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Chapter Text

The sky hung low like a threat. It pulsated emerald green, punctuated by swirling dark clouds and detritus. His mouth tasted of ashes. The courtyard was choked with dead grass and fallen rock. Cullen blinked at it dumbly. His eyes hurt, even in the dim light. The near-total darkness of his cell had been all he’d known for weeks beyond count.

The Red Templar guards marched him over familiar ground. Over here Cassandra once practiced her swordplay. Over there he used to nod hello to Scout Harding before strolling into Herald’s Rest — now a charred shell, smashed by a boulder. In the distance, the tower that housed his office was gone entirely.

Where were his colleagues, friends? Dead, or lost, or worse. So said the whispers from cell to cell, down in the dungeons: notes scribbled and tied on the legs of mice, knocks on the walls in code.

No one had heard anything of the Inquisitor. His heart squeezed at the news every time.

They were taking him up the steep stone stairs, to the Main Hall. Cullen kept pace, though every step felt like a monumental effort. The chains were heavy on his wrists and between his ankles. His hair hung down into his face, dirty and matted. He had grown a full beard. He was in no state to face anyone. A vain notion, but it persisted. An act of deliberation, of course. The enemy loved to humiliate those it had defeated.

The hall was barely recognizable. Where long ornate tables once stood rose towers of crimson crystal, gleaming in the light from the hearths. Their song seeped into his head as he passed — one of profound, heady desire. Cullen’s hands trembled. I must stay strong. But for whom? Who was left?

The throne loomed at the end of the cavernous hall, framed by the faded light filtering through broken stained glass windows. In another lifetime, Cullen had glimpsed Thalia sitting there, her posture as regal as her upbringing. Watching her pass judgment filled him with pride, and with something else — something baser, more carnal. He had liked to watch how she wielded her power, though her judgments were never harsh or cruel. She weighed everything with careful consideration, and he had nodded in approval at most of her pronouncements. If she doubted her decisions, she had never shown it, and he had never questioned.

A figure, shrouded in darkness, lounged in the throne like a cat. One leg lazily extended over the armrest; a hand was propped up under his chin. Around his shoulders was a familiar fur-lined collar.

My coat. Rage washed over Cullen. He’s wearing my goddamn coat.

Before he could open his mouth, one of the guards kicked the back of the leg. With a grunt of pain, Cullen fell forward, onto his knees. He looked up into the familiar grinning face.

“Samson,” he hissed, like a curse.

His eyes glowed as red as the braziers on either side of him. The red lyrium that corrupted and deteriorated others somehow lent Samson more power. Try as they might, the Inquisition never did learn why. It was one fatal failure of many, over those dark months.

“Would you look at that.” Samson had the inflection of a Lowtown peasant, the slur of a drunkard, and the smugness of a victor. The combination made Cullen’s stomach churn. “I told you it would end up like this, mate. Warned you, I did.”

Cullen gritted his teeth and tried to stand. The Red Templar guard slammed a stone-like limb onto his shoulder, forcing him down again. Cullen let out a strangled cry of pain.

“Ah, ah, ah. I did not give you leave to rise.” Laughter rumbled low in Samson’s throat.

Seething with anger, Cullen picked his words carefully. “What do you want, Samson?”

“What I told you I wanted in my letter. You remember it, don’t you? The one I left for you in the Shrine of Dumat?”

Cullen remembered, against his will. He had wanted to burn the letter and forget it, but key phrases haunted him deep into the long nights, as he lie on the cold cobblestones. “I believe your exact words were, ‘to prostrate myself and beg.’”

“No.” Samson accentuated the shout with a fist smashed into the armrest. He leaned forward on the edge of the throne, the madness bright in his eyes. “I wanted to save you, dammit!”

Cullen nearly laughed. “Save me? From what?”

“Yourself, for a start.” Samson leaned back in the throne, steepling his fingers. “All that bloody business with honor and purpose. Your delusions of granduer. The Inquisition? Bah. You know what the Chantry did to us, Cullen. You know what you are, deep down.”

Cullen swallowed hard. The hunger howled inside him still. Being surrounded by so much red lyrium only made it worse. The melody vibrated in his ears, sweeter than its cerulean counterpart could ever be.

“An addict.” He lowered his head, leaning hard on his hands. The word felt despicable on his tongue. Admitting it had always been as difficult as resisting it. “Just like you.”

“Ha! At least you accept that much.” Samson smirked. For a glimmering moment Cullen could see past the gaunt, sallow figure, back to the youthful charmer he’d known in the Gallows: his first friend in Kirkwall, who had taught him to play Wicked Grace and would slip him extra doses of lyrium when the nightmares got bad. “We’re not so different, you and I. We’re the rubbish the Chantry chewed up and spat out. Why you’d want to go running right back into their hypocritical arms I could never bloody imagine.”

“We could not be more different,” Cullen scoffed. “I tried to save the world, not drive it to its ruin. You might have received your reward from Corypheus, but what good is being king of the ashes?”

The grin seeped from Samson’s face. “It’s plenty good, mate, I’ll tell you that. Untold riches in my hands, untold women in my bed, servants at my beck and call…”

Revulsion writhed inside Cullen’s gut. He summoned all his strength and spat at Samson’s polished boots. “Then all you ever cared about was power. You’re a disgrace to us all. To the Templar Order, to the Chantry — to everyone who wanted to live in a peaceable world.”

Eyes narrowed, Samson rose to his feet and descended the steps of the dais. He leaned down and grabbed Cullen’s shoulder. Cullen tensed, struggling not to flinch as Samson’s sour breath filled his nose. “You think I give one singular fuck about any of that, eh? Don’t threaten me with your empty platitudes, kid.” He shoved Cullen hard. Reeling, he went down on his elbow. Samson stood above him, tall and defiant. “Of course I wanted power. Who doesn’t? You sure took a shine to commanding an army quick enough. Just a pity you were on the losing side.”

Cullen struggled to right himself, to do more than writhe on the ground. “It’s not the same.”

“Isn’t it?” Samson laughed. “Oh, my spies told me all about your little war games. Civilians sacrificed for the sake of heading off enemy convoys. Invading and occupying sovereign lands. Withholding lyrium from my captured men until they broke — who taught you to do that, huh?”

“That’s war,” Cullen snarled, though fatigue had caught up with him. He slumped on the floor, remembering the look in Thalia’s eyes every time he suggested something at a war council meeting she deemed too extreme: wide-eyed, akin to fear. “The circumstances forced my hand.”

“As they did mine.”

They watched each other silently; Cullen’s cheek to the cool stone floor, Samson crowned by the light of the chandelier flickering beyond his head. Aggression drained from his former colleague’s expression, replaced with a gentleness Cullen hadn’t seen in years. He approached slowly and crouched beside him.

“I didn’t bring you here to gloat, ya know,” Samson muttered.

Cullen closed his eyes, wished he could press his chained hands over his ears. He didn’t want to hear whatever Samson had to say — not when he sounded so much like someone who had once been a friend. “You could’ve fooled me.”

Samson let out a weary sigh. “Gotta give a big show to the underlings, or they start to question your authority.”

A lesson straight from Meredith, Cullen thought, but kept his mouth shut.

“Truth is, good help’s hard to find. Even more so at the end of the world.” Samson reached out a hand. “Thought maybe you’d reconsider.”

“Reconsider what?” Cullen blurted, uncomprehending.

“Your refusal to surrender. You don’t have to spend the rest of your days withering away in that damp excuse for a dungeon. You’d be put to good use… and I’d make sure you’re treated kindly.”

Cullen laughed. “As kindly as you treated Maddox?”

Samson snatched his hand back, scowling. “You always did have more pride than sense.” He stood and strode up the dais, heels clicking on the floor. “Get ‘im up, boys.”

The guards seized him under the armpits and pulled him to his feet. Samson stood, facing the throne, and gave a flicking motion with his hand. The Red Templars began to drag Cullen away. Samson’s echoing voice followed.

“You’re making a grave mistake, Cullen. Ya shouldn’t turn your nose up at a gift like this.” Samson turned, and the red fire in his eyes had returned. “Specially if you ever want to see your precious Inquisitor again.”

Cullen tensed. “She’s alive?” The guards tightened their grip. Cullen resisted, digging his heels into the floor. “Thalia’s alive?”

A slow smirk worked its way up Samson’s face. “You speak with such fondness. Heh, adorable.” Seeing Cullen’s stricken look, he chuckled. “Oh, I know all about your affections for your little false Herald. Have to say I’m impressed. Didn’t think you had it in ya.” His grin grew wolfish. “Or in her.”

“You son of a bitch,” Cullen spat, struggling against the iron grip of his captors. “If you’ve touched one hair on her head, I swear to the Maker, I’ll kill you myself.”

Samson yawned. “Idle threats, is that the best you can do?”

“I swear it,” Cullen vowed. “The last thing you’ll ever know shall be my hands around your vile throat.”

For a fleeting moment, Samson seemed almost sad. He dropped onto the throne and crossed one leg over another. He gripped the arm rests with both hands, the collar of his stolen coat framing him like a lion’s mane. “Right, well, it’s been a nice chat. I’ll tell the Lady Thalia you said hi. Maybe next time, if you’re a good dog, I’ll even let you have a play date.”

Back in the dungeon, Cullen gripped the bars tight and stared into the frigid rapids falling outside his cell. Their roar drowned out the red lyrium’s siren call. In them he heard something deeper, more potent, keeping time with the blood that pounded in his ears.

She’s alive. She’s alive. She’s alive. She’s alive.

Chapter Text

At least I’m still alive, Thalia thought grimly, peering through the bars of her cage.

She had been imprisoned in this metal rectangle for untold days in Skyhold’s freezing Undercroft, under a sheet to blind her to everything but the sound of the falls. She had feared going mad there. Only hours ago she’d been moved, and the sheet had been reveal a nasty quartet of Red Templars, and the room was her own.

“What’s happening?” she’d demanded.

“Boss wants to see you,” grunted the Red Templar.

“Corypheus?” Thalia asked, but the guards said nothing more, and left.

Seeing her quarters like this filled Thalia with sadness and dread. She had loved the luxurious tower in Skyhold she had been afforded as Inquisitor. More decadent and spacious than her rooms in the Trevelyan estate — and a far cry from the cramped dormitory she’d shared with half a dozen other mages in the Circle — it had felt, for the first time in her life, like a space that truly belonged to her.

Now it was marred and violated: furniture ransacked, her beloved bookshelves bare, the beautiful lute gifted to her by a discerning noble smashed into kindling. What hadn’t been destroyed was replaced by ghoulish ornamentation: overflowing chests of gold and jewels, stolen pieces of artwork, divans and carpets and ornately carved tables littered with the foul remnants of vice: empty bottles of all shapes and sizes; rotting, half-eaten fruit; scraps of clothing belonging to both men and women.

Footsteps on the stair forced her upright. She squinted through the gloom, her blood pounding in her ears. A man cleared the landing. A thrill of joy and relief shot through her: she’d know the silhouette of that fur-lined coat anywhere. She grabbed the metal bars and pressed her face between them. “Cullen?”

The man stepped into the dying glow from the fireplace, and shot her a nasty smirk. “Sorry to disappoint.”

A horrified gasp escaped her throat. She shrank back. “You— you—”

“Yes, me,” said Raleigh Samson, Corypheus’s general. “I’m king of the castle these days, so to speak.”

Thalia had not seen Samson since the siege of Skyhold, when he and his men had breached the battlements, followed by Corypheus on his archdemon, framed by swirling black sky. With her remaining companions, she had stood behind Cullen as he’d drawn his sword, determined to make one final stand. They’d been separated in the ensuing chaos. She’d hoped, even in the bleak solitary confinement of the Undercroft, that others might have survived.

“He’s dead, then?” she whispered.

Samson drew closer. He had a face that might have been handsome once, but now his skin stretched over his bones. Premature lines criss-crossed his face, and his hair was thinner than the last time she saw him. Dark circles seemed a permanent fixture under his grey eyes, and his smile pulled on dry, cracked lips.

“They all are, love,” he said softly. “You’re the last one left. Too valuable for the master to kill, of course.”

His gaze dropped to her left hand, emanating a sickly green light.

“Yet.” Thalia swallowed.

“Yet,” Samson agreed. “He’s still got business to attend to before he has need of the anchor. You’ve been left in my care for the duration.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

Samson sighed, turning from her abruptly. “Now, now, don’t get your knickers in a twist. I don’t know what your boyfriend might have told you about me, but I assure you I’m a perfect gentleman.”

“Perfect gentlemen don’t usually have to assert themselves as such,” Thalia retorted. “Nor do they usually work for crazed demigods bent on destroying the world.”

“I’m wounded,” Samson murmured, staring into the hearth’s embers. “You’ve built your opinion of me on rumor and hearsay.”

“What else could I do? It’s not like you ever stopped by Skyhold for tea.”

“Sounds nice, actually.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Would you care for some?”

Thalia stared. She was kneeling in a cage, her wrists and ankles shackled, cold and dirty and hungry from the untold time spent in the Undercroft. “You’re offering me tea?”

“Why not?” Samson turned to face her. “Or are you thinking I’m too barbaric for such a thing?”

A sense of unease crept along Thalia’s ribs. He must want something from her, but she couldn’t figure out what: unequivocally, Corypheus had won. She was at his mercy, and Samson’s. She swallowed against a lump in her throat. “I’ll take some, I suppose.”

She expected, at best, to be handed a cup through the metal bars, but Samson fished through the inner pockets of his stolen jacket and produced a ring upon which hung a set of skeleton keys. He inserted one into the lock on her cage door and turned it. The door creaked open.

“You must be toying with me,” Thalia said.

“Does it look like I’m toying?” Samson stepped back, palms up as if in surrender. “Where you going to go, exactly?”

He had a point. The exit was downstairs, in an area surely crawling with guards. Her only other option was the balconies, with a hundred plus foot drop into the icy ravines surrounding Skyhold. Thalia limped out of the cell cautiously, the chains on her ankles too short to allow for a normal stride. The shackles on her wrists pulsated with imbedded shards of red lyrium. In small amounts, it had not been enough to cause corruption, but something about it prevented her from summoning enough mana to work a spell. She’d desperately wished Dagna were here to study it. To Samson, she was completely harmless.

He nodded toward the door off the bedroom. “Go on. Washroom’s over there. Clean yourself up, you look a fright.”

“I know where the washroom is,” Thalia retorted. “I used to live here.”

“So you did. You always stick your nose up at hospitality, or is that a newfound practice of yours?”

She bit back another flippant response. Her time as the Inquisitor had emboldened her, but before that she’d endured over a decade in the Ostwick Circle, where the mages were always one sarcastic remark away from discipline at the ends of the Templars. She could see something of the Templar bearing in Samson, in fact; a rigidness in his posture that reminded her, painfully, of Cullen.

“Thank you,” she muttered through gritted teeth, and turned away.

The guise of washing gave her a few precious moments alone to collect herself. The washroom behind the main room of the tower was largely unchanged. A basin full of clean water awaited her. She cupped some in her hands and stared at herself in the mirror. Samson hadn’t been kidding: her hair was a greasy, tangled mess, face streaked with dirt and dried blood.

She splashed the water on her face and took to scrubbing at her skin with a washrag. The grime melted away to reveal a face paler and thinner than she’d recalled, the circular tattoo of the Ostwick Circle standing out prominently on her brow and cheekbone. She had no means to wash her hair, and the shackles made styling it difficult, but she managed to pull out the half-unraveled plaits. She pulled the unruly mass back from her head in a simple bun and looked almost respectable afterward.

She paused with her hand on the door knob. Surely Samson would become suspicious if she took too long, but she relished a moment alone to think through her strategy. Samson had her bested in every way. There was no point in trying to fight him, but at the very least she might be able to learn something by conversing.

His motivation was likewise a mystery. He was trying to get her to lower her guard, but why? Did she possess vital information in turn, something that Corypheus’s forces had been unable to uncover? She couldn’t imagine what that could be.

She hobbled out into a brighter room. Samson had stoked the fire and lit a number of candles, cleared some of the mess off the low table. He put down a teapot of finely crafted porcelain and a matching set of delicate teacups. The image jarred her — this rough and grizzled man setting a place for her, as well as a tin of biscuits, a pot of jam. She wondered which noble’s manse had been ransacked for the finery.

“Sit,” he said, in a tone that was both kind and a command.

Thalia perched on the edge of the divan. She recognized it. It had been moved, and stained with a number of untold substances since she’d last seen it, but it was hers. She recalled a number of times sitting here with Cullen as the light outside turned golden and faded, curled up with a book, her feet in his lap. She thought of the smile he would give her each time she peeked over the top of the tome. Her heart ached.

She clutched her hands together, the weight of the shackles pressing down on her lap. Samson leaned over and poured the tea into her cup. She watched his hands tremble, another familiar sight.

“Low on lyrium?” she asked before she could stop herself. “I’m surprised Corypheus would deprive you.”

He halted, jerking his head up to catch her gaze. His eyes looked more red than grey now, but perhaps they were only reflecting the firelight.

“I’ve plenty,” Samson snapped, standing upright.

“I see.” It’s just not enough, then. His addiction is that bad. She’d known Cullen had considered Samson a cautionary tale, an example of a future where he could not resist the lyrium’s siren call, and she was beginning to understand his fear. Even world domination could not cure Samson’s sunken eyes, sallow skin and constant need for a fix. She reached out and took the teacup off its saucer. “My thanks.”

He only grunted in acknowledgement, and Thalia knew she’d hit a nerve.

Samson sat down heavily in a chair across from her and picked up his own cup of tea. She didn’t drink until he’d taken a sip himself, though she knew if he wanted her dead, he could have killed her weeks ago. He watched her closely as she drank. She tried to maintain the posture she’d been taught as a child, but her stomach was so empty she experienced a ravenous desire to fill it. She eyed the biscuits hungrily.

“Go on.” Samson slouched in his seat, crossing one leg over the other. “Didn’t put them out for decoration.”

Thalia hesitated. If she resisted, she would maintain the moral high ground but not much else. A full stomach would help her more in the long run. She leaned forward and snatched a biscuit, shoving it in her mouth in a decidedly unladylike manner. When she looked up, Samson’s gaze still bore into hers, with an intensity that made her uncomfortable.

“Ostwick, eh?” he said.

She leaned back, to put more space between them. “What do you mean?” she asked, licking crumbs from her lips. Surely word had traveled far enough that even Corypheus’s forces knew the Inquisitor had hailed from the Trevelyans of Ostwick.

He waved his hand in front of one eye. “The mark of the Circle.”

“Oh. That.” Her fingers crept to her cheekbone, where the tattoo began, curving its way around her eye. “Most people forget that’s what it means.” An absurd statement — as if there was anyone left to care.

“I didn’t.” Samson squared his shoulders. “Worked with a few mages from Ostwick once. Heard about the things they did to you there. Branding you like cattle.” He looked away with a grimace. “Made my stomach turn.”

Bits of biscuit caught in Thalia’s throat as she swallowed. His disgust sounded genuine, a disgust that she shared. As if collecting blood for mage’s phylacteries hadn’t been enough, the Templar leadership in the Ostwick Circle had decided that the best way to ensure mages didn’t escape was to tattoo a symbol of the Circle onto their faces. Phylacteries could be broken, went the logic, but disfiguring someone’s features was permanent.

“I don’t remember the First Enchanter sending anyone to Kirkwall while I was at the Circle,” Thalia said quietly.

A grin quirked at the corner of Samson’s lips. “Didn’t work with ‘em while I was a Templar. I helped ‘em escape.”

“You — what?”

“Oh, did Cullen not tell you that part? That after I was tossed out of the Gallows, I ran unhappy mages to freedom across the sea?” Samson tilted his head. “Typical. He was always trying to shut us down, after all.”

Was Raleigh Samson trying to tell her that he understood the mages’ plight — the biggest issue she’d once clashed with her advisors on? Even Cullen, who sympathized with her point of view, having been on the enforcement end of the mages’ oppression, who had ultimately supported her decision, had his misgivings about giving them their unconditional freedom. And now, was Corypheus’s general truly trying to say he supported that cause?

Her eyes narrowed. “Hang on. Cullen told me you used to traffic people. For money.”

Samson let out a disappointed sigh. “A man’s gotta eat, love.”

“Or feed a lyrium habit,” Thalia retorted. “Sometimes those mages ended up in the hands of slavers, I heard.”

“Hey. That wasn’t my doing. Some people can pay more than others. Or at all.”

“How magnanimous of you. And when the Mage-Templar war broke out, your customer base dried up. Then you turned to smuggling lyrium. Red lyrium, for Corypheus.” Thalia shook her head. “Forgive me, but you aren’t going to win much sympathy from me, painting yourself as the courageous freedom fighter. Where are all those mages now? Dead or enslaved, just like everyone else.”

“There you go, sounding just like Cullen.” A muscle in Sams’s jaw clenched. “Thought maybe, given your background, you’d be more reasonable. But I suppose he has you wrapped around his little finger after all.”

Thalia bristled. She wanted to throw the remainder of her tea in Samson’s smug face, but her fingers halted gripped around the cup.

He’d spoken about Cullen in the present tense.

Thalia slowly returned the teacup to its saucer, struggling to keep her composure. “Is that what this is about? Proving Cullen wrong?” What else might she be able to wheedle out of him? “Is that why you’re sitting there, wearing his coat, trying to convince me you’re actually the hero here? Do you wish you were him that badly?”

“Ha! Me, wish I were him?” Samson leapt to his feet and began to pace. “Why on earth would I wish to be that simpering dog lord? Oh, sure, he was always the golden boy on the surface, kissing Meredith’s arse all the way to the top. But you didn’t know him like I knew him, love. Always battling the demons inside his little head. I helped him out when he needed it, filching an extra dose here and there to take the edge off. I was a good friend, see? And what did he do, when he’d made Knight-Captain and Meredith kicked me out into the gutter, copperless?”

Samson leaned down, leering at her. Thalia tried to inch away, but Samson grabbed her chin and forced her to look him in the eye. His pupils glowed with a scarlet fury. Thalia’s heart hammered against her ribcage.

“What did he do?” she whispered.

“Nothing,” Samson growled. “He did nothing. For years. Even when I tried — I tried to help round up the mage extremists and get reinstated, but he couldn’t take the risk. Too much of a junkie — too addicted to the lyrium the bloody Chantry poured down my throat. I was a liability to him, don’t you understand? I was worthless.”

Pain cut through every word of his rant. Thalia watched him with a mixture of fear and sorrow. He was a deeply broken man, that much was evident. Thalia found herself recalling the long afternoons spent with Cullen, trying to track Samson’s movements, how every clue seemed to remind her that there must still be humanity inside him. Cullen never budged. He was moved only by rage at his former friend, the exact same rage she now saw fueling Samson. How did it end up like this? she wondered.

“And then— and then.” Samson sat on the divan beside her, clutching her hands. “I see him running the Inquisition. Following the so-called ‘Herald of Andraste,’ — a mage! When I’d had far more sympathy for their cause — when I’d done far more—” He let out an agitated huff. “Some men are just bloody lucky, I suppose. Good looks, charm, obedience, is that truly all it takes? He gets the fame, the glory, even the girl…”

With one shaky hand, and a gentleness that surprised her, he cupped her cheek. His other hand clenched her palm, engulfing the light from the anchor, nails digging into her skin. Thalia froze, not daring to breathe. Cullen was right. He’s gone mad.

A desperate smile spread across Samson’s face. “Well, I’ve showed him. Who’s laughing now? I’m here, second-in-command to a living god, and he’s below us, rotting in the dungeon…”

He embraced her, clinging to her like a man drowning. Thalia let him, too stunned to fight back.

“I thought,” she breathed into his ear, “you said Cullen was dead.”

Samson jerked back, eyes narrowed. “Technically, you said that, love, not me. Who the fuck cares about Cullen, eh? I can offer you so much more than him.”

She stared, aghast. “You brought me all the way up here, let me out of that cage, tried to entreat with me… because you’re lonely?”

“Why not? ’S very isolating at the top.” He drew a stray piece of hair behind her ear, making her shiver. “I thought you of all people would know that.”

Trying not to recoil, Thalia took a deep breath. “And what does Corypheus think of this plan?”

“Well. He don’t exactly know about it yet.” Samson scratched at the stubble on his chin. “But I think he’d come around eventually. He did with that Dorian bloke.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

Samson chortled. “That’s right, he was a friend of yours, wasn’t he? Heads the Venatori now. See what I mean? Corypheus can be reasonable.”

Thalia opened her mouth and closed it again, shocked. The Dorian Pavus she knew would have chosen death before siding with Tevinter supremacists, never mind agreeing to be their leader. Yet — all the rules of her reality had already been broken. If Cullen was alive, why not Dorian? Cullen was here in the Skyhold dungeons, and Dorian must be wherever the Venatori had set up their headquarters. Minrathous, probably. How many of her former allies might still be out there? Were any of them biding their time, looking for a sign, a glimpse of hope?

“Dorian’s a Tevinter,” she said with feigned blitheness. “I imagine he has a leg up from a lowly mage from Ostwick who accidentally got the anchor stuck in her hand.”

“Perhaps.” Samson slouched beside her, leaning on an elbow to prop up his jaw. His gaze was feverish, a mix of hatred and desire — though she couldn’t be sure if it was her he lusted after, or merely the sense of superiority she would provide him. “But if I were to vouch for you, Corypheus wouldn’t have need to kill you anymore, would he?”

“You mean work for him.” Thalia’s tone was cold.

Samson shrugged. “You got anything else going on at the moment?”

“And— what? Agree to be your—” She searched for a polite term and tried not to shudder. “Paramour?”

“Hey, don’t put it like that. I told you, I’m a gentleman. I ain’t forcing you to do anything. I just want you to give me a chance, that’s all.” He leaned forward and took her wrist, holding it up for her to see. “There’s a lot I could do for you, love. You’d like your freedom back, wouldn’t you?”

Thalia looked down at his clammy hand, but something aside from the shackles caught her attention. Cullen’s coat hung open on Samson’s slighter frame, revealing an inside lapel pocket she knew all too well. When the jacket had been Cullen’s, he was forever stuffing missives and scraps of notes to himself in there. The fabric dipped open, revealing the ring of skeleton keys he’d produced to let her out of her cage.

I wonder what other locks those keys could open. She thought of Cullen, in the dank dungeon, any screams being drowned out by the roaring of Skyhold’s falls. She swallowed hard.

“I suppose that would be nice,” she said softly.

Samson let out a smug laugh and dropped her wrist. “Good girl. Glad to see you’re not as thick as Cullen. ‘Reckon she’s got a brain in her head,’ I said to myself. ‘I bet she’s not too proud to refuse me.’”

“Is that what Cullen did? Refuse you?” Thalia felt a painful pang in her chest, because that sounded just like him. He would never bow down to the likes of Samson, now or ever. It was a wonder his stubbornness hadn’t gotten him killed already.

“Not only that, but he was an absolute tit about it,” Samson spat. “But I’ll show him. Oh, I will. Was being too lenient before now, outta the tenderness of my heart. Nah, I’ll get him in the end, when the red lyrium’s song consumes him.”

“What?” Thalia cried.

A slow smirk crossed Samson’s face. “Oh, don’t you worry about that. He won’t be a problem much longer. No one can resist the crimson melody for very long, ‘specially not a Templar. Soon he’ll be as compliant as the rest.” He stretched out slowly and luxuriously, like a cat. “And you’ll be mine, eh?”

Panic gripped her. If anything was being done to Cullen with red lyrium, she didn’t have time to play the long game. She couldn’t afford to be sweet and obedient until she lulled Samson into a false sense of security. She didn’t have days, or probably even hours. All the while, Samson sat beside her, offering her treats and pretty promises.

“Cullen was right,” she hissed. “You are a monster.”

“Eh, maybe. C’mere.”

He grabbed the chain around her wrists and yanked her closer. In his eyes she saw rage and fear and a cruel triumph; underneath it loomed a fierce, fathomless sadness.

He raised her chin with his finger and kissed her. She could feel the desperation there, all the loneliness and agony, the shadow of his addiction and the bitterness it had formed inside him, thinking he was unworthy, believing it damned him forever — unless he reached out and took the world by sheer force. It made her feel, for the briefest of moments, sorry for him.

She kissed back. Not because she wanted to, but because a man so starved for attention would be distracted by any drop of the thing he craved.

When they parted, Samson leaned his forehead against hers to catch his breath, and Thalia held a set of keys in one hand. “You’re lovely,” he murmured, and his cadence twisted a thread of pity deep inside her.

She tried to slip the keyring behind her and under a cushion, but the shackles made her clumsy. She spoke to hide any noise they might make. “You could be better than this,” she blurted.

“Nah,” Samson said. “I’ve made my choices.”

She tried to think of something else to say, but he leaned in again, too soon — knocking her hand and sending the keys clanging to the floor.

Samson pulled away, gaze dropping in confusion. “Wha—?”

Thalia grabbed the teapot from the table and shattered it against his forehead. Shards of porcelain and lukewarm tea flew everywhere. Samson let out a shriek of fury, clapping a hand over his brow where blood poured into his eyes. He lurched to his feet, but Thalia moved faster. She scooped up the set of keys and staggered away.

“You little bitch,” Samson seethed, swaying. “Get back here right now.”

He swung for her, but clumsily; Thalia dodged and tried to run. The chains on her ankles limited her movement and she nearly went sprawling. She shored herself up by leaning against the metal cage. She gripped the bars and tipped it over to put an obstacle between them. The corner of the cage clipped Samson’s ankle and he let out another pained yell. “Guards! Guards!”

Thalia limped out onto the balcony. A darkness black as night engulfed her, but the sky was roiling and starless. The wind was colder and more biting than she remembered.

She had to get away from Samson long enough to see if the keys fit her shackles, but there was no time. He was storming drunkenly after her, one hand nursing his forehead.

“Don’t be difficult, little girl,” he crooned. “Come back and I’ll be forgiving. There’s nowhere to go, anyhow.”

Thalia hit the marble balustrade, breathing hard. She knew how utterly she was trapped. How many months had she spent on this very balcony, gazing out at the snow-capped mountains? How many times had Cullen stood here with her, slipping his arm around her shoulders to warm her while the sun set?

It’s not going to work, she thought desperately. Cullen was directly below her, and she could never reach him. Soon the Red Templars would appear on the stair landing, and they would help Samson drag her back inside, and then…

Thalia gritted her teeth and hoisted herself up onto the balustrade. With effort, she rolled into a sitting position, the keys in a vise-like grip in one hand. She looked around; Samson stood only feet away, one side of his face a curtain of red. The anger had drained from his gaunt face. In its place, lighted only by the emerald glow of her anchor, stood naked fear.

“Come on now, love,” he said, his voice breaking. “Surely it can’t be that bad?”

She recognized his tone. It was the one Templars at the Ostwick Circle had taken with distraught mages — the nice Templars, anyway. The ones Thalia had thought might still have a conscience beneath the facade of duty and protocol. The realization slashed something savage through her heart. She swung her legs onto the far side of the balcony.

“This is the world you built,” she shouted. “Look around you, Samson. Yes. It is that bad.”

Samson stared at her, stricken.

“Then I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I am. Come down from there and we’ll talk about it, yeah?”

He held out a hand, sticky with blood. Thalia looked at it, and then, her stomach lurching, into the chasm below. She could see nothing but darkness, but if she concentrated, she thought she could hear vast, rushing water. She thought of the falls that ran through Skyhold’s dungeons, eating through so much stone that some cells could never be repaired, lest the keep’s entire foundation collapse.

Was it Solas who’d told her that there may be some ancient magic warding Skyhold’s walls, making it impossible to hurt oneself by falling? Or perhaps it had been Cole. She’d never tried to verify the rumor herself, for obvious reasons. And what counted as “within” the walls, exactly? She swallowed hard, clutching the keys to her chest.

“Thalia,” Samson said. He drew closer, his hand trembling in the frigid air. “Please. Don’t.”

“It’s too late,” Thalia whispered, and jumped.

Chapter Text

Head bowed, face resting against the cold bars, Cullen let the hunger win. With a feral cry, he lunged his arm through the space between the metal, scraping, clawing… and falling short. He slumped forward, arm going limp, and winced at the terrible ache in his shoulder.

The chalice of red lyrium remained just out of reach.

It was all intentional. Samson’s doing. Cullen had watched the vile man set the elaborate trap himself, in the space between his cell and the raging waterfall. A guard brought a small, round table, upon which Samson placed a chalice. Carved from obsidian into a grotesque likeness of Corypheus, its mangled limbs reached skyward.

“The rules are very simple,” Samson had murmured as he unscrewed a bottle and filled the chalice to the brim with a viscous crimson liquid. “All you’ve got to do is ask, and we’ll give it to you.”

“I’m going to kill you,” Cullen said quietly, from the corner of his cell.

“Yes, yes,” Samson said, waving a dismissive hand in Cullen’s direction. “Heard that one before. Hey, d’you remember when we were recruits? The first time they poured us the lyrium, in goblets with Andraste’s face on it?” He capped the bottle. “Or did they do it differently in Ferelden?”

It had been the same. Cullen remembered accepting the silver cup with great ceremony, fingers wound around the carving of Andraste. The first hit of the shimmering blue: the sweet tingling taste, its instant warmth. A feeling of transcendence, of peace. He had thought it a religious visitation, and hadn’t understood the truth until much later, when it was already too late.

He grimaced.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Samson quipped. He pushed the chalice to edge of the table. “Consider this an initiation of another sort. To the worship of a different prophet, if that helps.”

The cup of red sang. Its music curled into the air; seductive susurrations reached him despite the distance. Cullen dug his heels into the stone, tried to push himself further into the corner.

A smirk tugged at Samson’s lips. “I know you can hear it. ’S beautiful, innit?”

“Shut up.” Cullen covered his ears, but it made no difference. The song vibrated in his teeth, pulsed through his veins. He’d been without lyrium for so long, thought he had beaten it, but the call of the red ignited a need that lie dormant, not dead. He let out a shuddering breath and pressed his palms to the floor.

Sensing his discomfort, Samson gave a helpless shrug. “We could’ve done this the easy way, you’ll recall. This is the path you’ve chosen, not me. You ask nicely, and you’ll receive. Otherwise…” He paused, voice sobering. “I’ve watched men go mad. Don’t take long. You won’t even have to touch it… though you’ll try.”

“I won’t,” Cullen snapped.

Samson shot him a look that was almost pity. “You will.”

They watched one another in silence, each sizing the other up. They’d been taught the same techniques, after all: Cullen saw Samson’s sunken eyes searching him for weak points, and Cullen did the same. Samson was gaunter than ever, skin an ashen grey. The red lyrium built him up, but it was taking its toll. It’ll kill him eventually, Cullen thought, though that was scant comfort.

“And a ‘please’ would be nice,” Samson added.

Cullen looked to the ceiling. “Oh, go fuck yourself.”

Samson barked out a laugh. “Always did like it better when you showed some teeth.” The mirth vanished as soon as it appeared. “I’m going to miss that about you, kid.”

He sounded so sincere, Cullen almost believed him. Samson turned to leave, and a terrible sense of loss filled Cullen. They had been friends, once.

The grief burned away to rage. This was the man who had taken everything from him: his life, his career, a cause worth fighting for. Even Thalia, whom he’d believed dead, only to have her dangled in front of him, the carrot on Samson’s stick.

And Cullen was the ass.

He stumbled to his feet, heedless of the scarlet siren call, and charged the cell door. He clutched the metal bars and shook them. They held fast, but produced a satisfying rattle nonetheless.

“Where is she?” Cullen demanded to Samson’s retreating back. “Where is she?”

Samson halted, turned. In the shadows of the dungeon corridor, his face was reduced to a spectral profile.

“You don’t deserve her,” Samson said softly, and left.

Samson had been right. Cullen did try to reach the chalice, again and again and again. Time was difficult to gauge in the dank darkness, but he suspected it had taken hours, not days. He was not proud of this, and at first the guilt had pounded in his ears as he stretched and grasped. Soon, however, there was no room for shame: the song subsumed it all, a red rhapsody that burrowed deep within him and purged everything but the need.

Guards brought meals, but he left the trays all but untouched. Neither food nor drink could sate him. Yet when asked if he wanted anything else, Cullen refused to speak: he would not bend, he would not beg. Each time, the Red Templar gave him a dead-eyed stare and downed the contents of the chalice whole. It was replaced it with another, freshly poured and even more potent. His sullen jailers lacked the mocking tones of Samson, but Cullen imagined other messages in their silences: Just give in. It’s easier this way.

It would be. When the fits seized him, and his vision swam in shades of vermilion, the violence of his own body surprised him. Bruises covered limbs and torso from repeated impact with the cell bars. He heard whispers from the other prisoners, that he had been driven insane. Yes, probably. Yes.

