Chapter Text

I.

It’s wrong. Everything is almost exactly the same as it was, except everything is subtly wrong. The smallest, stubbornest part of Kay had never stopped hoping—even despite all the evidence to the contrary—that as soon as he got to Skyhold, as soon as he found Cullen or Josephine or Cassandra, then this whole terrible misunderstanding would be put right. But as soon as he passed under the portcullis into the keep, something chimed off in his heart. And now, here he is, waiting by the fire in Josephine’s study with a cup of her favourite brandy in his hand—like countless nights before—except that when she looks at him there’s nothing in her eyes but confusion.

She only poured him brandy out of kindness, because he was travel-worn and half-frozen from the trek, and all he wants to do is tell her everything—but she doesn’t know who he is.

The silence between them stretches out long and loud, and when the Qunari woman bursts in Kay almost faints with relief because at last, at last here is someone he doesn’t recognise.

Inquisitor Adaar seems to suck up all the air in the room. Sweat-sheened and breathing hard, as if she’d been running, lilac-skinned with curling dark horns that come to a wicked point at her jawline, and she towers over Cassandra and Josephine. Kay stands from his chair, because he’s feeling dwarfed enough already. The Qunari woman positions herself between Cassandra and Josephine with a threatening deliberateness.

Josephine is saying something—introducing him as Ser Trevelyan—and Kay swallows all of his nascent who the fuck is thises and his why won’t any of you fucking help mes and instead finds himself saying, as dry as his detestable Aunt Lucinda, "Is Solas not joining our little party?"

Instead of Adaar, it’s Cassandra who steps forward. "And who are you to be making demands of our people? Tell us your 'interesting news' and our Inquisitor will decide whether it merits further audience." Her hand is twitching near her sword hilt, and her glower is so familiar it makes the bottom drop out of Kay’s stomach. Cassandra always used to look at him like that. He used to dance on knife-edges trying to make her trust him. She had softened since he almost died, up in the snow between the mountain peaks. Now that had been wiped away.

This is a fucking nightmare. This is Fade witchery, like back in Redcliffe, only this time the horror is that he never existed, and some other poor bastard got to pick up Corypheus’ orb and curse themselves, but somehow he’s still here trying to explain to his only friends why they don’t have the faintest clue who he is. The words dry up on Kay’s tongue and he shrugs, and lifts his hands in surrender. "Can we stop with the glares of death, please?" He wonders if they can hear the note of desperation in his voice, or if it’s just him.

The Qunari’s eyes are fixed on his left hand. He holds it out to her, palm up. "Before today, you were the only person in Thedas with this mark, with the power to close Fade rifts and seal the Breach, am I correct?"

After a moment, the woman nods, one deliberate motion. "As far as I’m aware." Her voice is deep and rich, with that Qunari accent mixed with something more familiar.

She’s talking to him. She’s giving him that much. That’s something.

Talk, then, Trevelyan. "And I’ll hazard a guess that you know little about the Fade," Kay continues, even conjuring something resembling a smile to say, "besides the fact that it’s creepy as all hell and full of spiders."

Adaar’s scowl lightens, just barely. For a moment, there’s even something like amusement in the set of her mouth. "No, to be honest I don’t. I generally ask Solas about such matters."

"Precisely," Kay says. "And since the Fade is the only thing I can think of to explain all this nonsense, that’s why he needs to be here."

Solas could fix this. Solas could send him home. Solas—or Dorian—except that Kay doesn’t want to think about seeing Dorian look straight through him like he was a ghost. So it has to be Solas.

After he stops talking, the amusement falls off the Qunari’s face like he had just vomited on her boots. Her brows come together in one dark line as she regards him. Her dark eyes flicker to Cassandra, and she nods—and Cassandra acquiesces wordlessly, leaving the room with a glare at him. The Qunari woman spares a few more words for Josephine. "My lady ambassador," she says, with nothing but the suggestion of steel in her voice. "I believe I left a report on the war table this morning. There was mention of unusual rift activity. Could you retrieve it, please? It might prove useful."

