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Chapter Text

A cold wind blew across the white-tipped crests of the Waking Sea, tangling through Aria’s hair and leaving her laughing at the sting. Their winter cloaks—all but unnecessary now that spring had finally come to the shores of Ostwick—snapped and furled in brightly-colored sails behind them. It was all Aria could do not to wrest open the buckle that held hers firmly in place and go racing across the sand. She wanted to lift her skirts about skinned and skinny knees and run just as fast as she could, face tipped up and heart soaring somewhere far above Trevelyan Manor: like one of the birds Raul loved to mimic.

Free and happy and—

Dayna caught her wrist with a laugh. “I know that expression,” her older sister said, tugging Aria back a full step. Her own red hair had been neatly (wisely) plaited into two long braids, but her round cheeks were just as freckled as Aria’s. “If you want to fly free, little bird, you’re going to have to pay the piper. Recite your numbers and you can leave my side at any time.”

Aria made a face. “I hate this game,” she said.

“Oh, now, isn’t that sad?” Dayna gave her wrist another little tug, lips quirking into a lopsided grin. She was fifteen to Aria’s nearly-eleven and liked to pretend she was the boss of everyone. Especially when it came to—in her words—making sure the ever-growing Trevelyan brood didn’t grow up into a Maker-forsaken gang of backwater savages. “My heart is breaking for you.”

“That can’t be true. You’d have to have a heart first,” Aria muttered, then laughed when Dayna gave her a teasing shove, letting her go. She let the momentum carry her, spinning out like a top beneath the wide blue sky, skirts lifting indecently about her legs. The bright eggshell blue cloak lifted and snapped around her, caught high on the breeze like drifts of smoke. It would fly straight into the sun if she let it go now—she was sure of it. “Come on, Dayna. The day’s too beautiful for math.”

Dayna just shook her head. “You’d say that if it were spitting rain.”

“True!” Aria beamed.

Before Dayna could think of a response, a bird called from high on the cliffs, answered seconds later by another further down the beach. Dayna tapped Aria’s shoulder and pointed past her with a quirk of her brows. “Look,” she said. “Pirates.”

Aria twisted, one hand lifting to shield her eyes. Sure enough, two small figures were perched on the rocks just past the half-hidden cavern, watching them. One gave a jaunty wave. “We should arm ourselves and drive them from our shores,” Aria said, squinting to try to make out features. “Teach them a lesson they won’t soon forget.”

“We could do that,” Dayna said placidly; just past her shoulder, another child was clambering down the rocky cliffside. He paused just long enough to press his fingers to his lips and give a second trilling birdcall, answered again by one of those distant figures. “Or we could bring them their sandwiches, like we promised.”

“Or we could do that,” Aria agreed. She grabbed a messy handful of windswept hair and shoved it out of her eyes. “Ho there, Raul!” she called as her older brother dropped the last ten feet to the shore. He’d left his winter cloak behind, along with his shoes. “Any news from the house?”

Raul dusted off his sandy hands and trotted over to join them. He was just a couple of years older than Aria but already growing into his height. The world, it seemed, was determined to be unfair. “Father’s gone off to visit Lord and Lady Riley,” he said. “Mother’s down for a nap, and Tante’s busy with the twins.”

Aria made a face. “Poor Tante,” she said. The twins—Cassius and Josselyn—weren’t quite old enough to be interesting, but they were more than able to be a royal pain. Their howling kept half the house up as Mother and Tante walked them up and down the creaking old steps, trying to soothe their colic. “But good news for the rest of us.”

“Good news for the rest of us,” Raul echoed with a gap-toothed smile. He tipped his head toward Dayna. “Did you tell her yet?”

Aria twisted around to look at her sister, catching the tail end of her stern glare. “No,” Dayna said between grit teeth. “And you weren’t supposed to either. Petyr was very clear.”

“Tell me what?” Aria asked. Neither said anything. “Tell me what?” she tried again.

“Nothing,” Dayna said, just as Raul said, “Something really big.”

Aria frowned, looking between the two. It wasn’t that she was unused to her family keeping secrets from her—she’d been born…different…after all, with a fire burning inside her that Father insisted she never let anyone outside their family discover—but usually they managed to keep their whispers more subtle than this. “All right, then,” she said, turning back toward the distant cavern. The two small figures were standing now, clearly waiting for them. “Well, until you decide which story you want to go with, we should get the others their sandwiches.”

“Oh, there’s food?” Raul said, taking a step closer—

—only to trip when Dayna stuck out an ankle, nearly sending him sprawling across the sand. “Not if we get there before you,” her sister called, shooting Aria a bright-eyed glance…and the two of them were off in a shot, racing across the beach with their brilliant cloaks snapping like mabari at their heels.

Aria easily broke out into the lead, heart winging higher and higher in her chest with each step. She felt almost like she was flying across the grey beach: a flame licking the jagged shoreline, each step quickening that elemental thrum she never could seem to smother. It filled her lungs with lightning and threw sparks from the streaming ends of her long copper hair. The very earth seemed to buoy up beneath her feet, and if she just let herself reach deep inside herself, she could…

No, Aria thought, tamping down on the impulse, refusing to let herself call up the spell begging to be unleased. You can’t, you can’t, you can’t.

Raul called something from behind them and the figures—two more of her siblings, Timothy and Petyr standing in wait—began to swim into focus. Timothy was hopping restlessly from foot to foot, a wild sort of excitement answering her own, but Petyr kept him from racing out to meet her.

Oldest of the Trevelyans, big and strong and kind, Petyr watched Aria sprint toward him with a small smile twisting his lips, his own matching copper-colored hair tufted up about his handsome face from the wind.

Aria skidded to a stop a few paces away, hands reaching out to slap against cold rock. “First!” she crowed, spinning around just as Raul tumbled in behind her. She caught his arm before he could go spilling face-first into the waiting rocks, laughing and yanking him back to his feet when he would have overbalanced. “I got here first.”

“You cheated,” he protested, slinging an arm around her neck, and Petyr shook his head in amusement as Dayna jogged up to join them, her twin braids snapping behind her.

“I didn’t cheat,” Aria said, digging a sharp elbow into her brother’s side. Timothy had finally managed to wriggle free of their eldest brother’s grasp, ducking around the rocks to poke at the basket Dayna held folded in the crook of one arm. “Dayna cheated for me. I just took shameless advantage.”

Raul rolled his eyes. “That’s still cheating, isn’t it, Petyr?”

“It’s funny that it’s never cheating when he does it, isn’t it, Petyr?” Aria parroted.

Behind them, Dayna sighed and slapped at Timothy’s hands, pushing her way forward until she was standing next to her own twin: the eldest two of the whole family, and practically the king and queen of this little forgotten corner of Ostwick, with its wild storms and endless moors. “I brought food and drink,” she said, focused on Petyr. “I couldn’t smuggle out an extra blanket without someone noticing, but I figured we could use our cloaks.”

“Good thinking,” Petyr said, voice gone intermittently deep now that he was turning into a man.

Aria looked between them, then glanced at Raul and Timothy. Neither seemed at all surprised by the exchange, which meant they were all in on the secret…whatever that may be. “Should I know what’s going on?” she asked, shoving aside any flash of hurt feelings. Her siblings tried so hard to make her feel like she was one of them, even when they all knew she was something different, dangerous. She owed them the benefit of the doubt.

“No,” Petyr said, but before Aria could feel her heart plummet again, he quirked a smile and added: “But that’s mostly because we’ve been better than usual at keeping it a surprise.”

“Some of us have been better than usual,” Dayna added with a look toward Raul. He just shrugged philosophically.

A surprise sounded so much better than a secret. A surprise meant she was invited to be part of this—whatever this was. Aria began to smile back, warmth blooming inside her skinny chest as Petyr moved to gently clasp her on the shoulder. “Come on,” he said, copper head tilted toward copper head. “Let’s get inside the cave and I’ll explain everything.”

Timothy gave a sudden hoot and darted around them—away from Dayna—something suspiciously sandwich-shaped clutched in one grubby hand. Petyr shot his twin a look and she just sighed, pushing the basket closed again. “One down,” she said. “But it’s all right: I packed plenty more.”

Aria let herself be led past the jumble of rocks that all but hid the entrance to the cavern, anticipation building in her belly. She had to lift her skirts to keep the hems from dragging through shallow basins of water—the cave was close enough to the Waking Sea that at high tide, its mouth filled with frothing waves. It was dangerous to come out here without a close eye on the tides and time: spend too long, and you could easily find yourself trapped for half a day, waiting until the waters had receded safely again.

…which suddenly explained the extra food and Dayna’s comment about blankets.

“Are we staying here through the tide?” she asked, half-twisting to look up at Petyr. The light was twilight-dim, dwindling more and more the deeper they ventured. A cozy firelight called them toward the far back of the cavern, where the rocks were wide and elevated and dry enough for an impromptu campsite. But here, Petyr’s expression was all but lost to darkness. All Aria could see was that distant flicker of light in his eyes, like burning coals.

(Like demons in the dark.)

She shivered, nearly missing his reply. “…don’t know how long this will take,” Petyr was saying. “So we waited until we knew Father would be away and Tante would be too distracted to worry. It’s okay,” he added, teeth flashing in what should have been a reassuring smile. “I’ll walk you through it.”

“What do you mean by it?” Aria twisted around to catch a glimpse of Raul and Dayna, but Petyr kept a firm-yet-gentle grip on her arm.

“Careful,” he said, catching her when she nearly slipped on an uneven patch of stone. She darted her gaze back to him, but—thank the Maker—they were passing out of the heavy darkness and into the growing light of the campfire. Its light caught against the curling ends of his hair. The glowing coals of his eyes were nothing but friendly, familiar hazel, and that sudden gut-clench of fear she’d felt (low and thrumming and primal as a demon’s whisper) seemed silly in the face of his smile.

Aria blew out a long breath and mentally repeated the mantra Tante had taught her back in the early days when nightmares brought her shrieking awake every night, flames dancing at her fingertips. If I trust in the Maker, I have no reason to fear. There is nothing in the darkness but the promise of his light.

Timothy poked a stick into the fire, sending sparks swirling toward the high cavern ceiling as they approached. Sticky jelly smeared his cheeks, and he grinned around his final bite. “It’s all ready,” he said, voice coming out garbled.

Petyr just shook his head. “All right. You and Raul get the bed ready. Aria, could you give Raul your cloak?”

It seemed easier to just do what he asked and wait for her answers. She reached up, wresting open the clasp and swirling the bright blue cloak off her shoulders with a flourish. A few feet away, Dayna snorted with amusement and did the same—more subtly, as was her wont.

Both cloaks were handed over with silent formality, and Raul and Timothy scurried over rock to begin laying them out some distance back from the fire.

Petyr turned to her. “You know I went abroad with Father a few months back.”

“Yes,” Aria said. “I remember.”

“We traveled to Starkhaven, and Kirkwall, then down to Orlais.”

Aria tilted her head, brows slowly knitting. It wasn’t like Petyr to draw things out into unnecessary lengths—telling stories they both knew she remembered. “I know where you traveled,” she said, looking between the twins. “You wrote us letters. You told us all about it when you got back.”

Petyr hesitated. “I didn’t tell you all about it,” he said, then paused again—so uncertain, so hesitant, so unlike him that the hairs along her arms were standing up again.

Before she could demand to know what was happening, Dayna cleared her throat and gently took her hand. “Let’s sit,” she said, “and Petyr can explain everything he heard about Voices.”

“Voices?” Aria echoed, confused. Worried. Scared. She let her sister tug her toward the fire, however, willingly dropping onto a flat-topped rock. Her skirts pooled around her, and Aria let go of Dayna only to wrap her arms around her drawn-up legs, holding herself close and tight. “I don’t understand. What—”

Something horrible occurred to her.

“Oh,” Aria breathed, looking between them as they sat just before her, side by side but angled in her direction—a well-meaning wall. Hemming her in or keeping others out? Maker, did it really matter, in the end? “Oh, no, I promise, I promise I haven’t been hearing any more voices. They stopped not long after the dreams, and I—”

“That’s not what we meant,” Petyr interrupted quickly, shooting a panicked glance at his sister.

Dayna’s smile was reassuring. “We know you’d never listen to demons, even if you are a…” She was kind enough to let the rest die off. “No. What Petyr means is something different than that. I guess you could say it’s the opposite of that.”

“I don’t understand,” Aria said, heart still hammering like a wild thing in her chest. Even with their reassurances, she couldn’t seem to convince herself that her brother and sister weren’t trying to accuse her of using her forbidden gifts. Of communing with demons. Of…of any number of horrible, unspeakable things.

(Of seeing eyes in the darkness and the occasional light pressure on her thoughts, as if someone were listening to everything she said with hungry intent.)

Petyr took a bracing breath. “A few years ago, back when Tante first came to live with us—” back when the dreams had first begun, ice creeping across Aria’s pillowcase every morning “—I overheard her and Mother talking about Voices. Tante said that if Mother and Father helped you find your Voice, then you wouldn’t have to worry about demons anymore. You wouldn’t have to worry about someone coming to take you away.”

She looked between the twins, then over her shoulder at Raul and Timothy. Their expressions were a four-way mirror, reflecting earnest belief, but…

“Why would Mother and Father not do what Tante said, then?” she asked, voice a small thing in the sudden big, crushing darkness of the cavern. “It would ruin the family if someone discovered what I can do—Father says so all the time. If there was some way to keep anyone from ever finding out, then why…”

Why, why, why. The word echoed through her thoughts even as she bit off the rest of the question, because, Maker, it only led to more. Things like why haven’t you told me before and why are you telling me now?

A few years ago, she may have leapt up and demanded to know the truth—and inevitably, that was when thunder would begin to rumble, or the fireplace would throw unexpected sparks, or she’d feel that tug deep in her chest, wonderful and terrible all at once.

Now, with patience and long experience, she had learned to fold her hands tight in her lap and wait to be told which way the wind would carry her…but even now, there was still that angry, willful spark she had to fight to smother in her chest, demanding to know why why why. Why was she dangerous, why was she her family’s dirty little secret, why couldn’t she be told anything, why could she never hope to leave this place, why would the Templars want to take her when all she’d ever done was love too fiercely and trust the Maker to guide her?

Why did demons want to take her thoughts; why her?

Maybe that last one most of all.

Aria swallowed back an anxious noise, expression placid as deep waters hiding dangerous currents, waiting.

Petyr swore. “Look,” he said. “I probably should have told you a long time ago, but I didn’t know what they meant and… And I was scared.”

Of you, seemed to hang in the air; thankfully, they all loved her enough not to say it.

“We scoured the library for anything we could find,” Dayna added. “Petyr and I. We read through every book. Whenever I was invited to a neighbor’s hall, I would find an excuse to slip away and search their libraries, too.” She sighed and spread her hands. “We never found anything useful, though.”

“But when Father took me with him on this trip, I decided it was my chance to figure out what I could,” Petyr said, taking up the tale. “We were passing through proper lord’s houses—families who could actually afford living in those big old homes. We went to chantrys and viscount keeps and oh, all sorts of places with all sorts of people. And I found out everything we need to know about Voices.”

Dayna looked at her twin with arched brows and he colored, ducking his head. “Well,” Petyr admitted. “Maybe not everything we need to know. But enough to help you find yours.”

“We helped!” Timothy added, leaning forward to grab at a loose copper curl, giving it a tug. “We did what Petyr said and gathered all this stuff for you.”

“And between the two of us, Dayna and I managed to steal all the lyrium we’ll need.”

That had Aria shooting up to her feet, shocked. “Petyr!” she gasped, hand flying up to cover her mouth as her ever-responsible twin siblings each reached for the corner of a lockbox she hadn’t yet noticed. Half-hidden by Dayna’s skirts, it didn’t look like much—but when Petyr twisted in the rusted key and pulled upon the lid, she instinctively drew back, pulse racing, because…

Because this was dangerous, wasn’t it? This was against everything that had ever been drummed into her head, over and over and over again, like a whip’s lash. To take lyrium, to willingly call on magic, to give in to her own nature… It was wrong, it was sinful, it was was not allowed.

But somehow, in the safety of their cave, it didn’t look so very wicked. Aria stared at the two pretty rows of bottles, glowing blue-white liquid quiescent inside, and thought: Oh, but it’s the color of my cloak.

It was a stupid thing to notice—even stupider to care about—but something about that connection had her shoulders slowly relaxing. Or was it the earnest way her siblings were looking at her, conviction in their eyes as if they were offering her a lifeline instead of the greatest temptation she’d ever faced?

Aria bit the tip of her finger, eyes flicking between the rows of lyrium and her older brother’s eyes. This felt like too great a transgression to consider (her father’s voice echoing like a second conscience, cruelly yanking her to task whenever she strayed), and yet… A Voice. Safety. A haven from fear.

“What,” she began, lowering her hand to clasp her skirts between her fingers to hide the way they trembled. “How…”

“It turns out,” Petyr said, “that every, um, person like you has a Voice in the Fade. If you can go deeper in the Fade—using lyrium—you can find them and bond with them, and they’ll be able to shield you from demons and Templars and magic itself. I think.”

Dayna leaned forward. “Like a soulmate,” she said, practical braids swinging forward. “Isn’t that so romantic, Aria?”

Timothy, now sprawled bored across the makeshift bed, gagged.

Petyr shot him a dark look. “Anyway,” he said. “I figured it was worth a shot. If you’ve got some Voice in the Fade…”

“Soulmate,” Dayna said again, jutting out her chin.

“…then you need to at least try to find them. It’s your duty, right? As a Trevelyan? To make sure you aren’t ever discovered to be a…you know…and taken away and disgrace the family and all that.”

Raoul reached out to snag her spasmodically clenching hand from behind, whirling her around to face him. “And also, we love you and don’t want to lose you,” he said, catching Aria about the waist and spinning her once, off-balance. “But Petyr’s too self-important to say that part.”

“I was getting to that!” Petyr protested, red-faced—and somehow that was enough to open the floodgates. Aria sucked in a breath, skirts swinging wide about her legs as her little brother spun her about, and laughed. The sound was hard, a little too loud, but it felt so very, very good to just give in to the warring fear and relief rising like choking vines in her chest.

A Voice. A soulmate. A way out of the prison that had become her life; could it even be possible?

“I bet he’s tall and strong and handsome,” Dayna said, just old enough that she cared about that sort of thing. She stood, moving around the makeshift bed as Petyr brought the lyrium.

“I bet he has the face of a butt and the butt of a mabari,” Timothy added helpfully.

“Well at least that will be familiar,” Aria said, catching her breath as Raoul spun her down to the bed of cloaks, spread so carefully near (but not too near) the little fire. “I was raised with you lot, after all.”

Timothy snorted a laugh and Raoul gave a playful bark even as Dayna rolled her eyes and knelt next to her head. Petyr took the other side, lockbox of stolen lyrium by his side. Aria was filled to bursting with all sorts of questions, but she bit her tongue at the look in his eyes. He was so serious, so…grown-up, looking like a much kinder shadow of Father in this light.

She loved him so much her heart nearly burst with it. More than that, she trusted him. He wouldn’t send her off into the demon-choked darkness on a fool’s errand; he knew what he was doing, surely, and he would keep her safe.

“I trust you,” Aria murmured, obediently laying out with her hair strung in mermaid coils about her face. She took the first bottle of lyrium, trying to smile as the cold-bright-odd smell filled her head.

Petyr set his jaw and gave a little nod, so certain. She smiled, then pressed her lips to the open mouth of the bottle, sucking in a quick breath before she allowed herself to swallow. The taste was harsh—like ice spearing down her throat—and she sputtered, moving up onto an elbow.

Petyr gently pushed her back even as Dayna caught the bottle of lyrium, tipping it so the rest flowed down Aria’s throat. “It’ll be easier if you do it fast,” she said apologetically. Small hands clamped down on Aria’s shoulders—Raul—and even smaller, slightly sticky ones about her feet—Timothy. She didn’t struggle as they seemed to expect, closing her eyes and swallowing down the bright surge of her powers.

A second vial was pressed to her mouth; a third, a fourth. Trusting her brother not to lead her astray, Aria drank every last drop—struggling against a flicker of fire deep in her breast and the bone-deep chill of the Fade as it wrapped its fingers about her throat, pulling her down down down into a darkness deeper still.

“Petyr,” Aria heard, the whisper drifting over her, around her, gentle eddies pulling her into the sea. “Don’t you think that’s enough?”

“I don’t know,” he whispered back, afraid. “I…I think… I don’t know.”

He sounded younger, then; the childhood friend instead of the fully grown stranger he was becoming, and Aria wanted desperately to reach out and take his hand. I trust you, she thought, each word breaking apart in her drifting, lyrium-bright mind like dandelion seeds on the wind. I trust you, I trust you, I—

She closed her eyes against the darkness, the distant whisper of the Trevelyan siblings’ voices breaking apart around her.

When she opened them again, she was…somewhere else.

Chapter Text

The world was an endless sea of stars.

Aria drew in a trembling breath as she blinked up at the pitch-black sky, watching pinpricks of light burst in a shower of sparks above her. Again, and again, and again, as regular as a heartbeat; setting the tempo of this strange place within her dreams. She was floating on still waters, cloak back around her shoulders, hair still a mermaid’s tangle, becalmed ocean reflecting back the endless starfield, and…

And Maker, but this had to be what eternity felt like.

Slowly, carefully, she lifted a hand. A trail of red-gold light followed the motion, swirling against her skin in strange iridescence. She knew she should be afraid, alone here in the Fade deeper than she had ever been able to go before, but… But oh, oh, it was so beautiful. Like a moment in time, caught; crystalized. Forged in ice about her as she plucked a star trembling from the sky.

Aria sat up, water streaming from her hair and the sky-blue ripple of her cloak, and stared at the point of light nestled in her palm. It glowed like liquid sunshine, even though it was barely the size of a grain of rice. Its simple heat sparked coals low in her belly, and Aria began to smile as she impulsively tipped her hand over.

Plop!

It hit the water with an ever-growing ripple: concentric circles widening out further and further around her as swirls of gold began to bleed into the endless sea of black. Aria climbed to her feet, easily standing on the surface of the water as if it were sturdy ground, and watched as the ever-widening waves of gold stretched out toward the horizon.

Lightning flickered overhead, even though there wasn’t a cloud to be seen, and a coal-black city was briefly silhouetted against far-away cliffs. Then, darkness again.

And in the darkness, there was a voice.

Aria turned, startled. “Hello?” she called. Her own voice echoed across the darkness, reverberating back to her as if she were at the bottom of a well. A wind blew, catching the ends of her cloak; it billowed around her when she took a hesitant step. The brush of its long ends felt like cold fingertips against her ankles, catching and then releasing before they could take firm hold.

The thought had her spinning around again, heart giving a sudden unsteady lurch. A strand of hair caught around her throat, whipped back by the wind, and for a moment—for one terrible second—Aria could have sworn someone, something had circled long fingers about her neck. But no, no, no, she was just imagining it: there was nothing but darkness and dying starlight overhead, the uncertain flicker of lightning highlighting the Fade in erratic flashes of night.

She caught the ties of her cloak and yanked them free, letting the scrap of blue fly away as if jerked from her hands. She felt lighter without its dragging weight and yet somehow more vulnerable, as if its thin layer could protect her from the fears climbing out of her own head.

Was that a whisper in the darkness? A susurrus hiss? Maker, wasn’t it funny how wonder could turn to fear so quickly?

“There’s nothing there,” Aria told herself. Her voice echoed strangely, and she had to wrap her arms around her middle to keep her heart from leaping free. She wanted desperately to lay back down, to let herself float back into that easy acceptance that had brought her here, but even as she had the thought, her feet began to sink into the pitch-black water.

No.

She stumbled, startled, certain now that she could hear a breath just behind her. The rhythmic lull of the stars bursting overhead no longer seemed so soothing: it was a heartbeat, yes, but it wasn’t her heartbeat. She was deep in the Fade, lost in its frightening labyrinthine turns, and there was something out there.