He let out a growl of frustration and dragged himself from the door. He lie on the cold stones and stared at the ceiling, exhaustion battling the compulsion to try again.

Should he give in? What a relief it would be to look the guard in his crimson eyes and say, Just one. Please, just one swallow, that’s all I need. Though that would be a lie, and they’d both know it.

He was trembling. He rolled onto his side and drew his arms around himself. He felt feverish, damp with sweat, freezing and burning at the same time. If he only said Please…

We’ve been here before, haven’t we, young templar? whispered a voice in his ear. Cullen looked around in panic. Shadows played on the walls, and coalesced into a sickening silhouette that had long haunted his dreams.

“No, no, no,” he said to the shade of Uldred. “You’re dead.”

And so soon will you be, if you don’t drink.

“I’d rather die, than live like that,” Cullen spat.

Strange, that you never said as much to me in Kinloch Hold. I could have ended your misery then.

So this was what madness felt like: strangely familiar, like what lie behind the walls he’d tried to build since the nightmare in the Ferelden Circle. He crawled into a corner and closed his eyes. “Don’t listen. It isn’t real.” He felt like he was back there, again a scared teenager, grasping at scripture to protect him. Snippets from the Chant of Light surfaced in his mind, whispered fiercely through cracked lips:

“‘World-making Glory,’ I cried out in sorrow, ‘How shall Your children apology make? We have forgotten, in ignorance stumbling, only a Light in this darken’d time breaks. Call to Your children, teach us Your greatness. What has been forgotten has not yet been lost.’ ‘World-making Glory,’ I cried out in sorrow…”

Some time later, movement outside his cell snatched him from his trance. He jerked his head up, mumbling, worried it was either another hallucination or an approaching guard. He crept closer to the bars, search for the source of the disturbance. All looked unchanged: the table, the chalice, the tumbledown stones, the roaring waterfall.

And a ring of keys, dripping wet.

Cullen blinked fiercely, but the keys did not vanish. He stared at them, transfixed, then took a surreptitious glance in both directions outside his cell. This section of the jail was, as usual, deserted.

He reached through the bars, trying to hook a finger around the keyring.

A hand flew out of the falls, slamming onto the floor for purchase.

Cullen froze.

A second hand joined the first. This one emitted a ghostly emerald light, as if bits of the nightmarish sky itself were embedded into its palm. A length of chain connected one wrist to the other.

Cullen raised himself onto hands and knees and watched as a girl hoisted herself from the water, soaked to the skin and shivering. She rolled into her back and let out a coughing fit that wracked her entire body. She had hair plastered to her head, so wet it could be any color, and her lips were blue.

She turned her head toward him, and he saw the tattoo encircling her eye.

Cullen screamed. He scrambled backward on all fours until he hit the far wall of his cell. The girl was on her feet now, keyring in hand, trying to speak. He couldn’t hear her over the raw terror emanating from his throat.

“You’re not real,” he accused, pointing at her, “you’re not real, it’s a trick, it’s a trick, GO AWAY!”

The girl who was not Thalia — who could not be Thalia, no one could emerge from the falls like that, she’d have drowned — fumbled with one key, then another and another. Finally, one fit into the lock, and the door to his cell swung open. The apparition approached, blue eyes wide, hands out as if to calm a wild animal.

“Cullen, it’s me. Cullen, please, it’s okay. It’s going to be okay, shhh, you need to be quiet, please…”

He clamped his palms against his ears. “Just leave, I beseech you. I won’t drink, I won’t, I’ll die first, please don’t stand there looking like her, I can’t take it, not again…”

The ghost girl knelt beside him, face terribly sad, murmuring things he did not catch. She did not try to touch him. She waited, speaking calmly. Her voice did not penetrate into his mind the way Uldred’s had, the way the abominations had, long ago.

Trembling, he removed his hands from his head and stared at her. She looked real — though thinner than he recalled, sopping wet and deathly pale. He had a vision of her, stumbling out of the blinding snow in the mountains beyond Haven, as impossible then as it was now. A miracle, said something inside him.

“Thalia?” he asked.

She nodded.

He reached out and crushed her in a hug. She was so cold. It scared him. Her clothes seeped water into his prisoner’s rags, but he didn’t care. She was smaller than him, and if he enveloped her long enough, maybe he could breathe some life back into her.

Suddenly, they were kissing each other: deeply, desperately. Her skin was clammy, though as he put his lips on her mouth, her cheeks, her eyelids, some of the water clinging to her felt salty and warm.

“Cullen,” she said softly, and then with insistence: “Cullen.”

He stopped at last, resting his forehead against hers, not wanting to pull away. She reached up, cradled his face with both hands and looked into his eyes.

“We need to go.”

“Go where?” he blurted, but gazing back at her, at the water sluicing off her, he understood. Fear shot through him. “We can’t. You’ll die. We’ll both die.”

“We won’t,” she said, taking his hand in both of hers. “But if we stay here any longer, they’ll catch us. I need you to trust me.”

The chains between her wrists were so heavy, weighing her down. How had she managed? How had she not been killed, a thousand times over?

“All right,” he said, the terror pounding in his chest. “I trust you.”

A headache threaded through Samson’s eye socket, pulsing in time with the beat of his heart. He propped an elbow up on the throne’s armrest and pressed a thumb against his brow bone to alleviate the pressure. It eased the low grade tremble of his hand, but not much else.

He sighed, fixing a tired glare at the servant prostrate at the foot of the dais. “And?”

“St-still no sign of her body, milord,” the servant stammered. He’d come with the place; after the siege of Skyhold had been won, Samson offered the surviving staff to keep their jobs — with quite a generous pay raise, in his opinion. Some had pledged undying allegiance to the Inquisition and were now decorating the outer walls with their heads, but some, like this elven gentleman, had been smart. Or perhaps merely a coward. Not a day had gone by that he didn’t stutter in Samson’s presence, but he got the job done. He’d been swiftly named seneschal.

“Well, then, keep looking,” Samson growled. “No one sleeps until she’s recovered, that ought to be clear as crystal.”

With a breathless yes, milord, the seneschal took his leave, and Samson slumped in the throne that had once belonged to Lady Thalia Trevelyan, the dead woman no one seemed able to find. There were no other callers at the moment, allowing Samson a brief respite. Some ruddy mess this turned out to be. The pain in his head spiked, and he wished for nothing more than to return to his quarters, quaff a hefty dose of the red stuff, and sleep off the rest of this miserable day. He would do it, too — he had the authority — if being in there at the moment didn’t give him the bloody creeps.

It wasn’t his fault, truly. How was he to know the girl would jump?

Do you really think that’ll fly with Corypheus? said a voice in Samson’s head, the one he was never sure was a hallucination or just the remnants of his conscience. The Inquisitor had been entrusted to Samson as a high-value prisoner, and he’d gone and misplaced her like a cheap toy. “Stupid” didn’t even begin to cover it. He knew Corypheus didn’t care about the girl herself, just the anchor embedded in her hand. So as long as they recovered some part of her, Samson wasn’t likely to get roasted alive for the utter incompetence of it all.

If there’s actually that much left to scrape off the rocks, he thought, stomach clenching.

He hadn’t wanted her to jump. He’d tried — really tried — to get her off the edge of that balcony. When he closed his eyes, he could still see her: the spritely oval face, pretty despite the disfigurement of the Ostwick Circle tattoo, the mouth he’d kissed contorted with despair, a wildness in her eyes as the wind whipped tendrils of hair into her face.

Was the prospect of staying with him truly so repulsive, that she would choose death instead?

It was far from the first time Samson had tried to talk someone off a ledge. Kirkwall’s Gallows had a number of towers with windows that, due to age, didn’t lock properly. Every so often a mage would sneak out there, face streaked from sobbing, and threaten to end it all. The Templars were taught scripts to handle it, that’s how common it was. He remembered the drills like it was yesterday: always get on their level. Always agree with them, acknowledge their grievances. Promise to talk and work something out if they’d just come back in. Samson had prided himself on the number of mages he’d rescued, even if most of the promises were false. By the time Meredith took over as Knight-Commander, the likelihood of change was practically nil. Samson learned their names all the same, those would-be jumpers. He promised favors — small ones, sure, but something tangible, something that would make their lives bearable. He’d made good on those promises, too. Until he couldn’t anymore.

I could have made your life bearable, Thalia, he thought, with an anguish that surprised him.

It would have been nice, to feel like he was helping again. Samson had long since given up such illusions in the employ of Corypheus. Once he’d believed the red lyrium would build up the templars he’d recruited into his army… that is, until the end result never changed. They all showed signs of corruption with alarming speed: first in the eyes, then with the physical changes, and all too often the madness came roaring in on its heels. Samson was the only one who seemed to escape — a demigod amongst men, to be sure; why else would Corypheus have chosen him? But it also meant his most loyal soldiers had been lost well before their victory. These days most of his Red Templars were civilians, prisoners of war press-ganged into service, whose names he rarely bothered to learn.

I’ll know one of their names soon, at least. It was for the best that Cullen would lose himself before he ever learned of his girlfriend’s fate. Samson had not planned for this — for any of this. He had hoped that idiot would swallow his pride and accept Samson’s offer. If Cullen had just agreed to join him, none of this would have been necessary. Instead he’d been forced to entreat with the girl, and so what if he’d been more charmed by her than he’d expected? He could understand what Cullen saw in her, and had wanted that passionate warmth for himself. It was lonely at the top, that was the truth…

It was a damn shame she was lying broken at the bottom of a ravine somewhere. I should have said something else, something to make her come back. Cullen would have known what to say, Maker damn him.

His hand slowly clenched into a fist. His chest ached to bursting from an emotion he hadn’t felt since Maddox died. He’d thought the red had burned his capacity for it away, but there it was, weighing down on him all the same.

He should have just grabbed her. She’d been right there, clutching that damn keyring to her chest as if she’d won a prize. Now he’d need to have a new set of master keys made.

Look around you, Samson, she’d said. It is that bad.

Samson lurched to his feet and stumbled off the dais. His head was pounding. He didn’t want to look around him, dammit. He knew what was out there. The sun hadn’t been seen in months; whole cities lay in smoldering ruins. The ice winds howled out of the north, and Corypheus now presided in the gateway to the Black City. Samson had finally gotten what he wanted — the respect that was owed to him, after those years with his face ground into the dirt. He’d remade the bloody world; who else could say that much?

“Milord?”

“What?” Samson snarled.

He didn’t remember reaching the door to his quarters, but his forehead was against it, taking the brunt of his weight. He swung his head around dizzily. His seneschal stood a few feet away, hand extended as if to reach for his shoulder. He snatched it back as Samson’s gaze fell on him. “I-I-I’m very sorry to disturb you again, milord, but… I’m, ah, afraid there’s a bit of a situation…”

“Yes? What is it? Has she been found?”

The elf shook his head, face blanched under his tribal markings. “No, no, it’s… well, it’s the dungeons, milord. There’s been an — well, it looks like… an escape.”

Samson blinked, uncomprehending. “What do you mean, an escape?”

“One of the cells — it’s empty, milord. None of the guards remember leaving the door open…”

Samson’s hands fell to his sides with a strange sort of calm, the kind one felt shortly before the onset of a storm. In his mind’s eye, he saw Thalia on the balustrade, clutching the stolen keyring so tightly. No. It’s not possible. She’s dead.

“Which cell?” Samson asked, though he already knew the answer.

“Th-the commander’s, milord. Cullen Rutherford…”

Rage exploded inside him. In a flash, Samson’s arm shot out and he grabbed the elf seneschal by his scrawny little neck. With superhuman strength, he lifted the man into the air and squeezed. The elf let out a choked cry of surprise and began to struggle.

“How?” Samson demanded.

“No— no one…. knows, milord!” He clawed at the vise-like grip around his neck. “Ach— please, ser… I… I cannot breathe…”

“They can’t have just vanished into thin air,” Samson shouted.

“That… that’s what it looks like… p-please…”

Samson released the man. He fell on all fours at Samson’s feet and gasped in long, agonizing breaths.

“Command the men to stop looking in the ravines, and instead send out search parties into the surrounding areas,” Samson ordered. “I want both Rutherford and Trevelyan found and returned to me at once.”

“The Inquisitor?” gasped the seneschal. “But I thought she was—”

“She’s defied death yet again, it seems.” Samson could not believe he’d fallen for it. All his bloody moping, thinking the girl had taken her own life. Some sort of dirty trick, meant to get the better of him, while she snuck into the dungeons and freed her lover.

Pathetic, to think she’d ever choose you over him.

He winced and pressed a palm to his ear to blot out the voice. Seething, he added, “And I want them alive. Is that understood?”

“Y-yes, milord.”

Samson would show her. Oh, he’d show them both. They’d outsmarted him this time, but they were only two people, and he controlled all of the Frostbacks. He would teach them a lesson they wouldn’t soon forget. By the end, they’d be groveling at his feet, begging for forgiveness, for that foreign concept called mercy.

He just had to find them first.

“Go,” Samson roared, and with a terrified yelp, the seneschal fled.

Chapter Text

Dragging each other from the river, Thalia and Cullen found themselves in the icy ravines that stretched out under Skyhold. They stumbled along, not daring to stop, until the vast tundra forest of the Frostbacks loomed on all sides. There, at long last, they found a shallow cave.

By then, they were desperate and shivering; the shackles had nearly frozen to Thalia’s skin. Once they’d crawled inside, Cullen kneeled in front of her, rubbing warmth into her fingers between tries to fit key after key into the lock. Every so often, he accidentally brushed against the red lyrium crystal embedded in the metal and cringed.

“We don’t have to do this right now,” she whispered, thinking of the state in which she’d found him, feral and raving. His movements hadn’t quite lost their frenetic energy.

“Without your magic, we’re lost.” He gritted his teeth and fumbled with another key.

Just when she worried it was hopeless, one fit. With a twist of Cullen’s wrist, she was free.

“Stay here,” Cullen said, ducking out of the cave. Thalia did not want him to leave, but she was too tired and cold to argue. She hugged herself and trembled until he returned. The shackles and keys were gone, but he held an armful of tree branches instead.

He stacked the wood into a pile at the cave’s entrance. “This is the driest kindling I could find.”

Thalia scrambled over. Kneeling beside the pile, she conjured a lightning spark and used it to coax a fire to life. It wasn’t much — almost more smoke than flame — and it meant they could be spotted, but they didn’t have many options.

They helped each other out of their wet clothes, working from necessity rather than affection, though he was just as gentle. Thalia removed his shirt and recoiled: a constellation of bruises purpled his abdomen, his shoulders, his arms.

“What did they do to you?” she demanded.

Cullen winced. “Nothing.”

“I don’t believe you.” Her voice was sharp.

“They didn’t have to, Thalia,” Cullen said quietly.

She realized: the cup of scarlet by his cell door. She hadn’t had time to properly consider what it mean. Horrified, she asked, “Did you drink any?”

“No,” Cullen said, lowering his gaze. “But… I did try.”

“Fucking hell.” She didn’t curse much — it was unladylike, according to her upbringing — but it felt like the only thing she could do to contain her fury. She wrapped her arms around him, and he responded in kind.

They huddled together and waited. The flames choked and spit, and once almost guttered out after a strong gust of wind. But with some time, and enough prodding, the fire leapt up strong enough to throw some heat. They relaxed then, just a little. The cave must have had a previous occupant once, because Thalia found a battered tin cup while poking at a crevice. They packed it with snow and let it melt by the fire. Once heated, they passed the tin between them, taking deep gulps. The cave had an overhang, and Cullen strung up their clothes there, so as to dry above their paltry blaze.

When their teeth ceased chattering, Cullen ventured to speak. “We must get out of the Frostbacks at once. We’ll freeze to death before we starve — if our tracks don’t lead the Red Templars to us first.”

Thalia lifted her cheek from his shoulder to look him in the eye. She didn’t feel ready to consider their next move, but they did not have the luxury of time. “Where do you think we should go?”

“In the short term? Down below the frostline, as fast as possible. Long term?” He sighed. “I’ve no idea. There were no new prisoners in Skyhold since the siege. I’ve no intelligence about the surrounding areas. If only we still had Leliana, we could…” Cullen trailed off, pained.

Thalia swallowed thickly. “Do you know what happened to her?”

“No. Dead, I presumed. Same with the entire Inner Circle. I thought you were dead too, until Samson told me otherwise.”

“I think he had other plans for us,” Thalia muttered.

“He did,” Cullen said, his expression darkening. “The bastard. If I see him again…”

Was he having trouble finishing his thoughts? Though wan and scruffy, he’d calmed considerably since they had found the cave. Still, it was difficult to shake the sight of him in the dungeon cell, his words jumbling together, staring at her as if a demon had appeared.

Thalia thought of Samson’s mouth pressed against hers, tasting of sour wine and the tang of lyrium. She brought her fingers to her lips. I can never tell him, she resolved. The state in which she’d found Cullen was scary enough; what would it do to his already frayed nerves if he learned what Samson had done? And all the things he’d said…

“Wait, wait.” Thalia straightened with excitement. Samson’s ranting had been good for something after all. “Someone’s still alive. Samson mentioned it when we — spoke.” She cleared her throat, shoving aside the tumult of memories: the tea cup in her hand, Samson’s feverish gaze, the way he’d leaned in to gently lift her chin. “He said Dorian leads the Venatori now.”

Cullen nearly spat out the mouthful of water he’d drunk. “Speaking of bastards. For the record, I never thought we could trust him.”

“Cullen.” Defensiveness prickled within her. “I knew Dorian better than you did. I don’t think he’d betray us. Not on purpose.”

“So you think — what? That he commands the Venatori by accident?” Cullen scowled.

“I think Dorian is resourceful,” Thalia said carefully. “And that he’d play a bad hand before folding, until a better one came along.”

Cullen pursed his lips, thinking. “Do you think if he learned the Inquisitor and her commander were still alive, he might switch loyalties again?”

“I know he would,” Thalia said, though she didn’t. She believed in Dorian, but the world had changed a lot since she’d last seen him.

Cullen seemed to be thinking along similar lines. “Two escaped prisoners would force him to abandon a cushy position leading an army?”

Thalia took a breath, her gaze wandering skyward. The swirling clouds cast a terrible shadow, even in what should be daytime. She recognized it from her trip into Gereon Alexius’s nightmare future, the one she’d have been lost in, if not for Dorian.

“He never wanted this,” she said softly. “You weren’t there the first time, Cullen. Dorian and I were. I can’t believe there’s anything that would change his mind.”

Instead of answering, Cullen stared into the fire. She watched him, uneasy. Was it the reflection of the flames that made his eyes look redder than normal? Thalia reached out to touch his arm, but he snapped to attention before she could.

“All right, then. It’s a gamble, but it’s not like we’ve an abundance of options.” His irises were their normal hazel. “So where is he?”

“I-I’m not sure.” Thalia snatched her hand away, heart pounding. “Where would the Venatori be headquartered now? Minrathous?”

“Likely. They would surely want to hold onto the Imperium’s seat of power.” Cullen grimaced. “Tevinter’s a long way from here.”

“And Minrathous even farther.” The geography of the Tevinter Imperium was little more than a blur in her mind’s eye, but its capital was deep in the north.

“Well, we certainly can’t stay here. Minrathous is as good a destination as any, and we’re bound to learn something as we travel.” Cullen handed her the tin of water and slipped his arm around her. “The trick is how to get there.”

“Any ideas?” At last heat seeped back into them; his arm felt warm and sturdy curled about her waist. He’s okay, she told herself. We’re both going to be okay. Thalia rested her head against his collarbone. “You’ve studied more maps than I have.”

Thalia allowed herself a happy memory: coming across Cullen in his office, pouring over half a dozen maps spread across his desk. The bashful look on his face when he could trace an obscure route on any one on demand. She smiled. “I should expect you’ve got most of them memorized by now.”

“Fewer than I’d like, given the circumstances.” He furrowed his brow in concentration, staring into the woods, as if a distant tree trunk harbored a map of Thedas. “In the immediate sense, I think we’ve got two options: east into Ferelden, or west into Orlais. If we had any supplies, I’d consider staying in the mountains and going straight north until we hit the Imperial Highway. But I doubt the highway’s safe, and the cold might kill us before the Red Templars do. We must get to warmer ground if we’re to stand a chance.”

“I suppose it might be worth contemplating which country would bestow a better welcome.”

“I don’t think anyone should be allowed to recognize you if we can help it. Corypheus’s forces will be everywhere, and I imagine the bounty for you alone will be more than what most make in a year. I might fetch a fair price also, but I have a better chance of… blending.”

His gaze fell to the soft green glow of her palm. He traced a finger to the red mark on her wrist, left over from the shackle. “Ferelden might be friendlier to one of its own. If we can get through Gerlen’s Pass, we might be able to make it to Jader… and sail to Cumberland, I suppose.”

“Sail? Across the Waking Sea?” Thalia repeated, skeptical. “How, by commandeering a boat? We’ve no money to book passage. And that’s assuming Corypheus is allowing civilians to sail from Ferelden to Nevarra.”

“That’s a fair point, and I’ve no desire to stow away. Weeks in a cramped hold sounds… unpleasant.” Cullen shook his head. “Our other option would be to go west into Orlais and head overland into Nevarra, but that’ll take much longer.”

“I’d sacrifice speed for safety,” Thalia murmured.

“As would I.” He paused, considering. “We might be able to cross the river in the Heartlands between Lake Celestine and the sea, but again, the Imperial Highway is the main artery through all of Orlais. If I were Corypheus, that’s the first place I’d look.”

“Samson,” she said.

“Hmm?”

“You said, ‘If I were Corypheus.’ But it’s Samson who’s looking for us. I’m not even sure he’d report this if he had the chance. He seemed… hesitant to communicate with Corypheus, when we spoke.”

Cullen watched her closely. “What else did you and Samson talk about?” he asked, his voice taking on a measured quality she knew well: the sort the Templars had used when trying to ferret out the truth.

She glanced away, snippets of Samson’s rants filtering back to her. Some men are just bloody lucky, I suppose. Good looks, charm, obedience, is that truly all it takes? “He’s deeply jealous of you, you know.”

“I can’t imagine why,” Cullen retorted, sounding — to her relief — himself again. “Nice and warm in a keep while we’re out here, bracing against the elements? He’s objectively better off than I am right now.”

“He just had to sell his soul to do it,” Thalia said softly.

Cullen frowned, and the Templar had returned. “You sound sorry for him.”

Thalia tensed. Was she? Sorry for Samson? She bit her lip and found it difficult to meet Cullen’s gaze. She wondered how many times he’d interviewed mages, prodding for slipping loyalties, for sympathies with unsavory causes.

“Maybe a little.” She spoke calmly, though she inclined her head, eyeing him with deliberate defiance. “Didn’t you say yourself once, there isn’t that much separating the two of you?”

“That was before I saw what he was truly capable of.” Cullen’s voice was flat and grim. “There’s nothing of the man I knew left in him. All that remains is madness and greed.”

Thalia was not so sure about that, but she couldn’t think of a way to explain without bringing up what Samson had done: his offer, his need, and the desperation behind it.

“Don’t let yourself fall for it,” Cullen said sternly, as if reading her mind. “He’s always played the victim. Always makes everything black and white: him against the world. He’s got enough charm to pull off the ‘rebel without a cause’ act for awhile — until you realize everything he does is for his own gain. And look at the damage he’s caused in the mean time.”

Thalia swallowed thickly. She knew these things objectively, but they were difficult to reconcile with the panic she’d seen in Samson’s eyes on the balcony, and the way his hand trembled as he reached out to her. In that moment, she had exposed some real, human emotion buried inside him.

“He doesn’t deserve any of our kindness,” Cullen finished, with a decisive nod.

“I know he doesn’t,” Thalia said, and tried to feel as certain as she sounded.

She forced her mind to geography. She remembered the Orlesian Imperial Highway well, having traveled it to Val Royeaux and the Winter Palace at Halamshiral. Traffic was often thick and full of nosy travelers wanting to know everyone’s business. Or at least it had been, when the sun still shone.

“What if we went farther south, into the Dales?” Thalia asked. “I’ve been there plenty on field missions. There’s a lot of empty ground, especially in the Exalted Plains. Then we could cut north to cross the river outside Lake Celestine.” She knew Val Royeaux wouldn’t be far away after that, but beyond stood a lot of uncertain ground in Nevarra before they could even reach Tevinter.

“That might not be a bad idea,” Cullen mused. “Or, well, a less bad idea than all the others. If only we knew who was in charge in Orlais these days.”

“You don’t think Corypheus would have let Empress Celene keep her throne, do you?” Shoring up the Inquisition’s power in Orlais by backing Celene had been one of her final accomplishments before Corypheus had attacked Skyhold. “She might be able to offer us sanctuary, if so.”

“It’s difficult to say. On the one hand, Corypheus might not want someone who’d sworn fealty to the Inquisition to remain in power. On the other, Celene was a shrewd negotiator with us. I’ve no doubt she would do the same with Corypheus, given the chance.”

Thalia sighed. She’d never missed Leliana more. “I suppose we’ll have to try to find that out for ourselves on the way.”

“Mmm,” Cullen said. “I know a few less traveled mountain paths the Inquisition used for supply lines from Orlais. Most go straight to Halamshiral or Lydes, but we should be able to take a turn off into the Dales long before then.”

“All right.” She felt better, having a goal again. “Sounds like a plan.”

Cullen shot her a tired smile. “Now we just have to make it that far.”

When the fire burned down to embers, they donned their dry clothes and tried to sleep, their limbs entangled for warmth. Outside the cave, the wind blew relentlessly through the pines. A million sighs pressed in from all sides, but beyond it was a dense, unnerving silence. Even at the height of winter, the Frostbacks teemed with birdsong, wildlife, and the din of travelers. The world that now lay beyond Skyhold felt empty and dead.

Thalia lie awake with her ear against Cullen’s chest, listening to the beat of his heart. He had sworn not a drop of red lyrium had touched his lips, but did it need to? Varric had warned her not to touch it, not to even stand near the jutting crystals. Paranoia is the first sign, didn’t Varric tell me that too?

It made sense that Cullen bore no love for Samson, but Dorian? Thalia thought he and Cullen had worked out their differences. She recalled languid afternoons in Skyhold’s sun-dappled garden, the two of them bent over a chess game while she lounged nearby with a book.

That was before the Inquisition’s defeat, however. Before, apparently, Dorian had sworn allegiance to Corypheus and his ideas of Tevinter supremacy. Maybe Thalia was the foolish one, to hope Dorian would welcome them. And to think of Samson as anything but a lyrium-starved monster.

There’s something she’s not telling you, said a voice in the back of Cullen’s head.

Not a real voice, he didn’t think. He was pretty sure. Not like before, when the red lyrium was close. Just an itch in his mind — a hunch, as the templars who trained him called it. When a situation didn’t feel quite right, and the seemingly earnest faces you interviewed were, more likely than not, hiding something.

But Thalia was not a grief-stricken family member, trying to hide an apostate cousin in the chicken coop, Cullen chided himself as they trudged.

This road was, he believed, the fastest route out of the Frostbacks and into Orlais. It was also one of the most treacherous. On a narrow footpath full of steep switchbacks, Samson’s Red Templars, with their engorged bulks and crystalline limbs, would find it near impossible to follow them. To one side was a wall of rock, and the other contained a sheer drop below, buffeted only by dense forest.

Although they had traveled far enough that they were no longer knee-deep in snow, the temperature still hovered around freezing. Forced into single file, Cullen and Thalia took turns with the lead, clutching each other whenever the wind whipped up and unmoored them. His stomach was painfully empty — they had found nothing to eat on the way, not even acorns to grind into paste — and he worried frostbite was assured. Anything to take his mind off their current circumstances was an escape, if not a particularly pleasant one.

What did it mean, to doubt Thalia?

He squinted at the nape of her neck, the knot of auburn hair she’d secured there. Her hips jutted as she walked, and when the wind blew at their backs, he could see the outline of her spine through her thin jacket. She was dirty and tired and hungry, just like he was. He should not, perhaps, judge her too harshly. She was grasping for any scrap of hope she could. The prospect of a warm welcome in Minrathous from Dorian, arms open as he declared it was all a ruse, of course he was only waiting for her miraculous rise from the ashes, sounded as lovely to Cullen as it must to Thalia. Just highly unlikely.

And Samson…

Cullen’s chest tightened. To think he had once considered Samson a friend. To think of the grace he’d extended the man, far beyond the point he should have — even when report after report came across his desk in Kirkwall, pointing to a mage-running trade with Samson at its heart. He could have brought Samson in, but Cullen had pictured his friend languishing in a Kirkwall dungeon, begging for one last fix of lyrium. Those reports never quite made it to Meredith, and Samson never quite made it to prison… leading him to one day stumble across an ambitious stranger named Corypheus.

And Thalia claimed Samson was jealous of him. Why on earth? What could Cullen possibly possess that Samson would envy?

Thalia turned, catching his gaze. Even with cheeks chafed and lips chapped, her smile lit up the air around her. Her eyes shone icy blue, a pop of color in an otherwise dismal world. She was as enchanting now as she had been the first time he spied her watching him in Haven’s practice yard, spritely and warm and…

You don’t deserve her, Samson had said, brave enough to utter such a thing because of the metal bars that separated them.

An ugly suspicion bloomed inside Cullen’s stomach.

“Are we there yet?” Thalia teased, a little breathless.

Cullen forced himself to chuckle. “Not yet, though I think we’ve made it at least halfway down the mountain. There’s a number of hamlets dotting its base. I can’t quite recall which this road leads to, but I suspect we’ll come across it eventually.”

Thalia braced herself against a dead tree trunk, and Cullen also stopped to rest. The air up here was thin, and without proper sustenance they tired easily.

“And then what?” Thalia squinted at the path, which curved around a switchback and disappeared into a copse of bare trees. “We introduce ourselves?”

“If we cannot find any food to scavenge, we may have to,” Cullen said, shunting his misgivings aside. “Aliases would be prudent, I think.” He studied her, the Circle tattoo a dark ring around her pale brow; the verdant glimmer from her palm, brighter than ever in the persistent gloom. “As would covering your face and hand.”

He spoke solemnly, but she chortled all the same. “Are you suggesting we steal someone’s cloak, Commander?”

He found her use of his former title disarming; she often invoked it when she thought him being overly pragmatic. He nearly forgot he had nothing to command anymore, that his army had been reduced to ashes and dust. “Steal is such a strong word, in these circumstances… but yes, probably.”

“I’m not sure petty theft will endear us to the townsfolk,” Thalia’s eyes grew distant. “Perhaps we might find abandoned homesteads between here and there. Even before Corypheus won, the countryside littered with them, the result of one ongoing war or another.”

It was a grim observation, but practical. “You’re right. Let’s keep an eye out. Perhaps there might be food stores in one of them, if we’re lucky.”

The matter sorted, Thalia stepped forward to continue their trek. Surprising himself, Cullen blurted, “Listen, Thalia… about Samson…”

She turned, blinking. “What about him?”

Cullen took a breath. He nearly let the moment pass, but continuing on mired in this cloud of suspicion felt like too much. “He didn’t… try anything with you, did he?”

Her face was a careful mask of confusion. Too careful, Cullen thought. “What would he try?”

A hundred different things flashed through his mind, each less pleasant than the one preceding it. “I don’t know. He just… he said something to me, when I was in Skyhold’s dungeon, that made me wonder—”

Unthinking, he stepped forward, and felt his foot slip. All at once, the path was at eye level, and then gone, and he was falling — sliding, really — down a steep slope of bracken and branches and snow and mud. He saw a flash of Thalia’s panicked eyes, her face peering over the edge, and then she vanished. Around him was forest and pain, ears filled with snapping foliage and his own surprised cry.

He hit something solid, and all went black.

Cullen opened his eyes, dazed. He lie on his side in the crook of a tree trunk, and everything hurt: his limbs, his back, his head. He tried to move, and let out an involuntary moan. One arm would not support his weight. An ankle felt pained, but not as bad as the arm. He slumped in a sitting position against the trunk and gazed mournfully upward. The broken line of his descent crawled skyward until it became obscured by branches and bushes.

Stupid, he thought. Utterly, astoundingly stupid. He hadn’t fallen down the entire mountain, but he had gone far enough. Far enough to hurt himself, he noted as he wiped at his face and came away with blood, and far enough to lose Thalia.

Cullen dragged himself to his feet — his knees did not buckle as he stood, thankfully — and looked around. The tree that had broken his fall stood amidst a clump of large rocks, and beyond that the woods sloped gently downward. The ever-oppressive clouds above gave no indication how much time had passed. Had he been out for minutes? Hours?

He stared upward again, at the mountain peak extending above him. He saw no sign of Thalia. He dared not shout her name, as that would give away his location to any number of hostile parties, and perhaps hers, as well.

He saw no option but to move forward. Perhaps if he could find the road again, they could meet up at the nearest landmark, whatever that was. A thrill of fear went down his spine. She has no one else to turn to for protection, and what is the first thing you do? Act like a jealous fool and get separated from her. The punishment felt almost poetic.

Cullen crawled his way over the rocks, confirming his right arm was likely broken, but the rest of him seemed only bruised, scraped and cut. It could be worse. If he’d been immobilized he probably would have been as good as dead. He hugged the bad arm to his torso and looked about, willing some sense of direction back into him. The mountain at his back was east, cardinally speaking, but the rest was uniform tree cover, laden with foreboding mist.

He limped on, the only sound his feet crunching on dead underbrush. He kept hoping he would find a clue — of the road, of Thalia’s whereabouts, of an abandoned shelter or even a mountain village. All he found were endless trees, laid bare not by frost, but some other force. The branches often looked shriveled, and the few leaves that still clung to them were a strange, brittle orange.

Cullen stopped to rest when he’d jerked his bad arm one times too many and the pain made him dizzy. He leaned heavily against a blackened tree trunk and willed himself not to pass out. He was desperately thirsty, but there was no more snow to melt, and no way to carry down the snow they’d had access to near Skyhold.

He thought he saw movement in the corner of his vision, and snapped to attention, ignoring the protest from his body. He turned in a circle, eyes darting about, but saw nothing. An animal? Or perhaps his own imagination? He remembered the shadows swirling on the walls of his cell, nothing but a hallucination. He squeezed his eyes shut, breath going ragged, and tried looking again.

He felt, rather than saw, the hand grab him. Fingers twisted in his hair and yanked his head back. Cold metal bit at his neck.

“Don’t move,” rasped an unfamiliar voice.

Cullen froze.

“Utter one word,” continued the voice in his ear, “and I’ll slit your Maker-forsaken throat.”

Chapter Text

The village emerged from the fog, nestled so closely among the pines Thalia worried it might be an illusion. She stood, keeping cover behind a tree trunk, and waited. It remained. The fog drifted, and she made out more details: the high wooden walls, hastily constructed, and the pointed thatched roofs beyond. Watchtowers stood on either side of the tall gate, silent.

She debated approaching. It was risky, but she was cold, hungry, exhausted, and alone. Her options were limited.

She steeled her nerve and stepped out from the safety of the trees, joining the rough dirt path which led up to the town’s gates. She had followed this path all the way from the mountains. It had brought her to level ground, put distance between her and the Red Templars who were pursuing them. She had to trust it would take her somewhere safe — or all least, in the same direction as Cullen.

She had gotten within twenty yards of the gate when a voice rasped in Orlesian: “Halt! Who goes there?”

Thalia froze. Up in the right watchtower, a head and torso appeared. A large man, bearded with brown hair, leveled a bow at her. A trick of the mind made her think him to be Blackwall, but she had never known Blackwall to use a bow, nor speak Orlesian. The hair was too light, the man too gaunt.

“A friend,” Thalia called back. Her Orlesian was rusty; she could hear her own accent blurring the words.

The man scowled. “We don’t have many friends around here. And you don’t look like any I’ve seen.”

Thalia licked her lips. “I assure you, I mean you no harm.”

“That’s what the last pack of bandits said, before they robbed us blind. Even sent a little girl like you ahead with a sob story, to get us to open the gates.”

Thalia sighed. She considered retreating, skirting the town and moving on. But without food and water, she worried she didn’t have much left in her. “I’m looking for someone. A man. We were separated on the road, and I was wondering if you’ve seen him. If you haven’t, I’ll leave you alone, but… please. I need to find him. He could be hurt.”

The sentry’s eyes narrowed, but he lowered the bow a little. “What’s this man look like?”

“Blond hair. Fereldan.” What were the odds the local smallfolk could identify the Inquisition’s commander by rote description? Not high, Thalia hoped. “He’s got a vertical scar above his lip.”

“The Templar?” the sentry asked, suspicious.

Thalia started. How does he know Cullen was a Templar? “So you have seen him?”

The man hesitated, then lowered his bow. “The mistress will want to speak with you. Wait there.”

Without further elaboration, the man vanished. After a few moments, the tall gate creaked open. Relieved, though puzzled, Thalia hurried through.

