Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Evie is four and a half years old, and Mamae loves her very much, but has to go away lots.

She knows this because Mamae tells her, and because her brother reminds her when she forgets and starts to cry.

“She will come back,” he tells her, patient and soft, every time. “She is thinking of you now, and wants to be with you so badly.”

And she wants her Mamae now—but her brother is very good at giving hugs, and petting her hair and telling her that he knows, he understands.

And when she has stopped crying, sometimes he takes her for a little walk around the campsite. They can’t go far—she’s not allowed past the big white rocks by herself—but when her brother is with her, they can walk into the forest a little bit, and go catch frogs by the river.

Her brother is very, very good at catching frogs. He’s teaching her! So she can be just as good as him. Although, he never seems to get dirty like she does—he stands in the mud, same as her, takes his boots off and kneels down, but his clothes never get dirty. No one ever sees him coming back from the river and says, “Oh, Cole, you’re such a mess! Time for a bath!”

“That’s because I’m a spirit,” he tells her, when she complains about it.

She pouts, trying to wipe mud off her elbows. It’s dried a little in the heat, and it’s so itchy. “I wish I was a spirit,” she says.

“You have one,” her brother says instead. And then he gestures for her to be quiet, and takes her hand again.

He leads her a few steps down—and she is so careful to be quiet like him. He barely splashes at all, so she walks where he walks. He doesn’t leave any ripples, even, and she tries her best, but she can always hear her steps, and, as always, she gets little splashes of mud on the hem of her dress.

She doesn’t like dresses much. Mamae never wears them, so neither does she! But the rest of her clothes are hanging to dry, because she’s gotten them all covered in mud, so she has to wear the dress that Aunt Vivienne gave her a few months ago. Everything else is apparently too small, even though she thinks they fit just fine.

She thinks Aunt Vivienne would probably scold her, if she saw Evie wearing the special dress she ordered for her, all covered in mud.

“I won’t tell,” her brother whispers.

It’s kind of weird, how no one but Cole ever seems to know what she’s thinking. Kind of nice too, though. Because then they’d know for sure she took another handful of blueberries than she was supposed to last night, after dinner.

Except Mamae. Mamae always knows.

Her brother crouches in the reeds, and points to a spot in the mud. He gestures for her to be very quiet, and then lets go of her hand.

She creeps a few steps closer to the spot he pointed at, narrowing her eyes as she focuses on moving very, very slowly—and she moves so slowly, so carefully, that when she finally crouches down right next to the spot, she is rewarded by a tiny little frog poking its head out of the mud, right between her hands.

She catches it quick and gentle, like her brother taught her. Not too hard, so she doesn’t hurt it, because that’s mean and you’re not supposed to hurt people or frogs. She makes a cage with her fingers, so that there’s room for the frog to breathe, and then she lifts it out of the mud with a grin.

“Look!” she says, turning around. “Look! I caught one!”

Her brother is not looking at her, though. He’s half-turned, one hand on a knife at his belt, and the other reaching for her.

“Evie,” he says, his fingers brushing caked on mud off her elbow. “Behind me.”

There are so many rules she has to follow, that sometimes she forgets them all—but Listen to Cole is the most important, and the one she never ever forgets. So she does as she’s told, making sure to hold the frog very gentle so it doesn’t get scared.

When she looks where Cole is looking, there’s a person she’s never met before, standing in the trees.

He’s an elf, like Mamae or Sera, and he’s dressed a little like the messengers that come and go for Mamae when she’s here—but there’s only two of them, and this stranger doesn’t look like either of them.

He’s staring at her. And he’s smiling a little, but it’s not a good smile. It’s weird and creepy, like when Uncle Varric is telling her stories, and he makes the Bad Guy voice.

She remembers another rule when they take her.

If you see anyone you don’t know, scream and don’t stop.

And she tries, really—she does. She bites their hands and when that doesn’t work she screams into them so hard that her throat hurts. But the sound doesn’t carry, no matter how hard she tries, and they don’t drop her no matter how much she kicks and squirms, so they take her, and no one can stop them.

They take her past a place where she feels something weird tingle on her skin, like walking through a curtain but the curtain’s not real. And then they walk for days, and days, and she remembers another rule—don’t eat or drink anything a stranger gives you—but she is so hungry and thirsty that she has to break it on the second day.

There are two people—the second one had done something to her brother, made it so he couldn’t move, and then they grabbed her and took her.

They haven’t told her if he’s okay or not—but she thinks it’s like with the frog. He’s a little uncomfortable because he can’t move, but they didn’t hurt him because it’s wrong to hurt people. Right?

Except they hurt her arm when they grabbed it. And they hurt her when they tied her wrists up, or when they put something in her mouth so she couldn’t scream—

Maybe they never listened to their brothers, when they were told that hurting people was wrong.

After the fourth day, they take her to a big mirror. And they say something that’s in elven—Mamae’s been teaching her a little—and then they walk her through it.

That tingles, too.

And then there’s a lot of steps, and a lot of running—and pretty flowers, but her eyes are all puffy (she wasn’t crying, she has all-er-gies) so she doesn’t really see them all. And more mirrors, which is annoying because she’s thinking that maybe there was a rule about always pay attention to where you’re going so you can find your way back but it’s a little hard to do that with mirrors, isn’t it.

Then they get to a place where there are more elves, and some of them are wearing very shiny armour like Uncle Thom or Aunt Cassandra do (except they look kind of silly), while some of them are not. She doesn’t get a good look at anyone, though, because the people who took her just rush her through, even though they’re panting for breath.

She has tried to tell them that if they put her down, they wouldn’t have to get tired from carrying her all the time. She thought that was very clever, but they didn’t buy it.

They take her into a big, big aravel—building, she thinks, and then she remembers Uncle Varric’s stories and thinks crumbling ruin instead—and they shout a lot in elven, which is annoying because she doesn’t understand it, but it sounds very fancy (which is a word her aunt Sera taught her, and is one she’s actually allowed to say without a scolding but it means something like mean people who dress up and think they’re better than everyone else.)

They finally stop in a room with a big table, and a bunch of people standing around it. They’re all wearing the shiny armour, which still looks silly, and there’s one in the middle with his back turned who has a big, white pelt over his shoulder. She’s not too good at guessing yet, but she thinks it’s from a wolf—it’s way too long for halla hair.

The man who’s holding her says something, and she knows it’s about Mamae because he says Inquisitor, and then he says da’len and the man with the wolf pelt stiffens.

The whole room goes very quiet, and everyone looks at her very quickly. And then they all start to talk again, quicker, faster, louder, so loud that it makes her ears hurt.

Except for the man in the wolf pelt, who lifts his hands from the table and turns around very slowly—like people do in Varric’s stories, when something scary or exciting is happening.

The man holding her puts her on the floor, and she almost falls over—they haven’t fed her today, and they’ve been running all night. She can definitely handle it, she’s four and a half, but she thinks anyone would be a little shaky, under the circumstances.

She looks up at the man in the wolf pelt as he looks down at her.

He looks very, very surprised, she thinks. And maybe a little sad—or happy? He’s looking at her like Mamae looks at her sometimes, when she thinks Evie’s not paying attention. Cole says that she’s overwhelmed when she does that, it’s not Evie’s fault.

She thinks of her brother, then—of him being frozen in place, trapped by magic—and she thinks that she’s hungry, and thirsty, but she already broke a rule when she took food from the strangers who took her and she knows she wasn’t supposed to and she didn’t mean to break the rule about screaming but she got so tired of it—

She wants her brother. She wants her Mamae. She wants someone to take this thing out of her mouth and untie her wrists and bring her to her Mamae, right this instant.

The entire room goes silent when she starts to cry.

All of a sudden, the man in the wolf pelt kneels, and takes the cloth out of her mouth.

She nearly chokes on it, she’s so surprised—maybe he’s like Cole and Mamae, he knows what she’s thinking—and he hushes her as she does, hiccupping and sobbing loudly into the emptiness of the room. Not trying to get her to be quiet—no, he just makes soothing noises, whispers gently, “It’s going to be alright,” over and over.

“I want—I want—”

“Your mamae,” he says, gently, when she can’t finish. “Of course. I will take you to her as soon as possible.”

He pauses, though, when he unties her wrists. And she feels his fingers touch the big ugly bruise that’s left over from them grabbing her.

His hands glow a little, like Uncle Dorian’s or Aunt Vivienne’s. And she remembers another rule too late—don’t let strangers use magic on you—but all he does is make the bruise go away, and her wrist doesn’t hurt any more.

His eyes glow, too. But she doesn’t feel any different from that, so she doesn’t worry about it. Elf eyes get all shiny in low light sometimes.

“Are you hurt anywhere else?” he asks, and he sounds so nice that she answers honestly. She shakes her head no, and he smiles so nicely when she does that she feels a little smile of her own, answering him back.

“Good,” he says. “Are you hungry? Thirsty? It’s a long trip back to your Mamae, and I want to make sure you’re feeling well.”

She sniffles a little, rubbing her arm where the bruise was, and nods.

He smiles again. “Would you like to walk with me, to get something to eat?”

That breaks a rule, she knows. But she’s very hungry, and this stranger said he’d take her to Mamae, so she nods.

He stands then, and reaches down, holding out his hand for hers. He kind of has to bend over a little, to make it work, but she reaches up high and his hand is very warm and gentle. He begins to lead her out the door that she came in—and there are two statues there that she didn’t notice before, so she cranes her head up to look at them.

“My name is Solas,” he says, and she looks at him instead. “What is yours?”

She knows it’s breaking a rule, but she tells him anyway, in between sniffling and rubbing at her eyes. “Evie.”

It doesn’t take anywhere near as much time to get home as it took to get to Solas.

Maybe it’s one of those funny time things, though, where when you’re having too much fun it goes fast. Because Solas is fun—a little sad sometimes, but most adults are anyway. He asks her lots of questions, and shows her magic just like Uncle Dorian, and he tells her all about the plants and animals that she doesn’t know very well yet.

He gets overwhelmed sometimes, just like Mamae. And Evie has to be patient with him when he does—she pretends she doesn’t notice, when his eyes get all shiny or his smile goes sad or he looks frightened. Sometimes he forgets how to talk, she supposes, because he goes all quiet for a while. That’s when she tells him about catching frogs with her brother, or about playing pranks with Aunt Sera, or playing pirates with Uncle Bull.

She notices really quick that he always goes quiet when she talks about Mamae, so she doesn’t do that a whole lot.

It only takes two days—maybe three, because she’s asleep when they get there. Woken up by the sound of her mother’s voice, calling her name.

“Evanura! Evanura!”

Solas has been carrying her in his arms, but he always lets her down when she squirms so she doesn’t mind. He does so now, but she’s still sleepy so she holds his hand as she walks, rubbing her eyes to wake up faster.

“Mamae?”

Her mother swoops in and gathers her up in her arms—and Evie clings to her neck, because Mamae can’t hold her so good if she doesn’t have her left arm on. But Mamae does, and she holds her so tight that Evie thinks she’ll never ever let go.

Evie doesn’t mind so much. If Mamae never put her down, she’d never have to go away.

“I broke a rule,” she says, sniffling into Mamae’s hair.

“Oh, da’vhenan,” her mother says. “It’s alright. You tried your best. It’s alright.”

Mamae pulls away eventually—puts Evie back on the ground, and looks at her all over. Mamae’s cheeks are all wet, and Evie reaches up to touch them, frowning.

“I’m just so happy, little heart,” she says, laughing. “Did they hurt you?”

To be honest, she and Solas have been having so much fun that she’s almost forgotten all about it. But Cole always says it’s important to tell the truth, especially to Mamae, so after a moment’s consideration, she nods. “Yeah. But, Solas made it better!”

Mamae stills. Evie can feel her fingers digging into her shoulders, just a little.

Eventually, Mamae looks up at Solas. Very, very slowly. And then she just… stares at him, over Evie’s shoulder, for so long that Evie half-turns to see what’s the matter.

Solas is standing a few paces back—his mouth hanging open, just a little, like he wants to say something but doesn’t want to interrupt. He’s looking right at Mamae, as she looks at him, and Evie thinks they both look overwhelmed.

No one moves, for such a long time that Evie begins to worry that there’s another bad person behind one of the trees, and Solas and Mamae are frozen like Cole was. But then Solas breathes, suddenly and sharply, and he turns a little, as if to go—

“Stay,” Mamae blurts into the silence.

For a moment, the only sound is the air rushing through the leaves above them. But then Solas’s shoulders relax, and he looks back to Evie and Mamae with one of those sad smiles adults have all the time.

Behind Evie, Mamae stands. “For the night, at least,” she says, gently. And then, so softly that Evie’s not sure Solas can hear, she adds, “Please.”

And he kind of laughs a little—just a little huff. But he sounds like when Uncle Dorian broke a rib, and came to stay for a while, and Uncle Bull would tell funny jokes like he always does but Dorian would complain, because it hurt too much.

“Are you certain?” he asks, after a while.

Adults are so weird sometimes.

“Yes!” Evie shouts, annoyed, and breaks from her mother to go back to Solas. She tugs at his arm until he follows after her, wide-eyed, and she starts dragging him in the direction of the river. “I wanna show you where we catch frogs!”

“Evie!” Mamae calls. “It’s the middle of the night!”

But she’s laughing, a little, so Evie knows she’s not really mad.

Cole meets them at the usual place by the river—smiling a little, under his broad hat, and he kneels down so Evie can hug him when she runs to him, splashing through the mud.

“I’m alright,” he tells her as she buries her face in his shirt. “They didn’t hurt me. I’m alright. Small, swimming—there are tadpoles, now. Want to see?”

She nods into his shirt—and then sniffles a little, before she pulls away.

“You should come too, Solas,” Cole says, without looking, as she takes his hand and he walks with her towards the water.

It takes a moment, but after a while she hears Solas’s footsteps as he follows—the space between each growing smaller and smaller every time.

After Mamae tucks her into her furs, and kisses her goodnight, she waits until she thinks Evie is asleep to slip from the aravel.

It’s too warm for all those furs, though—and she’s not tired, she’s had an exciting couple of days. She gets up to open the aravel door a little, to let the breeze in, and when she glances out she sees Solas sitting by the fire. Staring into it, his expression blank.

Mamae sits near him—leaving enough space for Evie to sit, but not anyone bigger.

“When’s the last time you slept?”

He jerks in place at the question—blinking rapidly, like he’s been staring too long and his eyes have dried out.

It takes him a long time to answer. “When I told you she was safe.”

“Solas…”

Evie swallows. There’s something… different about the way her mother says that. She doesn’t know if it’s good different or bad different. Overwhelmed doesn’t seem to be it, though. A little bit like when Evie gets mud on her clothes, but sadder.

They don’t talk for a while after that. Her legs get tired, so she kneels on the aravel floor, peering out through the tiny crack she’s made in the door and hoping they don’t look this way.

They don’t, though. They just sit near each other, and stare into the fire.

“How old is she?” Solas asks, so suddenly Evie jumps a little.

Mamae sighs. “I think you know how old she is, Solas.”

Solas closes his eyes. Takes a deep, deep breath—and then stands, suddenly.

“I’ve overstayed my welcome,” he says, in a kind of voice adults use when they saying something boring or important. “Forgive me. I will not intrude on your peace again.”

As he starts to walk away, Mamae says, “I won’t.”

He stops, but does not turn around.

Mamae is still looking into the fire. “I won’t forgive you for coming here, because—” She closes her eyes, opens her mouth and shuts it again. Her fists are balled in her lap. “Because you saved her.”

His answering laugh sounds far away. “For a time,” he says, like it hurts.

“I should be the one—” She bows her head. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I want you to come back and visit whenever you like.”

His shoulders straighten. “What do you want in return?”

