the redhead said.

A deep breath. “I’d like to make these people a little safer. Will you help me close the rift in the garden district?” 

They stared in silence for a moment before pulling their eyes away to confer briefly between themselves.

“We will,” the dark-skinned man said, pressing his fist to his heart. “A moment, please.” He stepped to the edge of the stage and roared, “Montsimmard! I choose the people! What do you choose?” Alena turned to see the discipline of the departing Templars slip.

Lucius was incandescent with rage, storming down the length of the column, sword drawn, shouting recriminations and driving men and women back into formation with the force of his anger. Most of them, most even of the Montsimmard section, submitted, but several stepped out of the column, hands on their sheathed blades, planting themselves firmly. 

“Traitors,” Lucius hissed. “We will meet again.”

The main body of the Templars marched away. Alena was dizzy with relief, but she forced some steel into her spine and turned back toward the first two defectors.
And toward Cullen, who was staring at her open-mouthed, eyes shining. Flustered, she offered him a brittle smile before shifting her attention to the others. She held out her hand. “I'm Alena.” They shook it, the red-haired man introducing himself as Ser Elias, his companion as Ser Barris. “Let’s go close a rift, shall we? Will your comrades join us?”

Barris and Elias went back to meet the other nine Templars. Alena swung back into her saddle, the others following suit. The Templars fell in to march just ahead of the Inquisition soldiers. A sea of expressionless masks was turned towards Alena, the mouths beneath them gaping. All the theatre Josephine could’ve dreamed of, Alena thought grimly. Better even, with the Templars’ display of contempt for the city, the few honourable relics of the order now trailing behind the Herald. She wanted to flee. Instead she rode and the people followed, down the boulevard and through the narrow streets all the way to the gracious plaza where the group of sympathetic priests was supposed to meet them. It was empty. She set her jaw and led her procession onward. The rift was in a quiet, pretty street. A few bodies, weeks old, remained where they’d fallen, the demons—and there were many demons—stymieing any attempt to lay them to rest. Alena gagged. She dismounted, pressed her face into Comet’s neck until her stomach settled, and tied his reins to a hitching post at the end of the street. 

The Templars came forward and Barris introduced each of them to Alena. She nodded, beginning to feel mercifully distant from events now, and laid out their usual approach to the rifts. She asked the Templars to hold the edges and keep the demons from fleeing down the alleyways and away into the city; they nodded and trotted off. The Inquisition’s soldiers formed up to protect the crowd that had gathered to watch. 

Alena watched herself draw her mismatched daggers. Time to finish the show. Her will faltered for just a moment—they could manage perfectly well as they always did, just a thin trickle of lightning, maybe even just the blades—but then, her mind far away, she let the storm out. The others threw themselves into battle behind her. She sent lightning arcing out from her daggers, called up dark clouds and a stiff wind: more power than she’d been using in the Hinterlands, far less than in Airbourg. She didn’t want to frighten them, and she didn’t want to finish the fight too quickly—not this rare show of a mage serving the city whose Templars had abandoned it. And she didn’t want to end it vomiting into a bush. But they had to see a mage. They had to see magic. She ducked and dashed around the melee, her movements rote, her stomach roiling, clinging to thoughts of the mage children she’d left in the Marches. 

A chance to make their world a bit safer. You can, you can, you can. 

She found a little breathing room and raised her palm, pouring disruptive energy into the rift. It exploded outwards, stunning the demons and nearly knocking a few Templars off their feet. She pointed her daggers dramatically at a pair of stunned terrors, sent lightning coursing through them, and a moment later it was all over. She turned to the rift and lifted her palm. She couldn’t rely on her speed to mask her blankness, now, so she prodded her face into an expression of satisfaction at a job well done. 

The effort cost her, and it took quite a bit longer to draw the veil closed than it had in recent days. 

But at last the rift vanished as though it had never been there, the street just a quiet, pretty street again, albeit one strewn with bodies. The silence lasted a few heartbeats and then the crowd erupted, the watching royans cheering and stamping their feet. Alena raised her hand, pressing more emotion into her face, sure that her mechanical smile must be a grotesque thing. They cheered more loudly still, and she turned away, letting her face fall back to impassivity as she checked in with each of her companions, clapped Cassandra on the shoulder, nodded at a frowning Cullen, and went to meet the Templars. They bowed deeply, fists on their hearts, and Barris stepped forward to take the hand she offered. Robert’s voice was in her head—monster, monster, monster—and a bright, sharp memory hovered at the edge of her mind that she couldn’t, mustn’t, wouldn’t think about just then. She smiled, and smiled, and smiled.

Cullen

Cullen could imagine what Alena looked like to the cheering crowds: tall and striking, with the light catching the gleam of her hair and the blue of her lazurite breastplate. A hero straight out of the songs; the mage who’d taken up the task the Templars had abandoned. 

He was closer, though, and knew her better, so he saw the shaking edges of her smile. It vanished as soon as she turned away, and she was blinking rapidly as she checked in with her companions. Cullen got a single, solemn nod that didn’t invite him to join her. With visible effort she smoothed herself back into smiling graciousness and approached the Templars, shaking their hands and nodding and exchanging apparent pleasantries. Then she walked across to one of the extravagant gardens, pulled her gloves off, and stood with her back to everyone for a while, leaning on the fence and apparently very interested in the rosebushes. 

Cullen rubbed at an ache in his neck. The skies had cleared the instant Alena stopped casting, but he could still smell ozone and blood. He took a breath, reminded Matilda to keep the crowd away from Alena, and went to speak to the Templars. He couldn’t quite believe she’d convinced them to stand down. That she’d even tried. Hope and dread roiled together in his gut. Had she thought at all about what would come after?

Barris introduced him to the others. They were polite and professional, but most wore hollow-eyed expressions of shock. Reckoning, now, with the consequences of their impetuous decision. He’d made his choice to join the Inquisition over a couple of days—nearly two years, really, if he counted the time spent turning his loyalty to the Order and to the Chantry over in his head. He’d still felt, when he told Cassandra he’d take the job, like he’d just thrown himself off a cliff into dark waters. Templars didn’t just leave. They couldn’t.

“We’re well-supplied with lyrium,” he told them. “You won’t be cut off.” All of their expressions softened, just a little, with relief. 

Barris rolled his shoulders. “The Herald told us we march for Haven tomorrow.  There’s little enough equipment left at the Spire but I thought we’d salvage what we could.”

Cullen’s eyebrows leapt in surprise. He needed the warriors, desperately, but he’d expected that he’d do the inviting and that Alena might never forgive him for it. 

The Templars were just turning to leave when an arrow hissed close by Cullen’s ear and buried itself in the wooden door of a nearby house. He and Cassandra and all the Templars spun in the direction it had come from, their shields raised, and behind his shield Cullen turned his head towards Alena. She’d reacted late, her head only now turning listlessly towards the door with the embedded arrow. He’d almost reached her before he caught the telltale sheen of a barrier over her. Solas’ work. He slid to a stop and she blinked at him, face slack.

After a few tense moments in which no further arrows flew, Cassandra stalked over to inspect the one in the door and said, “There’s a message!” She tore the slip of paper away, frowning at it. “Reads like nonsense to me.”

Varric took it from her. “A scavenger hunt! Might be worth chasing up, if you important people still have business to deal with. I can waste a little time.” When Cassandra turned away, waving a dismissive hand, Varric gave Alena a sly grin. She only blinked at him for a long moment, Cullen’s chest aching at the uncharacteristic dullness of her expression. Varric patted her on the arm and turned away, peeling off from the group and taking Solas with him.

The Templars marched away and Cullen went to tell Matilda to make camp outside the city—and to post heavy patrols. He’d just rejoined Cassandra, Alena and Mother Giselle when an unobtrusive but impeccably dressed man appeared at Alena’s elbow, handing her an exquisite card: heavy cream parchment with gold embossing. “Excusez-moi, Mademoiselle l’Hérautte, une invitation.” He bowed very low and disappeared as swiftly as he’d come. Alena dropped her eyes to the invitation, sighed mournfully, and handed it to Cassandra. 

Cullen kneaded the back of his neck. Alena didn’t speak while they made their plans: Mother Giselle to take the mood of the Chantry while the rest of them got settled at an inn, where the priests could seek Alena out if they still wished to speak with her. She sighed again at that but kept quiet, her eyes fixed on the cobblestones. 

“Not that we need them anymore after that display. The Chantry has no choice but to support you,” Cullen told her with conviction. The corner of her mouth flickered in acknowledgment. When they left, she dutifully followed them back towards the bazaar to take rooms at the Enseigne de la Pomme. 

Alena

“Do you need anything?” Cullen asked, his voice low, head tilted towards her. Cassandra was a few doors down, wrestling with her lock. 

Alena did need something, someone, to bring her back to herself, to remind her the body could feel good and do beautiful, exciting things that weren’t spectacles of destruction. Cullen could do that. He was bright and golden and strong and his weight on her would be enough to ground her again. But she was so tired that even speaking to him felt like scaling a cliff wall—and he would offer her more kindness than she could bear.

“No, thank you, Cullen.” She took a step back to close the door on his worried face.

She pulled the straps of her breastplate free, letting it fall heavily to the floor, and began to tug at her boot, but all her energy had fled now. She collapsed on the bed and began to cry in heaving, ragged sobs that she muffled with a pillow. The memory she’d been fighting all morning—since Airbourg, really—was on her now: her five-year-old body blown apart with a power she couldn’t comprehend. The screams of a younger girl experiencing searing pain for the first, terrifying time in her life. The last time in her life. Monster, monster, monster; how terrible to have killed your sister. The door of the tower closing on her mother’s luxurious red silk skirts. I suppose your parents can’t bear to look at you, poor lonely girl. The first time she’d turned the lightning on herself—just to know what her sister’s death had felt like—and it had burned so exquisitely, leaving a tracing of delicate branching marks from her wrist to her shoulder, too beautiful to linger on her monstrous body more than a day but the pain, the pain had burned some of the hopelessness away, left her as relaxed as a skinned hare. She hadn’t done it since the tower fell, but perhaps…

She lay her right palm flat on her thigh. The lightning, so long repressed, was just below the surface now, ready to leap forward in an instant. She pressed her face into the pillow, biting down on it, the wet patches she’d made cool against her skin. It hurt, her leg seizing, a faint smell of burning leather in her nostrils. That made her stop: the idea that Cullen might burst in to save her from a fire and instead see this. But it had been enough. She lay limp and drained, but in the way she was after a long run in the mountains: in full possession of herself and her senses. When she finally stood her limbs would be her own. She slept then, on top of the quilt with her boots on, a dreamless sleep that was interrupted a few hours later by Cassandra bringing news of the mothers’ arrival.

Alena washed her face, lined her eyes, replaced the tight braid with a loose bun, and changed her scorched breeches. She met with the priests in one of the inn’s private rooms. Rigorously polite, they made vague excuses about the abandoned meeting, thanked Alena for closing the rift that had been terrifying the populace, and gave her to understand that most of the Chantry hierarchy had decided to offer the Inquisition their tacit support instead of outright hostility. Alena was, at least for now, no longer a dangerous heretic. She ought to be relieved; she was relieved, in a distant sort of way.

When she returned to her room, she peeled off her breeches and took the time to examine them: the delicate red marks branching down from her thigh to her ankle, looking like vines twining around her legs. She traced them with her index finger. They were beautiful, in their way. She wondered, as she had every time she’d seared them into her own skin, if they’d lingered on her sister’s body. They’d only remained on hers once, a vine twisting down her right side from waist to pubis to inner thigh. Perhaps only death made them permanent.

She left so many burned bodies in her wake these days. Perhaps she’d find out.

She dressed again: the unburnt breeches, the cleanest of her tunics, the awful heavy breastplate. Attire not fit for an Orlesian salon. But Cassandra and Cullen were in their armour, too: she stiff and scowling in her dark metal, he all silver and gold in his plate mail. He smiled at Alena as though the sight of her soothed every worry. She smiled brightly back and watched a worried crease form between his eyes.

And then they went to meet the leader of the loyalist mages at the chateau of Duke Bastien de Ghislain. 

Vivienne was stunningly beautiful, richly dressed, and perfectly at her ease among the gossiping nobility. Alena disliked her on sight. Her dislike only increased at the woman’s clear emphasis and delicately raised eyebrow as she introduced herself as “the leader of the last loyal mages.” But everything Vivienne offered they had need of, so Alena ground her teeth and tried not to be too sullen while Cassandra welcomed the latest addition to the Inquisition.
Vivienne inclined her head gracefully. “Great things are beginning, my dears. I can promise you that.”

When Cassandra, Cullen and Alena returned to the inn, they found Varric sharing a jug of ale with a pretty young elf with uneven blonde bangs. He raised a hand in greeting and the elf leapt up, expression falling as she looked Alena up and down.

“You’re… kind of plain, really. All that talk and you’re a… person.” She brightened. “I mean, it’s all good, innit? The important thing is, you glow. You’re the Herald thingy.” 

Alena closed her fingers reflexively over her left palm, even though her glove hid the mark.

“Sera here led me and Solas to a noble who was plotting against the Inquisition. He’s not a problem any more.” Varric put in helpfully, waving at the barkeep for three more glasses.

“You sent the red message?” Cassandra asked.

Sera bounced on the balls of her feet. “It’s cover, get round it! So, Herald of Andraste, you’re a strange one. I’d like to join.”

Alena took a seat at the table, gratefully accepting the glass of ale Varric handed her. He added a meaningful nod and she sagged with relief. He’d found an opportunity to send her package. With luck the most skilled of Leliana’s spies had remained on Alena. “How about we get to know each other first? I’m Alena,” she said, then introduced Cassandra and Cullen. 

Sera retook her seat and took a large sip of ale, foam clinging to her lip like a moustache. “Alright, it’s like this. I sent you a message to look for hidden stuff from my friends. The Friends of Red Jenny: that’s me! Well, I’m one. It’s just a name, yeah? It lets little people, friends, be part of something while they stick it to nobles they hate.”

“So your network could help us?” Alena asked.

“Look, do you need people or not? I want to get everything back to normal, like you.”

“But who are these Friends of Red Jenny?”

Sera leaned back in her chair. “Ugh, it’s not hard to understand if you’re not trying to waste your day on it. Someone little always hates someone big. And unless you don’t eat, sleep, or piss, you’re never far from someone little. It doesn’t always work out, but a lot of people hated that guy we killed tonight. Someone got a laugh, someone got even, and someone got paid.” She leaned forward and glared at Alena. “And someone has to have it explained to them that free help is good.”

Alena looked at the others: Cullen had taken his own seat opposite her and looked tired. Cassandra was still standing by the table, ale untouched, clearly intent on escape. She shrugged.

“She’s a dab hand with a bow,” Varric said.

Alena turned back to the elf. “Alright, Sera, free help is good.”

“Yes!” She clinked her glass against Alena’s, splashing a good portion of ale in the process. Alena was reminded of Lonnie; she hoped he was alright in all this chaos. “Get in good before you’re too big to like! So come on now, can I see the glowy thing?”

