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Description
The sky above Starkhaven was a pale blue. The mountains that lined the vista from the central towers were snow-capped and jagged; a defensible wall that had long served the citizens who lived in their shadows. It struck Sebastian Vael that, for all that he’d missed the view, he found he missed more the walls and stones of Kirkwall. Not for the city itself, and certainly not for any sentimental attachment to the place or what it had become, but for the security of blind corners. The comfort of narrow alleys. The openness of his home City State felt somehow daunting now.

And in another day, it truly would be his. Prince of Starkhaven not just in name, but in role. It had all felt a little too easy. He had arrived tired, weary and with a small band of his family’s old loyals; still reeling over the events that had forced him to leave Kirkwall and his new allies behind. The gates had been opened to them, word of his arrival apparently travelling far faster than their horses, and the members of Goran Vael’s government had lined the path before him. There had been no dark words and no challengers. There had instead been a feast and confetti and, Sebastian’s head still spinning from the sudden noise and unexpected welcome, he had been pulled aside by his cousin. Goran had looked pale and worn. Tired. He had clapped Sebastian on the shoulders warmly, thanking him for coming back. Actually thanking him. Goran wanted to go back to his paintings, his poems, his cats. He wasn’t and had never been a leader. Now Sebastian was here, now Starkhaven could regain some of what it had lost under the Harrimann rebellion.

It had all been too easy. So easy.

How much, Sebastian wondered, had been paved for him by King Alistair.
And how much, he thought now as he looked to those pale blue skies, had been paved for him by someone else.

He hadn’t realised how tightly he’d been gripping the balcony’s railings until he tried to move his hands and felt the muscles groan. They were white. He had failed in so much. He had tried to be a good man, a true man, to be what the Maker might have wanted. But in the end it had meant nothing. He had been unwanted as a priest, unneeded as a prophet. Whether Anders had been ordained to do what he had done by a higher cause, or whether he had been only the catalyst in the sign Sebastian had waited for, both paths could only have brought Sebastian here. Back where he began. Chosen or unchosen, he would fight and he would kill and he would wreak vengeance.
And it seemed he would do it without the friends he had grown to know over seven long years in Kirkwall. Some were scattered among Alistair’s territory, still loyal but distant. Some were now his enemies, happy to stand by the side of someone who had betrayed them all and murdered Sebastian’s last bastion of hope in cold blood. He couldn’t deny the stab he felt just thinking of them. Thinking about Cortland’s face as he’d refused to take the life Elthina’s death demanded. Thinking about Anders himself; of the mage who’d once cried, shaking in Sebastian’s arms; who had once saved his life under a rockslide; who he’d learned to respect, and who had ultimately hurt Sebastian more than any Harrimann or Vael had ever been able to. His head lowered, brow resting on the hands that clasped each other on the cold concrete of the balcony’s surface. Old habits died hard, it seemed. But this wasn’t a prayer.

This wasn’t anything close to a prayer.

Anders would die by his hand. He had made that promise. And Sebastian couldn’t care less if the Maker wanted it or not.

The knock at his chamber door pulled him from dark thoughts and, for just a moment, he expected to greet Fenris, Varric, any of them. Someone come to invite him to the Hanged Man. Cortland come to request his skills. Instead, when he opened the door, all he saw was a small and unassuming palace worker. She looked perhaps the age his mother had been when he’d seen her last.
She smiled sweetly at him and offered a small courtesy. “Prince Vael? I…you look better today. You slept well?”

“I did. Thank you. Anya, was it? Your name?”

“Aye, sire. I’m glad you’d remember.” She stared at him with nothing less than fascination. Had Anya been alive when he’d been banished to the chantry, he wondered? How different he must appear now to the drunken fool of a youth who’d embarrassed his family back then.

“What can I help you with, Anya?”

“Oh!” She shook herself and nodded apologetically. “Forgive me, I…you have a visitor, sire.”

Sebastian groaned quietly, then caught himself and ran a hand through his hair. “I told the council I’d call a gathering this afternoon. Have them wait on my word, would you?”

“Oh, this isn’t a councillor, sire. It’s…she says she’s a friend. She insisted I bring her to you and…”

“A friend?” A small spark of interest lit his soul. Someone he knew? Someone from before? Who was left who had not been killed or who he had not betrayed or scammed out of gambling coin? Again he felt a longing for the dirty walls of Kirkwall, for friends who didn’t call him Sire.