Josephine inclines her head and says, voice all cool professionalism, "Of course, Inquisitor." Her eyes skip over Kay as she dips him a purely courteous bow, and then she’s gone too, leaving only the honeysuckle and jasmine scent of her perfume, Kay’s half-drunk cup of brandy, and an overwhelming sense of dread in his gut.

There is no sound but the crackle of the fire in the grate and the Qunari’s heavy footfalls as she crosses the room to block Kay’s route to the doors. As she leans against Josephine’s enormous desk, she almost looks casual, except that her large hands are balled into fists by her sides.

Kay doesn’t want to think about the damage those fists would do, except that he’s just now realising that he may have taken for granted what kind of person the Herald of Andraste might have turned out to be. He has no idea who Hera Adaar is, after all. He takes a step back, without meaning to.

"Masterfully done," he says. He lifts his chin, setting his jaw. "Do you mean to strike me down, or have my stunningly good looks finally won you over?"

The woman’s face is stone, except for the firelight that glimmers, reflected, in her shadowed eyes. "You are the envy demon I banished to the Fade at Therinfall, are you not?" Her voice, soft for Josephine, was nothing but steel now.

"Envy demon?" Kay almost stumbles backward. He had thought himself on rocky ground—now he was realising the ground under his feet wasn’t stable at all. "Why in the –"

"It’s the only explanation," the Qunari goes on. "You failed to imitate me then—I forced you out of my mind before you could overcome me—but you took something. Enough, I imagine, to make some poor sap into a cheap copycat." She pushes off the desk, looming toward him. "So what’s your plan?"

Kay plants his feet and balls his own hands into fists, Anchor throbbing uncomfortably in his left. He has to tilt his head back to meet Adaar’s eyes, but he does. "Cheap?" he spits, before bringing his voice under control. "Look. I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m not a demon. I’ve never even been to Therinfall." He does lightning-quick calendar maths in his head as he speaks. "I was too busy in Redcliffe. Saving the thrice-damned world. Again."

The Qunari’s expression sharpens. "Redcliffe? The mages? You infiltrated them also?"

He wants to laugh, or run, or lash out—but the roil of panic churning in his gut keeps him sensible. "I haven’t infiltrated anyone. I’m no demon." In his head, beneath his racing thoughts, Kay tries to line up his timeline with this distorted world’s. "This was some time ago, before Solas led me to Skyhold even. Did you not deal with them?"

"No." Adaar turns from him, paces away, as Kay silently relaxes his fists. "We lent aid to the Templars. We were too late to help the mages after what happened at Therinfall." A moment’s pause, then, turning her head over her shoulder, she says, "With the red lyrium." When Kay doesn’t respond, she turns again fully to face him. "Where you then tried to invade my brain and take over my body so you could systematically destroy the world."

With the firelight behind her, Adaar’s face is impossible to read. Kay faces her, standing in her shadow, and says, "I’m sorry—was this me, or the envy demon?" He can’t see if there’s anger blossoming across her face, so he goes on. "We’re so obviously interchangeable."

In one stride Adaar crosses the distance between them. "What else could you be?" she snarls, and her anger is like the heat off a bonfire. It’s all Kay can do not to step back again. Lip curled, she goes on, "At least I have an explanation for this madness. All you can do is snipe."

"I’ll tell you," Kay says, every word an exercise in aristocratic sang froid, "when Solas gets here."

"I see," the Qunari hisses. "My rift mage has somehow sealed your story away in some Fade-pocket of your brain, and you can’t speak of it without the password."

A joke. It startles a smile out of Kay, more reflex than humour. Keep her talking. "I just don’t see the point in telling it twice."

One big fist seizes his shirtfront, and Kay braces himself for the punch. Instead, Adaar leans her face down into his to growl, "Other than preventing the angry Vashoth from pummelling you?"

Shifting his feet for a quick getaway at the earliest available opportunity, Kay gently places a hand over her fist at his chest. In for a penny. He didn’t get to be Inquisitor by being sensible, after all. "You wouldn’t dare," he breathes. "I’m far too pretty."

She drops Kay with a noise of something like frustration as both doors into Josephine’s study open at almost the same time. Kay springs back a few steps, and Adaar casts him a withering glance.

But he isn’t looking at her any more.