Cassandra made good her escape, and Alena pulled off her glove. She let Sera look at her palm, and the elf squeaked and grimaced and poked carefully at the skin around the mark, chattering away as she did. Alena watched Cullen. His eyes had fallen to her mark, too, and his jaw had tightened at the sight. The skin around it was red and swollen, as though it bore some infected wound, and the mark itself was unquiet, churning and ebbing, looking like it might at any moment return to consuming her.

His eyes flicked up to hers, golden in the candlelight, but he said nothing while she put her glove back on and tucked her hand under the table. 

“Phwoah, kinda wish I hadn’t seen that,” Sera said. “Less glowy and more… ugh, spooky. Must hurt, too, right?”

“Not anymore,” Alena said. Sera made a face and tipped back her ale. They chatted: Varric and Sera recounting the story of their evening, Sera bursting into wild giggles about breeches for a while, wheezing while pointing at a large stuffed sack she’d left in a corner. Cullen was quiet, sipping his ale slowly and looking too often at Alena. She was feeling warm, the ale unspooling some of the tension in her body and dulling the concerns of the day. She liked how he looked at her. She liked to look at him. She wanted him again, but not in the desperate, starving way she had earlier in the day. She wanted to tangle her fingers in his hair. Wanted to hear the broken-open way he spoke to her when he was inside her. She thought she might even want his kindness. Wanted some warm uncomplicated thing that would never be within their reach; but here in the candlelight, she could let herself imagine it.

Cullen

When Alena began to say goodnight, Cullen stood and with an embarrassed glance sideways at Varric said, “I’ll walk you to your room.” Sera snorted and Varric grinned. But Alena just smiled and let him fall in beside her. 

When they’d reached the quiet of the upstairs hall, Cullen said, “Are you alright? Today seemed… difficult for you.”

“I was tired earlier, but I’m alright.” Her voice was light.

“And your hand? The mark?”

She sighed. “It’s unpleasant. And I hate not understanding it.” 

“I wish we could help you.”

Alena hummed acknowledgment. They were at her door; she unlocked it but didn’t open.

“I wanted to ask you,” Cullen said, “about the Templars.”

He thought she might refuse, but then she opened the door and led him inside. He stood by the fireplace; Alena leaned on a nearby armchair, keeping it between them.

“Ask away.”

“Will you be alright having so many in camp?”

She shrugged. She’d been almost herself again that evening, but some of the morning’s hopelessness threatened to show through. “I’m not sure. They didn’t have a change of heart about mages, after all; they just didn’t like Lucius.”

“Why did you invite them?”

She gave him a wry, pasted-on grin. “Honestly? I really didn’t like Lucius either. Thought it’d be a good way to ruin his day.”

Cullen chuckled and let the lie stand. “You’ll come to me, if they give you any trouble?”

“Of course.”

He nodded and took a step towards the door.

“Oh,” she said, unstrapping the poignard from her belt and holding it out to him. “Thank you for this. I was glad to have it.”

Cullen looked at it, balanced across Alena’s right palm, then reached out and folded her fingers around the tabbard. “I’ll get another.” He gently pushed her hand away. 
He wasn’t sure why he was doing this. He knew what Meredith would think of it: a Templar giving his weapon—his most personal, close-quarters weapon—to a mage. Of that mage channeling her magic through templar steel. Maybe that was why. Proof to himself that he didn’t fear her or hate her or want to lock her away.

She looked down at it, frowning, debating something with herself. “Thank you,” she said at last.

She opened the door, and he said goodnight, and before he was quite sure how it happened or who moved first, her lips were against his, soft and dry, warm, the kiss chaste but lingering, his hands on her face.

She pulled away first, regret creasing her forehead. “I’m sorry. Good night.”

She closed the door.

Chapter Text

Cullen

Leliana worked quickly. They’d been back in Haven only two days when Cullen received her message: Templars found. Meet in war room ASAP. He listened to her report then walked stiffly across the room to pick up the map marker that represented the order. He was surprised by how light it was, just a deft but simple wooden carving of a warrior with the flaming sword on their shield. It should be heavier. It should cost him something to lift.

He paused over the map, then set the marker down: Therinfal Redoubt, to which Lord Seeker Lucius had led his Templars, a pair of Leliana’s agents trailing doggedly at their heels. A large contingent was already holding the fortress, the scouts reported, six or seven hundred people. The entire order, or near enough that it made no difference.

They can be salvaged, he thought. They can be what I thought they were. He straightened. Alena was leaning against the far wall, arms crossed, her body a long languid line, face almost bored. He wasn’t fooled. This mattered to her.

She’d been withdrawn the whole way back to Haven. He’d expected her to avoid him, after their kiss, but she hadn’t spent much time with anyone, as far as he’d seen. She’d sparred with Matilda every night, but she’d stopped improving, grown a little slower and clumsier.

He’d watched the Templars, too. He was impressed with Barris, who was tremendously competent despite his youth and eager to integrate his defectors with the Inquisition. But some of the others seemed to doubt. There was more than a little chilliness between them and the former Templars in Matilda’s squadron, who’d refused the war that Barris and the others had joined.

And when Alena lifted her palm to the rifts, one or two of them watched with narrowed eyes and tight lips. He saw her notice it, too. He was glad he had soldiers to send against the demons, so she didn’t have to use any of her own magic in front of them.

And, shamefully, in front of him. His nightmares had grown ever more vivid and disturbing since Airbourg. Their influence lingered through his days. When he looked at Alena, now, a faint voice whispered mage, told him she was not a person to be listened to. That her every word, every glance, was intended to manipulate or corrupt. It was only a very faint voice, nearly drowned out by the awe and hunger and respect and sorrow he felt at the sight of her, but it was there.

His thoughts were never far, now, from the Templars slain at Kinloch Hold, the men and women he’d grown up with who’d been tortured to death as he watched. A little fear was justified, wasn’t it? A little suspicion? It had made the order cruel, but it needn’t have. They could do better. They could be salvaged.

With a final glance at Alena, knowing she’d hate it, he said, “I still believe the order could help with the breach.”

“We must first persuade the Lord Seeker to bring the Templars out of exile,” Leliana replied. “But how?”

Cassandra huffed. “He imagines the Templars as the most significant force in all of Thedas. The most righteous. That display in Val Royeaux—he wants us all to recognise them as such.”

Cullen paced, rubbing at the persistent ache in his neck. “They won’t go along with it! We can simply take the order out from under him.”

“Not easily,” Leliana mused. “We'd need to get our message into the castle, hope it isn’t intercepted by those loyal to the Lord Seeker in time for them to crush any dissent. If it isn’t, or he doesn’t have the numbers, they could very well overthrow him and join us. But it’s too uncertain. Alena’s finally been invited to meet with the mages. Let’s focus on them.”

“If it’s status the Lord Seeker wants,” Josephine said, “we might approach the nobility for assistance. If we send a formal envoy, with several of Orlais’ most notable houses—”

Cassandra made a disgusted sound. “You would appeal to his ego. Encourage this madness.”

“And why not?” Cullen demanded. “If it gets us inside! With the gates open we can appeal to the order directly. They will turn on him.”

 “Will they?” Alena put in, voice low. “Of the hundreds at Therinfal I’m sure some will feel as Barris and the others did. But will they be enough? Will they act on it?”

 “Of course they will!” He’d raised his voice; he took a breath, lowering it deliberately. “Their doubts will fester.”

“You’re right,” she said. She hadn’t looked away as he shouted at her. “But so can resentment, hate, fear. The world’s changed, the order’s position in it has changed. The Templars wouldn’t be the first to close ranks against change.”

He turned away, jaw tight, biting down anger she didn’t deserve to see in him. She spoke sense, infuriatingly. And he was compromised. His nightmares. That disgusting whisper in his head. Its presence, its ugly reflexive distrust, only proved her point.

Josephine broke the silence: “Lady Trevelyan leaves for Redcliffe tomorrow. Let’s see what the mages say. In the meantime, I'll begin feeling out our allies on the matter of the Templars.”

With that, the meeting was over and the women said their goodnights. Cullen lingered in the war room for a long time, turning the Templar marker over in his hand.

Alena

Late the next evening, Alena rode stiffly back out of Redcliffe, sick with dread. It was an hour’s ride to the Inquisition camp at Dusklight, Sera’s endless muttering rants about magic grating on her shredded nerves. Cassandra was quiet, though her face made Alena worry for the camp’s single, already shabby, practice dummy.

Varric was bent over his cards with a pair of scouts and Blackwall, the Grey Warden they’d found that morning at Leliana’s request. He took one look at their faces and immediately bowed out of the game. “I’m almost afraid to ask.”

Alena handed Comet’s reins off to a hovering scout. “Ah, Varric. What’s a Tevinter death cult when we’ve a hole in the sky to worry about?”

“Well, shit. I see your luck continues to hold, Temps.”

“Fucking mages with their fucking shitting time magic!” interjected Sera. “Up-themselves Tevinter pricks!”

“Indeed,” Cassandra drawled.

Alena pulled off her gloves and scratched hard at the skin around her nails. “I’m riding back tonight.”

“I’ll go with you,” Cassandra said.

“Yeah, far away from the crazy mages as possible, right?” Sera said. The others agreed and began gathering their things. Alena’s chest was tight. She wanted desperately to be alone, to take off towards Haven on foot with the wind in her face, the world opening up at her feet as her mind quieted. But so much depended on her now; she might never be just herself, alone, again. She took Comet’s reins back with an apologetic pat on his neck and they set off under the full moon, the distant howl of a wolf floating on the wind.

They were back in Haven just after four bells, the town still and quiet. Varric and Sera offered to see to the horses rather than waking the grooms. Cassandra relinquished her reins and strode immediately off towards Cullen’s tent. Alena jangled with nervous tension.

“Hey Varric, when Cassandra comes back, could you tell her I’ll meet her in the war room in twenty minutes?”

“You got it, Temps.”

She headed towards the lake, shaking her legs out, stiff from the ride but desperate to be moving, pushing herself into a ground-eating run well before she'd properly loosened up. Everything was coiled up so tightly inside her. She ran faster, wringing as much effort out of her body as she could, the world finally beginning to narrow to the rhythm of her breath and the terrain at her feet. She turned at the dock and sprinted back towards Haven, feet light over the packed snow, the wind at her back, riding a few precious moments of wild exhilaration. She flew through the town and pulled up in front of the Chantry, blinking in the face of Cullen’s tousle-haired alarm for a few moments before she realised it was she who’d so surprised him. He’d sprung towards her, swift and graceful even when dragged from his bed before dawn, and was scanning the square, hand on hilt.

“Maker’s breath, Alena.” He dropped his hand. “There’s nobody after you, is there?”

“Sorry.” The last shreds of euphoria slipped through her fingers. But the terrible twisting inside her had quieted, leaving her limbs loose and her body fully her own.

Cullen scrubbed his hands over his face. “Well. Good morning.”

“Needed to work off some tension. I’m sorry, truly.”

“Cassandra said it was bad news.”

“Are they in there?”

“Josephine is. Cassandra went to wake Leliana.”

She couldn’t bear to be inside stone walls. “Can I wait out here with you?”

“Of course,” he said, voice pitched so low and soft it made her breath hitch. He leant against the Chantry wall, head tipped back. She wanted to kiss his neck. She hadn’t been alone with him since that foolish kiss in Val Royeaux.

She looked away, paced a little. When next she glanced at Cullen, he’d raised his head and was watching her, face clouded. She looked away, off balance, grateful to see Cassandra and Leliana entering the square. She hauled open the heavy front door of the Chantry and held it as they all filed in and through to the war room.

When they’d taken up their customary positions, Alena began: “Grand Enchanter Fiona claims she didn’t invite us to Redcliffe. Our arrival was a surprise and”—her mouth twisted—“the rebel mages are now indentured to a Tevinter magistrate.”

Cullen scowled. “You can’t be serious.”

“Apparently a Templar attack was imminent and Alexius arrived at a moment of desperation.” Alena realised she’d begun to take off her gloves to pick at her nails and put her hands behind her back instead. “But his son Felix passed me a note.” Leliana raised a dubious eyebrow. “We met him and an old pupil of Alexius’, Dorian, in secret. They tell of a Tevinter cult, the Venatori.”

“They're obsessed with the Herald,” Cassandra broke in sternly. “And Alexius apparently possesses the ability to manipulate time itself. It’s how he arrived in Redcliffe before we did.”

There was a moment’s horrified silence. Cullen had stiffened, hand on his hilt, his face unruly with horror and concern, his eyes on Alena.

“Is such magic even possible?” Leliana asked.

Alena shrugged. “I don’t understand how it works, but it’s real.”

“But that’s not the only mystery,” Cassandra said. “Our meeting with Fiona outside Val Royeaux.”

Alena sighed. “I can’t figure it out. There wasn’t much on shapeshifting in the circle library but nothing I’ve read suggests they can shift into people.”

She glanced at Cullen, who’d quieted his face. He immediately dropped his eyes to the table and said, “The world is suddenly full of things I believed impossible.”

“What’s the mood like in Redcliffe?” Leliana asked.

“Tense,” Cassandra said dryly.

Josephine looked up from the copious notes she was scribbling down. “How did you leave things, Alena?”

“Alexius promises to send word when he’s ready to negotiate for the mages’ help with the Breach. A trap, but Dorian and Felix claim to want to help us escape it.”

Cullen glowered. “To help you escape it, Alena. He’s after you. You can’t seriously intend to—"

She waved a dismissive hand, careful not to let any of the skin-crawling fear of being hunted show on her face. “He’s after the mark. I don’t intend to deliver it to him. But I hardly think he’s going to shrug his shoulders and wander back to Tevinter because I refused an invitation.”

“We’ll have to deal with him sooner or later,” Leliana agreed. “This Felix. What reason does he give for turning on his father?”

“He and Dorian both say they want to save Alexius from doing something terrible. That this isn’t who he is.” She shrugged and looked at Cassandra. “They seemed sincere, but—”

“But they may be skilled liars,” the Seeker finished.

There was a moment of grim silence—save the scratching of Josephine’s pen—before the diplomat lowered her writing board and said, “I suggest we take some time to consider. Meet back here at two bells?”

They all agreed, and she led them out of the war room, waving a farewell as she turned off into her own office. The others spilled out into a pre-dawn Haven, the sky a kaleidoscope of dawn pinks and breach greens. Alena farewelled Cassandra and Cullen at her corner, but he lingered. “Please don’t do this. Don’t take this risk.”

She sighed. “Josephine was right. Let’s just… not. For now.”

His jaw tightened. He began to say more, but then he pressed his lips tight, raised his hand to his neck, and left, pushing open the town gates to rejoin his army.

Alena managed only a few hours’ sleep and when she woke, all the churning agitation she’d exorcised with her pre-dawn run had returned. But she felt too weak to move, so she just lay in bed with the covers over her head, stomach tight, imagining herself closing the breach and then turning to face hundreds of Templars whose need for her had just disappeared.