And that’s when her mother turns to look at him—so Evie can’t see her expression. “We have some rules, here. No one talks about the war. About Fen’harel, or the fighting, or what might happen. You can come and go as you please, but you can’t bring anyone I haven’t approved, and—and her nameday is in Guardian, it’s nice if as many people she knows can be here as possible so if you can just… I don’t know…”

All at once, Solas smiles, and half-laughs, and starts to cry.

And—and Mamae’s crying too, Evie realises. Her shoulders are shaking and her voice starts to waver. “I wanted you here so badly,” she says. “I—I’m sorry. I wanted to tell you but I couldn’t stand the thought of her being used against you—I wanted you to come back because you wanted to, not because I blackmailed you—”

“Tel’abelas,” he says, all of a sudden rushing back to her.

She stands, and they embrace before the fire. Crying, both of them—and Evie thinks that maybe she should go out and make them stop, it’s all very weird.

Then she feels a cold hand on her shoulder, and she knows without looking that it’s her brother.

“It hurts but it helps,” he whispers. “Go to sleep, Evie. They need to talk.”

She takes one last look out the door—looking at her mother, arms wrapped around Solas, his face pressed into her hair—and Evie wonders, because she’s never seen Mamae act like that around anyone else.

But Cole whispers again, and she lets herself be led back to bed.

Chapter Text

Evie is eight years old—but she will be nine in two months, and she doesn’t think she can wait that long.

Her nameday is the only time her whole family is in one place, after all. Instead of all off doing—well. When she was a baby, she thought they were just off doing very important adult things, but…

She’s not a baby, anymore. She knows better, now.

Last time Aunt Sera came to visit, she had a big, ugly scar on her right shoulder. She kept moving her arm around and making a face like it hurt, until she’d catch Evie looking. Then she’d grin, and say, “Looks pretty badass, yeah?”

Evie’s only got one scar—on her knee, from when she was six and borrowed Mamae’s knives when no one was looking. The big, dual-bladed ones that she’d seen her Mamae spin over her head, like they didn’t weigh a thing.

Well, they weighed at least a few things—she’d dropped them, and bled all over the place, and it had hurt like some of the stuff Aunt Sera likes to say… but the scar isn’t half as big as Aunt Sera’s.

So what happened, that Aunt Sera’s is so big?

“Stinging, sharp… tastes like copper, clots in the sunlight.”

She feels a tap on her nose from a cold, cold finger, and it makes her nose wrinkle. A gentle reprimand.

“You’re not focusing,” Cole tells her as she opens her eyes.

She is standing ankle-deep in the mud by the river, her footwraps folded neatly on a stone somewhere behind her and her leggings rolled up to keep them dry. It’s a little cold for this kind of thing—it smells like rain, Evie thinks, and the humidity hangs in the air, keeping everything so damp that her hair and clothes feel twice as heavy as normal.

Her fingers are cold, and her toes have gone numb. Cole is watching her, his gaze pale and distant as always, and as usual he is utterly immune to the cold.

“You asked me to teach you,” he reminds her gently.

She pouts. “I know. I just thought…”

Cole smiles a little. “Catching frogs is for babies, I’m ready for something bigger,” he says, then blinks slowly. “Focus on the frogs, first.”

“It’s too cold for frogs,” she grumbles back, but closes her eyes again anyway. “They’re all sleeping.”

“Fundamentals—remember?”

She huffs out a breath. Then draws her next in slowly, deliberately, and then another, and another…

It’s very quiet by the river in the dead of winter. The trees above her head have lost their leaves, though there’s still so many tall ones with needles that block out the grey, grey sky overhead. Cedar, she thinks to herself, before turning her focus to the mud that’s encased her feet.

It’s cold, and thick, and—kind of gross. Normally, if she were to try and pull her foot out, there would be an awful sucking noise, and she’d probably lose her balance and fall face-first into the mud. And then she’d have to return to camp, soaking wet, and have to endure another lecture about how she’s getting too old for this nonsense like she doesn’t already know it.

Another tap on her nose. “Focus.”

The mud is thick and heavy. But—she can be light, too. Like Cole, who never makes a sound. It’s just a matter of…

The air around her vibrates a little, and she feels a little dizzy—too light, as if she’s not weighed down by anything—but then she breathes and she is steadied, the air passing through her lungs as silent as the forest around her.

She pulls one foot from the mud without a sound. Nothing sticks to it as she lifts it, then places it in front of her. It does not sink in, even as she lifts the other.

She opens her eyes, and walks six paces forward without making a sound.

The seventh, her foot brushes a branch she didn’t see, and she falters—she splashes a little as she tries to correct herself, sinking down into muddy, cold water up to her knees.

Cole catches her arm before she falls face first into the river.

“That was very good,” he tells her.

She yanks her arm out of his grasp with a frustrated sigh. “You’re just saying that,” she snaps, before turning on her heel and splashing her way back to her footwraps.

“You don’t really want to run away,” Cole says to her back.

Evie sighs, leaning against the rock. “No,” she admits, pulling herself up. “I just…”

When her thoughts hang in the air between them, tangled and confused, Cole supplies them for her instead. “The Fade is fantasy, bright and bold—but it can’t tell you what the rain in Rivain feels like.”

Propping her muddy feet up on the rock before her, she crosses her arms on her knees and rests her chin on them. “Yeah,” she agrees, softly. Staring off to the other side of the river, where the air trembles ever so slightly, if you know where to look.

A barrier that keeps people out. That keeps her in, while Sera’s off getting ugly scars, Dorian’s off doing politics, and Bull does whatever he doesn’t want to talk about. While her Mamae goes wherever she goes that makes her come back with dark, dark circles under her eyes, and Solas…

Of her family, she knows least of all what Solas does past that barrier.

She knows only that silly looking gold armour, a white wolf pelt, and a whole room answering to him.

“He’s not wearing that now,” Cole says, startling Evie out of her thoughts.

She looks up at him, frowning curiously. He’s looking somewhere over her shoulder, towards…

“Solas!” she cries, delighted, when she sees him approaching from the camp.

He hasn’t even put his pack down, silly man—it’s slung over his shoulder still as he moves between the trees, his brow scrunched in that way he always does when he’s worried about something. But he relaxes when he sees her jumping off the rock and running towards him with a grin on her face.

“Da’assan,” he says, sounding relieved, right before she throws her arms around his waist.

“I missed you,” she says, burying her face into the soft green vest he’s wearing. He smells like a campfire, and his warmth chases away some of the damp chill hanging in the air.

He laughs a little, and very slowly hugs her back. “You saw me last night.”

She pulls back then, scowling up at him. Or—trying to, but he just looks so happy and she missed him, so a smile just keeps creeping up her face no matter how hard she tries.

“It’s not the same,” she counters, sounding a little petulant to her own ears. She squints up at him, then, studying his face closely—it’s hard to tell how he’s doing in the Fade, because he can look however he wants. It’s just as hard in person, she finds. He’s very good at hiding things, but she’s learned a few ways to tell, over the years; she just has to look very closely.

As usual, he’s giving her as thorough an examination as she is him.

“Have you grown taller?” he asks, clearly trying to pretend he’s not studying her face intently.

She smirks a little—he always looks so serious when he does this. So she answers him, “You should have seen me yesterday. Shot up taller than a tree! But I thought Bull might get jealous so I shrunk back down again.”

Solas smiles, placing his hands on her shoulders. Normally, when he does that, the shadows vanish from his face like magic. Today, they’re still there—hard to see, but she knows where to look.

He must be exhausted.

“Have you been catching frogs with Cole?” he asks, reaching up to tuck her hair behind her ear, his face doing that thing where he just looks really sappy for some reason.

Not that she doesn’t like it. It’s just weird.

She makes a face. “Catching frogs is for babies,” she says.

His lips twitch downward before he catches himself.

“Oh?” he teases, the corners of his eyes crinkling like they do when he’s feeling mischievous. “But I see wading knee-deep in mud is still an acceptable activity for an eight year old.”

“I’m almost nine,” she counters. “And we were practicing magic!”

“Of course,” he says, like he doesn’t believe her. But the exhaustion seems to have been chased away from his face for a moment, at the mention of magic—his eyes are bright, his shoulders relaxed, and his smile is easy, eager even, when he looks up at Cole over her shoulder. “And how is your star pupil progressing, Cole?”

“She’s doing very well,” Cole reports without hesitating. “We’re working on the fundamentals.”

Solas shakes his head, still smiling fondly—and Evie relaxes a little, when he doesn’t ask what, precisely, she’s been practicing.

“Well,” he says, looking down at Evie once more, “if you haven’t tired of magic for the day, I believe there’s one or two things I could show you, if you like. However—” and his eyes crinkle some more, “—I would prefer not to do so in the mud.”

“What kind of magic?” she blurts, suddenly grinning from ear to ear. “Like how to make fire, or how to grow things, or how to make big fancy dreams like you do, with all the people and towns and—”

He laughs a little, in that way he has that she knows he’s not making fun of her. He smiles down at her, looking so happy for a minute that she wonders if he forgot all about being sad. “I believe we have to start a little smaller than creating entire cities in your dreams, da’assan,” he says, offering her his hand.

She takes it, even though she’s way too old to be holding hands all the time. “So fire then, right?” she asks as he smiles down at her, falling in step beside her as she walks back to camp. “Or maybe ice, or light, or water, or lightning! Or how to move stuff like Aunt Vivienne did with that tree that fell over that one time…”

“Slow down,” he says, laughing, when she starts to tug on his arm.

“Walk faster!” she calls back, which only makes him laugh more.

When they stumble back into camp, however, Solas nearly stops dead in his tracks, so suddenly that Evie slows down with him.

She looks up at him, frowning. His eyes are wide, the smile on his face faltering, as he stares across the camp.

She follows his gaze and sees her Mamae, speaking with Una and Vern, the people who watch Evie most of the time.

Mamae looks tired, as usual when she comes back—she is unstrapping her prosthetic arm before she’s taken her bag off her shoulder, so Evie knows that means she’s really exhausted. She’s trying to smile as she speaks, but Evie can see even from across camp that it’s not really reaching her eyes.

“Are things that bad?” Una asks, softly.

“Just be careful,” Mamae says, after a moment. “I’ll see you in two weeks.”

Vern happens to look over at them, then, and he looks Solas up and down for a long moment before leaning in and saying something to Mamae quietly, so Evie can’t hear.

Mamae goes as still as Solas, and her face as blank too.

Evie rolls her eyes.

“Mamae!” she calls, deciding to pretend she hasn’t noticed.

And Mamae turns toward them with a smile—strained, Evie thinks, and she seems not to be looking at Solas on purpose. But she bends down and embraces Evie as if nothing is wrong, when she comes running—and as Evie buries her face in the soft scarf her mother’s wearing, she feels her mother’s face in her hair, and the deep, steadying breath she takes as they both just… take a moment. Evie clinging to her mother almost as tight as Mamae clings to her.

“Da’vhenan,” she murmurs, gently.

“I missed you,” Evie says, tightening her grip on her mother’s clothes. Thinking of the scar on Aunt Sera’s shoulder, and wondering…

“I missed you too,” her Mamae says, pulling away so they can properly look at one another. “But,” she adds, with that lopsided smile of hers, “I’ve made a few arrangements, and I’m staying for three weeks this time.”

“Really?” Evie waits, vibrating, for her mother to nod, grinning, as she reaches up with her good hand and cups Evie’s cheek.

“Really,” she says. “Just you, and me, and Cole…”

“And Solas!” Evie blurts, turning around.

Solas, for his part, is just standing there. Staring at the two of them like he’s happy and upset at the same time.

Mamae doesn’t say anything. Solas opens and closes his mouth several times before he manages to say, “Perhaps I should… I didn’t mean to intrude, I just…”

He keeps looking between Evie and her Mamae, and Evie can’t… she can’t handle the indecision on his face. How he’s not saying what he wants to say—and she knows he wants to stay, because Cole told her he never wants to leave, and she gets to see him even less than she sees her Mamae, and…

“What about teaching me magic?” she asks. And then, belatedly, she realises that didn’t come out very polite.

He shifts. “I could come back later,” he says, and he has an expression on his face Aunt Vivienne would call sullen.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Mamae says, standing. “Solas, I’ve told you before, you’re welcome here whenever you like.”

He hesitates a moment longer—as he and Evie’s Mamae just stand there, and look at one another. Evie holds her breath the whole time.

Then his shoulders relax, and he smiles, looking relieved. “So you did,” he says, in that voice Evie hears him use with her Mamae sometimes, all soft and gentle.

“Well!” her Mamae says, after a moment. “I’ve caught supper—who’s hungry for boar?”

“Now Evie,” Solas says, when the only light is the fire they’re huddled around, his own shimmering green barrier protecting them from the heavy evening rain, “try it one more time.”

Evie exhales—her head hurts a little from so much focusing, but she nods, slowly.

He gives her an encouraging smile. “You were very close the last time,” he tells her, shifting a little closer on the log they’re both sitting on. He takes her hands in his, having her hold them before her, as if she was carrying something round. A ball, maybe.

“You don’t have to force it through the Veil,” he tells her, as she feels energy start to move from his skin to hers. It feels like the air before a storm, and she can feel the hair on her arms stand on end. “The best barriers take the veil itself and direct it—not relying on your own mana, which will deplete as you tire, but simply directing the veil to take a more solid form around you, or someone you wish to protect.”

The air feels like it’s trembling between her hands.

“Do you feel it?”

She exhales. “Yeah.”

“Excellent. Now, use only a portion of your mana—only a little—and show the Veil the shape you wish it to take.”

She tries—she does. She can see a faint green outline of a sphere flicker in the air before her, but when she tries to make the Veil follow that shape…

Her head suddenly aches, and she winces as she loses focus, and the shape dissipates into the night air.

“I’ll get it next time,” she grumbles.

Solas brings his hands to either side of her head. His hands are cool—and as he touches her skin, she feels the ache slowly fade away.

“I’m afraid we’ve overdone it a little,” he says, apologetic. He doesn’t look disappointed, though—he only smiles as he brushes her hair out of her face, and then tilts her head up with a finger curled under her chin. “You have made remarkable progress,” he assures her, before kissing her forehead.

She closes her eyes. “One more time?”

He huffs a laugh into her hair. “Tomorrow.”

“Promise?”

“Promise. Now,” and he pulls away, offering his hand once more. “I’m afraid it was your bedtime two hours ago.”

Evie looks over at her mother, opening her mouth.

Before she can even speak, her mother shakes her head fondly. “I believe I’ve given you plenty of five more minutes, Evie. You have three more weeks to practice magic with Solas.”

“Three weeks minus one day,” she complains, but she takes Solas’s hand as she stands.

“We will make them count,” he promises.

Even though she’s too old for this, she lets him lead her up to the aravel. And then her Mamae comes in, and fusses over her as she tucks her into her furs—and Evie’s definitely too old for that, but it’s five more minutes she gets to see Mamae before she goes to bed.

And Mamae sits with her a little longer, playing with Evie’s hair a little, singing softly. One of those songs she used to sing when Evie was little—in Elvhen, about love and sweet dreams in the Fade…

As Mamae leaves, Evie opens her eyes again—seeing, around her mother’s retreating form, Solas leaning in the aravel doorway.

In the moment before he moves out of sight so her mother can leave the aravel, Evie thinks that he seems… impossibly sad. Like something awful has happened, and he doesn’t know what to do about it.

“Goodnight, da’vhenan,” her mother calls as she closes the door, and Evie smiles back.

“Goodnight, Mamae,” she calls back. “Goodnight, Solas.”

After a long, painful silence, she hears Solas call back, “Goodnight, da’assan.”

The door closes, and she waits—counting her breaths, blinking rapidly to try and wake up a little more. Then she hears them move away from the door after a long, long pause, and she makes herself wait even longer before slipping out of the furs, creeping over to the door, and pushing it open a crack as she crouches next to it.

Solas and her mother are sitting at the fire once more—with plenty of space between them, Evie notices with an annoyed scowl.

They’re not looking at each other.