Cassandra stands in the doorway, hands on her hips, one eyebrow cocked over her flashing eyes. Beside her—small, nondescript, wearing an impassive expression on his face—is Solas. Kay can’t help but grin at the sight of him.

The Qunari is speaking. "Solas, would you be kind enough to speak to our guest? I’m afraid I’m getting quite tired of his games."

Giddy with relief, Kay makes a moué at her. "Oh, and we were just beginning to have fun, too." He smoothes down his shirt where she had wrinkled it, and catches her glare from the corner of his eyes. "Oh no. The death glare’s back."

"Solas," Adaar says. "Please?"

Solas steps forward on silent feet, the door slipping shut behind him. He takes in all of Kay in one measured look. "Seeker Pentaghast mentioned something about the Fade. You were…" he seems to search for a word. "Displaced?"

Kay nods. "I think I come from some…" Now it’s his turn to pause, ordering his thoughts. "Some alternate universe to your own, possibly connected by the Fade. In it, I’m Inquisitor." When Cassandra snorts, he pretends not to hear her. "All of you exist there." He gestures around at the gathered people. Josephine has drifted up beside Adaar. "As well as the rest. Dorian –" his voice trembles and he takes a breath, "– Sera, Bull, Cole, Vivienne, Varric, Blackwall. Cullen and Leliana too." He’s counting them off on his fingers. Now he’s started listing the people he’s lost he can’t seem to stop. "Harding, Harrit, Maryden, Bull’s Chargers, Morrigan, Mother Giselle –"

"I think we get the idea," Cassandra cuts him off, voice crisp and cold.

"Well then." Kay says, somewhat at a loss now. Everyone is watching him, waiting for further explanation. "That’s it. We’re currently working with the mages to bring down Corypheus. The last thing I remember, we’d taken Adamant from the Wardens, fallen through a Fade rift, and fought a frankly terrifying number of spiders and oversized spider-themed demons…" He trails off, remembering. "We lost Hawke."

Cassandra steps forward, suddenly animated. "We did not!"

Kay raises his hands. "No, I mean I lost Hawke." Something falls into place in his head. He meets Adaar’s eyes. "You lost Stroud, then?"

"We did." The Qunari’s glare softens. "I’m sorry for your loss. Hawke was –" she corrects herself, "– is a good man."

Kay nods, once. "And for yours." There is a long moment, full of a sudden strange intimacy, that stretches out between them before they both look away from one another. "So, yes." Kay gathers himself. "I fell out of the Fade, and the others—Dorian, Cole, Cassandra—my Dorian, Cole and Cassandra, I mean—didn’t emerge with me." His mouth twisted. "Either they returned safely home or– or they didn’t." He shrugs at last, without anything else to say. "That’s rather it."

Solas keeps his dark eyes fixed on Kay for a moment more, before turning to Hera. "He is not a spirit. Nor is there anything demonic about him." He raises one slender-fingered hand to stroke his chin, turning away from them both to stare into the middle distance. "The Fade is vast, larger than any mortal can hope to comprehend. It is also entirely different within, as you will both have experienced. Reality as you know it is warped. I will need to look into this." He paces away, back again. "But the existence of a reality twinned with our own is not beyond the realms of possibility." He looks back up at Kay again, attention suddenly sharp as a knife. "Whether it is possible to restore you to your world is a different matter. I will conduct research into this." With that, he turns, and leaves the room without a goodbye. The door closes quietly behind him.

In the silence that follows, Kay feels the room spin. He looks up, swallowing the tangle of emotions behind his gritted teeth, and finds the room’s eyes upon him. He forces something like a smile.

"So does this make you Inquisitor, or me Inquisitor?"

The Qunari woman has no more patience for him after he’s given up all his useful information, so it’s up to Josephine to find him chambers, fresh clothes, and dinner. His head is spinning and there’s a voice locked somewhere inside that’s distantly screaming so it’s not until she leaves him alone in a small room overlooking the herb garden that he realises he’s managed to insult her without even meaning to. His mouth, running without his paying attention. When he was a younger man, carousing in the stews of Ostwick, he used to do that all the time—but usually back then he didn’t care, even when he ended up in a duel.