Later, in the war room, Cullen paced as Leliana laid out her plan to use Alena as a distraction while her agents entered through the castle’s secret tunnels. As soon as she finished, he burst out, “You can’t be serious!” Leliana just raised an eyebrow, and he went on. “It’s far too risky. We must approach the Templars.”

Alena scoffed. There was a sudden pounding in her ears. “We know nothing about the Templars. You have no idea what risks approaching them might entail! The mages are familiar. The Hinterlands are familiar. Redcliffe is—”

“The Tevinters are a complete unknown!”

“No, they aren’t,” she said. Cullen made a dismissive sound. She wanted to slap him. Instead she said coldly, “We have contacts among them. We know exactly what Alexius wants. What does Lucius want? Huh?”

Leliana nodded. “Exactly. Infiltrating Redcliffe is a risk, but one we can understand and manage.”

“Understand?!” Cullen roared. Josephine gasped and took half a step back from the table; Cullen froze, jaw tight, and turned away from Alena. When he spoke again his voice was soft, his flat Ferelden accent tucked away. “We can’t begin to understand this time magic. It’s unnatural.” Despite his efforts at calm, a note of disgust crept into his voice at the end.

Alena’s throat tightened. Behind her back, she pressed a thumbnail hard into her palm.

Across the table, Cullen focused his appeal on Cassandra and Josephine. “We might not know Lucius’ plan, but we know the order. We understand them. You’re a Seeker, Cassandra. I was a Templar.”

Alena gave a bitter laugh. “Nobody’s forgotten that, Knight-Captain.” Cullen flinched, then stared at her for a long moment, throat working.

“That was unnecessary, Alena,” Cassandra said firmly. Alena scowled and turned away from the table, feeling like a child who’d been disciplined in class. Cassandra tutted and said, “Josephine, how long until we can expect to hear from our allies?”

The diplomat cleared her throat. “A day or two. But I think we could hope to assemble a diplomatic envoy to Therinfal within a tenday.”

“It’s a long time to wait,” said Leliana.

“We could very well wait that long for Alexius’ invita—” Cullen began.

Alena cut him off. “He won’t wait that long. Are you so disgusted by the idea of allying with mages that you’ll let the breach—”

He slammed a fist down on the table, knocking a handful of markers over. “I’m disgusted by the idea of throwing your life away on the mere chance of their help. When we don’t even know if they can help! You want to pour even more magic into that thing in the sky? Maker, Alena, I thought you had more sense than that!”

Her mana roared up, raising the hairs on her arms, guilt and horror hot on its heels. Cullen paled and stepped back from the table.

“Enough!” Cassandra snapped. “If you can’t control yourselves—”

Cullen took another step back. Alena turned away, breathing deep, seeking the calm she’d spent a lifetime perfecting. She never lost control. She must never lose control. Cassandra made a disgusted sound.

“Well.” Leliana announced, unperturbed. “As things stand: Josie is harrying the nobility into action in response to the Templars. We have a possible plan for Redcliffe, but we can’t act until we get word from Alexius. Let’s consider these and other options overnight.”

Alena was the first out of the war room. She strode rapidly to the west gate and broke into a run the moment she’d cleared the town walls. Two hours later, having made dozens of loops around the lake, she felt no better: just a nauseous, jangly sort of exhausted, her limbs rubbery and emotions raw. She was freezing, the sweat chilling on her skin, but she couldn’t bring herself to go back to Haven. She sat on the end of the dock instead, shivering against a wooden post, and stared at the green sheen of the ice beneath her feet.

Cullen found her there. She heard his boot first, heavy on the wooden dock, and when she didn’t look around he said, “May I join you?”

She sighed and gestured at the space beside her. She didn’t feel like being gracious. She didn’t look at him until he’d sat down next to her, his boots swinging above the ice next to hers. He handed her a blanket; she took it and wrapped it around her shoulders without a word. He’d taken off his bulky armour and without it, he seemed diminished. Not a holy warrior, only a man. He looked awful, in fact: face pale and deeply creased, eyes fever-bright, a light sheen of sweat on his forehead. She hoped, savagely, that he felt as ill as he looked. And then, bile suddenly hot at the back of her throat, she remembered how he’d looked in Kirkwall in the early hours before she’d given him the lyrium.

“Andraste's—You’re not taking lyrium, are you?”

He hesitated. “No. But that’s not impor—”

“Of course it is. It could kill you!”

He shook his head vigorously. “It won’t.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You have enough on your mind.”

Alena pressed her forehead against the post at her side. She squeezed her eyes closed and tried to untangle guilt from anger.

After a long silence, Cullen cleared his throat. “When you invited Barris and the others here… I thought perhaps you might be more—”

“Reasonable?” she said icily.

“—amenable to approaching the others.”

“And I thought, when you were so insistent you’d left the order behind, that you saw us as people.” She’d been aiming for a cutting tone, but her voice wavered towards the end.

Cullen made a soft noise in the back of his throat. “I do.”

Alena kept her eyes fixed on the far side of the lake. She could imagine the soft, searching look he’d be giving her. “As children, perhaps, running about with scissors. Terribly unnatural, disgusting scissors.”

“That’s not fair,” he chided gently. “You know that’s not what I see when I look at you.”

She turned to him. She’d been right about the look. “What do you see?”

“Maker’s breath, Alena, I can’t—” He scrubbed a hand over his face and went on in a choked voice. “How can I even begin to answer that? I see someone who’s generous, who’s brave, and kind, and loyal, and—and I see—”

“I killed my sister.”

Cullen froze, eyes wide.

Alena lifted her chin and smiled with such bitterness she could taste it. “I’m sure you’ve wondered why I don’t like to cast. Well, there you go. That’s why my parents stuck me in the circle and never spoke to me again. They knew what I was. I know what I am. So I control it, because I’m not a child anymore. We’re not children.”

She watched him, waiting for the horror to bloom in his eyes, waiting for him to recoil from her. But his face turned gentle, concern creasing the corners of his eyes, and she turned away. “That’s how you came into your magic?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t.”

Cullen let out a long breath that hung for a moment in the frigid air. They sat and watched the green light reflected in the ice. “That’s why," he said at last. "I know the order became something cruel, but that’s why they’re important. To keep everyone, mages and non-mages, safe from magic. They can be—”

Alena scoffed. “I heard that all my life, you know. But I didn’t feel safe until we left the tower. I wasn’t safe.”

Cullen darted a look at her. “I know. I know we failed.”

She twisted to face him head-on. “What do you think happens, Cullen, when the entire Templar order is here, and we close the breach, and they get to be the heroes of Thedas again? What happens to us? You think they’ll stop at circles when the entire continent is back on their side?”

Cullen stared at his own knees, forehead tight. Twice he started to speak but let the words die on his tongue. “I hadn’t thought about it that way."

“What future were you planning?”

He gave her a sideways look, a flush crawling up his neck. “I thought they might redeem themselves.”

“And then?”

“We could remake them. To protect. Like we were supposed to.” Alena’s mouth twisted. Cullen hurried on. “You said it yourself. Magic, demons—they’re dangerous. The people need protection.”

She rolled her eyes. “If it was about protection, why aren’t there any mages in the Templars? Are we not experts on magic?”

He blinked at her. “Because… because mages also need—”

“If you say protection, I’ll push you off this dock.”

Cullen laughed, warm and unexpected, his face brightening. Something loosened in Alena’s chest. She smiled despite herself.

“Why did you finally make the decision, Cullen? Why did you leave the order?”

He sobered and lifted a hand to the back of his neck. “Before Meredith, before the attack, I was angry for a long time. Afraid. Afterward, I realised how much I disliked the man anger had made of me. I wanted to be better. And for a long time I thought the others would realise too, but the war just went on and on. They got angrier. More frightened. I believed the Inquisition could change that. And I thought about you,” he added, voice cracking, “and how precarious it all was for you.”

I was angry for a long time. Alena made herself ignore the end of his confession and instead cataloged all the terrible stories that had filtered out of Kirkwall in the years before the rebellion: the curfews, the violence, the liberal use of the Rite of Tranquility. Even at the worst moments, she’d been unspeakably grateful to be in the Ostwick Circle rather than the Gallows.

Cullen shifted on the dock, putting more distance between them. “I’m sorry.”

She pressed her restless hands against her thighs and took a breath, turning to him. “What for?”

“For the things I did. For the things I let happen.” His throat worked. “For the things that happened to you.”

She huffed a humourless laugh. “It’s not me you owe an apology to.” What things?, she wanted to ask. Lay out your sins for me as I did for you.

“I know. I’m not asking you to forgive me. I just wanted to tell you.”

There was so much regret in the curve of his lip and the furrow of his brow. She longed to believe him sincere. She had to haul this discussion back onto its course. “And all of that, all those things you’re sorry for, were because you were angry?”

His hand returned to his neck. “Yes.”

“Your former comrades are still angry.”

Cullen sighed. After a moment’s silence he let his hand drop, turned to her, and said, “What future are you planning?”

“One without circles or Templars.” She paused for his face to change. It didn’t. “One where all of Thedas watches the mages close the breach and sees they’re not monsters. And then, well, I’m sure Fiona and the others have their own plans, but self-governance. Partnership with non-mages to protect against magic. Not imprisonment.”

He looked out onto the ice, chewing on it. “And the risk of possession?”

She tutted. “We’re not children. We’re not out there getting possessed willy-nilly for the fun of it. Possession’s a tragedy. It’s a death. We’ve more of an interest in avoiding possession than anyone. And more expertise. My people?” Her voice broke. “Not a single possession since the tower fell. Seventeen unHarrowed children, healthy. Happy. Even as fugitives.”

Cullen’s jaw was tight and voice frayed. “The risk is always there, though, isn’t it? However small… multiply it by hundreds of mages all gathered here. Strangers! We have a responsibility to the people of Haven.”

“I know.”

“I don’t—” he began then sagged. “I don’t want to have to watch them, and assess them, and take responsibility for them. I don’t want to be a Templar again.”

“So don’t. Let them take responsibility. They’ve been protecting themselves. Let them keep doing it.”

He took a shaky breath, brow deeply furrowed. “I don’t know if I can.”

Alena’s heart clenched. She wanted to be angry again. Instead, with a recklessness that reminded her of Kirkwall, she turned his face towards her and smoothed the lines in his forehead with a gentle thumb. “It will be alright,” she promised.

He looked at her, eyes wide, lip trembling. “I want to believe you.”

Alena slid her hand to his cheek. He leaned into it, so slightly that she might have been imagining it. She couldn’t bring herself to stop touching him. “I lost my temper. In the war room. I hope you know I’d never use magic against—”

“I know. And you’re no fool. I shouldn’t have implied otherwise. I shouldn’t have shouted.”

“I shouldn’t have used your old title.” They looked at one another for a while. Cullen’s face was still wide open to her: regret and sorrow and fear and care and worry spilling out into the space between them. It disarmed her. “Can I kiss you?” she murmured, and when he nodded she pressed their lips together. He ran his hands slowly up her arms, down her back.

Alena drew back, at last lifting her hand from his face. “I’ll try to fight fair in future,” she murmured. “But I can’t change my mind on this.” She wondered what she would do if Leliana changed hers and the others all closed ranks around the idea of the Templars. She couldn’t—wouldn’t—leave the Ostwick children a world in which the Templars were ascendant again. “You heard Lucius. It’ll be Tranquility or death if the Templars have their way.”

Another long silence. Cullen stared up at the breach, the moonlight green on his face. “You believe the mages can help you close it?”

“Yes.”

He bowed his head. “I’ll think about what you’ve said.”

“Alright.” Slowly, her stomach in knots, she dropped her head to his shoulder.

She felt some of the tension drain out of him. He took her hand and pressed it to his lips. “Alena?”

“Hmm?”

“I see the whole world.”

“Huh?”

“When I look at you,” he murmured, “I see the whole world.”

Chapter Text

Cullen

Cassandra opened the meeting, pausing to shoot warning looks at both Alena and Cullen. “Where shall we begin?” 

Cullen cleared his throat and they all turned to him. Alena looked gently tired this morning, not haggard as he felt but soft: eyes a little bleary and lacking their usual kohl, long hair gathered in a mass of waves at the nape of her neck, loose strands curling around her face.

He ignored the others and said to her, mouth dry, “I’ve thought about the things you said. Let’s bring in the mages.” She lit up like a candle, and when he finally wrenched his gaze away he saw Leliana and Josephine sharing a private look, the diplomat smothering a grin.

“Wonderful,” Leliana said. “We’re all in agreement about our next move, then.”

Alena’s voice cut across the murmurs of assent: “It’s likely some rifts will linger, even with the breach closed. There’ll be more work to do. We should continue to make overtures to the Templars, no? Why not turn them and the mages to a common purpose?”

Cullen pressed his fist into his thigh and kept his gaze on the table, taking a moment, allowing the others to react in his stead.

“That’s a very daring proposition, my lady.” He could hear the smile in Josephine’s voice. “When we first spoke you implied I was a foolish optimist for hoping to achieve mere peace.”

“Not a foolish optimist,” Alena protested. “And you were speaking of peace across Thedas. I’m just talking about a couple of teensy warring factions.” Her voice had turned wry. He ventured a look at her, and she smiled at him across the table.

“It’s a worthy goal,” Cassandra declared. “One I would be pleased to support.”

Cullen nodded. “As would I. Thank you, Alena.” Across the table, she glowed.

And so it was decided, and they turned their attention, for now, to Redcliffe. Some of yesterday’s dread wound through Cullen’s gut at the thought of dangling Alena as bait for a crazed magister, but Leliana stepped out of the room for a moment and returned with the largest Qunari he’d ever seen. 

“The Iron Bull,” she said, by way of explanation. “Captain of our newest mercenary company… and Alena’s bodyguard for Redcliffe. Alexius wants her to go alone, but he won’t be able to resist capturing a Qunari.”

The Iron Bull grinned, stuck a hand out for Alena to shake, and cast an appraising, unabashed eye over her. Cullen frowned, irritated, but Alena just raised an eyebrow and said,

“Have you fought alongside a mage before?”

“You haven’t got anything I haven’t seen before.”

“We’ll see about that,” Alena replied. The suggestion in her voice twisted Cullen’s gut, but she smiled at him as she stepped away from the Qunari, warm and reassuring. The Iron Bull followed her gaze and all his flirtation vanished.

“Not to worry, boss,” he boomed at Alena, all affable professionalism. “I won’t get in your way.” And then, to the room at large, although he kept his eye on Cullen, “I’ll keep her safe.”

Alena

She caught Cullen’s eye as the meeting began to wind down. They hadn’t spoken much last night after he’d promised to think on things. She’d felt like she’d walked out onto a slender wire above a chasm and if she thought too hard about what she was doing, she’d tumble to her death. Cullen, too, seemed content not to prod the fragile intimacy between them, so they just sat in silence a while, her hand in his, her head on his shoulder. Then he’d walked her home.