“How come they do this every time,” she grumbles, knowing without looking that Cole is suddenly at her side.

He sighs. “We have to be patient,” he says, though he sounds like he’s beginning to lose his.

Evie exhales, frustrated. For as long as she’s known Solas, she’s looked out the crack in the door of the aravel and watched him and her Mamae, sitting far apart, gradually getting closer and closer the more time they spend together. Relaxing, bit by bit—Solas smiling a little more easily, the dark circles disappearing from Mamae’s face as she laughs a little more…

And then one of them has to leave. And the next time they’re both here—which doesn’t happen very often at all—the whole thing starts all over again.

“Three weeks is long, though,” she whispers. “Maybe this time…”

He inclines his head. “If not now,” he murmurs.

Before he can finish what he is about to say, however, Solas suddenly speaks. “I did not mean to intrude, truly.”

Mamae sighs. “You’re not intruding, Solas,” she says, pinching the bridge of her nose.

“If you want me to leave—”

“Solas.” He stops as she looks up at him—her eyes dark, but a small smile on her face. “I believe I told you years ago that you can come and go as you please.”

His shoulders relax a little. “You did,” he says, with some uncertainty.

“I meant it,” is all she says, before she stands and starts walking back towards the aravel.

Evie has to scramble back into her furs, then, and pretend to be asleep when her Mamae opens the door.

She doesn’t close it right away—and Evie squeezes her eyes shut, trying to lie very still, wondering if she’s been caught. But then she hears her Mamae say, very softly, “Goodnight, Solas.”

It takes Solas a long time to reply. “Goodnight, vhenan.”

When Evie was almost six, she got sick. Really, truly sick.

Una and Vern weren’t worried at first, and neither was she—but then Cole started to fret, as she started to fall behind more. And he stopped taking her down to the river, no matter how much she begged and screamed.

And then, she got so sick she couldn’t leave the aravel.

She was just… cold, all the time. Even though she was sweaty. And she couldn’t stop coughing, even though it hurt.

And her dreams were strange. Big, bright things watching from the shadows, and then there was cold, and then heat, and then—

Then, finally, she dreamed her Mamae came. She stood outside the aravel and said, “I will make it better, da’vhenan, if you just let me in.”

It was so real, it was like it wasn’t a dream. So she got up, even though she was shaky and coughing, and she almost made it to the door—

But then she heard snarling, on the other side of the door. A shriek that wasn’t quite right, not human or elf or dwarf or qunari. And there was slamming, and the crackle of lightning, and she wasn’t quite sure what she should do…

As soon as it started, all the noise on the other side of the door stopped.

And it wasn’t so cold, all of a sudden—so she leaned forward, and peeked out through the crack in the door.

Outside, there wasn’t much of a camp at all. Just a kind of big, green place, with a black city looming over her, so close she could almost touch it.

There was a big, big wolf. He had white fur, and looked like he was just growling and snarling but whatever he was snarling at was gone, and he was slowly relaxing.

When he turned to look at her, he had too many eyes, all the same stormy grey she sees in her reflection in the river.

“Da’assan,” the wolf had said with Solas’s voice.

When she jerked awake, startled, her mother was lying in front of her, hushing her, promising it was all going to be okay.

And Solas was lying at her back, one arm around her, pulling her close to his chest. His other hand stroked her hair as she felt him press a gentle kiss to her forehead.

So, lying between her mother and Solas in the aravel, feeling protected and safe and warm for the first time in a week, she decided that, though she wasn’t exactly sure what a father did other than in Varric’s stories, she wanted Solas to be her Papae.

And that feeling… never really went away.

Even now, at almost nine years old, holding her hands above her head and trying to form a barrier around her, like Solas has shown her, she keeps glancing over at him, even though she’s supposed to be focusing.

As she does, the veil that has almost become solid warps a little, flickering in and out of form.

Solas notices, every time. And a little smile keeps creeping up on his face, no matter how serious he tries to look.

“Focus, da’assan,” he says. “You almost have it.”

She closes her eyes, and inhales slowly. And when she exhales again, she focuses on the shape of the bubble she’s trying to create around herself.

“Don’t force it,” he warns her when her face begins to scrunch up. “Just guide it. It will follow your lead.”

She makes herself relax. She rolls her shoulders, to ease the stiffness there, and breathes in, then out, and as she inhales one last time she sends a thread of her mana in a dome around herself, slowly, waiting and seeing if the veil will follow her.

Something snaps into place around her, lightning quick. For a split second, the air smells like her Mamae’s hair, like Solas’s sweater, and then the smell vanishes.

When she opens her eyes—tentatively—there is a thin, green, crackling but stable barrier separating her from the rest of the camp.

On the other side, Solas is beaming down at her.

“Well done,” he tells her, his voice soft but overflowing with pride.

Evie’s chest swells. She drops her hands, and the barrier remains—humming, slightly, but stable.

“Can you teach me fire next?” she blurts, and Solas laughs.

“I believe your Mamae said no fire until you were at least fifteen,” he reminds her, but there’s a twinkle in his eye that tells her he’s very tempted to break that rule.

“She certainly did,” comes her mother’s voice from the other side of camp. Solas turns, and Evie can see her—walking through the trees, dragging a deer behind her on a makeshift sled.

When Mamae sees Evie, her eyes light up, and she drops the rope in her hand to the ground. “You did it!”

“Try to get in!” Evie taunts, as her mother runs up to them. “Bet you five chores you can’t!”

Mamae only shakes her head, coming to a stop beside Solas. “I’m your mother,” she says, reaching out to tap on the barrier with a finger. It makes a dull thump noise, but the barrier remains unharmed. “I don’t bet on chores, I assign them.”

Solas smirks. “Your loss—I’ve won an evening entirely free of cleaning dishes.”

“Oh? Is that why you were scrubbing the aravels two days ago?”

Evie giggles, and Solas clears his throat, embarrassed. “Perhaps.”

Mamae shakes her head. “In any case, learning to make a barrier in under three weeks can’t be easy. Well done, da’vhenan.”

Evie lets down the barrier so her mother can step forward and embrace her. And then of course she fusses a little, petting down her hair and kissing her forehead, and Evie squirms a little—but only a little, because she doesn’t see Mamae enough to even pretend she’s too old for this.

“Well, Solas, If you’ve got so much free time,” Mamae says, turning and walking back to the deer she left at the edge of camp, “then you can help me butcher and clean this kill, for a change, while Evie takes a breather from all the hard work she’s been doing.”

Evie almost asks to help—but then she sees Cole, off to the side, and he shakes his head slowly.

She frowns at him, curious—but he gestures to Solas, who is watching her mother walking away, a different kind of smile on his face.

She looks over at Cole again, her nose wrinkling to show her doubt. But he only nods, and she rolls her eyes as she relents.

“Cole wants to go play by the river!”

“Be back before dark,” is all her mother says, not even looking over her shoulder as she bends over to grab the rope.

Solas gives her a kiss on the cheek. “Excellent work, da’assan,” he tells her before he lets her go, but he doesn’t stop her from running to Cole. The spirit walks beside her as she makes her way through the trees, and she goes nearly as silently as he does, avoiding every stray branch or fallen leaf.

“Are you sure?” she whispers, once she’s certain they’re far enough away from camp. “We’ve only got two days left! They always screw it up when we leave them alone.”

“Not today,” Cole says with a hum.

Evie sighs. But, Cole is much better at these things than she is, so she relents.

“Want to catch frogs?” he asks.

She giggles. “You’re obsessed.”

That night, Evie watches through the crack in the aravel door as Solas and her mother sit next to each other, with very little space between them.

They talk a little—mostly about boring stuff. The state of the aravels, the weather. If it will snow, tonight.

“We have enough furs,” Mamae says. “I have more I can give you, if you’re cold.”

“There are plenty in my aravel,” he assures her. “And I know a few spells to keep me comfortable while sleeping, should those prove insufficient.”

She hums, and they lapse into a comfortable silence.

“I could keep you warm.”

She glances up at him.

“Er—that is to say.” He coughs, suddenly looking bashful. It’s hard to tell in the firelight, but Evie thinks he’s flushing. “I meant—I could have the spell cover the entire camp. It would—it would be simple. If you like.”

Yeah, his ears are definitely red. Evie frowns, wondering what he said that was so embarrassing.

Her mother only shakes her head. She’s not sure, but Evie thinks she’s smiling.

And then they’re quiet again, for such a long time that Evie’s knees begin to cramp up. And she’s getting a bit cold with the aravel door open, even huddled up in all the furs she’s pulled from her bedroll. She almost decides to give up and go to bed—they’re obviously not doing anything exciting, and they’re probably not going to screw it up, they’ve been doing well enough on their own today.

That’s about when it starts to snow.

Her Mamae looks up first—maybe noticing something in the air, or maybe something fell on her nose. But not long after she does, Evie sees little white flakes, dancing in the air. Illuminated by the fire, bright white against the darkness surrounding their little camp.

Mamae starts to smile, as it begins to snow in earnest. Watching it fall from the sky. Slow, meandering, directionless. There’s not a breath of wind in the trees—only the crackle of the fire, fading low in the pit.

Solas is watching her watch the snow. His expression soft, and fond.

“This always brings me back,” she says, her voice low. “We don’t get much snow here. Nothing like Ferelden, when we do. Probably a good thing—it was so damn cold.”

He hums in agreement. Still looking only at her, while she looks at the sky above.

Her Mamae rubs her arms. Solas shifts a little closer.

“But—I forget sometimes, how cold it was. And I miss it. I miss the sun on the slopes of the Frostbacks. The crunch of it under my boots—I hated those boots, but they were warm.” She shakes her head, and Solas chuckles a little, low and deep. “I miss snowball fights with Sera. Those soft blankets the horses used to wear. The tavern full of people—it got so hot in there sometimes they didn’t even have fires going. Even—I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I even miss when we had to go and dig those ridiculous Orlesian carriages out of the snow when they got stuck. I miss—”

She looks at Solas then, finally, finally noticing that he’s looking at her. That they’re closer than Evie’s seen them sit, ever.

It’s so quiet. Evie holds her breath.

Solas says, so quietly that Evie almost doesn’t hear it, “I miss you.”

Mamae kisses him.

On the lips!

And then she pulls away, and says, “Fuck,” which makes Evie’s eyebrows shoot up, but then Solas leans in and kisses her back, so hard they nearly fall over the log they’re sitting on.

That’s about when Cole covers Evie’s eyes with his hand.

“Hey!” she hisses, fumbling to get it off her face. “I wanna see!”

“No you don’t,” Cole tells her.

She hears Mamae hiss, “Not here,” and Solas murmur something that sounds kind of like he’s agreeing with her but also like a growl, and then she hears Mamae stifle a laugh.

When Evie finally gets Cole to move his hand, all she gets is a glimpse of Solas and her mother, slipping into the trees.

Cole closes the door. Evie pulls her furs closer around herself as she stands and goes back to her bedroll.

“Was that good?” she asks, as Cole tucks her in again.

He’s smiling a little. “Yes,” he says, softly.

Chapter Text

When she was six, Solas told Evie that she was a Dreamer.

At the time, she had been mostly annoyed that it meant more rules. She remembers pouting as he started to explain, as gently as he could, the importance of never saying yes in a dream, no matter how tempting it was.

But then he had stopped—and now that she’s older, she knows she hadn’t been hiding her displeasure very well—and he reached forward, tilting her head up with a finger curled under her chin.

“Would you like to know how you can speak to me, even when I’m not at your side?”

It was the first bit of magic he ever taught her.

She doesn’t use it much—normally, Solas finds her, not the other way around. Sometimes he’s already waiting for her, crafting up grand settings for them to explore together in the Fade. Sometimes, he appears when she’s in the middle of a nightmare, or a dream she thinks isn’t a dream, and takes her hand and leads her out of it.

She always knows it’s him. She’s… not sure how, she just does.

It’s a week until her ninth nameday, and she stands in the Fade—a vague, half-formed dream swirling like mist around her. She takes a steadying breath, then reaches for Solas.

She feels him dreaming, somewhere distant. There’s a heavy cloud of uncertainty clouding the Fade around him, same as it’s been every time she’s checked for the past… two months, nearly.

This time, there’s the chill of despair, too.

She scowls a little, right before reaching a little harder and then tugging, hard.

Normally, this just drags Solas to her. Normally, he follows her call, and arrives in her dream smiling pleasantly, whatever strange thoughts he has tucked neatly away where she can’t see them. Not really fair, that he can see whatever she’s thinking and not the other way around, but when she brought that up he only assured her that he’d been doing this much longer than her, and then promised not to pry into her private thoughts.

Normally.

This time, however, Solas is so wrapped up in his dream that he doesn’t budge—and Evie’s is only partially formed, so when she tugs she feels her whole self lurch forward, and the dream vanishes around her as she flies through the Fade towards Solas.

It only lasts a moment. It feels kind of like… being the wind. Or something. Like she’s moving very fast, made of nothing, but can be stopped by a brick wall.

Solas’s dream is kind of like that brick wall.

She stumbles when she finally stops. Even though she doesn’t really have balance to lose in dreaming, as Solas sometimes tells her, she still feels like she does. It takes her a moment to regain her composure—and she blinks, rapidly, as she adjusts to the stark solidity of the dream around her.

Solas doesn’t make dreams so… hard, with her. He always makes them bright, and colourful, or soft and warm.

Everything here is grey, and muted, and cold.

And strangely familiar, but not in a good way.

Evie shoves her hair out of her eyes, her breaths loud in the still air around her, as she gathers her wits. She stands amid the crumbling ruins of what must have once been a very nice city—she spots mosaics on walls that have fallen apart, though they don’t have much shine in this strangely cloudy dream, and broken sculptures that have very lovely shapes, even though they look worn down by time. There are tall, tall columns, and gardens that have old, shrivelled trees at their center, vines blackened by rot and age tearing up the intricate cobblestones at her feet.

She’s standing on a sort of street, buildings on either side of her—and it all leads to a set of stairs, which lead into a building.

That’s the thing that looks most familiar, she thinks, the hair rising on the back of her neck.

She shakes her head to clear it. She closes her eyes—even though it’s a dream and she doesn’t need to—and focuses on Solas again.

Again, he ignores her tug. Or maybe doesn’t feel it. She doesn’t fly to him this time, but she can tell he’s in the big building at the top of the stairs.

Her back is very cold, suddenly. She turns, arms raised to defend herself, and only catches a glimpse of Despair as it flees, weeping softly, into a plain stone wall marked only by a mirror.

Evie stares at the mirror—it’s tall, and thin, and it looks very familiar.

“Oh,” she says, softly.

This is where she met Solas.

Seemed like a bad dream then, too.

There’s still a chill in the air, so she rubs her arms and starts walking toward the big building she was taken to when she was very little.

Like the strange city she arrived in, the inside of the building is completely empty. Not even a stray spirit bothers her, here—and while she’s glad she doesn’t have to worry about Despair tailing her, or something worse, she’s not used to a dream so empty. With just grey walls and broken things lining the halls.

Why would Solas dream about something so lonely?

Why couldn’t he answer her?

She checks for him again, and then begins to run in that direction.

It’s a straight line the whole way—maybe because it’s a dream, or maybe the building actually looks like that outside the Fade, too. But she runs down a long, long hall, up some steep stairs, and through a set of heavy, dark doors, before she finds Solas.

He’s standing in the middle of a big room, staring down at a pedestal in the center, with a stone orb resting on it.

There’s an expression on his face that Evie doesn’t know how to react to, so she kind of just stands there for a moment. Watching him as he looks down at that orb, trying to figure out how to even describe his features.

Maybe it’s because this place is from her childhood, but she can only think of one word: overwhelmed.

He notices her, and he freezes in place.

“Evie?” he asks, uncertain.

He sounds… lost.

“Yeah?” she answers.

Then his expression goes blank, and hard, and he raises one hand, and the strange dream vanishes around them. Leaving them standing in the places Solas brings her to often—a glade, with a gentle waterfall and a little winding river, and pretty yellow flowers.

