The room they rented was better suited to couples, or at the least people who were used to living in close proximity. Fenris and Nyssa were neither, and the lack of space was somewhat uncomfortable. There was no bathtub, one chair - not even a modesty screen. Still, it was better than sleeping in the stables.

"I have been considering your offer," Fenris said into the quiet.

Nyssa bent over the wash basin. She'd been removing her armour in bits and using a rough cloth to wipe away the dust from the road, while Fenris busied himself and tried not to glance at her bare back illuminated by the fire.

"You said you could replace the lyrium," he added.

"Yes, I should be able to."

"Can you remove it?"

Nyssa was silent for a few minutes, although he heard the water splashing over the basin and the rustle of her clothes. Fenris leaned his sword against the far wall and glanced over his shoulder. She was dressed in a loose shirt and leggings, her hair falling over her shoulders, and she was looking at him with an expression perilously close to pity.

"I don't think I can," she said softly.

The answer was not unexpected, but still he felt a little disappointed. He covered it up with a shrug and packed his whetstone away.

For Fenris, sleep did not come so easily. The pain in his lyrium markings was constant; it only varied in intensity depending on the day. Specifically his hands tingled and burned from using his whetstone, and he felt the swollen finger joints protest when he clenched his fists together.

He sat by the fire in the hope the heat would help, curling his fingers in his lap and enduring the pain without protest. Eventually his hands would cease to trouble him, and he could attempt sleep. This was how it had been for years.

A touch on his shoulder made him jerk involuntarily, his markings flaring to life. He cursed low as the pain in his hands intensified.

"What is it?" he said, a little harsher than he'd intended.

He hadn't heard Nyssa get up. She stood across from him, holding a small ceramic jar in one hand.

"Here," she said. "I have a salve for such a thing." When Fenris looked wary, she beckoned him over to the bed. "Come. At least let me try it. If it hurts, I can stop."

There was no arguing with this woman, it seemed.

Nyssa rested his hand on her knee and smoothed the salve across his palm, then spread it to the back of his knuckles and calloused fingers. As she worked she gently curled and uncurled his fingers, pressing her fingerpads into the joints. It did hurt at first. Then the fluid in his joints began to dissipate, and the stiffness melted away.

"You are practiced at this," he observed.

"I'm a healer," Nyssa replied, her head bent over his hand. "My mother was a healer, too."

"She was a mage?"

"No, but she taught me everything there is to know about Dalish medicine." Nyssa gently laid one hand back on his thigh, then reached for the other. "I learned magical healing from a Rivaini seer."

"Ah." He knew a little about the seers despite never being to Rivain. Isabela had told him about the hedge witches who practiced their magic away from Chantry influence, even allowing themselves to be possessed by spirits. The thought should have made him wary, but the salve had taken away the pain in his hands. He was beginning to relax, and Maker knew how long it had been since he felt that way.

Nyssa had finished applying the salve, but kept his hand resting on her knee. She turned it palm up and traced the line from his thumb to his wrist.

"There really is no place Danarius left untouched, is there?" she said quietly.

Despite himself, Fenris chuckled. "There are a few."

"Not what I meant." Nyssa pressed one of the markings, and he flinched. "Sorry. May I see some of your other markings?"

Fenris stood and flexed his hands, splaying them out before him. The salve was pungent, but certainly effective. Wordlessly he shucked his shirt and tossed it onto the chair.

Nyssa's eyes widened, though he didn't flatter himself at the reason. The lines of lyrium spread across his chest from shoulder to shoulder, curling over his abdomen and disappearing past his leggings. At a distance they looked like tattoos; he had been mistaken for a Dalish more than once before. Up close the scar tissue was more obvious.

He would have felt vulnerable and awkward in any other circumstance - he balked at being treated like an object of curiosity. Only Isabela's teasing had made him feel more at ease, and only because he knew it came from a place of affection.

Strangely, it wasn't so bad. Nyssa looked quietly, asking him to turn so the light caught the lyrium. She touched him only with his permission; stretching out one arm, rotating it inwards, smoothing one hand over his hip and gently spreading his skin to check the extent of the scarring.

There was some pain, but Fenris didn't mind. He watched the light catch red and gold strands in her hair and the curve of her eyelashes. There was a little scar on her cheekbone that interrupted the lines of her tattoos. He wondered if they hurt when she received them.

His breathing quickened at her hand on his abdomen. To conceal it Fenris said, "Are magical healers common among the Dalish?"