“Well, that’s the nicest way I could think to put it anyway.” The unmistakeable voice came from a figure stood a few paces down the hallway, wrapped head to toe in a travelling cloak, face barely visible behind a fur-lined hood.

Anya jumped, as shocked at the new voice as Sebastian, it seemed. “I said to wait in the entrance hall! Did the guards not stop you entering the residential quarters?”

“Well, they tried.” The cloaked figure let out a small laugh and patted Anya’s shoulder in a friendly manner before turning her attention back to Sebastian. “Are you going to have me thrown out of the palace or can I come in, sweet thing?”

-------

“He’s what?” Cortland was pacing the floor of a large tent the Dalish had erected in the centre of their camp. Its colourful floor coverings and incense could do nothing to stave off his increasingly dark mood today, however. “My brother?”

“We can’t be entirely surprised.” Anders was seated at the head of the long table around which the tent stood. “Alistair’s not a fool. He’ll use what he has. And Carver is…well, he’s Carver.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Cortland stopped pacing and turned, his arms folded as he surveyed the people around the table.

“It means exactly what it means, Hawke.” Varric chimed in this time, hands behind his head as he managed to inject a casual tone even here. “Look at the reaction he’s got from you from you even just knowing your brother’s been summoned.”

“We should have sent him word sooner. Brought him here before Ferelden’s King had a chance to sway his opinion.” Fenris poured over papers, one long-fingered hand to his brow.

“You assume he’d have even listened to us.” Anders interjected, his own tone brash. The thin bonds of newfound alliance between himself and the elf didn’t take much to be strained. “Maybe he considered you a friend, Fenris, but somehow I doubt I could have won him over. He and Cullen were thick as thieves even before Meredith fell.”

“Neither of you would have had to win him over. He’s my brother. I don’t need to win him over at all, damnit, he’s my brother!” Cortland slumped angrily into the chair at the furthest end of the table from Anders and silence fell over the council of the Hand for a moment or so.

The pause was broken by the Antivan accent of their newest ally. “I rather think, my friend, that him being your brother is exactly why Alistair chose him. Alistair doesn’t put much weight in the rank of Knight Captain of the templars, after all, though their numbers will always be a boon. But, brother of the Champion of Kirkwall? That holds far more water.”

Zevran Arainai, once of the Antivan crows, once companion to the Hero of Ferelden, hero of the fifth blight, was something of a legend amongst the group. He had ridden up to the camp’s exterior the night before and endured questioning and solitary confinement before their Dalish hosts had finally deemed him loyal to the Hand’s cause. Merrill had taken a little more convincing, and Zevran had even obliged her in her own tests – Cortland didn’t want to know what they were – before she finally conceded her trust in him. He had abandoned Alistair and the Hero in favour of Anders’s cause, or in favour of the cause that Anders had been made the figurehead of, at least. In favour of the new world. Cortland couldn’t fathom why the elf had chosen them instead of being a lone wolf, perhaps the crows had made Zevran more dependent on company than he’d realised, but he hadn’t wasted any time in placing Zevran firmly within their central command. He was more than an ally. He was an asset. Cortland narrowed his eyes, listening to Zevran’s words. “Alistair is a clever and charming man. Don’t underestimate him or his ability to win the hearts of people.”

“You’re talking about my brother.” Cortland repeated. “Carver and I share blood. We’ve grown up together. He…”

“Loved living in your shadow?” Varric pursed his lips as he said the words, his eyebrows raising. Around the table, several people nodded in quiet understanding, and Cortland felt a pang of something that hurt. Carver wouldn’t turn on them, would he? Not joining their cause was very different from actively fighting it.

“Give the kid a chance.” Another elf spoke up from the corner of the tent. Tallis seemed to prefer sitting on the floor than at the table. “You’re all talking like he’d turn in a moment. Have some faith in him. This King Alistair guy is just a man. One conversation with him isn’t going to incite some sort of blood feud in Carver, right? I met him once. I liked him. I know a turncoat when I see one and he didn’t look the sort.” She continued to fletch arrows as she spoke, shards of wood falling around her onto the coloured rugs.

Cortland smiled at her, nodding with a small glimmer of hope. “Tallis is right. I’m assuming too much. We all are. He’s only been summoned. That’s all. He’s a templar, after all. And second to Cullen. It’s hardly that unusual that he be called in.”