“A lonesome choir, I, song failing unanswered,” that voice (that Voice) echoed, seeming to come from somewhere high above her. It drove back the fear briefly, like a shield guarding her heart. “Voice on wind returning, answered no more.”

“Hello?” Aria called, daring. She spun around, overwhelmed by that crawling sense of dread. Somewhere nearby, a cow lowed and was answered. A wooden sword (she couldn’t say how she knew; she just knew, deep in her bones, the way she understood she must never let the demons find her dreams) thwacked against stone to underscore the uneven chant.

Aria reached out, unsurprised somehow when her palms hit rough-hewn stone. She looked up and still could see those stars—only they were much, much further away now, caught in a simple circle about six feet wide. A bar crossed the top of the well (because of course, yes, she was at the bottom of some farmer’s well) bristled old rope hanging down with a worn bucket on its end. It was just out of reach, swaying with each gust of the wind above, and the boy’s voice continued with his chant.

“Andraste despairs for her people
In heart's drumming I heard footsteps thund'ring
Shield-brothers and spear-sisters distant raised
Blade to shackle-bearer, valiant of spirit
Blazing like star-shine, to battle they charged.
None to return to the lands of their mothers
By cruel magic taken, ice, lightning, and flame.”

It was a boy, Ferelden accent heavy, stumbling over a few of the words. Instinctively, impulsively, Aria felt her shoulders relax as she began to smile. That voice—stuttering so very seriously over the Chant of Light, echoing through this calm summer night—felt so very…good. Familiar and yet strange, unknowable and yet already the brightest star in her sky.

She reached out, feeling the sparks of her magic catch inside her, scattering in a flurry of coals as she grasped at a jagged piece of stone. It felt solid beneath her grip, even though it took a moment for the visual to form—for the walls of the well to grow around her, as if her heart were three steps ahead of the rest of her, already winging up toward that unknown little boy.

I’m coming, she thought as he continued the verse. His voice echoed all around her, ringing like a chanter’s bell as she fitted her fingers into grooves of stone, rested her weight on jagged rock, and climbed steadily up up up toward freedom.

She only looked down once, skirts sodden about her legs and hair a messy tangle across one cheek, and in that instant Aria swore she saw a face reflecting back at her from the depths of the well. It was bone-white and cold, so cold, onyx eyes fixed on her with palpable hunger. But before she could so much as suck in a sharp breath, the vision was gone: transmutated into simple moonlight on water. Nothing threatening. Nothing to fear.

Still, heart in her throat, Aria grit her teeth and climbed faster.

She broke the surface on a gasp, as if narrowly escaped drowning. The cool night air felt so very good against her cheeks—safe in some way she couldn’t quantify yet needed desperately. Aria dug her fingers into stone and pulled herself out of the well, hyperaware of her sodden skirts hanging heavily about her legs. Or were the shadows taking shape beneath her, grasping into cloth, subtly pulling her down?

It was impossible to break free of the thought. Her arms trembled, grasping fingers cold, and it was strange, so strange, how she could strobe so effortlessly between joy and fear. This place was like the shifting of a sea and she the riptide; or was she caught in the riptide? Maker, what did it matter?

“Stop,” Aria snarled, kicking back into the darkness of the well. The voice—the Voice—continued, rolling like distant thunder, and she felt a flare of anger that her own imagination was conspiring to drag her back into the figurative dark. There was nothing holding to the ends of her skirt; there were no cold fingers grasping her ankles. She was defeating herself.

Right?

With a surge of will, Aria dragged herself the rest of the way up and over the lip of the well. She hit the ground with a satisfied grunt, rolling once across the sweet-scented grass as if to put space between her and her own personal demons. Rising from deep within the well echoed the sound of crashing waves (the Ostwick coast, white as bone and grasping tight) but as she sat up, her senses were flooded with new sensation.

Crickets singing along the rolling hills. Frogs in a nearby pond. The distant creak of a wagon and a nearby crack of fire as the boy’s voice finished his chant on a rush, as if hurrying his way through a nightly chore. “Long was his silence, 'fore it was broken. ‘For you, song-weaver, once more I will try. To My children venture, carrying wisdom; if they but listen, I shall return.’”

The familiar words tolled like a bell through her, lifting her to her feet. She was standing in a village square, very near a strange stone statue. Houses were flung like wild seeds here and there, but only one was alight. Through the open window, silhouetted in gold, was—

Was a boy.

No. Was the boy.

He sat by the sill, cheek resting on his fist, golden curls falling sloppily into his eyes. A wooden practice sword and a heavy book balanced by his elbow, ignored. Long lashes fanned sleepily over what even at this distance she could tell were incredibly warm eyes, and his lips twisted up into a half-smile that had Aria instantly smiling in return.

Oh, she thought, chest filling. She took a step forward, half expecting his gaze to jerk toward her at the motion, but he stayed where he was—a solitary dreamer, brimming with the sort of restless ambition that filled her own dreams. All it took was a single glance and she understood. What’s more, she felt understood in return, even when he didn’t seem to see her, each step dragging her closer as if they were magnets.

No, no, the moon and sea: Maker, the way he drew her to him.

“Hello,” Aria managed, her voice coming out breathless. The night chorus was all around and she could feel the warmth casting from inside his open window. It bathed her upturned face, sparked the waiting heat always hovering just beneath the surface of her skin. She could feel the sparks between her fingers, and she dug her hands into her still-sodden skirts, as ashamed as always. And yet… And yet somehow, when he tilted his head to look out at the night sky, some of that shame and fear seemed to bleed away.

He wouldn’t be frightened of her. She could already tell—he was brave, and good, and they were going to be knights together. They were going to be so very free.

“My name’s Aria,” she said, taking another few stumbling steps forward. She had been half the square away from his little cottage, and yet within two steps she was standing just outside his window, looking up into his face. Aria reached out, fingers curling around the sill as she took him in, both startled and understanding when he didn’t seem to notice her.

She was a dream to him; and like a dream, she somehow knew she wouldn’t be remembered come morning. But oh, oh, she would remember him. The threads of gold and wheat in his hair. The warmth cast from him. The subtle scents of pine and hay and sunshine and the way he smiled as if responding to her presence after all. He let his hand drop, hanging over the edge of the window and very nearly brushing hers, head tilting as if listening for a distant song.

Her song. She was sure of it.

“My sister said I’d find my soulmate,” she told him earnestly, seriously, studying his face with careful gravity. “And you’d be able to protect me from my magic. But…but I’m going to protect you, too.” She pressed closer, leaning up onto her tiptoes so she could meet his eyes. He was maybe a couple of years younger than she was, cheeks still baby-round and limbs awkward with a recent growth spurt. Caught between the world of childhood and young manhood, and that little bit of softness made her heart squeeze tight in response. She would fight a whole legion of darkspawn for this boy if she had to—and, Maker, she didn’t even know him. She’d only glimpsed him and already she was on fire.

“I promise,” Aria said, coals burning bright inside her. Her fingers curled tight tight tight around the sill and she could feel the wild mass of her hair shifting in the mountain breeze—lifting in red coils as a low wind subtly whipped through the square. “I promise I’m going to find you, and we’re going to protect each other, and—”

And with only the softest breath of warning, a cold, spindly hand closed over her shoulder and squeezed.

Chapter Text

Aria sucked in a breath, half-turning, one hand lifted in a sudden protective flare. She swore she saw a shadow stretch far behind her, but it dissipated the second she focused, lost to the Ferelden night. The peaceful square with its strangely shaped statue was frozen in response, listening. Waiting. Straining against the faux sense of peace, and, oh, they were not alone.

This was not her imagination; this threat was all too terrifyingly real.

“Go inside,” she said, even though the boy couldn’t possibly hear her. She turned back to him, fiercely aware of the whispers beneath the crickets’ call and sensing hungry eyes in the night. The crash of waves against the shore echoed up up up from wells of darkness, and oh Maker, when she promised to defend him, she hadn’t dreamed she might be called on to do it now.

Yet determination and new love burned bright in Aria’s chest as she rocked up onto her toes and brushed her lips against the corner of his mouth, taking strength from the sudden shock of connection. Then her fingers curled tight around the hilt of his wooden sword balanced so precariously on the windowsill and she was turning in a flurry of skirts, weapon lifted, teeth bared, ready to face whatever came.

A voice drifted close, familiar: Why won’t she wake up?

Aria stepped forward, startled into lowering her blade for just a moment. Dayna? What was her sister doing in her dreams?

We gave her too much lyrium, Petyr. She won’t wake!

“Dayna?” Aria said. A high, raucous laugh—just a crow, Aria told herself, though she knew instinctively it was something much more dangerous—echoed high from a nearby tree. She turned to face it, warily moving. The sleepy Ferelden village was fading away, stripping down like oil paints being laid in reverse, all the color slowly draining. The boy still remained, golden-bright as ever, and the two of them shone like beacon fires as the dream crashed back into the black-on-black starfield.

They were standing on glassy waters, dark shapes moving beneath the solid peaks. A white face pressed against the surface, staring up at her with a toothy grin, and Aria yelped and jumped back, instinctively reaching for her boy.

He was breathing harshly, aware of the danger even in his deep slumber, and she wondered briefly what visions his dream was giving him. Those warm eyes darted about the dark dome of the sky, and she squeezed his fingers tight as she lifted the blade. It was just wood, yes, but it was also an extension of her now—and as she had that thought, its beveled edge burst into brilliant flame, fire licking up the blade as if charged by the coals of her magic.

We have to get her inside. Tante will know what to do. Quick, Timothy, grab her other ankle.

“Hold on to me,” Aria said to the boy as she warily scanned the darkness. The bright flare of her sword cast ever-deepening shadows, and it struck her that they were both in very real danger now. Every night she went into the Fade, it was only to skim the surface. There were demons there, yes, but she’d never gone deep toward where they swum shark-swift in the shoals below.

Now, with the lyrium (too much, too much, she should have known it was too much) her siblings had given her buzzing through her veins, she was deep, deep in their world, and oh but she must have seemed so temptingly bright.

“Now she understands,” a husky voice whispered in her ear, ruffling the hair at her temples.

Aria yelped and swung, letting instinct lead her—but the demon (taken shape at last, laughing and bright and almost beautiful in its twisted, otherworldly way) merely floated just out of range of her flaming sword. It was near-naked, skin glowing with sickly light, teeth unbearably sharp. Its flat dark eyes were fixed hungrily on her…and on the boy she still held tightly by the hand.

“Look at you,” Desire murmured, floating there just out of reach. “So young and sweet. You’d taste like the ashes of roses on my tongue.” That wicked smile grew. “Why, I could just eat. You. Up.”

“Go away,” Aria said, grip tightening around the hilt. Her heart was thundering in her chest so fast she felt light-headed, and the world kept trying to dip and sway around her. She could hear snatches of what she was beginning to realize was her waking world—the crash of the sea, her brothers and sister struggling to carry her unconscious body back to the manor, the scream of gulls—but it was overlaid with this strange place. Deeply echoing, as if she really were at the bottom of some well, the sound muffled yet thundering at the same time, coming from all around her. “We don’t want you here. We don’t want anything you have to offer.”

That’s what Tante had told her to say, wasn’t it? Maker, but she wished she’d been paying closer attention!

Desire just laughed. “That’s not true, little one,” she all but purred, drifting closer. She made as if to reach out for Aria, only to float back when Aria swung again; the flaming blade clipped close to naked skin. “Everyone wants what I have to offer, once I find the right words.” That onyx-dark gaze ticked right, over Aria’s shoulder. “The right face.”

The boy.

She refused to let herself look back at him, but Aria squeezed his hand tighter, as if he really could feel her. He was making low, choked noises: sounds of distress, like someone trapped in a nightmare. She supposed that’s what this would seem like to him—what was he seeing now? What images was the Fade weaving for him? “Go away,” she said again. “I’m not going to make any deals with you.”

There was a hum of laughter, echoing all around her. Desire leaned forward, one claw-tipped finger pressed against her own lips—

—and behind Aria, another tolling bell of laughter sounded as the boy was very nearly wrenched away from her grasp.

“STOP!” Aria screamed, whirling and striking out hard. The flaming sword hit the demon with a satisfying crack, sparks scattering across the gleaming darkness. Those sparks hissed and sputtered even as the second Desire shrank back with a scream—small licks of flame sprouted where they fell. “Don’t touch him!”

She’d meant to say don’t touch me, but fear had inspired a dangerous sort of honesty.

“So sweet,” both Desire demons echoed in chorus. One of them was scorched from the strike of her blade, her expression twisted into a sneer. “So protective.”

Aria turned to the boy, wrapping an arm around him, anchoring him close. He was lost and blind in this dream, but she wasn’t. She was here, she was present, and she would be damned if she let them have him.

Her soulmate.

“You’re right,” Aria said, baring her teeth. She let her magic feed into the flames, building them higher and hotter—forming a wall between them and the demons. She kept the sword lifted, aware of her fear but refusing to acknowledge it. Her skin was wonderfully, strangely warm; her lungs were filled with smoke and the ever-present salt of the Waking Sea. “I am. And if you come any closer, Andraste take me, but I will run you through.”

The scarred Desire laughed, mocking. “Sweet child,” she purred, “but do you really think you’ll be able to guard his dreams every night?”

“And besides, you have bigger problems than us now,” the other Desire added, floating there just out of reach. She was wreathed in smoke and flames; her voice echoed with…screams? “Despair will so enjoy the feast you’re preparing: so many poor little Trevelyans. Nothing but ash.”

I don’t understand, she wouldn’t, couldn’t say. The heat against her skin was growing worse by the second, and her lungs felt oddly full: stuffed with soot. She wet her bottom lip, surprised by how cracked and dry it was, and felt—

She felt—

She felt flames against her calf, shocking her into letting go, oh Maker, oh no, oh—

“No!” Aria yelled, startling awake. She grabbed instinctively for the boy’s hand again, fingers skittering across the folds of her quilt as the Fade receded and reality slowly sank back in. Her thoughts felt terribly slow, drugged, her tongue thick as she stared down at her own bed. She was still dressed in the clothes she’d worn out to the shore, but she was back in her room. Had her siblings brought her back while she was unconscious? Had they…

Had…

Searing heat brushed her cheek, there and gone again. Startled, Aria jerked back even as she looked up—up—up at the ceiling of her childhood room. Her eyes widened as the face of Wrath leered above her, hazy yet bright with flames…but within seconds it shifted, turned into ordinary fire, golden-yellow trailers sparkling in its wake.

She was hallucinating. Or she was still dreaming. Or—

Maker, but the screaming seemed so real.

Body heavy with lyrium, magic nearly bursting out of her skin, Aria shoved herself up and stumbled out of her bed. The world seemed to dip and sway beneath her, caught in terrible strobe flashes (like lightning, she thought, and instantly the night outside her window was bright with trails of electricity), and every sound seemed to be coming from a thousand miles away. As if she really were still in the Fade. As if she were trapped in that oubliette. As if as if as if, drugged confusion keeping her mind wrapped in sodden blankets as she staggered out of her room and into the hall…flames catching and spreading with each step she took.

The walls were brilliant red-and-gold; the ceiling was black. Aria turned her head slowly at the sound of sobbing screams, caught in her own waking nightmare. Awareness was a slow thing, crawling by degrees as her dress was burned away, as her fingertips left smoldering ruin behind her. She was a creature of living flame and—

And—

And Trevelyan House was on fire, roaring bright around her, each pop and crack of flames a chorus of demonic laughter.

She sucked in a breath to scream, the dream (nightmare) (horror) shattering around her as the last of the lyrium cloud faded and she realized with stunning clarity exactly what had happened. Her brothers and sister had brought her back to the house, afraid; they had lain her in her bed. And the demons…the demons had tricked her into triggering her powers—already so strong, so tenuously under control—the lyrium super-charging everything until this.

This inferno raging around her.

She felt the scalding heat against her bare feet and shrank back, only to go stumbling forward at the next high-pitched scream. It echoed from the smoke-choked darkness, deep in the heart of the flames; the hallway was alight around her, walls and ceiling completely engulfed as a brightly-lit shape took form at the end of the hall, toward her little brother’s room.

Small. The shape was so small, crumbling to a heap even as she watched, and she sobbed in a breath as she felt the flames pour from her, ripping out of her body. Timothy, Maker, it had to be Timothy. His scream seemed to stretch on and on, rising in horrified ululations as he writhed, caught in a wall of flame, until, suddenly…

It snuffed out. The figure went still.

Oh Maker. The silence was worse than anything.

“No,” Aria begged—gutted, horrified, fighting to control the storm raging inside her. She was at the center of the tempest, ripped open by the power bursting within her chest. No matter what she did, no matter how hard she fought, she couldn’t seem to yank it all back inside. She was too small and it was too big and Maker, Maker, Maker please.

“There!” someone yelled over the roaring flames, and Aria instinctively shrank back, terrified that she’d only make it worse. Leave me to die, she wanted to scream, the horror of realization crashing over her: the whole wing was alight—the children’s wing, her family’s wing—and if Timothy had been trapped… If Raoul had been caught by the fire… If Dayna… If Petyr…

No no no no no no NO.

“Go away, go away, stop!” she screamed, backing up into the fire. She could feel it burning hot, searing, consuming: she didn’t care. She was the heart of this fire. The sooner it burned her, the sooner it could die. “I didn’t mean to!”

Big, adult shapes moved closer, ignoring her howls of protest: they were smudges of darkness, lost in the flames that were consuming her from the inside out. Her long red hair caught, flamed, spilled living fire around her as she burned: screaming with the last of her breath as Trevelyan House blazed around her.

The little boy in the Fade, forgotten. The promises made to her family, forgotten. Everything but this, forgotten, as the power exploded from her in a devastating wave, consuming everything in its wake.

Leaving behind nothing but ash.

Chapter Text

The rest fell into place much later, like dreams of a dream.

She remembered…fire. Fire everywhere. Her own screams ripping out of her as Tante and one of the neighbor men dragged her from the inferno. Tante had covered her mouth and nose with one hand, stifling her breathing until she’d gone limp—it was both a kindness and a horror that Aria never quite remembered the sight of her childhood home burning against the lowering clouds.

They kept her asleep as the children’s wing drifted to ash, taking with it Petyr, Dayna, Raoul, Timothy. They kept her asleep as those little charred bodies were carried out and covered in cloth, her mother sobbing quietly into her fist. They kept her asleep as the Templars came, as the Circle mages tended to her burns, making her good as new (the way the others never got a chance to be, a part of her always whispered), as she was loaded onto the wagon that would lead to the boat that would take her to her new home.

They kept her asleep, and they kept her in Silence, and they kept a chain about her small wrists…just in case, they said, as Knight-Commander Meredith stared down at her curled there, small as a rag doll and just as lifeless.

Time crawled past, and Aria was locked in Fadeless dreams with no warm-eyed boy to give her comfort—and no demons to haunt her sleep.

Finally, when she was at last allowed to wake, it was to a kind-faced older woman who stroked back what remained of her hair and said how lucky she was not to be Tranquil. “They’re giving you a chance,” the old mage said, lined face tired and worn from years of fear. “Don’t squander it, child.”

Aria blinked up at the ceiling, vision blurred and head still filled with fog. The room was little more than a cell. Dark stone on dark stone, only the smallest arrow-slit of a window high high high up casting the merest sliver of light. She had a flash of fever-memory—of the oubliette—of demons whispering in the dark inciting fire in her blood. It took everything Aria had not to scream.

She didn’t. She couldn’t. She was too afraid that once she started, it would never stop.

“Where,” she tried, uncertain what she meant. Where is my family, maybe, because oh Maker, there was no way it had all been real. She couldn’t have killed the brothers and sister she loved so fiercely…right?

Petyr. Dayna. Raoul. Timothy. No, no, no.

The mage misunderstood. “Kirkwall, dear,” she said. The smile she offered was a ghost of itself, and Aria shivered at the sudden chill. “You’re in the Circle. The Gallows. You’ll be…”

She trailed off before she could finish, thin lips pinched together as if swallowing back a lie. Even then—young and scared and facing the fresh horror of the monstrous thing she’d done—Aria hadn’t needed to ask what the woman hadn’t been able to bring herself to say.

You’ll be safe here.

Time passed like a river in drought: a sluggish trickle that never ceased to remind her of everything that had been lost.

For the first year, Aria remained in silence. Not literal Silence, though she could feel the Templars stationed to watch her every spare minute of the day, ready to strike her down at the first sign of flames at her fingertips. Their perpetual shadow kept the other young students away, but she didn’t mind—she still saw the echo of Timothy’s quicksilver smile or Dayna’s kind eyes when those boys and girls glanced her way, and the pain was like a clawing thing in her small chest, desperate to tear itself free.

She bit her lip and swallowed back the small noises and otherwise refused to speak. The old woman—Trulie—was the only one who dared spend time with her, catching her up on lessons she missed on days Aria couldn’t bring herself to get out of bed. That warm, motherly hand stroking the growing length of her hair sometimes felt like the only thing keeping her from shattering piece by piece, and Aria marked the hours by the lines of shadow across the floor as Trulie read aloud, or knitted soft coils of shawl to ward off the chill, or simply sat there and brooded up at the arrowslit window just as lost in thought as Aria.

Gradually, the drought showed signs of ending. Aria would sit up and hold skeins of yarn for her new friend. She would brush her now-shoulder-length hair and put on fresh robes and go to class. She would speak haltingly, voice husky as if still ravaged by fire, and the eyes of the other young girls stopped reminding her quite so sharply of her sister’s.

She healed, bit by bit—never fully, never as deep as was needed, but…enough. Enough to remember she hadn’t died that night, too.

And with her slow re-awakening came the questions that had lain dormant for so long.

“Trulie,” Aria said one stormy night. She sat on the stone floor, meticulously winding yarn into a ball; her fingers worked dexterously over the undyed wool, setting a gentle cadence for the always-uncertain tempo of her thoughts.

“Hmm?” the woman asked. Her knitting needles (whittled from branches one of the fresh-faced young Templars had snuck in to the Gallows, each small kindness hidden like the gravest sin) clicked and clacked against each other in a familiar pattern. Sometimes, when she struggled to slip past memory and into sleep, Aria tried to think of that soothing click click click, like a metronome.

She frowned down at the yarn, considering. Then: “Have you ever heard of Voices?”

The click-clack stopped with an abruptness that had Aria jerking to attention, wide eyes darting around the dim room. She half-expected to see moonlight against steel plate—or, Maker, Knight-Commander Meredith standing there with her blue eyes blazing like the bottom of a lyrium vial—but they were still alone. Still (not safe; never safe) not in direct danger.

“Trulie?” Aria said, lowering her hands.

The old woman was shaking her head, lips pressed into a firm line—pale. She’s afraid, Aria thought, breath catching as Trulie leaned forward, eyes locked on hers. Hands curved into defensive claws. “No,” Trulie whispered, so low it was barely more than a breath. “And neither have you, if you know what’s good for you.”

“I don’t understand,” Aria whispered back. Memories of that boy’s face were often her only comfort: they warmed her, made her chest feel full and bright, if only for a little while. The details of that terrible dream had begun to fade a little at the edges, but he was still clear. She had a feeling that no matter how long she lived out this prison sentence here in the Gallows, he would always be clear to her. “What’s so wrong with them?”

Trulie reached out to catch Aria’s hand, pulling her closer. She leaned in, lips against Aria’s ear, voice so low even then that she had to hold her breath to hear. “Meredith will have you Tranquil before you could draw your next breath if she knew you were even thinking about your Voice,” she said. “Andraste save us, she would have me taken, too, for listening to you.”

Maker’s breath. “Is it really that evil?” Aria asked, feeling the conflicted impulses spark within her. It seemed impossible to think of anything so sweet as wrong…and yet, there were holes inside of her where her brothers and sister used to be. If she hadn’t gone searching for her Voice…if she hadn’t let those demons drift close…if she hadn’t been born with this thing inside of her…maybe she would be dead and they would be alive. Maybe everything would be okay.