Now the others gathered their papers and moved towards the door, but Alena didn’t move and neither did Cullen. Cassandra, last to leave, shot them an amused look as she closed the door.

They drifted around the table towards one another. “Thank you,” she murmured.

Cullen nodded. They were standing so close now that she caught the scent of oakmoss and whetting oil. “What about your future without Templars?” he asked.

She grimaced. “I don’t want to get there by killing them all.”

“What if that’s the only way to keep your people safe?”

“It’s not,” she said firmly. This will work. We can defang them, so long as they’re not ascendant. A series of complicated emotions flickered over Cullen’s face. She lifted a hand to his cheek and watched some of the tightness drain out of it. Now that she was closer, she could see the withdrawal on him again—the shadows under his eyes, the pallor of his skin. She ran her thumb along his too-sharp cheekbone. “The lyrium. How long?”

“Six months.”

“How bad is it?”

“I can handle it.”

She nodded, chest tight. “Why?”

“I want to put all of it behind me.”

The breath fell out of her. She’d shed the tower in stages: her robes first, swapped for breeches and a tunic the others had scavenged from the Templars’ quarters before they left the tower; her staff several days later, the first bit of magical contraband they’d sold; and finally, weeks after that, she’d straightened her shoulders and combed her hair back from her scarred face, and resolved to leave the shame behind as well.

Cullen was still leashed, might always be leashed, to the tower.

She lifted her other hand to his face. “That’s very brave.”

He reached for her and she swayed forward, her left hand tangling in his hair. He sucked her bottom lip; she whimpered then tugged roughly on his hair until he tilted his head back so she could kiss his neck and hear him whimper, too.

“Alena,” he rasped, then tore off his gloves and pushed her jacket off her shoulders, untucked her blouse so he could slide his hands up under it, run his fingers along her spine. She shivered; she was pressed against the metal of his breastplate but his hands were on her, at least, warm and calloused. Those hands, Maker, those hands had done wonderful things to her in Kirkwall, and she wanted—

Her hip struck the war table, the markers shivering in their places but not falling. They both froze, Cullen blinking comically at the table, his pupils blown wide, hair thoroughly disheveled. His hand tightened on her hip and for a moment she thought he’d sweep the markers aside and toss her down on the table, but some shred of professionalism prevailed. He tugged her across the room instead and pressed her against the wall. She laughed into his mouth and hooked a leg over his hip, pulling him into her, gasping at the feeling of his hardness grinding against her. “Alena,” he moaned again; he had her blouse half-unbuttoned now, a hand on her breast, his mouth hot behind her ear. 

Not fair, she thought, and spun them, pushing him against the wall, her palms flat on the metal of his breastplate. “Hate this thing. How do I…?” She began tugging on a strap, her fingers clumsy and trembling, her other hand guiding his back to her breast. 

There was a knock at the door, four very loud raps, and they sprang apart, fleeing back to their usual positions on opposite sides of the war table, Alena frantically rebuttoning her blouse. Cullen was breathing fast, gaze fixed on the dusty portrait of some aged Fereldan nobleman, his lips moving silently. She had the impression that he was reciting the Chant. She couldn’t help it—she chuckled. He gave her a wounded look that skittered away almost immediately.

She tucked her blouse roughly into her trews, smoothed her hair and called weakly, “Come in.” 

Josephine stepped in, tactfully keeping her eyes from their dishevelment. “Forgive the interruption. I just received word from Redcliffe.”

“Already?” Cullen demanded. His eyes were fixed on Alena now, dark with worry.

“I’m afraid so. I’ve called the others back.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Here’s Cassandra now.”

Across the table, Cullen huffed an irritated breath and turned away, flexing his hands. As the other women arrived, Alena took the time to rebuild her own equanimity. She hadn’t expected the cautious intimacy of last night to tilt so abruptly into lust this morning; she’d thought they might agree to start over, a slow and careful courtship that couldn’t possibly spiral out of control, couldn’t possibly lead to anyone getting hurt. And now that she remembered what his hands felt like on her skin, life was snatching her away again.

Leliana arrived, declaring, “If we act immediately, he’ll think you desperate and unprepared. He’ll let his guard down. My people can be in place overnight.”

Even Cullen nodded, face set in grim lines. Alena didn’t get another moment alone with him until late that afternoon as she prepared to ride out, Comet’s body a prancing, nervous shield between them and the others. 

“When I get back,” she murmured, squeezing his hand, “let’s try to be together.”

His smile was bright and relieved; it made him look ten years younger. He muttered “Let’s,” then took her face in his hands and stepped into her, his lips warm and soft and fleeting before he held the stirrup for her to mount.

“Be careful.”

Cullen

Two days later, Cullen watched the mages arrive. They walked in no sort of formation at all, just a long line of people in mismatched robes, chatting to one another or gaping at the sky. It was hard to believe, looking at them, that they’d lasted through years of war—that they’d actually given the Templars a real fight. Not a scrap of discipline at all, he thought, picnickers out for a stroll. And crueler, more suspicious things, formless thoughts that never cohered quite well enough for him to rebut them.

It wasn’t fair, he knew. Most of them were circle mages who’d had enough discipline to survive their Harrowings. That they didn’t march like a military force meant nothing. He made himself focus on Alena, walking in the vanguard with Comet trailing at her back, talking with Fiona. She didn’t look as carefree as the others, didn’t saunter or playfully shove the people around her, but she walked with a loose stride, reaching back from time to time when Comet nudged her impatiently. Not a trace of discipline in her, either, not the kind that had been drilled into him since he was child. But she was strong, he knew, and strong-willed. Astonishingly disciplined in her own way. She wasn’t a danger. Not to him, not to the people here. 

Nor were the others, he told himself.

He wanted badly to believe it. But lightning trembled up his spine and he kept catching the scent of blood.

He stood at the gate to greet them, shook Fiona’s hand, smiled at Alena when she brushed her hand against his.

The mages filed past them—milled past them—towards their new home.

There were so very many of them.

Alena said, “Cullen?” in a voice that suggested she’d been speaking to him a while. When he turned, he saw a new crease in her forehead, placed there by him. He nodded, tried to smile, and let her lead him toward the Chantry.

In the war room, there was a long silence when Alena finished recounting the future she’d witnessed in Redcliffe. Her face was impassive, but there was distress at the corners of her eyes and in her carefully tucked-away hands. And then Leliana asked a clarifying question about the Elder One and they were away, sinking into a long circular discussion that was light on fact and heavy on grim speculation.

At seven bells, Josephine lowered her writing board with a sigh. “We could discuss this for hours. Shall we bring in Grand Enchanter Fiona before it gets too late?”

And so a runner was sent for Fiona, who arrived in a matter of minutes, dignified, clearly remorseful but unbowed. Cullen had spent the time Alena was in Redcliffe preparing for the mages’ arrival. They’d managed to finish construction on two new barracks and to requisition three-score tents; the mages were now accommodated on the western edge of Haven. Barris’ Templars had repeatedly approached him about supervision of their new allies. He’d sent them away with a sternness he didn’t feel, and his nightmares each night had been full of abominations and static cages.

Now, at Alena’s prompting, Fiona described the mages’ own procedures to guard against possession: nighttime sentries outside the sleeping quarters, overlapping mentor/mentee arrangements, small-group trainings, “a culture of honesty and openness”. It all sounded terribly lax to Cullen’s ears. His neck itched. But Alena nodded and asked several detailed questions about the apprentices who’d joined the rebellion unHarrowed. She and Fiona seemed prepared to discuss the matter at length but Leliana gracefully forestalled them, asking Fiona how many abominations they’d had over the course of the rebellion. 

“Fourteen,” the Grand Enchanter said gravely. Cullen’s eyebrows shot up and he caught Alena’s sidelong smile. It was kind, though, not gloating or mocking, and despite himself he felt the corners of his own mouth curl in response. 

“In two years?” Leliana said.

“Yes. Nine in battle, younger mages who panicked, I believe. I’m uncertain of the harm they caused—a dozen of our side killed at their hands, perhaps. More if you consider the advantage of such a distraction to the Templars. Another five were taken in their sleep: four apprentices and a senior enchanter.” She shook her head grimly. “The latter was a nasty surprise. She had begun to despair, but I did not believe she was at risk. In total, let me see… several mages and a pair of Tranquil injured, four mages killed, not including those taken by the demons. No harm to civilians.”

Cullen chewed on the numbers. Far fewer possessions than he’d imagined. And each had cost about the same in lives as they would in the circles—and far fewer than they typically had outside. A voice—Meredith’s, he recognised it as now, sharp as a well-honed edge—ranted that these were lies, a fiction invented by Alena and Fiona together to placate and deceive him.

He tried to ignore her. Cassandra had begun questioning Fiona about the arrangements she would put in place here, but the Seeker didn’t seem over-worried. The Grand Enchanter turned to Cullen. “Commander, the Herald explained to me there are many former Templars within your forces. My people are likely to be distrustful. I hope we can work together to ensure there are no incidents.”

“Of course, Grand Enchanter,” he said. “Most left the order when it abandoned the Chantry, as I did. We wanted no part of this war. Those few who defected later… I’ll keep a close eye.”

“Thank you, Commander.”

Fiona left and they resumed discussion of the Elder One, going back and forth until well past twelve bells. Alena lingered as the others filed out, inclining her head in a silent invitation for Cullen to stay, too. He did, closing the door behind Cassandra with a quiet goodnight. 

When he turned back Alena was standing at the map table, the candlelight shining in her hair. He was reminded of the last time he had been alone with her here, and despite all the fear and distrust, his body stirred. He took her outstretched hand and she tugged him close, wrapping her arms around his neck. “Missed you,” she said, and while he kissed her everything else was quiet. He slid a hand to the curve of her back and felt it arch in response to his touch. Alena hummed into his mouth. 

And then she drew back to look at him. The glow of warm invitation dimmed; he’d ruined it. She frowned a little as she examined his face “Are you well?”

“Well enough,” he hedged.

Alena tutted, not unkindly and stepped out of his embrace, going to clear off two chairs in the corner of the room. When they were seated she spoke again, no challenge in her voice, just gentle curiosity. “Are you satisfied that Haven will be safe?”

Cullen sighed. “It’s hard to silence a lifetime’s training,” he admitted. “Fiona’s numbers seem too good to be true.”

“You think she’s lying?”

“No. Or not the rational part of me.” If only the irrational parts would be silent.

Alena made a sympathetic sound. He wondered what the irrational parts of her believed. She seemed to gather herself to say something, her mouth opening once, twice, and then at last she just made a resigned face. “I believe her,” she said.

Cullen nodded. “I trust you."

She huffed a little breath, surprise and gratitude lighting up her face. All the angry, terrible parts of Cullen were quiet. She said, “I’m glad.” They smiled at each other for a moment, and then she asked, smile dimming, “A lifetime’s training. How old were you?”

“Thirteen.”

“That’s terribly young.”

“How old were you?”

“Five.” Alena grimaced. “Did you want to be a Templar?”

“Oh yes. Very badly. I begged the village Templars to train me. I was overjoyed when they recommended my parents give me to the Order.”

“Why?” Such a little word, gentle in Alena’s mouth, coiled up like a trap between them.

His mouth twisted, nostalgia and bitterness and guilt all fighting for room. “I wanted to help people. To protect them.”

Alena didn’t laugh; he thought it might be the kindest thing she’d ever done for him. “Was it hard to leave your family?”

“Yes. I was close to my siblings. But the order became my family.” More sorrow crawled onto her face. He wanted to chase it away, but he couldn’t think of a single spot of shared brightness in their tangled, sorry histories. “We needn’t—” he began. 

She took his hand. “It must be hard, having so many mages here.”

“No,” he said, but she put a gentle finger on his lips.

“It’s alright if it is.”

Cullen hung his head. “I don’t want to be that man again.” 

Alena pulled her chair closer still, tangled their legs. She smoothed both hands through his hair. “But you feel like him? Angry? Afraid?”

“I don’t want to.”

“It doesn’t matter how you feel. It matters what you do.”

He sighed, caught her hands, kissed them. But he didn’t know what to say to her, so they just sat while he tried to convince himself she was right.

“Cullen. Perhaps you could tell me… what is it you feel so guilty for?”

He’d imagined telling her many times: imagined her disgust and fury and rejection. Couldn’t believe, really, that she hadn’t already imagined the worst. Wasn’t sure why she’d chosen not to, or chosen not believe it. 

“You’ve read Varric’s book?”

“No. But there were many rumours about Kirkwall in Ostwick.”

The laugh that bubbled out of him was harsh and ugly. “I was second in command. How can you even look at me?”

Silence stretched out between them. Finally Alena took a breath. “I’ve done terrible things, too, and I want to believe I can still be a good person. I think… I don’t know. I can’t believe you were cruel.”

Cullen’s chest felt hollow. “I hope not. But I wasn’t kind. And I turned away from so much… Refused to see the abuses.” He made himself look at her: brow furrowed, sorrow carved into the corners of her eyes. The scar, a permanent reminder of the violence that had been done to her. And here he was, making her comfort him, when he had turned his back on the mages in his care. “You shouldn’t—”

“Don’t.” She pressed the finger to his lips again. “Just let me worry about you for a while.”

“You should be furious at me.”

“Part of me is.” She stroked his cheek. “But I want to understand.”

Cullen let out a ragged breath. He wished she would scream at him. Strike him. This kindness was almost unbearable. Not kindness, hissed the voice, too near. Manipulation.

“Maker,” Cullen put his head in his hands. “I think I’m going mad.”

Alena was quiet until he lifted his head. “The lyrium?”

“Yes. It’s getting worse again.” 

She nodded and they sat in silence a while. Eventually she said, “I don’t want to push you.”

“But?” he said, trying for a light tone, missing wildly.

“But I’ve been thinking. You joined the Templars in Ferelden—”

Cullen’s face twitched so violently that Alena fell silent. “Yes,” he rasped. “I did.” She didn’t react, only sat waiting as he slowed his breathing and smoothed his palms along his thighs. “Yes. I was a recruit in the Ferelden circle when it fell.”

“Blood mages.”

“Yes. I was… held. For three days. Rescued by the Hero of Fereldan. And then,” he rushed it past his lips before he could change his mind, “I begged her to carry out the Rite of Annulment.”

Alena went very pale and her lip trembled. It was almost a relief. He’d done it. This would be the thing she couldn’t forgive. 

She pressed her eyes closed and whispered, “That’s awful.”

“Yes,” he said, hollow as a drum. “I’ll lea—”

“I’m sorry.”

Sensation flooded him again. Anger. He wanted to shake her. “Don’t. Don’t forgive me that. You hate the Templars. You should hate me.”

She looked at the wall, off in one of her little internal debates. Once, she’d wandered off in her own head and decided to trust him. He hoped she’d make a better choice this time.

“I hate the order, Cullen. The circles. I hate what they made of us all.”

His breath hitched. “They didn’t make anything of you. You’re wonderful.”