“His being a templar is one of the bits that worries me the most.” Anders mused, his head resting on one hand as he traced the outline of landmasses on the map before him with the other.

“This isn’t just about magic any more, Anders.” Fenris warned. “If you believed that no templar has ever felt oppressed or failed by the system, you’re a fool.”

“And how long was he aware of your clinic in Kirkwall for, exactly? Or that Cullen chap too, for that matter?” Merrill placed a gentle hand on Anders’s outstretched arm, her face hopeful where the others were merely neutral. And Cortland remembered how close she and his brother had seemed. “Carver never turned you in, Anders. He never turned me in. We should all trust him, shouldn’t we, Hawke.”

The expression she turned to him was one he found it hard to challenge, and her words were words he wanted to believe in. So Cortland shrugged and nodded and smiled. “Yes. Yes, we should. You’re absolutely right.”

“Forgive me if I reserve my right to be wary.” Anders warned, but he stood and the air seemed lighter. “We need food. And drink. We’ve been cooped up in the woods for too long.”

“Missing Kirkwall?” The slight growl behind Fenris’s voice was unmistakeable, and it apparently hit Anders where it had been intended, the hurt and emotion instantly visible on the mage’s face and a hush falling in the tent.

Two followers who’d been allowed to listen in on the discussion were instantly up and out of their chairs in defence of the Hand, but Anders stopped them with a gentle expression. He swallowed, turned to Fenris and said words that held that emotion his face described. “Yes. I miss it. And if there’d been any other way…”

Fenris took his turn now to look a little guilty. He lowered his head in apology and Anders patted his shoulder in silent acceptance of it. It was a sight Cortland hadn’t quite got used to yet, but it was one that boded well for them all. They were all in this together now. On the same side; as surprised as some of them had been to realise it. He hoped his brother felt the same.

“Excuse me for interrupting, councilmen.” A Dalish elf had parted the flaps that counted as a door to the tent, apparently filled with pride for the words he was about to impart. “We have another group of recruits at the gates asking to join the Hand in building the new world. One of them says you may know of him? A mage. Says his name is Jowan.”

Anders and Zevran raised their eyebrows almost in synch at the news, but Cortland couldn’t quite work out if it was in a good or a bad way.

-------------------

“Isabela.” Sebastian’s voice faltered in a way that left Isabela unsure until he continued with “Maker, I…it’s good to see you.”

She smiled broadly then, as the door was closed dutifully behind them. “I could say the same about you, my Prince.”

And it was good, so good to see him. Better than she’d convinced herself it would be during the long journey to get here. She had considered so many times turning back. She’d felt an awful sense of déjà vu; like she was fleeing again with the Qunari tome in her hands, only this time what she held in her hands was only her own loyalty and a hundred questions about where it should lie. She had to respect what Anders had done. She had to respect how Cortland had handled it. She had to respect what Alistair had tried to do. But she hadn’t been able, during restless nights in those early days after Kirkwall, to shake the knowledge of where the largest portion of her respect lay. Sebastian Vael had shone that day. His hurt and his rage and his beauty in the face of it had captured her entirely. He had walked from that place with no demands made of anyone. He hadn’t expected anything. He had made his threats to the man who’d destroyed his home and his life, and he had simply left. Unwilling to make the killing blow he had so obviously desired, because it had not been his place in that moment. He had walked away expecting to be alone and not once had he looked back as he departed to lay the duty of friendship on any of them.

But Isabela had felt it. She had felt it keenly.

And now she was here. And Sebastian was real and smiling openly at her, and standing in a beautiful palace with guards and workers and crowds of civilians outside ready to cheer his coronation as Prince. It was all real and Isabela felt like she’d opened the pages of a book to be here. The book became even more real as suddenly he was close, and then his arms were around her. The same strength that she had once held back from the flames of Kirkwall’s chantry was now wrapped around her. Warm and solid. His lips were close to her ear, speaking words that took her by surprise, with that voice that she’d missed so much.

“You saved my life. I didn’t think I’d ever get a chance to thank you. You saved me, Isabela.”

And as she stroked his hair and absorbed his closeness, as she drank in his sincerity, Isabela felt something she’d only ever felt once before; when she had walked back into Kirkwall with that damned tome.

Isabela knew she’d made the right choice.