She was greeted on the other side by three more sentries, two men and a woman. They all had hungry, wild looks, clothes and armor patchwork and threadbare. The bowman descended the watchtower’s wooden staircase as she approached. She looked to him, hoping for introductions, but the two male sentries grabbed her from behind.

Thalia let out a yelp and tried to break free, but their grips tightened and she was reminded of her own weakened state. Even on a good day, she’d never been a brawler.

“Quiet,” the woman said. She spoke the common tongue, though heavily accented with an Orlesian lilt. “Everyone entering the village must be searched to make sure they don’t have the rot. Mistress’s orders.”

“The rot?” Thalia repeated, but the woman either didn’t understand her inquiry, or didn’t care.

The men patted her down none too gently, but they were a step up from Samson’s Red Templar guards. A preliminary search seemed to satisfy them — until one lifted her arm and noticed she had her left hand clenched into a fist.

“What do you have there, young lady?” he asked.

The two men pried open her fingers, and all four sentries gaped when the emerald light pierced the foggy gloom. They exchanged quick glances and even quicker words in Orlesian. The only phrase Thalia caught was the Herald. She pressed her lips together and waited. If they planned to turn her over to their local overlord, there would be nothing she could do about it.

At last the man holding her wrist dropped it, and the sentries straightened. “We will take you to the mistress,” the woman announced in Common, gesturing to herself and the bowman who had let her in the gate.

“Excellent,” Thalia said, in a manner she hoped was authoritative. She drew her hands behind her back, so that no one could see them tremble. “I’m eager to speak to her. Does she know the whereabouts of my… friend?” She thought it safer not to reveal the full nature of her relationship to Cullen quite yet.

“She will tell you all,” the woman insisted, and indicated Thalia follow.

As they walked down the dirt thoroughfare, Thalia glanced uneasily in either direction. The town felt deserted, in spite of the direct evidence of residents. She saw no one in the streets going about every day business. Usually tiny villages bustled and bubbled with liveliness: people on errands, children playing games, stores and vendors open for business, the sounds of a blacksmith hammering at the forge and horses whickering in the stables…

There was none of that here. Only the emptiness, mist curling along the ground as their boots tread, the quiet, and the sense that Thalia was being watched. She shivered, wishing she could pull a cloak around herself, but all she had were her old fighting clothes: leggings soiled and torn, a jacket long since given over to mud.

The windows of the houses they passed looked black and dead, though Thalia thought she caught a flicker here and there. Was that a face, peering at her? Another seemed to have a candle burning in the window that abruptly vanished when she and the guards passed.

The strangest were the barricades. Some houses had chains across their doors. Others were boarded up — and abandoned, she hoped. Still more had furniture piled on the porch, blocking the entrances. Fear crept up her spine. Could Cullen be in one of these buildings?

“What are you trying to keep out?” she asked, when the female sentry caught her staring.

The woman shook her head and clicked her tongue. “You have not been outside much lately, have you, Herald?”

Thalia winced. “No.”

“Some say you’re supposed to be dead.” The woman’s eyes were hard as flint and difficult to read.

“Well.” Thalia forced herself to remain similarly aloof. “Reports can be exaggerated.”

The woman only grunted, and moved on.

They skirted the town square, empty save for the base of a statue that was cracked and broken. It appeared to show a woman, but everything above the feet and skirts was missing. They headed for the tallest structure in the town: the high-steepled Chantry. Thalia paused to crane her neck upward. Paint was peeling on the side of the building, and beneath the dirt she thought she spied dried blood.

Chilled, she asked, “Have you seen many battles here?”

The guards ignored her and headed for the entrance.

Thalia had not been inside a Chantry in ages. After the Ostwick Circle, she thought she’d had a lifetime of its services and protocols. Although the Inquisition had conducted its initial business out of the one in Haven, she had been quietly relieved when Skyhold put their headquarters on more neutral ground. Those who wanted to worship had their opportunity, but Thalia rarely stepped foot into the room with the shrine to Andraste. The few times she had tried, she felt nothing but a dull fury and a desire to flee. She envied those who could still find comfort in the dogma — Cullen among them — but worried that whatever she had lived through, it had severed her from that illumination for good.

Still, she understood the pragmatism of running a town out of its Chantry, and doubtless many villages did so even in the best circumstances. Even so, the foreboding feeling she’d harbored since entering the town gates intensified the closer they came to the wide double doors. Thalia found herself dreading to meet the mistress who claimed this seat of power.

Yet even if she wanted to run — where could she go? And if Cullen was here, how could she leave without him?

One male sentry opened the door and held it for the woman and Thalia. The other man stood by the entrance, guarding it. The woman marched forward, seemingly sensing nothing amiss. Thalia took a breath and followed.

The Chantry interior was dim and smelled faintly of incense. Wooden benches dotted the floor in haphazard fashion, as if moved often for various meetings. Amid the flickering of candles, a skylight spilled wan beams into the middle of the space. A throne had been erected between four central pillars.

In the throne sat a woman with horns, cloaked in darkness. Thalia frowned. A Qunari?

“Mistress, I’m sorry to disturb you, but this is urgent. At the gates we found—”

“Oh, I can see perfectly well who it is you found,” said a maddeningly familiar voice. “You may leave us, Florentine. The Inquisitor and I have much to talk about.”

The female sentry — Florentine — bowed and headed hastily for the exit. Thalia was too stunned to bid her goodbye. She approached the dais, scrambling for words. “But— you— is it really?”

“Of course it’s me, my dear,” said Vivienne, wearing the double-horned mask she’d donned the night they met at the Ghislain Estate in Orlais. The rest of her garb was less flashy: black in color, improvised from multiple fabrics, yet still somehow elegant. She gripped the armrests of her throne and tilted her head, her mouth sliding into a smirk. “My, my, Lady Thalia. Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes?”

“Cassandra?”

“Killed in the seige. Died in battle holding off six Red Templars, so the tales say.” Vivienne sighed. “Leliana was captured, as was Josephine. It was public executions for them on the steps of Skyhold. Corypheus needed to make a statement early about the Inquisition, you see.”

Thalia felt ill. She let the spoon of the stew she’d been shoveling into her mouth drop into its bowl. She and Vivienne sat in the Chantry kitchen, amid baking bread and a roaring fire in the hearth. Vivienne had removed her mask, and in brighter light the toll could be seen on her as well. She looked thinner, tired. Her hair had grown out in the intervening months, and Thalia saw spots of grey amid the dark. She’d always known, in a vague sort of way, that Vivienne was older than her, but this was the first time Thalia wondered how much.

She lowered her eyes to her stew. Potatoes and leeks and a bit of carrot bobbed in the broth, but no meat. Had she and Cullen seen wildlife at all, since they’d escaped? It had been so cold and dark, and difficult to tell.

“Varric?”

“Escaped Skyhold.” Thalia’s heart leapt, but Vivienne held up a hand to stay her joy. “Reports are he fell in battle a few weeks ago. Alongside Hawke, her sister Bethany, and a battalion of Grey Wardens out of the Anderfels.”

I won’t cry, Thalia thought, blinking back tears. That there was even resistance at all was good news. “What of our other warriors? Iron Bull?” Her voice felt stuck in her throat. “Blackwall?”

“The Iron Bull vanished after the siege of Skyhold, as did Cole and Solas. I’ve no intelligence on any of their whereabouts. As for Blackwall… some say dead, some say fled.”

“He wouldn’t flee,” Thalia retorted. “He was right in front of me during the battle, like he always was.”

“Once you fell, Inquisitor, it was pure pandemonium. Most of us did not know what direction was up.” The corner of Vivienne’s mouth tugged into a poisonous smirk. “And it would be far from the first time Captain Rainier deserted his post, wouldn’t it?”

Thalia tensed as if slapped.

Vivienne softened. “Forgive me, my dear. I forgot you harbored some tenderness for the man.”

Thalia put her face in her hands. Out of anyone she could have found, why did it have to be Vivienne? They’d barely been civil in the in the days of the Inquisition. They had clashed on everything from the topic of the Mage Circles, to the role of the Chantry in society, to the way Thalia needed to present herself as Inquisitor. It surprised her not at all that Vivienne had survived, and Thalia was grateful that Vivienne had built a small community of “resisters,” as she’d called them, but being on the same side had never made her easier to deal with.

“Perhaps now isn’t the best time to discuss this,” Vivienne said, placing a surprisingly gentle hand on Thalia’s arm. “You’ve had a terrible ordeal. Drink, eat, recover your strength. Then we can talk strategy. I’ll have a bath drawn — you can replace those ghastly rags and get a good night’s rest. Then we can return to the matter of—”

“Vivienne, please.” Thalia lifted her head. “Before any of that, I need to know. I was traveling with Cullen, and we got separated. Have you seen him?”

Vivienne dropped her cool palm and straightened her shoulders. “The Commander is still alive?”

“Yes,” insisted Thalia. “We escaped Skyhold together. Samson was holding him for Maker knows what reason. He was already hurt, the Red Templars had been torturing him, and then…” She felt a rush of shame over the argument they’d been having when Cullen slipped. I’m such an idiot. I should have just told him the truth. “I haven’t been able to find him.”

Vivienne may as well have donned the mask again for how unreadable her expression became. “You said they’d been torturing him. They used the red lyrium, I suppose?”

Thalia nodded, but the question struck her as odd. “Why do you suppose that?”

“It’s consistent with our reports,” Vivienne said evenly. “Templars are highly valued for Corypheus’s forces, for how quickly they’ll respond to the red. Though they’ll take anyone and everyone, these days.”

Thalia thought of the makeshift town walls, the barricades on the doors, the deserted village streets, the blood on the outer Chantry walls. A shiver ran up her spine.

“He didn’t drink any, though,” she said quickly. “He’s fine.”

Vivienne gave her a careful look. “Is that what he told you, my dear?”

“Yes, that’s what he told me, and I believed him. He hasn’t had any lyrium at all in months, in fact.” Thalia huffed. “Not that it’s any business of yours.”

“You’re right. It isn’t.”

“I just want to know if you’ve seen him, that’s all.” Thalia felt dangerously close to crying.

Vivienne’s eyes remained as opaque as ever. “I’m sorry, darling,” she said. “I haven’t.”

Thalia sniffled, drawing herself up. Shoulders straight, chest forward, her old etiquette instructor had drilled her, making her balance a book on her head. She could be as dangerous as Vivienne, if she so chose. “Then why did your sentry call him ‘the Templar’ when I described him at the gate?”

Vivienne’s mouth curved downward in an expression of distaste. Thalia had knocked her off center.

“Why are you lying to me, Vivienne?” Thalia asked softly.

Vivienne’s shoulders slumped. She pressed a hand against her face. Thalia wanted to be angry, but could not summon the energy. The other woman seemed well and truly exhausted, and Thalia understood that in her bones.

“I wanted to spare you,” Vivienne said. Wearily, she dropped her hand. “When did you last see the Commander?”

Time was difficult to tell when the sky stayed a swirling grey. “A day ago. Maybe two.”

“He came to our gate last night. He… did not seem like himself.”

Thalia’s eyes narrowed. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“Since you escaped, has his behavior been erratic at all, my dear? It begins with small things. Think back.”

Thalia pressed her lips together and avoided the other woman’s gaze. She had no intention of telling Vivienne anything they had quarreled about. “I told you, he was fine. You’re saying you saw him, and he wasn’t? What happened then?”

“It is dangerous,” Vivienne said carefully, “to let a man with the rot into our community.”

The terminology turned Thalia’s stomach. “Is that what the rot means, then? Corruption from red lyrium?”

Vivienne nodded. “The villagers coined the phrase, but it is all too fitting, I’m afraid. It’s everywhere these days. We’ve been spared, more or less, but it travels from person to person with increasing ease. The land itself is becoming blighted. It’s not reached us here, but farther west the forest is being swallowed. Trees, grass, soil… all of it, overtaken by scarlet crystals.” She paused. “You have to understand, I could not risk exposing my subjects to such a thing.”

“So you just turned him away,” Thalia whispered. “Left him to fend for himself out there, disoriented and alone.”

“Inquisitor…”

“Don’t,” she snapped. “There’s nothing you can say to make it better, so don’t try.”

Thalia ate a final spoonful of stew and pushed away from the table. Vivienne watched, expression unchanging. “Where do you think you’re going, my dear?”

“I can’t stay here. Not while Cullen is still…” She stood, and a wave of fatigue washed over her so heavily that she had to grasp the table for support.

“Don’t be absurd; you’re about to collapse.” Vivienne rose beside her, placing a steadying hand on her shoulder. “You need rest. Rushing back into the wilderness while in this state won’t save him, darling.”

To her mortification, Thalia burst into tears.

“Oh, there, there.” Vivienne wrapped her into an unexpected hug. Thalia clung to her, astonished by how maternal the embrace felt. “Let’s get that bath drawn up, shall we? I promise once you’re clean and rested, things won’t look quite so bleak.”

The bath had been warm but not scalding, and attendants helped Thalia scrub off months of grime and untangle her long, thick hair. Afterward, Thalia had promised herself she would only take a short nap. Yet once she had seen the large four-poster bed in the Chantry’s guest quarters, she’d lain down at once and fallen into the deepest sleep of her life.

She awoke only when a servant shook her gently, asking if she’d like to join Mistress Vivienne for dinner. When Thalia asked what time it was, the servant — a female elf with an earnest face — apologetically told her that she had not only slept through the night, but the morning and most of the following afternoon as well.

Groggily, Thalia accepted the invitation.

“Do you need help dressing for dinner, Your Worship?” the servant asked.

“No, thank you,” Thalia said. A decade in the Ostwick Circle had taught her how to dress herself, and she needed some time alone to think. She pushed herself into a sitting position and rubbed the sleep from her eyes.

“As you wish,” chirped the servant. She gestured to a nearly chaise lounge, where a gauzy gown had been laid out. “Mistress took the liberty of, uh, laundering the garments you arrived in.” Based on her tone, Thalia suspected they’d actually been tossed in a fireplace somewhere, which in truth was what they deserved. “She said you would find this replacement satisfactory.”

“I’m sure I will.” Thalia inched out of bed, testing her weight on the floor. Although sore in muscles she didn’t even know she had, the cloud of panic that had dogged her since losing Cullen had lifted. She hated to ever admit Vivienne was right, but she did feel better. She stood in her shift, smoothing the mass of hair that had grown wild while she slept, and nodded to the servant. “You may go.”

“Thank you, Your Worship.” She bowed and hurried off. Thalia watched her go, perplexed but not surprised. Of course the world would end and Vivienne could still find excellent servants to employ.

Vivienne had said Thalia’s quarters had once been used to house visiting clergy — who, it seemed, had never failed to live in style. Though of modest size, the room boasted not only the impressive bed, but several ornate pieces of furniture. A wide hearth stood against one wall, where a fire crackled merrily, taking the chill off the air. Thalia wandered over to the chaise lounge and sighed. The dress was lavender samite, with delicate cloth-of-gold embroidery dotting the bodice and the hem of its billowy sleeves. Beautiful, but wholly inappropriate for traipsing about the woods looking for Cullen.

“Well, you finally got your wish, Vivienne,” she muttered as she pulled the thing over her head. During the reign of the Inquisition, Vivienne had long been offering Thalia fashion advice, which she had usually shunned for trousers and tunics that would serve her in the field. Thalia wasn’t sure where Vivienne had obtained such a fancy gown — perhaps the same place she had procured the servants? — but she was in no position to argue.

It occurred to her, uneasily, that might be precisely where Vivienne wanted her.

What other choice do I have? Thalia wondered as she laced up the front of the bodice. Varric and Hawke, Josephine and Leliana, Cassandra — all dead. The rest missing, presumed lost… and Cullen out there on his own, hurt and sick. Guilt welled within her, though she couldn’t bring herself to believe Vivienne’s assessment of his condition. Thalia had worried about Cullen after their escape, but didn’t understand how proximity to red lyrium could have affected him so rapidly. Perhaps he’d developed a fever, and Vivienne’s sentries mistook the symptoms for their so-called “rot”?

Sighing, she finished tying up the bodice and smoothed out her skirts. As much as it pained her, she could do nothing for Cullen right now. She would have to entreat with Vivienne, learn as much information as she could, and when her strength returned, set out again to find him.

Thalia found hairpins in a jeweled box on her bedside table, so she plaited her auburn hair and secured it around her head in a crown. She did not feel inspired to do anything more elaborate, and suspected Vivienne would not like being kept waiting. She confirmed she looked acceptable, if not particularly radiant, with a quick glance in the nearby looking glass. She turned toward the door.

Halfway across the room, she heard a thud.

Thalia froze, gaze darting to the window. The room only had one, narrow with a curved pane, set with colored glass. Perhaps a passing bird hit it?

She remembered, with a shiver, that she had seen no birds since escaping Skyhold. No animals at all.

Thalia thought again of the stains on the outer Chantry walls. She crept through the room’s eerie silence to the window. Peering through revealed only a yard choked with yellowed grass and dead leaves.

Another thud — no, more like a pounding — behind her. Thalia whirled, searching the room for any possible source. The sound was faint but steady, like a heartbeat, yet everything looked untouched. She retraced her steps on the Rivaini carpet, not daring to breathe.

She stepped off the carpet onto the floor. There. A tiny vibration. Thalia dropped to her knees and placed her ear to the stone. Perhaps if I stay very still...

“Your Worship?” The door opened; the elf servant stepped in. “Mistress Vivienne would like me to— oh!”

Thalia jerked upright, kneeling back on her heels. Lavender skirts pooled out around her.

“Are you quite all right?” the servant asked, alarmed.

“I’m fine,” Thalia said, heart hammering. “I just thought I heard something. What do you keep in your cellar?”

Chewing her lower lip, the servant ran over to help Thalia up. “W-we do not have a cellar in this building.”

“What do you mean?” Thalia took the proffered arm and pulled herself to her feet. “I definitely heard a noise. A thumping, like something is—” Trapped, she thought. “Most Chantries have cellars, don’t they? Or an undercroft of some kind?”

“Not this one, Lady Thalia. The soil here is very rocky.”

“But you don’t hear that?” Thalia gestured around them, as if the source might appear to introduce itself.

The servant stood by, avoiding Thalia’s gaze and wringing her hands. The sound had vanished.

She thinks I’m mad. “I’m sorry. I must have misheard.” Thalia straightened her posture, trying to gather herself. “What were you coming to tell me?”

“Just that Mistress Vivienne awaits you at your leisure, Your Worship.”

That was noble speak for Hurry the fuck up. Thalia raised her chin. “Right. Lead on, then. Sorry to cause a needless delay.”

The servant escorted her from the room. Thalia, unable to shake the sense of wrongness in her bones, was all too eager to follow.

Chapter Text

Raleigh Samson had escaped many things in his life.

He had come of age on the rough, mean streets of Lowtown. Beggars and cutpurses and scarlet women, those were his compatriots. He had learned quick hands and quicker feet meant you’d eat tonight. He’d little prospects then, sitting on the docks with the scent of rotting fish and wishing to be anywhere else.

He’d thought the Templar Order would give him purpose. The day he accepted his sun shield from Knight-Commander Guylian was the proudest of his life. It meant he’d escaped the gutter, transformed himself into something better. It was a small price to pay, to swallow the glowing blue liquid from their sacred vials.

He’d escaped Meredith too, though not in the way he’d wanted. Standing in her office, refusing to look contrite, he stared the bitch dead in the eye as she stripped him of rank and title. As she spoke, he imagined wrapping his fingers around her neck and squeezing. It was her fault the Kirkwall Templars had fallen into ruin. He would not flinch.

Is there anything else you’d like to confess, aside from this abominable behavior? she’d asked. Officially, it was the letter incident that had done him in, but Meredith wasn’t stupid. There were a dozen close calls leading up to this she couldn’t explain, but suspected Samson was to blame. The lyrium stores routinely coming up short were chief among them. It might do your conscience some good.

Samson laughed in her face and turned on his heels, head held high. How tempting it had been to tell her of the times he and her Knight-Captain had indulged in stolen lyrium and shot the shit late into the night — but no. Samson was many things, but he was no snitch.

It was a pity. Maybe if he’d ratted, Cullen would have been toppled from his high horse. Maybe they’d have been ground down into the dirt together. Cullen didn’t know what it was like, to have to scrape and crawl and bite for survival. That was the problem.

Once a guttersnipe, always a guttersnipe, Samson’s mother had sneered at him as a child, when she cared to come round the shanty called home. At first he thought she meant his father, absent those many years, but slowly, he came to understand she meant him. That he could never outrun the lot he was born into.

The years spent begging and whatever else, the lyrium hunger hounding his brain, those were the worst. But again, he’d prevailed. He recalled the brilliant night he met his current boss, in a dingy back room at the Hanged Man. Gripping a singing bottle of crimson in one hand, listening to the offer of a lifetime.

Of course he’d taken it. Why wouldn’t he take it? What sort of fool would turn down an opportunity like that?

An image of Cullen floated amid the steam in the air: disheveled and dirty, eyes manic, huddled in the back of his cell. I’m going to kill you. A threat so earnest Samson had felt sorry for him.

Then, while rattling the bars, Cullen’s demand: Where is she? WHERE IS SHE?

“You don’t deserve her,” Samson said aloud, to the wisps rising like blood-stained ghosts.

Cullen vanished, replaced by the girl. Thalia. Thalia, whose name lilted off the tongue in soft syllables. Whose hair burned in the candlelight: a deep, dark red a man could get drunk on. Samson could see her, close enough to touch, in scraps of scarlet silk. Strips of the gauzy skirt wound around her wrists like shackles.

Yes, he thought. Yes, now she’s mine…

“Milord?”

The mirage evaporated, and Samson smacked the water with his palm. The voice belonged to his simpering Dalish seneschal, clinging to the doorframe. “I said I didn’t wish to be disturbed!”

Well, now his reverie was ruined. He was in his washroom at Skyhold, in a bath colored an opaque crimson. The water had been transformed by the red lyrium salts, lovingly attended to by his servants. The fumes created an intoxicating aroma, heady and haunting. Luxuriating in the circular tub sometimes played tricks on the mind.

“I-I know that,” the seneschal said, quaking. “But I’ve urgent news from your agents in the field…”

“Yes, Meredith, what is it?”

The elf blinked his watery eyes and coughed. “My, ah, my name is Mareth, milord.”

Samson glared. “That’s what I said, wasn’t it?” Inhaling too much vapor could slur one’s speech, but he was fine. The damn elf must be hard of hearing.

“Er, no, not exactly. I think, perhaps, you might have said Meredi—”

“Didn’t you have something to tell me?” Samson growled. “Just get on with it.”

His seneschal gripped the doorframe tighter, as if for protection. “There’s been a sighting. Of Lady Trevelyan.”

“What?” Samson leaned forward, suddenly rapt. He crossed his arms over the rim of the tub, dripping pink droplets onto the tile floor. He felt as though he’d conjured Thalia herself from his imagination. “Where?”

“At the base of the Frostbacks, on the Orlesian side of the border. She vanished too quickly to be pursued, but they’re fairly certain it was her.”

“And Cullen?” Samson demanded. It still infuriated him that they’d managed to escape together. It defied any and all logic, yet somehow it had happened. All the sympathy he’d wasted on the girl, thinking her a helpless mage like the sort who’d hurled themselves from the top of the Gallows.

“No sign of the Commander,” Mareth quivered. “At least, not from the report we received.”

Samson inhaled slowly. He could scarcely hope Cullen had died of exposure after their flight from Skyhold, but it was interesting that Thalia was alone. Had the red lyrium already overtaken Cullen? The exposure time was minimal, but Samson had seen its effect spread rapidly. Or had some other misfortune befallen him?

Samson raked his fingers through his wet hair — ever more receding on his forehead with every passing day, it seemed. He scowled. “Where is she headed?”

“It wasn’t clear,” Mareth said hesitantly. “But the nearest settlement is an isolated hamlet. It’s well fortified, but not strategically relevant, so it’s been left alone for several months.”

“An excellent hiding spot, then,” Samson said. “Thalia may very well be there.”

Mareth squinted in puzzlement. “How can you know?”

The red instilled a man with many virtues, Samson wanted to tell him, but his seneschal looked sickly pale underneath his facial markings. The crimson baths were always too much for him. “A hunch.” Samson rose to his full height, the water sluicing off his body. “Get me a towel, Meredith, would you?”

“It’s… it’s Mareth, milord…”

Samson glared. “Of course it is. That’s what I’m saying!”

The elf gulped in fresh air from the room beyond and scurried into the washroom, grabbing a towel off the rack and handing it to Samson. He stepped out of the bath, wrapping it around his waist. He dared not glance in the nearby looking glass — the man who stared back looked emaciated, eroded down to nothing — but that was never how he felt after one of his baths. He felt invigorated, and, for the first time since the girl had jumped, hopeful.

The vision of Thalia floated in his mind’s eye once more. The blood-red dress, her wine dark hair loose around her shoulders, lounging in his bed with a coy smile. “Tell the lieutenant to ready my caravan.”

“What?” Mareth looked shocked.

“You want something done right, you better do it yourself,” Samson drawled, padding from the washroom into his tower quarters. “I intend to pursue the Inquisitor on my own.”

“I-is that a good idea?” Mareth asked. “If Corypheus hears you’ve taken to the field—”

“Never mind Corypheus,” Samson snapped, waving a dismissive hand. “He’s much too busy to worry himself over such trifling matters.” A good thing — if Corypheus had bothered to check in and learned his precious anchor was missing, Samson would probably be dead already. It was a much better idea to find and retrieve her himself. If Cullen could be found as well, so much the better. This time Samson would not be so generous to his former friend.

“Right,” Mareth said, defeated. “Right away, milord.”

Samson stepped over to his wardrobe and threw open the ornate doors. Inside hung many of his own splendid attires, but he reached into the back and pulled out a smaller, lighter garment: a green dress with gold threading. Samson had found the item strangely charming when he’d come upon it. For what reason had Thalia obtained this dress, and for whom did she wear it?

He thrust the garment into the trembling hands of Mareth. “Take this to the tailor. Tell him I want a gown made from these measurements.”

“A… gown?” Mareth looked nauseous. Samson could not imagine why. The red lyrium fumes did not carry this far from the privy.

“A gown,” Samson repeated. “With particular specifications. You might want to get out quill and parchment for this. I don’t intend to leave here without it, and I don’t want anyone fucking it up, you understand?”

“Of course, milord.” Mareth scrambled off to find writing implements.

Samson smirked, pleased. It felt good to see the correct course of action and take it. Soon this unpleasantness would be over, and Thalia would learn her place in all this. Oh, he intended to teach her a great many things.

Samson dreams of Thalia. Art by sunshinemage

Days passed with Thalia at Vivienne’s side.

True to her word, Vivienne shared the intelligence she had gathered through the network she had built over the last several months. Thalia learned Orlais was now under the control of the Tevinter mage Calpernia, who had been granted the throne as a favor from Corypheus. Empress Celene hadn’t been seen since the Venatori takeover of Val Royeaux and was presumed dead.

The news dismayed Thalia. It would make passage across Orlais to Tevinter all the more difficult — not that she had harbored much hope they would have received gentle treatment, even if Celene had remained in power. She took some comfort in the fact that Vivienne’s intelligence confirmed what Samson had told her about Dorian leading the Venatori. Vivienne agreed Dorian could likely be found in Minrathous, which was where Corypheus currently made his seat of power.

Thalia stopped short of indulging the plan she’d hatched with Cullen about seeking Dorian out. Perhaps she worried Vivienne would try to dissuade her, as Cullen had, but she thought it was none of Vivienne’s business.

The local region was not without its troubles, either. As Thalia had noted, the state of the village was battered and worn. Due to its relative proximity to Skyhold, the Red Templars had once mined the place for recruits. Then Vivienne had come along and “restored a proper order,” as she put it. With the town fortified, the Red Templar raids stopped, but they were far from the only threat. Vivienne spoke of roving packs of bandits — some were amassing to the west, not far from Emprise du Lion, and she worried what might happen if they became more organized. Also, Fade creatures seemed more prevalent these days: blight wolves, demons, even darkspawn, all becoming more plentiful as the natural wildlife died off to the lack of sun.

And of course, there was the ever encompassing threat of “the rot.”

In Vivienne’s private chambers, Thalia listened with a grim expression and grimmer thoughts. The more time passed, the more she worried about Cullen. Yet every time she brought up going out to look for him, Vivienne waved her concerns away.

“My dear, you’ve barely recovered your own strength,” Vivienne gently chastised Thalia on her third attempt. She placed her cup and saucer on a side table and drew one languid leg up under her. The casual nature of the gesture struck Thalia, sitting ramrod straight in Vivienne’s chambers. “You really ought to eat some more, too.”

Thalia stared at the cup of tea and its accompanying biscuit on her own side table. Ever since her little tea party with Samson, she could hardly stomach the sight of these trappings of polite society. “I’m fine, I assure you.”

“If you insist.” Vivienne helped herself to another biscuit drizzled delicately with chocolate.

“And I really think I ought to stop lounging around while Cullen is in danger,” Thalia pressed. “Please, Vivienne, you must understand. I know the lengths you went to for the Duke de Ghislain. I know you don’t want Cullen here, because of this so-called rot, but— what if I could prove to you he isn’t infected?” Invoking Vivienne’s deceased lover was a risk, but it might be the only way to gain her sympathy.

Vivienne shot her a calculated glance. “And how do you propose to do that, Lady Thalia?”

“I don’t know.” Thalia drummed her fingernails on her chair’s cushioned armrest. “There must be some way to tell, yes? You let me in the town gate.”

Vivienne straightened, putting her feet on the floor. It puzzled Thalia that Vivienne sometimes tried to be chummy with her, only to return to her steely resolve at the slightest rebuke. “You are a different case. Not only are you a mage — mages, we have reason to believe, may have a natural resistance to the rot — but you are the Herald of Andraste. You bear the anchor. You have powers the rest of us can still scarcely fathom.”

Her words carried an unspoken connotation: Therefore, you are too valuable to let out of my sight.

“Is that truly at the core of this?” Thalia asked. “Am I just a pawn, to be moved about the board at your whim?”

“My dear, you were always a pawn to the Inquisition — from the moment you first accepted the title. I’m simply aware we need to recalibrate the strategy.”

Thalia’s eyes narrowed. “And having the Commander of the Inquisition at your disposal wouldn’t aid in that recalibration?”

Vivienne paused, then sighed. “All right, I see your point. And not just the political one — I am not so hard-hearted as that.” She broke a small piece off her biscuit and nibbled it. “You and the Commander, then? It’s true?”

Thalia felt her cheeks grow hot, but it was hardly worth denying now. “It, ah, just sort of happened, not long before the Siege of Skyhold. We hadn’t really planned to tell anyone, not until Corypheus was…” She trailed off, thinking of the whimsical plans she and Cullen had spun out of fantasy, all centered around what they’d do with Corypheus gone.

“I understand, Inquisitor. I understand all too well.” Vivienne flashed a coy smile. “Besides, it was always clear he was smitten with you.”

Thalia blinked. “It was?”

“He was not exactly subtle about it.” Vivienne’s gaiety drained from her face. “But I warn you: too much sentimentality in times like these — it could be your downfall, my dear.”

“I know that,” Thalia retorted with a scowl. “I merely think it’s preposterous to sentence a man to death for what amounts to an intangible threat.”

“Ah, yes.” Vivienne’s gaze turned shrewd. “You always did have strong feelings about capital punishment, didn’t you?”

“If you’re referring to Blackwall,” Thalia said hotly, “I’d really rather not discuss it.”

“It was a dangerous move, that’s all I’m saying. Smuggling Captain Rainier out of Orlais and then pardoning him. One that weakened the integrity of the Inquisition at a pivotal moment, some might argue.”

Thalia stared at Vivienne, her chest tight. “Is that what you’re arguing?”

“Of course not. It’s all water under the bridge now, anyhow.” Vivienne tilted her head. “You have a very large heart, darling. I would hate to see it broken over one man — again.”

Thalia ground her teeth on her lower lip. She disliked how much knowledge Vivienne demonstrated about her personal life: all the petty romantic dramas she thought she’d kept hidden from the public eye. She tired of the political doublespeak, wished Vivienne could speak plainly. “So you won’t help me look for Cullen, is that what you’re telling me?”

“Not at all. I only wish for you to consider the measure of your own strength, and the well from which it springs.” Abruptly, Vivienne got to her feet. “Come, follow me. I’ve something to show you.”

Ill at ease, Thalia stood and followed. She was grateful to be wearing a tunic under a jerkin and trousers today, another “gift” from Vivienne. They fit her better than the elaborate gowns Vivienne always seemed to have on hand. It was a relief to no longer have to gather up her skirts in order to walk everywhere.

Thalia’s boots echoed on the stone floors of the Chantry chambers, falling in time to the clicking of Vivienne’s heels. Down a dark hallway, Vivienne paused outside a heavy wooden door, fishing out a key from a chain that plunged deep into her neckline.

Once the lock clicked, Vivienne pushed open the door and beckoned Thalia to the room beyond. Whatever its previous function, it had been converted to an alchemist’s station, laden with tools of the trade. A liquid so purple it was nearly black bubbled in a giant alembic. The iridescent cerulean of distilled lyrium glowed in another bulbous flask, accompanied by beakers, bottles, and crucibles of unidentified substances. Hanging from the walls were several varieties of dried herbs. Thalia recognized elfroot, vandal aria, and rashvine at a glance. A mortar and pestle sat on one table, its contents half-ground, as if someone had put it down only moments ago.

“Vivienne,” Thalia breathed in awe, “what is all this?”

Vivienne clucked her tongue, gliding over to the alembic that dripped the violet-black liquid into a container of spherical glass. It was fitted with a spigot. “I take it you never reached Advanced Alchemy in your Circle studies, my dear?”

Thalia bristled at the insult’s subtlety. “I opted for the Herbalism track in the Natural Sciences discipline.”

“Ah. A practical move—” Vivienne cast a surreptitious glance over her shoulder, “—for someone of your skill level.”

“Was there anything you’d like to accomplish here, Vivienne, aside from asserting your superior intellect?” Thalia asked tartly.

She paused, waiting for a scornful remark about falling short of her full potential due to the abolition of the Circles. Thankfully, Vivienne knew how to pick her battles. She placed a small bottle of fogged glass under the spigot. Using a set of metal tongs, she opened it. The steaming liquid oozed out.

Thalia stood by, anxious. “What exactly are you—?”

“Shh, my dear. You wouldn’t want me to spill any.”

When finished, Vivienne turned off the spigot and held out the bottle. “Drink.”

Thalia hesitated. “What is it?”

“You said you wished to leave the village to search for the Commander. This is a preventative measure to protect you from the rot.”

Thalia took the bottle lightly. It was warm to the touch, though not scalding as she’d been expecting. “I thought you said something about — mages having a natural immunity?”

“A natural resistance, we think,” Vivienne corrected gently. “That is by no means a guarantee.”

“Who is ‘we’?” Thalia asked.

“Myself, a few local Chantry scholars, and my trusted guard. The formula has been tested over many months on myself first and them second. Then, we introduced it to the general townsfolk. It seems to have a deterrent effect, yes.”

“Local Chantry scholars?” This was the first Thalia had heard of them. “Where are they now?”

“They did not survive the last bandit raid, I’m sad to report.”

“If you’ve had this potion this whole time, why didn’t you give some to Cullen when you saw him at the gate?” Thalia asked archly.

“‘Preventative’ does not mean ‘curative,’ darling. Surely you learned that in your Herbalism lessons?”

Thalia sighed. She stared at the bottle, smoking ominously.

Vivienne pressed her lips together. “I can understand your reticence. Given your time in close proximity to the Commander, one cannot be sure whether this remedy is entirely—”

Thalia put her mouth to the bottle’s rim and downed the concoction in one go. It burned thick and slow along throat; she fell into a coughing fit. When she straightened and wiped the moisture from her eyes, Vivienne stood with a look akin to admiration. “Well, you never did lack for courage, Inquisitor.”

“There, I’ve drunk your potion. May I have leave to look for Cullen now?”

Vivienne stifled a sigh. “You may. I will assign you a guard to accompany you. You remember Florentine, don’t you?”

“How could I forget?” Thalia thought of the severe-faced woman who had escorted her from the town gate. She did not relish spending more time with her, but it was better than venturing out alone. She handed the empty bottle back and said softly, “Thank you, Vivienne.”

Vivienne gave her a long look, her eyes as difficult to read as ever. She placed a solemn hand on Thalia’s shoulder. “I know what it’s like to be young and in love, if you’ll believe it. Go on, then. With any luck, you may actually find him.”

“And I can bring him back here?” Thalia asked. “He may need medical attention, but if I can prove he hasn’t got the rot…”

“Oh, don’t worry about that now, darling.” Vivienne smiled. “We’ll burn that bridge when we get to it.”

