Shadows leapt through the branches, dancing against the flames of the fire. Telyn tried to shrug each one off, but I watched her glancing out of the corner of her eye as if she expected an army to fall out of the trees. I'd attempted to read through the same page in my rift manual five times. Upon reaching the bottom, I'd realize I didn't retain a word and have to restart again. My free fingers rolled above the flames shifting the camp fire to a soft waltz through the air as it obeyed my whims.

Telyn watched me for a time, her leg extended as she prodded the bit of food we scrounged out of our packs. Without turning to her, I asked, "Does this bother you?"

"Should it?" she grew defensive, picking apart the blackened bread and chucking the worst ends into my fire.

It was Solas who spoke up, turning away from his own book. Out of my periphery I watched my flames dance in his crystal eyes, "Considering the Qun's beliefs on mages, it is a wonder you do not insist we both be bound."

Telyn dug her fingers into the blanket, scratching the stiff fabric as she glared murder at him, "I'm not a qunari anymore. Though I wouldn't be against sewing your mouth shut."

"Ah yes, you are Tal-Vashoth now," Solas continued.

"What of it, flat ear? Are you going to judge me too? Think it's easy to give up on all you know, your friends, your home without anything before you but the road and an empty stomach?"

"On the contrary," Solas said, "I find it commendable." His words were spoke in earnest, pulling my full attention as well as Telyn's. Then he smiled, "If, it is true."

Telyn scowled, "There is nothing I can say that will convince you of the truth, so why should I bother?" She struggled to rise, her leg stiff and unwieldy, so she could limp towards the pond and the still rotting wyvern carcass away from our camp.

In the encroaching darkness, an owl called a greeting for its time in the world. Solas rose from his perch, an elegant finger marking the place in his book. I followed suit, returning my still unread book to my pack. At this rate, I was going to master the abyssal pull after we defeated Corypheus. While closing up my pack, Solas dipped down to a knee, his hand resting upon my shoulder.

"The hour is growing late," he said, twisting his head towards the moon encroaching upon the boundaries of the sky. A sigh rattled in my throat and I turned to him. My now healed hand, finally clean of the wyvern and nug dung, ran across his fingers. He dug deeper into my shoulder, acquiescing something to me.

"I'll take first watch," I said, rubbing the exhaustion off my face.

Solas didn't miss the lead in my arms or the draw below my cheeks, his eyes narrowing from my choice, but he accepted my order. "Vhenan, are you..." his words paused as he glanced back to the shadowed elf stomping in the water like a child, "certain you can trust her?"

"Trust?" I laughed, "No, but I know where she's hurt and how to exploit it."

Solas nodded from my practical response. His hand broke from my shoulder, but before he turned back to his blanket, he passed the book in his hands to me. "I thought this might help to pass the time more amiably," he said with a smile.

I accepted the tome, but couldn't stop asking, "Are you certain? I'll likely lose your place."

"It is all right," he smiled, "I have read it numerous times. I think you will enjoy it. Hope, at least." He brushed back a lock of my hair, his thumb pausing on my cheek and then turned to return to his bedroll.

Good on his word, Solas drifted off to sleep almost the moment he struck the blanket. It was strange to watch him slumber. While most everyone else tossed and turned, their sleep shallow from the cold, or insects, or rolling onto a rock, Solas lay stretched out upon his back, his hands folded across his chest. He would not move from that position until he awoke, not even groggy from a night in the forest. Creators, at least he wasn't chipper in the morning, or someone would have tried to put his face through a mountain. It was a bit odd to watch someone sleep, even if that was what one on watch was supposed to do, but on cold or uncertain nights I couldn't stop myself. He appeared at peace while sleeping, not the vulnerable look so many with eyelashes fluttering against their cheeks did. I felt the same overbearing urge of protection watching the sleep of the others from Cassandra's dream sneer to Bull sawing up logs with his sinuses. But in Solas it was something deeper. Not that I found him helpless, but the exact opposite. A curious thought flitted through my mind and I wondered if Solas didn't appear the same way the elves of old did when entering uthemra. Not quite sleep and not death either. If I watched too long, it unnerved me.