“Oh, child.” The old woman reached up with her free hand to cup the back of Aria’s skull, ruffling copper-red hair. “Yes. And no. It’s the only comfort we will ever have, but… You mustn’t ever speak of it.”

“Do you?” Aria dipped her chin, eyes squeezed shut. Anyone who looked in on them now would assume they were deep in prayer. “Have one, I mean?”

Trulie let out a slow, uneven breath: serrated-sharp, as if her memories had become burrs to snag its edges on. “Of course,” she said, voice thick. “Every mage has a Voice, child. It’s only that not all of us are lucky enough—or cursed enough—to be able to find them.”

That had Aria lifting her head, brows drawn together. “Cursed?” she echoed, needing to know. She’d always assumed everything had gone so wrong because of an overdose of lyrium, but maybe…maybe it was deeper than that. Maybe it was seeking him out in the first place, or…

Trulie simply shook her head, banishing the tumbling thoughts. “No. No. I mean only…” She leaned back herself, spreading her hands. They were old and wrinkled, trembling there between them. “I met…her…when I was young. She was there in my dreams like neverending summer, and I was here. I was always here. Do you understand, child?” Trulie asked, eyes on her. “Sometimes, when I dare, I can still see her. She’s married, has grandchildren; she’s happy. And I am happy when I see her, but then I wake, and I. Am. Still. Here.”

Oh. Oh. “It’s always winter in Kirkwall,” Aria translated, meaning: we’re frozen here. We’ll never escape.

Trulie nodded slowly. “So,” she whispered, “you see why it can be a curse. To see what we may never have.”

“There’s a boy,” Aria said on impulse, catching those trembling old hands in hers. “He has golden hair and kind eyes. And the way he makes me feel…” She faltered. “Felt.”

The old woman squeezed her fingers. “Hold on to that,” she said, “but never too tight. See him when you must, but never too often. It will drown you if you let it, this longing for something you will never have.”

Aria swallowed. “But I don’t even know how to…” she began, then stopped. Aware of the quiet room, of the ever-open doorways, of the chance that someone might overhear and take her very mind from her with the single hot kiss of the brand.

Trulie squeezed tighter, and tighter, eyes on Aria’s uplifted face bright with a sheen of unshed tears. “If you promise me you will be careful,” she said, “and never speak of this again, then, well…” She drew a breath and let it out slowly. Painfully. “I will show you how to find him whenever you want.”

It seemed too good to be true. More, it seemed too good for her. She didn’t deserve this gift; it would be better if she lived her life in silence and regret, atoning for what she had done. And yet Aria couldn’t help the little spark of hope that lit in her chest as she thought of her golden-haired boy, out there somewhere: safe. Safe, the way her family never would be.

I’m sorry Dayna, Petyr, she thought, hot tears—never too far away—burning on her lashes. I’m sorry Raoul, Timothy, but…I have to. I have to see him. Just to be sure, Aria quickly rationalized, he really is safe.

“Please,” she whispered, hating herself for the curl of hope that unfolded in her chest, making her feel alive for the first time in so very, very long. “Show me how.”

Chapter Text

There was no lyrium this time, or she would never have agreed. That fear still tasted like blue fire on her tongue.

Instead, there was only her familiar bed, tucked into a corner in the dormitory. There was Trulie’s hand on her brow, the memory of her whispered instructions—echoing like rolling waves as sleep came slowly, slowly, slowly.

We teach each other, when we dare, Trulie had said, and a part of Aria wondered at that kind of bravery—if Tranquility was at stake, how could any mage ever trust another with this kind of secret? And yet apparently several of the men and women sleeping in this very dorm had been shown the way by older mages like Trulie, the way Aria was being shown now.

Guided into sleep. Watched over. Protected.

Lead through the darkness and back to that one shining light.

He was there, her little blond-haired boy, kneeling on an old chantry floor with his hands folded in prayer. He looked so earnestly focused that something inside her tightened even as the rest went winging bright and high and relieved inside her chest.

She’d been afraid that maybe she might hate him, the next time they crossed paths. He’d inadvertently been the door demons had needed to tear her life apart; he’d been the crack in her armor, would always be her one greatest weakness. And yet, standing there in the streams of golden light breaking through the chantry’s window, all Aria could feel was love.

“Oh,” she whispered, watching him. It was a strange sensation—falling, like this, when he’d never even looked at her. The pain of it was exquisite, tearing, clawing deep inside. There were tears tracking down her cheeks, and her hands trembled as she reached up to dash them away. Her heart beat like a wild thing in her chest, because…

Because he was still here. After everything, after she had lost—after she had destroyed—everything, he was still here.

She clapped a small hand over her mouth to stifle a sob, sinking down to the cold stone. Skirts the color of blood, of flame, pooled around her, and Aria watched through a haze of tears as her solemn little Voice lifted his face up to the light.

There was kindness writ clear across every line of him. There was stubbornness in the set of his jaw, determination in the curl of his hands—still clasped in prayer and just a little grubby, dirt under the nails. When she breathed in a ragged breath, she swore she could smell a gust of fresh country air and sunshine: the tangling hints of freedom she’d never know again.

She’d thrown that all away the night she’d failed to protect her family. She’d lost even the right to mourn the life she could have had. And yet…

“I’m sorry,” Aria whispered. She rose up onto her knees, clasping her own hands—unconsciously mimicking his pose, as if they were here in this grand old chantry praying together. It would be so easy to pretend, the flicker of candlelight catching on gold and red hair alike. His eyes were so warm; she wondered what it would feel like to have them on her, for him to see her. Her cheeks flushed pink at the thought. “I’m sorry I’ll never know you for real.”

“I promise,” he said on the heels of her words, and for a shocked-still moment, Aria swore he was looking right at her: earnest and serious and kind kind kind. “I promise I will train, and I will study, and I will do my best.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, one hand dropping to the cold stone as she unconsciously inched closer. Her lungs were full of the sun-tree-free scent of him, and her skin prickled with incredible awareness. They were in the Fade, in his dreams, and yet in this moment she believed so strongly that she swore she could feel the heat cast from his skin. She wanted to reach out, but kept her hands tightly fisted in her lap, twining through the heavy fall of her dress.

They were alone together in a circle of light cast in a dazzling beam from the high window. The darkness of the chantry beyond was a score of flickering candles—more—their yellow-gold flames licking higher, higher. Aria could feel the…something…in the air, electric around them. Her heart was racing a mad staccato and oh, oh it hurt to see him and to not be seen, and yet she was so desperately glad for each detail she was able to memorize: the black soot of his lashes, the handful of golden freckles across his cheeks, the messy way his curls tumbled over his brow.

The perfect bow of his upper lip.

He was older, now, no longer quite the little boy she remembered. Of course, she was older too—funny how fluid time could feel, its river rushing past as she barely marked the days. There was still a touch of softness to his cheeks, but the rest of the baby fat had all but melted away to broadening shoulders and gawkily long arms and legs. The wooden practice sword had been replaced by a real sword at some point—dinged-up and ancient, but good steel.

She sat back on her heels, taking in the differences. A tiny bit of soft golden fuzz clung to his upper lip, making her smile. She remembered the first time Petyr had been able to grow a mustache; how proud he’d been of that ridiculous bit of—

Aria flinched back as if struck by the memory. Her breath left her in a ragged gust, and she felt that ever-present tidal wave of loss ready to come crashing over her head again.

“No,” she said, reaching out blindly. She caught at warm hands clasped together; she felt calloused skin—steady, so very steady, her Voice like a rock in the center of a whirlpool. If she clung to him tight enough, Maker, maybe she wouldn’t drown.

Feeling lost, shaken, Aria let herself cleave to him. He dropped his hands as she pressed close, responding that way he had before—unseeing, unknowing, lost in his own dream and yet reacting subtly to her presence as if he could only just catch the barest glimmer of her. Whatever it was, she was desperate enough to take it. She slid her arms around his shoulders and pressed her face into his neck, shakily breathing him in. Maker, she didn’t deserve this small comfort; she had no right to cry. Killers didn’t get the solace of remorse.

And yet she held on to him as if he were her one tie back to the past—to the world she’d never get to see again. To brilliant blue skies and the waves off Ostwick and that little cave in the distance, a pair of small figures waiting for her by the rocks.

“I promise I will do my best,” he said, looking up toward the rose window that blinked open above them like an eye: light streaming through in fractured color, casting them both in mottled shades of blue and red and orange and black. “I will make the order proud.”

She stilled at his words, their meaning tangled about in her thoughts. The order. “What,” Aria began, pulling back to look at him. She rubbed at her cheek as if ashamed of the tears, then twisted to take in that beautiful old stained glass hanging high above them for the first time.

The flaming sword picked out in multi-colored glass loomed over her in implicit threat. And in that moment, the pieces at last fell together in painful clarity.

Her Voice was going to be a Templar.

Aria jerked back, startled, staring at her little golden boy. A Templar. A Templar like Meredith, stalking through the halls of the Gallows, spreading terror in her wake. A Templar like Ser Trent, who watched young apprentices like her with one hand curled around the hilt of his blade, waiting. Hoping. Ready for any excuse to act.

It was so hard to imagine Cullen like that, and yet she sat back on her heels and tried to parse out the riot of conflicting emotion, forcing herself to picture it—to picture him. Dressed in steel plate, the flaming sword on his chest. Eyes hard. Jaw hard. Everything about him compacted by pressure and lyrium and distrust until he was a diamond in human shape.

Until he was recognizable.

And yet…

She watched the way colored light played across his features and felt the new flush of fear slowly drain away again. Cullen wouldn’t be hardened like that. He wouldn’t be cruel. This little boy who lived in her dreams was gentle in a way she recognized—not from within herself, but shining up from shards of memory. No matter how the Templars tried to shape him, she couldn’t imagine him watching her with ice-chip eyes.

Slowly, almost feeling shy, Aria reached out and closed her fingers over his clasped hands. His gaze flickered at the touch, though she know he couldn’t see her, feel her, sense her. But maybe somewhere deep in his dreams (as his mind roiled with the turbulence of all that was about to change as he transitioned from farmboy to recruit), he knew she was there, watching over him.

Loving him. Somehow, already, despite everything, loving him so damn much.

“Promise me,” Aria murmured, leaning close as if he could truly hear her. The old chantry was big and echoingly empty around them. “Promise you’ll do everything you can to be gentle. To be just.” She thought of the fear she sometimes saw in Trulie’s eyes as the older woman watched certain Templars pass, and she swallowed, grip tightening. “Promise me you’ll do everything in your power to make things right, whenever you can, for whomever you can.”

Cullen let out a soft breath, lips parted. She wanted to press her own lips to his, suddenly, and the thought was enough to bring a hot flush to her cheeks.

Aria cleared her throat. “In return,” she said, as solemnly as she could, “I promise that I won’t give up. I won’t…” Fade away, the ghosts of her past tugging her gently to the bottom of her personal sea. “I won’t let this be the end. I’ll keep fighting. And some nights,” Aria added, impulsively lifting one hand to brush her fingertips along the soft curve of his still-rounded cheek, “I will come find you in your dreams, and I will fight for you too.”

The words felt solemn as a vow on her lips, and she could practically feel that flaming sword in her grip again. Because he may be gentle, but she wasn’t. And she would be his shield and his sword for as long as they lived their lives forever apart.

It struck her suddenly that she was going to go through her entire life loving him, and he would never even know she was there.

“Maker’s breath,” she whispered, letting go. Aria sat back on her heels, hurting—the bitter-sweetness of this moment filling her chest more and more and more until it felt like she was drowning in it. When they were young, Dayna…Maker, Dayna…used to crawl into bed with her and whisper about the men they would someday marry.

‘I don’t care if he’s handsome,’ Dayna used to say, pulling the sheet over their heads until it was just the two of them, safe in a gentle cocoon of their own making. ‘So long as he’s kind.’

Aria had used to laugh and pull her sister’s braids. ‘You think too small,’ she’d teased. ‘Why not demand both?’

Handsome and kind. Strong. Good. She hadn’t had to wait very long until she found the person she wanted more than anything, and yet they’d both grow up leagues apart—she in her Gallows, him in whatever lonely tower he was assigned to—and he would never even know her name.

This, Aria thought with a melancholy understanding far beyond her age, is what Trulie meant when she said a Voice was a curse.

And yet she wouldn’t trade this stolen moment for anything.

“Be kind,” she said, refocusing on Cullen’s upturned face and solemn brow. The light was all around them now, casting shades of greens and golds and blues, like they were living in the heart of a prism: frozen forever in earnest, youthful love. “Be good. And know that I am here,” she added, leaning in to press a kiss between his brows—lingering there at the ache of warmth, tears pricking at her lashes, “watching over you.”

And then, before she could allow herself to sink by his side and stay trapped in dreams for as long as her body—and the Fade spirits never too far away—would allow, Aria let go and gave herself back to her own restless sleep.

Leaving Cullen in his own dreams, head bowed, unaware of the little girl who’d traipsed into his life…or the demons who followed in her footsteps.

Chapter Text

He should have felt ashamed for the way he watched her.

The way he wanted her.

Cullen stood silently at his post, fighting to ignore the constant strain of muscles from the sheer weight of his armor. The older Templars claimed he’d soon grow used to it, but he’d been an anointed brother for some time now and he still couldn’t find their practiced ease with the massive steel plate. It didn’t help that it was so noisy; he was painfully conscious of the clicks and clanks every time he shifted his weight.

At the way she looked at him, dark blue eyes serious in an expressive face. Dark hair threatening to slip free of its long braid.

He drew in an unsteady breath as his gaze fixed forward, away from Solona Amell. It wouldn’t do to be caught staring at her like the gawky farmboy he secretly knew himself to be. His commander would skin him alive if he had even an inkling of where Cullen’s mind wandered sometimes.

And Solona?

Well. Solona sometimes smiled at him—sometimes shared a few awkward pleasantries—but she wouldn’t appreciate any overtures of friendship beyond that.  She was too smart to fall into that trap.

Cullen stared straight ahead, willing himself to relax into his monotonous watch. Willing himself to think of the mages—of Solona—as just part of the scenery. That’s what Ser Yarik had said he needed to do, wasn’t it? Just pretend he was standing there alone, listening for wolves sniffing about the edges of Honnleath. Alert to danger, and yet impervious to the very human face that it could take.

…Maker’s breath, but the mere idea felt repugnant. He shifted, armor creaking far too loudly—making a thoroughly ridiculous noise where he’d failed to oil a hinge properly. Sqqquuuueeeeakkkkkkk. One of the younger girls clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle a giggle, the sound so normal, so natural, so human that Cullen found himself smiling along despite himself.

He glanced over and met Solona’s dancing eyes. She was already smiling back at him, that warmth he found himself so drawn to clear in the soft heart of her round-cheeked face. Maker, that smile—there was no way he could think of her, of any of them, as part of the scenery, or as wolves, or whatever else rank bullshit the older knights tried to feed him.

She was just like him, wasn’t she? They all were, underneath.

Cullen watched as Solona cocked her head, then leaned in to whisper something to the giggler. The girl’s eyes widened, and she nodded quickly, casting Cullen a quick glance of her own. He wished he could read lips; it would certainly make the hours of sentry duty pass more quickly. He wondered if—

A chair scraped against stone as Solona stood, gathering her books against her bosom (not that he was looking at her bosom; not that he ever even noticed her bosom; not that…) and skirting about the long table. Cullen glanced toward the window, surprised. Usually Solona spent most of the morning in the library. Was she leaving because he’d made her uncomfortable?

Stars, he probably had.

Mentally kicking himself, Cullen sighed and fixed his gaze straight ahead, resolutely trying to focus on everything and nothing at all…which was why he nearly startled out of his skin when a soft hand touched his arm, tugging the steel plate down.

He jolted back, half-turning in surprise—elbow smacking hard against old stone. It didn’t hurt, but the clang was mortifyingly loud, practically echoing through his own clenched teeth. Standing there at his side, Solona winced and dropped her hand, wrapping her arm around the book clasped to her chest like her own protective breastplate. Straight white teeth worried at her lower lip, and even when Cullen was immolating from the inside-out with sheer mortification, she was so bloody beautiful.

He didn’t think he’d ever seen a woman like her. Soft, curvy, yet strong, with a stubborn chin and eyes that seemed to take in everything with a touch of semi-solemn humor. She wore her long dark hair in a braid down her back, and she could have been any girl in his village if not for the hint of wariness that balanced the warmth behind her eyes. Staring down at her, breath picking up a touch, he could see himself reflected back in her gaze.

Funny thing was, seeing that inverted image, he almost liked what he saw.

Cullen cleared his throat and reached up to rub the back of his neck, unoiled hinge squeaking again like a laughing mouse. “Ah, uh, um, hello. Solona. Hi. Did you…?” Want something, he meant to say, but the words kept dying on his lips.

She smiled, tipping her head; the long end of her braid swung over one shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she said, voice low. They all spoke in low voices here; even the Templars kept their tones modulated until they were alone together in the mess hall. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“Y-you didn’t,” Cullen said quickly…but that was such a bald-faced lie that he had to add, sheepish: “Well, ah, not too much, anyway. Nothing I won’t recover from.”

“Good,” Solona said with a laugh. The sound was unexpectedly lovely. He’d heard her laugh before, of course—the Ferelden circle wasn’t as bad as some he’d heard rumors about—but never, never with him. The intimacy of that shared moment of humor made something turn over pleasantly in his stomach. “I’d hate to be the cause of your demise, Ser Cullen.”

It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her she didn’t have to call him Ser, but…but that was ridiculous, of course. She wasn’t some dairy maid he could ask to dance at the next barn raising and sneak away to kiss beneath the apple tree. She was a mage and he was a Templar and Maker’s breath but he’d never imagined things could feel so stupidly complicated when he pictured this future for himself as a boy. “And I’d hate to… To be the cause of anything you didn’t like,” he said, fumbling for words. These likely weren’t the right ones—no, he realized with an inner sigh, they’re definitely not—but the way she was looking at him kept making his thoughts jump and skitter.

“Sorry,” Cullen added, sotto.

She tilted her head, smile still in place. “What for?” Solona asked.

For being bloody weird. For not being able to talk to you like a normal person. Maybe if he imagined she really was just any other girl at Honnleath? …of course, he’d never exactly had a lot of experience talking to the village girls back then, either, too busy scrapping with his brother and sisters or memorizing the Chant in his endless drive to make it to this point, this position. This…strange calling that was nothing like what he’d always imagined it might be.

There was a good deal less glory in watching men and women, boys and girls, and pretending they were wolves.

…and Solona was still watching him, still waiting for his response. Maker’s breath. “For failing at even the semblance of normalcy,” Cullen sighed, giving up. A part of him wanted her—this kind, smiling girl with the serious eyes—to see him as dashing. Brave. Noble. All the nonsense the romances he snuck under the covers at night told him Templars could be. And here we was, fumbling about like the hapless yokel he was, tongue-tied as if he’d never seen a gorgeous pair of—

—um—

—eyes before.

Cullen flushed, then flushed harder when Solona dropped her hand again to his gauntleted arm, giving it a squeeze. He couldn’t feel the heat of her fingers, but he could imagine it, blazing a path against his sensitized skin. “There’s nothing all that interesting about normalcy, Ser Cullen,” Solona said, and smiled. Smiled at him.

If his whole face hadn’t gone numb with the heat of his blush, he may well have smiled back.

“Anyway,” she added, glancing over her should at the other young mage, who had gathered her things by now and was waiting expectantly by the door. “I just…saw you looking our way and thought I’d say hello. So…hello. And goodbye.”

Her hand slipped away as she stepped back.

“Goodbye,” Cullen echoed helplessly, watching her. He almost took an instinctual step after her, but that would be ridiculous, wouldn’t it? He was supposed to be stationed here, watching the library. “And hello.”

It took her soft laugh for him to realized he’d swapped the two, and he made a frustrated-embarrassed noise, rubbing at the back of his neck again. His damned armor squeak-squeak-squeeeaaked in response, underscoring what an absolute idiot and failure he was.

A fine soldier with a good head for the shifting tides of battle? Sure. A semi-decent scholar with a strong memory for tactics and history? Absolutely.

A lothario? A chevalier? A, a, a bloody hero from any of those novels he wished his oldest sister had burned before ever letting him sneak away to devour them in private? Most certainly not. If he opened his mouth again, he was destined to jam his food right in.

So he stayed silent, pretending not to watch as Solona turned away to join her giggling friend—their heads tipped together as they whispered on their way down the winding hall, dark and fair and so completely, utterly, out of his reach.

Another day, another boring watch.

Cullen stood, staring straight ahead—this time outside one of the classroom doors. He hated this rotation more than any of the others. There were truly young children filing past him into the classroom now, their eyes darting his way and their voices dropping as they slipped through the door and out of sight.

He always wanted to stop them, to reassure them that he wasn’t ever going to hurt them…but then, he supposed that would just make it all worse, and Maker but being a Templar wasn’t anything like what he’d been told.

Silently stewing—and doing his best to look as unthreatening as possible—Cullen lifted his gaze to the middle distance…and caught sight of her. Solona. Coming toward him.

She was walking side-by-side with a young man who’d already proven to be a bit of a thorn in both Greagoir and Irving’s sides (Jowan, his memory supplied), and she was laughing at something he said. They were a few steps behind the last of the young students, their arms piled with books. Taking the class, maybe? Or, more likely, helping to teach it.

Yes, that fit with what he knew of Solona. She always seemed to be helping everybody. It fit less with what he’d gathered of Jowan, but Cullen supposed he didn’t actually know the other man. Not really. Not the way his subconscious liked to trick itself into believing he knew Solona.

Anyway. It didn’t matter. He tried to look casually away as they approached, as if he hadn’t zeroed in on her the moment she’d rounded the bend, but Solona looked up at that exact moment and met his eyes. Her step faltered ever-so-slightly, but the smile that broke across her face didn’t seem faked. In fact, it was more real than the stone walls around him, more warming than the sun streaming through the far window, and Cullen couldn’t help the reflexive grin it teased out of him: big and no doubt goofy and more farmboy than Templar.

And, damn it, he was blushing; he could feel it heating his cheeks. He broke their gaze, fighting against the urge to rub awkwardly at the back of his neck as Solona and Jowan neared…then passed, moving within a whisper of him. If he only dared, he could reach out to touch her arm and say—

What? What exactly would he say to her? What could he say?

There were no permitted words for how he felt—how she made him feel—so he simply bit his tongue and re-focused on the wall ahead of him, trying not to strain to hear her voice as the senior mage began the class…

…and utterly failing to convince himself that he wasn’t blindly, impossibly infatuated with the mage girl with the storm-blue eyes.

It started as it always seemed to: him standing watch somewhere, staring straight ahead as if he were tasked with holding up the walls with just his gaze. A hand falling on his arm, startling him into the moment.

Cullen managed not to jolt this time, though it was a near thing. He’d been on edge since… Well, for a long time, actually, but it had been the most intense since Solona’s Harrowing. He had no idea what sick twist of fate had led him to be the one chosen to wield the blade should Solona lose herself along the way, but it seemed the Maker was testing him.

(Or, perhaps more aptly, Ser Greagoir was.)

“I’m sorry,” Solona said with an almost-smile despite the palpable tension humming between them. Maker’s breath, but he could hardly blame her; the last time she had seen him, he’d been standing there, sword in hand, ready to kill her if need be. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Again. Always. They’d shared more short conversations in the past few months—small moments drawn together like brightly colored beads woven into a dull tapestry—and every time, he jolted in her presence as if struck by electricity. It was appalling.

(It was so very telling. Wasn’t that what all those stories claimed? That true love sent adrenaline racing through your veins? Bloody uncomfortable is what it was.)

“You didn’t,” Cullen assured, but of course that was an obvious lie. “I mean, not too much. I mean…” What, exactly, did he mean? Star over, idiot. “I mean, um, h-hello.” He tripped over the words getting them out, but at least they were getting out. Thank Andraste for small bloody favors.