The last few days had done little to change the look of the forest. Thalia crunched through the brittle blanket of fallen leaves covering the ground, frowning at the bare tree trunks, spindly branches reaching high into the leaden sky. Florentine lingered behind her, hand gripping the hilt of her sword — as if she expected trouble any moment. From Thalia’s perspective, she needn’t bother: everything seemed still and dead.

“Happy now?” Florentine asked into the unnerving silence, expression sour. “We can go back, get warm by the fire.”

“No.” Thalia scowled. “I’m not happy at all.”

“We have been out here for hours, Herald.” Florentine was a tall and wiry woman, with a face that had been hardened by strife and toil. Thalia could feel her disdain, and perhaps she could not blame Florentine for that. In her eyes, Thalia must seem a stuck-up noble girl, clutching vain hopes. “Your Templar is dead, or as good as.”

“You don’t know that.” Thalia trudged forward. She narrowly missed tripping over a fallen log, but did not slow her pace. He can’t be. Not after everything we’ve survived.

Behind her, Florentine sighed, muttering Orlesian curses under her breath. “You were sweet on this Templar, yes?”

Thalia whirled to glare at her companion. “You forget yourself, Florentine.”

A twisted smirk reached the older woman’s face. “Do I? You’re not aristocracy in Corypheus’s world.”

“And if you see fit to abide by Corypheus’s laws, do tell Lady Vivienne. I’m sure she’d love to hear about your changing allegiances.”

That stayed Florentine’s tongue, and she begrudgingly fell back into step with Thalia. “I did not intend offense. I just wanted to say… it is understandable, to find it hard at first to let go of one you love.”

“There’s no need to let go,” Thalia insisted through gritted teeth, “when he could still be alive.”

Florentine’s face filled with pity. “You think if — what? You roam enough of the forest, you will find him sitting under a tree, waiting for you?”

Thalia huffed. “Maybe.” There was no shortage of trees, that was certain. The village was entirely surrounded. They had been ringing the town in ever-widening circles since they set out. Though that would only yield results if Cullen had decided to make camp close. If he had been well enough to move on, he had several days’ head start. While Thalia refused to believe he was dead, she began to worry that if he had put enough distance between them, their separation could be permanent.

“May I ask you a question, Florentine?”

Florentine’s look was guarded, though perhaps not as guarded as Vivienne’s. “Of course, Herald.”

“How did you learn Cullen was a Templar?”

Vivienne had never quite answered that question for her, how the sentries seemed to know Cullen’s past profession. Thalia supposed Vivienne had been alerted to his presence at the town gate by the guard and gone out to greet him herself — but was that truly the case? Thalia disliked how much Vivienne kept to herself until she had no choice.

Florentine tensed, then looked away. “The Mistress told us.”

An odd reaction, Thalia noted. “Did you speak to him?”

Florentine shook her head quickly. “I did not.”

If only she could find another eyewitness who could confirm or deny Vivienne’s story. “Were you there when he stopped by the gate?”

Florentine stared so long Thalia wondered if the woman had failed to understand her. She switched to her rusty Orlesian and tried again.

“No, no.” Florentine stomped away, ducking under the branches of a forked tree. “Come, we will freeze just standing here.”

Frowning, Thalia followed. Her guard’s evasiveness unsettled her. Had Florentine been coached about what to say? Probably. But what did Vivienne want to keep from the Inquisitor, a useful ally? Thalia tried to think of what else to quiz Florentine on. “Do you know of Mistress Vivienne’s potions?”

“You mean the alchemy experiments to stop the rot?” Florentine did not slow as she spoke. “She gave you some, yes?”

“She did.” Thalia wasn’t sure what she had expected to happen afterward, but she felt no different than before she swallowed the foul, viscous liquid. “And you?”

“Of course.”

“So why didn’t it occur to anyone to offer some to Cullen?” Thalia pressed, exasperated.

Florentine shot her a look over her shoulder. It seemed almost pitying. “He is a Templar, Herald.”

“He’s not, though,” Thalia grumbled. “He quit. Years ago, he quit.”

Florentine shook her head. “This does not matter.”

“Why not?”

Florentine looked at her as though she were a child. “The lyrium, Herald. It changes them, forever.”

Thalia clenched her hands into fists, nails digging into her palm. “I don’t think that’s true.”

Florentine snorted. “Your Templar did a good job hiding it, then.”

Thalia remembered the many bad days at Skyhold, when Cullen was feverish and volatile — like the time he almost clocked her in the head by accident hurling his lyrium kit across the room. He still came through it, though. He never gave in. “You don’t understand.”

“No, Herald, it is you who does not understand. We had Templars in this village when the sun still rose, deserters from the war with the mages. We fed and clothed them, offered them sanctuary, a new life. But do you know what we did not have?” Florentine paused, leaning against the trunk of a sickly oak. “Lyrium. They began to go mad.” Her eyes grew distant, troubled. “ Then they left, but not before stealing from us so that they could buy a supply in the nearest settlement that had it.”

Thalia felt a queasiness in the pit of her stomach. “Where’s that?”

She feared she already knew. She could see the red lyrium crystals jutting from the snow: beautiful, in an obscene way.

“Sahrnia.” Florentine sighed.

Thalia closed her eyes. All those broken men and women, toiling in Samson’s quarry for the promise of glory… or just a fix to get them through the day. Her stomach twisted. She thought of his sour breath and the cold hands on her skin as he tried to solicit her sympathy. “I’m sorry.”

“You should be,” Florentine snapped. “You were supposed to stop it.”

Thalia flinched. She stared up at the Orlesian woman with a mixture of hurt and regret.

“Instead, they came back changed. They came back working for him.” Florentine shook her head, scratched under the mass of her short hair. “No Templar withstands the red. Not even yours, Herald.”

Florentine abruptly parted a space between the foliage with one hand and marched through.

“Florentine, wait,” she called, hurrying after her.

Thalia was sorting her next words in her head as a cold breeze picked up, carrying with it a low song. She thought she was mistaken at first, but it grew louder. She halted, angling her head toward the noise. “Hang on. Do you hear that?”

Her guard stopped and cocked her head, one eyebrow raised. The melody was unmistakable: a chant, not unlike the sort sung in Chantry services, though too distant for Thalia to pick out the words.

She was reminded of the thumping in the floorboards after her first night in the village. She feared that Florentine might act as the servant who had attended her, the fear for Thalia’s sanity etched across her face. The sound had vanished after that incident, never to return. Thalia had attributed it to her frayed nerves.

But she could concede she might imagine strange thudding noises — not full songs.

Florentine, to her relief, nodded.

“Who could be singing all the way out here?” A shiver went up Thalia’s spine. In the strange quiet, the tonal range of the chanting felt discordant, unnatural.

“Do not trouble yourself with it,” Florentine insisted. “Townsfolk come out here at times.”

Thalia blinked, surprised they would be allowed to do such a thing, what with all the village’s precautions against attacks. “What for?”

Florentine shrugged. “Worship.”

“But there’s a Chantry right in the town square,” Thalia pointed out.

The chanting crescendoed, and due to a trick of acoustics, seemed to assault them from all sides.

“That is Mistress Vivienne’s domain now,” Florentine said, voice strained.

Thalia shook her head. The chorus of voices made her uneasy, but not so much as Florentine’s cryptic answers. “Why would Vivienne banish Chantry services to the forest? When all of you keep telling me how dangerous it is out here?”

“You tire me with your incessant questions, Herald.”

Temper flaring, Thalia snapped, “Yes, well, you all tire me with your lies.”

She pushed past Florentine, toward the singing. She didn’t care if she disrupted their improvised Chantry services — she wanted to force someone in this terrible place to tell her the truth.

Florentine seized Thalia by the arm, yanking her back. Thalia was surprised by the strength of her grip.

“No,” the guard growled. “You cannot go out there.”

“What? Why on earth—?”

The woman’s fist slammed Thalia in the temple, stunning her. Her ear sang with pain. Only then did the fear bloom: Florentine was no longer here to protect her. Maybe she never had been at all.

Thalia tried to wrest her arm away, but Florentine held fast. “What’s out there? What’s going on?”

Florentine slapped her in the face, silencing her, then shook her roughly. “Stupid girl,” she hissed, hatred flaring in her harrowed eyes. “Don’t you realize that when the Maker abandons us, we must build gods of our own?”

On instinct, Thalia tried to reach for a staff that was no longer strapped to her — she hadn’t seen it since the siege of Skyhold. Florentine twisted her right arm behind her; Thalia yelped in pain. Frantic, she drew back her left her hand and aimed it toward Florentine’s head. Verdant green light poured from her bared palm, followed by a pulsating burst of energy. At last, Florentine let go, knees buckling. Thalia ran.

The dissonant chant dogged her all the way to the village gates.

Chapter Text

Thalia doubled over on the hard-packed dirt, panting for breath. The crash of hurried footsteps followed close behind her; Florentine was still in pursuit.

In her panic, Thalia had thought she might find sanctuary at the village gates, but now she worried that had been foolish. What if the sentries sided with one of their own? What if they were all operating under Vivienne’s orders, to — what exactly? It couldn’t be to kill her. They’d had plenty of opportunities to do that already.

They must want to keep me away from the chanters in the forest. But why? What on earth is going on here?

Thalia dove into a thicket of evergreen bushes. They had grown brown and orange from malnourishment, but still provided cover. She crouched down low, hugging her knees and ducking her head.

Florentine crashed by, slowing down only when she reached the gates. Thalia heard her calling up to the watchtowers in Orlesian, asking if they’d seen her. They responded in the negative, and Thalia let out a tense breath. The fog was thick, and it may have just saved her.

Florentine cursed, backtracking into the forest with nary a glance in her direction. Thalia waited until the sound of her gait faded, then counted to one hundred in her head. Shakily, she dragged herself out of the shrubbery and brushed the dead pine needles from her jerkin. Now what?

She didn’t want to risk approaching the gates. That left a few options, none of them good. She could return out there herself, to confront the chanters, with no evidence of wrongdoing and no weapons. She could follow Florentine and try to force answers from her — still unarmed.

Thalia’s gaze drifted to the walls of the village as they receded into the mist. Maybe there was another way in. If she could circumvent the guards, maybe she could confront Vivienne directly. Vivienne, at the very least, could be reasoned with. She hoped.

Keeping to the underbrush, Thalia followed the line of the village walls. They had been poorly constructed, made not of sturdy masonry but lumber — hastily felled and erected by civilians, not craftsmen. They were high, at least, but she was hopeful she could find a weakness or gap to squeeze through. Or, barring that…

Thalia halted, eyeing the trunk of a large oak whose bare branches hung past the wall, looming over a thatched rooftop on the other side. “This could work,” she muttered.

She had always loved climbing. As a little girl, all too often the groundskeepers had to extricate her from trees against her will, having gone too high for anyone else to reach. She had considered this an advantage, to get away from her older siblings. At the Circle Tower in Ostwick, climbing grew more difficult, and more dangerous. The Templars didn’t like mages being up too high, for various reasons. The memory of Samson’s stricken expression stuck with her, creating a sour taste in her mouth. She tried to shake it, eyeing the oak’s trunk for the best way to approach. No, the Templars didn’t like when the mages climbed too high, but she did it anyway — way up into the old bell tower with her friends, so that they could see out over the bay and into the misty forest.

She sighed, approaching the trunk and grabbing a low-hanging branch. She tested a foothold on a protruding stump. All those friends from the Circle were long dead, she suspected. They’d left early in the war to join the rebel mages, and if the fighting hadn’t killed them, then surely Corypheus…

No use thinking about that now. Thalia hoisted herself into the tree, taking it as slowly as she dared. She might be spotted either way, and would rather feel confident than risk falling. Her companions on various field missions for the Inquisition had always found this habit of hers unsettling. If there was a ruin tucked into a thicket, or a mine she might be able to access at the top of a mesa, she’d wanted to try reaching it. Most worried for her safety, like Blackwall and Varric. (Both dead too, probably.) Only Dorian seemed to understand her delight and left her alone, though she rarely convinced him to follow her. I prefer the ground sturdy beneath my feet, thank you very much.

Her heart ached. How she missed Dorian. She missed them all, and none more so than Cullen.

She reached the outer branches of the tree, which she might be able to shimmy over. Clinging to the trunk, she peered in every direction. The fog clogged the forest, and she saw no sign of Florentine. Over the wall, the village seemed deserted, as usual. The ground was muddy, the streets eerily quiet. The roof she hoped to reach belonged to a house that appeared equally lifeless. The thatch pitched at a sharp angle, but Thalia was sure if she could keep her grip, she could use it to ease herself down into the small alley between buildings.

She inched her way out on a branch, holding her breath the thinner it grew beneath her. Just as it began to bow beneath her weight, she leapt off from it. She used the spring to aid her trajectory, and landed on the side of the roof. Her boots and hands scrambled for purchase, and due to the dampness, found none. Thalia stifled a cry as she slid toward the roof’s edge.

She hit a wooden frame with her boot and dug her heel in — and stopped short. She paused, cheek planted against the wet straw, panting to catch her breath. Finally, she dared look down. She had narrowly avoided going over the edge. She prayed there was no one inside the house to have heard something large land on their roof.

When no one appeared below her to shouting, she decided she might be in the clear. Thalia bent down and gripped the wooden beam framing the roof’s edge and let herself hang. Her feet didn’t quite reach the ground, but were close enough that she landed lightly when she let go.

She looked around with trepidation, picking bits of rushes from the braid crowning her head.

The village was not large, so even with her bearings skewed, she could find her way. She avoided the main thoroughfare, fearing sentry patrols, but the high Chantry tower loomed over the town from every direction.

On the way, she rehearsed in her head what to say to Vivienne, but feared the words sounded weak. What if Vivienne denied all knowledge, thought the chanters in the woods to be a fanciful, made up story? I know what I heard. And Florentine attacked me. Thalia rubbed the side of her head above one ear, where a painful bump had risen. She can’t deny everything.

She wished she had more proof. She was taking a lot on faith about Vivienne, even though that might be unwise. She’s not truly my enemy, though, is she? Maybe her servants are involved in some sort of mutiny? Vivienne did just barge in and declare herself ruler, if the story could be believed.

All the better to get right to Vivienne and explain to her, Thalia decided. The Chantry steeple faced away from her, toward the town square she had traversed a number of times. From behind, she approached a wrought iron fence; beyond lay a weed-choked yard, strewn with ancient, lichen-covered tombstones. Thalia slowed. She hadn’t realized this Chantry had its own cemetery, though it was hardly surprising. Where else would the villagers bury their dead?

A prickle chilled the back of Thalia’s mind with the wind that brushed her ears. The cemetery looked long unused. Florentine’s words in the forest returned to her: Don’t you realize that when the Maker abandons us, we must build gods of our own?

Thalia wound fingers around the fence’s spokes, the anchor tingling and spitting against the cold metal. She peered through the bars, looking for any sign of recent use — how many had died in recent months, according to Vivienne? But everything was covered in a blanket of dead leaves, graves and paths alike, abandoned all the way to the wall of the Chantry.

She let out a gasp.

Protruding from the Chantry’s foundation, where Thalia had been promised there was no undercroft, no basement of any kind, stood a cellar door.

Without a staff, channeling magical energy was difficult, but not impossible. Thalia stood above the rotting wood, flexing her fist and trying to remain calm.

The entrance was like that of a root cellar, set at a forty-five degree angle into the stonework of the Chantry’s foundation. It was fitted with chains and a padlock, worn and tarnished.

She thought of the terrible knocking that had home from beneath the floor days earlier. Panic clawed at her. They’ve been lying to me. All of them.

Lightning sparked in her palm. She rocked back on her heels and threw the elemental magic as hard as she could. It bounced off the door, splintering the wood and — as she hoped — severing the chains. Breathing hard, she grabbed the handle and hoisted the door open.

Narrow stone steps descended into fetid blackness. Thalia coughed from the rising dust. A rush of elation hit her, overpowering the fear. She was going to figure out what was going on, the rest of them be damned.

She plunged into the void, clinging to the old stones for purchase. At the bottom of the stairway, the floor was packed dirt, the stone walls damp; from somewhere ahead came the sound of dripping. The air was musty, the dark absolute. Thalia debated her options, then conjured a small flame in her fist. She might give away that she was coming, but she’d lose any advantage of stealth by stumbling around in the dark.

The passageway ran under the building for a short distance, terminating in a coal chute. Dismayed, Thalia stood in the narrow enclosure, holding her palm aloft to illuminate the area. The chute extended above her, to — where? The kitchens, perhaps? It didn’t look easy to climb, in any event.

By her mental map, this passageway wasn’t long enough to extend under her own quarters. So the knocking she’d heard can’t have come from here. This can’t be all there is.

She chewed her lip and closed her fist over the magic flame, plunging her into inky blackness. There — a dim glow on the far wall of the coal chute, near the ground. Thalia crouched down, let her eyes adjust to the dark. She faced a metal grate with torchlight on the other side. She pressed her eye between the bars, and saw a stone chamber beyond.

She drew a breath, held it, and listened. No movement. She grasped the grate with each hand and tried to pry it loose. All she came away with was a lungful of coat dust. She grit her teeth and tried not to sputter. Did she dare try another spell? Or would that draw too much attention?

She stood and kicked at the grate with her boot instead. After a few tries, it loosened, then dislodged. She halted, straining to listen for footsteps or any other noise. Nothing.

Nothing?

“Cullen?” she whispered, surprising herself with his name on her lips, full of fervent hope and terrible dread.

Still nothing.

Heart loud in her ears, Thalia ducked through the opening.

The room was long and narrow, with only a few sconces lit and burning low. Thalia waited for her eyes to grow accustomed to the dimness. Hulking shapes along the wall transformed themselves into cell doors and dark cavities beyond. At the far end of the room stood a long table, upon which sat a number of tomes and scrolls. Next to it, a stairwell ascended around a corner.

Thalia ran to the nearest cell. The recess was cold and empty. As was the next, and the next. She fought the rising panic, gripping the bars of each one she passed, praying she would see a familiar face inside as she had in the bowels of Skyhold. “Please, Cullen, please…”

The final cell, set adjacent to the wooden table, was similarly bare. Thalia’s breath caught as she stared inside. A sleeping pallet lay on the floor, rumpled from recent use. Beside it sat an empty food tray.

Swallowing hard, Thalia stepped back from the cell, staring upward. How far from this spot were her own quarters? If someone inside this cell had stood to bang on the ceiling — low enough, she estimated, for someone of Cullen’s height to reach — would she have heard?

She stormed over to the table, grabbing at the rolls of parchment and vellum-wrapped books that lie amid quill nibs and ink pots. She squinted at the spines: books on alchemy, on the theories of miasmas and poisons in the blood. She opened one and flipped through, catching a flash of loose parchment. She recognized Vivienne’s handwriting at once.

Thalia snatched up the page and tried to make sense of it.

8.3.42 — Level of exposure considered critical. Observation is needed to determine outcome. Preventative potion at this stage may kill him.

8.4.42 — Aggression and paranoia displayed, but no physical manifestations. Eyes remain normal.

8.7.42 — Word has spread. They want a sacrifice. T. can only be kept in the dark so long.

8.8.42 — Administered laudanum. It should be gentle.

Thalia’s hands shook, her mind reeling. “A sacrifice?”

The chanters in the woods, with their haunting, dissonant song. Florentine’s insistence Thalia could not go out there.

Stupid girl. Stupid girl. Stupid girl.

Someone was moving at the top of the stairwell.

Thalia dropped the parchment and retreated into the shadows. Breathing heavily, she leaned against a stone pillar and waited, shaking so hard she could scarcely breathe.

No one descended the stairs, but the movement above continued. Beside her stood a barred door she had overlooked before. Inside were mounted weapon racks, shelves of potions. She felt the panic slowly drain from her, replaced by a low, burning fury.

The armory door was locked, but she spied a ring of keys on a peg by the stairwell door. She crept as quietly s she could, and one skeleton key opened the door. Amid swords and daggers were mage staves, some the standard make and model of the Circle of Magi. The village must have collected them from combatants in the Mage-Templar war. Relief flooding her, she grabbed one and strapped it to her back. She gazed at the swords, wanting to take one for Cullen, but feared it would only weigh her down.

She grabbed a healing potion from the shelf and tucked it into the pocket of her jerkin. She almost took another, but hesitated, remembering Vivienne’s notes and books. Thalia’s mental geography realigned, and she knew what must be at the top of the stairs.

She crept up the stone stairway, which ended at a landing with a wooden door. Thalia peered through the small barred window set in it and saw the familiar array of alembics, decanters and other alchemical supplies. She had stood in this very room earlier today, drinking Vivienne’s foul potion, believing it would help her find Cullen. Had he been this close then too, or had they already moved him? She shivered.

Inside was the elf servant who had denied to her this Chantry had a cellar. She flitted about the room, tidying loose papers, rearranging strewn bottles, and dusting. The door was locked, but with the keyring she was able to open it. Thalia stepped into the room, her staff drawn.

The servant saw her and screamed, dropping the feather duster she’d been holding. “Your Worship! What are you doing here?”

“Where is Cullen?” Thalia demanded.

The servant’s delicate features went wide with fear. “I-I should get Mistress Vivienne,” she squeaked.

“You will do no such thing.” Thalia summoned a current of electricity and sent it coursing through the length of her staff. “You will stand very still and answer my questions.”

The servant swallowed hard, raising her hands in the air.

Thalia sucked in a breath. “What’s your name?”

“Elori. If it please your Worship.”

Nothing about this situation pleased Thalia. “Did you see Cullen here, Elori? In the dungeon?”

Trembling, she nodded. “I gave him food m-most days, Your Worship.”

Thalia’s heart seized. “Did he say anything to you?”

“‘Thank you,’ mostly.” Elori swallowed hard.

I won’t cry. “Was he hurt? Sick?”

Elori scrunched up her forehead, as if squinting would shake loose the memory. “His arm was broken, maybe. Mistress Vivienne had a healer treat it.”

“Was anything else wrong?” Thalia demanded.

Elori hesitated. “H-h-he… Your Worship, I’m sorry, I don’t know, I didn’t look too closely. They were worried about the rot. Everyone’s worried about the rot.”

Guilt snaked through Thalia. She thought of the bruises on his body he’d sustained in Skyhold, trying to get at the red lyrium to drink it. She remembered staring at his eyes in the firelight, wondering if the glowing scarlet had taken root there. “Where is he now?”

Elori looked down, wringing her hands.

“Elori, I know about the chanters in the woods,” Thalia said. “They’ve got him, don’t they?”

Slowly, Elori nodded.

Thalia stepped closer, lowering her staff. “Tell me the quickest way to get there, and I’ll forget that you ever lied to me.”

The swirling green-grey sky seemed to darken as Thalia ran through the forest. She prayed she could reach Cullen in time. Elori had promised her there would be a clearing if she kept due north of the village, and after following her instructions to reach a secret exit through the ramshackle walls, Thalia had found a worn path winding through the trees.

How much time had she lost, struggling to grasp what was going on? An hour, maybe? More? She had not thought to ask much about this cult or how long they made their fell rituals. If Cullen was drugged, he’d be practically defenseless.

If only she hadn’t been so moronic. She never should have trusted Vivienne. She never should have expected the woman to have any compassion. The incident with her dying lover had clearly been a fluke.

Thalia’s staff bounced against her back as she ran, reassuring her. At least now she was armed. At least now, she might be able to fight them off and reach him. At least now, if it was too late—

No. You can’t think like that.

Winded, she stopped on the path to catch her breath and listen. The wind picked up, bringing with it a now familiar discordant thrum. She tilted her head, and slowly the rhythm smoothed out into syllables. They’re still at it. Gritting her teeth, she set off again.

The thick pines and dead bushes began to thin as the sound grew louder; fog swirled into tendrils like fingers as her boots crunched the underbrush. Please. Please, Cullen, hang on.

Thalia rounded a bend and nearly ran into a tall specter looming before her. She let out a yelp of surprise, drawing her staff. Vivienne emerged from the gloom, arms crossed over her black patchwork gown and frowning deeply.

“Oh, my dear,” Vivienne said softly. “I am afraid I cannot let you go any further.”

“Step aside, Vivienne,” Thalia commanded. She felt terrified, but could not let the other woman know it. “I’m getting Cullen and we’re leaving this horrible place.”

“To go where?” Vivienne possessed an infuriatingly measured tone. “Do you think perhaps you’ll have more luck with the bandits in the west? Or maybe you’d like to try reasoning with Empress Calpernia?”

“None of that matters,” Thalia retorted. “You’re going to kill him!”

“I assure you I have had no hand in the Commander’s death.” Vivienne sighed. “I had hoped more than anyone we could avoid this outcome.”

“By locking him in the dungeon? By experimenting on him?” The low-boiling rage that had dogged her since the Chantry cellar intensified. Over Vivienne’s shoulder, she could see the edge of a meadow emerging from the mist. The chanting crescendoed.

Vivienne let out a sardonic laugh. “I don’t know what it is you think you’ve learned here, Lady Thalia, but I was doing no such thing. I was trying to save him.”

Thalia spat, “Glad you put in the effort, after that went so well for Duke Bastien.”

Vivienne flinched as if slapped. She rose to her full height, lifting her chin. Her calm was maddening. “You are an ungrateful little harpy, aren’t you, Inquisitor?”

“Everyone has been lying to me since before I stepped through the town gates,” Thalia said through gritted teeth. “On your orders, I imagine. And yet I’m the harpy?”

“I suppose it’s no use explaining that was for your own good,” Vivienne replied crisply. “That we’d isolated the Commander, put him under observation, to see whether he showed symptoms of red lyrium corruption—”

“And has he?” Thalia demanded.

Vivienne hesitated.

“Has he?”

Vivienne sighed. “No.”

“Then why? Why are you going to do it?” Thalia’s throat was raw.

“During your captivity, you were kept from the worst of it, Inquisitor. The Maker is dead, as far as the townsfolk are concerned. If the periodic sacrifice of one already corrupted can buy unity among my subjects, then it behooves me to—”

“Execute an innocent man?”

Vivienne gave her a pitying look. “He is a Templar.”

“Was,” she cried, the rage gripping her. “Why can nobody get that through their thick skulls? He left, and the Order is gone.”

“Its legacy remains,” Vivienne said quietly. “In every misshapen husk that lumbers forward to do Corypheus’s bidding. Those terrorized by the Red Templars see the threat in every man and woman who took up the sword for the Templar Order. If I can slake their bloodlust every now and again by giving them someone to blame, someone almost guaranteed to lose himself to the red…”

“You’ll do it. To keep yourself on top, you’ll do it.” Thalia swallowed hard. “Fine. Let me be the villain, then. Step aside, and they can blame me for disrupting their offering to whatever dark god holds them in its sway.”

Vivienne shook her head. “My dear, you have not thought this through. You are still the Herald of Andraste. No one will see you as the villain. You will be revered, no matter what.”

“I thought you said the Maker is dead. Why would anyone still care who I am?”

Vivienne tutted, angling her head to the side. “You were raised better than that, Lady Thalia. You know that titles still hold weight, as long as there are people to believe in them. To survive, we must take advantage of this. Let me help you.”

The chanters reached a fever pitch, and Thalia had heard enough. She pounded the ground with her staff, alighting currents of violet electricity. “There is no ‘we’ here. This is your last chance, Vivienne.”

“You cannot mean to fight me.” Vivienne looked scandalized.

Thalia intended to throw the first spell as an answer, but the chanters chose that moment to go deadly silent. Thalia felt a bone deep dread, as if standing on a precipice from which there could be no return.

Through the quiet came a crashing, uneven footfall.

“Inquisitor, behind you.”

Thalia whirled and sprint off the path, narrowly missing the spray of ice magic hurled by Vivienne. She tripped over a stone, hit the ground hard, barrel-rolled under a fallen log. She popped up above its rotting bark and shot electricity at the hulking figure emerging from the fog. She and Vivienne continued hitting the creature with spells until at last, with a choked, gargled gasp, the figure seized and fell to the ground.

Thalia rose shakily to her feet. “Wh-what was that?”

Vivienne strode over to the corpse’s head, breathing hard. “It seems, my dear, something has been following us for awhile now.”

It lay face down. Vivienne prodded it with her staff and gently turned it over. Grotesque crimson crystals protruded from its face and shoulder.

“Red Templars,” Thalia breathed, horrified. And then thought, with nauseating certainty: Samson.

Chapter Text

The warm breeze wafted in through the open door to the balcony, bringing with it the smell of spring. Samson thought he might never get that scent again: the sea salt mingled with flowering juniper as it blew up from the Wounded Coast. The sunlight filtering through the gauzy curtain was yellow as lemon.

He stood in the tower of the keep, the chambers they’d chosen for their own. It had all the trappings of splendor: a four-poster bed; large, round tub in which to luxuriate; vanities and armoires and writing desks for the lady, and of course the large, taxidermied halla atop which some of their more adventurous love-making had taken place.

How long had it been since they’d settled here? He chose not to remember.

He moved freely, easily, with no armor nor burden. Weapon and shield had been lain down a number of years ago, and it was strange to admit he didn’t miss them. He had spent so much of his life fighting and scraping for survival, but he had traded it all in when the battles had been won.

And of course, the main attraction. Stretched nude on a chaise lounge, long hair wrapped in a towel from her recent bath, Thalia faced away from him, nose buried in a large tome. He admired the view: the shapely curve of her hip, ass, and the barest hint of breast.

He chuckled low in his throat. “That book really so interesting you couldn’t wait to put clothes on first?”

“I don’t hear you complaining,” Thalia replied drily.

“No, and you won’t, neither.” Samson sidled closer. The tilt of her neck was delicate and supple, her skin creamy soft. A fair number of years separated him from her, but that had never bothered them. He might be sliding gracelessly into old age, but Thalia remained as beautiful and nubile as the first time he saw her.

He leaned down, pressing a kiss onto her neck, then her shoulder. “D’you think it’s odd, the way we met?”

“I don’t know what you mean.” Her voice was light and coy.

“Oh, you do.”

Samson gently pulled the towel from her head, letting the damp wine red waves fall about her shoulders, trailing down her back. He threaded one hand through her hair and with the other reached around to squeeze her tit. She let out a delicious sigh, arching her back into his touch.

“Remind me,” she whispered.

He buried his face in her scented hair. “We were trying to kill each other,” he murmured. “You and that bore of a Commander, you were trying to find a way to break my armor. And I was working for a deluded monstrosity who fancied himself a god.” He felt a thrill of triumph, saying the words aloud. Like uttering blasphemies in the middle of Chantry service.

Thalia dropped the book and twisted around to face him. She wound arms around his neck and pressed herself close to him. “Ah, yes. I do remember now.” She angled her head and looked at him through coquettish lashes. “I’m glad we managed to get past that, aren’t you?”

Maker, he wanted to take her right here, on this damn reclining chair. He climbed onto it beside her, and she pulled him toward her, giggling.

“Don’t forget,” Thalia murmured in his ear as he showered her with kisses, “you’re wanted in the yard.”

Samson groaned, halting with his lips on her clavicle. He rose above her and gazed down, annoyance mixed with fondness. “I bloody forgot.”

“You forgot sword practice? For shame.” Thalia wriggled beneath him, smiling brightly. The little tease.

He pushed himself to sitting, scrubbing a hand down his stubbly face. “She’s your daughter. What’s she need with swords? Can’t she just—?” He waved his hand around in a vague approximation of what mages could do.

“She’s your daughter too.” Thalia bent over beside him to retrieve her book. He watched the graceful curve of her back, the spring to her teats as she righted herself. “And she wants to learn swordplay.”

Samson sighed, squinting out the round archway to the sweet morning. “She’s probably at the smithy anyhow, with Maddox.”

The name hit him like a sour note in a pleasant melody. His chest twinged. Why should Maddox be here? The poor lad is—

“Teaching her everything he knows,” Thalia finished, although he hadn’t spoken aloud. Or had he? He stared at her, confused, but her pretty head was bowed again over the wide, heavy book. “You think soon she’ll start bringing us those little paper cranes he makes?”

Samson stood, unsettled. “I never told you that.”

“Never told me what?” She did not look up.

“The cranes. I never told anyone. That even after they made him Tranquil, he could still—” Samson broke off, his throat tight.

“Love, what are you talking about?” Thalia gazed at him, wide eyes as blue as the day’s azure sky.

“Nothing,” Samson said quickly. “It’s nothing. Forget it.” He kissed the top of her hair. “I’ll go check on the little one.”

He left her, strolling to the tower balcony that would lead him to the inner bailey. Samson curled his fingers around the marble balustrade’s edge and fought his growing sense of unease. Everything was fine. Everything was bleeding perfect. Why did he have to ruin it? Why did he always have to—

A glint of red below drew his attention, and Samson caught sight of her: the tiny ragamuffin, with a mop of curly hair that matched her mother’s, but his dark eyes. She was dressed in old Templar recruitment leathers — Maker knew where she’d got those — and proudly hoisted a wooden sword over her shoulder. She waved at him in the bright sunshine, flashing a gap-toothed smile. Nine, now, maybe? Or ten? The years hardly mattered anymore.

“You comin’ down or what, Papa?” She sounded born and bred in Lowtown, just like him.

“In a minute, sweetling.” Samson wanted to savor this moment for a little longer. Before… before what?

The red of her hair captivated him — the deep scarlet, pulsating almost, like the veins that had cut through the towering crystals. Lyrium. Red lyrium. When it had once threatened to consume the world. A cloud passed over the sun; the sky darkened, and Samson’s mouth drew as dry as ash.

“Wait. No. No, this isn’t right…”

There was a great crack of thunder. The blue sky disappeared, as did the thick tree line that surrounded the battlements. Above, clouds roiled in grey and green. The little one let out a scream. Surrounding her were the great glowing crystals, extending up and up, overtaking the walls of the keep, blotting out the remnants of the sun.

Samson awoke shivering, head ablaze with pain.

He tried to roll over in his camp bed, but landed on the empty bottle he’d been clutching the night before. He grabbed it with one trembling hand and squinted down the neck. Not a drop left. His tongue felt like cotton, the headache shooting from his eye sockets to his teeth.

He hauled himself up, planting feet on the floor. It was all coming back now: his war pavilion, the caravan on the move, his men ready to strike at first sight of the enemy. They camped in a desolate patch of Orlesian forest at the base of the Frostbacks, where intelligence stated they could find the Lady Thalia.

Samson staggered to the nearby wash basin and splashed water on his face. The table had contained a looking glass once, but somewhere along the way it had shattered. (A flash of his fist, wet with blood and flecked with glittering shards.) Only the baseboard remained. He stared at it, water dripping from his chin, and grasped at the fleeting tendrils of his dream.

The girl — Thalia — in his embrace, naked and willing. And… a child? And Maddox too, still alive. Samson forced a guffaw, wincing at the intensifying pain. Wishful thinking, that’s what they called that.

Still. There’d been a lightness in his chest in the depths of the dream. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been that carefree. Never, maybe.

He wound his way around the ornate furniture in his pavilion — the General must travel in style — and reached the cabinet containing a full array of bottled ruby red. He popped one open and took a hefty quaff. The headache receded, taking with it the tremor in his limbs. He came up for air, wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his nightshirt. The fog lifting, he remembered: he’d be late for the war council meeting if he didn’t hurry.

“Mareth,” he bellowed.

His elven seneschal appeared at once. He was looking more harrowed as of late, carrot-colored hair sticking out around his long ears. “Yes, milord?”

“Help me don my armor. I’m to meet with Lieutenant Barris soon.” More like than not they’d be taking to the field today, and it wouldn’t do to let the troops see him without his iconic vestments.

Mareth hurried off to the far corner of the pavilion. Over there, Samson’s favorite blades gleamed on their racks, many hand-forged by Maddox. (The gap-toothed girl stood by Maddox’s forge, watching him fold the molten metal over itself with the singular awe of a child.) Samson pressed a hand to his forehead, gritting his teeth.

Mareth dashed past the weapons to the dummy fitted with Maddox’s prime achievement: the set of black metal armor, inlaid with the largest fragment of raw red lyrium worked by mortal hands. Even across the room, the steady hum of power reverberated from the armor; Mareth grimaced as he disassembled it piece by piece.

Samson stood still as the servant dressed him. Invigorated by the vermilion, his mind wandered to the tasks set before him. Retrieving the girl was of utmost importance. If he could renegotiate the terms of his prior offer, so much the better. (He could feel her naked flesh, soft and sweet under his touch.) For that, he was hopeful. She was alone, and under the thumb of Madame de Fer, to boot. Samson knew from prior intelligence that Thalia had never got on well with Vivienne — he was confident he could appeal to her.

“A-are you very nervous, milord?” Mareth piped up as he tightened the straps on his cuirass.

“Nervous?” Samson grumbled. “Why would I be nervous?”