“What was that?” Evie asks.

“Private,” he snaps, hard and fast.

She leans back a little. She can’t tell if he’s angry or scared.

Solas sighs. He closes his eyes, then brings a hand up to his face. He breathes a moment, his head down, his eyes covered.

“Ir abelas,” he says, and though he tries to say it gently he still sounds rattled. “I did not mean…  You should not have ventured so far on your own.”

“I didn’t mean to. Really! I wanted to see you, so I did what I always do, same as normal, but then I just… went flying to you. Instead of the other way around.”

He exhales, shaking his head at her. But the beginnings of a smile are starting to creep onto his face, chasing the hard lines away. His eyes softening as he approaches, his shoulders relaxing.

“I forget, sometimes, how clever you are,” he tells her.

She makes a face. “I don’t really think I did anything.”

But he just keeps smiling down at her.

“So,” he says, after a moment has passed. “What did you wish to talk about?”

She blinks up at him. “Huh?”

He chuckles. “Da’assan,” he says, “one does not fling themselves halfway across the Fade on their first attempt unless something very important is on their mind. Why did you wish to see me?”

In this light, his eyes are almost purple. Like hers get, sometimes, in her reflection in the river, when the light’s like this.

But… it’s the Fade. Is that just because she wants them to be the same?

She looks down at her feet. “I missed you,” she says, lamely, watching her toes curl in the soft grass. “A lot.”

He sighs. It sounds… fond, she thinks. Hard to tell, because she doesn’t want to look at him.

But then she feels his fingers under her chin, guiding her very gently to look up at him.

“I missed you too,” he tells her. “You are always on my mind, when I am away.”

She smiles up at him.

“Now,” he says, sitting cross-legged in the grass and gesturing for her to do the same, “I believe I have been neglecting your training as of late. Let’s see if you can remember the basics? Perhaps, changing the colour of these flowers.”

She makes a face at him. “You’re worse than Cole,” she complains, and he laughs.

She wakes, later, to the sound of winter winds rattling the door of the aravel. The morning light coming through the cracks is grey, and the tips of her ears are cold from where they poke out of her mountain of furs and blankets.

“You didn’t ask him.”

Evie curls deeper into her blankets and rubs the sleep from her eyes. “I chickened out,” she answers, her voice muffled by sleepiness and furs. “Sorry.”

She doesn’t know why she’s apologizing—Cole isn’t mad. He’s just sitting at her side, his back pressed against the wall. She can feel him rocking, slightly, but that’s just because he’s thinking.

It wasn’t even his idea.

“He called her vhenan. You want to know, but… what happens if you’re wrong? If he’s not? If his eyes are just grey, and it doesn’t mean anything? Maybe pretend is better, in the long run.”

She sighs. “Yeah,” she says, “that’s pretty much it.”

He hums. “I can’t tell you,” he reminds her.

“I know. You promised.”

“I want to. It hurts—I want to make it better.”

He normally sounds sort of blank, most of the time—except when they talk about this, and his voice gets shaky, and he starts to look strained. Solas explained, once, that spirits get upset when they can’t do what’s in their nature. What they’re supposed to do. And Cole just wants to help, but…

She sits up, even though it’s cold, and she reaches out to take Cole’s hand.

“You are helping,” she tells him. “You’re my brother. You… understand me. Even when I don’t understand me. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

He smiles a little.

“You help too,” he says. “Everyone forgets for a while, when they’re with you. Or—the bad things slip away, for a while. Not gone, just quieter.”

You mean the war no one talks about, she thinks, but does not say, and then tries to think about other things. It won’t do Cole any good to distress him more by thinking about things he’s not allowed to talk about.

“Cole,” she says instead, “I saw Solas’s dream tonight, for a little bit. And it was hard, and dark, and… at the end, there was an orb. And he got mad at me when I asked about it.”

Cole tilts his head slightly, but does not look surprised.

“What was it?”

He’s quiet for a while—he doesn’t even move. Just sits there, so still that she wonders if he’s even heard her.

But in the end, all he says is, “Nothing good.”

“Okay,” Sera says, eyeing the barrier above their heads with obvious nervousness, “I mean, that’s cool. Weird and magic and—I mean shouldn’t complain, I’m dry.”

Evie tries not to roll her eyes. And also not to look too strained—it turns out that it’s difficult to split her focus between the small barrier she’s raised to keep them dry and stringing her brand new bow just like Sera showed her in the shelter of the aravel.

Evie had been too impatient to wait for the rain to stop before she got her first real lesson.

“How long ya been able to do that, anyway?”

“Like a month.” She finishes tying it, then tugs on the bowstring.

Sera launches forward and snatches it out of her hands. “Okay, okay, lesson one: no dry fire. It’s bad for the bow.”

“What’s dry—“

“What you just tried to do.” Sera inspects the bow for a moment, and the job Evie has done of stringing it, and then hands it back with an easy grin. “Nice. Alright, now, we gotta figure out which eye you see better with…”

Evie makes a face. “I see fine with both my eyes.”

“Nope. One’s better. Trust me.” Sera sticks one of her fingers up.

“Evanura!”

The sound of her mother’s voice makes both Evie and Sera jump in place—and Evie loses her concentration on the barrier. Evie manages to duck, but Sera gets slapped full force over the top of her head by a wall of rain water that had collected on the barrier.

Sera says a number of words Evie is not brave enough to repeat around her mother.

“Arselicking magic!” she finishes, right as Mamae storms up and grabs the bow out of Evie’s hands.

“Mamae—”

“What is this?” she demands, though she’s looking at Sera more than Evie.

“Busted,” Sera mumbles.

“It’s my birthday present!” Evie tries to reach for it, but Mamae holds it over her head. “Sera gave it to me!”

“Did she?” Mamae squints suspiciously at Sera, who can’t seem to decide what to do with her hands. “Did she ask me if it was alright for you to own a weapon?”

“C’mon,” Sera says, “she’s nine. Pretty sure you were stabbing people in the neck at like, six.”

Mamae’s lips twitch, which Evie has recently discovered means she is trying not to laugh because she’s still mad. “It doesn’t matter what I did,” she says, “or how my father raised me, it matters how I am raising Evie.”

Evie is torn between the desire to act like a grown up and the urge to climb her mother like a tree to get the bow back.

“I was gonna ask,” Sera says. She plants her hands on Evie’s shoulders, as if to keep her on the ground, then bends down to stick her head neck to Evie’s and look up at her Mamae with big, big eyes. “But she caught me sneakin’ it in, and she got so excited, an’ you know how it is, I don’t get to see her often enough…”

Mamae looks between them both, unmoving.

“I am not falling for the puppy dog eyes, Sera.”

“Kid, tell your mom how much fun you were totally about to have.”

Evie swallows. “I was totally about to have all the fun,” she says, as politely and nicely as she can. “Mamae, can I keep it, please? I won’t use it without Cole watching, I promise.”

Cole, suddenly hovering just over Mamae’s shoulder, leans in. Evie watches as he says something—And Mamae’s lips thin, and she looks down. Her expression faltering a moment.

At length, she sighs. “Alright,” she says, handing the bow back.

“Yes!” Evie exclaims, snatching the bow up so quick she forgets to be polite. “Thank you Mamae! Thank you!”

“You will teach her to use it safely.”

“Yeah yeah. Don’t worry, I won’t let her throw bees at anyone til at least twelve.”

“I’m gonna throw bees?!”

Evie turns back around to her mother giving Sera a murderous glare, while Sera tries her best not to notice.

“Okay! First lesson—”

“First lesson was no dry fire.”

“Yeah, yeah, we get it, you’re smart. Okay, second lesson, then, smartypants, is if you’re gonna use the bow left handed or right handed.”

“You’re not teaching her anything in this—”

The rain that had been pouring down on them suddenly stops. Evie looks up, blinking waterdrops out of her eyes, to see a green barrier shimmering in the air above them. This one is curved better than the one Evie made, as the water trails down to fall harmlessly off its edges, well away from anyone’s head.

“Solas!” Evie exclaims.

“Ugh,” Sera moans.

Mamae says nothing at all. Evie doesn’t pay much attention to her, though—she spins around in a circle until she spots Solas, standing just on the edge of the forest.

The first thing she notices is the dark circles under his eyes.

But he’s smiling, and he doesn’t look angry about the bow, so she decides not to worry about it. He approaches, slowly, ducking his head as he passes under the barrier to avoid the worst of the water trickling off its edges.

“I believe I was being metaphorical when I started to call you da’assan,” he teases.

“Sera gave it to me,” she says, holding the bow out for him to see. “And she’s going to teach me to shoot like her. I love it. I’m never putting it down.”

Is she talking too fast?

Probably.

Solas looks up, and his smile turns strained as he meets Sera’s gaze.

“A fine gift,” he says at length.

Evie turns around. Sera is standing between him and Mamae with her arms crossed and her eyes narrowed.

The only sound for a few long, painful moments is the sound of rain on the barrier overhead.

“Yeah,” Sera finally says. “Never know when she might need it.”

Mamae sighs, and pinches the bridge of her nose. “That’s enough, Sera.”

“Hm.” Sera shifts her weight, still scowling. “Sure.”

Before anyone can say anything else, Evie feels Solas’s hand rest on her head. She looks up at him as he drops it.

“I will leave you to your gift,” he says, mostly to Evie.

He walks off towards the aravels—and he hesitates a moment, when he passes Mamae. He opens his mouth a little, as if to say something, until their eyes meet, and he just kind of wavers in place.

Mamae smiles. “Hello Solas,” she says.

Solas lets out the breath he’s been holding. “Hello.”

“It’s good to see you again.”

He smiles, and it’s like all the shadows vanish from his face. “And you, as well.”

After he leaves, Sera gives Mamae a look.

Mamae runs her hand over her face. “Don’t say it.”

Sera clicks her tongue.

Solas doesn’t join them for supper. Which isn’t strange, when other people are around—Solas and the others don’t get along, really. Never have.

“Don’t worry about it, Bluebird. Chuckles was always a bit of a loner,” Varric says, as he helps Evie scrape the rest of the stew out of the pot and into a bowl. “Even before… well.”

As Varric trails off, he glances over at Mamae—who has taken her left arm off to adjust it with some long, odd shaped tool, and is giving him that look that she gives anyone who tries to talk about the thing they’re not supposed to talk about around Evie.

Sera opens her mouth to say something, but belches instead. Once Evie announced her intention to bring the leftovers to Solas, Sera had marched right back to the pot and helped herself to three more heaping bowlfuls of food. The last is half-empty, sitting by her feet, and Dagna is rubbing circles on her lower back.

“Maybe you should have called it quits after the second bowl,” Dagna says, gently.

Sera mutters something under her breath that Evie doesn’t quite hear.

“Be nice,” Dagna chides, which only prompts more grumbling.

“Before what?” Evie asks, pointedly ignoring her mother’s warning glares.

Varric, not even skipping a beat, just smirks at Evie. “Before he decided to become a professional hermit,” he says, then not so much places the pot back on the ground so much as drops it. “Damn, I’m getting old…”

Evie makes a face. “Before what,” she asks again, gripping the bowl full of food tight to her chest.

This time she looks at her mother—who does not quite meet her gaze.

“Bluebird,” Varric starts to say.

“I’m going to go talk to Solas now,” Evie snaps, before turning on her heel and storming off.

As she does, she hears Sera say, “Yeah, you fucked up.”

She finds Solas by the river—a ways back from it, not quite where the mud starts but close enough that her feet get uncomfortably cold as she approaches him. He’s speaking with Cole, so softly that Evie can’t hear—and she makes no effort to hide her approach, so they stop as soon as they hear her coming.

At least Cole isn’t mean to Solas all the time. It kind of makes up for… everyone else.

“Are you hungry?” she asks, holding the bowl out.

Solas smiles. He accepts it once she’s close enough, cupping his hands around hers for a moment before taking it from her. “Thank you,” he says. “You don’t have to worry about me all the time.”

“He likes it though,” Cole supplies.

Solas sighs. “Cole,” he says, and it sounds like a warning.

“What were you talking about?” she asks.

Solas stiffens.

“Nothing good,” Cole replies. He slips off the rock he’s been sitting on, pauses to mess up Evie’s hair a little, and then vanishes into thin air.

She takes a moment to fix it, shoving it all back out of her face where it belongs. By the time she looks back up at Solas, he’s got a spoonful of food. But he’s just holding it in the air and contemplating it, like it’s part of a puzzle. Possibly a very sad puzzle, but honestly Solas just looks sad all the time, when he thinks she’s not looking, so who knows.

He drops the spoon back into the bowl, then places it on the rock beside him.

“Evie,” he says, his voice low and serious. “Just… know that I love you. More—more fiercely than I have loved anything.”

She stares up at him wide-eyed.

He opens his mouth and closes it. He runs a hand over his face, clearly trying to figure out what to say next.

Before he does, Evie hears shouting coming from the camp.

Solas jerks his head in that direction. And then he freezes in place, his brow furrowing in confusion.

Evie listens, tilting her head and frowning. “Is that uncle Dorian?” she asks, taking a step forward.

She stops when she feels Solas’s hand on her shoulder. It’s heavy, and his grip is surprisingly tight.

“Stay here,” he urges, before taking off towards camp at a run.

She waits for Solas to disappear into the trees, counts to ten, and then follows after him.

She expects, with every step, for Cole to stop her. To appear before her and shake his head, or at her side and put a hand on her shoulder. Every time her foot hits the ground, she waits for it.

And with every step he does not, her chest starts to feel tighter, and tighter.

When she reaches the clearing, she finds out why.

Dorian is swearing—cursing in Tevene, mostly, though there’s a few of the ones Bull says sometimes that Evie recognises in there. He’s sitting down already, and Dagna is pressing a bottle into his hands that is glowing blue—lyrium, she remembers, from some of Vivienne’s sporadic history lessons. Which means his magic is… low, right? His hands are shaking, so maybe that’s right.

Mamae is helping Bull sit down next to him—he’s limping pretty bad on his braced leg, and as he gets close to the firelight Evie can see a bandage on his other leg, soaked through and glistening black with blood. His face is pale, and he seems to be having trouble staying upright.

Thom is behind them all, someone slumped over his shoulders. He puts them on the ground—gently, but he’s so exhausted he nearly drops them, and then rolls them over onto their back.

It’s Cassandra. She’s… not moving.

Evie can hear her blood pounding in her ears, and nothing else. There’s a smear of blood on Cassandra’s cheek—dried, crusty. It almost looks like dirt, or mud. Evie just… stares at that. Instead of looking at the rest of Cassandra. Looking where her armour is caved in over her chest—

Cole kneels by Cassandra’s head. His own bowed over her, his hat hiding his face so Evie can’t see if he’s saying anything.

A glass bottle shatters as it hits a tree, and Evie snaps out of it.

“Fasta vass,” Dorian shouts, “I hated those bastards enough before they started copying Templars.”

Mamae gets Bull settled, and then tries to look at his leg. He waves her off, however, pointing towards Cassandra.

“Fuck,” Sera is saying. “Fuck—how did they get Cassandra?! She’s like—”

She gestures wildly in the air, as if that helps articulate her point.

Varric stands by Cole for a moment, and his face twists as he looks down at her. But he only shakes his head, and goes back to Thom. “The Iron Lady won’t be here until tomorrow,” he says, though Evie barely hears him. “You think Dorian’s…?”

Thom shakes his head. “I doubt it. Last time this happened, Lady Vivienne was out of it for hours. Cassandra’s got… well. Not that.”

“And my specialty isn’t exactly healing, let alone gaping chest wounds,” Dorian snaps. “Where the hell is that healer Hawke promised us?”

Evie glances over, and sees Solas standing a few feet to her left. He hasn’t noticed her yet—he’s just staring, his face twisted in confusion and grief. But Dorian’s words seem to startle him, and he squares his shoulders and walks, quickly, across the clearing.