She smiled again, still small and strained. “Well,” Solona said after a moment of stretching silence. “Anyway. I just saw you and thought I’d say hello. So…hello.” Solona laughed quietly. “And goodbye. Or did I get that the wrong way around?”

Maker, they had inside jokes. This wasn’t the first time she had (gently!) teased him with that, and he earnestly hoped it wouldn’t be the last. “It’s perfect,” he said, meaning you’re perfect. But of course even he had enough sense not to say that. “I…goodbye, hello, goodnight.”

She laughed again and began to turn away, braid snaking down the straight line of her back…and Cullen realized he had to say something. He couldn’t just let them both skate gently past what had happened. “I, uh,” he said, and was gratified when Solona immediately stopped and turned back to look at him. “I am glad to see your Harrowing went smoothly.”

I am so, so bloody glad I didn’t have to kill you.

He didn’t say the words, but maybe she read them in his eyes. Either way, she focused instead on the jittery delivery rather than the meaning stacked heavy there between them. “Why are you stuttering?” Solona asked.

It…wasn’t like her to call out his perpetual awkwardness, but he supposed he did have it coming. It seemed, at least, like a small price to pay for witnessing the trial she’d had to undergo. “Oh, well, uh, no reason,” Cullen said, mostly because you’re bloody beautiful and I’m bloody terrified didn’t quite seem right. Maker, why hadn’t he ever learned how to talk to girls? “I mean, I’m not. Really. At all. So.”

She tilted her head, dark blue gaze fixed on him. Intent. “You sound nervous, Ser Cullen,” Solona said. And all right, she had definitely never called him out on that before, though he was absolutely certain this wasn’t the only time he’d fumbled over himself in her presence. “Why?”

“What?” he tried to play it off, doing a piss-poor job of it. He felt like his skin was on fire, and there were literal beads of sweat blooming across his hairline and creeping cold streams into the far-too-hot tin can of his armor. “I-I’m fine.” He gave a small, strangled laugh that sounded anything but fine, reaching up blindly as if he could tug the metal away from his constricted throat

It was the way she was watching him, he decided. There was such a, a, a knowing look in her eyes. Maker. Did she suspect how he felt? Had his blundering given him away at some point? Or had she known all along, and she had chosen now, post-Harrowing, to let him hang for it? “I… I’m just glad you’re all right,” Cullen settled weakly on, shifting back and forth, back and forth, feeling all of eleven years old again. Maybe if he pulled her pigtails and ran away, he’d have better luck. “You know.”

“I see,” she said, though he had no idea if she really did see. Then, meeting his eyes, Solona asked bluntly: “Would you really have struck me down?”

He tried not to flinch at her words. He really did. A true Templar wouldn’t flinch, would he? A true Templar wouldn’t doubt.

But he did doubt—he doubted a great deal, more than his idealistic childhood self could have ever imagined—and he wasn’t sure how to answer her question. Mostly because…he didn’t know.

Maybe that’s why he was chosen. Maybe the test was as much for him as it was for her. And even though he would never presume to think he had gone through a quarter of what she had, it was true he was still reeling under the weight of his own uncertainty.

He was taught he had to fear mages, and yet…he wasn’t afraid. He was taught they were little more than animals, and yet…he saw more humanity in Solona’s open expression than in the faces of men years into their service. He was taught that his blade was meant to protect the world from people like her, and yet…he couldn’t help but think she was the kind of woman who could protect the world better than anyone.

But.

But.

He couldn’t say any of that. Not and still wear the uniform he’d spent his entire life until this moment fighting to earn. “I would’ve felt terrible about it,” Cullen said, settling on the easy, expected lie. “But I serve the Chantry and the Maker, and I will do as I am commanded.”

Solona didn’t answer right away. Instead, she looked at him searchingly—seriously—blue eyes scanning his face as if she could read the thoughts buried deep below the surface. Or, Maker, were they buried deep below? Goodness knows he’d never been bloody great at lying. Maybe she could see everything. Maybe she—

“Maybe we could go elsewhere and continue our discussion?” Solona asked suddenly with a tilt of her head and a slowly spreading smile.

And…

And, wait.

What?

“Elsewhere?” Cullen repeated, voice cracking. Cracking, as if he was all of eleven again. What was it about this woman—well, all women, but this woman in particular—that kept doing this to him? “Ah, what do you mean?”

Solona’s smile grew wicked. “I’ve seen the way you look at me,” she said on a purr, the sound raising the hairs along his arms.

She… Andraste take him, was she flirting with him? Was she… Did she mean… She couldn’t possibly… He couldn’t possibly… But… And… Oh. Oh. Oh goodness.

“Oh, my goodness,” Cullen said, heart ratcheting up, racing in his chest. He could hear the sound like a hollow drum, drowning out everything. The world could be crumbling right now and he wouldn’t even notice. “Ah, I’m not sure what you mean,” he managed.

Solona stepped in—stepped closer—one hand lifting to press against the metal breastplate with its flaming sword. He could practically feel the indentations of her fingers despite the layers of armor separating them. “I believe you do,” she said, eyes never leaving his.

This…this felt like one of those moments that defined a person. One of those turning points that changed the path he was on. He’d had one before, as a young child: a dream of darkness and a girl made of fire, warding away the night. He’d woken from that dream crying out for her, reaching as if he could clasp her hand, and when his fingers closed around nothing but air, he’d thought—

This. This is what heartbreak is.

It had hurt, that long-ago dream. But it had also made him determined to become the protector that dream girl had been for him. He’d thrown himself into his studies, begged to be allowed to start the training that would one day lead him to the Templars, done everything he could to be here, now, at another turning point.

At Solona Amell watching him with knowing eyes, a question of sin on her lips.

He’d never kissed a girl. He’d never really had a chance. And right here, right now, he wanted to kiss her more than anything in the world.

But something was holding him back.

“If you’re saying…what I think…” Cullen began slowly, falteringly, feeling bloody earnest and ridiculous and, well, yes, excruciatingly interested at whatever she was hinting at. Her lips were parted, slick, and he couldn’t seem to take his eyes off of them. That was a bad sign, wasn’t it? That was…

She was…

She was just so beautiful. And she had been so kind to him. And she wanted him; even Cullen could tell that she wanted him, those dark blue eyes unwavering, that heart-shaped face lifted toward his, her breasts (bloody void!) brushing his armor as she swayed forward in open invitation, just waiting for him to lean down and taste her. Take her. Claim her.

…take advantage of her. Because Maker, that’s what it would be, right? Taking advantage? He was a Templar and she was a mage and this was wrong wrong wrong, no matter how much he wanted to see if she tasted half as sweet as he imagined.

“That would be really…inappropriate,” Cullen managed, gently catching her hand before dropping it as if it had burned him through the metal of his gloves. Bloody void, he was turned on; this was not good. This was very not good. “And…I couldn’t… I…”

She watched him, smiling, something alarmingly (intriguingly) wicked in the tilt of her mouth.

“…I should go,” Cullen finally managed to say, and he turned and literally ran away from her, armor clanking impossibly loud in his ears, almost enough to drown out the thud-dud of his racing heart. He could feel her eyes on him even as he sprinted down the hall and around the corner, away from temptation—away from her touch—away from—

His own bloody senses, apparently, because this wasn’t where he meant to be.

Cullen skidded to a stop, startled, as the familiar stones of the mage’s quarters morphed beneath his feet—changing, roughening, going slick-dark-terrible with blood. He sucked in a breath and jerked his head up, staring around him in dumbfounded horror.

He was at the base of the steps that lead to the Harrowing chamber. He could hear…screams. Screams all around him. A shimmering barrier held him trapped, and his armor had been stripped away, leaving him vulnerable. The pounding of his heart wasn’t desire, but fear, and the woman watching him…

That wasn’t Solona Amell.

“Demon,” Cullen whispered, and she laughed as she pulled away, dark hair unwinding from its braid and erupting into flame. The robes faded, turned into bare skin, and bottomless black eyes watched as Cullen fought against the magical bonds holding him in place.

Demon. It was a demon, and all around, echoing everywhere, was—death.

“Maker,” he said, recognizing one of those voices lifted high in desperate ululation. It curt to the quick of him, burning away his own fear with growing horror.

Desire just shook her head, amused. “I should have known she wasn’t the right form,” she said, voice echoing in that way it had. He could almost swear he recognized her, as if he’d seen this particular shade before, haunting the edges of his dreams.

Cullen tensed as Desire leaned forward, flames spreading out around her shadows in licks of heat and light; her eyes danced with it and oh, the way she smiled at him, as if she knew him well. He tried to pull back when Desire reached for him, but he was held still, helpless, as bone-cold fingers gripped the rough stubble of his chin, forcing him to look at her as flames consumed the air around her: beautiful in their own sick way.

“Now, dear boy,” Desire murmured, face beginning to shift again, voice changing inflections as she found a new form to torture him with, “shall we try this again?”

Chapter Text

He didn’t know how much longer he could hold on.

The pain had long since faded, bleeding away to a dull ache that was nothing more than a vague awareness of his own body. It was cold, he knew, but he’d lost the ability to feel its bite against his skin. He was drifting—he was lost—he was trapped in this moment of not-quite-dying, teetering on the edge of the void and forced to stare into its depths.

If the flame-haired woman had her way, he’d be dangled there forever, until there was no concept of him left.

“Don’t be like that, Cullen,” she said, crouching before him. They were in a familiar-yet-not library, the columns of books recognizable even if the layout was new. A Circle—he knew that instinctively—and yet not Kinloch. The windows here were high, narrow slits; the walls were rough stone. This was more a fortress than a home, missing all the little touches that had made the Ferelden Circle more bearable over the years.

Seeing this place somehow made his heart ache.

Fingertips brushed his jaw, sliding up into his hair and drawing him back into the moment. Cullen tried to jerk his face away, but her grip was like iron; like ice. Freezing him in place as she snarled curls about her fingers and leaned ever-closer.

The vivid red of her hair spilled around them when she pressed her forehead to his. Her breath was sweet-yet-sulfurous. Her eyes—

Maker.

He would take those eyes with him to the grave. The way they watched him, unraveled him, delighted in every moment of this endless torture.

I will kill you, demon, he promised, gritting his teeth around a mouthful of blood. He’d had to bite the insides of his cheeks to keep from crying out. He’d rather swallow his own tongue than give her the pleasure of his screams. I will find a way to survive this, to break free, and I will wrap my hands around your throat. I will squeeze the life from you.

He could see it, feel it. That promise was the only thing keeping him anchored when everything else conspired to send his thoughts spinning under her control.

She tsked, one corner of her mouth pulling up into a smile. “You wouldn’t want to hurt me,” she crooned—then laughed, tipping back her face again. The way her long hair fell around them, it was like being trapped in living flames; each silky curl burned his skin to ash. “I know you, Cullen. I’ve been watching you for a very long time.”

I do, though, Cullen reassured himself. I do want to hurt you.

The way she had hurt him. The way she had killed his brothers, his charges. Maker’s breath, he could smell the bloodbath, even though the screams had all but faded now. How long had he been trapped inside Desire’s well? If he really concentrated, he could almost… Almost feel the distant awareness of his body, and…

And no. No, the ice had taken him completely. He may as well have been untethered from the flesh, floating on the fever-edge of remembered pain.

“Do you want to know how I know you?” Her voice was so human it was chilling. She’d chosen a Marcher accent—not quite the thickness of a Starkhaven burr, but a nearby cousin, perhaps. Markham? Ostwick? Trying to pinpoint the intricacies of her lie kept him from losing himself to the vision she was trying so hard to sell. “Do you want to know where we met for the very first time?”

Her breath was hot on his cheeks again, and the library was long gone. Now they were in some dim stone room, tarp-covered shapes like ghosts in the distance. It was that same Circle keep judging by the tall arrow-slit windows and cold stone floor, but a blanket had been spread out beneath them and she—he—they were naked. Skin to skin, deceptively warm as she crawled into his lap with an almost-sweet smile.

The hell of it was, it would be so easy to just let himself sink into the lie this time. He could stop struggling, stop fighting, and let himself believe they were here together: two lovers, meeting in some Circle storage room, giggling and blushing and whispering together as they stripped each other bare one piece of armor at a time.

She’d devour his heart whole if he let himself believe, but at this point, was there really any point in trying to resist? Wouldn’t it just be better to give himself up to inevitability?

To Desire?

Nails raked his scalp with deceptive tenderness as the demon straddled his lap. She was tall and lean, a feathering of pale pink on patches of exposed skin: old burn marks that had been inexpertly healed, he thought. Her left brow was subtly higher than her right, and there were flecks of freckles spread across her cheeks like golden sand. The details, the tiny flaws that made her human in her beauty, were incredible. It would really be so very easy to believe.

“There was a girl,” Desire whispered, sliding her free arm around his shoulders. The tips of her breasts brushed his chest, nipples tight. Despite himself—movements jerky—Cullen dropped his (bloody) hands to the flare of her waist. He’d dug his nails into his palms so many times the skin was serrated, catching and dragging as he pressed them flush and slid them down her hips. Smears of red-pink painted garish lines against fire-kissed skin. “Shining like a beacon in the dark. Lost little lamb, full to the brim with power and lyrium and so bright I couldn’t stand to look away.”

She leaned in slowly—slowly—forcing him to sink into acceptance by the subtle pressure of her magic. It was an undertow, and this place… Maker’s breath, this place. This was the one place where they could come; this was the one place where they could be together. Where nothing in the world mattered but her.

Shining bright eyes. A flick of dark lashes. Her skin pressed against his, and her breath stirring the fine hair at his temples as she whispered secrets only he would ever know.

“I followed her to you,” the woman murmured. The way she arched her hips was invitation, and even though he wasn’t hard, he couldn’t…quite…remember why not. They had done this before, so many times. Why was he fighting her now? “All the way into your dreams. And when she sensed me lurking there, she whirled with a sword bathed in fire, and I knew.”

Teeth caught his earlobe, tugging it, playful. Only…only her teeth seemed sharper than they should, biting into flesh hard enough to make him jolt. He could feel the tear, smelled the fresh wash of blood. His muscles tightened, but he couldn’t seem to do more than hold on to her—frozen in place. Trapped. Imprisoned?

Was he a prisoner?

Fuck, but it was so hard to remember.

She traced her tongue against the new wound, licking away the sticky traces of blood, chuffing a soft laugh. “I knew I’d eventually find my way to you,” she said…then pulled back to give him a bloody, razor-toothed smile. Her eyes were black pits now, reflecting him back: a withered, sallow, drained husk of himself. He could see the violet shadows beneath his eyes and the gauntness of his cheeks. He could see the furrows of torn skin—deep as the fields he used to plow as a boy, cutting to muscle and bone. He couldn’t feel that pain, still, couldn’t even catch a glimpse of it when he looked down at himself in horror (only seeing the fiction she wanted him to see: skin whole and healthy, pressed flush with hers), but he knew. He knew.

He knew.

And still, something horrible and twisted deep inside him wanted to slide his fingers into her flaming hair and pull her down for a kiss.

“I,” Cullen began, unhinging his jaw with near-impossible effort. Its sharp ache was grounding, welcome. He’d clenched his teeth so hard it was a wonder they hadn’t shattered, and the effort of speaking was truly monumental. “I…will…kill…”

She sighed and slipped back from him, standing. Bare and beautiful, with a lean build and those freckles scattered down the high-tipped peaks of her breasts, she was incredibly warm: glowing, like a flame in the night. And yet blood—his blood—dripped down her chin and streaked her flesh in artless smears.

She was eating him alive. Bite by bite, and he was letting her.

“Will…kill…”

“Why won’t you stop fighting me, Cullen?” Desire asked with a pout. “I told you how long I’ve loved you. My little golden-haired boy.”

“Kill…you.” It was all he had. It was the only threat his slippery mind could grasp hold of. It was the only truth. And as she sighed and looked down at him sadly, he thought maybe if he kept pushing hard enough, she’d tire of this endless game (how long had she been torturing him, here, in the shadow of the Harrowing? Hours? Days?) and finally slash open his throat. It was the best he could hope for.

Maker. It was the only thing he could hope for. Death was release. Death was the only option.

You will not conquer me, Cullen promised himself, resolutely setting his jaw again, even as she sighed and waved her hand. The walls of their little hidey-hole disappeared, dissolving into the familiar stone of Kinloch—soaked in his blood, deep red and sticky against his bare, ragged skin. Steps led up to the right to the Harrowing chamber and a strange magical dome crackled overhead, keeping him trapped.

Reality. The relief of it had him falling forward, bloody palms slapping against the stone seconds before he collapsed. He could see himself reflected up on its pools—a beaten, ragged excuse for a man—but the reality of that was almost enough to have him sob a breath in relief. As ugly as his present was, at least it was real.

Though Andraste only knew how long he’d be allowed to see its truth.

Desire crouched down in front of him, just outside the magical field. She still wore the face of the red-headed woman (a woman he didn’t know, but couldn’t help but feel like he should), but her eyes were purely hers; purely demonic. The air tremored with her sigh. “It would be so much better if you would just stop fighting me,” she crooned, reached out as if to touch him.

Cullen jerked back, nearly overbalancing. He was so weak, his muscles trembled just keeping him semi-upright. It wouldn’t be long before he lost that little bit of strength too.

Kill me, or I will kill you, he promised, watching her from beneath his lashes. Stewing in his hatred and the renewed dull ache of pain. Do it now.

“My little golden-haired boy,” Desire sighed, shaking her head sadly. “Don’t you realize it yet? I am never going to let you go. I am never going to let you die.” She rested her own palms against the stone, leaning forward, eyes intent on his: some bastard blend of human and demon, beautiful woman and Desire. The mage robes she wore only underlined the bizarre disconnect, twisting everything up in his brain tighter and tighter and tighter. “She led you to me, and now you are mine, and I’m going to—”

She suddenly cut off, lifting her head as if listening to something very far away. A faint frown deepened between her brows. “It looks like we may have company,” Desire said, lifting effortlessly to her feet. She shimmered, brightened, the robes and hair and human skin bleeding back into purples-and-pinks, tiny chains dancing merrily between her horns. “What a shame.”

Then she waved a hand, and it was like being doused in lye. The sudden, harsh, blister-burn of it shocked a cry from him; he barely swallowed it back in time, suffocating his own screams as pure agony crashed over him—again, again, seeping deep into torn skin and muscle and remaking him from the inside-out.

It felt like it lasted a lifetime, but it had to have been only moments before he was gasping and collapsing forward, hitting the scrubbed-clean stone with a metal clang. Cullen could feel the weight of his Templar armor kitted back on, and when he opened his eyes, the blood was gone; his wounds were gone. He felt—

No. no, he still, felt them, but to the naked eye, he may have almost looked like himself again—the himself he used to be, at least, before Desire had dipped her talons into his mind and stirred.

“We wouldn’t want to worry our guests should they make it all the way up here,” Desire said, voice echoing. “Now would we? Be good and wait for me.” He swore he felt fingers in his hair again, tugging sharply, but he was too weak—too near to broken—to jerk away. “I promise you, my Cullen: I’ll always be back for you.”

He heard fighting…or was that the steady pounding of his heart?

One, two, three. The tempo seemed off, and yet he was drifting so much he had lost awareness of his own flesh. He only knew he was kneeling there because his blurry vision told him as much. Or was that an illusion too? Another trick?

I’ll always be back for you.

He shuddered and tried to remember how to pray.

Some endless time later, he heard another rhythm: footsteps. Coming closer by the sound; but that could have been the subtle bang bang bang of his fists against stone, each tremor sending a shockwave of grounding pain through his ravaged body. The Templar armor had never felt so much like a prison—a shell—holding him up in mockery of devotion. If he let himself fall in this damn plate, he knew he’d never find his way up again. But his fingers were too clumsy to do more than tear at the latches, so he beat his fists against the stone and let that hollow echo chase away remembered screams.

Chase away—

Chase—

Ghosts. Or visions. Come to haunt him again and again.

“Uldred has to be here somewhere.” A familiar voice. Older. Feminine. “All that’s left is this next room and the Harrowing Chamber.”

She was answered by another, even more insidious voice—one he wanted far too much to hear: “And if he knew we were here, he’d have killed us while we were dealing with the sloth demon. So we’ve got the element of surprise.”

Not again, Cullen thought, squeezing his eyes shut. Maker, please, not her again.

The door burst open, slamming hard against the far wall, and yes, yes it was her standing there, staff raised as if ready for battle. Solona Amell—only this time, Desire had taken care to dirty her up, make her look ragged and worn, as if she’d been battling her way through the whole infested Circle. Her hair was a dark banner and she was covered in ichor and blood: beautiful and terrible, and Andraste take him, he would not go through this again.

The not-Solona swept the room with a gaze, then gave a sharp cry when she spotted him. She rushed to him, staff lowering, and if he’d been that foolish boy who’d once loved her, he would have been touched by her obvious concern.

But that boy, at least, had been allowed to die. “This trick again?” Cullen said, voice so hoarse he barely recognized it.  “I know what you are. It won’t work. I will stay strong.” If he kept saying the words, maybe they would somehow be true.

“Cullen…” Solona whispered, sounding heartbroken. As if she wasn’t delighting in every moment of her torture.

Shadows shifted behind her, Wynn’s familiar face swimming into view. She, too, was streaked in gore and looked as if she’d battled her way through the very void to reach him. A touching fiction. “The boy is exhausted. And this cage… I’ve never seen anything like it,” she said. Then, directly to him: “Rest easy. Help is here.”

Lies. Lies. Lies lies lies.

A third woman stepped forward, next to a man in heavy mail. Her flash of red hair nearly had his heart stopping, but, but, but Maker’s breath no, Desire wasn’t taking that form again. Cullen couldn’t say why the flame-kissed woman was so much worse than this, but it was. Desire wearing Solona’s face ached down to his core, but that woman… There was something about her that broke apart pieces of him—pieces he wasn’t sure he’d ever reclaim. “He’s been tortured,” this red-headed woman said; her voice was pure Orlais. “He’s been denied food and water. I can tell.”

Solona choked back a sob, eyes brimming with tears. The sight sparked that coal of anger inside of him again, and he tried to glare her down even as he bit out, “Sifting through my thoughts…tempting me with the one thing I always wanted but could never have…” The words felt like poison on his lips, but it was good—this was nearly good. Seeing her was making him furious, was shoving away the agony and madness and despair and leaving only hate. Even the words—words he’d never have dreamed of thinking, much less saying until this moment—tripped easy off his tongue as he tried to push himself up. “Using my shame against me…my ill-advised infatuation with her…a mage, of all things…”

Magic had started this. In the muted buzzing inside his head, that was the one thought he could clearly latch onto. The demons had come because they had been summoned. Never mind the politics, never mind the humanity, never mind anything but magic, magic, magic.

He watched from slitted eyes as she lifted her staff and called her own spell; it sparked against his cage and singed his skin, and for one moment he could see his hands around her throat. “Alistair,” Desire-as-Solona said, not looking away, “can you…”

“I— I don’t know if it will work…”

“Please.”

Please. He’d broken down and tried begging once, too. Was this meant to remind him of that? What was hidden behind those tearful liar’s eyes? “I am so tired of these cruel jokes…these tricks…these…” Cullen swallowed back his words, feeling his own eyes burn. Maybe that young fool he’d once been wasn’t completely dead yet, after all; there was a part of him that so desperately wanted to believe Solona had come to save him.

Idiot. Idiot.

He tightened his jaw once more. “You broke the others, but I will stay strong. For my sake. For theirs.”

“Cullen, it’s—we’re going to get you out of there somehow. Whatever it takes—”

“No!” he said, fighting back the hope and drowning it in his chest. He squeezed his eyes shut tight enough to ache, willing Desire out of his head. He could hear her even now, laughing at him. He could feel her fingers against his skin. “I will not listen to anything you say! You are not real.”

There was a sizzle of skin as Solona put one hand on the barrier. He could swear her heard her cooking flesh. “I’m real,” she whispered. “And I’m going to help you.”