Mareth shrugged. “I dunno. Eve of battle, and all that?”

It occurred to Samson that Mareth had never been on the front lines before. Before his promotion to seneschal, he’d been a gardener or some such. “I used to live for this.”

“You did?” Puzzlement mixed with horror in Mareth’s voice. He snapped on the greaves, his skin seared from the proximity to the red.

Samson smirked, thinking back to the days of his youth, when he first held a templar sword in his hand and at last knew he’d found his purpose. He’d put other recruits to shame in the practice yard, even the lordlings promised to the Chantry who were practically born to it. Knight-Commander Guylian had seen promise in Samson, the streetwise ruffian others would’ve been happy to leave down in the gutter. He’ll wash out of the competency exams, the noble asses whispered amongst themselves as a balm for their wounded pride. He can’t even read.

Then Samson had learned, the book stuff coming to him with surprising ease. Marks as high as the rest; better than some of them, even.

I knew I was onto something with you, the Knight-Commander had said at the initiation ceremony, handing Samson his sun shield.

If only being a Templar had been all that was promised. An honorable warrior was one thing — the degrading, humiliating work Samson had done quite another. Then the fall, and the spectacular slog that followed, when he’d found himself belly-crawling again in the muck. A lyrium-starved desperation clung to the memory of those years, culminating in a ghost haze after the Chantry explosion and the city’s collapse. He’d begun to desire… not a quick end, exactly, but some sort of glorious disaster. Something that would make others pay attention. Understand his sacrifice. See that he was the unsung martyr.

Instead, they’d nearly made Cullen Rutherford goddamn viscount.

“Yes,” Samson murmured. “But it wears you down after awhile. Especially when you see other men elevated in your place without even lifting a finger.”

Mareth was quiet for a long while, occupied with securing the last bits of armor. Samson was beginning to wonder if the elf had even heard.

Hesitantly, Mareth opened his mouth. “That… must’ve been difficult.” He fixed the scabbard to Samson’s belt.

Samson stepped away and rotated his joints, making sure everything was locked into place. “Yeah. It bloody well was.” He sniffed. “But no more of that, eh?”

“No more, milord.” Mareth flashed a tremulous smile. “And might I say, you look fantastic, ser.”

Samson knew Mareth was lying, but thanked him anyway.

Fully armored, Samson stepped out of the pavilion. Time was difficult to tell when the sun never shone — it was approximately afternoon, and the war camp bustled with activity. They’d been on the move for days, and many of his foot soldiers were hungry for a fight. Samson saw them milling about the camp with fierce expressions; the spiked crystals that sprung from their joints gleamed in the light from the cook fires. Samson took the time to speak to a few of them — boosting morale was more important now than ever.

He wound his way through the encampment, and slipped into the war tent right at the agreed upon time. Of course, Barris had beaten him there. He sat in contemplative silence before the large wooden table, an heirloom inherited from Skyhold, along with the tattered map of the continent that lay atop it.

“Lieutenant,” Samson grunted, coming up behind him. “What have you got for me?”

“Dum spiro, spero,” Barris said cryptically.

Samson stifled an irked sigh. “How many times must I tell you, I don’t speak…” This applied to a number of languages. He trailed off, waiting for Barris to supply the correct one.

“Tevene,” Barris replied. “Old Tevene, specifically. ‘While I breathe, I hope.’ I suspect it’s what the Lady Thalia is thinking right now.”

“And I suspect trite phrases are why they must’ve switched to new Tevene,” Samson quipped.

Not even a chuckle from Barris. He wasn’t quite as bad as the Tranquil, or the more feral of their soldiers, but Samson and Barris’s senses of humor had never aligned. Delrin Barris had arrived as a captive templar from Therinfal Redoubt nigh on a year ago, one of the holdovers from Seeker Lucius Corin’s retinue. At first Samson wondered if one with as much self-professed “honor” as Barris could be turned — but as always, the crimson song had proved irresistible. Still, Barris had shown impressive stamina, maintaining reason and intellect even under the effects of the red. That had proven valuable, as the attrition rate among Red Templars was usually astronomical. He’d quickly made lieutenant for that competence alone.

That didn’t mean Samson had to like him.

Barris had come to the Templar Order from noble stock. Samson didn’t care much for the details — previous social hierarchies meant little in Corypheus’s new world order — but there were idiosyncrasies one never shook. Barris had the hallmarks of a noble’s upbringing: knowledge of languages and etiquette, as well as the posh Fereldan inflection Samson recognized from Cullen’s Chantry education. Was that why Barris sometimes set Samson’s teeth on edge? Or was it the lieutenant’s impossibly high cheekbones, and the piercing eyes that had until recently had been such a verdant shade of green? Some men have all the luck.

“I’d like actionable intelligence,” Samson muttered, “not baseless speculation.”

“I wouldn’t call it baseless, General.” Barris turned. He looked quite different from when Samson had first met him: one eye was shot through with an infernal red, and his old Templar armor had been repurposed and reforged The old Templar sigil on his breastplate glowed in the light from the scarlet crystal he wore around his neck. “All the reports say the same thing. She’s looking for Commander Cullen.”

Samson felt a twinge of his former headache prodding at his temple. “Who’s vanished.”

“Yes.”

“For days now.”

“Yes.”

“Dead, do you think?” Samson couldn’t bring himself to believe it, though he wanted to.

“Does it matter?” Barris asked.

“Of course it matters,” Samson snapped. He might not be in this mess if he hadn’t let slip to Thalia at Skyhold that Cullen was still alive. “She’ll never stop looking if she thinks there’s even a chance. She loves the fool.” He tried not to let too much bitterness show.

Barris tilted his head at Samson, expression unreadable. That was another thing Samson didn’t like about him — he kept things too close to the chest. “You never did say. How she freed him and escaped in the first place.”

“When I figure it out, I’ll tell you,” Samson countered. “She’s a magicker. They have their ways, as you well know.”

“Mm.” Barris gazed upon the map of Thedas. It was woefully out of date, but the updated one from Corypheus’s seat of power in Minrathous hadn’t yet arrived. “Is it true she escaped from your quarters?”

Samson growled, “I don’t like your tone, Lieutenant.” He angled himself over Barris’s stool; the red lyrium crystal in his cuirass hummed between them. “And what if she did?”

“Nothing, ser,” Barris was quick to say, though he was not as cowed as Samson had hoped. “Just wondering if it’s personal.”

Samson narrowed his eyes. He owed Barris nothing — his lieutenant was supposed to take orders, not question his motives. Still, the man was clearly fishing. With blunt impatience, he asked, “What else have you heard?”

“That you may have… had a dress made,” Barris said carefully, mismatched eyes flickering up to meet Samson’s own. “For her measurements.”

Mareth needs to be flogged, Samson realized. I have been too lenient. Unless it was the bloody tailor who’d gossiped. Maybe he ought to have both their tongues cut out, just in case.

“So?” Samson forced levity into his voice.

“One doesn’t usually go about getting gifts for his prisoners,” Barris said, deadpan.

“Who said it was a gift for her?” Samson retorted.

Barris looked away. Samson got the sense that his subordinate found him repulsive, which gave him a grim satisfaction.

“Corypheus won’t like it,” Barris said softly.

Samson snorted. “And how far away is Corypheus right now? A thousand leagues? More?”

Barris shook his head. “Empress Calpernia is closer. She has his ear and his favor.”

“I’ve got his favor too,” Samson insisted. “Who suggested the siege on Skyhold? Who saw the opportunity for victory within our grasp and organized the whole bleeding thing? Me. He owes me.”

Barris stood from his stool, leaning heavily on the war table. His eyes stayed fixed on the marker in the distant north, denoting the Tevinter capital. “He’s aspiring to godhood. I don’t think he believes he owes anyone anything.”

Samson scowled. “What exactly are you trying to say to me, Lieutenant?”

Barris let out a weary sigh. He rose to his full height and faced Samson, chin raised. “When I was young — before my father promised me to the Templars — there was a girl living in our keep. The daughter of one of the kitchen maids. Lia, her name was. I was smitten with her, and I… well, I don’t even really know what she thought of me.”

“You’re telling me about a childhood crush?” Samson asked, incredulous. “Really?”

Barris frowned, studying him with those unsettling eyes. “It’s not about the crush, General. It’s what my father did about it. He found out, put a stop to it. He’d already had plans for me, you see, and didn’t want a youthful indiscretion with a peasant getting in the way.”

Samson waited, eyebrows raised.

“But it wasn’t me he punished.” Barris’s voice carried a hint of sorrow. “He sacked Lia’s mother and put them both out of the keep. I didn’t know what happened to either of them, until I found Lia begging on the streets of Denerim the next time we visited.”

Samson suspected this was intended to move him, but he didn’t see how. “Did you say anything to her?”

“No.” Barris looked down. “I was too ashamed.”

Of course. Samson knew what that was like. All the well-to-do aristocrats and merchants had done the same: passing by the corner where he sat, huddled against the shakes, their eyes facing straight ahead. They never even looked at him, even when he was certain they’d heard him ask to spare a copper.

“Then I guess we’ve both lost something we were fond of, Lieutenant,” Samson sneered. Noble asses, indeed. They’re all alike, deep down. “You forget yourself. I’ve been the beggar in the story, and Corypheus ain’t my father.”

Barris stood, silent and defeated. He let out a slow breath and returned to the map. “You said she won’t stop looking until she finds Commander Cullen.”

Samson narrowed his eyes. “Yeah?”

“Then the fastest way to catch her, if you ask me? Make her think she’s finding him.”

Slowly, Samson smiled. “Now that, Lieutenant, is the smartest thing you’ve said to me all day.”

They were deep in a tactical discussion, looking through compiled maps of the local area, when a figure darkened their doorway.

“Gentlemen.” Lieutenant Rylen pushed aside the tent flap, tattooed face lethally serious. “We’ve received a runner. The scouting party’s got eyes on the Inquisitor.”

A thrill went through Samson. “Perfect.” He rose, feeling the power of the red within his armor and his body bolstering his confidence. The trap would be laid, and in it he would snag the girl. “Tell the soldiers we march at once.”

Chapter Text

Thunder rumbled in the distance, and Cullen remembered storms.

He’d be playing in the fields with his siblings one minute, and the next, the sky overhead would turn a foreboding violet-grey, the wind rustling through the trees around them. It became a desperate sprint to outrun the rain. The air was heavy with the threat; his mother shouted their names from the doorway.

Kinloch Hold had sturdy walls and few windows. The thunder sounded muffled, inconsequential. He’d told a young acolyte once there was nothing to fear. Cullen hadn’t known then the storm brewing would come from within.

In Kirkwall, he’d lean against the window sill in the Gallows and watch them roll in off the Wounded Coast. There was a drama to it, the roving cloud over the water, the crackle and spit of lightning. Samson strolled by now and again, cigarette hanging from his lips, to see what all the fuss was about.

I don’t get it, he’d say, and Cullen would shrug. They were calming, to watch from far away.

But this was no longer Kirkwall. Samson wasn’t here. The last time Cullen had seen him — greasy and emaciated, grinning like a knave — he had promised ruin.

Cullen! His mother’s voice called.

He couldn’t find his way back. This was all wrong. Where was he again? Why did he hear chanting?

In the Inquisitor’s tower. The rain fell in sheets, pounding hard against the sloped ceiling and the stones on the balcony. Thalia curled up in bed, her hair falling decadently about her shoulders, beckoning him. She had told him once, shyly, that he was the only man she’d let see with her hair down, something he found both sweet and alluring. “It’s too wet to go out there right now. Come back.”

This is wrong too, Cullen thought, dread growing in his stomach.

“Come back to me,” Thalia said. “Cullen.”

He tried to apologize, but could not unhinge his jaw to say the words.

The thunder grew louder, but so did the song.

There had been singing in the Chantry, the day Meredith died. And in the wreckage, when all the bodies had been cleared. Cullen had attended the vigil, candle flickering in one hand, ash streaked on his face, dazed from the carnage. And again in the weeks and months that followed, though he found it increasingly difficult to sing along with the others. Kirkwall held no illumination for him. The skies darkened, and when it stormed, he sometimes wished the whole city would be washed into the sea.

He kept his own vigils after that, at shrines to Andraste when no one else was around. It was easier, to find his way through individual prayer. He no longer wanted to look upon the symbols of a corrupt institution and swear fealty through song. He could keep the Chant on his own.

He sang again the night Thalia was found alive, after Haven.

Should he be singing now? The chant grew louder in the darkness, though it sounded foreign to his ears, twisted and misshapen. Behind it, the storm was approaching.

Cullen. Come back, Cullen. I need you to wake up.

Thalia’s voice. No, Vivienne’s.

He had been in a cell. Beneath a Chantry, with Vivienne on the other side. Kind words, reassurances. She treated his arm, with poultices and splints and the soothing chill of a spell. He hadn’t flinched. She’d wanted to help, but she couldn’t let him out.

He was alone. One prison traded for another. Poetic, almost. His arm grew stronger; the bone healed. Vivienne kept holding a candle to his eyes, taking notes. I feel fine. He did not mention the scarlet song, how it had left him bruised and thirsty.

Vivienne’s expression told Cullen she did not believe him. And why should she? She’d spent most of her life in a Circle. She knew exactly what Templars were good for, and what they were not.

Come back to me, Cullen. I need you.

He tried to say, “Leave me alone.” He tried to say, “Please.” Everything was muddled and he felt as if he were moving through molasses and the thunder was here and the chanting had stopped.

Why had it stopped?

Cullen gasped for breath like a man drowning. He opened his eyes. Torchlight gleamed in the gloom on all sides. He was deep in a thicket of trees. He was bound with thick ropes on his wrists and ankles, lying on a hard stone surface. Hooded figures in dark robes surrounded him in a broken circle, and Thalia knelt before him, face bright with fear, a soft hand on the nape of his neck.

“Thalia?” His voice sounded sluggish. His head felt heavy, as if he were still in a dream. He lifted his cheek from the stone — he was elevated from the ground on some sort of table — no, an altar?

“Shh,” she whispered. “I’m going to to get you out of here.”

“What is the meaning of this?” The hooded man gestured with a blade that flickered in the torchlight.

“Circumstances have changed.” Out of the gloom emerged a tall woman, poised but solemn. Vivienne. “I cannot let you go through with the ceremony. Any moment now we will be set upon by Red Templars.”

Panicked murmurs went up among the cloaked figures. “How?” demanded the one with the blade. “Our patrols have been so diligent. Any intruder has been swiftly dealt with—”

“It’s the Herald,” snarled another. “She’s brought this scourge upon us!”

“Silence,” Vivienne commanded. She took to the dais beside Thalia and Cullen and addressed the crowd. Cullen lost the thread of her speech, his head still foggy. He knew he ought to be afraid, of these cloaked figures and especially the Red Templars. The thunder that had seemed so vivid in his dreams belonged to no approaching storm, but the rhythm of a marching army.

While Vivienne argued with her minions, Thalia ducked out of Cullen’s view. He felt her fingers on his wrist, picking at the ropes that bound him. He was flooded with gratitude for her. “You’re always saving me,” he whispered, though he did not know whether she heard him over the din.

Soon he was sitting upright, pressing a hand against his forehead to keep the world from spinning. Thalia slipped under his armpit, supporting him with her shoulder. “Can you walk?”

“I-I don’t know.” Cullen put a foot on the ground, tried to stand with Thalia’s help… and stumbled, his legs giving out. The weight drove them both to their knees.

The hooded figures fell silent, turning to stare.

“They’re trying to escape!” the man with the dagger roared. “I cannot allow it.”

“Nor can I.”

A gasp went through the crowd. Cullen realized, too late, that the sound of the march had stopped. Gritting his teeth, he raised his head at the familiar voice — a voice that had once belonged to a friend.

A battalion of hulking Red Templars stood at the edge of the clearing. At their fore stood three figures. One Thalia did not recognize: an attractive man with dark skin, short-cropped hair and one eye of bright green; the opposite eye glowed a sinister red. She thought the other a stranger until she looked closer. Under his helmet, veins of red lyrium snaked across his face and illuminated a patterned tattoo that traced his nose and jaw. Dread filled her.

Oh, Knight-Captain Rylen, Thalia thought with sickening dread. What have they done to you?

Both wore breastplates emblazoned with the crest of the Templar Order, and red lyrium crystals on chains about their necks.

Between them stood Samson.

He had donned his horrible armor, black metal upon crimson, and in it seemed taller than Thalia remembered from that night in her — his — quarters. He looked unimpressed by the ghoulish display put on by the townsfolk. It appeared he cared naught for petty cults that had cropped up in his master’s world. He ignored the hooded robes, the ominous torchlight, the makeshift dais and its crude altar. He gazed past all that and looked Thalia in the eye.

Something curious showed in his face. She did not think it had been there last time, when he had been full of pomp and bluster, trying to seduce her with his silver tongue. Or maybe she had seen a glimpse, when he’d reached a trembling hand out to her as she straddled the balustrade.

It vanished as Samson stepped forward, replaced by a slippery grin bisecting his long face. All that red surrounding him seemed to gather in his eyes.

“Hello there, Madame de Fer. That’s what they called you back in the Orlesian court, innit?”

Vivienne had drawn herself up to her full height, but as he crunched the grass beneath his metal boots, Samson still seemed to tower over them all.

“General Samson,” Vivienne responded cooly. Her expression betrayed nothing. “I had hoped I’d never have the displeasure of meeting you in person.”

“Me as well, Iron Lady. Me as well.” The crowd shrunk away from Samson with each clinking step he took. Rylen and the templar with mismatched eyes dogged his heels, and the foot soldiers lumbered behind like the tail of a bloody red comet. Samson reached the base of the dais and scrutinized those that crowded the platform. “Seems I’ve interrupted some sort of party.”

“Vile servant of the Dark Lord,” spat the man who had led the ceremony. He leveled his ceremonial dagger at the giant crystal protruding from Samson’s breastplate. “It is your foul misdeeds we seek to dispel with our worship!” He motioned toward Cullen, on hands and knees beside Thalia. “This degenerate creature is a byproduct of your fell sorcery and must be cleansed.”

“By all means, go for it,” Samson drawled. His gaze drifted from the cultist to Cullen, then leveled on Thalia. “Ain’t him I’m here for.”

Thalia’s heart began to pound. Cullen looked sick and sweaty, too woozy to form words, let alone defend her. She had her staff on her back, but what good would it do her, one against so many?

The man with the dagger sneered. “What else could your cursed kind wish for, except—”

“Matisse, give it a rest,” Vivienne snapped.

He sniffed, incensed, but lowered the dagger.

Thalia looked desperately toward Vivienne, knowing she should not dare to hope. She knew it was foolish, after so much deceit and deception, but she prayed for it all the same. After dispatching the Red Templar scout with her, Vivienne had turned circumspect. She’d decided to show Thalia the way to the glade and agreed to end the ritual, saying it was too dangerous to allow. It was the closest thing Thalia suspected she would get to an apology — which she would take, if it meant saving Cullen’s life.

But the calculus was rapidly changing, and Vivienne had always said she would put the lives of her subjects first.

Vivienne’s eyes narrowed. “General Samson, what exactly are you saying to me?”

Samson’s hand went to the hilt of his longsword, stowed over his right shoulder. He stroked it lightly while he considered the question. “Hand over the Inquisitor, and there don’t need to be any bloodshed here today.” He smirked at Matisse, who looked ready to defecate in his breeches. “Least not at the hands of me and mine.”

Small cries went up in the crowd. Heads turned to survey one another, then the players in this strange farce. Thalia felt dozens of eyes boring into her, and swallowed thickly.

“Samson,” Cullen snarled, lurching upright on his knees, his voice thick and slurry. Thalia had to cling to his elbow to keep him from toppling over. “Don’t you dare lay on a hand on her, or…”

“Or what? You’ll retch on my boots? You’re so blasted you can’t even stand, my friend.” Samson chuckled. “Remember when it used to be the other way round, back at the Hanged Man?”

“Enough,” Vivienne cut in. “I don’t care about your shared history, and I certainly don’t care about your petty pissing contest.”

“But do you care about deals, Iron Lady? The kind where you scratch my back and I scratch yours?” Samson cocked his head. “Think of it: this is a little forgotten stretch of nowhere. We’ll be happy to leave it that way. You can strip naked and have orgies in the name of whatever imagined gods you like. Cut each other up and eat each other’s hearts, for all I care.” He opened his arms wide, as if giving a magnanimous decree. “All you gotta do is give me the girl.”

Thalia held tight to Cullen’s arm with both hands. “Please, Vivienne, you cannot do this.”

“I think you can,” Samson countered. “Easily.”

Vivienne’s icy gaze lingered on Thalia. She pressed her lips together. “I cannot act without the consensus of my people, General.” Vivienne stepped forward, surveying the hooded figures around her. “So I ask: what say you, subjects of mine?”

Matisse cried, “Hand her over!”

A chorus accompanied him. It was less than half the crowd, Thalia estimated, but it was substantial. Horrified, she realized she might be ripped from Cullen the second she managed to find him.

“Mistress, let me speak, if you please,” called a familiar voice in Orlesian, breaking through the din.

The crowd quieted and parted, revealing Florentine, Vivienne’s guard. She sauntered forward, glaring hard at Thalia, her hand gripping the hilt of her sword. Thalia’s stomach clenched. She had never been able to win over Florentine, and could only imagine what the woman might have to say against her.

Vivienne cast a glance at Samson. “Might you give us a few minutes?”

Samson was frowning, but impatience was only part of it. He seemed to be covering up bemusement, like someone who did not speak the local language. He doesn’t know Orlesian. Of course he doesn’t. When would he have had the chance to learn?

“Hurry it up,” he growled.

Vivienne nodded to her guardswoman. “You may speak,” she said, also in Orlesian, to Florentine. She can tell too. She’s using it as a power play. Thalia felt a pang of begrudging respect for Vivienne.

Florentine shied away from the dais. Nor did she approach Samson and his terrible legion. She stood in the grass, her teeth clenched, and began to speak in gruff, quick sentences in her native tongue. “I have spent time with the Herald. I have been her guard these past many days while you prepared her Templar for the sacrifice.”

Thalia licked her lips nervously, drawing a protective arm around Cullen’s shoulder. She noticed the Red Templar with the mis-matched eyes whispering something in Samson’s ear — translating for Florentine, she guessed, based on a look at his lip movements.

“I did not like her,” Florentine said with brutal honesty. “She is stuck up. She is entitled only the way nobles can be. She did not see the situation in front of her until it was too late.”

Each sentence hit like a punch in the stomach. Florentine was correct on every count. The crowd swayed with the weight of this information, buzzing like flies.

Florentine raised her voice to compensate. “I personally do not miss a world where people like her reign supreme simply because of their birth. But when I confronted her with this ugly truth, she … apologized. She regretted not doing better.” She turned a disgusted eye upon Samson. “I cannot say the same for this monster.”

An excited growl went up in the crowd. Thalia’s mouth dropped open. Once the Red Templar lieutenant stopped speaking, Samson’s jaw clenched.

She still had a chance, Thalia realized. Samson saw it, too, the fatal flaw in his strategy: it was difficult for the world to hate her more than it hated him.

Thalia took a breath and raised her head, staring out over the crowd. Whispers abounded, in Orlesian but just as many in Common.

She is the Herald of Andraste, after all.

She always seemed kind to me.

I saw the mark on her hand; she’s legitimate.

Before Corypheus came, she did many good works.

Mistress Vivienne says she will lead us to salvation.

Maybe Vivienne was right, about heroes and villains and the roles into which they had been cast. Or maybe it depended on more than that. Clutching Cullen’s hand, Thalia pushed herself to her feet. Her heart pounded in her ears.

“Hear me, one and all.” Her Orlesian was shaky, her accent thick and awful, but she couldn’t risk losing a single ear to a language barrier. “Corypheus may have won the battle, but he has not won the war. If that were true, then why are so many of you out here, resisting?”

Another ripple of whispers went through the black-cloaked crowd. She watched Samson frown, deeper and deeper, as his guard translated into his ear.

“But you must understand,” Thalia continued, before the moment was lost, “targeting men like Cullen will not rid this land of the rot that taints it. You must attack the corruption at its root.” She stared down at Samson, swallowing hard at the fury she saw brewing in his face. She pointed to him. “This man is responsible for the red lyrium that swallows your land and your loved ones. This man mined it, refined it, fed it to good and noble Templars until they fell victim to its madness.” She cut herself off before her voice could break, catching sight again of Rylen. “And when that wasn’t enough, turned to regular, hard-working people to fuel his army. Return me to him if you wish, but know that if you do, you serve the very dark god you purport to despise.”

The crowd erupted, and the Red Templar guard reared. Live steel flashed on both sides. Samson drew his longsword in his left hand, scowling. The great sword glowed the same wretched red as his armor, his eyes, his minions.

“Quiet,” he roared in Common, brandishing the sword with one hand, showing off incredible strength and agility. “This has been a fun little bandy, but this is your last chance, Iron Lady. Give me the Inquisitor, or prepare for violence.”

“We stand behind you, Mistress,” came a shout from the crowd.

“Give us our orders, Mistress.”

“You walk in the light of the Herald, Mistress.”

Thalia looked to Vivienne. Their eyes met, and Vivienne gave a near imperceptible nod.

Vivienne’s voice sounded amused as she drew her staff. “Violence it is, General.”

Chaos exploded around them. Thalia grabbed Cullen and tried to run.

It was not easy. Cullen was heavy, and he could still barely hold his own weight. The sound engulfing the glade was deafening: battle cries and screams filled the air; steel clashed against steel at a frenetic pace. Vivienne perched atop the dais, throwing ice spells at Samson and his lieutenants, all of whom were parrying the rabble with ease.

Thalia maneuvered Cullen to the back of the dais, dropping down into the grass to give herself more cover. Getting Cullen down was harder. He scrambled and flailed, and Thalia cursed a hundred times and a hundred circumstances that had brought her to this moment.

“I was so stupid,” she muttered, shielding him with her body when he finally collapsed onto the ground. “I should never have let you out of my sight.”

“The fault was mine,” he whispered. “I should never have doubted you.”

Thalia swallowed a lump in her throat. This was no time to weep.

In a sweep of black skirts, Vivienne appeared and crouched beside them, panting from the expenditure of magical energy. “My subjects are holding the line, Inquisitor. If you head due west you’ll have the best luck. There are other small enclaves like mine, but less… volatile.”

“Less likely to drug and feed me to an unnamed evil?” Cullen asked archly, the first sign that he was coming out of it.

“You’ll have to take this as my penance, Commander,” Vivienne replied. “My moves on the board have been flawed, I confess.”

“You can make it up to us the next time we see you,” Thalia said, entwining her arm with Cullen’s.

An enigmatic smile tugged at the corner of Vivienne’s lips. “Yes, Inquisitor. Next time.”

The way she said it made Thalia’s heart hurt. All her anger and resentment toward Vivienne, so much of it earned — and she still felt horrible, knowing what was to come.

A red templar lumbered toward their little alcove. Vivienne shot to her feet, aiming a frigid spell at its heart. “Go! And be swift about it!”

They went.

They plunged deep into the wood, so deep that the din of battle faded like a bad dream. Neither spoke for some time, and neither tried to stop. At last, Cullen gasped, “I need to rest here, my love.”

Thalia slowed, letting his arm drop from around her shoulder. Cullen sank at once onto the leaf-strewn ground. He leaned his back against a tree trunk and took several shuddering breaths. “I feel… awful,” he said, pressing a hand to his face.

Thalia knelt beside him. “Vivienne dosed you with laudanum.” She put a hand to his sweaty forehead, trying to gauge his temperature. “I’m not sure how much.”

“Enough to put down a horse, it feels like,” Cullen muttered. He dropped his hand and cupped her face, staring at her with wonder. “How did you even sort out where I was?”

“I almost didn’t.” Thalia dug through the pouch tied to her belt, searching for anything that might help. The bottle of purple-black rolled among the glowing healing potions and few dried herbs she’d managed to steal from Vivienne’s laboratory. She eyed it, then him. It was probably far too soon to suggest it, though the sight of those burning red templars dogged her. “We can talk about it later. I don’t know how long we’ve got before Samson picks up our trail.”

Cullen nodded grimly. Neither of them harbored illusions that Vivienne’s band of colorful characters could hold an entire Red Templar battalion at bay for long.

“Did you see him?” Thalia blurted. “Rylen?”

“I did. I had hoped…” Cullen sighed. “He doesn’t deserve a fate like that.”

Thalia bit her lip. None of them did. “I didn’t recognize the other lieutenant.”

“Nor did I. There were a number of Templars missing from Therinfal Redoubt the Inquisition was never able to account for. Perhaps he’s among that number. Or any other disillusioned member of the Order Samson was able to twist to his desires.”

His desires. Thalia felt Samson’s eyes on her again. How steadily he had kept track of her. She suppressed a shiver and stood. “We should keep moving. We’ve no proof the way ahead is any safer than the way behind.”

Cullen tried to get to his feet, but groaned and leaned heavily against the tree. “I don’t have much left in me. We need somewhere to rest and regroup.”

“A hiding spot,” Thalia offered. “For now?”

Cullen nodded. “Perhaps you ought to go ahead. You can move swifter and with more stealth.”

Thalia did not like the idea of splitting up, but Cullen seemed exhausted. With a low groan, he put his head in his hands. It occurred to Thalia he’d already been pushed well past his limit, but had foregone saying so. The way he hunched over in the indent of the tree provided decent cover… granted no one approached him head on. Thalia sighed, looking west. Or at least, the direction she was fairly certain was west. With no sun or stars to navigate by, it was a vague approximation, based on the way the remnants of moss grew on the trees. With a little time and concentration she could summon a navigation spell, but she hadn’t the time nor the energy earlier.

She bade Cullen goodbye and ventured deeper into the forest. The navigation spell made her course correct, but they were, at least, not completely turned around. She used the spell to mark Cullen’s location, so that she could backtrack to him easily.

Thalia continued overland. She came across no road or game trail, and thought it safer that way. After a good half an hour, she decided to circle back around, unsatisfied with what she’d seen: unbroken, fog-laden woods.

On her way, she heard Cullen’s voice. Faintly, but he was calling her name. Thalia sped up her pace, not wanting to shout back to him — what if that attracted unwanted attention? She summoned her tracking spell, but the amorphous blob that swirled in her palm seemed to indicate he hadn’t moved. Had she gotten turned around after all, and was closer to him than she’d thought?

She cleared a thicket of bushes and found a low ascending hill. A narrow cave entrance stood in the vine-covered rock wall. “Thalia,” called Cullen. “In here.”

Relief flooded her. He must have found a shelter after all. She ducked inside, blinking rapidly to adjust her eyes to the gloom. “Cullen?”

The cave was small and dank, with only a trickle of daylight cascading in from above. Standing in the pool of light in its center was a tall, bulky figure. Not Cullen. She knew that at once, and her hand went to the staff strapped to her back. “But how—?”

Samson stepped fully into the light, which reflected off the ruby of his breastplate and cast his gaunt face in a blood red glow. There was real blood splattered on his face as well. He was grinning, holding up his fist. He opened his palm, and on his gauntlet sat a small, round stone, pulsing with magical energy. “Thalia?” The voice from within sounded remarkably like Cullen.

Thalia took a slow breath to stave off the terror. “A summoning stone.”

Samson tossed it in the air and caught it. “Neat little trick, eh? Upside of working with the Venatori. They can do all sorts of fun stuff for you. Always pays to have one or two in your camp.”

Thalia drew her staff, twirling it in her hand to build up electricity. She gripped it with both hands and slammed it into the ground, shooting lightning in his direction. Samson dropped the stone, drew his red lyrium sword, and cut a brutal arc in the air, absorbing the magic attack. The great sword glowed with infernal heat.

Faster than a man in such armor had a right to be, Samson advanced upon her, deftly batting the staff out of her hand. It flew behind her, thudding to the ground somewhere near the cave’s entrance.

“Now, now,” he said, looming over her, “no need to be rude. I just wanna talk.”

Thalia tried to back away, but after a step or two, her back hit the jutting cave wall. Her mind spun. How did he escape the battle? How long has he been following us?

“That didn’t seem to be your objective back in the clearing,” Thalia retorted.

“Yeah, well, that was Plan A. It went south. This is Plan B.” Samson sheathed his sword and stepped back, hands up as if in surrender. “I’m serious. I don’t wanna hurt you. I’ve got a present for you, if you’d like it.”

“A w-what?” Thalia had a difficult time following his words. Her staff was too far away; he’d be upon her before she could reach it. Her pouch held nothing that could help. She’d tucked a small dagger from Vivienne’s laboratory in the back of her belt, more as a way to replace her old paring knife than for self-defense. It might be her only shot.

“A present. You know, a gift? Like the ones they give at Satinalia or Wintersend — not that we were allowed to do that, mind.” He retreated to the shadows, maintaining his chatty demeanor. “Strictly against protocol in Kirkwall, a Templar giving mages gifts.”

“I don’t care what you did or didn’t do in Kirkwall,” Thalia snapped, horrified. What was he prattling on about? Had he finally lost what was left of his mind?

Samson returned and, true to his word, he held a wrapped package, tied with a satin bow. He held it out to her with both hands, like an offering. Despite his smirk, the rest of his face looked painfully sincere.

This had to be some sort of deception, like the summoning stone. “I don’t understand,” Thalia said helplessly.

“Most people start with ‘thank you,’” Samson quipped.

Thalia huffed, snatching it from him. She tore open the packaging, ignoring the hunger in his eyes as she did. In a narrow box, folded with painstaking care, was a bolt of fabric, silk or linen, dyed a deep scarlet. Thalia frowned. No, that was wrong. She grabbed it and shook it free, letting the box fall to the ground.

It was a dress. The strangest, ugliest dress she had ever seen. Despite clear technical craftsmanship, she wasn’t sure how any woman could actually wear this dress. Holes — large ones — appeared throughout the area where the bodice should be. There were no sleeves, only larger bits of fabric that, she supposed, were meant to wrap around the bosom to give the wearer the smallest illusion of modesty. The skirt was similarly baffling, just long strips of gauzy, transparent fabric, so that one might bare her her entire thigh as she walked. And some of the skirts had… cuffs? As if they were to be adorned to the wrists.

It was a dress devised by a madman.

Thalia looked from it to Samson, who grinned.

She felt ill. “You thought… I would like this?”

“I designed it myself,” Samson said, a touch defensively.

Of course. Thalia looked away. He thought he could lure her here — using Cullen’s voice — and win her over with this monstrosity?

“Well?” Samson prompted.

What did he expect from her? Praise? Adoration? If so, he was delusional. Thalia balled the dress into her fist in a flash of fury and threw it at him. Samson grunted in surprise as it landed over his head, blinding him. Thalia ran for the exit, eyes on her fallen staff.

She only made it a few steps before his shadow was upon her. She felt his metal hand seizing her shoulder. “Leaving so soon, are we?”

Thalia spun, reaching behind her back and drawing the dagger. It was pitiful in the face of his terrible armor and great sword, but she refused to be taken without a fight.

“Not even a goodbye?” Samson chuckled at her weapon. That’s not very polite, after I’ve been such a gracious host.”

Thalia slashed at his face. Samson knocked her wrist, deflecting the blow. He stepped past her and in a fluid movement, swept out her leg with his. Thalia lost her balance, and, with a cry, crashed to the ground. She scrambled back on all fours, desperate to keep hold of the dagger.

“Feisty though, I’ll give you that.” Samson stomped toward her, overtaking her with ease. “What’s wrong? You didn’t like my gift?”

He squatted down and seized her wrist, prying her fingers off the blade’s handle. Thalia gasped in pain, scrambling for purchase and coming up with nothing but damp rock and moss. His strength was incredible; the ruby red crystal in his breastplate hummed through her bones.

“No matter. I’ll see you in that dress, my dear, one way or another.”

Panic coursed through her, as did something far more primal. Without thinking, Thalia aimed her left palm at his forehead, and a crackling emerald light burst forth from the gash on her hand. Samson cried out and sat down hard, dazed.

Thalia stood and ran.

She almost made it to her staff, but he hit her with a crushing blow. His whole body enveloped her, dragging her to the ground. She was on her belly, trapped under his weight, face in the dirt and muck. She tried to scream, but he clamped his glove over her mouth.

“Shhhh,” he whispered in her ear. “No point fighting. You’re just making it worse for yourself.” Samson flipped her over. He took hold of her chin and tilted it to face him. He leered at her, face sweaty and pale. “C’mon now, darling, is this really about the dress? I can get you another.”

“You’re insane,” Thalia snarled.

She writhed beneath him, trying to raise the arm that held the dagger. He grabbed her wrist, twisted it until pain shot through her arm and her grip loosened. He took the dagger and pinned her hand above her head.

