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Evelyn’s heart sunk when she saw the oddly shaped cask beside the elven servant one of her Inquisition agents had detained. It was identical to the containers of the explosive gaatlok that she had seen the Qunari using to mine lyrium from the Deep Roads as part of a military effort they called “Dragon’s Breath.” Less than a week earlier, she had uncovered the Qunari plot to attack southern Thedas after traveling through the eluvians they had linked to the Winter Palace. Evelyn had disrupted that massive mining operation and hoped that it would be enough of a setback that the Qunari might rethink their invasion plans. Obviously that had been overly optimistic.
After thanking the Inquisition agent for her vigilance and ordering the elven servant detained, Evelyn set to work - telling Cullen to have his men start searching the palace for similar casks and speaking with witnesses to piece together what had transpired. Leliana and Charter quickly caught wind of the development and appeared at Evelyn’s side. Charter took over the questioning while Leliana drew Evelyn aside to discuss the ramifications of her discovery. As they spoke, one of Cullen’s men reported that they were already finding many casks scattered throughout the palace, and that most were placed near structural weaknesses. Had they not uncovered the plot, the losses would have been catastrophic.
Leliana conjectured that the Winter Palace might not be the only target and ordered that all chantries, noble houses, and places of government in southern Thedas be alerted to the threat. The Divine gave Evelyn a sympathetic look as she pointed out that yet another romantic moment between the Inquisitor and Cullen had been sullied. Evelyn snorted and replied, “It’s happened so often that I’ve come to expect it. At least I got cake this time.” Leliana laughed melodically before lauding Evelyn’s good humor. Evelyn shrugged. It was her choice to be resentful or upbeat. Either way, her priority had to be keeping her people safe. She might as well do it with smile - albeit a slightly sarcastic one.
Charter came by a few minutes later to deliver a note that had been discovered on the detained elven servant. Evelyn wasn’t surprised to see that the note was written in Qunlat. “We’re working on a translation,” Charter reported but Leliana interrupted. “I’ve picked up a bit of the language from Iron Bull although he says my accent is atrocious,” she said with self-deprecation. Evelyn rightly assumed that meant Leliana was fluent in the difficult tongue. Her old spymaster always had something up her sleeve, and Evelyn once again found herself thankful that Leliana was on her side.
The note made mention of a particular eluvian in the maze of magical mirrors that were joined to the one now kept under heavy guard at the Winter Palace. “Looks like I’ll be having a honeymoon trip after all,” Evelyn chirped. “Pity Cullen won’t be able to come with me.” She started toward her quarters to change clothes and then gather her team when another more pressing concern entered her mind - Graham. When Evelyn went to find Norah and help her and Graham to safety, Evelyn found Cullen instructing the Chargers to take them to a secure location instead.
“For someone that claims she has no maternal instinct, you thought of Graham pretty quickly,” Cullen pointed out with a sly grin.
“Graham is a special case,” Evelyn argued. “He’s my little buddy.”
“I see,” Cullen teased with a twinkle in his eyes before changing the subject. “I just realized that I’m speaking with my wife,” he said in a gentle voice as he took Evelyn about the waist. “I rather enjoy the thought of that.”
“Me too,” Evelyn agreed as she gave him a quick kiss. “Your wife, however, has to run out on you right now. Our best lead is through the eluvians.”
“Ev, please be careful,” Cullen prayed as he held her marked hand before turning it over. “This worries me,” he added while looking at the glowing green magic which had spread up her arm and grown more unpredictable during her last sortee through the strange mirrors.
“Me too,” Evelyn found herself agreeing again. “But I don’t have another choice. Take care of our people while I’m gone.”
“I always do,” Cullen answered before kissing her forehead and holding her tightly.
“I know,” she replied as she took a moment to feel safe in his arms before facing the unknown.
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The eluvian had led to an ancient elven library that had been devastated when the elven trickster “god” Fen’Harel had created the Veil. Evelyn and her companions had tracked and fought Qunari as well as demons in the fractured ruins, but she returned to the Winter Palace with more questions than answers. The Qunari they encountered persisted in calling her an agent of Fen’Harel. She was born and raised a devout Andrastian. The idea that she was some elven “god’s” minion was laughable - until it wasn’t.
As was typical for her, Evelyn couldn’t fall asleep that night, so rather than tossing and turning in bed, she sat at her desk jotting down her thoughts and trying to find some interconnection between the Qunari’s assertions, the rebellious elven “god”, and the Inquisition. When the mark popped and hissed with its odd magic, the puzzle pieces slid into place, and Evelyn felt sick to her stomach. Solas had once told her that the source of the anchor’s power was a foci that had belonged to an elven deity. She had later seen Corypheus wielding that orb as he tried to make himself a god. Once she had worried aloud that the orb had belonged to the trickster Dread Wolf - even going so far as to tell Solas they were “screwed” if it did. From how strongly the mark reacted to the old magics at Fen’Harel’s sanctuary and the Qunari assertions, Evelyn was left with little doubt. The glowing green magic in her hand once belonged to the Dread Wolf. She had unwittingly been his agent.