But even though this wasn’t his Josephine, she was still Josephine. He didn’t want to hurt her.

The servants bring him steaming hot water and scented oils to fill a copper bathtub, and he soaks in it until the water goes cold. He rises from the bath to find a steaming bowl of stew, a trencher of bread and a bottle of wine with a cup set out for him on a small table. It’s been days since he ate enough—days trekking through the mountains with the refugees heading for Skyhold, sharing the wild game he could shoot with the starving families he travelled alongside—that he devours it, forgetting table manners, forgetting even to dress, forgetting where he is and the wrongness of everything. After, he dresses slowly in the simple linen and leathers they had left him, sipping the wine, and everything feels… a little less awful.

Kay slips his new borrowed cloak around his shoulders and leaves his chamber. The sun has set—early, behind the mountains—and everything in the keep is soft and blue and glimmering with torchlight. He stops there, on the high walkway above the garden, to look out. The air is cold on his skin but, inside these ancient walls, lacks its bite. Morrigan had spoken of old elven magic in the bones of this place. Having reached it now, after days in the wilderness, he feels it more than ever.

From here, the people in the keep are too small to make out, the voices just a murmur rising up to reach him. From here, this could be home.

He turns his feet toward the door to the great hall.

He makes his way down to the ground floor—head down, avoiding eye contact—and is about to knock on the door to Josephine’s study before he hears a laugh he doesn’t recognise ring out deep and resonant from inside. He pauses for the briefest moment, and in that moment he hears Josephine’s answering giggle and there’s something in it that makes him drop his hand. It’s a note of pure, unrehearsed happiness.

The first voice behind the door speaks and now Kay recognises it as belonging to Hera Adaar, though not a tone she would have used with him. "Just you wait until I show you some more of my expertise…"

As Josephine giggles again, Kay turns away, a half-smile creeping across his face. So that’s Josie’s type.

Instead of creeping back up the staircase beside him, Kay pushes through the door to the great hall again, disappearing into anonymity in the hubbub of society, high and low, that mingles there. He makes his way across it to the door that leads to the round room that, in his world, had become Solas’. Hesitating on the threshold, unsure of the protocol, he swallows his misgivings, knocks, and enters without invitation.

"Hello, Ser Trevelyan." The elf stands with his back to the door, stooped over the desk in the centre of the room, a book splayed open in front of him. He doesn’t turn as Kay enters.

Another man stands across the desk from Solas, finger tracing a passage in the book between them. He lifts his dark head, and Kay’s heart stops.

A wolfish smile quirks Dorian’s mouth. "You must be the lost Fade wanderer I’ve just been hearing all about." His eyes flick up and down Kay’s body as he speaks. "I must say, I’m very glad you could join us. Dorian Pavus, the Inquisition’s evil Tevinter genius in residence." He sketches an elegant bow. When Kay doesn’t reply, he says, "Solas, tell me—does he speak or just stand there and look pretty?"

"Be gentle with him," Solas says, still without looking around. "Imagine you woke up one day and everyone you knew treated you as if you were a stranger."

"Sorry," Kay manages. "It’s just –" Just that I want to grab you and kiss you. Just that I’ve missed you more than I can say. Just that seeing you and hearing you speak is both wonderful and not enough at the same time—a thousand thousand miles away from enough. Dropping his gaze, Kay turns away from Dorian to pace around behind Solas, putting the desk between him and Dorian again. "I know you, in my world. This is strange."

"I can only imagine," Dorian says.

"Sorry, again." Kay inclines his head in Dorian’s direction without meeting his eyes. "Kay Trevelyan. Spare Inquisitor. Surplus Herald of Andraste."

"It’s a pleasure, Kay Trevelyan," Dorian purrs, and the sound of his name in Dorian’s mouth goes straight through Kay’s bones, and he’s quite sure this is not Dorian being gentle.

"Ser Trevelyan," Solas says, and Kay is grateful for the distraction. "You came to see me for a reason?"

"Please," Kay says, "call me Kay. And I just wanted to see if there was anything I could do to help."