Description
The sky above Starkhaven was a pale blue. The mountains that lined the vista from the central towers were snow-capped and jagged; a defensible wall that had long served the citizens who lived in their shadows. It struck Sebastian Vael that, for all that he’d missed the view, he found he missed more the walls and stones of Kirkwall. Not for the city itself, and certainly not for any sentimental attachment to the place or what it had become, but for the security of blind corners. The comfort of narrow alleys. The openness of his home City State felt somehow daunting now.

And in another day, it truly would be his. Prince of Starkhaven not just in name, but in role. It had all felt a little too easy. He had arrived tired, weary and with a small band of his family’s old loyals; still reeling over the events that had forced him to leave Kirkwall and his new allies behind. The gates had been opened to them, word of his arrival apparently travelling far faster than their horses, and the members of Goran Vael’s government had lined the path before him. There had been no dark words and no challengers. There had instead been a feast and confetti and, Sebastian’s head still spinning from the sudden noise and unexpected welcome, he had been pulled aside by his cousin. Goran had looked pale and worn. Tired. He had clapped Sebastian on the shoulders warmly, thanking him for coming back. Actually thanking him. Goran wanted to go back to his paintings, his poems, his cats. He wasn’t and had never been a leader. Now Sebastian was here, now Starkhaven could regain some of what it had lost under the Harrimann rebellion.

It had all been too easy. So easy.

How much, Sebastian wondered, had been paved for him by King Alistair.
And how much, he thought now as he looked to those pale blue skies, had been paved for him by someone else.

He hadn’t realised how tightly he’d been gripping the balcony’s railings until he tried to move his hands and felt the muscles groan. They were white. He had failed in so much. He had tried to be a good man, a true man, to be what the Maker might have wanted. But in the end it had meant nothing. He had been unwanted as a priest, unneeded as a prophet. Whether Anders had been ordained to do what he had done by a higher cause, or whether he had been only the catalyst in the sign Sebastian had waited for, both paths could only have brought Sebastian here. Back where he began. Chosen or unchosen, he would fight and he would kill and he would wreak vengeance.
And it seemed he would do it without the friends he had grown to know over seven long years in Kirkwall. Some were scattered among Alistair’s territory, still loyal but distant. Some were now his enemies, happy to stand by the side of someone who had betrayed them all and murdered Sebastian’s last bastion of hope in cold blood. He couldn’t deny the stab he felt just thinking of them. Thinking about Cortland’s face as he’d refused to take the life Elthina’s death demanded. Thinking about Anders himself; of the mage who’d once cried, shaking in Sebastian’s arms; who had once saved his life under a rockslide; who he’d learned to respect, and who had ultimately hurt Sebastian more than any Harrimann or Vael had ever been able to. His head lowered, brow resting on the hands that clasped each other on the cold concrete of the balcony’s surface. Old habits died hard, it seemed. But this wasn’t a prayer.

This wasn’t anything close to a prayer.

Anders would die by his hand. He had made that promise. And Sebastian couldn’t care less if the Maker wanted it or not.

The knock at his chamber door pulled him from dark thoughts and, for just a moment, he expected to greet Fenris, Varric, any of them. Someone come to invite him to the Hanged Man. Cortland come to request his skills. Instead, when he opened the door, all he saw was a small and unassuming palace worker. She looked perhaps the age his mother had been when he’d seen her last.
She smiled sweetly at him and offered a small courtesy. “Prince Vael? I…you look better today. You slept well?”

“I did. Thank you. Anya, was it? Your name?”

“Aye, sire. I’m glad you’d remember.” She stared at him with nothing less than fascination. Had Anya been alive when he’d been banished to the chantry, he wondered? How different he must appear now to the drunken fool of a youth who’d embarrassed his family back then.

“What can I help you with, Anya?”

“Oh!” She shook herself and nodded apologetically. “Forgive me, I…you have a visitor, sire.”

Sebastian groaned quietly, then caught himself and ran a hand through his hair. “I told the council I’d call a gathering this afternoon. Have them wait on my word, would you?”

“Oh, this isn’t a councillor, sire. It’s…she says she’s a friend. She insisted I bring her to you and…”

“A friend?” A small spark of interest lit his soul. Someone he knew? Someone from before? Who was left who had not been killed or who he had not betrayed or scammed out of gambling coin? Again he felt a longing for the dirty walls of Kirkwall, for friends who didn’t call him Sire.

