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Adaar drags herself out of bed.
She’s still recovering from her unexpected headlong tumble into the Fade; tearing open a rift with nothing more than stubborn will and frantic hope leaves her worn and weary even still. Her hand aches beneath the skin, and when she closes her eyes green wavers at the edge of the dark.
Years of being a mercenary have taught her how to regain strength in uncomfortable circumstances, but right now she’s restless under the rising sun streaming through the massive stained glass window. Cullen’s arms were tight and protective around her, but they can’t ease the thought of blue-lightning eyes and red seared fingerprints on Anders’s—Justice’s—neck, the knowledge that lurking inside these walls somewhere is a soul-spirit she shattered with a single word.
Hawke…
She pulls on Cullen’s cloak, pressing her face into the furry pauldrons that carry his scent, and pads onto the balcony. Under the light creeping over the mountain peaks and the crisp air prickling her skin and stealing her breath, with nothing but sky above and distant boulders below, she feels small. Lost amid the weight and enormity of what she’s done, what she has yet to do.
A bell suddenly rings across the hold, indicating a change in watch, except—
Except the bell doesn’t simply ring, it starts a pattern. A beat, she realizes, when a lone voice, tangled in the wind, begins to sing. And then another joins, another, until voices rise all across Skyhold, carrying over ramparts and inside towers, in the courtyard, until the very stones seem to echo with mourning:
I am the one who can recount what we’ve lost…
Her throat tightens, and once she feels the warm, secure weight of Cullen’s hand tangling with her own, the tears she’s battered back for too long begin to fall.