Cullen looked up through his lashes, seeing the flicker of demonic light in her eyes. Seeing the hidden smile toying at the corners of her lips. Seeing Desire’s face superimposed over Solona’s, sickening and terrible and…maddening. Maker, it would be so easy to fall into that particular void; he could already feel himself slipping toward the edge.

“I don’t believe you,” Cullen said, meaning: I will kill you.

“This is a discussion for another time!” Wynne interrupted, sharp. “Irving and the other mages who fought Uldred. Where are they?”

That question was…unexpected. Why would Desire ask such a thing? “They are in the Harrowing chamber,” Cullen said, suspicious and yet not seeing a reason why he shouldn’t answer. If it was Desire (and he knew it was Desire), then he wasn’t saying anything she did not know. And if by some chance it was Solona and Wynn come to save them all?

No. Do not hope. Hope will make you weak to her.

And yet: “The sounds coming out of there…” Cullen murmured, glancing around the small group before looking up. Those howls had been with him for what felt like an age before they’d gone abruptly silent…only to emerge again in susurrus whispers. Whatever had taken hold up there was no longer human. He still felt its echo in his blood. “Maker.”

“We must hurry. They are in grave danger, I am sure of it,” Wynne said.

“You can’t save them,” Cullen said. If this were Solona… He knew (he knew) it wasn’t, but if it were… “You don’t know what they’ve become.”

“What did they do to you?” Solona whispered.

You know what you did to me. But he had to tell them—had to let himself hope. Had to try. Because if they were real…if this was real…if he wasn’t lost in a dream, or unraveling into unconsciousness on the cold stone floor (bloody, broken, changed in every way) then he had a duty to say: “To ensure this horror is ended…to guarantee that no abominations or blood mages live, you must kill everyone up there.”

There was a beat of silence. “I’ll assess the situation once we’re inside,” Solona said. “And…that’s all I can promise. Well.” Something complicated crossed her face, there and gone again in an instant. Whether or not this was Desire’s plaything, Cullen knew in that moment: this wasn’t the girl he had known. “That and I’ll bring you Uldred’s head on a pike.”

He studied her, wanting to believe. Hating that he did. Still seeing his fingers wrapping around her throat, even as the part of him that had loved her—that had tried to be fair and just and good—rioted at the thought.

Finally he said: “Maker turn his gaze on you,” and closed his eyes, unwilling to watch as they slipped up those steps to the darkness beyond. It was done; either she was real or she was a ploy, and nothing he could do now would change the course of the next few minutes.

He pressed his hands against stone and drew in a shuddery breath. He fought to hold on to the unraveling threads of his mind. He listened to his heart thudding fennec-fast and he followed the chaotic twists of his thoughts as memory and pain and fear fought for dominance over him again. Fought to break him again. Fought to win.

And then, high above, the screaming began anew.

And Cullen died a little more inside.

Chapter Text

“We are all facing dark times,” Knight-Commander Meredith said, staring Cullen down as if she never meant to look away. It was…unnerving, to say the least, the way this woman’s blue eyes bore into him. Through him. He kept finding himself wanting to flinch away—and every time he felt the impulse, Cullen steeled his spine and met her stony stare for stony stare.

This was not what would finally break him. He hadn’t made it through the horrors of Kinloch to crumble under this.

“Dark times,” Meredith echoed, “and desperate measures.”

That had him blinking, though he was careful to keep the extent of his surprise off his face. “Knight-Commander?”

But she just waved the comment away. “There’s plenty of time to get into that,” she said, standing. Her heavy chair—more a throne, he’d say, if it wasn’t so impeccably ascetic—scraped hard against cold stone. Cullen stood as well, one hand falling to the hilt of his sword as a sign of respect. If she noticed, nothing in her expression or ice-chip eyes gave it away. “First you’ll be wanting to settle in, get to know your charges. Get to know your men.”

Mostly, he wanted to step outside and take a deep gulp of air. The Gallows felt very much like the prison they used to be. Kinloch had been…trying at times, especially toward the end (Desire whispering in his ear as the scent of blood hung heavy in the back of his throat, choking him, subsuming him, dragging him down down down toward some gibbering madness he’d never survive), but it had also felt somewhat relaxed. Almost like a home.

Not so, the Kirkwall Circle. Here, every stone seemed to press in; every hall seemed to echo with fearful whispers. The air was thick and the tension wound high—high enough that he could feel it like fingertips brushing his skin. How much worse must it be for the mages who lived here?

Thinking like that, a part of him tried to warn, was what led to the atrocity at Kinloch to begin with.

No, another, quieter part—the boy he’d been before flesh and bone had been stripped away—tried to whisper. Not acting on that empathy was what caused everything to fall apart.

Cullen shoved aside both sides of himself and locked his emotions down tight, grimly following his new Knight-Commander as she led him to her office door. It opened out into a long, windowless hallway, the only light cast from intermittent torches. They drew the shadows long and deep, making every corner a place where any number of horrors could lie in wait.

“I look forward to seeing what you do,” Meredith said by way of dismissal. The unspoken promise—I will be watching you—was clear beneath her words.

He inclined his head. “Knight-Commander,” Cullen said, refusing to rise to the bait.

“Knight-Captain,” Meredith said—then shut the door in his face.

He stood there in the dim hallway, blinking at the heavy wood with its intricate paneled carving before turning on his heel and striding back toward what he was fairly sure was the main hall. He hadn’t expected the welcome Greagoir had given him as a raw recruit all those years ago, of course, but Meredith’s prickly coldness would certainly take some getting used to. Though perhaps…

Perhaps…

Maker, but it was dark in here.

Cullen slowed his steps as he neared a shadowed corner, heart giving an unsteady lurch. He touched his hand to his sword, palm sweaty, as he took the sharp left, half-expecting to see viscera smearing the stone and Desire smiling in welcome. There was nothing there, of course, but it took a few unsteady breaths before he found his equilibrium again.

Perhaps, Cullen thought, firmly refocusing, a little coldness wouldn’t be unwelcome. He wasn’t fully recovered—he knew that well enough—and had every intention of keeping as much to himself as possible here. He’d had and lost too many friends before; it was better to be more aloof now. Do his duty and not let his mind or heart wander. With Greagoir, that may have proven tricky, but he sensed that Meredith would appreciate a Knight-Captain more statue than man. And if…

Damn it, another blind corner wreathed in shadows. Another flash of sense-memory, skittering along the back of his neck until his hackles were raised in instant alarm. He felt like such an idiot spooking at various twists and turns in his new home (afraid of the dark, like he was once again some little farm boy with more dreams than sense). His time in Kirkwall would be absolutely untenable if he didn’t manage to get control of this reflexive fear.

“Nothing is going to happen,” Cullen muttered to himself, deep beneath his breath. He doggedly kept going, ignoring the lurches and pained skitterings of his pulse—ignoring the fight-or-flight that had haunted him ever since Kinloch’s fall. He forced himself to move through the Gallows at a steady pace and not let his memories overtake him, so focused on keeping himself firmly in check that he barely paid attention to the subtle changes in architecture as he walked.

Dim office halls gave way to barracks, gave way to common rooms, gave way to classrooms. He passed a library where none of the mages sat giggling together the way they used to in his more rose-colored memories. In fact, only a couple here or there sat together at all—for the most part, everyone was solitary, silent, head down and eyes barely lifting, even at the steady clank clank of his armor. Strange.

He heard voices up ahead, in one of the pocket courtyards. Not the main Gallows entrance, where stalls had been set up, but an inner sanctum with a bare patch of grass and high walls surrounding it. Two Templars stood guard at the main door, and a third, he knew, would be positioned at the exit back into the kitchens. From the sound of the conversation drifting toward him, the two men were deep in a long-standing debate.

“…pretty enough, when the sun hits her right,” one of them was saying. Cullen slowed, frowning. That didn’t sound… Surely the Templar wasn’t talking about one of the mages. “Though Maker knows I’ve never been much a fan for freckles.”

“I don’t mind the freckles so much,” the other countered with a rough laugh. They were both facing out toward the courtyard and away from Cullen. Neither seemed to have heard his approach. “It’s the figure I fault. Too tall, too many straight lines. If I wanted to rut a board, I’d bloody well find a knife-ear to do the job.”

Cullen stilled, concern melting into horror, then anger. They were talking about one of the mages; one of their charges, entrusted to them by the Chantry and (the devout claimed) the Maker himself.

Holy purpose or no, there was no forgiving this kind of abusive behavior, and Cullen strode forward even as the two men straightened, the one of the left calling out: “All right, we’re done here for today. Come on in and we’ll see you back.”

“Belay that order,” Cullen said, striding in amongst them. The quiet fear that had held him gripped in a fog (a prison) had been burned away for the moment and all he felt was fury as he rounded on the small group. Two men, one sour-faced, the other surprisingly young, both in Templar plate that shone mirror-bright. The older of the two squinted his eyes at Cullen in question, not yet recognizing him as Kirkwall’s new Knight-Captain.

Well. He’d bloody well recognize him after this.

“I am Knight-Captain Cullen,” he said, watching as the younger Templar straightened instantly, “and I would like to have a word with the two of you. To the barracks. Now. The rest of you,” he added, turning, meaning to suggest that the mages retire to the library or their rooms—somewhere safe—but the words died on his tongue, his brain derailed, and—

And it was her.

She stepped closer, smiling at something the older woman next to her said, one hand lifting to push back a waterfall of fiery red hair. The sunlight caught on the golden freckles scattered like sand across her nose, and he knew, he knew, he knew the color of her eyes even before they flicked toward him in surprise. He knew the shape of her mouth and the lift of her chin and arch of her brows—lifting, lifting, eyes going wide at the sight of him as, Maker, she recognized him too.

This wasn’t a dream. This wasn’t the Fade. This wasn’t—

This was real.

It was her.

“Demon,” Cullen breathed, feeling a sharp surge of unexpected joy at the sight of her, followed by a crash of sick dread, and oh, oh Maker, no. No it couldn’t be.

Demon. Demon. Demon.

“Oh!” she said, stopping stock-still, staring back at him. Eyes going wider and wider, cheeks flushing with blooms of color, and every second that ticked by felt like a millennia. Every breath was hard-fought and -won, his hands trembling, his knees weak, his skin clammy as he reached out a single hand toward her.

Pointed.

She parted her lips as if to say something, but he spoke before she could, putting every ounce of the twisted fury and sickness and fear and loss that had curdled inside him from the moment she first took him under her spell: Desire, twisting into this unknown woman, now haunting him in the flesh.

“Silence,” Cullen said, and the sharp burn of the spell licked through him with unmatched power to slam into the red-headed mage. He could see the moment it hit her, could see the way her skin blanched pale, and Cullen watched—pressing his will onto her with all the mercy Desire had shown him, had shown his friends—as she was forced down, down, down to her hands and knees. Trembling there, hair pooling around her, fingers digging into the dirt as she fought not to cry out when her mana was hollowed out of her in one terrible scrape.

He’d never used the spell before; he’d never wanted to. It seemed cruel, the way it flattened mages to their bellies like dogs forced to heel. But standing there, pointing down at her, watching as she struggled to keep to her hands and knees (to keep from falling completely, belly-first, to the dirt before him) he felt a renewed spike of fear.

Of her.

Of himself.

Of this whole damned place, closing like a fist around them as time tripped by, finally falling back into some semblance of reality.

Behind him, the two Templars had moved to flanking position, literally having his back. Before him the redheaded mage (demon) knelt, fighting the Silence just enough to lift her chin. She watched him from beneath her lashes, tears on her face, dripping to the stone. The older woman had dropped to her knees as well, hands fluttering out as if she wanted to grip her friend’s shoulder and help her, but a different kind of fear kept her from making contact. She shot Cullen rabbit-scared looks, as if he were some kind of monster loosed from the Fade.

You don’t understand, he wanted to say, looking between them. Had Desire ensnared her, too? Was this even really happening? Was any of this real?

And, oh Maker, Maker, had any of the weeks, months, since Kinloch been real? Was he still back there even now, under her thrall, unspooling messily on that blood-drenched stone floor; her fingers in his hair, her lips at his ear, her red red red hair tangling about them as she unmade him one building block at a time?

A low wind blew. Overhead, a gull circled and cried. The redheaded mage kept her eyes locked on him, kept fighting against the push of his Silence—kept silently crying as if her heart were breaking, something deeply moving, deeply human, about the way she trembled there, waiting.

Stop, Cullen told himself, shaken to the core. He let the strands of the spell fall, everything inside him quaking. Maker’s breath, stop this.

The older of the two Templars moved past him, reaching out with casual cruelty to wrap his fingers in the demon’s hair. “Head down,” he snapped, shoving until she was forced to comply—eyes dropping to the stone and arms visibly trembling as she fought against the pressure being exerted against her.

From the cruel Templar.

From Cullen.

Maker. Was there really any difference between the two?

“That’s,” he began, voice rough. His heart was racing fast enough that he feared it might come tearing out of his chest. The world was a dizzying wash of color, and he had no idea what was real and what wasn’t. Not here, not now, maybe not ever again. But he did know he couldn’t do this. He couldn’t be this.

If this were a test, he would fail it over and over again, because despite how much he hated Desire for what she’d done to him, he couldn’t risk becoming the monster he’d always known he could be.

“That’s enough. Let her go.”

The Templar turned his head to stare at Cullen, grip still tangled in red hair. The older woman was openly weeping now, tears trailing down her lined face. There was hatred in her eyes when she dared to flick her gaze up to Cullen, there and gone in an instant.

He understood. He rather hated himself too.

“Knight-Captain,” the Templar said, “she should be taken to solitary. Locked up and shown what’s-for. When Silence is used—”

“I do not need to be reminded of regulations from you,” Cullen said stiffly. He was still quaking like a child in the depth of night, but he managed to keep his voice steady; he managed to keep it off his face. If this was real…if this wasn’t just Desire toying with him again…

Maker’s breath. He needed to regain control of himself, either way. “The three of us will retire to the barracks. You,” he added to the older mage, doing his best not to look at the woman kneeling by her side, “take your friend to her room and stay with her there.”

She swallowed, eyes lowered. “Yes, ser,” she whispered.

I’m sorry, he almost said. But was he? Andraste take him, he was still so tumbled up inside, he didn’t even know that. He didn’t know anything, only that he needed to get away from here—from her—so he could think.

Was it even the same woman? Or would he forever react in fear at the sight of flame-red hair, lashing out like a wounded dog and never again finding peace?

He couldn’t let that happen. He needed to be better than this.

“With me,” Cullen said, casting each of the Templars a stony look—letting himself take some measure of comfort in the role he was now playing. The young one (barely out of boyhood) straightened and fell into step immediately, but the older one…hesitated. Fingers still curled in silky red hair. Expression impossible to read.

Cullen locked their eyes together, slowly moving forward; daring the other man to resist. He was hyperaware that each step took him closer to the demon-not-demon (who was she? what was she?), but he didn’t let that slow his pace.

Fight me on this, he thought, hand slowly drawing to his sword as the seconds ticked past. Oh, yes, please fight me.

But the Templar broke his locked gaze with a low grunt, pulling his hand free. Cullen refused to let himself focus on the way that gauntleted fist opened and closed; just as he refused to let himself turn tail and run. He could do this. He could.

Standing just a few paces away, he made himself look down at the woman who had broken him, bile coating his tongue. Yes. Yes, it was her—there was no mistaking that face, those eyes. Whether or not this was all Desire’s illusion, that was the face of the demon who had tortured him for so, so bloody long.

Maker, he hated her. He hated her so much it was like a madness. And yet as she lifted her face again, eyes locking on his in a show of strength he couldn’t help but also admire…his heart, frozen in his chest since the fall of Kinloch, gave an unsteady pulse.

Those eyes, he thought inanely, helplessly. So like the sea. He could all but hear the rush of waves in his ears. He could feel the soft kiss of breeze against his cheeks.

He could feel her, her scent surrounding him, her warmth drawing him ever closer.

Cold, afraid again, Cullen gave a sharp jerk of his chin and turned on his heel to stalk away. Each step was one foot closer to safety, and still he could feel her eyes on him like the touch of summer heat. His skin flushed and he strained to listen for her voice even as he fled her presence just as fast as his frozen gait would take him.

He needed to keep his distance until he figured out what was going on. He needed…he needed to know for sure he had escaped Kinloch, and once he was sure this all was real, he needed to understand why his tormenter had taken this woman’s face…and what it meant that he knew her so deeply; that he could feel her under his skin.

As he stiffly fled the scene of his latest emotional crime, he heard the mages finally beginning to stir. “Are you all right, Aria?” the older woman asked, low and angry.

“I am all right,” she promised, that voice echoing through him like the tolling of bells. Like a distant warning cry: his life forever changed yet again.

Aria, Cullen thought, hands clenched into impossibly tight fists, the two Templars flanking his sides as they swept out of the courtyard and into the Gallows proper. His heart was racing, blood rushing, and despite the terror lacing his skin and bones…Cullen felt a strange pulse of elation at the thought. Her name is Aria.

Chapter Text

He couldn’t sleep.

To sleep meant to dream and to dream meant…her. Both sides of her, now, haunting him day and night: the demon and the woman split into two disparate parts in his subconscious mind, threatening to tear him to pieces.

Cullen swam through his days in a cold sweat of fear, knowing that each corner could bring them face-to-face again. He lay awake in his bed staring up at the ceiling night after night, too afraid to shut his eyes lest she be waiting there in darkness.

He was being haunted by memory, just like in those first terrible days after the fall of Kinloch. He was being consumed.

And he didn’t know what to do.

Keep it together, man, Cullen tried to order himself, staring into his own bloodshot eyes as he leaned over a basin of cold water. One of the benefits of his position was a solitary room, but the way the Gallows was built, it felt like a cell. With its single spartan bed and arrow-slit window, he couldn’t have felt more like a prisoner—in his mind and out of it. Trapped, forever trapped, bound helpless beneath a shimmering barrier with her voice in his ear and fingers in his hair.

He slammed his fist against the tabletop, water sloshing over the rim of the bowl. The face that looked back at him was decades older than it should be and far too cruel; he was afraid to try to recognize himself in its cold lines and shadows lest it become a self-fulfilling prophecy. He didn’t need to keep letting what had happened at the Ferelden Circle define him. It was over. Solona Amell had scoured the place clean and he was free.

(He was free.)

(Maker’s breath, he didn’t feel free.)

“Keep it together,” he murmured, and pushed himself away to begin another day…and then another…and then another, each hour chased be too little sleep and haunting dreams. He was failing at his job in the most basic of ways, and he couldn’t seem to keep himself controlled enough to control the others. Refugees spilled into the harbors and shoved against Gallows walls. There was fighting in the courtyard. Fereldens demanded entrance to Kirkwall, and he was too damn tired to be anything but curt and cold, the idealistic young man burned away bit by bit by bit until—

Maker. He resented coming back to his room at night.

He feared it.

He couldn’t live like this.

Cullen sat on the edge of his cot now, breathing raggedly against the recurring nightmare that had chased him awake. He was so tired he was close to tears, every inch of him feeling raw and sandpapered-rough. His eyes itched and his skin felt too tight across his bones. He wanted to fling something against the wall; he wanted to scream.

Red hair. Insidious whispers. Bruising fingers against his skin and screams screams screams echoing through the Circle as bodies burst open like bruised fruit and Andraste, no, he could not take this anymore.

He would not take this anymore.

Jerking hard to his feet, Cullen grabbed blindly for his ring of keys. He didn’t bother pausing to pull on his plate mail prison—he didn’t even bother with shoes, feet slapping bare against frozen stone as he slipped out of his room and strode down darkened halls.

He’d forced himself to learn every twist and turn of the main Gallows in his first couple of days here, needing to swallow back the reflexive panic with mindful repetition. Now, that familiarity came in handy: he wove in and out of regularly patrolled halls, slipping past unlucky Templars who’d drawn the graveyard shift and out away from the Templar barracks. The Gallows walls rose high and forbidding over him, but actually doing something lit a fire in his blood. (Even if he still had no idea what he actually planned to do.) He felt more in control than he had been in months, grimly unlocking the heavy door and slipping into the courtyard that divided Templars from Mages without a thought for the line he was crossing.

The stars were out in full force tonight, winking coldly down at him. A million eyes watching as he trespassed against his own good sense, unlocking the far door and sneaking inside the Circle dormitory like a thief in the night.

He didn’t know which of the many open doorways was hers, and yet his feet let him straight there as if he’d always known she’d be waiting. Strange, strange, so bloody strange; if that wasn’t proof of a demon, he didn’t know what was. She had sunk beneath his skin and he needed to scour her away somehow. He needed— He had to— He had to—

Cullen pushed in through the open doorway, moving unerringly to the third small sleeping compartment at the very end of the long room. He passed two slumbering figures, blindly seeking out her, there: curled on her side with a simple red braid falling across one shoulder, narrow face relaxed in sleep, lashes a dark smudge of soot against her cheeks.

Beautiful, something inside him whispered, and he swore he could feel himself threatening to fly apart.

Sucking in a breath, still not letting himself think this through (what are you doing; WHAT ARE YOU DOING?) Cullen moved to the demon’s bedside and crouched down by her. He reached out, halfway certain he intended to curl his fingers around her throat. He swore he could feel her pulse thundering against his grip already; he could feel the sickness inside him unleashing, all those nights left staring silently into darkness culminating in this one peak of madness.

As a child, he’d dreamed of becoming a Templar. He didn’t even know what it meant, but he knew he wanted it. Wanted this. But…

But, fuck, no, no, this was nothing like what he wanted, and he felt so Maker-damned shattered inside. Sickened. How had he come to this moment?

Curling his fingers into tight fists, Cullen sat back on his heels—horrified with himself for even that flicker of an impulse and so, so very afraid. He couldn’t even say what scared him most. The memories of Kinloch? The thought that it could happen again, here? The demon? This woman?

Himself?

This can’t be you, he thought dully, dropping his head into his hands and digging the meat of his palms against his eyes. He’d been a volcano on the verge of erupting for so long—was he even safe to be around people (mages) anymore? Had he really come in here to…

To…

Maker’s breath. He didn’t even know what he’d come in here to do—not really. He’d just known he had to come, had to see her, had to—

There was a soft rustle of cloth before a hand fell gently to his shoulder. It should have sent him rocketing out of his skin—he hadn’t been able to bear another’s touch since Desire had left her indelible mark—and yet somehow, this touch made every whirling, howling bit of darkness inside him go…briefly still. Quiet. Bearable, if only for a moment, as if she’d cast winter’s grasp on his dangerously boiling thoughts in a bid to give him a breath of peace.

Slowly, Cullen looked up. He met her eyes.

The demon was smiling at him. Subtle, so subtle, full of both encouragement and worry, as if she’d woken to see this broken Templar huddled by the head of her bed (after what I did to her, a part of him whispered) and couldn’t help but reach out across the shattered divide. To help. To heal.

That frightened boy that lived inside the grown man quaked in response, and Cullen braced himself, waiting for the horror to come rising up inside of him again. It was her. It was Desire. It was every nightmare given flesh and blood and claws with which to tear him apart.

And yet as his bloodshot eyes met hers, he…couldn’t seem to find any traces of the demon there. Yes, they shared the same sharp-featured face. Yes, they had the same golden handful of freckles, the long neck, the tumble of copper hair. Even the too-full curve of her lower lip was the same. And yet those eyes were full of so much human empathy that he could feel tears—actual tears—pricking at his lashes in response, and everything inside of him wanted to go rushing head-first toward her as if she were the answer to every question he’d never dared to ask.

“Who,” Cullen managed, voice coming out a shattered croak. “Who are you?”

She rose up slowly on one elbow, letting her hand drop from his shoulder. He barely caught himself from pitching forward, skin hungry for her touch in a way that he couldn’t explain. He felt starved for it, all at once, as if his skin were desert earth drinking in the rain and what the bloody fuck was wrong with him?