"Yes!" Dorian says, leaning forward across the desk. "Funny you should say that. If you wouldn’t mind starting by telling us absolutely everything that’s happened to you so far, starting when you stepped out of the Fade in our world and working backwards, that would be smashing." He flashes Kay a bright grin as he says, "I’ll get the drinks in."

Before Kay has the chance to respond, Solas steps between them, into Dorian’s line of sight. "Actually, Dorian, while I appreciate your help with this matter, I think it would be best if you left Ser Trevelyan and I alone now."

"I beg your pardon?"

"He and I will meditate together. It would be best if there were no distractions."

Dorian’s eyes narrow. "Just so you know, I don’t believe you one jot. You’ve milked me for my superior bibliographic knowledge and now I’m being dismissed like a servant." He folded his arms. "Luckily for you, I’m happy to be the bigger person, and not just because I’d rather be at the tavern. Though by rights I ought to take our guest with me. He should be introduced to everyone."

"Certainly not simply that you wish to spend more time with him." Solas bows his head to the book again, a picture of disinterest. "You are transparent, Dorian."

"That would hurt," Dorian says, on his way to the western door, "if I didn’t mean to be." He pauses with one hand on the doorknob. "If you get bored with the water-drinking apostate tramp, Trevelyan," sending another shiver down Kay’s spine, "you’re welcome to join me at the Herald’s Rest." With that, he flings open the door and disappears into the night beyond.

Something in Kay’s spine gives and his shoulders sag. He covers his eyes with a hand—his right, never his left—briefly, before drawing it down his face. When he opens them again, he sees Solas has turned from his desk and is regarding him with those eyes, grey as flint and as inscrutable. "This must be difficult for you."

Kay slopes over to the desk to idly walk his fingers across the pages of the book. It is enormous, pages yellowed and brittle with age, and covered in so much cramped, angular writing it hurts Kay’s eyes to look at. "Oh, you know. Plummeting through Fade rifts, fighting off fear demons left and right, leaving companions to die before hiking for days through war-torn wasteland and frozen mountain passes to reach a home that doesn’t even know I exist—all part of the job description, I suppose." His lips twist against worse words escaping. "I don’t sound bitter, do I? Maker forbid." He shakes his head. "Sorry. I didn’t mean to bite your head off."

"Please. I am not so easy to offend." Solas reaches out to gently—but firmly—push Kay’s hand away from the book. "But you should know that already. You know me. I’m only sorry I haven’t yet had the chance to know you."

Kay puts his hands behind his back, where they can’t cause trouble. "I keep forgetting that. I’m not making a very good first impression, am I?"

The smile that has been playing around Solas’ mouth breaks out now into something more friendly. "You’ve got the chance to mend it yet. Come—tell me everything."

The next dawn comes bright and cold, light running down the mountains like clear water as the sun crests the peaks. After everything, Kay finds Hera Adaar up on the battlements, straight backed, eyes narrowed, facing into the sun. One day, he thinks, she’ll make an impressive statue. If the world lasts that long, at least.

Cole is sitting on the ramparts by her side. He looks around as Kay approaches, limpid eyes wide, but he doesn’t speak.

"You," Kay says, aimed at Hera’s broad back. "You left me with them. All of them at once! It took me hours to get away." Hours of daytime drinking at the Herald’s Rest, and now his head was unhappily muzzy. Hours of double-edged questions he had to fence with. Countless hands of Wicked Grace, dealing with Varric and his entire lack of scruples, and Josephine’s improbable cardsharp skill. He would have done all right, as well, with the advantage of knowing them without their knowing him—if he hadn’t been dividing his attention between the game and the tall, dark and handsome Tevinter whose eyes never seemed to stray from him the entire time. That, and Sera’s provocation. "Sera kept trying to fill my breeches with bees."

Hera half-turns her head to raise an eyebrow at him. In the sunlight, Kay’s startled by the shade of her eyes. Not dark at all, as he’d initially thought, but the colour of an amethyst stone, faceted and complex. "I thought you knew them," she remarks.

"Well, yes." He scuffs a gloved hand across the back of his neck. "But I don’t deal with them all at once, ganging up on me like that. It’s madness."

