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The first step outside the solid stone walls of Kinloch Hold is terrifying.
Terrifying in the sheer number and intensity of long-forgotten sensations—the sun warming Surana’s face, blinding her eyes as she looks up at the noonday sky marked with encroaching stormclouds. The taste of distant lightning on her tongue as she takes a deep breath of fresh air. The earthy smell of Lake Calenhad as it laps the base of the tower, the sound of birds chirping and screeching as they soar overhead. Memories once dim like the echo of loving arms around her, now more vivid than she could have ever possibly imagined.
Terrifying in how exhilarating such newfound freedom is, a surge of vehement soul-deep certainty: I will never let anyone cage me again.
Duncan doesn’t touch her. But he stands close and watchful at her shoulder, allowing her a moment of respite to get reacquainted to this strange, wonderful, beautiful world.
She finally forces herself to look up at him, meeting his dark-eyed, intense scrutiny that is somehow both serious and gentle. “Ready,” she lies, but follows him into the boat all the same.
It’s not until they safely cross the lake and are several minutes up the trail, away from the rickety buildings on the shore, that she says with her eyes fixed on the forest around them, “I don’t know what the First Enchanter told you, but my name is Surana.”
“Surana,” he repeats slowly, as if committing it to mind. “I’m grateful you were able to join our fight after all.”
“You didn’t give them a choice,” she reminds him. The smile that nearly bursts from her lips at his easy acceptance of her name twists into the grimace of a long-held fear. “I was afraid…”
She trails off, a different sort of terror clawing inside her.
“I could not have let them make you Tranquil.” It sounds nearly like a vow, for all that she has few reasons to trust him. “And to find a man so steadfastly loyal to his friends… that is the kind of man the Wardens desperately need.”
Surana’s jaw clenches; the flick of Duncan’s gaze across her face reveals her failure to hide her instinctive revulsion.
“Is there…” he starts, deep voice careful. “Is there anything else about you I should know, Surana?”
Her pale cheeks flame, heart lodging painfully in her throat. Their footfalls on the rocky path and the rolling thunder and the roaring in Surana’s ears is so loud, her tongue still and leaden. This is the opportunity she’s been waiting for, longing for, for years, and now that it’s here—
Creators take her, now that she’s just been enlisted for certain battle and possible death, it’s too much to fight.
“Maybe later,” she says finally, voice hoarse.
Duncan nods, and she chokes back a sigh of bittersweet relief.
* * *
Later never arrives.
Later finds Duncan murdered at Ostagar and her newfound siblings strewn slaughtered across bloody fields.
Later Alistair startles when Surana stumbles out of Flemeth’s cabin, and he’s so relieved to see her alive through his tear-stained eyes and trembling voice that she can’t bear to risk their tenuous friendship, or overcome the heavy realization that they’re the only two Wardens left in all Ferelden.
Later is too late, so Surana says nothing at all.