He kneels beside Cassandra, and all conversation comes to an abrupt halt.

Everyone watches, and Evie holds her breath, until Cassandra’s head jerks, her lips part, and her eyes flutter open.

She blinks up at Solas, frowning, until he presses a hand to her forehead. He whispers something Evie can’t hear, and then Cassandra closes her eyes again. Just sleeping this time, it seems.

Solas stands, slowly. And then he steps around Cassandra, around the fire, all the while with every eye in camp trained on him, and stops before Bull.

He starts to kneel before Bull.

“Don’t touch him,” Dorian snarls.

Solas stops, half-kneeling on the ground. Evie can’t see his face, but his shoulders are straight as a board.

“If the wound is not seen to,” Solas says, his voice very flat, “it will fester.”

Dorian laughs, hard and bitter. “Ah yes, I’d forgotten how stupid you think we all are. Like infants running under your feet. Or insects, maybe, on the days we’re not lucky enough for you to consider us people.”

That’s when Bull notices Evie, standing at the edge of the woods. His eye goes wide, and he tries to nudge Dorian with his elbow.

“Dorian,” he hisses.

“No,” Dorian snaps. “No! I am sick to death of fighting for our lives, for the fate of a world full of perfectly good people who aren’t good enough for you and your lofty ideals, because you miss castles in the sky and—I don’t fucking know, upside down fountains or whatever bullshit you’ve decided is better than real, living, breathing people who just want to buy bread and make stupid babies and keep living. I am sick to death of coming here, to the one place where none of that is happening, and instead of getting to forget about it all I have to see your face, and be reminded of every person who I have lost and who I’m going to lose, at this rate, so don’t you pretend that you’re anything other than—”

“Katoh!”

Dorian’s mouth shuts so fast his teeth clack together. He turns to look at Bull, furious confusion all over his features.

Bull only looks at Evie, an apologetic smile on his face that looks more like a grimace, right now.

Dorian follows his gaze—and then his face falls, all the fury draining from it the instant he sees her. And he just looks exhausted, all of a sudden. Not angry at all.

One by one, everyone in the camp turns and looks at Evie.

No one says anything. They all just… stare.

“Well,” Varric says, breaking the agonizing silence. “Shit.”

Evie inhales, Sera curses, Dorian looks at his feet, and Solas turns on his heel and leaves the clearing so fast that Evie thinks he uses magic.

Mamae calls, “Solas!” but he doesn’t stop. She looks back to Evie, then to Solas, clearly torn.

“What’s going on?” Evie shouts.

Mamae shakes her head. “Evie, just—just wait here.”

“Mamae—”

But then she’s off, bolting after Solas and leaving Evie behind.

This time, Evie only hesitates long enough to look at Cole.

He nods, quick and short.

“Evie!” Bull calls, when Evie starts to run.

She goes around the edge of the clearing—faster to get to where Solas and Mamae went, and further away from grabbing arms that might stop her. Sera almost gets to her, but Evie throws up a barrier between them, and Sera’s grabbing hand bounces right off.

Evie bites back an apology and keeps running.

She races through the trees as fast as she can—and after years of chasing Cole, of playing hide and seek with Bull and Sera, of racing to see her Mamae whenever she came back, Evie could close her eyes and make this run easy. She knows where every low hanging branch is, where every tree root sticks out. Every large rock she has to avoid, every hole some animal has dug up.

So she catches up to her Mamae no problem—only to watch her run right through the barrier that keeps Evie in.

“No!” Evie yells. But her Mamae doesn’t hear her—she just keeps running, disappearing into the trees just beyond Evie’s reach.

Evie skids to a halt before the barrier, breathing heavily.

“I hate you,” she tells it. And then, she clenches her hand into a fist, and throws it at the barrier while she shouts, “I hate you!”

Her fist bounces off. The force of it makes her stumble a few steps backward, but it does not hurt.

Behind her, she can hear people calling her name. Thom, Sera, Dagna, Varric…

Suddenly there’s a shift in the air, and she knows without looking that Cole is at her side.

“Being angry doesn’t solve anything,” he tells her. “You need to focus.”

She closes her eyes. And—it’s hard not to be angry, like he says. Because if she’s not mad, then she’s thinking about Cassandra, lying very still…

“Focus,” he says again.

She takes a breath, and it shakes. And then another, and another—

She can hear Thom getting closer. “Evie,” he’s calling, “come on, lass, everyone’s fine. Dorian’s just being dramatic. You know how he is.”

Don’t force it, Solas had told her; guide it.

She opens her eyes, approaches the barrier once more.

And—she can feel it. The tiny little tendrils of magic that shape it. That are telling the veil where to go, who to let in, who to keep in or out.

She takes her final step as she reaches out to touch the barrier. Her feet don’t sink into the soft, wet earth beneath her, and she makes no sound as she brushes a rock aside with her toes.

And her hand passes through the barrier with no resistance.

The rest of her follows, and though her skin tingles a little she comes to stand on the other side of the barrier as if she has just stepped through air. The earth under her toes feels the same, and the trees don’t look any different… just a little less green maybe. But there’s something in the air that feels strange. Less… warm. Or more?

She looks behind her. If she didn’t know the barrier was there, she would think there was a particularly dense growth of trees just ahead, blocking her passage. She squints, and she can see the illusion shimmer a little, if she sways back and forth.

As she moves, she can feel the veil shudder around her. Like it’s nearly a solid thing in the air—brittle, like the thin sheets of ice that sometimes form on the river.

Her thoughts are interrupted when she hears Solas, not far away.

“I don’t understand… How did this happen?”

He sounds angry. Or scared.

Evie crouches and focuses on moving quiet again—knowing that if they see her, they’ll just shove her back inside again, and maybe make it so she can’t sneak out.

She moves through the bushes until she can see them—and then she stays crouching where she is, peering through yellowing ferns, her toes digging into browning moss.

But… there’s been so much rain, that shouldn’t be happening.

There’s a little clearing—some tree has fallen and died, and nothing has sprouted up yet to replace it. Solas is pacing back and forth, his hands clenched behind his back with white, white knuckles.

Mamae is standing, watching him with her arms crossed over her chest, and is not answering his question. She looks upset, but like she doesn’t know what to say.

“I have given orders for this place to be left alone, there were to be no major assaults on any of your people at this time… let alone…”

Mamae almost smiles, but it looks a little painful.

He whirls on her, then, his eyes dark. “Why did they come here?” he snarls—sounding like a cornered animal. “Where Evie can see? This place is supposed to be safe, she’s not supposed to know—”

She doesn’t rise to meet his anger. She just stands there and stares up at him, her arm crossed over her chest, fingers curling over the pin holding her sleeve in place on what remains of her left arm.

He stares back down at her, his face falling from rage to confusion. His features twist, and his demands hang in the air between them, heavy.

At length, Mamae only says, “There was nowhere else for them to go.”

Solas opens and closes his mouth. He blinks, and his eyes search her face for something. “What… what do you mean?” he asks, his voice very quiet.

She shrugs. “This is it, Solas. We lost the pleasure house in Minrathous during the uprising—and I won’t say I’m displeased with the results, but that was our last sanctuary, other than here.”

He doesn’t move. He doesn’t say a thing—he just stares at her, his expression impossible to read.

“My forces are scattered,” she tells him, as if they’re talking about the weather. “I have some trusted allies converging here, but it’s a poultice on the wound at best. What few eluvians I control I can only afford to reveal to very few. So most are waiting for word of where they will go, but I have nowhere to send them to. They’re spread too thin to be of any use to anyone.”

“Impossible,” he says, desperately. “You still hold Adamant. You have allies in Nevarra—”

She laughs a little, bitterly. “Adamant is an excellent decoy, but it’s been sealed tight to prevent Darkspawn from clawing their way out of the abyss for nearly a decade. I’ve never held forces there, I just wanted you to think I did. And the nobility and their armies were suddenly less welcoming, once your people exposed my role in the slave revolts. They’re frightened I’ll do the same for their servants, and they’ll be cleaning their own chamberpots.”

He is very, very still. Like he is when he’s very upset, and he doesn’t want anyone to know.

“Why did you keep her?” he asks, his voice tight.

Mamae blinks, startled by the question. “What?”

“Evie.” Solas stares down at her—standing very close, but utterly unmoving. “You knew the truth. About—about everything. So why…?”

She shakes her head. “You’re asking me this now? After—five years?”

“Four and a half,” he corrects, very softly.

“Why?”

“Please,” is all he says, his voice wavering a little.

Mamae exhales. She frowns up at him a moment longer, and then she smiles a little, sadly. She reaches up, and cups one side of his face with her hand.

“Solas,” she says, very softly, “Sometimes, I’m afraid you’ll never understand how I feel about you.”

He almost says something, but she shakes her head a little and he stops.

“Ar lath ma,” she tells him. “You, Solas. The man who makes friends with spirits, and teaches Evie to cast barriers, and chases her nightmares away. The man who painted, who stopped the Qunari invasion because he did not want us to suffer. The man who tells me the truth, even when it’s hard to hear. Who sought to ease my pain and save my life at great risk to himself, when he did not know me, or even think I was real. The man I’m going to save from his idiot self, and the things he doesn’t even want to do.”

She brushes a tear from his cheek with her thumb. He breathes in, sharply, as if he hadn’t even known he was crying.

He reaches up, and presses his hand against hers. He closes his eyes and leans into her touch, and they stand there, motionless, the air around them utterly still.

“Sometimes,” he says, so softly that Evie can hardly hear it, “I think of asking you to run away with me. To take Evie with us, and find some place where no one has heard of Fen’Harel, or the Inquisitor, and just…”

“Vhenan,” she says, when he goes too long without speaking, “I don’t think that place exists anymore.”

He lets out a small, broken breath.

“Solas—”

“The orb is complete.”

She freezes in place. “What?” she says, after an agonizing silence. “I don’t—when?”

“Nearly two months ago, now.”

Her hand is still on his cheek, his hand over hers. Neither of them moves.

At length, he opens his eyes. He just looks lost.

“I’ve been stalling,” he says, gently taking her hand away from his face. “Citing a need to ensure there will be no problems, when I use it. Telling anyone who asks that I need more time, that I need to be certain, after what happened to the last one.”

When he tries to pull his hand from hers, she tightens her grip. “Why?’ she asks.

“I…” He stares down at her. Evie watches as he leans in a little—and she in turn, as if they’re pulled to one another.

He drops her hand, and takes a few steps back. “I will make certain no one was followed here tonight,” he says, stiff and formal again.

“Solas—”

He’s already turning on his heel, and does not stop. “Go back to Evie,” he says. “She will be distressed. If you do not wish for me to return, I understand. I—”

“Solas,” she says again, pleading.

He stops.

She takes a shaken breath. “In the end,” she says slowly, “what happens to her? If she—will she—”

He turns and looks at her over his shoulder. He does not say anything, but his expression is grim, and something about his eyes looks… desperate.

Mamae closes her eyes. Her hand clenches into a fist.

“It’s almost her birthday,” she says. “She’d—she’d be miserable if you weren’t there.”

He stares at her a moment longer, before turning and disappearing into the trees without a word.

After he’s gone, Mamae brings her hand to her face and whispers, “Fuck,” under her breath. She sits down on a fallen tree, rakes her hand through her hair, and starts to cry.

“Mamae?”

Her mother stiffens. She wipes at her face, furiously, her gaze narrowing in on the bush Evie is hiding in. “Evie?”

She crawls out of the bush and stands, sheepish.

Mamae looks mad, for a second. But then she shakes her head, and smiles a little, though her eyes are still wet.

“Sorry I snuck out,” Evie says.

She manages a half-laugh. “I forget sometimes how clever you are,” she says.

Evie smiles back a little. She shifts in the dirt, and tries to look her Mamae in the eye as she asks, before she can lose her nerve, “Who’s Fen’Harel?”

Mamae’s expression falls. “How long have you been hiding there?”

“Is he the reason Solas always goes away? Did he hurt Cassandra?” She wrings her hands together. “And—and the orb Solas was talking about. What—what is it? Is it what the war’s about?”

She keeps waiting for Mamae to get mad, with every question she asks. But—she doesn’t, this time. She just sits there, and bites her lip, and waits so patiently for Evie to finish that she sort of trails off, instead. Uncertain, now, that she even wants to know.

When the silence stretches on a moment too long, Mamae sighs. She spreads her arm out, and says, “Come here.”

Evie joins her on the log. Mamae wraps her arm around her and pulls her tight, then presses a fierce kiss to her forehead.

“Mamae…”

“Just… give me a moment,” she says into Evie’s hair.

Evie feels a few drops of moisture on her scalp, so she curls closer to her mother and does not ask again.

She loses track of how long they sit there—Mamae hums a little, no specific tune and it’s not very soothing. She rocks them, very gently, like Evie’s a baby. Or, maybe, because Mamae is upset, and it helps.

At length, Mamae pulls back—and she fusses with Evie’s hair a little, before placing one hand on her shoulder. Her expression very serious, and strangely sad, as she looks down at her daughter.

“There are some things I need to tell you,” Mamae says. “And… they’re going to be hard to understand. Just know that, no matter what, we all love you very much, and we’ll do anything to keep you safe. Okay?”

Evie swallows. “Okay,” she says.

Mamae takes a deep breath.

A twig snaps.

Mamae is on her feet, immediately, pulling Evie up and simultaneously stepping in front of her. She lets go of Evie, and then moves her left arm in a way Evie’s only seen her do when she’s practicing with her daggers, and then goes very still. The prosthetic and her daggers are still back at camp.

“What do we have here,” says someone Evie’s never heard before. They appear as if from thin air at the edge of the little clearing—an elven man, taller than Solas, dressed in that strange armour she remembers from her childhood. He has a dagger in each hand, and they look wicked sharp. “Both the former Inquisitor and the girl. Quite the prize, wouldn’t you say?”

Someone steps out from the shadows behind him—an elven woman, shorter but sturdier of frame, and carrying a large sword in her hands. “How fortunate for us,” she drawls. “Let’s finish this quickly.”

“Evie,” Mamae hisses, “When I tell you, I need you to make a barrier around yourself, and run back to camp as fast as you can.”

Evie looks between the two strange elves, standing between her and the camp, and hesitates. “But—”

“Kill me if you want,” Mamae says, her voice low and dangerous, reaching for a flask on her belt, “you know you’ve won anyway. Just let my daughter go.”

The man chuckles. “Really, Inquisitor, you think we’d come all this way for you?” He takes a step forward, all traces of a smile vanishing from his face. “Hand over Fen’Harel’s brat, and we’ll let you live.”

Evie sucks in a breath. What…?

“Evie, now!” Mamae snarls, launching herself forward as she pops the cork from the flask.

Evie blinks, and her Mamae vanishes. There’s a crack in the air, and the smell of lightning, and then the man with the daggers is on the ground, writhing, one of his knives sticking out of his neck. The other is in Mamae’s hand, and she’s using it to deflect the other elf’s sword.

“Go!” Mamae yells, and Evie’s so startled her barrier snaps into place around her, lightning-fast, and she starts to run.

She doesn’t get very far at all, however.

It feels a little like arriving in Solas’s dream—but harder, and colder.

She stumbles, and gasps for air like she can’t breathe, as her barrier vanishes around her. Her arms feel heavy, her feet clumsy—even as her heart races in her chest, everything feels so weird and fuzzy that she starts to panic.

She trips over a tree root and falls. She hits the ground, hard, and it’s like it hurts more than it should.

“Evie!” Mamae screams.

Evie tries—tries to get the barrier back up. But she reaches, like Solas taught her to, and a pain so severe shoots down her spine that she cries out, startled. She claws at the ground and tries to get up—where’s her magic, where’s her magic, where did it go—

Someone grabs her by the back of the shirt and yanks her up off the ground. They throw her over their shoulder, and she sees Mamae try to move out of the way of the big elf’s sword—

And another elf appears from thin air behind her, plunging a knife into her back.