Stretching out by the fire, I cracked open Solas' book. It wasn't what I expected from my grim mage. It was a compilation of fables from the dwarven kingdom below the rock. Each tale emphasized and enforced the good morals of being a dwarf; honoring the caste, dedicating oneself to honor, the choice of family before freedom, and savoring sacrifice with the legion of the dead. It wasn't until I got halfway through that I realized the true moral woven inside each short story. The hero wound up in the right within his society but was still trapped, cut off from what he or she wanted in life. The square peg willing to lathe down its sides to fit into the round hole found itself hollow without those missing edges. There was the grim edge I'd expected.

I'd reached the fifth tale where the darkspawn first appeared when I heard Telyn flop down onto her bedroll. She sighed loudly, tossing her head back to stare at the stars.

Without looking up, I said, "You should be sleeping. It will be a long march tomorrow."

"Then shouldn't you be sleeping as well?" she asked. I didn't answer her, my finger dragging across the page as the darkspawn consumed a thaig like virulent fire.

"Oh," Telyn continued, "I get it. You're afraid I'm going to suddenly slit your throats in the night. Maybe I'm even working for Corypheus himself."

"It is not beyond the realm of possibilities," I said, thinking back to the Grey Wardens. You'd have been mad to call them traitors before, but after Adamant...

Telyn snorted again, as if she wasn't the one to drum up the idea. She sat up, her fingers prodding at the linen wrapped around her leg. "Touching it only makes it worse," I said, still trying to be engrossed in the book. Her fingers paused in their exploring, but I caught myself. I was being unnecessarily cruel again. Setting the book aside, I crawled over to her.

"Let me see it," I said, pointing to her leg.

"Why?" her eyes darted over to me, a strange fear in them.

"Because if it's opened again, I'm going to need to heal it closed."

Telyn sighed, but stretched her leg out towards me. I lifted up the hem of her pants, exposing the linen bandage. Blood oozed into the fabric, staining it a macabre crimson and purple, more than there should have been. Perhaps some of the poison worked into the wound and I failed to account for it. Biting my lip in concentration, I dug into the fade, trying to summon every healing spell I could remember. Sadly, my training was rather lacking as the Keeper preferred the destructive arts.

"I'm surprised you even care," Telyn said, rising up on her hands to watch me work.

My fingers hovered an inch above her skin, "If what you say is true, then we will all need to be at our best."

"And if what I say isn't true," she countered, "then you just shot yourself in the foot."

"Perhaps," I answered noncommittally. Something deep within the tissue was wrong. Frowning, I reached behind to my pack to unearth a bottle. Telyn gritted her teeth as I poured the mixture into her wound, but she didn't scream at me even as it bubbled, taking the infection away with it.

That seemed to have worked, the wound fading to a bright red line in the fade, the green vanishing away. I quickly passed my hand back up her leg, trying to knit together skin. Telyn shifted on her hands, and spoke, "I know why you're doing this, healing me."

"Oh?"

"It's just so you could get my pants off," she said, her words falling into a disingenuous laugh. I only glanced up to her eyes, waiting for an explanation. "Because, you know,without pants I couldn't get far in the forest..." she said, her gaze switching up to the moon.

"As you say," I answered. "There, though it needs a new bandage." I glanced towards Solas' pack that had the bandages, but didn't want to rifle through it while he slept.

"What? Is the flat ears not happy about sharing?"

"I don't go through people's things uninvited," I cut back. Without ceremony I reached up to my robe's inlay and found the rip I'd been needing to fix for weeks. Working it with my fingers, I yanked off another row of satin. Before Telyn could snort at my actions, I wrapped the blue fabric around her leg and knotted it loosely. It would need to be changed once again before setting out. I slid back to my own bedroll, trying to find my place in the book.

Telyn ran her fingers along her wound, dropping her pants leg back in place. Only the crackle of the fire broke through the woods, even the winds dampening in our little campsite. "Every time I'm out in the woods I think about that time you scared the fur off a squirrel," she spoke.

"I didn't mean to," I said, hoping she'd stop speaking.

"I know," Telyn chuckled, "That's what made it so funny. You all bearing down, preparing that...what did you call it? Two-oinfernal spell?"

"Thaum of inferno," I answered, still not reading a damn word.

"Right, right, took up that dead wood like a treat. Never felt fire so hot in my life," she said, her steel gaze bearing up at the stars. "And then we're watching it, wishing we thought to bring something to roast when this little grey squirrel comes traipsing into the clearing, proud as you please."