She shook her head, lips thin. Then she took his hand and said, “I can’t imagine what that was like. I’m desperately grateful for Elizabeth Cousland’s restraint, but I don’t blame you.”

“And if she’d listened to me? Slaughtered them all? The children, hiding under their beds?” Alena shuddered. That one had struck true. “If she’d—”

“Don’t,” she snapped, dropping his hand and standing up in a rush, knocking her chair over. “You want to push me away. I get it. I’m going. But don’t treat me like I don’t know my own mind, like I need you to explain to me what Annulment means, what Tranquility means, what exactly your brothers and sisters did in the dark that you chose to allow. Because I know all that. I’ve always known all that.” She took a deep breath, scrubbed her hands over her face, and walked to the door. 

“You haven’t tricked me, Cullen. I care about you because you’re worth caring about, not because I’m too naive to understand what being a Templar means.”

And then she was gone. Cullen stood, hollow, and righted her chair, blinking at it for a long time before turning to the centre of the room. He plucked the wooden Templar marker from the table and stared at it, turning it slowly in his hands.

Alena

Alena spent the next day with Solas and the Redcliffe mages, forming up in different configurations on the shores of the lake to practice pooling their mana for her use. It was difficult work. Magic was not a collaborative enterprise in the towers. It was a competition: a mage’s personal capacity for mana and the power of its expression were marks of status, jealously guarded. Now, as the shared pool of potential grew between them, they all wanted to grab at it, tinker with it, do something spectacular with it. Alena had spent her life turning away from a mass of untapped power, but even she felt a shiver of temptation. There was so much of it—a shimmering mass of wonders-yet-underbuilt, miracles-yet-unperformed. Her fingers trembled with it.

It didn’t take much more than that—a shiver of want, the thought of some specific working a mage wanted to perform—to start siphoning mana out of the pool. It was happening almost before the mage responsible understood their own wish. 

They’d never have managed it without Solas. He was a calm, unobtrusive presence at her side or Fiona’s, his suggestions clear and precise. When Alena raised a curious eyebrow at the depth of his knowledge, he waved a dismissive hand. “Arlathan was built with such communal workings. I witnessed the ancient elves at work as I slept.” When she opened her mouth to ask another question, he only gestured at the breach.

When they broke for lunch, Alena noticed them watching: two of the Templars who’d defected in Val Royeaux. Nevarrans, she thought. Paul Bohm and… Nadine something? Their eyes were narrowed and they muttered to one another as the mages clapped hands and enthused about their progress, turning away when they noticed Alena’s gaze. She kept her chin up as she passed them, dread curling up in her gut. Beyond them, the camp, with its commander at the centre, a sheaf of papers in one had as he gestured energetically with another, tall and straight-backed. The strain of withdrawal should have dimmed his beauty, but it only lent him the gravitas of a much older man.

She should tell him about the defectors, but it felt like an attack. I don’t trust Templars, I don’t trust your people, I don’t trust you. Their conversation last night had badly dented the fragile thing between them; she was certain that another fight today would be the end of it. Instead she pointed the defectors out to Fiona. “Keep an eye open.”

But the defectors were nowhere to be seen that afternoon. The mages pooled their mana flawlessly half a dozen times, and then for the first time Alena let her fingers flick out to pull the power into herself. It was nothing like drawing on her own sharp power. This was bright, sweet, and cool, like sipping summer cider through a straw. It fizzed on her tongue, and she laughed and lifted her hands to weave sparks between her fingers. The pool was at her fingertips, immense and joyful, and for a brief drunken moment her magic was beautiful. 

She could toss aside the straw and take all that power into herself in greedy gulps.

She dropped her hands and abruptly let go of her grip on the shared pool. Solas was watching her, a faint, knowing tilt at the corners of his mouth. She thrust her hands in her pockets. “I know what to do. Let’s all get some rest.” 

Dorian, who’d been leaning insouciantly on a rock and pretending the entire process came easy to him, slid off it with theatrical relief. “At last. Tavern?”

“You go ahead.” She glanced at Fiona, who was shooing the mages back towards town, and beyond her to the sprawling tents of the military camp. “Don’t get too drunk,” she added. “The ex-Templars are restless.”

When they were all gone, she sat on Dorian’s rock and unlaced her boots with shaking hands. She’d begun keeping her light running shoes in a pouch on her belt and slipped them gratefully on. She left her boots and the stiletto she kept thrust in one there by the edge of the lake and began unbuckling the belt that held Cullen’s poignard. But her gaze fell on the camp again, and she left it on.

As she ran, she let herself feel the hunger that had taken her. The craving. Power had always felt wrong, before. Loud, sharp, frightening. She’d grown, in the months after the tower, to appreciate having it—it meant that she didn’t ever have to be afraid. But she’d never hungered for it. She’d never wanted to fill herself up with it—with stolen power, snatched out of the hands of friends and allies. She hadn’t thought herself capable of such greed. 

She’d never understood, before, the call of blood. She’d thought herself above it. But Maker, what might she have done, if her own power weren’t so abhorrent to her, if it were intoxicating rather than nauseauting, on that violent night when the tower fell?

What might she have done to Robert, if her power hadn’t tasted so bitter?

The shadows began to lengthen, and Alena slowed. She’d slept little since the night she and Cullen sat hand in hand on the pier and she began to loosen her grip on her own frightened heart, and she tired more easily now. She slowed to a trot, then as she reached the pier, a walk. She stood at the end for the pier for a while, looking at the breach. She could close it, she felt certain of that, and knowing it she could look up at it without any of the sick horror she usually felt. She could indulge the part of her that found its unworldly light beautiful.

Her legs were beginning to stiffen. She’d walk back the long way, let the muscles cool slowly, and then find Cullen. See if they could get close enough to console one another.
It was dark among the trees, and she realised she’d made a mistake in the split second before something struck her hard in the temple and the world went dark.

Chapter Text

Cullen

Cullen was leaving the Chantry when the bells rang out loud and panicked by the western gate. He ran there and was met by a scout running at full speed. “The Herald!” the young man called. “Down near the pilgrim’s bridge!”

“Understood,” Cullen said, putting on a fresh burst of speed.

They weren’t far down the road: three of the Montsimmard defectors, Maker curse them, with Alena and a lone scout. A fourth Templar was on the ground, an arrow lodged in their eye. Dead. Two of them—Bohm and Auer, he thought—were on Alena, the scout engaged with the third. They were trying to take her alive, Cullen realised, his legs pumping, two hundred metres still between him and the fight. They were circling her cautiously, Auer trying to hold her attention while Bohm came in to grab her from behind. She whirled away but he caught hold of her braid and pulled hard, throwing her off balance. One hundred metres to go and the sky darkened, a threatening rumble of thunder rolling across the snowy landscape. She’d decided there was no other choice, apparently. Sparks ran up the length of her unfocused knife—where was the other? And then all her gathered power was stamped flat: he could only dimly sense the silencing, but the moon broke free of the clouds and Alena’s sparks winked out. Cullen’s chest was tight. He was too far away! Auer struck out with the pommel of her blade, but Alena ducked and flicked a careless hand and tore the silencing to shreds. Her gathered power struck Cullen like a wave, the clouds rushing back in, the wind sharp and cold in his face. 

She shouldn’t be able to do that.

When he skidded to a stop seconds later, she had a knee on Bohm’s chest, the tip of her dagger at his neck. “Never. Again,” she ground out, and with a cursory glance over her shoulder to assure herself an ally had arrived she sheathed the dagger and walked away. Her right hand trembled briefly at her side before she gathered them both out of his view.

The scout was bleeding but not seriously hurt. “Commander Cullen,” she said. “Two dead over here.” Bohm was gasping for breath. Cullen kicked his sword further out of reach. 

“Watch him,” he snapped and strode over to Auer. Also alive. When he turned her over and pushed off her helmet he saw a spreading mark like the branches of a tree blooming from her plate mail over her neck and face. He frowned at it, something tugging at his memory. Auer’s breath, like her comrade’s, was ragged. Cullen picked up her sword and fought down a mad furious desire to thrust it into her throat. Alena had pulled her punches. He’d never seen someone survive her. She’d left them alive for a reason.

Voices. Leliana, Cassandra, and Iron Bull with a handful of his mercenaries. “Two alive,” Cullen said shortly, keeping hold of Auer’s sword and beginning to follow Alena. She was halfway along the bridge, wedged against its wall on the far side of a ruined cart that’d been abandoned the day of the Conclave. Her knees were drawn up, her head pressed against them and arms wrapped tightly around them. The shape of her name died on his lips. She wouldn’t want him. He turned away, gestured for Cassandra. He wished Varric were there, or Fiona, but he thought he’d seen a fragile friendship springing up between Cassandra and Alena. He hoped he had. 

“See if she’s alright?”

Cassandra gave him a curious look but went. She propped her sword and shield against the wall of the bridge and crouched, speaking to Alena. After a moment she turned back to Cullen, nodding, gesturing that they should return to camp whenever they were ready. She’d follow with Alena. Cullen nodded back, watched Cassandra sit down next to Alena, and turned to the Templars who’d tried to kill her. To take her, he corrected himself, but he didn’t see much of a difference. They were both in chains now, Iron Bull hauling Auer roughly to her feet, his healer crouched over Bohm.

“Take them to the dungeons,” Leliana said. “I’ll question them there.”

Auer spat. “I have nothing to say to you.”

Leliana smiled very sweetly. “We shall see.”

The healer stood. “Ready to go,” he said of Bohm. Cullen took the man’s chains, yanked him up, towed him roughly back to Haven.

When it came to interrogation, though, he fled. He didn’t want to hear them say all the ugly things he’d been thinking and dreaming since the mages arrived. Didn’t want to see what he could tip into, might tip into, if he weren’t vigilant. If he didn’t fight at every moment not to be afraid.

No, he thought. It doesn’t matter if I’m afraid. It matters what I do with it.

He paced for a long time by the western gate, then retreated at the sight of Alena and Cassandra finally making their way back to town. She didn’t need to see him. Not until she was forced to, a few hours later in the war room, her face pale, eyes wide and blinking, her usual mask of calm wavering so terribly he knew they could all see it.

Alena

“It seems their plan was to use Alena to buy their way back into Lucius’ good graces,” Leliana reported. “And then they hoped he’d use her to close the breach.”

“But they defected less than three weeks ago!” Josephine exclaimed. “Why change their minds so suddenly?”

“We brought in the mages,” Alena said. She wanted to slump against the wall. She wanted her bed. Instead she was standing over the war table, her throat thick and spine crawling. 

“Exactly,” Leliana nodded.

“You’re sure they’re secure?” Cullen demanded for the third time since the meeting had begun. Alena’s chest tightened. She didn’t know what to do with his concern. It took up so much room.

Leliana’s voice betrayed only the slightest irritation. “Yes, Cullen. The cells are secure. And I have six people down there.”

He paced at the edge of Alena’s vision. “What of the other defectors?”

“Several more agents are watching them. But I believe the four of them acted alone.”

“We’ll need to have a trial,” Cassandra said. 

Cullen scoffed. “They tried to kidnap her! Execute them and be done with it. We have witnesses.”

“You can’t,” Alena said dully. She wanted them dead as acutely now as she had hours ago by the bridge. But she’d kept them alive—they had to stay alive—to be tried. Nothing could be allowed to further damage the mages’ reputation. “We can’t give them any ammunition.”

She made a tremendous effort and raised her eyes to Cullen’s face. It was twisted in concern. His accent had flattened, more Ferelden slipping out. “We can’t risk their escape, Alena! Your safety is—”

“They can’t take me alive and they don’t want to kill me.”

“They could bloody well change their minds!” Cullen pressed a fist against the table and leaned towards her, imploring.

She shook her head mutely.

“The Herald is right,” Josephine said. “If we spin this carefully, we weaken the Templars—the Lord Seeker—even further. If we’re reckless, we leave room for catastrophic gossip.”

Cullen straightened, jaw tight, but turned slightly away from the table in concession. Alena looked down at it again, heart sinking as her eyes scanned the markers, always more markers, and always spreading farther. Her gaze finally landed on Wycombe. Her breath caught. Sometime that day, a raven had flown in over her distracted, unseeing head, and Leliana had taken two rift markers from the cabinet and placed them down to the southwest of the city. And Alena had just gone about her day. She’d enjoyed training with the mages, gone for a run, admired the lake, dared to think that—

“Alena?” Cullen’s voice was edged with panic, and hands were on her suddenly and with them the realisation that she couldn’t get enough air and her heart was a hammerstrike against her ribs and—

And the hands pressed her into a chair and pushed her head down, and Cassandra said “Breathe, Alena. Breathe in, breathe out,” and sighed out a long breath in the time Alena took five. “Stay back,” the Seeker told someone and kept counting breaths and rubbing firm circles on Alena’s back. Alena’s own breath finally began to slow and her heart to stop careening. The mana, which she realised with horror had been bubbling just beneath her skin, subsided. Her limbs flooded with exhaustion and she sagged, head sinking even deeper between her knees. “That’s it, Alena. Good,” Cassandra murmured. “Just keep breathing.” Her hand stilled and Alena had the distant sense that an energetic conversation was going on in silence above her head. The door opened and closed. A flask of water was pressed into her hands, and Cassandra helped her sit up straight and take a drink. 

And then she was present enough to realise that they’d all just seen her fall apart. Her cheeks burned and her breath hitched again, and when Cassandra took the flask back she pressed her palms over her face. “None of that, now,” Cassandra said, firm enough to pull Alena up short. She dropped her hands and sagged again.

The door opened. “It’s quiet,” Cullen murmured. 

Cassandra guided her out of the war room, through the Chantry and the sleeping streets to Alena’s own door. Alena fumbled in her pocket for a long time. “Can I help?” Cassandra asked. Alena nodded and the other woman fished her key out in seconds, led her inside, pulled off her boots and put her to bed.

“I’m sorry,” Alena whispered.

Cassandra tutted. “None of that,” she said again. She pulled the covers up to Alena’s chin and set the waterskin on the bedside table. “Sleep now.”

***

She woke the next morning as she had after her Harrowing: a clumsy, exhausted fumbling towards wakefulness, sick at heart for reasons she couldn’t—for a moment—quite remember. It was too bright, and she pulled the blanket over her head, curling around herself. 

Wycombe.

She clambered unsteadily out of bed, splashed cold water from the washbasin on her face, and pulled on the clothes nearest to hand. She was at Leliana’s tent less than ten minutes after waking. 

The spymaster took one look at her and dismissed the two agents who’d been going over reports with her. As soon as they were gone, and before Alena could even open her mouth, Leliana said gently, “Is this about the Wycombe rifts?”

Alena pressed her fists against her thighs. “You knew.”

“Yes. I’m sorry, Alena. I intended to speak with you before you saw the war table yesterday. I didn’t want you find out that way. I don’t know your people’s status yet but I will find out.” 

As she spoke, Leliana cleared off a stool and placed it near Alena. She looked remorseful. Alena didn’t trust it at all. “How did you find them?”