“Yeah, well,” Samson said, breathing hard. “Sanity’s all a bit relative, ain’t it? When one lives in an insane world—” He leaned down, using the point of the dagger to draw up the sleeve of her tunic that had slipped from her shoulder. The cold metal of the blade scraped her skin; the proximity of the gleaming red lyrium in his gauntlet made her tongue go numb. “—we grasp for any shred we can.”

He leaned back on his haunches, bits of thinning brown hair falling loose about his forehead. The cruelty in his expression softened. “Mm,” he murmured, “but you are lovely.”

Thalia spat in his face.

Samson roared with disgust, rocking backward and wiping spittle from his eye. Thalia pushed against him and they barrel-rolled, each trying to wrest the dagger from the other. Several dizzying seconds later, Thalia found herself upright, legs straddling chainmail and leather and metal. She tightened her grip around the blade and bowed over him, bringing its razor edge to the exposed skin of his throat.

Underneath her, Samson froze. They were both panting. This close, his eyes were not red but a shadowy grey. She watched them widen in fear. All that cold bravado — for what? He looked like he had on the balcony, a man teetering on a precipice with her.

Thalia straightened, heart pounding, her hand slick with sweat as it clutched the dagger hilt. Who are you, really? she wanted to scream.

“You wanna end it here, love?” Samson rasped, seizing her hand. He pressed the blade closer to his neck, drawing a thin line of blood. “You go ahead and end it.”

Thalia’s breath hitched. Her whole arm trembled. All she could see were his eyes, deep and dark as wells, full of horror and pain.

She tried to pull away, but he held her fast. “I said, end it.”

Chapter Text

On the third day, they stumbled across a road. Hard-packed dirt wound through the trees, heading due west. For lack of better options, Thalia and Cullen followed it.

Water had been scarce, food even scarcer. The whole world seemed to be dying around them. One day they had a handful of berries; on another they found some brackish water in a crawling stream.

Every now and again, Thalia caught sight of glinting ruby red amid the greys and blacks of the foggy wood. She would tense, afraid the Red Templars had caught up with them, but it was only an isolated patch of crystals protruding from a blanket of rotted leaves.

“Vivienne warned of this,” she said the first time, when Cullen put a concerned hand on her shoulder. “That in the west, the landscape was being swallowed by it.”

“I suppose it shouldn’t be a surprise. We’re not too far south of Sahrnia, if memory serves.” Cullen stood beside her, watching the crystal. It looked like it had grown into the trunk of a brittle tree. Thalia remembered the way the red lyrium stood out against the snow cover in the Emprise. She squeezed his hand and led him away.

They wouldn’t last much longer on their own, without supplies or shelter. Thalia felt as though they’d gone in a circle — they were barely better off than they had been since their escape from Skyhold. “At least there isn’t a mountain to fall off this time,” Cullen quipped when she told him.

The joke didn’t bring her comfort. Her hand went to the dagger tucked into the back of her belt, and she felt a pang of guilt.

“We need to find a town,” Cullen said when they discovered the road. They debated whether the risk was worth putting themselves on a path easily followed. “Continuing overland, though safer, is like to be suicide.”

Thalia couldn’t argue with that. She couldn’t argue with him on much of anything. Her stomach clawed with hunger and her mouth felt full of sawdust.

A couple hours down the road, Cullen grabbed her arm to stay her. “Do you hear that?” His face was streaked with dirt, his beard scraggly from neglect.

She angled her head, but all she heard was the wind blowing through barren branches. “I don’t know.”

Cullen looked around them, a muscle twitching in his jaw. “I think we’re being followed.”

Fear shot through her. Thalia reached for the staff strapped to her back, but Cullen shook his head. “If it was the Red Templars, they wouldn’t have opted for stealth. We might have a better time negotiating if we don’t show hostility.”

Thalia glanced through the trees. What she’d assumed to be bushes and branches and stumps seemed to take on lives of their own through the drifting mist. Her breath went shallow. She dropped her arm to her side.

“Stay behind me,” Cullen whispered. He stepped forward, holding up his hands as if in surrender, and raised his voice. “If you are out there, we mean you no harm. We’re lost travelers in need of assistance. Please, show yourselves.”

Rustling picked up around them. Figures emerged from the woods in every direction, spiking Thalia’s apprehension. An array of drawn bows and steel presented themselves. They were attached to common-looking folk, hard bitten and almost as disheveled as themselves. Vivienne warned of highwaymen in the west. Were they looking for targets to rob? Thalia’s hand fell to her belt pouch as she crowded against Cullen. They can’t have it. It’s too important.

“Who the hell are you?” said a bowman in Orlesian. Uncomprehending, Cullen’s gaze flickered to Thalia.

She struggled to formulate a response. Hunger, fatigue and fear had chased most of the language from her mind. How had she managed to give a full speech just days ago?

The bowman switched languages and tried again. Before either of them could answer, a female voice called out in Common: “Hey, back up! Jennies, no good. I know these sorry sods.”

The crowd parted, and an elven girl with uneven blond fringe walked out of it, lowered bow in hand. Her hair was longer than Thalia remembered, nearly to her shoulders. She still wore her distinctive red dress and yellow tartan leggings, though both were patched and dirty. “Bloody hell, am I dreaming?”

“Sera,” Thalia cried. “You’re alive!” Had Vivienne even mentioned anything about Sera?

“Yeah, yeah, I could say the same about you.” Sera’s tone was curt. “And Commander Tightpants? Unless he’s some other bearded blondie you’ve picked up along the way.”

“It’s nice to see you again too, Sera,” Cullen said drily.

“Ain’t my fault I can’t tell with that rodent pelt covering your face.” Sera gestured to the others and they dispersed, most melting away into the forest. A retinue of four remained. “Right. Guess I need to take you to camp.”

Relief washed over Thalia. “You’ve got a camp nearby? Thank the Maker.”

“Don’t think He’s around much anymore, actually. If He ever was.” Sera seemed grumpier than usual, which Thalia supposed was hardly surprising. They had barely tolerated each other in the best of times. Still, she was a good deal happier to see Sera than a battalion of Red Templars. Thalia’s throat tightened. Or Samson.

Sera set off with a brisk stride. She didn’t look back, leaving Thalia and Cullen scrambling after her. As they walked, Cullen asked, “What exactly is this operation you’ve got going here?”

“It’s the Red Jennies. Sort of. Them’s that’re left, anyway. Anyone can join now, if they can hold a weapon and use it.”

“Bandits,” Thalia supplied.

Sera shot her a scathing look. “Outlaws, thanks. We don’t rob just anyone, see. We save it for the pissers who put in with Corypheus. Lots of stinkin’ nobles did that. Shocker, right? They’ll bow to anyone long as they can keep the little people wiping their arses.”

She cut off the road suddenly. In their weakened states, Thalia and Cullen struggled to keep up, especially as the foliage grew thicker. Thalia wanted to ask more questions, but Sera kept such a distance that it was difficult to pose them. She wondered if Sera wanted it that way. Annoyance flared inside her, but she was too fatigued to confront Sera on it.

Darkness was falling. A ring of wagons, tents and campfires materialized from the gloom. Thalia spotted horses tethered to trees, a blacksmith’s forge, and the bustle of a true caravan, not just a few stragglers camping in the woods. She felt a surge of relief so strong it nearly knocked her over. She leaned heavily against Cullen’s arm. His eyes were as wide as hers.

Sera eyed them. “You’re probably starving, yeah?” she said, a little less grudgingly. “We’ll see to it. And baths too. Er. No offense.”

“None taken,” Cullen murmured. “We’re indebted to your hospitality.”

“None of that, fancy man,” Sera shot back. “You’re returned from the bloody dead. Shite. That’ll be a song for the singers, won’t it?”

They walked into the camp, Sera pointing out amenities along the way. There were full tents dedicated to bathing, an armory, an infirmary with attending herbalist, several food stations. When they passed a cookfire with roasting meat, Cullen lagged behind, asking for two helpings and some water straightaway. Sera slowed, watching him. “And we’ll get you some tents, o’ course. Just gotta talk to the boss.”

Thalia blinked. “The boss? You’re not in charge here?”

Sera shifted her weight and looked at her loafers. “We sort of share it, yeah.”

Without warning, Sera lunged and snatched Thalia by the arm. Sera brought her face close, so close Thalia could see a dusting of freckles on her cheeks. “Just. Don’t make it weird, all right?”

Make what weird? Thalia opened her mouth, but Sera released her and stepped back. He was already striding toward them, clad all in black: as tall and broad-shouldered as she remembered, the dark hair and beard longer than ever.

Thalia’s heart stuttered.

“Andraste have mercy,” spat Blackwall.

The camp din around them quieted. Eyes swiveled, including Cullen’s, a crease appearing between his brows as he held a drumstick in each hand.

“You shouldn’t be here.” Blackwall glared. His voice was a tumult of mourning and fury. Déjà vu hit Thalia in a dreadful wave. “The dead should rest in peace.”

Cullen sat on the bedroll, staring into the small wood stove that lit and heated the tent. Thalia’s breath caught while opening the flap. He looked like a completely new person: a bath, change of clothes, and a shave did wonders.

Thalia cleared her throat, and Cullen startled out of his reverie. He fixed his gaze on her and smiled shyly. “You look adorable.”

“Oh, this?” She’d been lent a bathrobe far too big for her, and wrapped her long hair in a towel on top of her head. “It was the only thing they could find for me at the moment. Hopefully tomorrow the laundress will have something that fits better. Or at least will have washed mine.”

The tunic, jerkin and trousers that she’d been bequeathed from Vivienne were practical enough, but Cullen had never had an opportunity to change out of his prisoner’s rags. The armorer promised him ring and mail, his pick of sword and shield. For now he’d been afforded just a thin laced shirt and breeches, which explained his proximity to the fire. The night was cold and growing colder.

Dinner had been a strange affair, with familiar faces she thought they’d never see again. Blackwall and Sera had promised to accommodate them — Blackwall had been the one to call over the smith, lamenting that a warrior like Cullen had been stripped of proper armor — but Thalia hadn’t been able to shake his reaction to laying eyes on her.

He’s said that to me before. She remembered Blackwall, looking out from that cell in Redcliffe castle, his gaze glowing red. In the future I promised to prevent.

In the end, Thalia and Cullen had been too tired to stay up past the meal and explain the blow by blow of why and how they were still alive. All parties had agreed to adjourn until the morning for a full debriefing. Sera had showed Thalia the women’s bath tent, while Cullen went off with Blackwall. Thalia had watched them go, vaguely disquieted. She hadn’t seen the two men occupy the same space since the night Cullen had appeared in the jailhouse in Val Royeaux.

Thalia sat on the bedroll beside Cullen. At least the bath had relaxed her somewhat; between that and a full belly she felt calm, almost content. She unwrapped the towel from her head and let the damp locks fall about her shoulders. Her hair would dry faster in front of the fire, and then she could braid and pin it back and forget about it. The humble furnishings betrayed the basic resources of these Red Jennies. Additional furniture was scant: there was a small trunk that might double as a chair, a threadbare blanket folded on top.

“Only one bedroll?” She quirked an eyebrow and the corner of her mouth.

“Technically,” Cullen said, brushing a stray strand from her shoulder, “your tent is next to mine.”

“Oh.” Thalia tilted her head. “Blackwall didn’t…?”

“No, he didn’t seem to know. He certainly didn’t ask.” Displeasure flickered across Cullen’s features. “Rainier,” he corrected gently.

Thalia sighed. “Does it really matter what he calls himself?”

“It might,” Cullen said. “How many of his recruits still think he’s a Grey Warden? I imagine it would have been harder to bolster his strength if he was advertising himself as a known traitor.”

“It sounded to me like Sera does most of the recruiting,” Thalia countered. “And they are outlaws, she said so herself.”

“Outlaws against Corypheus, not the Orlesian crown.”

“Yes, well, some Venatori mage named Calpernia holds the Orlesian crown now.” Thalia huffed, crossing her arms. “I don’t see how Blackwall’s past is relevant anymore.”

Cullen shot her a pointed look.

“And I’m not calling him Rainier,” Thalia mumbled.

Cullen sighed, drawing closer. He hooked his finger around a strand of her long hair, watching the firelight reflect in her auburn highlights. Thalia shivered. She thought of their first time together, the joyful eagerness he’d displayed in removing the pins from her braided bun, eyes on the waves that cascaded down her back. No man outside her family had ever seen her with her hair down; that he’d wanted to do the deed himself had been quite arousing for her. That had been mere weeks before the siege of Skyhold — a deceptively simple time.

“I’m sorry,” Cullen murmured. “The last thing I want to do is bicker. It’s just… after Vivienne, and with Samson still out there, I’m wary about who we can trust.”

Thalia swallowed. She felt Samson’s gleaming, thrumming armor beneath her again. Drops of blood trickled from his unshaven throat. I said, end it.

She closed her eyes. I should have just killed him, she thought, stomach lurching. But the idea of shoving the dagger through skin and muscle and bone, of leaving Samson alone in that dismal cave to choke to death on his own blood…

“Are you all right?” Cullen asked softly. “You look pale.”

Thalia forced herself to smile. “I’m tired, that’s all.”

“Me as well.” Cullen shot her a wry grin. “Well, if you’d like to retire to your separate tent…”

She batted him playfully on the arm. “You could have just told him we were together.”

“Maybe. Seeing the expression of shock under that beard might have been worth it. ” He sobered, sweeping her hair from one shoulder to the other, smoothing out the drying strands. “But I didn’t want to disclose anything without your leave.”

Thalia felt a tug of desire and shifted so that she was properly facing him. She pressed her hands against his chest. The anchor, forever tingly, was docile and silent as she spread her palms, feeling the reassuring contours of muscle beneath the fabric. She swallowed, meeting his eyes.

“Rainier didn’t sound happy to see you at first,” Cullen murmured. “You don’t think he still harbors some… ill feelings, do you?”

“Oh, I’m certain he does. That was always his speciality. I’ve never seen a man brood like he can.” Thalia chewed her lip. Cullen had never asked her the full extent of her relationship with Blackwall before the crisis that outed his identity. From her point of view, there wasn’t much to tell: an errant kiss, her refusal, and then his self-destructive withdrawal from her. When she’d smuggled Blackwall out of Val Royeaux and pardoned him, he’d had had a series of nasty things to say to her about it. Publicly, while she sat atop her throne and tried to show him mercy. Cullen knew that part, at least. It was deeply hurtful at the time, but she would rather leave it all in the past than dwell on it.

So why did Sera say not to make it weird? Thalia suppressed a shiver, wondering exactly what Blackwall had been telling her about their past. The thought irked her. Sera was prone to undue drama, and Thalia didn’t like the thought that Blackwall might have been handing her ammunition this whole time.

“Let’s forget about him,” Thalia said, playing with the strings on the collar of Cullen’s shirt. She would drive herself mad over petty matters if she let herself. “Have you thought any more about taking the elixir?”

Cullen took a steadying breath. Once she had been certain they’d given Samson the slip, she had told him about Vivienne’s alchemical research into preventing red lyrium corruption, and revealed she’d taken an additional bottle of the mysterious concoction. She’d wanted to give it to him as soon as she’d rescued him from the cultists, but ever wary of putting strange substances in his body, Cullen had asked her to let him think about it.

“I have,” Cullen said carefully. “It troubles me that it’s the only sample we’ve got. If it can truly protect people against red lyrium corruption, it ought to be studied, not wasted on me.”

“I don’t think it would be wasted. You’ve had extended exposure to red lyrium. The likelihood that might happen again isn’t low. Everyone in that town kept telling me how susceptible Templars are, due to a…” She swallowed. “A pre-existing habit. If we want to keep the Red Jennies as allies, having this contingency would be important, I think.”

“And do we know anything about those who have stopped taking lyrium?” Cullen asked softly. “How they might react?”

“You’re still the only one I know of who’s done that. Did Vivienne say anything about it, when she…?”

Cullen sighed. “She was short on explanations, but given the state I was in, I may have forgotten. I think I had a fever for some of it, and was in considerable pain. That fall did me no favors.”

Thalia leaned her forehead against his. “I was so worried. I thought I might’ve lost you for good.”

It was the first time admitting that to anyone, even herself. She blinked hard; she could hear the edge in her voice, making her teeter close to tears.

“Well, you did not.” Cullen leaned in and kissed her nose. “So it isn’t worth dwelling on what-ifs.”

That was easy for him to say. He didn’t know about the cave, and who she’d left inside it, staring at her with those haunted grey eyes.

She pressed her lips against his, tentatively. Cullen returned the kiss, entwining his hands with hers and giving them a reassuring squeeze. Thalia wished she could lose herself in this moment; when he tried to draw her closer, she pulled back and sighed.

“Even so, I’d feel better knowing you were protected.” She put her hands on either side of his face. He was so rarely clean-shaven, even in the Inquisition days, and she found herself drawing her thumb across the smooth skin of his cheek. “I noticed there’s an herbalist in camp. Maybe I can speak to her about replicating the sample.” She suspected they would need an alchemist to truly understand what they were doing, but she doubted the likelihood of finding one with their current resources. “If you knew we could make more, would you take it?”

Cullen hesitated. “Vivienne’s notes indicated that taking the elixir when one already has the red lyrium corruption might be fatal, didn’t they?”

Thalia averted her gaze. “Yes.”

Cullen pressed his lips together. “Then I suppose I’d like to make damn sure that hasn’t happened before I drink it.”

“It hasn’t.” Thalia refused to believe otherwise. “Vivienne admitted as much to me. She watched you for days.”

“And do we know how long onset takes?” Cullen asked. “Or is it just that with some it’s more obvious than others? Rylen still seemed mostly intact, and that man with the cheekbones. And Samson… if it wasn’t for his armor…”

“And his eyes.” Thalia tilted her head, staring into Cullen’s. They were their usual brown, warmed with bits of gold in the firelight. “Your eyes are fine.”

Cullen frowned. “I’ve never been close enough to Samson to tell.”

Thalia froze.

She tried to turn away, but it was too late — he’d seen the panic in her. “Thalia, wait.” His hand was at her elbow, gripping her urgently. He searched her face. “Do you remember what I asked you back on the mountain, before we got separated?”

This again. Thalia did not want to dredge any of this up, especially not now. “Cullen, you’re tired. I’m exhausted. Is this really the time to—”

“Do you know what Samson told me, when I was in the dungeon at Skyhold?” Cullen’s voice had gone low and dangerous. “He said that I don’t deserve you.” He took a slow breath. “He showed up with a full battalion of Red Templars in that clearing, but you were the only one he wanted.”

The blood pounded against Thalia’s temples. When she closed her eyes, she could still feel the cold metal of his armor weighing her down, hear the horrible rasp in her ear. I’ll see you in that dress, my dear, one way or another.

She should have killed him.

Why hadn’t she killed him?

“What has he done to you?” Cullen whispered.

“Nothing,” Thalia yelped. “Nothing.”

Worry lines creased his forehead. “Are you sure?” Cullen drew the hair from her forehead, making her shiver. “I’m not angry, if that’s what you’re worried about. This isn’t your fault.”

You won’t say that when you learn the truth. “He kissed me,” she blurted.

“That son of a bitch.” Cullen’s expression darkened. She felt him tense against her.

“I smashed a teapot over his head,” she added quickly.

Cullen stilled. She worried that he would get up that instant and storm out of the camp, in search of wherever Samson was lurking.

To her shock, a smile spread on his face like a spiderweb crack. He burst into laughter. “Did you? Did you really?”

Slowly, Thalia nodded, unsure what about that he found so funny. He pulled her closer, and this time she let him, concentrating on the heat of his chest and the few layers of fabric that separated them. He gathered her hair and brushed it over one shoulder.

Was he… proud of her?

Chuckling, he said, “I would have loved to see the look on his face.”

That couldn’t possibly be true, but Thalia felt as though she’d found a loophole on a difficult exam question and passed the test regardless. I don’t need to tell him the rest. What would it matter? It will just cause him undue stress.

She knew these excuses were flimsy, but more stress was the last thing either of them needed. She liked how sturdy he felt as she leaned against him. She wrapped her arms around his neck. The collar of her robe slipped open, and he traced the line of her clavicle, his fingers catching on the hem of the thin shift beneath.

Cullen let out an unsteady breath, eyes on the curve of her breast. “Maker, I have missed this. Missed you. I thought for so long I’d never see you again.”

“Hey, no dwelling on what-ifs, remember? I’m right here.”

Thalia kissed him, and a hunger grew between them. He palmed her cheek, fingers in her hair. Their mouths were hot and insistent. They kissed and touched a little longer, until Cullen let out a small groan against her lips.

“Would it be too terribly forward, to ask if we could…?” He sounded almost embarrassed to say it.

“Make love?” Thalia grinned coyly. “I thought you’d never ask.”

“It’s just — not the most ideal circumstances.” He glanced at their surroundings. “I mean, what if Rainier is somewhere out there, skulking about?”

Thalia stifled a giggle. “Then I suppose we’ll have to be quiet, won’t we?”

He quirked a brow, and all at once they were laughing again: stupid, exhausted, delirious laughter that came from the belly. They laughed until it hurt; laughed until there were tears.

Chapter Text

Thalia helped him out of his shirt and breeches; Cullen removed her robe and shift. They were both too thin, with fresh scars and fading cuts and bruises from the hard months they’d spent apart. Exposed like this they grew shy, running hands over each other, trying to remember the contour of one another’s bodies. Their relationship had been fresh and new the last time they’d done this, on an uncharacteristically warm, rainy evening in Skyhold when Cullen had managed to sneak into her tower after dinner. He’d stayed the night, joking it was because his roof leaked.

That will happen when there’s a giant hole in it, she’d teased him.

They were trying to get the hang of it back then, loving and being loved, and making love too. They were both unused to it all: lifetimes of neglect and loneliness compounded. They’d had to peel that away, layer by painful layer, and Thalia realized they still hadn’t fully managed it. Her limbs felt clumsy and atrophied. They’d never done this without the myriad comforts of their keep, and the fumbling around grew extreme until she finally pressed a hand against his chest to stay him. “All right. How are we going to do this?”

Cullen let out an exasperated chuckle. “Lie down on the bedroll? And I’ll—”

“Attack from above?”

Cullen cackled. “Maker, please don’t say it like that.”

He helped her onto her back, sweeping her long mass of hair away from her head. He lie beside her, propped up on an elbow, taking her in. Thalia was grateful for the little wood stove, as her extremities were chilly when they faced away from it. Her stomach fluttered, watching him. He was so beautiful, the hair mussed and loose against his forehead. The desire in his gaze burned. It was that sort of desire she had never quite known what to do with, from him or Blackwall or any other man. It took its gentlest form in Cullen, and she found it easy to slip her hand in his and beckon him closer.

He lifted one of her legs gently, bending it at the knee — her breath caught — and then he settled above her, trying to fit in all the correct places. He kissed her neck and collarbone; she slipped her arms around him and buried fingers in his hair. She stared up, at the firelight flickering on the pointed corner of the tent’s ceiling. She tried to focus on the feeling of his mouth, trailing gentle kisses between her breasts, on his thumb drawing slowly across a nipple. Her breathing grew shallow with need. She gripped him across the shoulder blades and drew her legs up further, shifting so that their hips could meet.

He looked up, kissed her. “Is this all right?”

“Mmhm.” She hummed with delight.

“Shall I keep going?” He searched her eyes.

“Please.”

Cullen had always handled her so delicately. Thalia ached with a sad sort of wanting. The world she’d hoped to inherit with him had vanished like ashes slipping through their fingers. This was the best they could do, and it was a miracle they’d made it this far.

He kept a close eye on her — she remembered that he liked to watch her face when they started, to make sure he wasn’t hurting her — but when she felt him against her thigh she realized the mistake. Jolted by dread, she gasped, “Ugh. Cullen, wait.”

“What?” He tensed against her and withdrew, eyes widening. “What is it? Have I—”

“It isn’t you.” Thalia threw an arm across her eyes, sighing in aggravation. “I can’t believe I’ve been so stupid. I never even thought about it.”

“It?”

“Protection. For us.” All that talk about the red lyrium corruption, and yet the more mundane realities had completely slipped her mind.

“Oh. Right.” Cullen scrubbed a palm down his face. “I don’t suppose you’re still taking the correct potions.”

Thalia let out a bitter laugh. “After months in a cage? No.”

“Can you do the— what was it?” He waved his hand in the air in a vague approximation of a spell-cast. “A warding spell?”

She had done that their first time, as it came as a bit of a surprise to them both. More of a cunning woman’s knack than a proper spell, it had nevertheless made the rounds in the Ostwick Circle on the sly, as a little side spell every mage should know. Thalia tried to conjure it, knowing full well she was low on magical reserves. She tried once, twice, but like a flint and tinder against a wet piece of wood, she could not coax the spell to life in her hand.

“It’s been a long day,” she muttered.

“It’s all right.” Cullen kissed her forehead and gave her a smile, though there was disappointment in his eyes. “We don’t have to tonight. We can try again another time.”

“No, no.” What if there was no other time? Thalia had foolishly thought they’d had all the time in the world back at Skyhold. That Corypheus was in retreat and wouldn’t dare attempt an assault on their headquarters. That she and Cullen were so close to learning how to weaken Samson’s armor — the armor that had thrummed and glowed and pinned her down, while he whispered how futile it was to fight. “I want you, Cullen. Right now. I do.”

Cullen hesitated, shifted against her, frowned so that a crease of concentration formed between his eyebrows. “There are, perhaps, other ways. We could give each other pleasure — differently.” He glanced at her uncertainly, as if reading an untested strategy from a war tactic manual. “Or I could, er, remove myself. Before climax.”

Thalia’s eyebrows shot upward. “Differently… how?”

“I’ve heard it said one could use only the hands. Or the, uh, mouth.”

Thalia stared at him, lips slightly agape, trying to sort the suggestion. “And that’s something we could do at the — same time?”

“Perhaps? I’m not clear on all of the logistics. Obviously one technique seems as though it could be easier to perform simultaneously than the other…” He was bright red in the face.

“Let’s try the other thing,” Thalia said in a rush. “Removing yourself early.” They had escaped too much real danger lately to risk injury putting body parts in unfamiliar places.

Cullen looked infinitely relieved at the suggestion.

Fortified by their plan, he slipped inside her. After a few murmured assurances, Thalia let her head fall back, trying to focus entirely on the feel of him, inside and out. She traced the line of the muscles in his back, shoulders, neck, but they struggled and bucked unevenly. “Slower,” he urged into her ear, and when she matched his pace he shuddered. “Like that. Good. Is that all right?”

“Yes,” Thalia breathed, though in truth she wished he would go a little faster. This felt like teasing, and lying here without coverings made her feel exposed. She watched the shadows dance on the tent wall from the wood stove, and there was no mistaking what they were doing. She watched the silhouette of her breasts move in time with his thrusts. The sight brought her a flash of embarrassment mixed with erotic thrill.

“Cullen,” she said, trying to get his attention.

“Thalia,” he murmured into her neck, nuzzling the mass of hair that had gathered there.

“Cullen,” she said with more insistence. “Do you think anyone can see us?”

“Hm?” He slowed, raising his head. He blinked at her, eyes cloudy with lust.

She gestured toward the tent wall. Cullen followed her gaze. “Maker, is that what we look like?”

“I can see the outline of your ass,” Thalia hissed, and they began to laugh.

“No one’s out there,” Cullen said when the giggles had subsided. “If there were, we would have heard—”

Outside the tent came the sound of indistinct movement.

Thalia squeaked in terror, and Cullen shushed her sharply. “It’s a camp full of deviants,” he muttered. “I don’t know what I expected.”

He leaned forward, grabbing the folded blanket from the top of the trunk, and laid it over them. She helped him tug it into place, so that they were huddled together in a small fuzzy cave. Thalia’s vision went dark, and she blinked to readjust her eyesight. Cullen’s face hovered above hers, his hair messy around his head in a staticky halo. He gazed down at her with a dreamy sort of grin.

“You’re beautiful,” he murmured.

Thalia flushed. “I love you,” she blurted, and then stupidly felt tears pricking her eyes. “I love you, and I’m sorry, I’m so sorry—”

“Shh, shh. I love you, too. What are you apologizing for?”

She blinked, and blinked, and she was in the dark of the other cave, scrambling off of Samson with the dagger in her hands. The clean blade glinted in the dull light.

“Hurry up,” she whispered, as he had whispered, when he’d wanted her to slit his throat. “What are you waiting for? Please.”

When he did, her breaths began to come in soft gasps. It felt good, so good, maybe the best she’d ever felt during their few inexpert couplings. She was hot and swollen with arousal, and the hard length of him was sliding against the heart of it. She rocked her hips into his thrusts, pulling her knees back as far as she could. She scrambled for purchase and dug her nails into the taut muscles of his back. “Please,” she repeated, although she wasn’t sure what she was asking for. She wanted both sweet release and for this to never end; she wanted to stay here with the man she loved and the rest of it could burn — all her stupid, agonized decisions and those who tried to flaunt their power over her.

Cullen tried to shush her again, pressing a finger to her lips. “They’re going to hear,” he said, though he didn’t sound like he cared overmuch.

She took his hand and flattened his palm over her mouth. He looked at her, surprised, before one corner of his lips quirked upward in a mischievous grin. “Is that how you want it?”

Thalia nodded. After that her noises of pleasure came muffled, in time with his grunts of effort and the rhythm of him inside her. She closed her eyes; if she just lost herself in this warm pulsing feeling, she could escape what she was running from. The hand on her mouth was warm flesh, not cold metal. Gentle, not mean. And she loved him, she loved him, she loved him—

She climaxed fast and unexpectedly. She arched her back and writhed, straining against his hand with a long, stifled groan. Cullen gasped, his own pace growing frantic as she squeezed her muscles hard against his erection. They rode the wave of it together, his face buried in her hair.

When it was over, his palm slipped from her mouth and he lay limply on top of her. They were drenched with sweat and panting.

“Maker,” Cullen said. His voice was raw. He rolled off her, pressed a hand to his forehead and raked fingers through the hair that had fallen on his brow. “I wasn’t sure how it was all going to go at first, but…” He laughed, breathless. “That hand thing was a bit impish.”

“You didn’t like it?” Thalia asked vaguely, concentrating on the good ache he’d left behind.

“Oh, no, I liked it. I liked all of it.”

Thalia let out a euphoric giggle. She turned on her side so she could slide under his arm. He settled her there, wrapping the blanket around them both.

It was only then, when she was moving about, that she realized. Dismay churned in her stomach. “Cullen! What happened to removing yourself early?”

Cullen pulled the hand from his face, blinking dumbly. “Oh. I…” A deep scarlet crept into his cheeks.

“You forgot.”

He let out a weary sigh. “Yes.”

Fury seized her, mixed with an intense melancholy. She wanted to yell at him. She wanted to forgive him. After all they had been through, it was just one mistake, relatively minor in the scheme of things, wasn’t it? There were remedies to pursue after the fact, tansy mixed with deathroot and vandal aria, maybe pennyroyal. If the herbalist had them. Thalia’s throat itched.

She thought, absurdly, of her mother, who had taught her little before shipping her off to the Ostwick Circle and was almost certainly dead now. Men only want one thing, dear, and they’ll promise you anything to get it. Gird your loins, that was the lesson, told to little highborn girls everywhere to keep their marriage prospects intact.

That she was thinking about it now, when her “marriage prospects” hadn’t been relevant in more than a decade, made her angrier. And it wasn’t even Cullen’s fault — it was she who insisted they keep on. So what did that make her? Several choice words came to mind, all made worse by the memory of her mother’s disdain as she uttered them.

Cullen was watching her curiously, the silence extending.

“It’s fine,” Thalia mumbled. “I’ll take care of it. Don’t worry.”

“Thalia…” Cullen trailed off. He sounded sad. He leaned over and smoothed the damp hair from her face. “You know whatever happens, we’re in this together, don’t you?”

Thalia swallowed against a lump in her throat. No, she supposed she didn’t. Survival had become her default goal long before she’d met him, long before the Inquisition had freed her from her life at the Circle. This nightmare brought her back so easily to old habits.

“Besides.” Cullen’s hand dropped to the flat of her stomach. “It wouldn’t be the worst thing to happen, would it?”

Thalia stared at him, wondering if she’d misheard. “You’re kidding.”

Cullen blinked in surprise.

Thalia sat up so fast the blanket fell away. Her chest felt cold and exposed while her back to the wood stove burned. “The world is ending, and you want to bring a baby into it?”

“That’s not— Thalia, that’s not what I meant.” Cullen reached for her elbow. “I’m just saying, if something like that happened, it would be all right. I’d protect you. Both of you.”

His face was painfully earnest. He believed what he was saying. Thalia pressed an uncertain hand to her belly. He took this as encouragement and put his hand over hers, flashing a tentative smile. He wants this. Genuinely. The realization made her a little dizzy. She’d never thought about it seriously, having children. Not even when she and Cullen had made things official. It all seemed so abstract, something she’d consider when she was many years older. When the world was at peace. They’d never spoken about it, but she suspected that even if circumstances were ideal, their opinions on it would differ wildly.

And certainly not now. That’s… absurd.

Maker, what if Samson found her again, and she was carrying Cullen’s child?

Her pulse pounded painfully behind her eyes. I should have killed him.

Why didn’t I kill him?

Chapter Text

Thalia waited until Cullen’s breathing steadied, and slipped out from under his arm. She stood shakily, putting on her chemise and robe by the dying embers in the stove. Her boots were hard to manage without waking him — he shifted in his sleep and she froze, balancing on one foot, not daring to breathe until he settled again. She braided her hair, winding and pinning it at the nape of her neck. Then she dug through her pouch and removed the philter of purple black. The viscous liquid oozed around inside.

She put it in the pocket of her robe, ducked out of the tent, and nearly fell over at the sight of Blackwall.

He sat on a fallen log by a fire pit that had been set up adjacent to the cluster of tents. The fire crackled, illuminating his chiseled face and intense gaze. He had his sword in one hand and a whetstone in the other, hovering over the bare steel. He said nothing, but his gaze bored into hers, unblinking.

“How long have you been here?” Thalia demanded as she straightened. Her hands went to the lapels and belt of her robe to make sure she was securely fastened.

“Why?” Blackwall shot back, lip curling. “Do you think it’s a crime for a man to move freely about his own camp?”

He knows. He’d probably been there the entire time. She felt heat and horror rising in her face. All their little jokes and japes — it’s a camp full of deviants; I don’t know what I expected — came flying back to her.

She lifted her chin and asked, with as much authority as she could muster, “Where can I find your herbalist at this hour?”

Blackwall sniffed. He laid aside the whetstone and pointed. “Go past that tree and take a left when you hit the center of camp. There’ll be a circle of wagons. She’s in there.”

“Thank you.”

Thalia marched away before he had a chance to ask any questions.

The fog that blanketed the woods by day made them impenetrably black by night. No moon shone overhead and the stars were distant memories. Aside from the fire pits and staked torches, the landscape beyond possessed the eerie sense of a void. The activity of the camp was winding down for the evening, and aside from Blackwall, Thalia saw few outlaws. One sat by a smoldering cookfire in the center of camp, nursing a final tankard of ale; another overstepped her unsure feet, disappearing through a tent flap. Thalia saw no familiar face, and felt grateful. Blackwall had been bad enough — she had no desire to explain to Sera what she was still doing up.

She reached the circle of wagons, standing exactly where Blackwall had said. She guessed which one belonged to the herbalist by the lines of drying herbs strung up along a ramshackle wooden table out front. Thalia worried she might have to wake a stranger, but was relieved to see a lithe elven woman emerge from behind a stack of crates, cradling an armful of potions. She had ashen blond hair curling around her long ears, and the bare face of a city elf, not a Dalish. She looked to be a few decades Thalia’s senior, at the least, though she sometimes had a difficult time guessing ages with elves.

“Good evening,” Thalia said uncertainly, stepping forward. “Might I have a moment…?”

The woman looked up, her gaze drifting to Thalia’s attire. “You need something?” Her voice, though not unkind, was accented with a rural Orlesian lilt.

Thalia’s hand tightened around the bottle in her pocket. “A few things, actually.”

The woman began arranging the vials into a smaller crate on the table. “Before or after?”

Thalia was startled. “I’m sorry?”

“You have a man on your mind, yes? Is it before or after?”

Thalia felt her cheeks grow warm. “After.”

The older woman tsked. “Next time, come to me before. But yes, I can assist. You will need to wait while I brew the tea. Please, have a seat.”

She motioned to a row of low barrels lining the back of her wagon. Thalia took a slow breath and sat on the top of one. From here, she could see the other side of the woman’s table, including the many crates and barrels she had stocked, all full of herbs, plants, and containers. She stoked the fire over a small cauldron, and began digging through her stores with practiced ease.

“How long since?”

Thalia pulled a face. “Perhaps an hour? Not even.”