Her lashes flickered as she glanced down; Maker only knew what madness she was seeing on his face. “My name’s Aria,” she said, voice pitched low and throaty. He could just barely detect the Marcher accent rounding out those vowels. “I’m…I can explain everything.”

“You’d better,” he breathed, meaning for it to sound like a command. Instead, he sounded more like the farmboy he used to be, pitching around desperately for something, anything, that could give his life meaning.

Cullen drew back on his heels as she pushed herself fully up, that long red braid swinging. His fingers actually itched to catch it before it could flip behind her back. He wanted… He had no idea what he wanted. He felt so horribly confused and mixed-up inside.

When Aria swung her legs over the edge of the bed, Cullen hurriedly scrambled back, popping up to his own feet gracelessly. She was dressed in a simple long white shift that left her arms bared; there were more freckles exposed across the vulnerable expanse of her shoulders, as if she’d been laying sprawled across a sand dune. Her eyes were very big and very serious in the darkness.

“We shouldn’t wake the others,” she whispered, padding past him on equally bare feet as if she weren’t afraid of what he might do to her. Brave. So brave, and foolish, and strong. He didn’t have to know her to sense that spine of steel. “Follow me. I know somewhere we can talk.”

“Wait,” he said, reaching out on instinct to grab her wrist. He immediately let go at the intense flare of heat blooming beneath his skin, fingers curled into impotent fists when she looked at him. He cleared his throat. “You can’t go wandering about the halls after curfew. You’ll get in trouble.”

Shockingly, one corner of her mouth curled up into something like a wry smile. “Then I guess it’s a good thing the Knight-Commander is with me, isn’t it?” she said, almost as if it were a joke between them. Then, sobering again: “We can’t talk here. You don’t want to risk anyone overhearing what I have to say. Trust me.”

I do, he thought, heart tripping along madly in his chest. “I don’t,” Cullen snapped, but he fell into step beside her, close enough that he could almost feel her heat. She was like a coal burning in the darkness—banked, but ready to flare up on a breath. She’d burn him alive if he let her.

That’s what mages did, didn’t they? That’s why they couldn’t be trusted. (It isn’t like you to think this way.)

Aria’s footfalls were near-silent in the darkness, her expression alert, alive, as she listened for trouble. Cullen followed far clumsily in her wake, more used to brute force than stealth, but he had to admire the way she easily navigated the dark labyrinth. Turning left, left, right and left, down the stairs over and over, wending her way through empty classrooms and echoing libraries and forgotten storerooms until he was well and truly lost. This wasn’t part of the Gallows he’d memorized. He hadn’t even realized it spread so far, so deep.

She kept casting looks over her shoulder as if to reassure herself he was still there—or maybe she was cutting him wary glances, uncertain of his intent. If so, he couldn’t exactly blame her; he had no idea what he was doing here, still. Lost deep in the bowels of the Gallows, so turned around he no longer was quite sure exactly where they’d ended up. They were deep in the earth; the walls were colder, here, and he swore he could feel the pressure of water and rock all around him. A distant drip-drip underscored the subtle rhythm of their breaths, which had fallen into a natural syncopation.

Breathe in. Hold. Breathe out. Hold. Breathe in. Hold. Breathe out. Hold.

Cullen had the uncanny feeling that even their hearts were beating in time, and that was enough to have him pushing ahead of her, letting out a harsh breath to break the unnatural stillness. He fumbled for one of the torches on the wall, all at once aware that he was deep in the frozen heart of the Gallows with a woman who wore a demon’s face; the only light came from the smallest of arrow-slits high, high up toward the ceiling, the sound of waves muffled yet omnipresent.

Like they were trapped together inside some giant womb. A chrysalis. A catalyst.

He was fumbling at his waist for a toolbelt he hadn’t thought to bring with him when she reached over his shoulder, close enough the hairs along his arms prickled in response, and closed her fist over the head of the torch. When she pulled her hand away, it was flickering with growing flame.

Cullen shuddered.

“Is it really wise to use your magic in front of me?” he demanded without turning around, eyes fixed on that consuming fire. It was growing, expanding, coils of bright red dancing at the center of his vision.

Aria pulled back, putting a safer distance between them. “No,” she said, voice low. “But if you’re going to Silence me again, at least this way I’ll be able to see your face when you do it.”

Damn it. Cullen squeezed his eyes shut, hating himself so much he thought he might fly apart at the seams. “I didn’t,” he began, not really sure what he meant to say. I didn’t mean to? That wasn’t true. He’d been aware of himself, aware of her, and all-too-blindingly aware of what he’d been doing. In that terrible moment in the courtyard, he’d wanted to bring her low.

What did that say about him? Even if he had thought she was a demon, what did it say?

“I’m sorry,” he finally settled on. Cullen turned, crossing his arms over his chest, and made himself look at her. “When I saw you, I thought you were…someone else.”

“A demon,” Aria said, meeting his eyes. She had a quiet directness he liked despite himself; if he was a broadsword, hacking inelegantly away at the darkness surrounding his life, then she was a rapier. Every move of her lean, powerful body seemed perfectly controlled. “Wasn’t that it?”

He licked his lower lip. “How did you know?” he asked. Cullen slowly began to move, skirting the edges of the room they’d found themselves in. It was a tactic he’d learned from his battlemaster: in a duel, it was important to keep your opponent from getting the upper hand.

She watched him prowl about without moving herself, that focused stillness just as calculated and powerful as his measured stalking. “That was the first word you said to me,” Aria said, an honest sort of heartbreak in her eyes. “When you saw me for the first time, you said, demon.” She paused, then offered: “But those weren’t the first words I ever said to you.”

“I remember,” Cullen snapped, unexpectedly wanting to beg her forgiveness again. What was wrong with him?

Aria just shook her head. “No you don’t,” she said. “You couldn’t. You were too young, and it was just a dream.”

Just a…

He stopped, several paces away from her, and studied her face. What the void was she implying? “Are you suggesting that you have the ability to travel through dreams?” he demanded. In a way, it almost made sense. If this strange mage was some sort of dream-walker (was that even a thing?), then perhaps Desire had seen her in the Fade. Perhaps that’s why she wore a demon’s face; or, wait, no, the reverse must be true, right? If Aria wasn’t a demon herself (and as much as part of him still had that kneejerk fear response at the sight of her, his logical mind kept insisting she wasn’t), then Desire must have chosen to wear her face for some reason.

But why? It couldn’t have been a coincidence. What was Desire hoping to get from this?

Aria tipped her head, arms crossed over her middle as if she were keeping herself from flying apart. It was the hint of weakness he could spot in her. “We were both very young when my siblings gave me the lyrium they had stolen,” she said, as if those words made any bloody sense. “I drank all of it; I didn’t know better, then. And when I fell into my dream, I saw you.”

Cullen shook his head, denying those words.

“You were in your house, in your small village,” she kept saying, gently relentless. Her eyes were on him, making him feel hot and cold all at once. “Playing with a wooden sword. Its hilt was wrapped in green fabric with wildflowers on it—a scrap from a woman’s dress.”

He startled, straightening. How? How could she possibly—

“You were singing the Chant—memorizing it, I think, because you knew you’d have to learn it inside and out if you ever wanted them to let you leave that little mountain town and—”

“Stop,” Cullen said, only the word didn’t leave his mouth. It froze there, a shocked husk of sound, as he stared and stared and stared. Even a dreamer couldn’t know all these things, could they?

“—join the Templars. When I saw you in the window, it was like…” Aria stopped and shook her head, swallowing back whatever she’d been about to say. Her eyes dropped from his. “I said, Hello. My name is Aria.”

Stop. Stop. STOP. He was yelling it in his own head, uncertain where she was going but knowing the words were going to change everything. Were going to change him, on some fundamental level, and Maker, Maker, he’d already changed so much. He’d been twisted on the rack and could no longer recognize the shape of himself anymore—would he even survive whatever this woman, this mage, this temptation made flesh was going to do?

But her lashes were dipped low, her eyes not on him, and her fingers curled around the end of her own braid as she finished in a husky voice he felt down to his very bones: “My sister said I’d find my soulmate. And you’d be able to protect me from my magic. But I’m going to protect you, too.”

The words hung there between them.

Still. Frozen.

Echoing in the hush.

He could feel the shock of it rippling through him, and it was worse, worse than he’d imagined. It was worse than anything he’d ever dreamed, because…because he thought he understood what she was saying, and oh Andraste’s breath, no, this sort of thing didn’t happen to boys like him. Soulmates. Voices. All the forbidden words whispered between Chantry lessons when the Sisters could not hear, the concepts getting more and more muddled and preposterous as they passed from child to child.

When a mage claims a Voice, they bind their lives together forever.

A Voice can never hide from their soulmate. They can never escape. They never even remember they should want to.

Only the very wickedest boys and girls are claimed as Voices.

If you believe in the Maker enough, you’ll never have to worry about one of them claiming you.

“You’re—you’re lying,” Cullen managed, his voice coming out all wrong. Weathered down, as if he’d been screaming against the storm for hours. He stared at her, feeling all of ten years old again, the rumors and outright lies and uncertainties swirling around his head faster and faster and faster. A Voice. He was a Voice.

He was her Voice.

She had trapped him. Tricked him. Drew him here somehow. She had—

“The demon,” he said, stepping back reflexively when she moved forward. Aria froze instantly at whatever she saw on his face, her knuckles bleeding bone-white as her grip tightened around her braid. “The demon who…” Broke me, hurt me, unmade me, “…visited me, she wore your face. Why?”

Aria flinched as if he’d struck her, gaze dropping to the ground again. Still, she remained standing tall and strong, that steel backbone keeping her facing him even as he shrank away. “I was too deep in the Fade, the first time,” she said slowly. “I didn’t know how to shield myself. I caught their attention on accident, and they followed me to you. That demon…it must have stuck around, after, curious about you.”

Cullen let out a slow, stuttery breath. “You drew her to me.”

“I drew her to you,” Aria agreed. “And I drew worse to my family that night.”

She shuddered, showing real vulnerability for the first time since he’d woken her—shoulders rounding forward, making her look smaller, fragile somehow. Sharp around the edges the same way he felt too sharp, as if the broken pieces inside them hadn’t been fully sanded down yet.

Soulmates, huh? I wonder if all our jagged pieces would somehow fit together, he thought nonsensically before dragging his fingers through his hair, trying to sort through everything she’d said. He wanted to shout at her and call her a liar, but he already knew she was telling the truth. The moment those words passed her lips, he’d felt their authority. She was his soulmate; he was her Voice. Desire took her face because it was the one that would most hurt him, even if he didn’t know it yet.

And now…

Maker. Now what?

“You can read my file,” Aria said, voice very small now, too. “If you haven’t already. You can see what I’ve done. Who I’ve hurt. But…” She let out a soft puff of air and looked up, meeting his eyes; Cullen was startled to realize there were tears on her lashes, bright against her cheeks. He felt himself begin to move forward at the sight, needing…needing to wipe them away, but he forced himself to stop. To think this insanity through. That protective instinct wasn’t really him, was it? It was the…the soulbond, or whatever it was. It wasn’t real.

None of this was real.

Right?

Unaware of the firestorm unleashing itself inside of him, Aria finished, “But I never meant to hurt you. I’m sorry, Cullen. I’m so, so sorry.”

“I,” he began, then stopped, the words caught in his throat. I never meant to hurt you, she said. And before, when she was a child: I’m going to protect you, too. “I should report you. I should…request to be transferred, or have you moved to another Circle. If anyone found out…” There were regulations about this sort of thing, weren’t there? Maker’s breath, it was so vanishingly rare for them to have to worry about the mages under their charge ever finding their Voices at all that he’d never really even considered it.

Aria flinched. “Meredith will have me made Tranquil if you report me,” she said. When Cullen opened his mouth to protest (that isn’t how we do things), she shot him a flat look. “If you don’t believe me, then open your eyes. The Gallows isn’t a Circle—it’s a death sentence. We’re all barely holding on, but she won’t let me survive this.”

“That isn’t,” he began, but Cullen had to stop, seeing Meredith’s lyrium-bright blue eyes in his mind. Remembering those two Templars, and the way they’d talked about Aria and her friend. Feeling that omnipresent sense that the walls were slowly closing in on him, like a tightening fist. “…you shouldn’t have to be afraid.”

“None of us should have to be afraid,” Aria countered. Standing there in the flickering torchlight, she looked…Maker, but she looked beautiful. And vulnerable. And fierce. And maybe most of all, nothing like the demon who had worn her face. It was getting easier and easier to see all the differences—and with each second that passed, he could feel his own fear dwindling into a sense of peace he hadn’t experienced in, void, months. “But only one of us has the power to change that.”

He wasn’t convinced he actually had that power, but Cullen slowly nodded. Strange how much had changed in just the span of an hour. “All right,” he said. “I won’t say anything. But the two of us can’t… I’m not your Voice; I’m your Knight-Captain. And you’re just another one of my charges. This? Us talking like this? This can’t happen, ever: do you understand that?”

“I never even expected to see you in this lifetime,” Aria said, head tipping slightly as she studied him. “I’ve had a long time to make my peace with that. Keeping my distance…it won’t be a problem. I won’t come to you in dreams, either.”

“Maker’s breath,” Cullen said, “you can actually do that?”

Red brows lifted. “What do they even teach Templars about all this?” she said, only to wave the question away. “It doesn’t matter. Yes, I can, but I promise I won’t. Your dreams are your own.” She hesitated, then added in a much softer tone—one that sent a shiver working its way down his spine: “I hope you manage to find good ones somewhere.”

Cullen had that impossible urge to reach out for her again. His palms itched for warm skin. For…copper hair, tangled between his fingers. A breath against his cheeks. Those eyes, so serious yet so full of empathy he did not deserve, meeting his.

She was a tall woman—nearly as tall as he was—and it’d take very little to tip up her chin and…

He turned away, on the defensive. He had to get out of here; the whole Voice thing was already going to his head, and he’d be skipping merrily down to the void if he let this continue a moment longer. Powerful, deadly things, soulmates: it was insane just how quickly he’d become accustomed to the idea, when just an hour ago she’d scared him more than anything in this world or any other. “My dreams, good or bad, are none of your business,” Cullen snapped, striding toward the door and the escape it offered. His heart was pounding too hard, too fast. He needed to get out. “Now, if we’re finished here…”

There was a beat of wounded silence as he stood by the door, refusing to look at her. Then a breath, a sigh, and a murmured, “We’re finished here,” before the torchlight snuffed itself out, plunging them both into darkness.

There’s a metaphor here, Cullen thought, aching but—for the first time in weeks—completely unafraid. He couldn’t say why the fear had faded (But I’m going to protect you, too.), or whether it was truly gone for good, but for now…

Aria slipped past him without meeting his eyes, leading the way: a stranger in the darkness.

For now, he thought—following in her wake and refusing to let himself think things like soulmate or Voice or love—it will have to do.

Chapter Text

At first, he did his best to ignore her.

For weeks—weeks—Cullen made it a point not to be in any room he thought she might enter. It was surprisingly easy, in a way. Aria tended to keep to herself other than a very small handful of friends (the woman from the courtyard; a quiet young man with nervous eyes; a girl barely out of childhood with the round cheeks to match), and his attention was captured daily by the influx of desperate refugees banging at the Gallows gates.

And yet…

And yet somehow, no matter how he tried to focus his attention away from her (no matter how much he told himself that everything she’d said was a lie; that he didn’t actually believe they were soulmates; that there was another explanation and damn her anyway for so easily muddying his thoughts and making him believe the impossible), she was bloody well everywhere.

He heard a voice calling her name as he crossed out of the main courtyard one evening, and his breath seized in his throat.

He spotted a flash of red out of the corner of his eye one early morning, high at one of those arrow-slit windows—there and gone again before he could truly look.

He felt the prickle of gooseflesh sweep down his arms as he passed through the library, the rustle of cloth and a barely audible step giving her away as she hid. She hid. Withdrawing from his passage as if she hoped he could somehow forget she was here.

And then…then there was the singing.

Cullen sometimes had to get out of the stone prison walls; he had to see the sky above him and feel fresh air against his cheeks. He wasn’t completely unaware of the irony of that—of the bitter unfairness that he could strip off plate mail and climb to the highest rooftop, hidden from view and blessedly, perfectly free for just a little while. The men and women under his charge were barely allowed out of their rooms except to go to class or mill listlessly about the tiny central courtyard; it wasn’t right that he could escape it all and breathe deeply for the first time in days, weeks, when they could not.

And yet he couldn’t forbid himself this simple pleasure—this moment to collect and gather himself and feel like a person again—so he climbed up here now and again and just…breathed. Breathed deep and tried to remember the man he used to be.

It was a night like that when he first heard the melody. It was late enough no mage should be out of her room (cell). The sky was wide and broken open above him, shining like a geode. He’d tucked his plate mail at the bottom of the crooked ladder that led up to this all-but-forgotten watchtower, and his muscles ached pleasantly from the climb here to the roof. The air was still, but cool, sweat-dampened curls beginning to dry at his temples. He thought, looking up at the night sky: What the void am I doing in this horrible place?

And then, softly, drifting from a window in the tower below…her.

He startled, heart freezing in his chest before suddenly lunging—racing fennec-fast. Cullen had no idea how he knew it was Aria, but oh, oh Maker he knew. His whole body seized with some kind of innate awareness, lungs too small, skin too tight, eyes suddenly burning as if on the verge of tears.

She had a low alto, a slight raspy throatiness to the song that gave it character if not perfection. The melody was instantly familiar, though Maker he couldn’t say where he’d ever heard it before, and that recognition should have sent waves of fear crashing through him.

A Voice. She’d said he was her Voice. And as much as he flinched against the thought (still struggling to rationalize it away in the bald light of day), hearing her now, just like before, he couldn’t do anything but believe.

But I’m going to protect you, too, she’d said.

Maker’s breath. Had she come to him in dreams all his life, singing this mournful lullaby until it was etched indelibly into the fabric of his consciousness?

Cullen sat up, dragging his bent legs close, and pressed his face against his knees. His breath was ragged, painful, and his cheeks flamed hot. He could practically feel the rhythm of that low Marcher song thrumming through him, everything inside the fragile cage of his body echoing like a plucked string. He wanted… He wanted to climb down the tower and find her. He wanted to convince her he hadn’t meant it when he said they shouldn’t speak (hadn’t meant she had to hide from him, like she was a guilty secret he harbored; a glowing ember in his heart). He wanted to see her eyes, and the way her lips shaped the achingly sad words, and…

He sucked in a stuttery breath, shocked at himself and afraid again. Only this time, the fear wasn’t of the horrors Kinloch had shown him, but the questions rattling about in his own skull. The dangerous curiosity and belief that whatever else he’d been taught, this thing—this Voice—was undeniably, indelibly real.

Right now, sitting beneath the stars and listening to her, this was the most real he’d ever felt in his life.

Cullen squeezed his eyes shut, shocked to realized he was trembling as the song ended and her voice trailed to silence. His whole body—whole awareness—strained to catch whatever came next.

There was a low, childish laugh.

“That was so pretty, Aria,” the young mage girl said. “Where did you learn it?”

Cullen heard muffled shifting, as if Aria had drawn up her legs in unconscious mimicry of him. As if she could sense him that deeply. “My Tante used to sing it us, when I was very young,” she said. The shock of her voice after what felt like so long sent a shiver down Cullen’s spine. “She claimed it could keep away unpleasant dreams.”

“Does it?” The little girl’s voice was high and sweet, a sharp contrast to Aria’s more measured tone. Controlled. Even when she’d opened her eyes to find him crouched by her bedside, wracked by his own literal and figurative demons, she’d sounded so bloody controlled. As if somewhere along the way, the foundation of her world had crumbled and she’d been forced to become her own bedrock. “Does it keep away bad dreams?”

Aria’s sad, soft laugh had gooseflesh pricking down his arms. His whole body closed tight as a fist in response, and he found himself thinking, strangely enough, of the sea—not the way it was now (waves throwing themselves merrily against the rocks at the base of the Gallows) but…deeper. Greyer. Fathomless. Maker, what did her eyes look like now? “No,” she said, an old, endless pain wending through that one simple answer.

And he didn’t believe (refused to believe) (couldn’t believe) soulmates were anything but a made-up word used to explain away untethered magic, but oh. Oh. Oh, he felt that deep inside.

But then she laughed again, lighter and more obviously forced, as if trying to cheer the two of them up. “But maybe it’ll be a better charm for you. Or maybe another song. Didn’t you say your grandfather taught you one? Something from the Anderfels?”

The girl hummed thoughtfully. “I do know something,” she said. “Here, I’ll teach it to you!”

There was another low rustle, followed by a sweet, clear, high voice tripping through an old mountain chanty. It wasn’t a song he was familiar with—tinged heavily by Anderfels accent and phrasing—but the heart of it was intimately known to him. The soul. This was a mountain song, sung by mountain folk, weathering the harsh winters by cozying up warm by the hearth.

It was about family, and belonging, and hope, and all the things neither of the women in the stone room below were allowed to keep for themselves.

Listening to it and remembering his own family gathered by the homefire, Cullen couldn’t help but wonder…what would they have done if he had been born mage instead of void-bent on joining the Templars? Would they have fought to hide him, the way so many families did? Would they go on the run with him and try to live the life of apostates? Or would they have handed him over—given him to the Chantry—to the Circle—and let him grow up with nothing but arrowslit windows to show glimpses of the silver-spun sky, locked away for all time from his Voice.

His Voice.

Maker’s breath, he didn’t believe in the romanticism around such things—he had been taught better—but, but, but…

But right now, listening as the young girl encouraged Aria to join in with her on the chorus, the two voices lifted high and lilting and free the way neither of them would ever be, he couldn’t help but imagine himself in their place. Feeling their pain. Trapped in this stone prison, with wardens like Meredith and Cullen Rutherford to keep them pinned and docile and afraid.

I can’t do this anymore, a small part of Cullen whispered…and the thought frightened him so much that he scurried up onto his feet and hurried to the ledge that would let him drop down and away from this accidental temptation.

The singing continued as he all but ran away, voices drifting fainter and fainter the further down the tower he climbed, until he was able to scoop up the plate mail so cleverly hidden from view, any hint of sound lost to the moaning of the wind. He began to cross the arched stone bridge, heart pounding as if he were being chased…then reluctantly glanced up once toward the window he knew, somehow, she would be looking out.

He caught the faintest flash of pale skin and red hair. A breeze lifted it, coiling it away in dancing strands, like living flame. And then she was turning away from the window, one hand lifting to push back her wayward hair, and she was gone again as quickly as she had appeared in his life.

Hidden from view. The way she wanted to be. The way he should have wanted her to be, too.

Cullen grit his teeth and forced himself to keep moving, heart and head a riot of conflicting desires—every inch of him at war.

And no hope yet for peace.

He tried. He tried so hard.

Later, Cullen would look back on those weeks where he fought to keep away with a dull sense of wonder. Had he ever actually thought he could manage? Had he ever really believed that if he just kept his head down and focused, he’d be able to block out the sound of her voice…close his eyes against flashes of red hair…stop being aware of her, even as she did her best to hide her presence from him?

The Gallows was a small world that grew ever-smaller with every day that passed. Now, improbably, he could all but hear her song in his sleep. The melody chased him, tormented him, revived him, inspired him. There was a part of him that wondered, at first, whether she’d chosen to go into his dreams after all…but no. No, those were still too dark and turbulent, too filled with monsters. This was something altogether different. This was—

Beautiful, he thought, staring up at the tower one evening and wondering whether he dared to try climbing it again. It was late, though not late enough that the courtyards had been completely emptied. Two or three mages hurried together in small knots, heads down and eyes fixed on the ground as they darted past him in silence. A few Templars not stationed for watch were idly making their way back to the dorms, chatting in low voices that never seemed to carry far.

It was funny; back in Kinloch, before everything had gone to the void, there had been a palpable air of ease. Even if not all (many, even?) of the mages were happy to be there, they at least seemed content enough to him. Relaxed into the collegiate air, until the place had almost—to his very young eyes—seemed like a home.