Mamae falls. Evie screams.

The person holding her clamps a hand over her mouth, and then they turn so she can’t see Mamae anymore. She tries to bite it, but they’re wearing gloves and she only hurts herself. So she tries flailing, tries to pry their hand off of her, tries everything—

“Knock her out!” someone hisses.

“So she can tell Fen’Harel what we’ve done? And ruin all my work to make a decoy trail so we can get out of this alive?”

Evie keeps screaming into the hand. Her nail catches on his glove and tears, but she keeps screaming.

“Make sure she’s dead.”

“She’s dying—slowly. She’ll draw her pet spirit to her and buy us the time we need to get back to the mirror. You hit the kid with the smite?”

“Yeah.”

“Good.” A pause, and then Evie feels an ice cold hand on her head. Her whole body goes numb, and her thoughts scramble, and she can feel everything suddenly go limp.

She blinks, her eyes heavy. Someone’s—someone’s talking, but she can’t understand… everything’s jumbled…

Her heart races. Her fingers twitch. She can’t—can’t think straight, but she has to. She has to.

The people who’ve taken her start to run, away from the clearing and into the vague, shrouded darkness of the forest—broken images of her mother falling, and not getting up, in every shadow that whirls past her.

Chapter Text

Someone tried to tell her about the Dread Wolf, once. Evie doesn’t remember how young she was at the time. Before she met Solas, she thinks. Very young, either way.

She doesn’t remember who it was—someone who had an accent like Mamae’s, she thinks. Maybe Una, who always looks after her while Mamae’s away.

She remembers only a little of it. Sitting on her lap, while Una—or not-Una—spoke in a soft, low voice, the kind people only use for the most important stories. Like when Cassandra talks about Andraste, when she thinks Evie can’t hear.

She doesn’t remember much of it. Only that Fen'Harel tricked someone, but she doesn’t think it was a very good trick. And that after he did it, he laughed, and laughed, like the bad guys in Varric’s stories.

Mamae had been very angry, when she’d found out. Evie remembers that.

Now, she thinks she understands why.

The people who have taken her won’t let her walk—and they keep whatever spell they’ve cast on her going, so she’s too dizzy to even if they tried to make her. It comes and goes—she thinks they must have to recast it, or maybe they lose concentration.

She only catches snatches of their conversation as they make their way through a world of broad shadows and impossibly bright lights.

“Looks like Fen'Harel’s following that false trail you laid,” one of them says, right before they shove Evie to her knees in front of a lake. The cold of the water on her palms is what shocks the worst of the spell away from her mind. She feels it rushing over her fingers as they dig into the riverbank for balance, hears the movement of water and thinks—not lake, river.

“How do you know?” someone else asks, frantic. “How do any of us know? What If he’s just behind that tree, waiting to turn us all to stone?”

She tries to remember any of the people coming to visit her talk about a river, but the only one she knows is the one that winds through camp.

Someone laughs. It sounds low, and a touch desperate. “We’ve got a worse fate than stone waiting for us if the Dread Wolf catches us.”

Evie opens her eyes, but the light reflecting off the water is awfully bright. It makes her head spin, and her stomach roll, and she nearly collapses face first in the mud.

That voice…

That’s the man who…

“Make her drink,” he snaps. “She’s useless to us dead.”

That’s the man who killed Mamae.

Evie tries to get up—get to her feet, grab his leg, shove him in the river, do something—but she feels a heavy hand on her neck, and her face is shoved into the rushing water.

She reaches, instinctively and blindly, for her magic, even as she breathes in a mouthful of river water. It sparks around her, frantic and useless, still too weak for her to call on with any strength, but it makes whoever’s holding her let her go, surprised.

Before she can react though, someone else grabs her.

“Idiot!” he shouts. And then he yells some other things, too, but that hazy spell is falling over her again, and everything just sounds far, far away.

Sometimes, she comes to, only to find herself slung over a shoulder as they move through places where she looks up and sees ground, or there are bushes with leaves of colours she’s never seen before—

She tries to scream, and struggle, and bite the ear of the person carrying her or dig her nails into the gaps in their armour. From the moment that fog begins to lift to the moment it falls back over her mind again she fights, and hot, angry tears stream down her face.

“You killed her,” she screams, as loud as she can, over and over.

One time, she hears the person carrying her call her, “Fen'Harel’s demon brat,” just before the spell slips into place again, and her every thought is jumbled up, her vision fogged over, her limbs limp.

Every time she comes out of it, each time opening her eyes to somewhere completely different from the last, her panic rises.

Where are they taking her? How long has she been out?

How long has Mamae been lying there? Did Cole find her before she…

Could Evie had helped her, if she screamed louder? Fought harder? Ran faster, back to camp, where everyone could help?

And then, after all those thoughts race through her head, she’ll hear the voice of the man who killed Mamae, and the only thought she has is, this is your fault, and the only thing she wants to do is make him hurt.

And that’s all she tries to do, until they put the spell on her again.

They won’t let her sleep. Even if they did, she doesn’t know what she would tell Solas. She can’t seem to collect her thoughts enough to figure out where she is—she couldn’t even tell him what the trees look like, or what time of day it is.

All she knows is that she gets thirstier, and hungrier, and weaker, every time she comes around.

They stop trying to make her eat and drink because she just keeps biting their hands.

Who is Fen'Harel, she has time to wonder, one near-lucid moment. It’s raining, hard enough she can’t hear anything but the hammer of water on stone and the long, drawn out roll of thunder in the sky.

Her father, apparently. And a frightening enough figure that everyone who has taken her is utterly terrified of him.

And that… that just gets her mad all over again.

Because—because if she’s important enough to matter, to keep in some bubble and never be let out, to chase down when people take her, then why was he never there?

Mamae was there, she thinks, sullenly. Cole. Dorian. Sera. Bull. Solas…

Solas.

Whose eyes are just grey, and it doesn’t mean anything that hers are, too. Who is just kind to her because he’s in love with her Mamae.

And now Mamae’s…

“It’s fading again,” someone mutters, and Evie realises she’s crying as she chokes on a sob.

“We’re almost there,” another person says, as they cast the spell again.

She comes to for the final time on a hard, cold stone floor. People are shouting, but her head is spinning too much still to make out what they’re saying.

No one’s holding her, though—and though people seem to be pacing, she doesn’t think they’re running for their lives anymore. It’s dry, but she thinks she can hear thunder in the distance—or something loud, anyway.

She risks opening her eyes. It’s dark enough that she’s not immediately dizzy, but there is a weird green light somewhere in the room that casts everything in misshapen shadows.

She’s hungry, so hungry that her stomach feels tight and hard, and it honestly just hurts more than anything. She’s thirsty, too. Her mouth is dry, her throat rough, her lips cracked and bleeding. She curls her fingers on the stone, and they tremble as she moves.

One of her nails is broken in half. The exposed nail bed is covered in old, dried blood, and dirt, and the pain is a dull, lingering throb that is answered by an ache that burns throughout her whole body.

But it’s the nail bed that she stares at. Swollen slightly, probably infected. Left to heal on its own, no attention given to clean it or treat it.

Mamae never let her go without cleaning the smallest cut, and bandaging it up nice, or asking Dorian or Vivienne or Solas to heal it for her.

Mamae…

Her eyes hurt. Her everything hurts.

But focusing on the hurt slowly clears the fog from her mind. As she blinks, the world gets a little easier to make out, she can make out more of the room she’s in. She can see people pacing back and forth, and their words become less and less hazy until she can almost understand them.

Almost.

Then someone kneels in front of her, and helps her sit up against something hard and cold at her back. She tries, weakly, to struggle, but she can’t. And they are gentle, surprisingly--their hands unfamiliar, and rough, but they do not grab at her, or cover her mouth when she makes a small noise of protest.

They press a hand to her forehead, and Evie feels the veil shift, and all of a sudden the fog lifts from her mind.

She gasps, blinking rapidly at the man kneeling before her. He has very yellow eyes, and he has very hard features, but he is looking at her with something like pity, or regret.

He brings a cup with water to her mouth, and she drinks, greedily.

“Slowly, da’len,” he tells her when she chokes. “Slowly.”

Everyone else in the room has stopped arguing. They’re all so quiet, Evie can hear sound coming in from outside.

It’s far away, but it sounds like… like metal on metal. Like spells being cast. People shouting.

Kind of like how Varric describes great battles, when he tells his stories.

When Evie takes the cup from the man he stands and walks over to the others, who stand on the other side of the room and stare at Evie like she’s about to explode. It’s the people who took her—the man who killed Mamae, and everyone with him.

Beside them, on a pedestal of stone and casting that weird green light all over the room, is the orb from Solas’s dream.

“What have you done?” the nice man asks in Elvhen, and the silence in the room is broken.

“Only what I had to,” the man who killed Mamae snaps. “Only what my hand has been forced to do, Sorrow, by those who are too weak to act.”

She thinks she’s heard wrong, at first—Solas and Mamae have been teaching her, but she still makes mistakes sometimes—but then she realises that the nice man’s name is Sorrow. Abelas.

Abelas crosses his arms over his chest. “Taken a child from her mother? Nearly killed her on the way here? If you expect to blackmail the Dread Wolf with the life of his child, you could have brought her any place but his own stronghold, and perhaps bothered to feed her.”

“That’s no child,” someone snaps. “That demon nearly bit my hand off.”

“I can’t imagine what you might have done to deserve that,” Abelas retorts, dry.

They start talking too fast, and all over one another, too fast for Evie to understand. So she drinks the water—the cup, it seems, never gets empty—and reaches, tentatively, for her magic.

It answers, and she has to bite back a sigh of relief. It’s as strong as if it never left her, and though she’s tempted to call up a barrier and make a run for it, the only door she can see looks heavy, and when she looks at it more closely, she can make out the shimmer of magic keeping it shut—just a force spell, like Dorian sometimes uses to lift things.

Weird, she thinks. Wouldn’t it just be easier to ask the Veil to do it?

But the Veil feels strange, here. Hard and brittle, like the thin layers of ice that sometimes form at the edges of the river when it’s very cold out. But also like something is building behind it—something old and very, very angry—and all it needs is one little crack to break free.

The orb sits in the middle of it all—the Veil thinnest around it, and it feels like that angry thing pressing the hardest right there.

Every time she looks at the orb, it almost feels like whatever that thing is looks right back at her, and she feels something like a hot breath or a flame on the back of her neck.

Someone shouts, suddenly louder than all the others, and Evie’s attention snaps back to the argument in the middle of the room.

“You have ruined the cause you claim you are furthering,” Abelas shouts. “Our forces are divided, slaughtering each other just outside that door while both the Inquisition and the Dread Wolf draw closer, and for what? To hurt him? To force him to rend this world asunder, by placing his child in harm’s way?”

“I had children,” the man who killed her mother snarls. “Two of them, boys, with their mother’s eyes. Do you know how they died, Abelas, while you were holed up in your temple and mourning the loss of a monster? When the Dread Wolf put up his veil? They were in the city of glass, in the crystal lake. Serving a noble who worshipped Falon’Din, and when the magic left, the water rushed in. They drowned, trapped in a glass room, the air just above them, and they could not reach it.”

“Many children died,” Abelas retorts. “If you think bringing down the Veil will bring them back, then you are mistaken.”

“I don’t care what it does,” he snaps, his eyes hard, magic crackling at his fingertips. “I care that he hesitates now, when we are in ruins. Not when it could have saved my children—not when it could save anyone but his own flesh and blood.”

Abelas seems to realise something, then, even as everyone else in the room just begins to look more confused.

“Sarvis,” someone says, “what are you saying? What about the empire? You said she could bring it back, just like Fen'Harel.”

“You’re mad,” Abelas says, slowly uncrossing his arms and reaching for his sword.

“This world was never meant to be,” Sarvis says, “and I don’t particularly care how it is ended.”

Abelas draws his sword at the same time as Sarvis drops to one knee, and a rush of magic surges out from him, crashing over everyone in the room.

They all go flying—Evie is just out of the blast range herself but she watches with wide eyes as they all hit walls, crying out, and fall to the ground in heaps of limbs and clothing.

Abelas crashes into the wall near her, almost close enough for her to reach. He hits the ground and rolls a little, and she stares down at him as he gasps for breath, like all the air has been sucked out of his lungs and he can’t get it back.

“Run,” he coughs out, in Trade.

In the center of the room, Sarvis stands and dusts off his hands, as if he has been cleaning out an aravel. The orb is glowing brighter now, and the presence on the other side of the veil feels like it’s all around her, like a heavy smoke tainting the air.

As Sarvis starts to walk towards her with urgent strides, Evie tries to stand up.

Her legs give out from under her, too weak to use, and she crashes hard to the floor.

She throws up a barrier, frantic, desperate, but the Veil is too brittle for it to work properly, and before she can strengthen it Sarvis is there, dispelling her efforts with a thought and grabbing her by her arm.

“Let me go!” she shouts, her voice scraping at her throat, but no matter how she tries to struggle Sarvis only yanks on her harder. She tries to make him let go—but there’s nowhere to dig her nails in, nowhere to press or pinch that isn’t covered in armour. Any spell she tries fails, useless, as he drags her toward the orb at the center of the room.

All the while, the thing on the other side of the veil presses closer, and closer, and it almost feels like it’s grabbing at her. Pushing her closer, because Sarvis isn’t moving fast enough.

She struggles, and she fights, and she yells, but in the end Sarvis drags her up to that pedestal, and presses her palms flat against the orb.

It’s very, very cold.

And then suddenly it’s not. It’s—it’s hot. The light from the orb rushes out, and she feels energy wash over her, through her, and she feels like every bit of her is full of static, all of a sudden, and then the static turns to fire, and it starts to burn—

And then, just when it starts to hurt, all that energy shifts. She can still feel it, filling her up, but it moves from her skin to Sarvis’s armour, where he’s holding her wrists, and as she stares up at then as the magic starts to eat away at the armour, like the river pulls at the bank.

It happens so quickly, she barely sees it. It’s like she blinks, and Sarvis doesn’t have hands any more. And then his arms are gone, and he’s screaming, and—

And then he’s not screaming any more, because he doesn’t have a face.

Evie watches in horror as the light begins to reach out from the orb in thick, heavy tendrils—almost solid enough to touch. It passes over her, briefly, before snapping out like a whip, directly at the closest person lying on the floor.

It eats his leg before he can even start screaming.

And it’s not enough. It’s going to keep going—whatever it’s looking for in her, every time it washes over her like a wave, she doesn’t have enough of it. She tries to pull her hands off the orb but it’s stuck, so she only succeeds in falling over and hitting the ground hard.

She manages to sit up just as the second man vanishes into thin air, dissolved by twisted magic. And then it snaps out again, reaching right for Abelas this time—

Evie closes her eyes and does the only thing she knows how—she throws up a barrier around herself, as hard and fast as she can.

Something’s different about it, this time. She doesn’t just pull at her own magic—she feels something else guiding the Veil along with her magic, drawing it in a wide circle around the center of the room, curving over her like a dome.

It takes so little effort. She just thinks about it, and it’s done.

She looks up, wide-eyed and breathless. She can see her barrier, glowing with a strange green light, and trapped within it is the energy coming off the orb. She can see what was left outside slowly disappearing into the air, suddenly harmless.

What remains within, however, still hovers in the air—it moves along the edges of her barrier, searching for a weakness.

And when it doesn’t find one, it all pulls back into Evie.

She screams. And screams. And screams.

It feels like every nerve in her skin is on fire—like every part of her body is burning, or maybe like a big flame has just caught in her chest, and it’s rapidly spreading to the rest of her. She tries to let go of the orb, tries to throw it across the room, but nothing works—it’s like it’s been burned into her skin, and it’s carving a path along every vein from there to her heart, and holding her with an iron grip.