The woman chuckled. “Wasting no time, eh?”

Thalia sighed. “I would like to deal with it as quickly as possible.”

“Smart girl. Would you like something for next time, as well?”

“You have those in stock?” Thalia tried not to sound surprised, but she’d needed to put in a special order with the herbalist for such things back at Skyhold.

“Of course I do. It is the end of the world, ma cherie. Everyone is doing what they can to feel alive.” The elf woman shot her a knowing look. “I am called Lautilde, by the way.”

“I’m Thalia,” she said softly.

“Oh yes, I know. The Inquisitor. It has been quite the word around camp.” Lautilde threw several herbs into the cauldron and stirred.

Thalia swallowed. “And I can trust you to be discreet, Lautilde?”

At that, Lautilde let out a cackle. “I have practiced medicine in many a village, and spent my best years amongst actors, minstrels, and other assorted riff-raff.” She brushed by Thalia, taking her face in her hands and planting a kiss on the top of her head. “I know secrets that would make your hair curl, little one.”

A lump formed in Thalia’s throat at the unexpected tenderness. She blinked rapidly to clear the onslaught of tears. “Would you like to hear another?”

Lautilde wiped her hands on her apron and cocked her head in curiosity. Thalia slid her hand into her robe pocket, tightening her fist around the philter.

Some time later, she returned to her tent, a bitter aftertaste lingering in her mouth. Thalia felt a bit off-kilter, but relieved. Blackwall sat where she’d left him, his whetstone sliding along the edge of the blade in long, slow strokes. His eyes were on the fire.

Irritation stirred in Thalia’s chest. “That must be the sharpest sword known to man by now.”

His eyes snapped to her; his hand paused. Thalia felt a strange pang to behold him like this. Terrible memories churned in her mind: sitting with him in the Herald’s Rest, growing more and more alarmed as he told a story she couldn’t follow — there’s always some dog out there, some fucking mongrel who doesn’t know how to stay away; his impassioned speech on the gallows in Val Royeaux; the way he’d looked at her through the bars of his cell.

This is why I told you we couldn’t be together, he said, with perfect loathing, while her heart rent in two.

Thalia stood before him now, wringing the sash on her robe, waiting for him to speak. She should march past him and settle back into Cullen’s tent, because it was none of Blackwall’s damn business. But the sight of him before her was so much like seeing a ghost that she couldn’t quite manage it.

“Did you get what you needed?”

She nodded, unable to meet his eyes. The pockets of her robe were heavy with additional potions, but only one stuck in her mind.

She chewed her lip and, with a huff, sat on a log opposite him around the fire pit. She arranged herself as stately as she could: back straight, knees together, hands folded in her lap. She forced herself to look at Blackwall and not flinch. “There’s something I’d like to discuss, while we’re both awake.”

“It can’t wait for the meeting tomorrow?” The one he’d called on her behalf, like the war councils of old.

Thalia shook her head.

Blackwall slowly sheathed the sword and put aside the scabbard. “I’m listening.”

Thalia took a breath, held it, thinking over what Lautilde had told her. “I think I might have a way to stop the spread of red lyrium corruption.”

His eyebrows shot upward. That wasn’t what he expected me to say, Thalia thought with some satisfaction.

“How?” Blackwall asked.

Thalia pulled out the philter and held it up for him to see. The bottle was black, threaded through with the darkest hint of violet in the firelight. “Vivienne was experimenting alchemically. Before I left her village, I… took the liberty of procuring a sample.”

Blackwall stared impassively at the bottle, then back to Thalia. “Does it work?”

Thalia swallowed. “She told me she and the townsfolk had success with the prototypes. I drank some as well. I don’t think she had a reason to lie.” About this, at least.

Blackwall remained in stone-faced silence, considering this. “May I see?”

Thalia stood and moved closer, holding out the bottle. When Blackwall reached for it, his fingers brushed hers, giving her a jolt. She swallowed hard, remembering the night he’d appeared in her quarters unannounced. Grabbing her. Kissing her. I had to see you. That had been her first kiss.

Thalia snatched her hand away, sat back down and examined her fingernails. She’d tried hard to scrub the dirt out from under them while in the bath.

Blackwall inspected the potion with the same level of scrutiny he used when analyzing a battlefield. “I don’t suppose Vivienne is still able to make more of the stuff.”

“I… doubt it. Considering the state of things when we escaped.” Thalia had been trying not to think of whether Vivienne had lived or died, fighting the Red Templars. “I looked for a formula in her notes, but you know her. She always kept things close to the chest.” Thalia licked her lips and continued, “I spoke to Lautilde about it. She thinks it might be possible to reverse engineer the components, given a proper laboratory.”

Blackwall snorted. “And where’s one of those?”

“Larger keeps sometimes have them. Or a city.”

“The closest city is Halamshiral.” His voice carried a note of disgust.

Images flashed through her mind: the Winter Palace, in all its splendor. Flitting from one opulent room to the next, trying to unravel the series of clues regarding the attempt on Empress Celene’s life. Court intrigue at its finest. She remembered visiting Dorian out in the courtyard, the cool night breeze hitting their faces as the minstrel played on. Vivienne stood in the foyer, subtly mocking Thalia’s clumsy attempts at the Game. And she’d strolled down the gallery stairs to see Blackwall, in his formal finery, coldly shutting down a courtier who thought him familiar. Thalia had walked right by the man who stared Blackwall in the face and wondered about the beard.

And I suspected nothing, she thought, feeling a little sick. Or maybe that was just the effects of the tea taking hold.

Cullen had been there too, of course. Handsome, concerned Cullen, still only a friend, though one who looked half a heartbeat away from tucking a stray hair from her face. He’d spent the evening surrounded by lustful suitors of all genders, setting off her envy. Had that really only been months ago? It felt like a lifetime.

“Is it safe?” Thalia asked now, with the eternal dark clouds swirling overhead. “I imagine Halamshiral is much changed from our last visit.”

Blackwall grunted. “Nowhere is safe. You don’t know the half of it.”

“Vivienne told me some things. That Empress Celene is dead and someone named Calpernia rules in her stead.” Thalia combed her fingers together over one knee. “Is that true?”

“As far as I know. According to the Red Jennies, every major city in Orlais is in the hands of Corypheus’s forces. Venatori and Red Templars alike.” Blackwall slowly tilted the bottle this way and that, watching the thick liquid creep around inside. “Calpernia is supposedly the most favored of all his generals. That’s why he granted her the Orlesian crown.”

Thalia’s eyebrows shot upward. Would Samson agree? “Is she using Halamshiral as her seat of power?”

Blackwall shook his head. “Val Royeaux.”

“Thank the Maker for small favors.” Security would be laxer there and in the surrounding areas, then. Perhaps infiltrating Halamshiral for this purpose would be more plausible than it seemed.

Blackwall eyed her with a flinty gaze. “If you could learn the components, what would you do with it?”

“Replicate it, if I can.” Thalia smiled tightly. “Then at least maybe we’d have a fighting chance against Samson and his Red Templars.”

Blackwall sighed, getting to his feet. He crossed the space between them and stood towering above her. He held out the bottle for her.

Thalia did not like sitting there, in his looming shadow. She shivered and got to her feet, pulling the robe right across her chest, where Cullen had lain his head not even an hour ago. She took the philter and put it back in her pocket. Her gaze lingering there, despite the feel of his eyes on her.

“What about the Commander?” Blackwall’s voice was low and gravely in her ear, almost an accusation.

She forced herself to turn her face toward his. She could just barely make out the chiseled lines of his cheekbones, the crooked nose, the immaculately groomed beard. Only his eyes shone in the dim light — that intense, unyielding grey. “What about him?”

“You’d have to be blind not to see he’s been through the wringer.” Blackwall crossed his arms. “Seems you and he left out quite a bit at dinner.”

Thalia shut her eyes. Their account of past events had been truncated at best, outright deceptive at worst. But it had been evident Cullen didn’t trust Blackwall, nor the entire gang of Red Jennies. Thalia, improvising, had been careful to keep the details sparse, at least until they were rested enough to regain keener judgment. “It’s a long story. We’d planned to tell it tomorrow, at the meeting.”

“Well, if you want to commandeer my men for a suicide mission in order to further your science experiment, I think I have a right to know now.”

Anger boiled in Thalia’s chest. She’d tried so hard to keep this civil, but he always refused to play by the rules. “What makes you think you have a right to know anything?” she demanded. “Sitting outside our tent, just — listening in, apparently—”

“Wouldn’t’ve wasted two on you, if I’d known,” Blackwall shot back.

Thalia was horrified. “I can’t believe you’re admitting it.”

“Oh, you think I haven’t heard worse, my lady?” Blackwall sneered.

Thalia put her face in her hands. Don’t you dare cry; it will give him too much satisfaction. It was embarrassing enough to consider him a voyeur, but her argument with Cullen still simmered in her mind. Could Blackwall have heard all of that as well? She wrapped her arms around her torso and shivered.

“Should’ve just told me,” Blackwall grumbled, moving back to his seat by the fire.

“Was it ever any of your business?” Thalia asked. “After you pushed me away?”

Blackwall froze mid-stride. His broad shoulders tensed, and his gaze strayed toward the firepit. The flames had burned down low. “We both made our choices.” He swallowed. “The Commander’s office was in full view of the stables.”

And she’d visited Blackwall first, always, before climbing the stone stairs to knock on Cullen’s office door. Even after she’d refused him, and all he had to offer was silence, arms crossed, expression like marble.

Thalia’s shoulders slumped. She sat down on the log, rubbing her forehead, too fatigued to continue whatever this absurd conversation was. Blackwall stood unmoving, staring into the embers.

“I love him,” Thalia said, voice breaking. “And I thought I lost him. Twice now. It’s a miracle he’s still alive.”

Blackwall said nothing.

“I got that potion for him, but he doesn’t want to take it. Not if learning more about it can save lives.” She wasn’t sure why she was saying this, but the anguish that accompanied the words surprised her. “I’m so scared, Blackwall. Everyone says Templars exposed to the red lyrium will fall victim to it sooner than later. You want to know what happened to him? Samson happened. When we were in Skyhold, Samson wanted to break him. Left the red lyrium outside his cell, just out of reach. When I found him he was half-mad and covered in bruises. The things he did to try to reach the red lyrium… and then, in Vivienne’s village, they were so terrified of the stuff. They called the corruption the rot. Vivienne locked him in a cell for a week to see if he’d — change. And when he didn’t, she still decided it was a wise political move to hand him over to her subjects, to sacrifice to some imagined god, just for what he represented.”

Thalia was panting by now, feeling shaky and nauseous. Blackwall turned slowly, watching her with his unknowable eyes. “So yes, I’d like to make that potion available to everyone I can. But I also want to make sure he’s safe from that terrible fate. I don’t know what Samson is capable of, but I know he won’t rest until he gets what he wants. And that can’t happen with Cullen in the way.”

Blackwall’s brows furrowed, ever so slightly. “And what does he want?”

Thalia wrung her hands. The mark on her palm spit a sickly green spark. “Me, I think. Not just the anchor, but… me.”

The area around his eyes softened. She thought she saw fear in there, but after a second it was gone. “Why?”

Thalia remembered the hopeful look on Samson’s face as he’d proffered that absurd box with a satin bow, and the viciousness with which he’d clamped a hand over her mouth. The silence grew unbearably loud. Tears pricking her eyes, she whispered, “Blackwall, I’ve made the most terrible mistake.”

He stared, and she worried he would scowl or sneer or make a snide comment. But he simply moved to her side and sat, albeit at at a respectable enough distance. He leaned his forearms on his thighs and said, “Try me, why don’t you? Can’t be worse than the ones I’ve made.”

Her heart leapt into her throat. She used to think, all too often, of a carriage trundling along a tree-lined road in rural Orlais, and the shadows in which a younger, clean-shaven Thom Rainier had skulked with his soldiers. But the months had blurred his sins into the background of memory, almost unrecognizable to her.

She opened her mouth and was telling him, quite suddenly, of Samson. Of his trembling hands and his offer to her in the Skyhold tower. Of the cat and mouse game he was determined to play. Every detail she dared not speak to Cullen poured from her lips, from Samson’s look of fear on the balcony to the way he watched her in the clearing, with something akin to longing. The cave, and the dress, and the blade she’d held to his neck, feeling the way he trembled beneath her.

“And I couldn’t do it,” she lamented, wiping tears from her eyes. “He wanted me to. He wanted to die right there. All I’d had to do was stop resisting, and he would have shoved the dagger in his own throat.”

She’d wrested the blade away, scrambled off him, and run. Half expecting him to tackle her again, knock her unconscious, do who knew what.

But he hadn’t. He hadn’t.

“I don’t know what it means,” Thalia said helplessly.

Blackwall was quiet for a long time. When he spoke again, it was with a low, zealous fury. “It means we know the bastard’s weakness. And when he comes for you again — and he will, men like that can’t help themselves — he will be that much easier to kill.”

Thalia looked at him in alarm. “I just told you I wasn’t able to.”

“With all due respect, my lady — you’ve got a kind heart, filled with compassion.” Blackwall lifted his head to her, and she thought there might be the ghost of a smile hiding under his beard. “You ought to leave the killing to those of us most suited for it.”

Chapter Text

Much could be gleaned by looking someone in the eye.

Samson did it with every new mageling brought to the Gallows. They teach you that, not to make eye contact with them. Something about not getting attached. But how can you go about, day in and day out with someone, and never give them the one decent courtesy of meeting their gaze?

Besides, you learn a lot. The eyes are the windows to the soul; one of the grifters he’d known in his adolescence told him that. Easier to get a handle on what someone will or won’t give you, if you get that eye contact. Easier to tell what they want. Some of those mages, they just wanted attention, a kind word, a friendly face to tell them it would all be okay. Others wanted tangible things — easy enough to get, in exchange for a little extra from their allotted lyrium bottles. Others wanted things he could never give, and those wore on a man, over the years. Still. The lesson served him well, all the way to army command. His Red Templars needed for the same things the mages did, but perhaps with some more urgency. The extra mile’s worth walking.

Double-edged sword, though.

You look them in the eye, and they can see in, too.

“General?”

No, no, not yet.

What did he see in Thalia Trevelyan’s eyes?

Fear, at first. Of course. Every captor knew that look in their prisoner’s gaze. But no, go past that first night in the Skyhold tower. There was the clearing in the woods, the altar to some false god, Thalia up on the dais, looking at him. He’d felt so close to her then. He thought she’d understood his purpose; maybe she’d come to him quietly after all. Until that goddamned speech got all the peasants riled.

Then he knew he’d have to be clever.

Her eyes were so blue in the cave. Did she know how they shone? Like the water off the Wounded Coast on the warmest, brightest days. Samson would take her there sometime, right at the magic hour when the sun sinks low and orange and glimmers on the bay. When you can jump off the jagged rocks and plunge down into the depths and the cold will shock you but it’s so welcome after the day’s heat. Her eyes will be on him, and she’ll be smiling shyly, and he’ll convince her they’re alone and no one will see. She can slip out of her clothes, right there on the rocky beach. He’ll help her, a hand on one alabaster shoulder, brushing back her hair, glowing red…

“General. Please. You’re needed.” Some idiot with a Starkhaven accent. “You awake in there?”

Piss off. Who did he even know from Starkhaven?

Stupid dream, anyway. The sun didn’t shine at all anymore.

Back to the cave. Her rejection had hurt, Samson wasn’t too proud not to admit it. But her spunk excited him, the rough and tumble of it, the scramble — oh, how she writhed. Why don’t they all do that? Am I not paying them enough? When she was on top of him, with the dagger. She couldn’t tell through the armor, but he was rock hard under there.

At least until he’d clapped his fist over her delicate knuckles and tried to force her hand.

A door banged open; heavy footsteps followed. “General, I hate to disturb you, but we’ve urgent business to attend to. Are you— oh.”

Samson groaned and rolled over, knocking wayward bottles to the floor. The light was blinding. He thrust up a hand to shield it and cracked his achey, burning eyes. A blurry figure stood above his bed, or maybe two.

He coughed. “Meredith?”

A pause. “Meredith’s dead, General.”

Fuck. “I mean — Mareth.” No, it was the Starkhaven idiot, better known as Rylen. “Where’s Mareth?”

“You sent him back to the camp to fetch the rest of your things.” Rylen stood there, looking uncomfortable. “You don’t remember?”

“Of course I remember.” Yes, it was coming back to him now. After the battle, they had quartered in the nearby keep of Comte de la Something. The Orlesian fop had been all too happy to lend General Samson the lord’s chambers, and his victorious battalion had taken up residence with him.

Well, mostly victorious.

Samson managed to get an arm on the featherbed beneath him and shoved himself into an upright position. More empty vials scattered. He was in nightshirt only, his other hand clutching the pride and joy of his creation to his stomach, crumpled into a ball. He unfurled the dress as surreptitiously as he could. It looked little worse for wear — a bit wrinkled, stained with sweat and the rest, but nothing a good laundering couldn’t fix. He brought it to his face and inhaled as the silky fabric caressed his cheek. It had smelled more like Thalia last night, but if he closed his eyes, he could make out the lingering notes of her scent.

Rylen cleared his throat.

Right. Samson let the dress slip through his hands and flutter to the mattress. He pressed the pads of his thumbs against his brow right above his eyes, where the headache was already starting. “What did you want, Lieutenant?”

Rylen had the countenance of a Templar, born and bred. His rigid posture and the way he constantly tucked his hands behind his back reminded Samson of recruitment drills — all the lining up in neat formation, the bowing and groveling. But Rylen had some mark of rebellion to him: the thin vertical lines of ink running the length of his handsome face.

Samson knew a trifle here and there of other Marcher cities and their love of tattoos, a cultural touchstone that had never quite migrated to Kirkwall. In Ostwick, they had become a symbol of oppression; the design adorning Thalia’s right eye reminded a keen onlooker that she had once been the Circle’s property. In Starkhaven, the opposite was true. Different styles of ink claimed membership to different guilds and gangs among the city’s lowlifes. Samson didn’t know enough about it to guess which Rylen had belonged to, but the evidence betrayed a past Samson begrudgingly found intriguing. It was too bad Rylen never spoke of it, nor let the mask of the perfect Knight-Captain slip, even as he guzzled the red with the rest of them. Samson had a dim memory of their clinking chalices at the high table in the lord’s hall last night. Rylen had toasted to their victory before Samson had retired early with all the bottles that now lay empty and scattered around him.

He squinted at Rylen. In the dim light of morning, Rylen looked about as fresh-faced as his men ever got, with the red lyrium veins spiderwebbing across the left side of his face. Like his other lieutenant, Barris, the corruption was slow-moving, with Rylen’s mind, body, and personality intact.

“The Comte wishes you to sit in judgment of some local matters, ser.”

Samson groaned. “Of course he does.” That was the problem with leaving Skyhold. These provinces were so isolated that the petty lords loved handing responsibility off to any passing authority figure.

Rylen paused. “And there’s the matter of the interrogation of the prisoner.”

Samson dropped his hands from his face, remembering. “Ah, yes. That.” He felt a tiny flare of hope.

He eased himself off the featherbed. The bed was a four poster, with curtains to ward off the chill that cling to these drab stone keeps, but Samson had forgotten to draw them before he’d passed out. As soon as he got to his feet, his knees buckled, and he grabbed for the heavy fabric to keep from sprawling.

Rylen moved swiftly, catching Samson on his other side. He hoisted a shoulder up under Samson’s armpit. “Easy now, General.”

“I don’t need your help,” Samson snarled, pushing at Rylen’s sculpted chest. He stumbled away; the laces of the nightshirt pulled and separated, leaving his shoulder and upper chest exposed. Samson leaned heavily on the bedpost until the floor felt steady again. He pressed his palms hard against the wood, trying to stop the shakes.

He could feel Rylen’s eyes on him, searing him with their pity. Samson glared over his shoulder. “What are you staring at?”

“Nothing, ser.” Rylen tore his gaze from Samson’s bare skin, where the scarring looked more mottled than ever. “Would you like another bottle? It might even you out.”

Samson yanked the shirt together and redid the lacing as best he could. It was an absurd question, because the answer was obvious. “Yes, you fool. And be quick about it.”

One thing that could be said for Rylen: he was good at following orders. He crossed the chambers, past the sitting area with its gilded chairs and chaise lounges, and the hearth that the servants must have snuck in and lit when Samson was unconscious, to the trunk that every Red Templar in every one of Samson’s battalions treated more preciously than gold. They all had trunks like this, in their tents or their quarters, whether infantry or general.

Rylen threw it open and withdrew the glittering philter of crimson. He hesitated, just for a moment, as the sweet song reached them both. Then he shook it off and returned to Samson’s side, holding it out.

Samson was parched, all of a sudden. He swiped the bottle from Rylen’s hand and took a deep drink. Immediately, everything felt warmer, clearer. The tremor in his hands subsided. Samson tossed the bottle on the floor with the rest, to be collected by the Comte’s domestics. He nodded reluctantly to Rylen. “Thanks.”

Rylen shrugged. “Anytime, General. Do you need additional assistance?”

Now that the lyrium shakes were leaving him, Samson became aware of all manner of scrapes and bruises that had beset his body since the battle. Wrestling a girl to the ground in full plate had seemed such an appealing idea at the time. When the red ebbed from his veins and the armor came off, however, he was forced to confront the fact that he was no longer in the prime of his youth.

“Help me to the privy, will ya?”

If the prospect appalled Rylen, he didn’t show it. That disappointed Samson a little. Instead, the man dutifully escorted him to the adjacent washroom. Samson wanted to believe the red was already giving him the strength he needed, but he knew he shouldn’t overdo it. The highs on the red stuff were high, but the lows were getting lower all the time.

“You were friends with Cullen, yeah?” The words escaped Samson before he could clamp them down. That was the only other thing he knew about Rylen, aside from the accent and the tattoos.

The Starkhavener hesitated. “Aye. I was.”

He seemed to want to leave it at that, which Samson found suspicious. He lingered at the threshold to the privy, feigning the need to catch his breath. He remembered Cullen on that dais, on hands and knees next to Thalia, caught up in something none of them understood. The red must not have taken hold in him after all — although he’d been so haggard and worn, it was hard to tell. Samson set his jaw. He should have poured the damn chalice down Cullen’s throat himself. Then all of this could have been avoided. But no, he’d wanted to play the long game. Wanted to hear his old friend beg.

“You served under him in Kirkwall, after the city fell to ruin,” Samson pointed out. “And in the Inquisition, for many months.”

Rylen stiffened. “With all due respect, General, we’ve been over this already.”

That they had, when the once Knight-Captain Rylen appeared at the gates of Skyhold. He’d been considered lost in the siege that had broke the Inquisition and taken the keep, but had apparently crawled, half-starving, through the snowy mountains from the smoldering wreckage wrought by the second battle of Haven. Samson had not known what he’d originally sought there. In the holding cells they’d made of the painted rotunda, Rylen had been frost-bitten and half-mad from the lack of lyrium, shaking all over.

I didn’t know where else to go, he’d said, when Samson crouched outside his wrought iron cage and inquired in his gentle voice. That was how he knew Rylen could be turned, in the end. Some men claimed undying loyalty to a person or a cause, but Samson knew what happened to a Templar freshly severed from the lyrium. They were usually the sort who never thought to question their supply and where it came from.

Rylen’s once-close companionship with Commander Cullen did give Samson pause, from time to time. Perhaps because in a kinder world, he could see the relationship he and Cullen might have had, working together under Corypheus.

“How did he look, do you think?” Samson asked softly.

Rylen regarded him closely. He was probably aware this was a test. “I’ve seen him look better,” he said, voice carefully neutral.

Samson cracked a smirk. “When he was still on the bottle?”

Rylen glanced away. “In truth, General, he never told me he’d stopped. I found out from you.”

Interesting. Perhaps the two hadn’t been as close as Samson had imagined. There’d been a time, when they were both younger men, that Samson would have known immediately if Cullen had decided to do something as stupid as quit lyrium. As it was, he’d only sorted it when he’d tried to send the blue down to Cullen’s cell as a display of goodwill, and the former Commander had left it untouched with impressive resolve. What was it Cullen had called himself, when Samson had tried to save him in the main hall, before the girl mucked everything up? An addict. Just like you.

With such shame behind it. Spoken like someone who had never been down in the gutter, forced to scrape together enough coin from begging and ferrying mages to afford the next hit of dust at its preposterous Carta markup. No. For Cullen it had been easy, apparently. For Cullen, everything was always so goddamn simple.

But what use was it wasting precious daylight on that bastard?

“Don’t go anywhere,” Samson growled at Rylen. “I’ll be right out.”

The Comte’s privy was as luxurious as one might imagine, and Samson could imagine quite a bit. It was even more spacious than the one in his Skyhold quarters, almost half as large as the lord’s chambers itself. The stone walls were inlaid with diamond panes of stained glass depicting, it seemed, scenes from Andraste’s life — not Samson’s first choice, but commandeers couldn’t always be choosers. A generous washbasin dominated one corner; a round wooden tub that could easily fit five people occupied another. Samson hadn’t yet had a chance to spend time in the tub, but given how achey he was, even with the red lyrium to smooth out the cracks, a soak was certainly in his future.

Assuming he got what he needed from their prisoner. Madame de Fer — the Iron Lady, as some called her — had been a formidable opponent in the field. Samson hoped a stay in the keep’s lightless cells might soften her up a little.

Even the latrine was generous, the seat as comfortable as one could hope for such business. Samson sat down and grabbed for the manuscript he had laid beside the seat the day before — his reading material, such as it had been, for some months. The tome was giant and very disorganized. He was no wordsmith, but he judged it to be a first draft. Not only because of the disjointed, patchy narrative and the multiple scratch outs, but because its working title was, apparently, All This Shit Is Weird.

It was a shame Varric Tethras would never be able to finish the opus. He had perished, it was said, alongside Garrett Hawke on a plain once exalted, now called the Crimson Field. They had served in one of the petty rebellions that had sprung up after Skyhold had been taken, but the Venatori dispatched with them swiftly enough. Corypheus soon claimed sovereignty over Orlais as well.

Samson licked a finger and flipped a page. He was not the world’s fastest reader, and Tethras’s penmanship left a lot to be desired. He’d first come upon it tucked behind a hearth in the main hall upon claiming his victory over Skyhold, and, bemused, decided it could be useful intelligence. Now, he begrudgingly admitted to himself, he couldn’t put the damn thing down.

How could he? It was a book entirely dedicated to Lady Thalia Trevelyan.

He cleared his throat and tried to find his place. He’d left off shortly after the gala at the Winter Palace, where Thalia had backed Celene for Empress and fought the traitorous Duchess Florianne. He’d been disappointed to learn Thalia had worn the official Inquisition military uniform to the ball. Clearly, she ought to have worn a gown, dressed in the loveliest finery. Samson had imagined her in the dress he’d made for her and thought it improved the narrative immensely.

Was it just that the girl disliked looking like a proper woman? Every time he’d seen her, she’d been in trousers, after all. Well, that was impish and sweet, but he’d have to teach her to embrace her feminine side, once they had the time to get to know each other properly.

He’d evacuated his bowels by the time he finished the next chapter, which ended on an unsettling note about the arrest of the one-time Orlesian army captain Thom Rainier. Varric Tethras had an infuriating way of writing — making cheeky hints and innuendo instead of coming out and saying what he meant. Samson was no literary scholar, but he got the uneasy feeling Tethras had been hinting at some sort of tryst between Thalia and her sworn knight, the fake Grey Warden.

He sat on the pot and stroked the stubble on his chin for some time, his bare legs growing cold in the room’s chill. His intelligence reports had never uncovered anything of the sort — all signs pointed to the girl sweetening on her Commander under the power of his careful tutelage. But Tethras had been there. If his own account was to be believed, he’d become one of Thalia’s most trusted confidantes.

When Samson threw open the privy door, Rylen was outside standing guard, as instructed.

“What do you know about Thom Rainier?” Samson demanded, jiggling a foot to put the feeling back in his lower extremities.

Rylen raised an eyebrow one hair’s width. “The bloke posing as Warden Blackwall? He’s dead, I expect. No one’s seen him since the siege.”

Well, thank the bloody Maker for small favors. “You ever hear about him and the Inquisitor…?”

Rylen blinked. “I’m not sure what you mean, ser.”

Samson demonstrated with a crude gesture, which got the point across. Rylen nearly choked; it was one of the rare occasions when Samson had caught the man off-guard, to his amusement. “Heavens no, General. The Inquisitor, she was a young thing, a highborn girl with pure breeding. I’m sure Blackwa— er, Rainier, was old enough to be her father. I highly doubt anything untoward happened between them.”

How old was that bastard, Rainier, anyway? He couldn’t have been much older than Samson himself.

“You find that unsavory, do ya? A supple maid and an old, done man?” Samson felt a sudden fury that seemed to spark out of nowhere.

Rylen’s eyes, newly harboring a red glow, widened. “Are — are we still talking about the Inquisitor and Blackwall, General?”

“Never mind. I suppose you think she was a fitter match for your buddy Cullen, eh?”

Rylen straightened, composing himself. “It’s not my place to comment on my commanding officer’s love life. Ser.”

“Good,” Samson growled. “Keep it that way.”

He stormed past Rylen into the chambers, headed for the standing wardrobe that housed his courtly garb. He would have to look sharp if he was to spend the morning listening to the peasants prattle on about their cabbage crops, or lack thereof. He thrust open the wardrobe door and yanked out the first doublet he saw — of black velvet slashed with deep red and decorated with rubies along the cuffs.

Behind him, Rylen cleared his throat. “Am I dismissed now, General?”

“Not yet.” Samson whirled. “This keep has a market town attached, yeah?”

“Yes. The name escapes me; I was never too good at Orlesian, myself.”

That put Rylen one step above Barris, at least. “Go down there and get me the prettiest red-haired whore on offer. I expect to find her naked and willing in my bed by nightfall.” And maybe his soak in that tub wouldn’t be entirely solitary, if he was lucky. “Is that clear?”

Samson watched closely to see if Rylen would flinch. To the Starkhaven man’s credit, he did not. “Any requirements on the length of said hair, ser?” He spoke almost without a hitch. Almost.

Samson thought of Thalia’s thick, braided hair, adorning her head in a crown. How wayward strands had slipped free and framed her pale face when they’d been in the cave together. She never wore it down, famously; some custom or another amongst the nobility in Ostwick, supposedly. Rumor had it highborn girls there never cut it, not even since birth.

The corner of Samson’s mouth twisted upward. “As long as you can find.”

Chapter Text

The keep was entirely deserted, as far as Thalia could tell. It lay in the middle of a dried moat, a once mighty fortress of stone towers and crenellations. It even had an ominous name, according to the old maps she had consulted with Cullen and Blackwall: Fort du Sombre Destin. Fortress of Dark Fate. It had been a military outpost, straddling a back country road, somewhere due southeast of Halamshiral.

Thalia frowned at the forbidding facade, noting the blown out panes of glass and the wooden barricades that dotted the bridge to the keep’s portcullis. Skeletons lay strewn about, all that remained of some last stand of the Orlesian army against Corypheus. Everything, like the leagues of forest around them, seemed still and dead.

Thalia retreated from the bush where she’d been spying, working her way back around to where the scout team agreed to rendezvous. As she walked, she spotted a flash of blond hair. Sera sidled up beside her.

“Whole lot of nothin’,” Sera muttered, readjusting her bow on her back. “You?”

“Much the same,” Thalia said. “No one’s occupied this place for months, I believe.”

“Yeah. Should probably tell the others.” The elf girl avoided Thalia’s gaze. “You really think what you need’s in this shite hole?”

No, Thalia wasn’t sure. But forts usually had many resources at their disposal, and it was not out of the realm of possibility this one housed an alchemist’s lab. One manifest they consulted at the last abandoned outpost suggested there’d been an enchanter of some kind stationed here, so it was better than a zero percent chance. “It would be nice,” Thalia admitted, “but I suppose I’m trying not to get my hopes up.”

Sera snorted. She knew what was at stake, and had already agreed to the mission, but Thalia could not shake the feeling that Sera barely tolerated her. They’d never been friends. Back before the Siege of Skyhold, their relationship had been irreparably damaged when Sera had beaten a noble to death whom Thalia had been trying to cultivate.

Should I have ejected her from the Inquisition then? Thalia had wanted to. But that hardly mattered now. This was the ally fate had handed her, even though things remained chilly between them.

Their boots crunched through the underbrush, the dense forest otherwise eerily silent. Cullen, Blackwall, and a few of Sera’s handpicked Red Jenny scouts would be waiting for them back near the entrance to the grounds. Thalia hoped they had found the place similarly lifeless. Then perhaps as a group they could attempt an infiltration.

“You ought to stop avoiding him, you know,” Sera blurted.

Thalia jerked her head up, surprised. “What? Who?”

“You know who. Curly McTightpants.”

Thalia tensed. “I’m not avoiding Cullen.”

“Are too. I seen it plenty.” Sera hopped deftly over a fallen log. “You’re always up with Beardy in the front of the wagon train.”

All right, so maybe Thalia was doing that. But it was only because she’d been convinced Blackwall was dead. She wanted to tell Sera that she should try seeing a dear friend all but rise from the grave. Being near him now was reassuring.

“Cullen usually rides right beside us,” Thalia pointed out, picking a more tactful option.

“I told you not to make it weird.” Sera continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “And you’re making it weird.”

Thalia prickled with irritation. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

How could she be making anything weird? It wasn’t her fault Cullen kept throwing her tortured looks, which she found impossible to bear. Nor that Blackwall had been a bastion of support since she’d told him the truth about Samson. In some ways, it was almost like it was before — before the Inquisition had lost, but also before the gamut of sordid circumstances that had befallen them both. Before Thalia had learned Blackwall’s real name. Before he’d kissed her that one feverish night. She never thought she’d feel as safe with Blackwall since, and wasn’t it nice, for a change, to have something feel a bit brighter?

“You do, though,” Sera said sourly. “You and Beardy.”

She spoke with such certainty Thalia froze mid-stride. It had never occurred to her just how much Sera might have been privy to, in the months she’d made company with Blackwall. “Sera, if you’re implying something, I’d prefer you come right out and say it, rather than—”

“Forget it! I said nothing at all.” Huffing, Sera took off, leaving a thick tree branch to thwack back at Thalia’s face.

Great. Thalia sighed. Even at the end of the world, she couldn’t avoid petty gripes and grudges. She trudged along behind, debating who she was more annoyed at: Sera, for starting this mess, or Blackwall, for apparently making his ill-fated tryst with Thalia a lovelorn campfire story.

They’d left the horses along the dirt path that led to the keep’s bridge over the moat. Cullen was already there, brushing down the mane of a chestnut courser. He was eager to keep busy, and the Red Jenny caravan had given him plenty of opportunities. He might be a leader in name only these days, but Blackwall and Sera had made it plain he and the Inquisitor both commanded the respect they deserved.

“This place is dead as corpses,” Sera announced as they emerged from the treeline. “Saw some actual corpses, too.”

Cullen looked up, gazed past Sera to Thalia. He caught her eye and tried to smile, which gave her a faint sense of panic. She glanced away quickly.

“I’m glad you made it back all right,” he said softly.

Thalia cleared her throat. “Has Blackwall returned?”

“Right here, my lady.” Blackwall sauntered out from behind a stallion the color of charcoal. “Everything’s as you said. Should be safe enough to try getting inside.”

“Let’s do it, then,” Thalia said. She liked this, getting to act like the Inquisitor on a field mission. “Sera, Blackwall, have your men stand watch. The three of you will accompany me.”

Cullen and Blackwall exchanged the briefest of glances; she couldn’t quite read either expression. “It might behoove us to split up once we’ve gained access to the bailey,” Cullen said, crossing his hands over his chest. He might be dressed differently — bereft of the coat Samson had stolen from him, in only a homespun shirt and boiled leather armor — but he looked just as he had in the war council room back at Skyhold. “We would cover more ground that way.”

“And risk the chance of diminished forces in the face of an ambush,” Thalia countered.

“What can a skeleton really do to us?” Sera cut in. “Even the ones that can stand fall apart when you bonk ‘em.”

“I suppose the chance of a Red Templar attack is unlikely,” Thalia admitted.

Blackwall sniffed and spat into the dirt. “No one has cared to traverse this Maker-forsaken plot of land for months.”

“Splitting up it is, then.”

“I’ll stay with the Lady Thalia,” Cullen announced, with far more force than seemed necessary.

Too late, Thalia understood where this was going.

“Are you certain, Commander?” Blackwall’s grim mirth spilled out from beneath his beard. “In the old days, it was usually I who escorted her on missions such as these.”

Sera didn’t even try to hide her guffaw.

“I am quite certain,” Cullen said, rounding on Thalia. His own smile looked triumphant. “What do you say, dearest? We haven’t properly done a field mission together since we investigated the Shrine of Dumat.”