“I haven’t, precisely. My agents intercepted your letter in Val Royeaux”—Alena ground her teeth—“and copied it before sending it and the coin on themselves. Inquisition channels. It reached the dead drop in Wycombe four days ago, delivered by the same agent who sent me the news of the rifts. That’s the most recent update I’ve had from the northern Marches.”

Alena scowled. “I hope you don’t expect me to thank you for spying on me.”

“I don’t.” 

Alena sighed and sat. “Where exactly are the rifts?”

“One is just north of the village of Hetbay, the other is…” she shifted a piece of paper on the desk beside her and scanned the map below it. Alena held her breath. “Ah. Northeast of Lerport and west of Ferwick. A kilometre or so west of the road to Wycombe.”

Alena let out a long breath and scrubbed her hands over her face. Both were far too close to the farm for comfort, but Maker’s mercy, they were far enough away that her people were unlikely to have been overwhelmed without warning. “Any chance there’s more we don’t know about yet?”

Leliana grimaced. “A very good chance there’s more to the west and north of Wycombe, but in the southern farmlands? I don’t believe so.” 

Alena stood and stepped over to examine Leliana’s map of the Free Marches. “Here,” she said, pointing to a bend in Arlingdon Run as it flowed east from Hetbay towards the coast. “They’re on a small farm here, owned by Willard and Sarah Bowen. Don’t make me regret this.”

“We’ll help you keep them safe,” Leliana said firmly. 

Alena pressed the thumb of her left hand into the palm of her right, staring down at the map. Her scalp ached from the Templar's sharp yank of her hair. “I’ll prepare a message for Senior Enchanter Rogier, can your agent…?”

“Of course.”

“The breach. We still have to move on it today. You didn’t cancel after I…?”

“No. We were going to postpone if you didn’t wake by ten-and-a-half bells.” Leliana beckoned a nearby runner and bid her alert Cullen and Fiona to prepare to march on the Breach as planned.

Alena rubbed her face briskly again and began to head back to her cabin. She lingered at the tent’s entry and looked back at Leliana. “Thank you,” she said dryly. “For the agents you had shadowing me last night, too. But don’t spy on me anymore.”

She closed the breach that afternoon. The gathered power, when she reached for it, was as bright and delicious as it had been yesterday, but this time she let it flow through her, a fast-flowing river that washed clean all the lingering exhaustion and panic. It made her well and whole and capable of extraordinary things. She healed the sky. What else might be possible, if they could master such cooperation?

She could understand, she thought, why the defectors had feared this.

Chapter Text

Alena

“Stay,” Cassandra said. “Let Leliana help you. Let us help you.”

They were standing by the quartermaster’s tent, looking out over the revelry below. It had taken nearly an hour to push their way through the crowded streets. Everyone had wished to congratulate them, to push bottles of wine or mugs of ale into their hands, to clap their shoulders. The thrilling confidence that had flooded Alena along with the borrowed power had begun to ebb. Exhaustion was seeping back in.

She sighed. “I don’t know if I trust her.”

Cassandra hummed thoughtfully. “Leliana is ruthless. Secretive. But I’ve worked with her for many years. You can trust her on this.”

Alena noted Cassandra’s cautious phrasing. “And if it turns out the rifts closed along with the breach? The Inquisition will disband, will it not?”

“Not overnight. We won’t abandon you or your people.”

Alena closed her eyes. “I’ll—” she began, but

A powerful horn blast came from one of the watchtowers, and a second, and then the bells of the Chantry began to ring. “We have to get to the gate,” Cassandra told Alena urgently, and then she was gone, shouldering her way through the crowds towards the gate. Alena followed, fighting a surge of fear as the people around her pressed in, their breath smelling of ale, their bodies too warm.

Cullen was at the gate, barking orders at the scrambling troops, face tight. When Cassandra and Alena reached him, he said, “Forces are marching on Haven.”

Josephine, too, had managed to reach the gate, her face flushed, her dark wavy hair pulled half out of its normally impeccable bun. “Under what banner?”

“None.”

“None?” Before Cullen could reply someone began to knock at the closed gate.

“Please! I can’t come in if you don’t open!” A young man’s voice, desperate and fearful. Alena glanced at Cullen before running to the gate and lifting the bar, flinging it open to reveal a very young man—a boy—in an enormous wide-brimmed hat and dirty leathers. Several bodies lay at his feet, and he held a wicked looking dagger in each hand.

“The Elder One is coming for you,” he said, looking directly at Alena. “He’s very angry that you took his mages.”

Cullen

They were Templars. They’d been Templars. Now they had crystalline horrors jutting out of their faces or red spikes encasing an arm. They were stronger than they had a right to be. His head swum with a lyrium-song more violent and more compelling than he’d ever heard. Red lyrium. His focus wavered—and he needed to focus, now more than ever.

They’d made it just past the training grounds to the northern trebuchet before the first wave fell on them: first battalion with him, second holding the western gate, in theory at least: his soldiers were scattered and scrambling.

He shouted orders between swings of his sword: E squadron to flank north, B to the crest of the hill, D to the stables, hold them! He caught sight of Alena here and there. She, Cassandra, Bull and Varric were at the foot of the trebuchet, pushing back any Red Templar who made for the lone sapper frantically preparing the machine to fire.

He thought for a minute they’d manage it, and then a fresh wave of enemies surged up the hill. The tide turned in an instant and he was about to call a retreat when thunder roared and lightning speared down all around Alena. Cullen’s stomach clenched. Most of the Red Templars within fifteen metres of her fell down dead; a few survived but struggled to rise and were cut down by Inquisition soldiers. In front of the trebuchet, Alena fell to her hands and knees, retching. There were already more enemies cresting the hill. Cullen heard Matilda shouting at his back—Commander, orders for the mages?—but he couldn’t manage to turn until he saw Alena’s three companions springing towards her, forming a protective circle. She was struggling to her feet. He turned; Fiona and a score of rebel mages were taking up position in front of the gates. “Concentrate fire on the lake path,” he roared. “Keep them off the trebuchet.”

The mages helped, but Templars began pressing down from the east, splitting their attention and quelling their magic. Another terrifying moment, another burst of lightning, Cullen’s neck seizing, Alena wavering, her friends leaping towards her. And again. And again. Her face was very pale and she’d stopped fighting, stopped moving, only cast and recovered from casting.

At last the trebuchet fired its deadly shot towards the main body of the approaching force, still descending the snowy mountain. A large section of the approaching sheet of torchlight blacked out. Not enough though: what remained had to represent hundreds of soldiers. He shoved his sword between the joints of a Templar’s armour, swung it to slice the head from a second, and there was breathing room. More than breathing room: the trebuchet and the gate, for the moment, were theirs.

“The northwest trebuchet isn’t firing! They mustn’t have reached it,” someone cried.

Alena was leaning heavily on Iron Bull, trying to sheath a dagger with a trembling hand. “We’ll retake it,” she shouted and pushed herself upright, forced the dagger home, and dashed unsteadily into the darkness.

“Lyons, Malatesta, protect the Herald,” Cullen barked, and the sergeants rallied their squadrons and trotted off after her. Cullen ordered Rylen to hold their position and marched stiffly back into the village to rally his fragmented forces and assure himself the west gate was holding. The sky to the northwest was dark and split by frequent lightning, and for once her magic held only relief for him.

He was on his way back to the north gate when the dragon swept low over the village, fire pouring from its throat. He cursed and knocked the nearest villager to the ground, covering them with his body, the flame licking so close that his armour turned hot against his skin. It flew off towards Alena’s position. He hauled the village man to his feet, shouted “get to the Chantry!” and ran for the gate. The village was alight, thatch roofs burning.

He called the retreat at the gate and sent a pair of recruits to pass the message to the west gate. The trebuchet fired once more, but the approaching forces were too close now; the projectile only trimmed the far edge of the approaching sheet of light. “Enough. To the Chantry!” They poured in. He looked left, spotted Sergeant Gruber and his squadron milling about at the stables, then realised a moment later that he could see them because the stables were alight. The horses were screaming. “Open the doors!” he shouted uselessly into the chaos. But the soldiers were already doing so, and they rolled out of the way as the Inquisition’s two dozen precious horses thundered out of the stable, eyes rolling, tossing their manes. Comet was in the lead, his tail a bright red banner against the snow.

I’m sorry, Alena, he thought, but then the dragon passed over again, leaving burning soldiers and mages in its wake. Two dozen Red Templars crested the hill. Cullen shouted the alert and drew his sword. The next ten minutes were lost to desperate fighting. Then he felt the hairs on his arms stand up and in the next instant lightning coursed around him and the Templars were down. He turned to see Alena leaning against the stone wall, loose strands of her long hair standing on end, lips pressed thin with rage or nausea. A gash on her forehead poured blood onto her face. He crossed to her in three long strides, tearing a strip of material from his mantle and pressing it to her wound.

“I’m alright,” she said, voice scraping painfully. She sheathed her daggers and took the cloth from him, her other hand brushing his cheek. They hadn’t touched one another since that awful night in the war room. “The Chantry?”

“Yes,” he said, thinking, at this point, just make them fight for it. But he couldn’t say it, couldn’t tell her to her face that he’d failed her so terribly that she’d die here, so far from her home.

“The horses?”

“Fled.”

She heaved a breath. “We’ll sweep west. Gather as many survivors as we can.”

He let her go, gathered his own people to sweep east. Between blows, between last-minute rescues, he watched the storm to the west.

On he fought, shouting until his throat was raw, breathing smoke, pulling Seggrit out of a burning home, arriving in time to help Threnn push back a press of Templars who’d got over the southern wall. Then they were in the square in front of the Chantry, the crowd that filled it heaving away as the dragon swept overhead, screaming as clothes or hair or skin caught fire. Alena was there, or at least he felt her, a wild surge of power that knocked the dragon off course and killed the Red Templars that had begun to assault the square from the south.

Then he was through the door and into the Chantry himself, the last few soldiers piling in and closing the heavy doors behind them, the whole mass of people backing away, hundreds of bodies squeezed into a village church.

Alena drew him into her circle, and she was all he could he see as he suggested she bring the mountain down on them all. I’ve killed you, he thought. I’m killing you.

But her blue eyes didn’t flicker. Her face, parchment-pale, was as calm as ever he’d seen it. Her hands were behind her back and she swayed very slightly on her feet. The strange boy from the gate called her attention, and she only blinked as he told her the Elder One wanted her, didn’t care about the village.

“Would he let his people kill me, if he thought he’d have a chance himself?” Alena inquired, as though she were asking what time lunch would be served.

“He’s very loud. He hurts to hear. But I think,” the boy replied, “he wants to kill you himself.”

“Right,” Alena said. Oh, at one? And will there be wine? And then Roderick was talking, and Alena was nodding thoughtfully, and Cullen knew that something terrible was about to happen.

“Right,” she repeated. “Can you get them out, Cullen?” He gaped at her. “Follow Roderick along the summer pilgrimage,” she said patiently, still speaking like a woman who was finalising the details of her social diary.

“What are you going to do?”

“I’ll give you an opening. Go. And take the prisoners.”

He backed away from her, shouting orders, trying to get Rylen’s or Matilda’s or anyone’s attention without turning his eyes from Alena for more than a moment. The strange boy and Roderick pushed their way through the crowds towards the rear of the Chantry, and the crowd surged between panic and hope. A dangerous place to be, he knew; they’d kill themselves with their eagerness to escape. But his soldiers were taking up his shouts, and something like order was beginning to form behind the Chancellor and his escort. Alena was by the door, removing her boots with shaking hands; it was such a bizarre thing to do amidst the chaos that he could only blink for a moment, and then Rylen was tugging on his sleeve. He barked his orders, told him to take command, and was at the door just as Alena said, in a tone that brooked no disagreement, “You’ll slow me down,” to the small cluster of people around her: Varric and Cassandra and all her mismatched companions. She’d pulled her light, low-cut running shoes out of nowhere—had she had them strapped to her belt?—and had slipped them on in place of her heavy winter boots. She pulled open the door cautiously and looked out.

“I’m going with you,” Cullen said.

She closed the door, said to them all, her friends and Cullen at once, “Go. I can do this, but only alone. I know where I’m going. He’ll focus on me. I’ll fire the trebuchet. Go. Don’t slow me down. I won’t make it if you do.” And then she took Cullen’s chin, and some of the preternatural calm of her expression faded. She looked instead like a woman who’d set out with full knowledge of his weak points and knew how to strike them. “You have a duty to protect these people. Protect them. Go.”

The others were backing reluctantly away. Cullen heaved a breath and tore his face from her hands. “I will,” he promised, as though he hadn’t just failed in that exact task.

Alena took two steps back, opened the door, looked out again, then back. She grinned suddenly, eyes lighting with a reckless mania that stopped his heart. “They can’t catch me,” she laughed, eyes shining, and was gone.

***

Cullen didn’t let himself look until they were well above Haven, tracing a faint path that snaked north and west through deep drifts of snow. There, in the thin air, he stopped to watch. Far below, there was a cluster of activity by one of the trebuchets. The Elder One; his dragon; and Alena alone, a tiny dark speck against the snow.

I left her alone.

They stalked her, the Elder One and his dragon, paced the area around her—she’d kept his attention for so long, how?—and then he was on her, and Cullen couldn’t see well enough to know what was happening but he knew he was killing her. The Elder One tossed her body away, and it struck the trebuchet hard. There was a long stillness.

I sent her to die.

Another spasm of movement below, the speck that was Alena suddenly upright and streaking away from the others; the trebuchet’s payload arcing through the sky, striking the mountain overlooking the village. There was a sickening pause, and the mountain groaned, the snow splitting apart, the avalanche tumbling into terrible, unstoppable life. The avalanche he had suggested.

Cullen sat down in the snow and watched it gain on her. And then, in the moment before it would have devoured her, she was gone. He stared at the place she had been, counted the heartbeats before the avalanche swept over it.

“Did she just…?” someone said slowly, and Cullen looked over to see Varric squinting into the distance at his side.

“The tunnels,” Cullen whispered, and then, louder, clambering to his feet, “She fell into the tunnels. We have to go back for her.”

Chapter Text

Alena

Alena woke to thin dawn light. Her hand flew to her neck, stomach turning at the memory of Corypheus’ fist closed around it. His tainted flesh against hers. The taint! She sat up in a flurry, getting tangled in the nest of thin blankets that had been stacked atop her in her hurry to push them off, to get at look at her own skin.

“Shh. You need to rest.”

Mother Giselle was seated on a rock by her cot, reaching a soothing, ungloved hand towards Alena. She recoiled and at last pulled her arms free. The skin was marked by scrapes and bruises, one wrist tightly bandaged, but there was was no sign of the crawling black rot of the blight.

It should have blossomed by now, shouldn’t it?

Beyond the thin canvas of the tent, she heard the crackle of fire and the ambient noise of hundreds of people. And raised voices—Cullen’s unmistakable, and a sharp female reply she thought belonged to Cassandra.