This place, this Gallows, was nobody’s home. Not even Meredith seemed to relax an inch here. He turned to watch as the last two mages passed, attention pulling away from what he’d begun reluctantly thinking of as Aria’s tower. They were huddled together, stooped and all but lost to the darkness. The moon was hidden behind clouds and the stars were intermittent at best; between the sparsely placed torches, it was easy to get swallowed by shadow here if you weren’t careful.

He began to move forward, following them at a comfortable distance, aware that everyone else had already slipped away. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust the other Templars, of course, but… Surely it wouldn’t hurt just to make sure they got back to the mage’s dorm with no trouble? The figures seemed small, young, and he was careful to keep far enough away that they wouldn’t feel like they were being herded or watched. He just couldn’t shake a slowly building sense that something was about to go all wrong.

You’re imagining things, Cullen told himself sternly, again. Like the music he’d taken to playing over and over in his memory until he was sure he heard it—her—around every corner. He was dreaming up demons where there were none and—

“Please, don’t,” that hauntingly familiar voice said, so low he could have sworn he was imagining it.

The two figures startled to a sudden stop, heads snapping toward a cracked-open door to their right. One of the classrooms, Cullen knew; abandoned this time of night. Surely, surely it was abandoned.

Somewhere far toward the crest of the Waking Sea, thunder rumbled. A cold wind blew down the hall, sending torchlight merrily flickering and casting queasy shadows across the anxious faces of the two young mages. One had the other’s elbow in a death grip, knuckles bled white. The other was leaning closer toward that cracked-open door, lips parted.

There was a deep murmured voice, then a sudden sharp clatter of iron striking stone. A thud.

Cullen jerked forward, even as the smaller of the two apprentices gave a soundless gasp and pulled her friend away from whatever it was they bore witness to. They barely glanced back at him before taking flight down the hall, leaving behind the familiar clang of steel plate and the low gasp of pain and Aria, Aria, Aria’s voice saying, “Stop.”

“You don’t get to tell me what to do,” another, gravel-rough voice all but growled, and Cullen was running now. He was down the hall in a panicked instant and slammed open the door, ignoring the sharp hiss of Aria’s indrawn breath—ignoring everything but the bare flash of her freckled shoulder, red hair spilling across pale skin (red blood trickling from her parted lips) and the silver gauntlet wrapped tight as a vise around her wrist.

The Templar turned his head to growl, “What the bloody fuck do you think you’re—” before he caught sight of Cullen, all that reflexive fury dying in a spark of realization.

And yet, the last quiet, controlled part of Cullen whispered, he still didn’t let Aria go.

Cullen exploded into action, striding across the room and reaching for the metal groove at the other man’s neckguard before either of them could react. He felt—Maker, he felt maddened, the distant storm crashing loud within his own head as he yanked the man back (away from Aria; away from his bloody soulmate) with all his strength. His hands were trembling and yet he’d never felt so focused as he swung—metal fist slamming down with a terrible crunch.

Someone cried out, though deep in a red haze, he wasn’t sure whether it was the Templar (Holden; the boy’s name was Holden) or Aria. All he could sense, all he could see, was blood spattering the fine plate and dark eyes going wide as Cullen reared back and struck again. Again.

There was enough control left in him that he was able to jerk Holden away from Aria, one hand holding him up, the other delivering nose-breaking blows. Don’t kill him, some part of Cullen whispered, and he pulled the next punch before it could fly. The man’s right eye was already threatening to purple, his breath coming in ragged, frightened pants. He scrabbled at Cullen’s grip as if trying to pull away, and there was no mistaking the sharp angle of his nose or the swell of his bottom lip.

He’d be swollen as a bee-stung calf by sunrise and lucky if he could suck in a full breath on his own. If Cullen wasn’t half certain he’d collapse into a pile if he so much as let go, he’d shove this man away and command him to present himself to the brig.

But there was a hand on his arm—gentle yet firm and surprisingly commanding—and Aria was pushing forward. She’d tugged her (torn) robe up to cover her bared shoulder, but he could still see the delicate wing of one shoulderblade where the seam had been completely rent. There was still blood trickling from a cut on her bottom lip and she should by all rights have been terrified. Maker’s breath, maybe she was, but she exuded such an air of calm control that Cullen instantly relaxed back, letting her do…whatever it was she was intent on doing.

Holden sucked in a wheezing breath, panic in his eyes. His own chin was streaked with blood; he was gagging on it. Cullen fought the childish impulse to hide his blood-flecked fist behind his back even as Aria reached up to touch her fingertips to the young man’s temple.

A light aura surrounded the point of contact, shuddering through the Templar. He made as if to lurch back, but Cullen still had a grip on the neck of his plate mail, holding him up on his unsteady feet as Aria healed the man who’d been attacking her.

Her jaw was tight as she did it; this wasn’t some kind of…of angel of mercy intervention. In fact, Cullen could sense the exact moment Aria decided to stop healing Holden long before all of his wounds had completely closed, that disjointed nose a visible reminder of what had just happened.

A reminder…but not an offense either of them would have to report. Not unless they chose to—and there was no way Holden would say anything to any of the men lest they realize just how easily he’d been cowed. As for complaining to Cullen’s superior, no one—not even Cullen himself—was stupid enough to go to Meredith with their daily problems. She’d just as likely rip you to shreds in this strange mood she’d been harboring.

His ruthlessly, relentlessly practical soulmate had saved them all a lot of trouble and headache…and yet there was a part of Cullen that wanted to go back to swinging, desperate to leave a clearer mark on this man lest he ever think of hurting Aria again.

I would kill you, he thought, uncertain whether that was true or whether it was the terror still boiling red through his veins. Touch her again, and nothing could stop me.

“Go,” Cullen said instead, voice rough. He thrust Holden away, watching with barely disguised contempt as the Templar stumbled before finally finding his feet. He glanced back once at Cullen, gaze briefly cutting to Aria before jerking away at the low noise that rumbled deep in Cullen’s chest: like the mabari he’d had as a child, baring its teeth to protect its family no matter the cost.

Holden sucked in a breath and all but raced from the room, the door swinging wildly behind him. It banged into its sill, leaving Cullen and Aria alone in the uncertain light. Just enough moonlight poured in from high arrowslit windows for him to see the way she turned her head to look at him, but it was too dark to make out the expression in her eyes.

Grateful? Relieved? Disgusted? Afraid?

Cullen closed his eyes and let his head drop forward, feeling the pressure of what he’d done pressing hard against his shoulders. He hadn’t even hesitated to come swinging in to her defense. And if Holden had managed to do more to hurt her…

I don’t even know you, he wanted to protest, leaning back against the stone wall with a solid clank of steel plate. I don’t even want this.

But want it or not, he could all but feel the heat being cast from her body as Aria stepped closer. He knew she was going to touch him even before those cool, delicate fingers cupped his jaw, sliding across the rasp of stubble with the shiver of a healing spell spreading in their wake.

It felt like stepping out of a sweltering day and into the spray of a waterfall. Or maybe more like the shelter of a cave: cool against his skin, the fine hairs along his arms and the back of his neck standing up in response as gooseflesh swept across his skin and he unconsciously swayed closer.

Maker’s breath, but he wanted to be closer. Close enough that he could feel her breath against his cheeks. Close enough that he could burn himself against her if he dared.

The healing magic unspooled deep within his body, stealing away the ache in his fist and the exhaustion that had dogged him for days. When he dared to flicker open his eyes, Aria was close enough he could count the individual freckles scattered across her cheeks. Her eyes were caught on his mouth, lashes a dark smudge, hiding whatever she was thinking. Her own lips were subtly parted.

Unable to help himself, Cullen reached up to lightly clasp her elbows. Instantly, Aria startled and jerked away, hands dropping. The spell ended in a trail of grey-blue light, and she pulled just enough away that she wasn’t an unbearable temptation.

“I’m sorry,” Aria said, as if she had anything to apologize for. “I should have asked.”

“Don’t.” Don’t what? Not even he was sure what he meant to say. Don’t apologize? Don’t pull away? Don’t do that again? Don’t keep hiding, as if she wasn’t doing exactly what he’d claimed he wanted from her?

He swallowed, trying to think, speak, past the erratic racing of his heart. He had a million and one things he wanted to say to her, but—as she began to pull away in earnest now, casting glances toward the door as if about to leave—what came out was: “I heard you. Singing. In the tower.”

Aria looked back at him, startled. “You…what?” she asked before he saw the moment it clicked. “Oh. Oh. I…hadn’t realized anyone was near.” She hesitated a moment before admitting the obvious. “We weren’t supposed to be up there, but…sometimes it’s necessary. To get away.”

But she hadn’t just been looking for solitude, Cullen instinctively knew. No, Aria hadn’t been running away from the horror that was life in the Gallows; she’d been deliberately showing that hidden place to the young mage who’d been with her. Introducing her to a few stolen moments of almost-freedom. Protecting her.

The way Aria claimed she’d once tried to protect him?

“I’m sorry,” Cullen said without fully realizing he was going to. The words just spilled out, triggered by that thought—by the reality of this woman’s incredible, resilient, fierce compassion. He was the one in plate armor, but thinking about the way Aria put herself out there to defend others made her feel like the warrior between them. “For what I said before. For everything, really. I’ve been…”

It seemed like such a rank, empty excuse to say the truth: I’ve been fucked up. I’ve been lost. I’ve been struggling for what feels like a very, very long time now.

So instead, he settled on a greater truth. “I’ve been wrong,” Cullen said. “About a lot of things. And I’d like to do better.” He took a deep breath, feeling a strange sense of unbalance, as if he were teetering on the edge of some great, cataclysmic change, and yet he felt the farthest thing possible from fear.

“Will you show me how?” he asked his soulmate, taking that step over the edge.

And her eyes, meeting his in surprise and tentative delight, were a greater rush than any fall.

Chapter Text

She was waiting for him in the tower. In their tower.

Don’t, Aria told herself, wrapping her arms around her middle as if she could bundle up all these feelings and pack them safely away. Don’t do this to yourself.

Because, really, there was no guarantee that Cullen would show up. And even if he did—even if he snuck away from his duties the way she had slipped out of the lines of mages making their way dutifully back to their rooms for the night—there was no guarantee that this…whatever it was they were doing here…would go anything close to well.

She could still see the wariness in his eyes when he looked at her. She could sense the hesitation underlying every word. She was waiting for the inevitable fall.

But until that time came, Maker, but it was hard not to dream.

Aria tipped her head forward, letting her forehead rest against her drawn-up knees. She was sitting at the far window that overlooked the sea, nothing but open waves and a starry sky before her. The sill jutted out just enough that she could curl up beyond the protective arms of the tower proper, each salt-tinged breeze playing through her hair. It caught the edges of her robe, making the material lift and sigh against her bare feet and thighs. Aria curled her toes against the pitted stone and closed her eyes just long enough that she could almost sense the waves lapping against that old seaside cave. She could hear her brothers and sister laughing in the distance.

She could feel fire kissing her skin.

Aria let out a harsh puff of breath, violently turning away from the sea. She uncurled and began to push herself back up into the tower room—only to freeze, eyes going wide, at the sight of Cullen stalling in the doorway.

He’d left his armor somewhere hidden below, and it was a shock seeing him without the steel plate. He looked…smaller, somehow, and yet more imposing all at the same time. More real and yet even more like one of her dreams than ever before. His head was faintly ducked, and there was color creeping along his cheeks as if he were embarrassed to be caught standing there. One hand reached up to rub at the back of his neck.

Neither of them said a word.

Aria straightened slowly, robes settling around her ankles. She opened her mouth, but for the first minute, nothing came out. She wasn’t sure what she could possibly say to him anyway. I didn’t think you’d come, perhaps. Or, but I really hoped you would. Or maybe, even more honest: I have no idea what we’re doing here.

Because he may have been her Voice, but surely she’d forfeited the right to have whatever shallow peace could be had from any connection they forged here. Or, Andraste, that was presumptuous of her, wasn’t it? To assume that there was any possibility of connection? Maybe he’d come here to tell her as much, again. Or maybe he’d come to tell her she shouldn’t be here. Or maybe—

Maybe—

Maybe a great many things. Aria had no idea what she should expect from Cullen; she’d known him for so long, and yet they knew so little about each other when it came down to it.

She wet her bottom lip. “I wasn’t sure you’d come,” Aria finally settled on. She folded her (trembling) hands in front of her, allowing the nervous energy to work its way through her body; no use fighting what she couldn’t control.

He rubbed the back of his neck again, not meeting her eyes. Dressed in underarmor, curls wild from the wind, Cullen looked…so unexpectedly young. Bashful, almost. “I wasn’t sure I would either,” he admitted, voice quiet and rough. He cleared his throat. “When you said, earlier, that you’d be coming here tonight, I, ah, thought maybe this would be the last place I’d go, even after…”

She didn’t want to think of the moment of violence he’d interrupted—or even the awkward sweetness that had followed in its footsteps. Not right now. “Why did you change your mind?” Aria hesitated, then forced herself to move to one of the piles of old crates and sackcloth she’d ferreted away up here over the years. The low makeshift chairs weren’t exactly homey, but they were something.

Cullen stayed where he was; she wasn’t going to try to read anything into that. “I don’t know,” he said. Then, inexplicably, he gave a choked laugh. “Maker’s breath, I honestly don’t. I just…kept thinking about you. Up here. Waiting.”

She could say she’d spent her whole adolescence waiting. She could say all the mages locked up here in the Gallows had been forced to wait—to dream—to come to bitter terms with loss. But even though he was her Voice, he was also the Knight-Captain, and she hadn’t survived this long by being stupid. “I’m glad you came,” Aria settled on. She even offered a half-smile. “I’m glad we’ve managed to find a…neutral ground after everything. If nothing else, it’s been…difficult trying to keep out of your way.”

Cullen gave a surprised bark of laughter, hand dropping and shoulders finally relaxing. “Has it?” he said, taking a meaningful step forward. “Because from my side, it’s seemed like you have a preternatural knack for hiding.”

You learn that fast, here. No, he wouldn’t get the dark humor of that joke. “It’s a hidden talent,” Aria said instead, smile slowly warming and growing as he shuffled his feet, then seemed to make a solid decision to join her. The crates groaned under his heavier weight, but he settled in easily enough across from her—close enough that their legs could tangle if either of them relaxed even an inch. “I’m full of those, you know.”

“I don’t know,” Cullen said, taking her joke more seriously than she’d intended. He leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees, warm eyes studying her face. “But I…think I’d like to hear more, if you’re willing.”

She hesitated at that, studying his face as if she could even hope to read the undercurrents that might be hiding beneath that unknowable expression.

There were a few mages here, in the Gallows, who claimed to have known someone (who knew someone, who knew someone) who had found and bonded with their Voice. It changed them, the mages claimed. It fit them together like two pieces of dovetailed wood, until there was no saying where one person stopped and the other began. It was an experience of pure understanding—a knowing, deep to the core.

Aria couldn’t even begin to imagine what that would be like, to look at this man’s face and understand what he was thinking when he looked back at her.

Still. As cautious as she could be, she was no coward to swallow back the truth that had defined her for so long now. “You must know my story already,” she said, folding her hands in front of her so they wouldn’t tremble and give her away. “I was the third child born to the Ostwick Trevelyans. My parents tried to help me hide my magic from the first time it erupted out of me. I killed my—”

He leaned forward, sudden enough that Aria stiffened, the words frozen on her parted lips. But she swore she saw kindness in those eyes as he said, “No, I know—I mean. That is. Yes, I’ve heard all that. And I wouldn’t want to make you go through retelling it again.”

She could feel her shoulders relax minutely. “Then what do you want to hear?” Aria asked.

“I don’t know,” Cullen admitted. “Whatever you want to tell me. A story from Ostwick. A, an adventure you went on. Or… Look.” He blew out a breath and sat back again, so adorably off-kilter she felt herself relaxing even more. When he rubbed the back of his neck, he was Cullen—her golden boy—and not the Knight-Captain of the Kirkwall Circle. “I grew up in Honnleath. A farming town, up in the mountains. When I was eight, for wintersend, my father gave me and my sister Mia wooden swords; I’d been pestering him for one all year, and I was so bloody proud of that thing. I thought I was some great warrior.”

He began to smile—just the ghost of old happiness—and some of the tension he held within himself drained away. He leaned back on his stack of crates, hands lacing together over his stomach as he remembered a simpler time. “I challenged my sister to a duel whenever she tried bossing me around, but she never took the bait—until one day, she said she’d fight me, but if she won, I’d be responsible for the washing-up for a full fortnight.”

“Uh-oh,” Aria said, feeling her own smile begin to tug at the corners of her mouth. Maker, but she could practically see it: little Cullen, full of childish bravado, facing his older sister with a stubborn set to his jaw.

Cullen tipped his head in wry agreement. “I took her up on it, of course—I thought no one could ever possibly beat me—and faced her back behind the house, near the woodshed. She had me supine on the ground in under five seconds, her sword pointed at my throat, my sword in her other hand.” That smile grew, warmed, changed the familiar landscape of his rugged face. It made him look young again, like he had before the demons came: laughing as he shook his head. “Thank the Maker she was kind enough to take me down a few pegs where there weren’t any witnesses. The kids around town wouldn’t have let me live that kind of trouncing down easily.”

“And your sister?” Aria asked.

“Oh, Mia definitely didn’t let me live it down,” Cullen said. “And I was washing dishes for a month, too afraid she’d come chasing after me if I stopped.”

Aria laughed, so bloody charmed by the image she couldn’t help herself. The story was so familiar it was almost as if she’d lived it herself. A result of their connection, or were the Rutherfords and the Trevelyans simply that much alike at core?

She glanced toward him, still smiling…and hesitated when she caught the strange expression on his face. It was cracked-open for once, easy to read, and oddly vulnerable. Those warm eyes kept sweeping across her as if he were drinking her in, and Aria felt her cheeks instantly flush in response. “What?” she asked, tangling her fingers in her lap again.

Cullen gave a faint shake of his head. “It’s nothing,” he said—lied—then shook his head again as if clearing it. “I just…don’t think I’ve heard you laugh like that before.”

It’s beautiful. Or maybe, I’d like to hear it again. Or…or some other romantic nonsense. That’s what it felt like he wasn’t saying, the unspoken words just as powerful as if he’d given them shape. Aria could feel the tension thrumming through the air again, only this time it felt different. More…electric, though no less terrifying.

Dangerous. This was dangerous.

You’re imagining things, Aria told herself firmly, not meeting his eyes. You’ve read too many novels; yours isn’t the sort of story where the maiden is forgiven her sins and lives happily ever after. “My brothers were all given swords when they were young,” she blurted to cover up the increasingly strained silence. “But theirs weren’t for play; they were meant to train and train hard, until they could take part in the tourneys someday. My father put a great deal of pressure on them to bring honor to the family name.”

Aria looked toward the window, out toward the darkened sky. She could practically see her father if she closed her eyes, as if her words had summoned him. His cold, disapproving scowl was certainly more than enough to smother the faint fluttering low in her belly; she knew exactly what he would think of her entertaining any sort of ideas about her charmingly Ferelden Voice.

…funny thing was, Aria wasn’t entirely sure which he’d disapprove of more: the fact that Cullen was her Voice, or the fact that he was one of those filthy dog lords. And a farmer’s boy, to boot. Despite the fact that the Trevelyans hadn’t been anything approaching rich for over two generations (and were barely scraping by now, from what she’d been able to gather as a child), her father claimed theirs was a blood that remembered what it was like to lead. To lord over others.

No. No, he’d have hated Cullen. Even if she weren’t a mage and he wasn’t her impossible Voice, he’d have determinedly chased Cullen away if he ever dared come near.

Somehow, that just made her like Cullen more. (But then, she’d always been contrary by nature.)

“What…what are you thinking?”

Cullen’s voice was low and uncertain enough that it startled her—drew her back from the edge of her thoughts and fully into the moment again. She looked at him, noticing the little scar on his chin, the flecks of amber in his eyes, the way his lashes dipped and then lifted as he studied her face as if soaking her in. As if puzzling her out.

As if he really, truly, wanted to know her.

Aria let out a soft puff of breath, feeling the warmth blooming in her chest even as she fought not to be charmed. Dangerous. This was, somehow, even more dangerous now than before. She should lie and freeze him out, for both their sakes…and yet she found herself leaning forward to rest her elbows on her knees, a bright sheet of hair falling over one shoulder. “I was thinking,” she said, meeting his eyes with as much fearlessness as she could manage, “that I would have liked your sister very much.”

When he smiled, it broke her heart. “She’d like you too,” he said, also leaning forward a little as if unconsciously mimicking her pose. It brought their knees a breath away from brushing together. She could feel the electric current of that almost-touch. “She always liked girls who could knock a fellow down with one well-timed blow.”

“I’m not exactly trained with a sword,” Aria said on a surprised laugh. “I’m no warrior.”

“You can be a warrior and never hold a sword,” Cullen countered quietly.

She could feel the flush, sweeping across her cheeks, down her neck, across the tops of her breasts. She could feel the tightness in her chest, the way her breath caught—the way all of her caught, fluttering like a moth in his gently closed fist. Her heart was beating far too fast and her breaths felt light and rushed. He was… He was really sitting rather close, wasn’t he? Too close, the scent of him filling her lungs and making her head swim. It wasn’t safe; this wasn’t safe; he wasn’t safe. Aria couldn’t let herself forget that.

She wet her bottom lip. “Your sister would like me?” Aria asked, deliberately sitting back and putting both physical and metaphorical distance between them again. “So I take it she’s not as militantly against mages as you are.”

The words clearly stung—as they’d been intended to—and Cullen went ramrod straight as if all at once remembering who he was; who she was. The switch from boy to man was as sudden as a thunderclap, and exactly the kind of reminder Aria needed. This…this thing between them, this untethered, unformed bond, wasn’t real. It couldn’t be; not when he was the Knight-Captain and she one of his charges. He wasn’t her little golden-haired boy, and he wasn’t any sort of charming prince from the story books, and Maker, but she had to remember that no matter how desperately she wanted to believe otherwise. The dreams she tried to avoid at night…those were just dreams. The glimpses of sweetness she saw in him, like grains of golden sand amongst the ruin of what Kinloch had done to his peace of mind…those were just passing fancies. Ghosts, haunting the ground they both walked on, hiding the very real traps littering this space between him and her.

If the world were different was a seductive thought, and one she couldn’t afford. The world wasn’t different, and it likely would never be.

“I, she, that is,” Cullen said, then just closed his eyes and shook his head once as if clearing the cobwebs away. It was reassuring to know he was so easily taken in by this connection, too. She wasn’t the only one struggling to see past romantic notions and might-have-beens.

Aria knit her fingers together, squeezing them tight. “I should go back to avoiding you,” she said simply. It would all be easier if she did. Living in the same prison would always be…Maker, impossible…but at least avoidance meant sidestepping the emotional pitfalls waiting for the both of them if they let themselves give in to this unrelenting tug between them.

Cullen let out a long, gusting breath and scrubbed at his face. All the brightness was gone from those eyes. “I wish you wouldn’t,” he admitted—startling her. Aria had been so certain the withdrawn, moody Knight-Captain was taking over again.

“Why?” she asked, and twisted her hands together so hard they ached. She wanted to ask more: why did you step in and risk yourself for me? Why did you join the Templars in the first place? Why didn’t you leave this life after what had happened to you? Why do you even want to look at me after what that demon did? There were so many questions burning at the back of her tongue, and she’d always hated being in the dark, but, Andraste take her, she wasn’t sure she had the right to ask. She wasn’t sure she had the right to even this measure of peace, after all she’d done.

And yet she asked anyway. She always seemed to.

He pressed his palms to his knees and pushed himself up, pacing restlessly to the window and back. His movements were jerky, graceless, and his whole body seemed to thrum with restless energy. He laced his fingers behind his head before dragging them roughly through his hair, every inch of him poised as if to take flight. “Maker’s breath,” Cullen said, rounding on his heel again to stare out the window. In profile, he as beautiful as the silhouette on a coin: stark and strong-featured. “I don’t know. I don’t know what you want me to tell you.”