Adaar huffs an easy laugh. "You’ve not learned how to wrangle them yet. Don’t worry—it’ll come with time." She turns back to the mountains and the sky. "I suppose I have an unfair advantage—you learn a thing or two about crowd control when you captain a band of unruly mercenaries."

"You are a stranger," Cole says. "But you are not strange." As one, both Kay and Hera turn to look at him. His head is to one side, as if Kay is a riddle he’s trying to figure out.

"Cole?" Hera says.

Cole doesn’t glance at her. His pale eyes are fixed on Kay. "I fear strangers, because they think me strange and fear me. You are familiar," with a puzzled lilt to his voice, "you feel like Hera—in some ways, but not in others. She is warm and patient, but sad. She sounds like cheering and swords clashing, knives in the dark. You are angry, not sad, and you sound like dogs and horns, hooves and snapping bowstrings." A smile comes to his face, sudden as a bird alighting. "But laughter too, both of you sound of laughter." He tilts his head to the other side, abstracted again. "It’s like you’re one person in two places. I think…" He dips his head so the wide, wide brim of his hat hides his face, puts his hands up to his ears. "I think I need to go for a walk. Away. You hurt." Hands against his head, he taps his fingers. "In here. It’s loud."

"That’s all right, Cole," Hera says. "I’m sorry we’re making this difficult for you."

In one swift movement, Cole hops up from where he had been sitting, into a tightrope walker’s pose on the narrow ramparts. "Not difficult. Only trying." With a cat’s balance, he walks away, along the wall, and both Kay and Hera watch him as he goes.

After a moment, Hera re-trains her gaze on Kay once again. Her eyes are still narrowed—against the sun, or trying to puzzle him out, Kay doesn’t know. She says, "I forget how odd he must seem to others. I’ve grown so used to his fumbling humanity."

"I remember when we first met, back at Haven," Kay says. The smoke and the screams. The blood on the snow. Then the boy outside the gates. He grimaces against the memories. "There was noise outside—soldiers, war cries, and suddenly—nothing. He’d just –" He draws his thumb across his throat. "Deadly with a knife. So unfalteringly compassionate. It’s a strange duality."

Hera nods, but doesn’t speak.

Kay’s calendar had suddenly become more free than he was used to, since Adamant, so since he has nothing better to do, he comes to join her where she sits.

Adaar seems content to quietly watch a handful of recruits sparring in the courtyard below. To make conversation, Kay says, "You met him at Therinfall, didn’t you?"

"What makes you think that?"

"I met Dorian when we helped the mages in Redcliffe. Afterwards, Cole came to warn us that we were under attack from the Templars under Corypheus’s thrall. You said last night that you helped the Templars at Therinfall." He spreads his hands. "Just conjecture."

She nods without looking round. "I did meet him there. He helped me push the envy demon out."

"You mean the envy demon that isn’t me?" He tries a grin, but drops it at Adaar’s unamused glance. "Sorry, go on."

She heaves a deep breath before continuing. "It was having the senior most Templars dose themselves with red lyrium infusions." Her face is grim. "They all lost themselves to it. Then it forced its way into my head and tried to steal my memories—become me—so it could use the Inquisition to further its own goals. But Cole was there, somehow, in my mind." She shakes her head. "I would have been lost were it not for him. I dread to think what would have become of the world had the demon succeeded."

The events in Adaar’s world are beginning to fall into place in Kay’s mind. He can see the decisions she made, the ones he didn’t. "Dorian was that for me in Redcliffe." Waist deep in foetid water, both panting from the fight, and Dorian had put his hands on Kay’s shoulders and said I’ll protect you. "Magister Alexius sent us a year into the future, a future where we failed to stop him." Which, of course, the Dorian of this world knows nothing about. "It was horrible. The fate that befell my friends—would have, if Dorian hadn’t helped me stop it—still haunts me sometimes."

When he looks up, he finds Adaar has turned to face him. "You speak fondly of him."

She’s more perceptive than he gave her credit for. "I speak fondly of all my friends."

Thankfully, she doesn’t press it. Instead she turns back to watch the recruits—her recruits—down below. She seems comfortable with him here, in a way Kay’s not sure he could be if their positions were reversed. But how could such an impressive figure of an Inquisitor be anything but sure of herself?