“You gave us the gift of time,” Giselle lilted. “And with time to doubt, we turn to blame.” She smiled at Alena, kind in a way that reminded her vaguely of Robert. A kindness meant to maneuver the recipient into something.

“I… need to…” Alena hoped the confusion of injury and disturbed sleep would cover her discomfort. A pair of heavy boots had been placed neatly at the side of her bed. She sat up and pulled them on, then stood. She’d been stripped to her breeches and linen undershirt, but there amongst the blankets was Cullen’s cloak. She wrapped it around herself and pushed past the thin fabric separating her from the rest of the camp. The heads of those nearest her turned. Their faces were haggard, their eyes dull.

When Giselle began to sing, Alena realised she’d done exactly as the woman had planned. It was a hymn of hope, of resilience, of perseverance. The people took it up, raising their voices to the sky, more of them turning their faces to her. She shuddered, and then the clouds parted and a shaft of precious golden sunrise bathed her face. “What the fuck,” she muttered between gritted teeth.

On the far side of the central fire, Leliana lifted her sweet bard’s voice. They crowded in on her, the voices, scraping along the bare skin of her arms, slithering under the bandage wrapped too tight around her neck. Cullen pushed his way to the front of the gathering crowd, his eyes fixed on her. He looked like he might sing, too, but it died on his lips at the sight of her. She realised, then, that Giselle had left her no choice.

Alena made herself smile, humble but gratified. She lifted a hand, triumphant yet sorrowful, mindful of the corpses she’d once again left in her wake.

The song swelled. Cullen stared at her. She smiled until her cheeks hurt and prayed nobody would reach out a hand to touch her. At last it ended and she fought the urge to slip back through the curtains to her bed. While she vacillated, Solas appeared at her elbow. “A word?”

It was as good an excuse as any to flee, so she limped out into the snow and listened: the anchor was elven, or at least the device that created it was. He was worried.

“I won’t say anything. But it gives us a clue, doesn’t it? Who do you trust to look into this?”

“Myself.”

She nodded.

A conspiratorial smile curled the edges of Solas’ lips. “There’s one other thing,” he said, and told her about Skyhold.

Cullen

When he finally found a moment to speak with her, Alena had retreated back behind the curtain of the healers’ tent. She was arguing with the same matronly Fereldan woman who’d received her frozen body hours before. The healer pointed at Cullen and said, “Look! He carried ye to us half naked and not a blot on him!” Then, to Cullen, “Talk some sense into the girl, will ye? And have her drink this.”

She tossed a waterskin to Cullen and bustled away. He sat cautiously on the edge of Alena’s cot and held it out to her. She put it down at her side, staring at Cullen with her face tight. His cloak was wrapped around her shoulders: the sight warmed him. “The Elder One. He’s a darkspawn. He”—she lifted a hand to her bandaged neck—“touched me. And so did you.”

He tamped down an instinctive horror of anything that might carry the taint. “I feel fine. Look at me, I’m fine.” He pulled off his gloves and vambraces to reveal unblemished skin. “See?”

Alena sagged. “You went back for me?” Cullen nodded and she took his hand in both of hers. “Thank you for my life.” She kissed his fingers and her voice turned wry. “Terribly sorry if I gave you the Blight.”

“You didn’t. Drink.”

She wrinkled her nose at him but obeyed. When she unscrewed the cap, a sweet-smelling steam floated out between them, and Alena’s face lost some of its tension. She took a few long sips, then sighed and handed the flask to him. “That helps. You should have some.”

Cullen recapped it and rested it against her knee. “You don’t have to do this.” They were preparing to move out, and the other patients were being strapped onto makeshift travois. But Alena would lead them; Alena, who’d nearly lost both feet to frostbite and who was still dangerously pale.

She took his hand again and pressed it to her face. Maker, she was still so cold.

“I do have to.” She pulled him closer, burrowing into him. “Please don’t try to talk me out of it. Just help me.”

“I will.” He sat himself more fully on the cot and wrapped his arms around her. “But I didn’t think…”

“Didn’t think what?”

He regretted saying it, but it didn’t feel right to hold her so closely. She was ill, she was seeking comfort; he was taking advantage.

“I didn’t think you’d want me so close.”

She pulled back, brow furrowed, and studied him for a moment before, “Oh. The defectors? That wasn’t your fault.”

“I should have kept you safe. And before that, in the war room, I said terrible—”

“Have you changed your mind? About trying… to be together?”

“No.”

“Me neither. So let’s talk about the hard things later.”

He nodded and she folded herself back into his arms. He fought the urge to insist she rest, that she allow him to order Solas to lead them to safety.

She wouldn’t, though, and he couldn’t bear to fight with her again. And a small part of him could admit Solas was right. They were all teetering dangerously near death, out here in the snow. Most were at least lightly injured, many badly, and the healers were hollow-eyed with exhaustion.  They’d lost another half-dozen people since they’d made camp. Hopelessness had caught them all in its teeth, until Alena emerged from her tent, bathed in light, and Mother Giselle forged her into an icon of hope.

Alena, he could tell, had hated it. It was another role forced upon her, another flattening of who she was into who they wanted her to be. What she could do for them. The Herald. But for all his heart ached for her, for all he could clearly see the falseness of the smile she’d worn, he couldn’t help but see what they saw, too. Couldn’t help but share a little in the communal ecstasy of faith.

That shared feeling, that hope, would keep them alive. It would be dented by the sight of Alena, sickly and passive, in a travois.

Cullen wanted them to live. He wanted his soldiers to live. He wanted Rylen and Matilda and all the other ex-Templars, already glassy-eyed with the need for lyrium, to live.

“Thank you,” Alena said. “I’m ready.” She began to detangle herself from him, then paused. “Half naked?”

“Oh, I’m… I’m sorry, you were freezing and I couldn’t think of another way to warm you. Cassandra undressed you and wrapped a blanket around us both. I… didn’t… see…” He trailed off, neck burning.

Alena looked to be smothering a grin. “Very gallant, Commander.” Then she leaned in and whispered in his ear, “I wouldn’t have minded if you had.”

It was the last time he saw even a little joy in her on that long, frozen walk.

Chapter Text

Alena

“We’re here.” Cullen sounded as ragged as Alena felt.

He sat her down on a pile of fallen bricks in the courtyard. “Let me make it safe.”  He turned on his heel, shouting orders.

Mairie bustled over, thrust a potion into Alena’s hands, and tutted over her injuries. She kept up a steady stream of patter, reassurance mingled with irritated denunciations of the Inquisition’s leadership for not putting Alena on a travois for the journey. It had been the same patter ever since their ragged column had set off towards their promised shelter, Alena in the lead.

Alena said little, as she had throughout the journey. If she let herself complain, even a little, she was sure she’d end up screaming herself hoarse with rage.

She’d needed to do this. Even Cullen had seen that, she knew, or he would have lost patience the first time she fell into a snowdrift and forced her onto a travois. Instead he gotten very quiet, spending as much time as he could spare at her elbow.

Whenever she sat to rest, she'd looked at the shivering crowd at her back: so many people, so adrift. She'd needed to do this.

Mother Giselle had made her the symbol of their survival and thus had folded every fragile, half-frozen life into Alena’s hands. It wasn’t a burden she could set down without breaking it.

But they were safe now. She’d rest. She’d rest. She’d—

“Here, Alena.” Cullen eased her down to her bedroll. It was dark, but firelight flickered in through wide half-doors. The stables. Outside, a woman laughed; it was the most joyful sound Alena had heard in days. Cullen pulled a blanket up to her chin. “Will you be warm enough?”

“I’m fine.”

“I’m sorry, I still have work—”

And then it was morning, sunlight licking in at the stable doors. Dorian flopped down next to her. “You look dreadful, Lenny. How did you manage to enchant that strapping young Templar of yours in such a state? You must teach me all your secrets.”

“He was already enchanted.”

Dorian huffed and stretched his legs out, grimacing at some twinge. “How’re you feeling?”

“Not well.”

He clucked sympathetically and smoothed her hair back. “You’re on bedrest, I’m told. That terrifying Fereldan woman will be along to see you soon.”

“What’s happening out there?”

“All manner of things. Let’s see: practically no food left, but suddenly the cook’s got an enormous pot of soup on the boil and can’t quite remember who showed her the garden. You should see it, Lenny, all the vegetables and herbs you can imagine growing absolutely rampant. So we’ll be fed at least—I’ll bring you some when it’s ready. What else? Your Cullen is striding around doing terribly important things, I’m sure. Lots of frowning and shouting involved at any rate. Leliana sent out the surviving ravens this morning. And nearly everyone who’s still fit is getting ready to move out again.”

“Are you going?”

“Maker, no! No, my talents are needed here.”

She smiled. “What talents are those?”

“They’re innumerable, as you well know. But alas, the situation is so dire I’ve been reduced to healers’ assistant and, ugh, alchemist.”

“Poor thing.” Alena nudged him with an elbow. “How are you otherwise?”

“Oh, just grand. Delightful climate, this Ferelden. Truly cannot get enough of it.” Alena chuckled. Dorian gave her an appraising look. “That priest’s put you in an awkward spot, has she not?”

“She has. I was hoping this Herald nonsense might fade away, but...”

“Not now that you’ve returned from the Maker’s bosom to lead the faithful home.” She made a face and Dorian smirked. “You must admit, you’ve had quite the week.”

“I ran fast enough to fall down a hole before a mountain squashed me. Hardly the stuff of ballads.”

“Lenny. Modesty might suit some women, but it’s not your colour.” She glared. “It is very Andrastian, though. Very fetching on a chosen one.”

Alena groaned and pulled the blankets over her head.

“Oh, the self-abne-ga-tion!” Dorian declared. “How she turns her face from the light!”

She laughed despite herself, sitting up to shove him lightly. “Enough. Please.”

He sobered. “Rather an exposed position for a southern mage, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” The levity drained away. “It might suit Giselle for now, but a lot of her sisters will disagree. And some of the—” the idea caught in her throat. She hadn’t been letting herself think about what her parents might do if their monstrous apostate daughter refused to sink discretely back into obscurity. “Some of the nobility, too.”

Dorian hummed. “You know, magic didn’t always rule Tevinter. Our Templars weren’t always as biddable as they are now.”

“What changed?”

“Many things, little and big, slowly and all at once. Nothing so dramatic as a beautiful young mage saving the world.”

Alena’s skin crawled. “What’s your point? They’re right to fear me?”

“Of course they are! You, my friend, are in a position of tremendous power. And tremendous risk. Whatever you do will change everything for southern mages. Has changed everything. The Chantry knows it. I hope you do, too.”

“I do. It’s another reason I didn’t want this.”

“You don’t want things to change?”

“I want everything to change. That’s what frightens me.”

He studied her. “You don’t strike me as the power-crazed type.”

“I don’t think anyone’s immune.”

“Perhaps some are less susceptible.” He paused, sniffing and Alena caught the sweet scent of culinary herbs. Her stomach rumbled. “What in the…?” Dorian turned back to her with an ancient chipped mug in one hand and a wooden bowl in the other, steam wafting from both. He thrust the bowl towards her. “Did you see someone come in?”

“No. That’s… odd.” She sipped: it was thin—a few chunks of carrot and broccoli floating in a herbal broth—but she moaned in delight anyway. “Jemmy forgot who showed her the garden, you said?” Something about the story reminded her of someone.

“That’s right. What are you thinking?”

“I can’t quite... I don’t know.”

He nodded and tasted the soup. “Maker, they should sell this in Minrathous and charge a hundred gold for it.”

She laughed, and they fell silent, stretching the meal out with tiny sips. When at last they were done Dorian took her bowl and stood.

“Thank you, Dorian. For the conversation.”

“Of course! And don’t worry. If the Chantry does come after you, we’ll flee to Tevinter! They’ll be thrilled to prop up the south’s heretical prophet. You’ll be showered in honours, invitations, as many slaves as your heart desires… You’ll just hate it.”

Later, Alena ignored Mairie’s admonishment to stay in bed and limped unsteadily towards the stable doors. As she stepped blinking into the midday glare she stumbled and nearly fell, but someone caught her arm: a slight young man in a broad-rimmed hat, who gave the sense of having already been at her side.

She took a few steadying breaths and let him lead her over to a crate. “You,” she said slowly as she sat, “were at Haven.”

“Yes.”

“You warned us.”

“Yes.” And then, glumly, “too late to help.”

“We wouldn’t have known how to get away without your help. We would all have died in the Chantry. Thank you.” She studied him: pale, with thin wrists and slender fingers; his leathers were scuffed and dirty. The daggers on his back were long and light, better cared for than the rest of him. He couldn’t have been more than twenty years old. “How did you know?”

He gazed out at the small groups of refugees scattered around the yard, head tilted, perched on his own crate like a watchful owl. “It was a long way from Therinfal. I had lots of time to listen. His thoughts were always loud, but when he thought of you, they thundered.”

Ice trickled down the back of Alena’s throat. “His thoughts?”

“Yes. And the Templars’, too.”

“And mine?”

His eyes darted towards her, quick as a sparrow. Or a hawk. “Yes. Yours are angry too, sometimes, but quiet, tightly held, only cruel when you point them at y—”

“Enough,” she snapped. He fell silent, still watching her. She took a breath and lowered her voice. “What are you?”

“A spirit. Not a demon.”

She gestured at his body. “Who was he?”

He looked away, his face hidden by the brim of his hat. His voice was distressed. “Cole. He was trapped. I was too late.”

Alena frowned. Very few abominations remained people.

“I am him,” the boy insisted. “I didn’t possess him.”

Alena pressed the heels of her palms over her eyes. She ought to be more concerned about this boy. More curious. But she was suddenly too exhausted to care. “Go find a mage called Solas. Please. Tell him what you’ve told me.”

When she dropped her hands, he was gone. She sighed and closed her eyes, face tilted up to the sun.

Cullen

The first several rooms they secured, Cullen assigned to the healers. And to the ex-Templars. When he visited, an hour or two before dawn that first night in Skyhold, the rooms stank of vomit. His soldiers were packed tight, sharing bedrolls or tossing and turning on the floor.

Rylen flinched away from him. Matilda called him by someone else’s name. He didn’t push. His own early days had been spent in the cabin of a ship to Ferelden, with a plentiful supply of sedative tea and anti-emetics. Cassandra had been sympathetic but undemanding, leaving him alone so he didn’t feel, afterwards, like his ravings had been minutely observed.

He wished he could provide the people in his care the same privacy.

At least now they were safe to rest. Their first three days had been spent trudging through snow, shepherded by their comrades into the centre of their formation so they wouldn’t wander off a cliff or out into the snow to be forgotten.

He went from there to the stables, tiptoed close enough to see that Alena was sleeping soundly, not shivering without his body heat.

And then back to work. Two thirds of his surviving forces were with the healers, and all but three of his officers. And he couldn’t leave Skyhold vulnerable. Not like he had Haven.

He got the list mid-morning: every person under his command who’d perished in Haven or on the mountain.

He wondered how many of the slain Red Templars had once been under his command in Kirkwall.