She doesn’t know how long she stays like that—it feels like forever, but it could only be a few minutes—before she hears the door burst open with an explosive force, and the rush of armoured feet running on hard stone floor.

“Evie!”

She looks up, towards the source of the voice. “Dorian?” she asks.

And—there he is. Rushing up to her barrier so fast as if he could barrel right through it. But he can’t pass through, so he only hits it uselessly with his fists. At his side is Bull, sword drawn and his eyes wide with fear, Sera just at his back looking even more frightened, Varric with Bianca, and…

And Solas.

Solas looks terrified.

“Da’assan,” Solas calls, “It’s going to be alright, I promise. Just—just hold on.”

He looks like he’s in physical pain, and Evie—she can’t even look at him, right now, so she drops her gaze back to the orb in her hands.

She hears a dull, echoing thud as Dorian pounds on the barrier. “Let us in!” he calls, “Evie, drop the barrier. Drop it now.”

Evie tries to shake the orb out of her grip one more time, but it’s useless. She shakes her head, furiously.

“Come on,” Varric says, “we’re not mad you snuck out. I frankly can’t believe it hadn’t happened yet. Let’s just all go home and talk it over, okay? Just drop the barrier.”

“No,” she says, and it sounds broken to her own ears. Rough and raw. “I—I can’t. It’s—It’ll kill you, if I do.”

“We don’t have time for this,” Dorian says.

“No!” Solas shouts, and everyone stops.

It’s so loud and sudden that Evie looks up at him, startled.

His jaw is tight, and he has his hands flat on the barrier. “She doesn’t have the strength to power the orb,” he says, and she’s never heard him sound like this before. Like he’s trying to sound calm, but there’s something about the way he’s speaking that just sounds frantic. “Look.”

Evie glances over to the pedestal, which is slowly being eaten away by magic.

“If she drops that barrier,” Solas finishes, “we all die.”

“If she doesn’t?” Sera yells.

The pedestal vanishes, and the magic surges back to Evie again. She screams, doubling over the orb in pain.

“Then she loses concentration on the barrier and we all die,” Dorian finishes.

“Or the orb kills her first,” Solas corrects. “Da’assan. Evie. Look at me.”

She does. It’s hard to see him through her tears and the storm of magic raging around her but there he is, his fingers curling against the barrier as if he could walk through it and hold her. As if he desperately wants to.

“I can help you,” he says. “But you need to let me in.”

“I thought we just said don’t do that,” Sera shouts, but Bull hushes her.

“You just have to guide the barrier to let me pass. Just—just don’t drop it, alright? Just allow one person through. That’s all.”

Evie looks back down at the orb and shakes her head.

“Da’assan,” he says. “Please. I can help you, please.”

“No,” she says, her voice catching. Her tears are falling in big, ugly drops onto the orb, and hissing away into steam the moment they touch it. “No—you have to go. Before—before it hurts you, too.”

“Evie—”

“They killed Mamae,” she shouts. The orb flares in her hands, so bright that for a moment everything is white, but her barrier holds, and the magic doesn’t stop burning her. “They killed her because of me and—and I can’t. I can’t let that happen again. If I let you in, you’ll die, and—”

She sobs, so hard that she can’t speak for a moment. Her whole body trembles as she curls around the orb, as if her body can protect everyone else in the room from it.

No one says anything, while she collects herself.

“Solas,” she says, “I know—I know that Fen'Harel’s my father, now. But I—but I always wanted you to be my Papae instead. So please, go. I can’t—I can’t—”

It surges again, and she screams so hard that it feels like a knife splits open her throat—and it burns,  but she can’t keep screaming so she stops, and just breathes, and cries.

Solas lets out a small, pained sound. Kind of like it’s supposed to be a laugh, or it would be in any other place. At any other time.

“Da’assan,” he says, “I am Fen'Harel.”

She looks up at him. Through her tears, she can see that he’s crying, too.

“I am your father,” he says, his hands flat on the barrier, pressing as close to it as he can. “I created that orb in your hands to end this world, but—Evie, the moment I met you, I lost all resolve to do what had to be done. I was only too foolish to see it.”

He tries to smile, but it comes out as a grimace.

“Evie,” he says, “I have—I have ruined so many beautiful things in my life. I can’t watch that happen to you. Please.”

She just keeps staring at him. Like—like maybe he’s lying, or maybe she hasn’t heard him right. Like the pain is making her think that what she wants to happen is happening, or she’s dreaming and she’s not supposed to say yes—

But it’s not a dream. And he’s standing there, crying, and no one else is saying anything at all, and he just looks so frightened and so, so desperate.

“Okay,” she says. “Okay. Tell me—tell me what to do.”

His shoulders sag with obvious relief, but the worry in his expression does not ease.

“It’s like—it’s like finding me in the Fade,” he begins. “But I will reach for you, instead. You’ll feel it on the barrier—you just have to guide the barrier along the path I show you, but do not let it break.”

Evie closes her eyes. “What if I can’t?”

“Evie, look at me,” Solas says. “You chased me halfway across the dreaming without knowing what you were doing. You escaped a barrier crafted by the brightest mages of this era. You’ve just now made a barrier to keep an ancient magic at bay—you can do this. But we have to act now. Are you ready?”

“Wait,” Dorian says.

When Evie looks at him, he’s staring at her—his hands balled into fists at his side. There’s a big cut on his forehead, and a smeared trail of blood running down his face, like he’s wiped at it with the back of his hand a few times. As he glances at Solas, then back to Evie again, his eyes look… utterly lost. Like he can’t decide what to do.

“How can we trust that this wasn’t all some trick?” he asks. But he doesn’t sound like the last time Evie heard him speak with Solas—not angry, not demanding anything. Just… pleading. “How do I know that you’re not—not lying to us all? That you didn’t orchestrate every second of this?”

Solas just meets Dorian’s gaze, either one looking every bit and lost and desperate as the other.

The power surges again—and as Evie screams her vision goes white, for a split second, and she can’t feel anything but heat and pain, so intense that when she blinks it takes a moment for her to see anything at all.

Everyone is shouting all at once.

Solas is screaming her name.

“Papae,” she whimpers, curling over the orb in her hands, and it’s the only plea she can make.

She feels Solas reach for her, then—feels it almost like a physical thing, like his hand on her shoulder. Or just behind it, rather. As if it’s that simple—as if he’s just moving to reassure her after she’s had a bad dream and he’s helped her out of it, and he’s waiting to see if she wants him to comfort her.

It’s the most natural thing in the world to say please, help me.

It doesn’t seem like anything changes. Her magic shifts, and the barrier holds, and she wonders if she’s done it right.

But then Solas is there, crushing her to him. The orb pressed between them as his arms wrap around her and pulls her as close as he can, as he kisses her forehead and says, “I’m here, Evie, I’m here.”

Part of her worries that it’s going to eat him up, like everyone else. But she doesn’t have the energy to pull away anymore—she can barely even lean into him, and let her tears fall on the soft fabric of his vest as she breathes in the smell of him. He smells like ash, like blood, like sweat, like smoke, burnt hair and skin—and underneath all that he smells like the Fade, like the air before a storm, like the forest that is her home, like a campfire with fir bark in it so it’ll burn hotter in the cold winter air.

As if from somewhere far, far away, she can feel his magic whirling all around them, so dizzyingly fast that she can’t even dream of keeping up.

Something hits the top of her barrier and shatters. She distantly feels Solas turn from her a little—shouting over his shoulder, “Get everyone out of here!”

She doesn’t know if they listen to him--all she can hear is the storm whirling around her, and Solas’s voice as he draws her tighter still.

“Hold on Evie,” he begs her. “Hold on, please.”

She can’t answer him. Everything hurts, and it’s all too bright, she feels like the whole world is burning too hot and too fast, and he’s her only anchor in this storm that’s howling around her so loud that soon she can’t even hear him, and after a little while she can’t even feel his arms around her, or his heart hammering against his chest where he’s pulled her so close.

She doesn’t know how long it goes on. It could be forever—it could be a minute.

But eventually, something gives with a great, mighty shudder. And then, bit by bit, she starts to feel things again—the throbbing of her broken nail. The dry, chapped skin of her lips. Cold, hard stone under her—the warmth of Solas’s chest against hers, his hand in her hair as he rocks her back and forth, his sobs as he begs her to wake up.

“Papae?” she chokes out, uncertain.

She can’t tell if the sound he makes is a laugh or a sob.

“Da’assan,” he says, and she can feel his tears in her hair when he pulls back and kisses her forehead. “Oh, da’assan.”

And then he pulls back again—looking her over with red, puffy eyes, as he tries to wipe old tears from her face with his thumb.

Above him she can see the sky. It looks like a storm has just passed—little straggling remnants of dark, dark clouds lingering on a backdrop of a dark, clear twilight sky.

She curls her fingers in his vest—and that’s when she realises that she’s not holding the orb any longer. She looks for it, frowning—even just moving her head feels like too much but she does it anyway, even though it makes her dizzy.

It takes her a minute to find it. It’s on the ground, just beside them. She doesn’t see it at first because it’s not glowing anymore—it’s broken clean in two, nearly indistinguishable from the rubble lying all around them. Like it’s some other part of the building come down around them.

Then Solas is taking her hands and casting healing magic on them. It takes him longer than normal, Evie realises dimly. Like he’s been drained nearly dry.

“I broke your orb,” she says. It hurts to speak, and her voice comes out cracked and rough.

He makes that sound again—but it sounds more like a laugh this time, she thinks. “It’s for the best,” he tells her.

And then his magic falters, and he leans forward a little—resting his forehead against hers, as his fingers curl over hers, protectively.

She can hear someone calling her name—Dorian, she thinks, just as he’s joined by Sera, and Bull, and Varric.

Solas turns, and she can see her aunts and uncles clambering over what’s left of the building around them. And she watches as, one by one, their expressions shift from panic to relief as they see her and Solas sitting in the rubble.

Behind them, approaching hesitantly, are more elves that she’s never seen before.

“Lord Fen’Harel?” one of the elves says. “What… what happened?”

He turns back to Evie again, and his expression softens. He cups her face with one hand, very gently, before saying, “It’s over. It’s… it’s over now.”

No one says anything at all for a long, long moment. Solas pulls Evie close once more, and she doesn’t resist—just lets herself be held, and buries her face in his vest, closing her eyes and just breathing, for a moment.

“Holy shit,” Sera says, finally breaking the silence.

For once, no one tells her to watch her language.

Dorian heals her hands, when Solas finally lets her go.

Some of the strange elves linger, but most of them seem to wander away. She can hear them arguing among themselves, for a while—in Elvhen, and too far away for her to make out the details.

“They gonna be trouble?” Bull asks, as he helps Solas stand.

Solas’s mouth twitches downward. “I don’t know,” he answers.

Dorian ends up carrying Evie away from what’s left of the ruins—Solas leans heavily on Bull, who walks with his sword drawn, and Varric and Sera flank them on either side, Bianca and bow in hand.

No one bothers them, as they walk through the old, crumbling city. As Doran carries her over the old road, as he whispers for her not to look as they pass people lying on the ground who aren’t moving.

She looks anyway. Until Dorian turns her so that her face is towards his jacket, and she curls into him, but does not close her eyes.

It gets dark quickly, but they walk by the light of Dorian’s staff until they pass through a mirror, into a place that makes her skin tingle with magic, and then back out again. And they don’t stop until they reach a clearing, and Dorian sets her down on a soft patch of moss.

“I’ll set wards,” he says, as Bull settles Solas next to Evie. “And a barrier, for good measure.”

She leans into Solas, not even thinking twice about it, and he wraps an arm around her shoulders just as easily.

Just as Dorian turns to go, Evie asks, “Is Mamae really gone?”

Solas’s arm tightens around her, ever so slightly.

“We don’t know,” Bull answers, his big hand coming to rest on Evie’s knee. “She… she told us which way they’d taken you, and there wasn’t time…”

He trails off, helplessly. Not saying it, but Evie knows—they might have saved her, if they had gone after her instead.

As if he can read her thoughts, Dorian sighs. He turns back and sits on the ground beside Evie, reaching into his jacket.

He pulls something from around his neck. Evie’s seen it before—it’s that crystal he and Mamae use to talk to each other sometimes, when they’re far away. He’s let Evie use it before, once or twice, when he was with her and Mamae wasn’t.

He takes her hand and presses the crystal into it.

“She used this,” he says. “And—she made us promise to find you. Not to wait around for her—just to get you back.”

“Hero and the Kid went to look for her,” Varric offers, settling down on the ground just in front of Evie. “So… maybe…”

The crystal in her hand is still, and silent. She doesn’t know if that’s good, or bad.

“Whatever happens next,” Dorian says, “we’re here for you, Evie. That’s a promise.”

He waits until she nods, and then he stands up and starts to set wards around their makeshift camp.

“Can you find her in the Fade?” Evie wonders, looking at Solas.

“Only if she’s asleep,” Solas replies, his voice thick. Every other possibility left unspoken.

She exhales. “I’m scared.”

He does not reply—but she remembers what he said, about the perfect things that he’s destroyed, so she shifts closer—and he shifts in turn, until his arms are wrapped around her, his face buried in her hair.

She can feel his heart pounding against her back.

She reaches up and pulls one of his hands from her chest. She twines her fingers in his, and then brings their joined hands down to her lap.

“Can we look for her together?” Evie asks.

He huffs a breath into her hair.

“Of course,” he says.

It takes them a long time to fall asleep—even as she lies there, uncertain of what awaits in dreams, Solas lying on the ground at her back, their clasped hands resting on the ground just beside her, the steady rise and fall of his chest lulling her, slowly, into dreams, even as he grips her hand tightly, terrified of what waits for them there.

She doesn’t know how long it’s been since she slept. Everything hurts, even the bits of her Dorian healed. Even the bits that she hadn’t known, before today, even could.

“What if she’s not there?” she asks, her eyelids drooping. “What do we do, then?”

He sucks in a slow, uneven breath. “I don’t know, da’assan.”

“Will you leave again?”

His grip on her hand tightens.

“If you want me to,” he says.

She shifts a little closer to him. “I don’t, though.”

He exhales into her hair. He sounds like he’s crying again.

She shifts in his arms, turning around so she can hug him back. And he is crying, and it gets worse when she wraps her arms around his neck, even though he pulls her closer still when she does.

“You deserve so much better,” he tells her. “You deserve a better father. Someone who—who wasn’t afraid—Evie, this is all my fault. Ir abelas.”

She presses her face into his shoulder. “Tel’abelas,” she mutters against his clothes.

“All of this happened because of me,” he insists, clinging to her like he’s terrified she’ll let go. “Your mother—Evie, if she’s gone, it’s my fault. My—my indecision caused this. I’ve—I’ve ruined everything I’ve ever tried to save.”

He chokes on a sob.

Evie feels like she should be crying too—because he’s upset, and she doesn’t know how to comfort him. But she feels like she’s cried enough for a lifetime, now, and even though this feels so important, she can feel exhaustion settling into every bone in her body, now that the danger has passed and they have stopped.

“You saved me,” Evie offers, but it doesn’t seem to help.

Anything else she might say is interrupted by a high, bright sound. Almost like the cry of a very strange bird, but just a little different.

Solas is upright in a heartbeat, clutching Evie to his chest, and he tries to stand up but he still doesn’t have the strength, so he kind of just lands in an awkward sitting position, and he has to let go of her a little bit to steady himself.

Evie turns around in his arms again, trying to blink the sleepiness out of her eyes as she looks in the direction of the sound.

Sera, nearby, has an arrow to her bow, pointing in the same direction. Varric’s got Bianca ready too, and she can see Bull reaching for his sword, and Dorian grabbing his staff—

“Dorian Pavus, if you do not drop this miserable excuse for a barrier this instant, I will be forced to dispel it myself.”

“Aunt Cassandra?” Evie blurts, incredulous, immediately recognising the voice ringing through the woods.

“Evie?!”