But there was something more - she knew it. Evelyn felt the truth skirting the edges of her consciousness, but she couldn’t bring it into focus. What was she missing? She rubbed her forehead and got up to make herself some tea. Tea always made her think of Solas. He hated it but would sometimes drink it when plagued with troubling dreams. As she thought of Solas, her mind whirred with images and memories - wolves in his murals, his wolf jaw amulet, his disconnect with both Dalish and city elves, his unusual opinions on the elven gods, and the broken expression on his face as he studied the shattered foci Corypheus had used. Evelyn held a hand to her mouth as the realization hit her. Solas had understood the mark because he knew the source of its power. He was a follower of the Dread Wolf - if not the “god” himself. No wonder Abelas acted differently toward him. He knew … who else did, though?
Evelyn wrapped a robe around herself and went to find Cole. He could intuit people’s thoughts. There was no way he didn’t know Solas’ secret. Solas and Cole shared a sort of father-son dynamic. Is that why Cole had never warned her? Did he feel loyalty to Solas rather than her? At the least, it explained why Solas had made Cole “forget” how to find him when he left the Inquisition. Evelyn turned a corner of the palace and nearly ran into the spirit-man.
“You’re upset,” Cole said to her. “You know.”
“Cole, why didn’t you tell me?” she asked with a shaking voice.
“He was trying to help - to undo what had been done, providing guidance through guise. He meant well,” Cole answered.
“He meant well,” Evelyn repeated numbly as she slid down a wall and buried her face in her hands. It was all too unreal, and the implications were too terrifying. How had Corypheus gotten Fen’Harel’s foci to begin with? Had Solas been sent to retrieve it - or had he been the one to give it to the magister to begin with only later realizing his mistake? Evelyn gasped as the anchor popped and churned in her palm.
“Your hand hurts. I’m sorry,” Cole soothed.
Evelyn looked directly at Cole and said what she had silently been fearing the past few months, “It’s killing me.”
“Yes,” Cole agreed sadly although Evelyn had intended her words more as a statement than a question.
“He’s sorry about that also. So many regrets. He doesn’t want to hurt people. He isn’t that kind of wolf,” Cole explained.
Evelyn’s eyes teared as she asked a question she already to which she already knew the answer, “Solas is the Dread Wolf?”
“Yes. He was Solas first. The Dread Wolf came later,” Cole answered as he sat down beside Evelyn silently rocking back and forth. “The mark makes you hard to hear, but I can feel your pain. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I only want to help.”
Evelyn hugged Cole and cried. “You’re wondering if I can fix your hand. I would if I knew how. He knows how, though. He wants you to find him, but you have to manage the Qunari first,” Cole chanted.
“Why?” Evelyn asked bewildered.
“That is your mistake to fix,” Cole replied.
Evelyn’s confusion about what mistake she had made was cleared up by Charter and Leliana’s investigations in the week that followed her conversation with Cole. The Inquisition had been penetrated by Qunari spies at all levels. They had even been able to put the casks of gaatlok that were found scattered throughout the Winter Palace on the Inquisition’s manifests making it seem that the Inquisition was a party to the planned destruction. After having railed at the Wardens for becoming corrupt, Evelyn’s Inquisition had fallen into the same trap in just three short years. She was demoralized and sickened by the news, but most of all she was scared. The mark had not stopped its activity or expansion - nor did it show any signs of growing dormant. She was running out of time.
As her advisors argued amongst themselves and the Ferelden and Orleasian ambassadors united against the Inquisition, the pain from the mark grew nearly unbearable for Evelyn. Shouting over the people around her, Evelyn finally shared her fears and frustrations with them -Cullen included- for the first time. True to form, those walls crashed down spectacularly as she raged, “Damn it! We’ve saved Ferelden and Orlais, and they hate us for it. I stopped Corypheus and saved the world, but my own hand is killing me. Could one fucking thing just stay fixed for a change?”
Her advisors fell silent, and Cullen in particular looked stricken as he drew close to Evelyn. “How long have you known?” he questioned as his hurt filled eyes conveyed a second query Why didn’t you let me know?
“I wasn’t certain until recently. I didn’t want it to be true, so I tried to ignore it … wall it off. Saying it makes it real,” she explained as her shoulders shook and tears fell down her cheeks.
Cullen wrapped his arms around her and whispered, “You’ll find a solution. You always do.”
“Cullen, I’m not sure I can this time,” she admitted. “But I can at least try to stop the Qunari while I’m strong enough to fight.”
Cullen closed his eyes and held Evelyn close. “Return to me,” he said in a low voice that was partly a directive and partly a prayer before letting her go.