He folded the list and tucked it into his pocket. He didn’t take it out again until that evening after he’d seen Alena moved to a small room off the garden. She’d frowned and put the back of her hand on his forehead.

“Have you slept at all?”

“I will.”

“Sleep here. I don’t care if you come back late.”

“I will.”

But first he went to the room over the gate that he’d claimed as his office, and began to write letters.

I’m sorry for the death of your daughter.

We all mourn your husband’s loss.

George died to protect the villagers of Haven.

Samantha’s death will not be in vain.

Useless, hollow words. He went down the list and wrote until the candle burned down to a stub. He wasn’t finished. But candles, like everything else, were scarce.

He stood at Alena’s door a long time. It was so late. He didn’t want to wake her. But she’d be hurt, he thought, if he let her sleep alone again. He crept inside, began to remove his armour as quietly as possible.

“Cullen?”

“Yes. Don’t wake up.”

She said something he couldn’t make out. When he slid into bed, she curled against him.

He woke at dawn, pulled his boots and armour back on. He leaned over and kissed her forehead.

“Wait,” she said as he turned the doorknob, flapping a sleepy arm at him. He turned and let her tug him back to the edge of the bed. “Are you alright?”

“Yes.”

“Can I do anything to help?”

“Rest.”

She frowned and dropped her hand.

Cullen went, and as he did a thousand hooks sank into him, pulling him in a thousand different directions. So went that day, and the next, and the next.

And the next, when the first cart full of lyrium rattled over the bridge to Skyhold. It all went straight to the shivering ex-Templars. A half hour later they strode out of the healers’s rooms: heads high, cheeks pink, picking up their duties with the verve of new recruits.

Cullen watched. And wanted.

He paced beside the war table. “She won’t want this.”

“She’s never shied away from leadership before,” Josephine said. “Why would she now?”

Because we’ve pushed her past her limits, he thought. “It should be you, Cassandra.”

Cassandra offered him the most baleful look he’d ever seen. A look designed to terrify Templars. She knew he didn’t believe that. He knew Alena was the best—the only—choice for Inquisitor.

His neck ached. “Fine. But I won’t let you coerce her. Ask her. Don’t force this on her in front of everyone.”

Leliana was already moving towards the door. “I’ll send a runner. We’ll ask.”

Cullen scowled at her. He’d hoped for a chance to prepare Alena for this meeting—which Leliana knew, of course.

She arrived ten minutes later, greeted them all, and ran a hand along the heavy oak of the war table. “Fancy.”

“Alena,” Cassandra began. “The Inquisition requires a leader: the one who has already been leading it.” Alena froze, her eyes fixed on Cassandra. “Will you be our Inquisitor?”

She shot Cullen a look, fleeting but fierce, full of hurt and anger. She closed her eyes, took a breath, and when she looked back at them all the mask was firmly in place.

“No. I won’t.”

Leliana was the only one of the women to look unsurprised. “Will you tell us why not?”

Alena hesitated. “Because it’s a bad idea. The Trevelyans hate me. Add to that the fact that I’m a mage—it’s far more political trouble for you than I’m worth.”

Josephine took a step forward, “I assure you, Alena, I can manage the poli—”

“Have you heard from the Trevelyans?”

“There’s been some gossip that they’re… displeased, but I hardly think they’ll—“

Alena lifted a hand and Josephine trailed off. Alena’s lip trembled very slightly, and she shot him one more angry look. “There was an accident. When I came into my magic. I killed their daughter. It’ll be a terrible scandal.”

“It won’t,” Leliana said. “We’ll take care of it.”

“I said no.” Alena squared her shoulders and glared at them all. “I’ll close all the rifts you want. But I’m not doing this.” She turned and was through the door before anyone could react.

Alena

She spent the afternoon crammed into a crenel on the battlements, feet hanging over the abyss, as far from the builders and sparring soldiers and bustling traffic as she could get. Patrols passed every half hour or so, but they didn’t disturb her.

As dusk fell, a woman cleared her throat. Alena sighed and turned, her legs hanging inside the battlements, her back to the setting sun.

“I bring news,” Leliana rested her hands on the battlement beside Alena and leaned over to peer into the abyss. “About your group near Wycome.”

A long silence. “Well?”

“They’ve relocated. The rift activity drove more refugees onto the Bowen farm and one of the children was discovered to be a mage.” Alena pressed a hand over her mouth, adrenaline flooding her body. “I’m sorry, Alena. The child—Francis Cross—was killed. Also the Tranquil mage Mary Fraser and Enchanter Fresnel.”

Another dead child. Alena let out a ragged breath. Francis had been one of the only children without any lingering fear of her, and he’d been constantly underfoot when she was in camp with them, wanting to hear stories about her travels. “Where have they gone?”

“To the mountains north of Hercinia. An Inquisition camp.”

“How long have you known this?”

“Two days."

“And you’re telling me now, why? To coerce me into becoming Inquisitor?”

“Not to coerce you, no.” Alena flicked suspicious eyes at the spymaster, whose face was open and honest and, she knew, entirely untrustworthy. “I wanted to remind you of those children in an opportune moment. You could make a better world for them to live in. Let us help you do that.”

“The Trevelyans— ”

“Are a minor Marcher family, Alena. Josephine could handle them in her sleep, even without my help.”

Alena leapt down and paced. The Anchor buzzed uncomfortably and she pressed the palm of her hand against her chest. Anchor. Aptly named. She needed to run, needed to move, needed more than anything not to tip back into the despair of captivity. “I’m not fit to lead.”

Leliana leaned on the battlements. “I travelled with Elizabeth Cousland during the blight. Her family was murdered immediately before she became a warden, you know. Parents, sister-in-law, nephew. It was awful. We believed her brother killed at Ostagar soon after. And there she was, eighteen years old and one of the last two wardens in Ferelden as darkspawn poured out of the earth.”

“I’ve heard the songs.”

“I’m sure you have. And they’re all true: Liz was an exceptional leader, even then. Brave, clever, a brilliant tactician. She saved the world. But there were times when the grief overwhelmed her and she became reckless and tunnel-visioned and cruel to her friends. She made bad decisions and tried to push us away. Not the stuff of heroic ballads, no? But all heroes carry loss and weakness and pain. It makes them people. The great ones don’t banish their darkness; they forge it into something new.”

Alena pressed her cheek against cool stone. “That’s very inspirational. I wish it weren’t part of some elaborate plan to manipulate me.”

Leliana chuckled. “The very best manipulations are based in truth. Take your time. We’ve all agreed to give you some time to think.”

Alena laughed. She turned her back on Leliana and made for her room.

Cullen

He’d been waiting at her door for twenty minutes when Alena appeared. She laughed—or sobbed, he couldn’t quite tell which—and unlocked the door with shaking hands.

She went in without a word, crossing the room to press her palms and face against the wall. He hovered in the open door. “Are you alright?”

She turned. “How could you not warn me?”

“I wanted to. They didn’t give me a chance.”

Alena stared at him. Her cheeks were gaunt, the scar standing out on her wan face. She looked almost as ill as she had when they’d arrived. He should have made more time for her, forced her to stay in bed, to—

Another of those terrible sobbing laughs. She tore off her gloves and scarf, took off her coat, and began unbuttoning her blouse, eyes still fixed on him.

“Alena!” He closed the door hastily. “What are you—”

She shrugged off the blouse and walked towards him in breeches and brassiere, thin, still bruised, but beautiful. He was getting hard looking at her, but something was wrong. It made him queasy.

She put both trembling hands on his chest. “I want to feel something good. With you. Please.”

He took her face in his hands and kissed her, gentle and lingering. She leaned in to him, deepening the kiss, and he drew back. “Alena. You’re not yourself. I don’t want to take advantage.”

She sobbed—and it was a sob this time, not a trace of laughter left in it. “I’m upset. I’m doing this because I’m upset. But I’m not falling into bed with some stranger. It’s you, Cullen. I want you all the time, not just now.”

He’d wanted their first time since Kirkwall to be special. Wanted to woo her in a Skyhold that he’d made safe for her.

“Alright, Alena.” He bent and swept her up, carried her across the room to lay her on the bed. She grabbed a fistful of his tunic and pulled him down on top of her. Her kiss was open-mouthed and hungry.

He rocked back, pulled his tunic off, and dove back towards her. They undressed one another quickly, clumsily, Alena’s trembling hands in too much of a hurry.

Then they were skin to skin, his weight pressing her too-thin frame into the mattress. She wrapped her arms and legs around him, tight as a vice, and sobbed once more into his neck. “Thank you,” she whispered.

There was a lump in his throat. He wanted to give her everything, to wrap himself around her so nothing could ever hurt her again. “I’m with you, Alena.”

She relaxed, a little, loosening her hold. When he found her mouth, there was less desperation in her kiss. She rocked her hips, his hardness sliding against the soaked fabric of her smallclothes, and it would be so easy, so good to— “Not yet.” He pulled back. He wanted to give her what she needed first. To wring all this sorrow out of her. “I want to taste you.”

She whimpered, nodded, loosened her grip further. He ran hands and mouth down her body. She’d been helping the alchemists when they'd called her to the war room with another heavy load for her to bear, and she smelled of elfroot and embrium.

He paused over the scar on her side, breath catching, horrified to realise that this was what Auer’s now-faded marks had reminded him of.

But Alena had noticed him noticing, and made a small, fearful noise in the back of her throat. He moved on, settled himself between her long legs, running his fingers along the smooth, pale skin of her inner thighs. “Still alright, sweetheart?”

“Yes, please, Cullen.”

He peeled the last scrap of fabric from her body. His heart hammering in his chest, he ran his tongue along her. Alena whimpered again, reaching down to take his left hand in hers, lacing their fingers. It felt more intimate than anything else they were doing; for a moment he thought he might burst into tears.

“Tell me how to please you.”

She did, and Cullen had always been good at taking instruction. Within moments, she moaned, low and full of uncomplicated pleasure. Cullen chuckled against her. It was such a joy to hear after all the pain and sorrow that he stayed there a long time, stroking her with fingers and tongue, finding all the ways she liked best. When she came, he lightened his touch but didn’t stop. She laughed, her hand twisting in his hair, when she realised what he intended.

“You’re spoiling me.”

“Not at all.”

After the second time, as he was drawing it out with light flicks, Alena moaned, “Stoooppp.” She tugged weakly on his hand. He looked up, grinning, loving the sight of her flushed cheeks, and let her draw him up to her mouth.

She kissed him thoroughly. “That was wonderful. Thank you. But I want you now.”

It was easy, natural, perfect. Alena’s hands didn’t tremble, and when she rolled him on his back so she could ride him there was mischief, not desperation, in her face.

And when they were both drawing close, she reached for his hand again, and laced their fingers again, and held his gaze until the moment she lost control, back arching, body shuddering.

He finished with her, groaning as he spilled inside her.

Alena collapsed on his chest with a breathy laugh.

Alena

They lay in silence a while, breath slowing.

“Swap?” She rolled off Cullen, tugging him after her. “Lie on top of me?”

He laughed. “I’d almost forgotten about this.” But he rearranged them, settling himself over her like a sheet, face buried in her neck.

She ran a hand through his hair.

He kissed her neck. “Do you feel better?”

“Yes.” Now that all the overwhelming pleasure was over, the dreamy fog clearing, there was room for the sorrow and fear to trickle back. But there was room inside her now to hold it. It no longer threatened to drown her. “Much better. But not… good.”

He sighed and reached a hand up to her cheek.

“What about you? You haven’t been sleeping enough.” She slid her hand down to the nape of his neck. The muscle was rigid.

“I’ll rest once I’ve made this place safe.”

“Well. Let me up. Stay as you are, though.”

She slid out of bed and went poking through a basket of herbal remedies in the corner. When she turned back around, Cullen was on his side, watching her with a faint smile.

“As you were,” she chided. “On your front.”

“But I want to look at you.”

“There’ll be plenty of time for that.”

“Will there?”

She crouched by the bed and kissed him. “Yes.”

Alena knelt on the bed next to him. She uncapped a vial of oil and poured it on her hands, rubbing them together so it would warm. The room filled with a sweet, grassy scent.

“What are you—“

She put her hands on Cullen, warm and slick with oil, and began to massage the back of his neck.

He groaned, a little of the tension already easing.

“Now might be a good time to tell you I’ve never done this for anyone else before. Some of it’s going to hurt, but tell me if it’s too much.”

“It feels wonderful so far.”

She chuckled.

“You do this to yourself?”

“When we first left the tower. I wasn't used to running and my legs would ache, but I loved it so much. Couldn't bear to stop. So I did what I could to loosen the muscles. They write books on this sort of thing in Antiva, you know. I’m going to put some weight into it now. Just breathe.”

It took over an hour to persuade the muscles of Cullen's neck and shoulders to loosen, and she could tell it hurt him. But it helped, too, the groans giving way to sighs of relief as each knot loosened. And it helped her: to not be alone, to comfort his body with hers, to let the turmoil inside her settle while she focused on the physical.

When the work was done, she lingered, stroking his back, running her hands through his hair, rubbing circles into his scalp. An apology for the painful parts.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” Cullen slurred.

“You can sleep, if you want.”

“Not yet.” He was quiet long enough that she thought he must have drifted off anyway, and then he repeated, “not yet,” rolled over and pulled her down for a lingering kiss. “Thank you. My head’s been aching for days and now… I feel much better.” He rolled his neck and shoulders lazily. “Much better.”

“I’m glad.”

“But I came to see you for a reason. Not to try to talk you into it. Just to talk about it. And I get the feeling something else happened.”

“You’ll sleep better tonight if you're relaxed.”

“I’ll worry if you don’t tell me.”

She told him about Francis and her people, and he held her while she cried. She didn’t mention Leliana’s delay in telling her, but he caught the implication right away.

“She’s going to try to use them to get you to agree.”

“I think so.”

He got up and started gathering his clothes.

”Cullen! Stop. Come back. At least think it through first.” He sat down heavily. “I don’t think she’ll hurt them. She just wants me to want enough power to keep them safe.”

He turned and took her hand. “What you said in the war room. The politics. Is that the only reason?”

“It’s a big one, but… no.” He didn’t press her. She sighed and lay back, staring at the ceiling. “I already have too much power.”

“You wield it carefully.”

“Will I always? I get so angry sometimes. And when I was in the tower…” She shuddered, remembering how close she’d come to Despair. “If I become… I could undo all the good we’ve done for the mages.”

Cullen lay down next to her. She turned to face him and he cupped her cheek.

“You would be an extraordinary Inquisitor. But I won't let anyone force it on you.”

Alena closed her eyes, chest aching.

"Did I say something wrong?"

"No." She put her hand over his and looked at him through tears. "I've always been on my own."

"You don't have to be."

He was right. She'd felt it, those final hours in Kirkwall: Here is a man who'll watch half the horizon, if you let him. She'd been too afraid to let him; too accustomed to vigilance; too suspicious of anyone who wanted to love her.

She pressed their foreheads together. "I love you."

"I love you, too."