“Well, that’s the nicest way I could think to put it anyway.” The unmistakeable voice came from a figure stood a few paces down the hallway, wrapped head to toe in a travelling cloak, face barely visible behind a fur-lined hood.

Anya jumped, as shocked at the new voice as Sebastian, it seemed. “I said to wait in the entrance hall! Did the guards not stop you entering the residential quarters?”

“Well, they tried.” The cloaked figure let out a small laugh and patted Anya’s shoulder in a friendly manner before turning her attention back to Sebastian. “Are you going to have me thrown out of the palace or can I come in, sweet thing?”

-------

“He’s what?” Cortland was pacing the floor of a large tent the Dalish had erected in the centre of their camp. Its colourful floor coverings and incense could do nothing to stave off his increasingly dark mood today, however. “My brother?”

“We can’t be entirely surprised.” Anders was seated at the head of the long table around which the tent stood. “Alistair’s not a fool. He’ll use what he has. And Carver is…well, he’s Carver.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Cortland stopped pacing and turned, his arms folded as he surveyed the people around the table.

“It means exactly what it means, Hawke.” Varric chimed in this time, hands behind his head as he managed to inject a casual tone even here. “Look at the reaction he’s got from you from you even just knowing your brother’s been summoned.”

“We should have sent him word sooner. Brought him here before Ferelden’s King had a chance to sway his opinion.” Fenris poured over papers, one long-fingered hand to his brow.

“You assume he’d have even listened to us.” Anders interjected, his own tone brash. The thin bonds of newfound alliance between himself and the elf didn’t take much to be strained. “Maybe he considered you a friend, Fenris, but somehow I doubt I could have won him over. He and Cullen were thick as thieves even before Meredith fell.”

“Neither of you would have had to win him over. He’s my brother. I don’t need to win him over at all, damnit, he’s my brother!” Cortland slumped angrily into the chair at the furthest end of the table from Anders and silence fell over the council of the Hand for a moment or so.

The pause was broken by the Antivan accent of their newest ally. “I rather think, my friend, that him being your brother is exactly why Alistair chose him. Alistair doesn’t put much weight in the rank of Knight Captain of the templars, after all, though their numbers will always be a boon. But, brother of the Champion of Kirkwall? That holds far more water.”

Zevran Arainai, once of the Antivan crows, once companion to the Hero of Ferelden, hero of the fifth blight, was something of a legend amongst the group. He had ridden up to the camp’s exterior the night before and endured questioning and solitary confinement before their Dalish hosts had finally deemed him loyal to the Hand’s cause. Merrill had taken a little more convincing, and Zevran had even obliged her in her own tests – Cortland didn’t want to know what they were – before she finally conceded her trust in him. He had abandoned Alistair and the Hero in favour of Anders’s cause, or in favour of the cause that Anders had been made the figurehead of, at least. In favour of the new world. Cortland couldn’t fathom why the elf had chosen them instead of being a lone wolf, perhaps the crows had made Zevran more dependent on company than he’d realised, but he hadn’t wasted any time in placing Zevran firmly within their central command. He was more than an ally. He was an asset. Cortland narrowed his eyes, listening to Zevran’s words. “Alistair is a clever and charming man. Don’t underestimate him or his ability to win the hearts of people.”

“You’re talking about my brother.” Cortland repeated. “Carver and I share blood. We’ve grown up together. He…”

“Loved living in your shadow?” Varric pursed his lips as he said the words, his eyebrows raising. Around the table, several people nodded in quiet understanding, and Cortland felt a pang of something that hurt. Carver wouldn’t turn on them, would he? Not joining their cause was very different from actively fighting it.

“Give the kid a chance.” Another elf spoke up from the corner of the tent. Tallis seemed to prefer sitting on the floor than at the table. “You’re all talking like he’d turn in a moment. Have some faith in him. This King Alistair guy is just a man. One conversation with him isn’t going to incite some sort of blood feud in Carver, right? I met him once. I liked him. I know a turncoat when I see one and he didn’t look the sort.” She continued to fletch arrows as she spoke, shards of wood falling around her onto the coloured rugs.

Cortland smiled at her, nodding with a small glimmer of hope. “Tallis is right. I’m assuming too much. We all are. He’s only been summoned. That’s all. He’s a templar, after all. And second to Cullen. It’s hardly that unusual that he be called in.”