Thalia felt a headache coming on. “All right, I suppose.”

They approached the portcullis with Thalia in front, her companions fanning out behind her. She was grateful to have the familiar weight of her staff strapped across her back. Cullen gripped the borrowed sword hilt hanging from his belt; Blackwall and Sera walked with caution, ready to jump into action at a moment’s notice.

Nothing stirred as they crossed the stone bridge. The stench of decay had long since melted away. The bones of the fallen had long since been picked clean by carrion. Most of the corpses wore the lion of Orlais on their tattered tunics and tarnished breastplates.

They worked together to move the first barricade. Afterward, Cullen crouched down and studied the armor of one skeletal soldier. “I’ve always found looting the dead distasteful,” he murmured, pulling at the straps of the cuirass. “But desperate times…”

Thalia felt unsettled watching Cullen strip the skeleton. She turned her attention instead to the grated iron of the portcullis. Blackwall had already approached and was studying it with a keen eye. Sera stood aside, watching his back, bow and arrow drawn but lowered.

“Any luck?” Thalia asked.

“Looks like the bastards cut the line on the way out,” Blackwall said, pointing upward to the battlement walls. In the chill breeze, a broken chain swayed from a pulley. “But fortresses like this usually have more than one entrance.”

“Is it possible there’s access from the moat?” Thalia wrinkled her nose and peered over the lip of the bridge. Dead weeds clogged the mud below, accompanied by a few skeletons.

“Could be,” Blackwall said, joining her. “Or one of us could try climbing.” His eyes twinkled with mischief. “Your favorite pastime.”

Thalia tried not to blush. The months she’d spent in the field for the Inquisition had been full of ill-advised climbing expeditions on her part. She could still hear Blackwall and Dorian admonishing her for running off to scale another uncharted ruin, with Varric’s voice carrying behind them: let the kid have some fun, huh? She felt strangely homesick, which was foolish. There was no place she could go that would bring Varric back, nor restore her to the idyllic days of the early Inquisition.

She looked uncertainly at the battlements above them. There were no ladders, but enough outcroppings of worked stone that the facade might be climbable. “I suppose I could give it a shot…”

“You will do no such thing.” Cullen strode up behind them, the Orlesian breastplate looking out of place on his torso. “It’s entirely too dangerous an endeavor.”

Blackwall cocked an eyebrow. “I think you underestimate Lady Thalia’s skill.”

“I do not. You seem to underestimate the importance of her survival.”

Thalia stifled a sigh. “Cullen. It’s all right. I’ve done it dozens of times.” She’d done in the bowels of Skyhold to rescue him, but she thought perhaps now wasn’t the time to remind him.

“Yes, and at none of those times was I present to advise against it.” Cullen raised his chin. “Now I am.”

“Andraste’s tits,” Sera cut in. She stomped over. “Fine, I’ll go. Here, Commander Buzzkill, hold my stuff.”

She shoved her bow and quiver into Cullen’s arms and ran away. She hopped up on a pile of crates stacked by the portcullis, then leapt for a ledge with a stone gargoyle, continuing to climb. Thalia stood and watched, flanked by Blackwall and Cullen on either side. She felt painfully aware of both presences. Is this really how it’s going to be from now on?

Sera cleared the ramparts and went poking around the watchtowers. Finally, there came a disembodied Aha! The portcullis slowly raised, accompanied by a labored mechanical whine.

She was waiting for them in the inner bailey, where even she stood in stunned silence. The place was a time capsule of carnage — now amid the bodies were full plates of armor, the Templar sword emblazoned on their chests. The air felt strangely charged; a low hum pierced the quiet that made Thalia’s ears ache. Jagged red lyrium crystals bloomed around the bodies like bloody fairy rings.

Beside Thalia, Cullen tensed. She felt an urge to reach out to him, but worried he might not welcome it.

“Bleeding hell,” Blackwall muttered. “There’s so much of it.”

Thalia was reminded of her own trip into the future with Dorian, with red lyrium growing out of every wall and person left to languish in its wake. This was the future she had failed to prevent, and who knew how long before that prophetic vision came true?

“Give it a wide berth,” she commanded. “But it might be worth trying to harvest later for testing purposes, if we’re able to replicate the potion.”

“Right,” Sera said uneasily, having backed up nearly to the bailey’s wall. “This’s where we split, yeah? To cover more ground.”

Blackwall and Sera seemed happy to leave the haunted courtyard behind. They disappeared through an open wooden door, and Cullen’s shoulders slumped.

“Are you all right?” Thalia asked, her previous annoyance melting away.

“Fine,” Cullen insisted, though he’d gone pale in the glowing red of the crystals. “We should focus on the task at hand.”

Thalia had no qualms with that. She opened a door on the opposite end of the bailey, which led down and down into foreboding darkness. “What do you think?”

“Orlesian forts this old usually housed many of its facilities underground,” Cullen said. “An alchemist’s lab might be among them.”

“Good enough for me,” Thalia said. She took a steadying breath and plunged down the stairs. Old torches still hung on the walls, and she lit them as she went with a spark of magic.

A long corridor opened up at the bottom. Checking rooms revealed a bare armory, a half-flooded dungeon with its rusty cell doors open (“perhaps this is where all the water in the moat went,” Cullen quipped), and a gaoler’s quarters. This room was occupied only by rats and a skeleton hugging the sword that had pierced its ribcage. Shuddering, Thalia moved on. Cullen followed, grim-faced.

The door at the end of the corridor opened to a large hall. Peering in, Thalia saw damp stone alcoves occupied by equipment she recalled from her days at the Circle: a potions station, an enchanting table, and large glass alembics stacked in a corner.

“I think we might be in luck.” She hurried inside to light the pillar-bound lamps.

A lichen-covered statue of Andraste stood at one end, standing vigil beneath faded tapestries of the Chantry and the Orlesian crown. At the other end, amid more large glass tubes and wooden barrels was a large working table, and shelves of alchemical reagents in jars, mortars and pestles, braziers and crucibles.

Thalia’s pulse quickened. “This is it!”

She shrugged off her cloak, leaving it on a nearby crate. She grabbed a torch off the wall to inspect the supplies more closely. “I might be able to work with this.”

She didn’t want to get her hopes up too high. She could still hear Vivienne’s smug voice in her head, reminding Thalia that she did not possess the needed expertise to understand the older woman’s alchemical work. Even so, she remembered a few basic techniques from the Circle — one that might, with the right ingredients, eke out the components of an existing tonic. If they could just understand what was in the potion Vivienne had invented, they might have a chance of replicating it.

She hung the torch above the station and began digging through the shelved reagents. Was strix’s shell required for this process, or was she mixing it up with shade bone?

Cullen hovered over her shoulder, squinting apprehensively at the dark glass jars. “Is it safe to be handling such materials? We’ve no idea what time and the elements have done to them.”

“I’ll have to risk it,” Thalia said. “I don’t think we’re going to get another opportunity like this any time soon.”

Cullen didn’t seem to like that answer. A line appeared between his brows, and he frowned. “You told me yourself you’re not an alchemist.”

“And you told me yourself you’re not a professional chess player, yet that never seemed to stop you.”

“Thalia.” Cullen sighed, scrubbing a hand down his face. “Look at me, please.”

The weariness in his voice gave her pause. Thalia put down the container of pickled frog and turned. “What is it?”

Cullen grimaced, easing himself onto a barrel that wasn’t too rotten to hold his weight. “I think it’s time we talked about what happened a few days ago, don’t you?”

Thalia’s heart started hammering. “Wh-what do you mean?”

“I know you; you haven’t forgotten.” He hesitated, taking in an anxious breath. “I wanted to apologize. I acted a perfect fool.” He wrung his hands. “And I shouldn’t have put you in that situation in the first place.”

Thalia could feel the warmth creeping into her cheeks. “It’s, um. It’s all right. Accidents happen, don’t they?” She would prefer to be doing anything but discussing this right now. She looked around, flummoxed, for a distraction, but Cullen kept putting himself in her way.

“It’s more than that. I betrayed a trust. We agreed on something, and I didn’t honor my end of the bargain.”

Thalia wished she’d discovered this room had a giant hole in it, so that she could sink down into it right now and disappear. “We are still talking about — ah, the relations, aren’t we?”

Cullen looked at her, confused. “What else would we be talking about?”

Thalia, against her will, let out a laugh. “I don’t know, you just sound so tortured about it, that’s all. It’s fine, you know. It’s all fine.”

Cullen slumped forward with relief. “Well, that’s good. I thought — perhaps, you were still angry.”

“I wasn’t angry.” Thalia swallowed, realizing that was a lie. “All right, maybe a little. But not about the— I don’t think you’re a cad or anything, if that’s what you’re worried about. Taking advantage of vulnerable girls.”

Cullen chuckled nervously. “You’ve been spending so much time with Rainier lately, I’d begun to wonder.”

He seemed to have aimed the comment as a joke, but it landed like a slap. “It’s not like that at all.” Thalia’s fists clenched at her side. “Can’t I just be happy he’s alive?”

“Yes. Certainly. I’m grateful too. We wouldn’t have got this far without him.” Cullen spoke with less conviction than she would have liked.

Thalia turned away from him. She focused on separating the reagent jars in front of her by which seemed the most salvageable. How could she tell him, that sometimes Blackwall seemed to understand her in ways Cullen couldn’t?

“So are we all right, then?” he asked, a little desperately. “I can’t take this cold shoulder much longer.”

Thalia sighed, guilt washing over her. She knew she had probably been a bit prickly, but she hated that to him she’d appeared to shut him out entirely. “I’m sorry. That— I wasn’t— doing that wasn’t my intention.”

She put down the jars and hugged him impulsively. The Orlesian breastplate was cold and bumpy, but his arms around her were warm. “I just don’t know what I’d do if I lost you again,” he murmured, kissing her forehead.

“I know,” Thalia whispered. “That won’t happen. I promise.”

Finally, Cullen pulled back, gazing at her with the soft expression that always made her a little weak in the knees, like he found her the most dazzling woman alive. “So… when will you know?”

Thalia was surprised by the abrupt change in topic. “As soon as I sort out whether we have enough alchemical supplies, I think.”

Cullen chuckled, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. “That’s not what I meant. When will you…” His gaze lowered to her abdomen. “Know?”

Thalia’s eyes widened. She jumped backward, laughing with equal measures surprise and horror. “Oh! No, no. I mean, no. I already know.”

Cullen stared at her with an expression of mounting confusion.

“I’m trying to say the answer is — I’m not. I already took care of it.”

Cullen froze, his face going slack. “‘Took care of it’?”

“Yes.” Now Thalia was the bemused one. “I think I said I would?” Hadn’t she? The night was a bit of a blur in her mind. “The camp herbalist had a number of potions, so I…”

Cullen blinked several times, as if he couldn’t believe what she was saying to him.

“And you just did that,” he said slowly, “without consulting me first?”

Thalia gaped. She opened and closed her mouth, feeling like a fish flopping about on land.

“Is— is that why you’ve been treating me like a baby bird? Because you think I might be pregnant?” Her laugh was low and bitter. “No, Cullen, I told you — I took care of it. Immediately. I’m not leaving something like that to chance.”

She turned away from him, but he grasped her by the arm — not hard, but with a frenetic sort of anguish. “And you don’t think I have any sort of say here?”

Thalia twisted away. “Oh, is that how it is?”

“Yes, I should think so. It’s something that would affect both of us!”

“Yet you were so quick to apologize for putting me in the position to have to make that decision — when I suppose you thought you could get a baby out of it!” Thalia laughed, high-pitched and shrill. “A baby, in this horrible place. Can you imagine?”

Her throat hurt. She realized she’d been shouting.

All the color had drained from Cullen’s face. His hands were raised, as if in surrender. His voice was terribly soft. “I thought… I don’t know, I thought it might… bring us a small bit of joy...”

“I can think of nothing worse,” Thalia snapped, and Cullen flinched.

She didn’t understand why this was coming as such a shock to him. She had told him she didn’t want this the night it happened, didn’t she? But maybe he hadn’t been listening. Perhaps he’d been too busy concocting a fantasy in his head — where they could both come out of this nightmare unscathed.

Thalia licked her lips, struggling for something to say. Cullen, dropping hands to his sides, seemed to be doing the same. The invisible chasm between them felt immense.

“Hey-o! Anybody home?”

Sera’s voice echoed from the corridor, and heavy boots accompanied her light footfalls. “We’ve found fuck all,” came Blackwall’s gravelly Marcher accent, “so I hope you’ve got better news for us.”

Cullen sighed. “We can talk about this later,” he muttered. Thalia nodded dully, though she intended not to bring it up again. He’s never going to understand.

Blackwall strode into the room; his pale grey eyes eagerly sought out hers. Thalia locked gazes with him, her stomach giving a little flutter when he smiled.

But someone else might.

Chapter Text

The cells in Comte Cock-For-Brains’ dungeon were down too many bloody flights of stairs. They were circular and stone and wound and wound, leaving Samson dizzy once he reached the bottom. He took another surreptitious shot of red while his retinue was collecting the keys from the gaoler, a fat old bastard who had two teeth and was partially deaf. He’d manned the lord’s dungeons for nigh on fifty years, and was going to make them wait fifty more out of sheer incompetence.

The vial steadied Samson, at the least. He had intended to do this deed sooner, but had wanted to give the prisoner more time to marinate. Besides, he’d needed some time for himself to recover.

He looked to Barris. “She still hasn’t been forthcoming under questioning?”

“No, ser.” In the damp dark, Barris’s one red eye gave off an unsettling glow. “She’s stymied three interrogators thus far. The last one quit yesterday.”

Samson sighed. “They don’t know what I know.” If you want anything done, you’ve got to do it yourself. “Come.”

The gaoler produced the keys, inserted one into a large lock, and swung open the round barred door. Beyond lay a row of cells carved out of the stonework, dripping wet and smelling of mold. Only one sconce was alight, down near the end. Samson had ordered this cell block emptied to allow the prisoner to stew alone in her thoughts. She had been doing so for nearly a fortnight.

“Stay here,” Samson told Barris and the other guards. He took the key and snatched the torch off the wall.

He approached the cell with heavy footfalls from his felt-lined boots. An Orlesian luxury, those boots. A faint scent hung in the air, sweet and floral. Samson’s pulse quickened, and he halted by the cell. He felt transported back to the cave, with Thalia so near. It was the same scent, the one he’d detected on the dress he’d tried to give her. Yet its sweetness had disappeared so quickly from the silken fabric. How could it be lingering in the air, taunting him?

He looked around, steeling his resolve. Thalia couldn’t possibly be here — he was not yet so far gone to think so. He shook his head to clear it, and gazed through the bars.

On the floor, delicate wrists chained to the wall, was a different woman.

Days in the bleeding dark, and she still smells like her perfume. He understood now. She’d had Thalia in her clutches — dressed up, they said, like a doll. She’d probably lent the girl her fragrance.

She sat with regal poise in the corner of the cell, watching him.

“Oh, General darling, you look dreadful,” said Madame de Fer.

Annoyance flooded Samson, because she still looked as beautiful as ever, even in fetters. She had smooth skin, sharp cheekbones, full lips and a long, lithe body. Samson would have paid top coin to bed a woman like Vivienne, once upon a time. She seemed to know it, too.

No matter. He could put on a show as well. Samson smirked, dusting off a lapel with his free hand. “What’s a matter, Iron Lady, you don’t like my ensemble?”

He thought he cut a striking figure, personally: the black tailcoat and silverite threading, accentuated by the ruffled plum-colored sleeves. All them damn Orlesian dandies could prance around in their finery — why not him?

“Oh, it’s not your outfit,” Vivienne said, chuckling. “But I certainly hope you don’t think you’re fooling anyone with it.”

Samson unlocked the cell door and stepped inside. He tucked the torch into a notch on the wall and strode over to Vivienne, looking down. She blinked hard in the new, brighter light. He clucked his tongue. “You’re not in any position to be criticizing me right now, Madame de Fer.”

For surviving a battle against his Red Templars, Vivienne was in remarkable shape. Samson’s doing, of course. Upon capture, Vivienne had been given the best care by the mages among his Venatori contingent. She was too valuable to be allowed a death on the battlefield. And, he hoped, she might see it as a gesture of his goodwill.

“I don’t see why not. It’s never stopped me before.” A feline grin crossed her luscious lips, parting to show off straight, white teeth.

Slowly, Samson crouched down low. The red was singing in his veins now, giving him his own grace. He could see a ghost of himself, reflected in the dark pools of Vivienne’s eyes. “Is that so? Did you talk back to your Templars in the Circle where you were raised?” He lifted an eyebrow. “Where I’m from, the penalties were bloody steep for that.”

“Kirkwall always was one step away from barbarism,” Vivienne shot back cooly. She seemed bored. “Is this why you’ve come, General? So we can reminisce about our respective pasts, dead and gone?”

“Sadly not.” Samson rocked back on his heels. When properly lubricated, he had the strength of ten men and the dexterity of a panther. He thought of seizing Vivienne by the neck and cracking her skull against the wall. Or doing different, carnal things. No, no, no. Patience. “Maybe another time, once we’ve become better acquainted.”

Vivienne let out a melancholic sigh. “You won’t keep me alive that long, I fear.”

“I will.” Corypheus’s intelligence reports had been full of speculation on Madame de Fer and her slow claw to prominence in the Orlesian court, but Tethras’s All This Shit is Weird painted a starker picture. Vivienne was a power broker, maneuvering herself wherever the wind blew, so that she could take full advantage. Samson was unsurprised she’d dug herself a sweet little burrow in the post-Inquisition dirt. With her claws in Lady Thalia, she might’ve done great things for whatever remained. But she was in Samson’s dungeon now.

He stared straight into her eyes. “If you’re square with me.”

Vivienne narrowed her gaze. She pursed her beautiful lips, weighing the value of his words. Hook baited and thrown into the sea. Now he waited.

“I’m not sure I believe that.” Vivienne leaned back, giving her shoulders a languid stretch. “And besides — I don’t know where she’s gone.”

Samson’s heart skipped a beat. He played at ignorance. “Who?”

“Don’t be daft, General. We both know who.”

So they did. “What makes you think I want to discuss her at all?”

He studied his nails — ragged and bitten down to the quick. Last night’s whore had tried to buff them without much luck. Growing frustrated, he’d backhanded her in the face. Her cry of pain had been more believable than her ones of pleasure, and more satisfying. Her hair wasn’t even really red, just a tiresome brown. They always turned out that way, in the end.

“Because you betrayed yourself in the clearing. An offer of peace and solace in exchange for the Lady Thalia? Leaving me Commander Cullen, her advisor and confidant?” Vivienne chuckled. “Only a desperate man would try to strike such a petty bargain.”

Samson scowled. She had him there. He scrubbed the stubble on his chin with the flat of his palm. “Perhaps I was feeling generous.”

“About the man who could have been you, had the stars aligned differently?” Vivienne shook her head. “I think not.”

“Your cultists were going to cut him to pieces,” Samson countered. “You were doing me a favor.”

“By removing the competition, I think,” Vivienne quipped.

Samson felt the sting of the lash, but forced himself not to react. “That comment supposed to upset me?”

“So you admit it, then?” Vivienne smiled her pearly smile. “To harboring lustful thoughts about our dear Inquisitor?”

“She isn’t ‘our’ anything, Iron Lady.” Soon, very soon, she’ll be mine. But that’s of no consequence. “And a man’s got eyes. Can’t help what he sees with ‘em.”

“Bah,” Vivienne scoffed. “That little thing? She’s barely out of her teens, General. I’d have thought you’d prefer a real woman.”

Her gaze bore into his, her voice commanding, yet melodious. Maybe he was getting somewhere. He’d made a guess — that he knew her type from his Templar years in Kirkwall. There were mages like Thalia, who’d made themselves small and bided their time… and mages like Vivienne, who knew exactly who they were and what they could use as bargaining chips.

“Such as yourself?” Samson asked quietly.

“You must be hoping so. Why else visit me personally?”

“Because it’s clear you know things. And I’d also like to know those things.” He let that sink in. “But it ain’t the Inquisitor I’ve come to discuss. Not directly, anyhow.”

Her expression was of practiced interest. “Why, then, my dear — do enlighten me.”

Samson reached into his lapel pocket and drew out the pages of parchment his lieutenants had given him. He’d poured over them for days. They weren’t nearly as lively as Tethras’s work, of course, but their implications were important. “We found these in the Chantry in that quaint little village of yours. Notes on some sort of cure for the effects of red lyrium, if I’m reading ‘em right.”

Vivienne regarded the pages calmly, though he noticed the slightest bit of tension growing in her shoulders.

“I’m impressed you know how to read at all, General,” she chided.

“The Templars taught me a few useful things.” He held the parchment up closer to her face. “The alchemy’s a bit beyond an uneducated man like me, though. I’d love to know more about this — and what you might’ve told the Inquisitor.”

Vivienne tutted. “I bet you do. But surely you’re smart enough to know such knowledge would not come before certain… assurances.”

Samson imagined her as a fish, swimming around his hook. It wouldn’t do to yank it out of the water too quickly. “What sort of assurances?”

“Well, my life, for one. And my freedom, of course.” Vivienne glanced about the dank cell. “It’s been an interesting stay, but the accommodations don’t quite suit my style.”

“Big requests,” Samson noted.

“You ask a lot of me.” Vivienne shrugged. “But I’m willing to dance, if you strike the right chord, so to speak.”

“That could be arranged. A whole ensemble, even.” Samson nodded. Careful now. Careful. “I can’t let you go back to running that village completely unmonitored, mind you.”

“No, that would be preposterous,” Vivienne agreed.

“But I’m sure we can work something out.” Samson tested the line with a gentle pull. “Still, I’ll need assurances of my own first.”

Vivienne’s mouth twisted into a lascivious smile. “What did you have in mind?”

Samson rewarded her with a smirk of his own. He leaned closer and said in a low voice, “Some information I can verify.”

Vivienne harrumphed. “Tease.”

“I wasn’t born yesterday, Iron Lady.”

“Fine. Bring me more of my notes and I’ll work out some alchemical formulas for you. Surely you’ve Venatori at your disposal to factcheck.” She held up her chained hands in a helpless gesture. “Happy?”

“I will be, when the factchecking’s done. That may take some time.” His battalion was still scattered throughout the region, and he’d likely have to set Vivienne up elsewhere to work long term. This keep didn’t have the tools on hand; the Comte didn’t keep a court enchanter as some of his ilk had done. But it was doable — it just wasn’t quite enough.

“Is there perhaps something else I can do to prove my word is good?” Vivienne asked sweetly. She drew closer to him, placing her soft hand on his knee.

Samson felt the stirrings of desire, amplified by the red. She was good at this. He’d suspected she would do anything to help herself, and that seemed to be bearing out. Maker, he could take her right here if he wanted to. No, no, no— not yet.

He snatched her hand and removed it. He held her wrist above the shackles, his grip growing tighter and tighter. They stared at one another, and he waited, silently daring her to act.

No, Samson was not an educated man, but Vivienne was holding something back. If he’d read her notes correctly, she might have cracked more than one conundrum of the crimson crystals so precious to Corypheus. Not only would the imbibers of her potion be immune from corruption, they could — if they ingested large enough quantities — break free of the magic nullification effects the Red Templars exerted over mages.

Only if they had the magical knack, of course. And only in theory. Vivienne’s notes admitted she’d never been able to test it against a Red Templar. He was not yet sure how willing she was to try. The fog of war made such attempts difficult on a battlefield; it was always better, he suspected, to start with one specimen in isolated conditions. Samson squeezed harder, feeling the bones of her wrist strain beneath his grip. He could snap her whole dainty arm if he wanted, just like that. If she intended to act, her time was now.

Vivienne took the pain in stride. She didn’t even flinch. Interesting, indeed. He found her resolve arousing. She was more willing to play the Game than overturn the board.

“Soon, yes,” he breathed. “I think that’d settle the matter nicely. But I need something else first.”

Vivienne tilted her head slightly. The waft of her perfume, reminding him so much of Thalia, filled his nostrils. “What is it?”

Samson leaned close to her ear. “What can you tell me about Captain Thom Rainier?”

He released her and sat back. He was reeling her in now, pulling with all his might. Delayed promises of intelligence counted for little, and a bedding even less. The true test would be whether Madame de Fer was willing to rat out one of the Inquisition’s own, after defending Thalia and Cullen so vehemently on the battlefield.

The silence stretched. Samson wondered briefly if he had miscalculated.

Then, ever so slowly, Madame de Fer smiled. “You mean Lady Thalia’s first love? Oh, darling, loads and loads.”

He took her from behind, hands squeezing her luscious, melon-like breasts while she clung to the bedpost. He kept his tunic on, but she’d stripped naked as the day she slithered into the world. She was as skilled as he expected, moving against him with deft enthusiasm. They got so carried away they knocked the brass candelabra from the side table and narrowly missed setting the bed curtains alight. Maniacal laughter followed — she kept trying to right the damn thing while he thrust and thrust, teeth sunk into the skin of her shoulder. Then she came so noisily that he followed along soon after with a raucous, manly roar.

Seed deposited, he gave her a hard shove. She caught his wrist, and they went tumbling together onto the bed, giggling like teenagers.

Vivienne stretched out before him, all long limbs and lustrous skin, fixing him with a sly smile. “Well, General, I hope that seals the deal.”

“Oh, consider it sealed.” Samson rolled to his side, smoothed his collar, and propped his head up on his palm. “And better’n a two-bit whore, I’ll give you that much.”

“You insult me.” Vivienne’s voice was soft as velvet. She drew closer and cupped the side of his face. “That was the best you ever had. Admit it.”

“Solidly average,” he goaded. “Nothing to write home about.”

“Then I have my work cut out for me, I suppose.”

“I like the sound of that.” He buried his face in her sweat-sheened chest, kissing a messy trail to one nipple, then the other. She pulled him closer and held him, and he thought: yes, like this.

Vivienne’s fingers found the ends of his hair along the nape of his neck. If he closed his eyes, he could picture this moment with Thalia, though he suspected she’d give him less cheek. She was younger, of course. Less versed in the ways of pleasing a man. He’d have a lot to teach her, when he found her.

“Tell me more,” he murmured, “about Thalia and Rainier.”

Rylen had been wrong, evidently. He could hardly blame the man. He’d been banished to the hellish arse end of Thedas, holding the Western Approach for the Inquisition when most of this transpired. To hear Vivienne tell it, at least.

“It was never public knowledge, of course.” He felt the sweet cadence of Vivienne’s voice before he heard it, his ear so close to her throat. “But one could spot it — she wasn’t exactly subtle. Lots of mooning about the stables, where Rainier spent his time between deployments. He played the ever-honorable knight, but I could tell he liked the attention.”

So Thalia did prefer older men; this boded well, though Samson did feel a small sting of jealousy. It was difficult to square the virtuous young girl as he knew her with this more vivacious version. In his head, Cullen had done the pursuing — finally free from all his years of duty to do what he’d always wanted: bed a mage. He’d told Samson so once, about the poor girl at Kinloch Hold for whom he’d harbored designs. Killed in the slaughter before the young Templar could give into his desires. A pity, Samson had thought at the time. The experience might have given his friend some teeth.

So he had to rewrite the tale: no puppy-eyed Commander Cullen, trailing her throughout the halls of Skyhold. No, she’d been sweet on someone else: a man who claimed to be a Grey Warden, and then turned out to be a fraud. No wonder that hadn’t ended in wedded bliss.

Samson lifted his head. “Do you think they ever…?” He raised a suggestive eyebrow.

Vivienne chuckled. “I think she’d deny it. She denies all of it now. But there was that time the two of them stole away together to the Storm Coast — alone. Some official Grey Warden business was the claim. But as Rainier never actually was a Grey Warden…” She shrugged. “Things soured between them after that. Everyone could see.”

Intriguing. Samson wondered if Thalia had surrendered her maidenhood to Rainier willingly on that trip, or if the brute had taken her by force. Men like that were capable of anything; Samson should know. Leave it to Cullen to want to pick up the pieces. He’d always been searching for causes more lost than himself.

“Well,” Samson said with a dark laugh, “it’s a good thing he’s dead.”

Vivienne stilled. “Yes, of course.”

He didn’t like the flat note in her voice. Samson narrowed his eyes. “He is dead, isn’t he?”

“Oh, can such things ever truly be verified?” Vivienne asked flippantly. “Why ruin this moment, my dear? We can worry about it later.” One hand trailed to the collar of his royal purple tunic; the other reached down and down, trying to arouse him again. “Take this off,” she purred. “I’d like to see you properly this time.”

He reached out and caught her wrist. “No. That stays on.”

Vivienne pouted. “Is the General shy?”

“I am not.” He merely suspected the extent of her acting would be put to the limit if she saw what was underneath. That, and she was stalling. He pushed her aside and sat up, glancing about for his discarded breeches. “Do you have proof Rainier is dead?”

Vivienne sighed, reaching for the sheer black robe he’d presented her with upon reaching his chambers. He’d found it in the Comte’s Cock-For-Brains’ extensive walk-in closet and wasn’t quite certain if it was for his wife the Comtesse or himself. Either way, Samson had originally thought about saving it for Thalia, but he had to admit Vivienne filled it out nicely. She cinched the sash around her waist, but he could still see everything. “If we’re done for now, darling, could I trouble you for a wash cloth and basin? I’d like to freshen up.”

Samson could scarcely believe her audacity. He found his breeches — flung across the long mahogany table, scattered with the intricate alchemical formulas Vivienne had scrawled for him this afternoon — and stood, hopping into one leg. “You presume to order me around when I’ve asked you a direct question?”

“No — is your answer.” Rolling her eyes, Vivienne stood from the bed. “And if you can’t be a gentleman, I’ll see myself to the privy.”

He watched her backside sway through the robe as she padded barefoot into the next room. Samson considered following her, to strike her for insubordination, but she’d given him just enough to turn his mind to bigger matters. He laced up the front of his breeches, grinding his teeth. “How do you know?”

From the privy came the sound of splashing water — Vivienne was wiping away all trace of him, no doubt. At the end of the day, she was all business. Just like the rest of them. Soon Thalia will be here, and it won’t matter.

“My scouts brought me routine reports of bandits due west of us,” floated Vivienne’s disembodied voice. “They call themselves the Red Jennies. Their leader, supposedly, is a female elf with blond hair, and she appears to share leadership with a large bearded fellow. And if you knew anything about the Inquisition’s Inner Circle, Sera and Thom Rainier—”

“—Seemed to be friends,” Samson finished. “Yes, I know.” He’d gleaned as much from Tethras’s manuscript.

His irritation faded in the wake of good intelligence. Samson shrugged on his coat and brushed aside the pages of formulas Vivienne had written. Beneath lie the map of southern Orlais he’d brought with him on campaign. He leaned over the table and studied it. They were due south of Sahrnia and its quarry, a place Samson knew all too well, and only a few leagues away from Vivienne’s little self-proclaimed kingdom. That meant the Red Jennies’ territory was the depths of the Dales; perhaps they even extended as far north as the Imperial Highway.

And if Thalia had escaped anywhere, it would likely be right into their hands.

“Did she know this?” Samson asked excitedly. “Did Thalia know where to find him?”

Vivienne didn’t answer. In fact, she hadn’t said anything for some time.

Samson frowned, craning his neck. The privy had gone quiet. The only sound was the fire crackling in the hearth next to him. He reached out his hand. The heat thrown, he realized, was more fleeting than it ought to be. And the back of his throat tingled with the old anticipation he’d learned so well, hunting mages in Kirkwall.

He dropped his hand. Tried to straighten casually, to turn without showing suspicion.

Too late. Something hard and frozen sailed through the air, hitting his jaw. One whole side of his face went numb; his ear rang.

“Aggghhh!” He reared and whirled.

Vivienne stood behind him, by the foot of the bed. Her breasts heaved under the transparent garment. She held one hand aloft, ice magic swirling between her fingers.

Samson didn’t have time to question her treachery. Vivienne advanced, summoning another ball of ice between her palms. Samson darted forward to meet her. Pulling on old Templar training, he seized her wrists and yanked them apart. He felt the red lyrium humming inside him, and channeled it out through his fingertips, coursing into the air. He’d seen it work hundreds and thousands of times — the spell guttering out like a candle.

Nothing happened.

Vivenne wrenched away. The shimmering blue-white energy coalesced into a boulder larger than his head. With a grimacing cry, she hurled it at him.

Samson staggered backward, dove for the floor. The spell shattered on the edge of the table and rained shards around him. A thin sheet of ice blossomed wherever they landed; his legs grew cold and slow. He scampered under the table as swift as they would allow.

Vivienne’s legs danced forward. “I’d been waiting to test out that hypothesis for quite some time, General. Thank you for providing the data.”

Fury replaced fear. She’d played him after all. “You cunt.”

“Oh, you weren’t complaining about it a few minutes ago.” Vivienne laughed, high and triumphant.

He crawled on hands and knees to the other side of the long table. Think, think. If the red couldn’t stop her, he needed a weapon. And backup.

“Guards!” he shouted. “Barris! Rylen! Get in here!”

“I wouldn’t waste breath on that, my dear. The silence spell I put up will make quite certain we’re not interrupted for a long while.”

Fuck. All right, next plan: his sword. He’d mounted Certainty above the fireplace mantle, on proud display after the victory in the woods. Unfortunately, she was between him and it, rifling around the papers on the table above him.

Samson popped his head up. Vivienne had a clutch of parchment in one hand, turning to dash it into the hearth. He recognized the intricate designs on one as that of her alchemy formulas. Panic gripped him. “No!”

He barreled forward, knocking her sideways. He still had his strength, after all. Vivienne stumbled, the pages flying. A few kissed the flames and were reduced to cinders. Others scattered about them as Samson wrapped arms around Vivienne’s middle and tackled her to the floor. She let out a pleasing cry of pain.

Grunting, Samson tried to hold her arms, but she wiggled one loose. She gripped him by the shoulder — snow and ice wound up her forearm to her hand, blasting frozen air into his joints. The numbness shot down his arm past his elbow, loosening his grip.

He hauled back and punched her in the face.

Crimson poured from her split lip, spreading between her teeth. Vivienne fell against the stone floor, dazed. “Bloody bitch,” he spat, struggling upward, pinning her hips with his knees. “This what you had planned all along, eh? Thought you could get one over on old Samson?”

He tried to hit her again. Vivienne shot up her elbow and shielded her face. She twisted beneath him and kneed him in the groin.

Agony overtook everything. Samson was vaguely aware of his own howling, of writhing in the fetal position. Vivienne rose. She had the brass candelabra snatched from the bedside table. Samson looked up just in time for it to hit him in the teeth: once, twice, thrice. Bending over him, Vivienne seethed through dripping blood, her face contorted with wrath.

She raised her hand to cast another ice spell. She would kill him if he allowed it, he knew that now. He seized her by the neck and — struggling not to choke on the blood filling the back of his throat — squeezed. Instead of delivering the blast, Vivienne dropped the candelabra and, gasping, pried at his fingers with her own.

He didn’t have the stamina to hold on for more than a few seconds. He released her, and they both lie on the floor, gasping for breath. His gaze darted to the fireplace mantle. His greatsword, mottled with glowing scarlet, forged from the red lyrium that had felled another so-called great woman. Certainty, he’d named it, when Maddox presented it to him from the forge. He’d always wanted a named sword, and he knew that with it he would do his own mighty and terrible deeds.

Samson staggered to his feet, breath ragged. He had only moments. He limped over to the mantle — one leg was still stiff and frigid. The sword’s hilt and pommel sang for him. He could hear Vivienne rallying, gathering her strength. The air around them grew chill as she summoned all the magic she could muster.

Samson grabbed for the sword. Hands closed over its familiar grip, always a little warm. He lifted it from its stand, and pulled.

Footsteps slapped the floor behind him. His breath misted in the cold.

Samson whirled and thrust Certainty’s blade through Vivienne’s stomach.

She halted, a look of stunned surprise on her face. The glowing ball of ice above her palm — large enough to blow out the window and half the adjacent wall — dissipated slowly. Her hands fell to her sides. She let out a cough; the blood splattered her beautiful neck and the borrowed robe.

“Look what you made me do, love,” Samson growled.

He yanked the sword out of her. She stumbled once. Fell.

Samson stood over her, watching the red seep from under her into the pages littering the floor. It collected into a large, dark pool. He put the sword aside carefully and leaned against the hearth for support.

Yelled again for his guards, and this time they heard him.

Barris and Rylen raced through his chambers, stopping short at the circle of glowing orange thrown by the fire. Their eyes grew wide as they stared.

Samson raked back loose strands of hair with shaky fingers. “Gonna need to apologize to the Comte for the mess.”

He turned his head and spat out a gout of coppery saliva, and one molar.

Damn woman. She’d got a piece of him after all.