Kay smiles at himself without much humour. Your inferiority complex is showing, Trevelyan.

To hell with it. There’s only one thing that can salvage this day—and it’s waiting down below in untapped barrels in the back of the Herald’s Rest. Kay springs up from where he had been sitting. "Come on." Hera looks up. "Some of Bull’s hideous liquor and a few good pranks from Sera and we’ll be fast friends."

Adaar shakes her head—but she climbs to her feet, and follows him.

It’s late morning, so the Herald’s Rest is quiet, populated only by road-worn scouts, minor diplomats at a loose end, and merchants after an early lunch. Even so, Kay can’t help but catch the curious glances being thrown his way. He keeps his chin up, his eyes forward, and a smile on his lips.

Adaar’s imposing presence bags them a table in the corner, behind the stairs, by Iron Bull’s usual spot. Kay catches Cabot’s eye as he’s mopping down the bar and calls for two ales. Cabot grunts. Kay has no idea whether or not those two ales are going to materialise.

He sits as Adaar does. "I have to say," Kay begins, "you do make a more formidable Inquisitor than me. That must open some doors."

"Less than you’d think." The Qunari woman sits straight-backed across from him, but she’s not looking at him. Instead her eyes are roaming the tavern. It looks, more than anything, like habit. "I imagine you fit right in at the Winter Palace."

Kay grimaces. All that double-edged conversation under the crystal chandeliers, punctuated by rushing down dark corridors, finding corpses in corners and assassins of different stripes behind every curtain. But like it or not, it was what he had been born, bred and trained for. "I know how to make a false smile look genuine, and I know all the dances, yes. I take it you didn’t have fun?"

For the first time, real anger washes across Hera’s face. She catches Kay’s eyes, and he’s almost knocked back by the force of it. But when she speaks, her voice is level. "The gentlefolk of Orlais don’t take gracefully to being forced to mix with a beast such as me."

Kay gropes for something to say, finds nothing constructive. Instead he says, "I’m sorry."

Hera breaks from his gaze, shakes her head. "Not your fault." Her mouth twitches in the beginning of a smile. "They’re lucky I’m not the vindictive type or I’d leave Orlais crawling with demons just to spite them."

"You wouldn’t do that," Kay says, but the way it hangs in the air it’s more of a question than a statement.

Adaar’s flash of contempt is directed at him now. "Of course not. I’m not a monster, however you may think I look like one."

Kay lifts his palms in mock surrender. "That’s not fair." Wasn’t it? A hook of guilt catches in Kay’s chest. If he was honest with himself, hadn’t he been afraid of her at first?

Adaar’s already apologising. "Sorry. You’re right. I just– I don’t know you."

In the awkward silence this left, two tankards are set down between them. At the very same moment, both Hera and Kay look up at the barmaid and say, in harmony, "Thanks, Moll." Moll’s pretty smile flickers as she glances at Kay, but she dips and turns away without comment.

Kay and Adaar catch each others’ eyes. In the next instant, they’re both laughing. It’s a few heartbeats, nothing more, but when their eyes next meet it feels like something has fallen away between them.

When the smile falls off Kay’s face, he says, "I’m the one who should be sorry. You’re not human, in a land run by humans. Things are easier for me. Just because I don’t see it doesn’t make that untrue."

There’s an unfamiliar set to Adaar’s eyes as she considers him. She lifts her tankard, tilting it toward him. "Appreciated." She takes a drink, puts it down. "For my part, I’m willing to accommodate the idea you might not be nothing more than another rich boy with a pretty face who just learned which end of a sword to hold last week."

This surprises a laugh out of Kay again. "I’m flattered you’ve come to an appreciation of my pretty face. Though I have to break it to you: I prefer to hold a bow rather than a sword."

"Perhaps that’s for the best." Adaar smiles. "You humans are terribly fragile, I’ve found."

Kay shrugs. "Can’t argue with that." He reaches his tankard across the table to clink it against Adaar’s. "To getting to know one another better."

Adaar’s smile broadens. Not unguarded, by any means, but it’s a start. She lifts her tankard. "I’ll drink to that."