"I'd never seen such accusing eyes in an animal before," I chuckled, remembering the brown orbs glaring first at the fire then back up at me.

"So you turn to it, and a spark of fire tethers from your finger to land right in front of the squirrel," Telyn snorted from one of her favorite memories. She would repeat it often with me, despite the fact I was there. "Beat feet right out of the clearing as fast as its little rodent feet could move."

"I thought about leaving a bit of food out for the thing after," I confessed, feeling slightly foolish from the thought. It was just a squirrel, it was not as if it could really judge me.

Telyn glanced at me; I felt her eyes trying to dig past the book over my face to find my own, "You would do that. Not when anyone's looking though. Just slip a bit of bread out at night so no one knows."

Her familiarity struck harder than I think even she meant to. Harder than her cruel words from before. She knew where to sting, but she also knew me. Before the mark, before I became the Inquisitor. For a time I thought there was no one in all of thedas who knew me better.

"You used me," I said, flexing my jaw and glaring at the book's pages instead of her.

"I...guess so," she said.

"Of course you did. You found the one girl in the clan, the loner who couldn't make friends and buttered up to me, invited me along on hunts - even when neither of us should be there. Shared food, and delighted me with stories about the shemlan world. You fed that unquenchable fire in me and all to your own ends."

"Are you finished?" she asked, her stark words causing me to drop the book and turn to her. Her cheeks were surprisingly flushed from the fire, the red brightening up her sienna skin. "I wasn't sent to make nice, not to make friends. The Vidassala wanted the stone, I was ordered to get it."

"Yes, I gathered, except it wasn't sitting out on a stool waiting for anyone to come along and steal it," I said. I'd had years to think over her plans, analyze every step of her treachery. "You must have known it was my grandfather's, still in possession by my mother, but one I could gain access to."

"Your grandfather's? I thought everything in the clan belonged to the entire clan," Telyn mocked.

I whipped around towards her, the fire lancing out from the force. Her eyes widened much like the squirrel's but she didn't scamper back into the woods; a pity. "Don't you dare," I said, "After your stunt, what you pulled, you have no right to intone anything about the clan! Do you know what happened? What they did to me?"

Telyn frowned, "Why would they do anything to you? I took it, it was all me."

"And I let you get close, I let you befriend me. I let you in," I sneered, struggling to blanket the rage in my words. Every memory with her was a betrayal waiting to happen and it stung. "They moved me to another clan, one that needed a mage they said. But I knew why. I left everything I'd known, every person, my family, my f...the clan because they thought I couldn't be trusted."

Telyn's lips fell slack, her eyes blinking against the fire's smoke. "I...I didn't know that."

"I'm unsurprised. Why would the qunari care?"

Her fingers lanced out of the darkness to grab onto my hand. I glared at her for daring to try that, but her head hung down, the eyes unable to meet me. She mouthed something but didn't give it breath. It almost looked like 'I care,' but she must have known I'd never believe such a lie. After a moment, Telyn whispered, "I'm sorry."

I shook her hand off me, snaking my own back to the fire. I wanted to call her on her words, on how she could speak a million truths and one lie and I'd never believe any of it, but something caught in my throat. She wasn't racing off back to her snicker, there wasn't that easy flowing mask falling across her face. The firelight bounced against the top of her head, her eyes boring into the ground.

Turning away from her, I glared fully into the fire, "It is too little, too late."

Telyn sighed, tumbling onto her back upon the blanket. She hadn't even shown up at the camp with a bedroll, her pack barely held any food. It certainly seemed as if she'd escaped the Qunari with only the clothes upon her back, but then again they hardly seemed the kind of people to skimp on corners. For once I wished fervently that Bull was here, sniffing out the truth far faster than I ever could.

"I know you want to ask me," Telyn spoke from behind her hand. She tossed it across her eyes, blotting out the stars above her - as if she couldn't face them any more than I.

"I don't know what you mean."

"Of course you do, you always wanted to know everything about everyone. You'd try to be subtle about it, watching, waiting for them to speak, but it'd be there. You know, you'd make a great spy agent. I mean, not so much now with that green magic in your hand and everyone knowing your name, but before..."