“Why not the truth?” Aria murmured, and she rose to face him when he looked at her. She was tall enough that they were nearly of a height; the air between them crackled like a living flame.

Cullen dropped his hands, helpless. She could see herself reflected in his eyes: a distorted mirror. “I’m not sure I know what the truth is anymore,” he admitted, low. Torn. But before she could even begin to soften in the fact of that painful admission, he pulled himself upright as if strapping back on his armor. “But you’re right; I should go.”

Don’t, she didn’t say. She probably never would say. “All right,” Aria murmured instead, standing still as he edged around her—a careful distance kept between them, as if he didn’t trust this wordless draw that was so impossible to ignore.

Aria turned to watch him go, her arms slipping around her waist as if she could somehow manage to hold herself together. Her heartbeat matched the steady thrum of his boots, and she felt lost already. Cold already. Empty and aching and damn it, damn it, damn it, but the Maker had a foul sense of humor to have thrown their lives together like this. It wasn’t fair.

(It was exactly what she deserved and everything he did not.)

Cullen paused at the threshold, one hand lightly touching the doorjamb. He didn’t look back at her, though Aria could practically feel his desperation to do just that. “I’ll…see you tomorrow,” he said, that awkward earnestness warring with the gruff distance he wore like armor.

She wasn’t some maiden from a storybook; her heart couldn’t actually break with longing. “All right,” Aria whispered in her own quiet promise.

And then, with a brusque nod, Cullen slipped out the door and away from their tower…and she was no closer to understanding this complicated mess they were in than before.

Chapter Text

Cullen knew, logically, that he needed to stay away.

He even managed it, for a time. There was much to do in Kirkwall, with refugees landing on their shores at a near-constant rate. Wave after wave came, fleeing Blight-riddled Ferelden, until the viscount was forced to close the main harbors and send full-to-bursting ships straight to the Gallows for processing. There, Cullen and his men were tasked with handling intake—checking for disease, verifying identities, making sure there was a shelter ready and waiting within the city of chains.

It was exhausting work, but oddly rewarding. With every family he was able to help—with every grateful refugee he could grant passage into the city—Cullen felt the ghosts of lost men-at-arms quieting around him. It wasn’t enough to fully replace what he’d been helpless to save at the fall of Kinloch (he doubted anything ever would be), but as he said again and again those magic words, “All right, it looks like your paperwork has cleared. Present this to the captain and he’ll see you ferried across to your new home,” he couldn’t help but feel as if a weight was at last lifting from his chest.

He should have known it couldn’t last.

“What do you mean the city’s closed?” Cullen asked, startled enough to break his typical measured silence. He’d already learned that Meredith did not welcome questions, and their habitual morning check-ins were for her to bark through orders at a brutal pace and him to remain silent. Hers was to command and his was to see her will done; most mornings passed with him saying nothing more than “Yes, Knight-Commander.”

But this…

Meredith looked up from the scrolls scattered across her otherwise immaculate desk, brows raised. Blue eyes froze him in place. “Knight-Captain?” she said.

It was madness to press further, but what she’d said… It didn’t make any sense. “I believe I misheard you, Knight-Commander,” Cullen replied in clipped, formal tones. “Could you please repeat your last order?”

Those brows inched higher, and she didn’t bother glancing down at the viscount’s latest scroll. “You heard me,” she said. “The city is closed. We will accept no more of Ferelden’s refuse.”

He bristled at that, but kept his temper. “There are more refugees arriving every day,” Cullen pointed out. “Three new boats wait at anchor, and another has been spotted just off our shores. The men and women aboard those vessels—”

“Are none of our concern.” She didn’t raise her voice, but then, Meredith never had to. The snap was there, like frozen steel; he felt a shiver race its way down his spine. “You will tell the captains to turn their ships around and return to Ferelden.”

Maker’s breath, that would be tantamount to murder. “Ferelden is being overwhelmed by the Blight,” Cullen said. “There may well be nothing for them to return to.”

She lifted another scroll, spreading it out across the massive oak desk. “Then let them find another port,” Meredith said, dismissal clear: he had his orders. “Another city whose weak-kneed leaders are unable to do what they must. Kirkwall has no more charity to give.”

Charity. Cullen doubted she knew the meaning of the word. He also knew he shouldn’t press the matter, but… “Perhaps there is another solution,” he said. He kept his shoulders straight and his eyes on her, even when she nearly gutted him with the force of her glare. Defying her was rank foolishness, especially considering the secret he must keep at all costs (Aria, drawing him like true north even as he fought to ignore the steady tug), but Cullen couldn’t help but imagine his own family. The villagers he grew up alongside. The young men and women from all across Ferelden who fought and lived and died around him at the Circle.

So many innocent people were taking to the seas, desperate for another chance at life. Kirkwall couldn’t simply turn them away. There wasn’t enough cruelty in the world for that to be true, surely.

“Another solution.” Her hands were unnervingly steady as she set aside the scroll, then pressed her palms flat against warm wood. The chair scraped as she rose.

“If the shelters are at capacity,” Cullen continued, standing with her. The desk still separated them, but he could feel the ice radiating from her, as if she were just as powerful as the mages she kept locked safely away. “The guard is overwhelmed and the viscount is a busy man. Perhaps they overlooked another option. I could select a few of our most gifted minds and—”

He didn’t startle when Meredith slammed her fists against the table. He didn’t look away when she glared him down.

Her voice scraped low with fury. “You are not here, Knight-Captain, to question your orders.”

Careful, Cullen thought, posture straight but nonthreatening. Meredith grew more unpredictable by the day, choosing to sequester herself here in her office and suite of rooms more often than not. He heard some of the more foolish young recruits whispering that she was slowly going mad; he wasn’t sure he disagreed.

Yet still: “I would not think to question you, Knight-Commander,” Cullen said carefully. He was no politician, but he’d learned by now the value of choosing his words wisely. “I only wonder if there is a more efficient way.” At the thinning of her lips, he added, “I know how you hate wastefulness.”

And void knew there was no greater waste than the waste of lives. He’d seen the squalid conditions some of these Ferelden refugees reached the Gallows in—they were crammed together on too-small ships, desperate and reeking and starving. The thought of actually turning them away to die like rats on the Waking Sea… Or, Andraste take them all, to be abandoned on the shores of the Gallows, left by disinterested captains to die within sight of Kirkwall…

“Wastefulness,” Meredith repeated quietly. Dangerously. She considered him for a very long minute, too-blue eyes practically seeing through him. Cullen’s heart lurched, and he found himself wondering suddenly, irrationally, whether she really could see through him. The Seekers of Truth had strange methods to divine a man’s soul; just because he had never known the Templars to do the same didn’t meant this uncanny Knight-Commander didn’t know the way of it. Could she sense the part of him (hidden away, buried deep) that wondered whether any of this was just? Whether Andraste was a fool and the Maker was a myth and mages were kept locked here not for reason but political expediency?

Could she see those seeds of doubt he tried so hard to bury?

Could she know, somehow, that he had been touched by magic from the moment he was born, his soul tethered to a girl with flaming red hair?

Meredith’s fists curled, tightened. She did not blink once. “What would be wasteful,” she said, quiet enough that he almost had to lean close to hear, “would be losing my Knight-Captain to a damp cell deep in the bowels of the keep. I would hate to have to do without until his replacement came. I would hate to see a promising man rotted away.” She tilted her head, and for a chilling moment, Cullen swore she nearly smiled. “But I will do what I must. And so, if you are wise, will you.”

A part of Cullen desperately wanted to call her bluff, but he already knew how badly that would end. So, instead, he inclined his head in agreement. If he wanted to be able to do anything for the poor wretches piling outside their door, he’d need to keep his freedom, at least. “Yes, Knight-Commander,” he said.

This time, she did smile, but there was no warmth there. “Good,” Meredith said before sinking back into her chair and reaching for the dropped scroll as if nothing had happened. Blue eyes skimmed the lines, the dismissal clear as a tolling bell.

Cullen turned on his heel and left her chambers, his blood boiling and his mind racing, even as he knew there was nothing he could do. His authority only went so far, and she had made her position crystal clear. At best, Cullen thought as he strode down the hall—his bootheels echoing in the dim, the sound of waves and calling gulls and milling horde of desperate people muffled as if coming from very, very far away—he could perhaps find a loophole or two. Discern a way to help those he could, and…

And even then, he knew it wouldn’t be enough.

The pain in his skull was nearly blinding. Cullen stood at attention, watching the milling crowds of helpless Fereldens on the docks below, and gritted his teeth against each piercing stab. They’d started turning boats away, as ordered, but it still hadn’t taken long before they were overrun. The guard was stretched too thin here and back in the city, and no matter how many men Cullen stationed along the piers, there was no holding back the desperate avalanche of people—some who literally jumped from the upper decks into the crashing waves the moment their ships drew close. As if they were so eager to escape those rotting hulls that they’d gladly risk being smashed against the unwelcoming rocks of the Gallows.

Men, women, children—they flooded the steps and broke through any resistance, and more than one ship had turned around and left them there, just as he’d feared. Now, weeks past the closing of the city, the Gallows was full to nearly bursting; he could hear their desperate cries chase him into sleep every night, and the need to do something, anything, Maker, was a constant drumming in his skull.

“We have nowhere else to go!” a woman cried, voice pitched high above the rumble of the crowd. Several of them had been there for days already; the building fury and fear was a steady pulse thrumming through the Gallows stones. A man called, “You cannot keep us out!” and, from somewhere—from everywhere—a baby’s wail rose and rose and rose until his ears rang with it. Until his head swam. Until he was ready to clap his hands over his ears and let his voice join theirs in one long, wordless shout.

There was nothing he could do and everything he wanted to do, and he was coming apart at the seams.

Soft fingers brushed his elbow. Cullen shouldn’t have been able to feel the touch through layers of steel plate, but every atom in his body responded as if set alight. Warmth bloomed deep in his chest, and he sucked in what felt like the first gulp of air in an age when Aria murmured, “Breathe.”

Breathe.

Just breathe.

He closed his eyes, letting his lungs fill with air. It felt too rough, too raw, but when Cullen slowly exhaled, some of that buzzing tension left his limbs.

“Again,” she said, voice pitched low—for him alone. He did as she asked, letting his soulmate set the steady metronome of his breaths, his heart, until all that gathered fear and anger had bled away for at least a little while. When he blinked open his eyes again, she was looking up at him. Close. Close enough that he was instantly overwhelmed by the dip of her lashes and the golden flecks of freckles across her cheeks.

She had the most extraordinary eyes. Cullen had no idea how he’d ever thought she was that demon—meeting her eyes now, studying them, seeing himself reflected back like stars on a still lake, he couldn’t imagine ever doubting who she really was to him. It almost hurt, being this close; he wanted to…

To touch her.

To cup the fragile line of her jaw.

To kiss her.

To spirit her away from here and run so far, so fast, neither of them ever had to look back. But of course, he couldn’t do that. So.

So Cullen cleared his throat, trying not to stare as a faint blush sworled like watercolor paints across her cheeks, and took a careful step back. The air around them was charged with awareness and emotion and, yes, attraction—Maker’s breath, but she was beautiful. Standing there, barely an arms’ length away, her hair catching stray beams of sunlight and sparking fire about her willowy frame. Her lashes dipped, and her lips parted, and he’d never wanted someone so much in all his miserable life.

It’s not real, he reminded himself, even as he murmured: “Thank you.”

“It…didn’t take a bond to know you were suffering,” Aria said, voice just as quiet. She looked away, past him, that faint blush only growing the longer he studied her face. As if she could feel the weight of his gaze like a touch. “And I, I don’t like to see anyone hurting.”

“You’re too gentle for that,” he agreed without thought, and she barked out a sudden laugh.

It was surprisingly harsh—and sad—and a little mocking, even, though he didn’t get the sense that her ire was turned toward him. “I’m not gentle,” Aria said. She drew herself back, arms crossing over her small chest, and met his gaze straight-on. “I’m no more saint than I am a demon, Cullen. Don’t put me on some kind of pedestal because that makes it easier for you.”

“I wasn’t—” he began hotly, but had to stop himself. Because…he had been, a little, hadn’t he? Picturing Aria, his Voice, as some distant figure: the girl in the tower, singing songs and watching the white-capped waves. More a fairy story of some forbidden love than flesh and blood and wanting to be his. “I’m sorry. I’m not very good at this.”

A single brow arched, and even without a bond he could hear the silent question: which part?

Cullen surprised himself by laughing. It bubbled up from inside of him, wry and more than a little youthful, and he had to scrub at the back of his neck as he half turned away. Below them, exhausted Templars and the city guard fought to keep the Fereldens under some kind of control. Up here, the two of them somehow alone just out of view of the crowd, there was only his own racing pulse to control.

Impossible odds, either way.

“There was a girl once, you know,” Cullen blurted suddenly. Two red brows arched in question now. “Back in Ferelden. Another mage.” It felt like a whole lifetime ago. Or, more than that, someone else’s lifetime. Someone else’s life. He’d thought he loved Solona Amell so desperately, and yet he’d barely understood the first thing about love, then. Boyish infatuation for a girl he’d hardly ever worked up the nerve to speak to. But still: “She reminds me a little of you.”

Aria hesitated, then tilted her head back toward the stone wall, further away from the lip of the battlement and toward a little copse carved into grey rock. She stepped back, out of the dazzling sunshine, and pressed back against the stone. Cullen followed helplessly, tugged ever-closer. Too close, maybe, his eyes dropping briefly to her mouth as he stumbled back into her orbit safely tucked away from even the most determined prying eyes.

(Maker’s breath, his heart was going to beat right out of his chest; what was he doing?)

“I saw her, once or twice,” Aria admitted quietly. She pressed her palms flat against the stone as she leaned fully back into it. Sinking down just a little, so he had to tip his face to keep his eyes on hers. When had he stepped this close? He was just a couple of feet away, close enough to count her freckles or the flecks of color in those serious eyes. “At least, I think it was her. Long black braid. A heart-shaped face. She was beautiful,” Aria added.

“She could never hold a candle to you,” he breathed, and Andraste take him, but he could feel the warmth cast from her body even through layers of plate mail.

Slowly—so slowly it was like moving through time itself—Cullen reached out and carefully, deliberately rested a gauntleted palm against the stone close to her right ear. He leaned his weight in until he was nearly bracketing her, his own broad frame blocking her from the rest of the world. Even as he did it, he kept one shoulder angled back so she could easily slip free…and fuck, but he burned inside when she didn’t take the obvious out.

What are you doing, what are you doing, what are you—

“What are you doing, Cullen?” Aria asked, echoing his thoughts as if she really could read them. (Sense them. Control them? No. He couldn’t think like that.)

“I don’t know,” he had to admit. “I told you, I’m not very…skilled…in this. I just—” He struggled to find the words, even as he slowly reached up with his free hand and brushed iron-cold knuckles along her cheek. Across her jaw. Up to her temple until he could trace the delicate shell of her ear with his thumb, eyes hungrily taking in the way she closed her eyes and trembled in response.

It felt impossible to breathe. The air had been sucked from the Gallows and there was nothing left but to sway ever-closer, drawn to her and too weak in this moment to deny it. He thought, dizzily, that he’d die if he didn’t kiss her. (He thought, a little more pragmatically, that no one actually died from frustrated longing outside of bad Orlesian poetry.)

“You just?” Aria said, face tilted up toward his.

He let out a long, serrated breath. “I just can’t get you out of my thoughts,” Cullen said quietly. “No matter how hard I try. Every time I think I succeeded, there you are again.”

Cullen could tell that was the exact wrong thing to say when her lashes swept up, eyes opening. She straightened, one hand gently catching his wrist and pushing it aside so she could slip free—away, her straight back to him as she stepped forward to stare out across the Waking Sea.

He turned helplessly to watch her, feeling more mixed up than ever. He shouldn’t have done…whatever it was he’d been about to do. (Kiss her, you idiot, a small part of him whispered. You were going to kiss your bloody soulmate.) And yet he couldn’t escape the feeling that he should have decided damn everything and done just that.

“That’s the potential bond you’re feeling,” Aria said, arms wrapping around her middle. “It’ll keep drawing you to me so long as we’re close. There’s nothing I can do to stop it.” She paused, then glanced over her shoulder at him. “I’ve tried.”

“You’ve tried?” He had no idea why that surprised him as much as it did.

Aria just snorted quietly. “Of course I tried,” she said, turning to face him. “You thought I was a demon when we first met. You Silenced me.”

Cullen controlled a wince, instinctively keeping his own shame from broadcasting on his features. Still: “I shouldn’t have done that,” he said.

“No,” Aria agreed. “You shouldn’t have.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt you.” He was sure that was true. The Silence had been reflexive, a flinch against the horrors he saw painted still on the backs of his lids. He was a long, long way from being healed, but by now he had enough distance to realize just how deep and dark that personal abyss had been. “I swear it.”

Her expression melted again, softened—gentled, despite what she claimed. With him, at least, Cullen sensed Aria would always be more gentle than he could ever deserve. “I know you didn’t mean to hurt me,” Aria said, voice low and throaty and sad. Maker, so sad. “That doesn’t mean you won’t do it again.”

Cullen wanted to protest that, but he was smart enough to know she was probably right. Not about Silence, but…but Maker, there was no way around hurting her somehow, was there? Not while they were trapped here together. Mage and Templar; soulmates both drawn together and constantly, violently repelled. She was supposed to be everything he guarded himself against, and yet there was no defending against the helpless feeling he got whenever she was near. The bittersweet yearning deep, deep inside that felt like slamming up against the iron bars of a cage over and over again.

It’s the bond drawing you. That’s what she’d said and what he kept trying to believe, but Maker’s breath he couldn’t even imagine a magic strong enough to make him feel like this every fucking time she so much as looked at him. He could feel the weight of the air around them, and it made him want to do crazy, foolish things (step forward and dig his fingers into that shining waterfall of hair; tug her close and catch her mouth in the first dizzying kiss) even as it made him want to turn on his heel and bolt as far and as fast as he could.

“I’ll try,” was all Cullen could say, quiet. Was all he could promise. And then, impulsively, because he never had been able to figure out when to leave well enough alone: “It is…good to know you couldn’t stop it. I know I shouldn’t want this, but… It helps, sometimes, to know you’re there.” The confession burned in his throat, and he knew—he knew—he should swallow back the foolish words before they damned them both, but he couldn’t help but add, “I’m glad you are.”

Aria made a strangled noise low in her throat, looking away as if in pain—and Andraste take him, already he was making a liar of himself. He should have forced himself to swallow back that ridiculous bit of romanticism before it could be the double-edged sword that skewered them both. He opened his mouth to apologize, but she was cursing quietly (inventively, the colorful words making his brows jerk up in surprise) and suddenly stepping in close. Close, directly in his orbit, the heat of her body, the fresh ocean-bright scent of her, instantly overwhelming. He startled as her hands came up to cup the line of his jaw, and oh, oh Maker, she was all around him all at once: he was drowning in her.

(He wanted to sink into this unexpected moment and never surface again.)

Cullen sucked in a sharp breath, chest gone tight, as Aria filled his vision—his senses—his thoughts. She was everywhere and everything. The Gallows and any thought of being observed from the high walls left his thoughts like sand between his fingers; the rising shouts of the crowd dimmed into the distant cry of gulls. His heart was tripping over itself, pounding so fast and hard it was a constant ache and… And she was just waiting there, poised on the edge of a kiss, so close he could feel each puff of breath against his parted lips—so sudden and overwhelming he was no longer entirely sure this wasn’t a dream.

His hands hovered, awkward, until they found her hips. He’d never wished so desperately to be rid of iron plate and heavy gauntlets—to feel the rasp of rough cotton against his fingertips, the soft press of her flesh, the simple connection shattering through him like the swing of a glaive. Maker’s breath, but he’d take this stolen moment with him to the grave. His mind was scattering, taking in every detail and greedily hording it away even as his thoughts slowed into one unanswered question:

What is she waiting for?

They were frozen on the edge of a kiss. That had to be what she’d intended, right? She was nearly pressed against the hard steel of his armor, eyes searching his, lips faintly parted, and… And… And was he supposed to take the next step? Was he supposed to step away? Did she want him to put distance back between them, was she testing him somehow, or—

Or—

Aria’s lashes dipped and then lifted again, those inscrutable eyes studying his, and like a light in the darkness, Cullen understood.

She wasn’t testing him. She wasn’t being flighty or cruel. She wanted this, wanted him as much as he wanted her—with a keening burn that scoured deep—but she wasn’t going to make this final move without his consent. She wasn’t going to kiss him, her Voice, her bloody soulmate, until he let her know he was in this alongside her.

I love you. The shocking realization was almost on his lips; he could tell by the way she sucked in a breath that it was written all over his face, but, but, Maker but he was bursting with it. Because that simple hesitation, that moment of grace, proved just how much she understood him—cared for him. Loved him too, despite all the fucked up pieces of this fucked up world keeping them apart.

“Yes,” Cullen murmured, voice rough; his fingers tightened against her hips, pulling her up against plate steel. “Maker’s breath yes, I—”

The words were swallowed by the press of her mouth against his. Thought was swallowed, dissolved, every bit of him coming alive in one shocked-still moment. Her thumbs brushed lightly against his cheeks and she was kissing him sweet and slow as if they weren’t snatching this moment from the brink of disaster. Down below, there was a clang of steel and someone shouting, “Hawke, a hand here!” as the lone city guardsman faced off against disgruntled refugees and and and Cullen couldn’t bring himself to care. Let them overrun the Gallows; let them tear it to the ground. Let it all settle into rubble and dust, because oh, Aria tasted like nothing he could have ever imagined, and he’d let the world burn if it meant kissing her just one moment longer.

His fingers tightened into the folds of her robe as he stepped back, hauling her with him—close, close, the shock of her parted lips cascading through him. Cullen hit the wall with a hollow thud and used its leverage to lift her fully into his arms. Her hands slid up as their heads tilted by some unspoken cue, fingers snarling tight into the wild curls of his hair and—

The stroke of her tongue sent a shockwave of blinding heat through him. A groan froze in the back of his throat. He wanted… He wanted, by the Maker, to touch her, everywhere—to rip away her robes and lay her out and press his mouth to freckled skin until she was gasping and writhing up under him. He wanted to swallow her noises again and again, and fuck, when she pulled just shy of too sharply on his hair, he felt it echoing through his body. Tightening, hunger coiling unexpectedly in his gut as he responded with everything he had.

It was a wild thing, and yet so sweet—and void, too bloody short. Before he could even think to wonder what to do with his hands (awkward and trembling as he held on to her, tugging uselessly at the back of her robe) she was pulling away. Slipping out of his arms and stepping back, her breath coming in harsh exhalations that perfectly matched his own, her eyes wide, her lips wet. There was color high on her cheeks, and fuck but he wanted to see how far it spread down…but Aria was stumbling back with a darting glance over her shoulder as the fight (an actual full-fledged battle in the courtyard below them, while he’d been dazed by a single kiss!) reached its crescendo. Junior Templars and other guardsmen were swarming in to help, and someone was calling for him, their voice rising over the clang of steel.

“I should,” Cullen began, dazed; he felt like an earthquake had just rocked the foundations under his feet.

“You should,” Aria agreed, as if he’d managed to string more than a few weakly firing thoughts together. She brushed back her hair, flushing darker when his eyes followed the movement, and began to turn. Then, hesitating, she glanced over her shoulder at him. “The tower,” she said, all in a rush. “Tonight. I’ll be waiting.”

And then, as if she hadn’t utterly ruined him for the rest of the day (for the rest of his bloody life) she grabbed the trailing ends of her robe and practically sprinted away…leaving Cullen standing in the rubble she left behind, every single thought echoing her name like some forbidden prayer.

Aria. Aria.

Aria.