Evie and Solas suck in a breath at the same time.

“Mamae?” she calls back, because—because—

Because she doesn’t quite believe it.

But she hears someone curse—Uncle Thom, from the sound of it—and then someone she doesn’t know scolds, “You have a stomach wound, slow down, she’s not going anywhere.”

“Blondie,” Varric says, almost exactly like he says thank the Maker.

Dorian waves his hand, and the barrier must drop because Evie sees Cassandra charge into their little clearing, sword drawn.

And right behind her, an arm thrown over Thom’s shoulder, is Mamae, her eyes wide and desperate.

“Where is she—oh.”

Uncle Thom can’t move fast enough for Mamae once she sees Evie, Solas clutching her on the ground.

Solas doesn’t even move—he’s sitting stock still, just as stunned as Evie is, so when Mamae manages to break from Thom,  stumbling a few steps to more or less just fall on them both, he barely even manages to catch her.

Evie actually has to check if she’s dreaming. And then check again, just to be certain.

“Da’vhenan,” Mamae cries, clinging Evie to her. “You’re alright. You’re alright.”

Crushed between Mamae and Solas, her fingers curling in Mamae’s clothing, Evie breathes and she smells her Mamae—camp fires and her sweat, the trees that line the river, under the smell of elfroot and dried blood.

“Mamae,” she says, and no matter how much she’s just cried, suddenly she’s crying again.

“Did they hurt you?” Mamae asks, but Evie’s crying too hard to answer.

“Yes,” Solas says for her. He sounds like he’s just come up for air.

Mamae pulls back a little, then. Evie looks up, and Mamae and Solas are staring at each other, tears streaking down both their faces.

In the silence, she can hear Thom say, “Stepped on the damn crystal when I found her, or we would have used it ages ago.”

“Stepped on—that is a priceless artifact, and you stepped on it?!”

But Dorian doesn’t sound as angry as he wants to, Evie thinks, watching as Mamae breaks into a smile, even though she’s crying. Watching as Solas’s expression cracks, and he leans forward in the same moment Mamae does, and as Evie’s pressed between them she can feel Solas’s chest shake with a laugh that’s half a sob, and she can feel Mamae’s shake too, in turn, as she rests her chin on Evie’s head, burying her face in Solas’s shoulder and he, presumably, presses his to her hair.

Evie feels the arms of her parents wrap around her—around all three of them, together, and as she cries it feels good. Even though she still hurts, even though she’s shaken, she still has them.

Mamae, herself, and Solas—Papae, now. Together.

And right now, that’s all that matters.

Chapter Text

Evie Lavellan is eleven years old, and her baby sister is asleep in her arms.

She’s all bundled up, swaddled in two blankets to shield her from the cool night breeze rolling off the sea. Evie closes the door to their little home behind her and pauses a moment, looking down towards the little Rivaini fishing village—down a winding path, seaside grasses swaying in the wind. She can see torches being lit as the sun slips behind the cliffs at her back.

Mamae and Papae had discussed where to have the baby for months—nearly as soon as they told her they were having one—and it seems like Mamae won in the end, since they settled in some place by the sea. Remote enough for Solas to feel comfortable, still—Evie doesn’t think anyone in the fishing village suspects for a minute who either of her parents are, or wonders why they’re so content to live up a hill from the village instead of inside it.

There’s a little path that doesn’t lead to the village, but away—and it’s new enough that the grass is only flattened, not worn to earth by the treading of many feet. Evie turns away from the little village and takes that path now, calling a little wisp of veilfire to hover in the air before her, so she can carry her sister with both hands.

Support the head, she repeats to herself, even though she’s heard it a hundred times.

She watches where she steps very carefully—sometimes the wind blows unexpected things on the path, and she doesn’t want to step on one accidentally. She doesn’t want to jostle the baby.

The path leads to a cave, well hidden by an outcropping in the sheer cliffs that rise above their little home. Hidden better still by spells and wards, but they pass over Evie and her little sister with little more than the air trembling on their skin, ever so slightly.

The moment she passes through them, she can hear Papae talking.

“—to be certain, we must establish a baseline.”

“Yes, yes, I remember,” Dorian replies, his voice muffled slightly.

“It will be tucked in the far corner, under the statue of Ghilan’nain. The one—”

“The one with the horns, yes, Solas.”

“And when you find it, you’re not to activate it, only to secure it—”

Dorian sighs, exasperated. “Solas,” he says, dryly, “do I need to promise for the five hundredth time that I will not attempt to take the Veil down without you present?”

Evie rounds the corner in the cave’s entranceway, and by the light of Solas’s veilfire she can see the cave open up, wide and high. They’ve cleaned it out a little in the month since they arrived, getting rid of all the bat droppings and some bones that Mamae is still teaching her to identify. There are still bats in the cave, but Solas cast a spell that keeps their droppings away—or burns them, Evie can’t remember.

There are boxes of supplies stored in the cave—not many things, really, but mostly things Solas needs for his work. Old things Evie’s not allowed to touch, usually, though some are just boxes of blankets, and bags of things to take with them if they need to run without notice.

On one wall, Solas and Evie are working on a fresco together—and their supplies are stowed there too, plaster and pigments ready for mixing. The fresco itself is only a red outline on the rough underlayer, now—several adult figures, one child, and one infant.

Evie hadn’t wanted to start it until the baby was born, so it would look like her. Turns out babies are a lot of work, so they haven’t even started yet.

On the farthest wall, there’s an eluvian—the biggest thing in the cave—and that’s where Papae is standing, with Dorian and Bull.

Solas has his arms crossed over his chest, and Dorian is throwing a bag over his shoulder. “Perhaps,” he says, but he’s smiling a little. “Please be careful,” he adds, when Dorian gives him a look. “I don’t believe my wife should be running off to rescue you so shortly after giving birth.”

“That wouldn’t stop her,” Dorian retorts.

“We’ll be careful,” Bull promises, with a chiding look at Dorian. He looks back at Solas. “You get some rest. Have you slept at all?”

“Of course not,” Dorian says before Solas can reply, “he’s trying to make up for missing out on Evie being so small. How is that going for you, pray tell?”

“He burned himself making breakfast,” Evie interrupts, picking her way carefully through the stowed boxes.

Everyone turns to look at her at the same time. Solas nearly jumps in place when he sees the baby, and immediately rushes forward to take her from Evie. Already forgetting, it seems, about her tattling on him—but then, giving him the baby seems to have that effect, she’s noticed.

“It’s too cold to have her outside,” he chides, but only half-heartedly. He is smiling as he looks down at his second child, holding her close. His eyes all soft and full of wonder—as if he doesn’t get to hold her enough. Even though this is the first time in the few short days she’s even been alive that he’s apart from her.

“She wanted to say goodbye,” Evie says, shaking out her arms—babies are surprisingly heavy. “Cole told me so.”

Even Dorian is not immune to the magic of bringing an infant into the room—he has a rather dopey smile on his face as he says, “Going to miss her favourite uncle? She has excellent taste.”

“I’d be my favourite, too,” Bull agrees, giving Evie a knowing look.

Evie can’t help a giggle.

Dorian rolls his eyes. “You’re impossible,” he protests, fondly. “And you,” he adds, pausing to bend down and press a kiss to Evie’s forehead, “you need to make sure your idiot father gets some sleep. You might have guessed it by now, but he gets rather irritable when he’s not loping around on all fours in the Fade every night.”

“I do no such thing,” Solas protests.

The baby jerks in her sleep, suddenly, and whatever else Solas is about to say is gone as he peers down at her in his arms, then shifts her in his grip so he can check her temperature with the back of his hand.

Cole told her that the baby is just surprised, when she does that. That she’s just used to her whole world being Mamae—everything else is new, and sometimes frightening.

Sometimes, Evie wakes up expecting the aravel, so she understands.

Bull and Dorian linger as they say proper goodbyes—Bull teases, Dorian frets, and Solas chides and complains and fusses over the baby, so by the time Bull and Dorian have passed through the eluvian Evie’s toes feel numb on the cave’s stone floor.

“What colours do you think we will need to start?” Solas asks, turning to examine the supplies lined up against the wall with a critical eye.

Evie sticks her hands in her armpits to warm them. She knows it’s not just a question—he’s testing to see if she’s remembering the correct order—so it takes her a moment to consider, scrunching up her nose as she does.

“Let’s do all the background,” she suggests. Solas blocked out some trees, her old aravel, and a winding river. She suspects he’s going to add frogs in when she’s not looking because he’s—how did Mamae put it—hopelessly sentimental.

He quirks a brow at her. “Around the figures?”

Evie shifts from one foot to the other, huffing impatiently. But she squints at his sketch again, and in the light of his veilfire she sees the lines that break up the piece, neatly separating the figures all lined up in the foreground into different segments.

“Oh!” she says, remembering. “Varric and Cole! We’re painting them first!”

“Well remembered,” he praises, finally straightening. “Best to start with the smallest section, on your first try.”

As his light shifts with him, she can see the city of Kirkwall towering over Varric. She remembers the big statues a little—though Solas and she had opted to paint the city as they’d seen it from the road, when the statues were in shadow, so they won’t be in the fresco. She had been so overwhelmed by the number of people there—she’d never seen so many in one place in her life. But Varric’s friend Merrill had shown her the vhenadahl, and she’d gotten to play with some of the children in the alienage.

“Are we going to get it all done before it dries up?” she wonders, following Solas out of the cave.

He hums, turning the baby’s head towards his chest as they exit to the cold night air. “You’ll find out. Tomorrow, I believe.”

Evie gapes up at him, but he’s only smiling. “Tomorrow? Really?”

He nods.

“But—I thought—you’re not kidding, right?”

Still smiling, Solas shifts the baby in his arms so he can lean down, cup Evie’s cheek in his hand, and kiss her forehead. “I will always have time for you too, da’assan,” he says.

Whatever reply Evie might think of making is interrupted by the baby sniffling, and then beginning to cry.

Solas winces as he straightens—shifting his grip to better protect the baby from the breeze blowing off the ocean. “I suspect she’s hungry,” he says. “Let’s go wake up Mamae together, shall we?”

It isn’t that long of a walk, but the baby has worked herself into a ridiculous wail by the time they get to their little cottage. Evie opens the door so Solas doesn’t have to, and as she follows him through she can hear Cole speaking softly in Mamae and Papae’s bedroom, and Mamae muttering sleepily in response.

When Solas pushes open the bedroom door, Mamae is already sitting up, pulling off the shirt she wears while sleeping, but not looking particularly awake.

“Time is it?” she mumbles.

“Bull and Dorian have just left,” Solas says, sitting next to her on the bed.

She hums in acknowledgement, and then, having finally untangled herself from her shirt, lets Solas put the crying baby on a pillow on her lap. She hushes her, gently, and winces once the baby finds her nipple, and stops crying.

“Yeah, still hurts,” she grumbles, and Solas laughs, low and soft, before leaning in to kiss her cheek.

Mamae spots her lingering in the doorway, then, and smiles, sleepy and warm. “Evie,” she says, “I feel like I haven’t seen you all day. Come here, da’vhenan.”

Evie joins her parents on the bed—more than a little happy to get the invitation—sitting on her mother’s other side while Cole looks over her shoulder.

“It’s okay,” Evie says as her mother slings her arm around her shoulders and pulls her close. “You’re resting—I understand.”

Mamae hums thoughtfully before pressing a kiss to Evie’s hair. “That’s no excuse at all,” she says, mostly to herself.

She knows that Mamae is pretending to feel better than she is—Evie can see the dark circles under her eyes, and the fingers that run through Evie’s hair move slower than normal.

So she says, “Papae and I are going to start the fresco tomorrow.”

“Really?” She looks over at Solas.

“I believe we’ve waited long enough,” he replies. “Cole has promised to watch the baby while you sleep.”

Mamae lets out a little huff of a laugh. “The baby,” she parrots, teasing.

He gives her a sheepish smile in return. “I… still have not decided on a name.”

“I gathered.”

“It is… difficult.”

“Mn-hm. Evie, should we give your father a deadline, or see how long we can drag this out?”

Evie tries to hide her grin from Solas in her Mamae’s shoulder. “Varric has a betting pool going,” she whispers.

To her delight, her Mamae rolls back her head and laughs, so loud that the baby loses her breast and starts to cry again. And then everyone’s distracted until she’s settled again, though Mamae’s shoulders are still shaking.

Solas is clearly trying, and failing, to look unamused.

“Two days isn’t that long,” he protests, but his lips are twitching upwards into a smile as he glances down at Evie, who can’t hide her grin.

“You have had months to figure this out,” Mamae teases.

“Longer than that,” he mutters, like he’s confessing something.

Mamae laughs a little, again—softer, this time, and impossibly fond.

They talk for a while, after that, in low, soft voices. Everyone shifts when they switch the baby to the other breast, but after that Evie leans on her Mamae’s shoulder, and listens to her parents speak. Of nothing, mostly—the fresco, the repairs Solas made on the roof. What colour they think the baby’s eyes will be, who she takes after.

Evie doesn’t even realise she’s dozed off until she wakes—Solas is coming back into the room, the baby in his arms, and the door creaks as he nudges it with his shoulder.

“I have done this before,” Mamae is saying. “And I’m not actually bedridden.”

“I know,” he replies, softly, as he crosses the room.

“You don’t have to do everything, Solas.”

He places the baby in her crib—the one Thom made—and lingers there, his hands resting on the rail, his back to them, looking down at the sleeping baby.

“Indulge me, vhenan,” he says, glancing over his shoulder.

His eyes are suspiciously shiny in the candlelight.

Mamae hums. “Well,” she says, wiggling the shoulder Evie’s resting her head on, “I think it’s time we sent this one off to bed.”

“I’m in a bed,” Evie mumbles.

“Yes, but your door has a soundproofing spell on it,” Mamae reminds her, “and your little sister is going to be hungry again in a few hours.”

Evie makes a face, but allows herself to be coerced out of the bed. She unsuccessfully stifles a yawn as her Mamae kisses her on the cheek and bids her goodnight.

When she’s changed her clothes and washed her face, Solas knocks on her door.

“Da’assan?” he calls, softly. “May I come in?”

“Mm-hm,” she replies, crawling under her pile of blankets and furs—some of the few things they kept when they gave up the aravel for the cottage.

He slips inside and closes the door behind him, and then sits at the foot of her bed.

“Newborns are… hectic,” he says, after a long moment. “And I… do not want you to feel left out.”

“Cole would probably just tell you if I did.” She tilts her head to the side, trying to figure out what he’s thinking. It’s a little hard to read his face with only the moonlight through her window to go through, but she thinks…

His brows are furrowed, his gaze cast to the floor.

Evie leans over and pinches the skin on his hand.

He jumps, startled. “What—what was that—”

“See?” She leans back, trying not to smirk. “You’re not dreaming, Papae.”

His expression softens, his lips twitching into a reluctant smile, and Evie can’t help but grin back in return.

“Thank you,” he says, softly.

She nudges his leg with her toes from under the blankets. “So pick a name already! Oh, but don’t tell anyone until Tuesday.”

He raises a brow. “Tuesday?”

“Because then I win, and Bull does our laundry for a week, and Sera our dishes for two…”

He laughs, then. Shaking his head and smiling at her long after he’s done, his eyes warm, the worries from when he sat down thoroughly chased away.

“I forget sometimes, how clever you are.” He leans forward, and presses a kiss to her forehead. “Goodnight, da’assan.”

“Goodnight, Papae.” As he stands, and she settles down into her furs, she asks, “Papae?”

He hovers in her doorway. “Yes?”

“Will I see you in the Fade tonight?”

He smiles. “Of course.”

He closes the door behind him once more, and Evie settles into her blankets. Warm, exhausted, and content, she closes her eyes and as feels the pull of the Fade with every slow, steady breath, she wonders what she and Solas are going to find there, together, with a smile on her face that lingers long after she’s fallen asleep.