I folded my arms up in my sleeves, crossing them against the cold. Hunched over, I gave in to her demands, "Very well, how did you join the Qun?"

Her smile twisted up only half of her face, blending up into her arm, "Not why but how, because you get the why in the how. Like I said, you'd have been a great agent." Her compliments fell on deaf ears as I waited for an answer. "I didn't lie to you before, I was an elf in Tevinter. You know what that means." Telyn threw her arm off and rose onto her elbow, her eyes peering through me. "Better than most, at least."

"Just because my grandfather..."

"Was a slave that ran away with a Magister's little prize," she said, smiling at me.

"Does not mean I know what being a slave is like."

"See, that's how you know better than most. You listen instead of talking," her eyes softened upon me, and she gazed up with such a sweet smile on her face it almost brought a smile to my cheeks. I blinked, trying to shake off her powers. If Telyn noticed, she played it off by shrugging her shoulders and glancing away, "I was a slave, I ran away. The only difference in the story is instead of going to find the Dalish, I found the Qun first."

"A very easy and convenient truth to turn," I said.

The smile vanished from her eyes, a darkness welling up instead. "You've seen the scars. You think I faked those?" She didn't extend her arms or her ankles where a lifetime of shackles bit into her skin, marking her as one of theirs. I'd shuddered the first time she showed them off and dared me to touch them. Telyn had giggled from my trepidation. A strange response, but it was always the one she gave when talking about her old life - laugh it off to keep from crying. Or so I told myself then. Later I thought she was scared of being called out on her lie. Now...

"No," I whispered, thinking to my own breakdown after Haven. Grief was rarely logical, the mind finding whatever path it could to heal. "I don't think you did." She bobbed her head, smiling at my admission. "But I believe you faked everything else about you."

Telyn snorted, shaking her head as if I was the one beyond hope, "You were always impossible to reach, da'mi."

"Ma banal las halamshir var vhen," I whispered, the words rushing back from the Keeper flustered and angry, trying to get one of us to own up to our mistake.

Her snicker was the same as the one I'd heard while we hid deep in the leaves, waiting for the Keeper to storm by threatening to tear our braids off if we didn't return with whatever misplaced object he was on a tear over. Every time we'd get the same lecture, the Keeper's finger wagging in our faces about what terrible influences we were to the clan, and then someone else would appear apologizing for misplacing the set of weighing rocks.

"Why did you steal the stone back from the Qunari?" I asked, breaking up the river of memory.

Telyn scrunched her eyes up and asked, "What do you mean?"

"If you wanted your freedom, why not take it? Run when you found opportunity? Why bind yourself back to the stone and everyone looking for it?"

"I..." she knotted her fingers against her blanket. "I needed leverage, and what better use than something magical when the world's gone to shit? That's all."

I watched her eyes dig through the dirt, her fingers twisting around her hair. How did I not see what a terrible liar she was? Because I didn't want to. "One truth buried in a thousand lies," I said, shaking my head. "Whatever your real plans are, know that I cannot be as easily bamboozled as when I was young."

The fire crackled, and we both turned to it to spy Solas rising up from his sleep. He didn't even wipe at his eye from the quick nap, only bowed his head slightly to me. "I believe it is my turn at taking watch." I smiled at him, grateful for the reprieve from Telyn but in my heart I knew I'd be getting little sleep. The past haunted me every step of the way.

I rose up and walked to Solas, his book in my hands. He watched my every move around the fire, the flames licking towards me as if wanting a pat. Accepting the book with one hand, his other wrapped around my fingers. My legs buckled as he pulled me lower towards him until he released his grip to cup my cheek. His skin glowed by the light of the fire, the eyes flaring to a purple from the red light. Ever so lightly, his lips kissed against mine, my eyes slipping shut as his fingers caressed my skin. Solas leaned back from me, and with a tiny smile whispered, "Melava somniar, vhenan."

"I hope so," I said, aware of what nightmares the fade could throw up at me. But with his blessing, my heart lightened. Maybe I would find some moments of blissful sleep after all. Paying no heed to Telyn, I laid upon my bedroll and twisted to the side, trying to calm the fire burning through my thoughts. An ice coldness reached out, tampering down the bellows.

As sleep twisted around my body, I heard Telyn whisper in the darkness, "Fen'Harel ma ghilana."