"Get out." Sera stands by the doorway to her room at the Herald’s Rest, one hand gripping the door. Kay stands from the windowseat.

"Sera, hear me out."

She shakes her head so hard she sends blonde hair flying into her face. "No. Nope. Not having it. No freaky magic shit in my place. Go away before I really put my bees somewhere you’ll have trouble fishing 'em out."

Pulling his hand from behind his back, he proffers the bottle he’s been holding. "But I brought booze."

Sera stills. Her eyes narrow as she glares at the bottle, curiosity warring with her better judgement.

Kay extends it toward her. "It’s not Blackwall’s kitchen scraps moonshine. It’s plum brandy."

Sera’s eyebrows curve upward, furrowing her forehead. "Where’d you get it?" she asks, suspicious as a stray cat.

"Vivienne’s personal stash." Kay sets it down on the table between them. He pulls a slim silver knife from his boot—the one he keeps there in case of emergencies—and starts chipping away at the wax sealing in the cork. "She doesn’t know I know where it is yet."

"How do you know where it is, and I don’t?" Her voice is all outraged disbelief.

"One: in another life, she and I have drunk from this very bottle together on the balcony of the great hall, talking about fashion and society weddings and Orlesian politics." Wax gone, Kay plunges his knife into the cork. "Two: it’s you in particular she’s been hiding it from, not strangers like me, so naturally I already stood a better chance at getting my hands on it."

Sera’s feet have inched her inside the little room. Now she raises her eyes from the bottle to his, still scowling. "All right. Lady Frostyknickers’ fancy booze buys you a chat. But as far as I’m concerned, you’re still creepy magic horseshit that I don’t got to trust, yeah?"

The cork comes free with a satisfying sound. Trevelyan holds up the knife with the cork speared on the end of it. "You’re entitled to your opinion."

"Yeah. I am."

Flicking the knife up to his mouth, Kay pulls the cork from the blade with his teeth, then, crossing to the open window, leans back for momentum before spitting the cork far out into the courtyard. He raises an eyebrow at Sera. "As for this brandy, I think we should enjoy it in the fresh air," he says, stepping up onto the windowseat and ducking out through the window after the cork.

Sure-footed on the sloping tiles, Kay finds a sunny spot and sits, cross-legged, taking a swig of sweet, dark-flavoured plum brandy. It’s the good stuff—too good to let sit undrunk in a secret compartment in the chantry. Too good, with his silent apologies to Vivienne, to not employ on this, one of his most important assays into renewed friendship.

After a moment, Sera follows. She sits, a wary distance from him, knees drawn up to her chest. The morning sunlight turns her hair to gold. She holds out her hand for the bottle, and Kay passes it. "All right then, Mr Fox—what do you want?" She takes a deep swallow, wiping her mouth with her sleeve, and goes on. "Wait, let me guess. You want to tell me about how we’re the best of chums in your stupid world, how we wipe each others’ arses for one another, and how you’re just dying to revive our super-special friendship so we can be bosom pals again?" She makes a gagging noise. "You can save it, 'cause I’m not falling for it."

Leaning over, Kay pulls the bottle from her hand. "Please. I know you, remember?" He swallows a mouthful of brandy. "Three reasons you want me as your ally. The first being that we share a healthy appreciation of filling people full of arrows from high places. Reason the second: I know where all the good shit is hidden, like Vivienne’s alcohol, Cassandra’s books, and Cullen’s underwear." At this, Sera’s eyebrows shoot up into her fringe. "Reason the third and final: you don’t know it yet, but I’m a good friend. Case in point—have you met Dagna yet?"

Sera’s blank face is Kay’s answer.

"You should head down to the Undercroft sometime—the wee hours are your best bet. We—they—keep a lot of interesting chemicals down there, as well as other things. I’m sure you’ll find something worth your while."

Sera shakes her head again, but this time it’s less decided. "I’m not saying I will. But I’m not saying I won’t, either, all right? That’s all you’re getting."

"Fine by me." He passes the bottle back.

"So," Sera begins, edging closer, leaning an elbow on her knee and her chin on her fist. "Your turn to answer some questions."

"Go on." Kay braces himself.

"What’s with the hair?"