“His being a templar is one of the bits that worries me the most.” Anders mused, his head resting on one hand as he traced the outline of landmasses on the map before him with the other.

“This isn’t just about magic any more, Anders.” Fenris warned. “If you believed that no templar has ever felt oppressed or failed by the system, you’re a fool.”

“And how long was he aware of your clinic in Kirkwall for, exactly? Or that Cullen chap too, for that matter?” Merrill placed a gentle hand on Anders’s outstretched arm, her face hopeful where the others were merely neutral. And Cortland remembered how close she and his brother had seemed. “Carver never turned you in, Anders. He never turned me in. We should all trust him, shouldn’t we, Hawke.”

The expression she turned to him was one he found it hard to challenge, and her words were words he wanted to believe in. So Cortland shrugged and nodded and smiled. “Yes. Yes, we should. You’re absolutely right.”

“Forgive me if I reserve my right to be wary.” Anders warned, but he stood and the air seemed lighter. “We need food. And drink. We’ve been cooped up in the woods for too long.”

“Missing Kirkwall?” The slight growl behind Fenris’s voice was unmistakeable, and it apparently hit Anders where it had been intended, the hurt and emotion instantly visible on the mage’s face and a hush falling in the tent.

Two followers who’d been allowed to listen in on the discussion were instantly up and out of their chairs in defence of the Hand, but Anders stopped them with a gentle expression. He swallowed, turned to Fenris and said words that held that emotion his face described. “Yes. I miss it. And if there’d been any other way…”

Fenris took his turn now to look a little guilty. He lowered his head in apology and Anders patted his shoulder in silent acceptance of it. It was a sight Cortland hadn’t quite got used to yet, but it was one that boded well for them all. They were all in this together now. On the same side; as surprised as some of them had been to realise it. He hoped his brother felt the same.

“Excuse me for interrupting, councilmen.” A Dalish elf had parted the flaps that counted as a door to the tent, apparently filled with pride for the words he was about to impart. “We have another group of recruits at the gates asking to join the Hand in building the new world. One of them says you may know of him? A mage. Says his name is Jowan.”

Anders and Zevran raised their eyebrows almost in synch at the news, but Cortland couldn’t quite work out if it was in a good or a bad way.

-------------------

“Isabela.” Sebastian’s voice faltered in a way that left Isabela unsure until he continued with “Maker, I…it’s good to see you.”

She smiled broadly then, as the door was closed dutifully behind them. “I could say the same about you, my Prince.”

And it was good, so good to see him. Better than she’d convinced herself it would be during the long journey to get here. She had considered so many times turning back. She’d felt an awful sense of déjà vu; like she was fleeing again with the Qunari tome in her hands, only this time what she held in her hands was only her own loyalty and a hundred questions about where it should lie. She had to respect what Anders had done. She had to respect how Cortland had handled it. She had to respect what Alistair had tried to do. But she hadn’t been able, during restless nights in those early days after Kirkwall, to shake the knowledge of where the largest portion of her respect lay. Sebastian Vael had shone that day. His hurt and his rage and his beauty in the face of it had captured her entirely. He had walked from that place with no demands made of anyone. He hadn’t expected anything. He had made his threats to the man who’d destroyed his home and his life, and he had simply left. Unwilling to make the killing blow he had so obviously desired, because it had not been his place in that moment. He had walked away expecting to be alone and not once had he looked back as he departed to lay the duty of friendship on any of them.

But Isabela had felt it. She had felt it keenly.

And now she was here. And Sebastian was real and smiling openly at her, and standing in a beautiful palace with guards and workers and crowds of civilians outside ready to cheer his coronation as Prince. It was all real and Isabela felt like she’d opened the pages of a book to be here. The book became even more real as suddenly he was close, and then his arms were around her. The same strength that she had once held back from the flames of Kirkwall’s chantry was now wrapped around her. Warm and solid. His lips were close to her ear, speaking words that took her by surprise, with that voice that she’d missed so much.

“You saved my life. I didn’t think I’d ever get a chance to thank you. You saved me, Isabela.”

And as she stroked his hair and absorbed his closeness, as she drank in his sincerity, Isabela felt something she’d only ever felt once before; when she had walked back into Kirkwall with that damned tome.

Isabela knew she’d made the right choice.