"Most Keepers know a little about healing." Nyssa straightened. "Spirit healing requires communicating with spirits to heal more serious injuries. It's carefully monitored, even more so in the Circles."

That made him frown. "Does that not make you more susceptible to demons?"

She shrugged. "As much as any mage, I suppose."

"Comforting."

"What do you want me to say?" she asked. "I'm not going to waste time insisting how not all mages are like the ones who abused you. You already know that, or you would have killed me back on the road."

There was no point denying that. It was true.

He was in the middle of pulling on his shirt when Nyssa said, "It will not hurt."

"What?"

"Replacing the lyrium in your markings. I will ensure you feel nothing."

Fenris sighed. "It is not only pain that concerns me."

How could he explain in a way she would understand? The memory of the ritual made him tremble deep in his bones; the pain was only one part of it. Recreating it could cause more harm than good. Worse, it could harm her.

He wasn't ready to face the consequences, whatever they may be. Whether that changed was anyone's guess.

The Imperial hunters caught up to them after leaving Hambleton.

Fenris was not a fool. He knew they would have found the burnt bodies of the slavers by now, and likely figured out what his next target was. Hambleton was the only town on the road between here and Ostwick, so their trail had been obvious.

He was only surprised they hadn't caught up to them sooner.

There was no ambush, no warning. The Tevinters set up a roadblock instead - one he and Nyssa came upon mere hours after they left the town.

Between the food, conversations and the night spent in an actual bed, he was feeling less and less wary of Nyssa by the minute. She wasn't the first mage Fenris knew outside the Tevinter Imperium, not the first elven mage or even the first Dalish mage. What he expected her to do and what she had done so far were entirely different. It was...refreshing.

The Tevinters, however, always behaved as he expected.

"Ready to give up, slave?"

It was a half-dozen bounty hunters and an altus this time; a man barely out of boyhood, wearing a sneer that made him the picture of his father.

"You," Fenris hissed.

Nyssa glanced at him. "You know him?"

"I know his face. His father is a magister."

"Let me deal with him," she said.

None of the bounty hunters moved as Nyssa stepped forward and took the stick from her belt.

"This one will fetch a high price," the altus said. "Do not damage her."

Fenris stiffened in fury and reached for his sword, but Nyssa waved him back with a gesture. Her staff had returned to its normal size, and the crystal began to glow yellowish-green. She looked directly at the altus, grinned, then struck the ground with the butt of her staff.

The road split apart, the earth cracking and splintering like threads unraveling on a tapestry. Several of the bounty hunters cried out as the ground opened up underneath them in a great fissure. Their screams were muffled as the earth then swallowed them whole and resealed itself, as if it had never come apart.

There was a moment of stunned silence, broken only by Fenris's laugh.

"You owe your gifts to my people, shemlen," Nyssa said. "Best you not forget it."

The altus got to his feet and retrieved his staff, his face red with rage. He shouted a command in Tevene and what remained of the hunters advanced.

"Impressive," Fenris said as Nyssa rejoined him.

"I have a few tricks up my sleeve." She made a gesture and a barrier of shimmering light sprung up around them. "Can you handle the hunters?"

"I've slaughtered many of Danarius's lapdogs over the years. Not one has gotten the better of me."

"Even so, keep the barrier. Wouldn't want you to mark that pretty face."

"Pretty?" Fenris said, but then she was gone, stepping forward to meet the altus's spell with one of her own.

Pretty. He smirked - then the expression turned into a snarl when one of the hunters attacked, swinging his flail in a wide arc. The weapon clattered uselessly against the barrier.

Fenris surged forward and beheaded him in one swift strike, then turned and kicked the legs out from under the next man to get too close. That one he slashed across the stomach, using the momentum to let him fall into another hunter. He buried his blade into both, grinning savagely as the light fled from their eyes.

"Fenris!"

Nyssa's warning cry prompted him to duck as a sword whistled by, close enough to shave a few hairs off his head. Fenris punched his fist through the man's torso without thinking, and shouted at the pain stabbing through his fingers. With his other hand he pulled the greatsword from the other corpses and, crying out with the effort, slashed the hunter's throat.

He collapsed, blood pouring from the ragged wound, and Fenris looked around frantically for Nyssa.

She was mere feet away, crouched over the smoking corpse of the altus, and there was a hunter closing in on her - the last hunter left alive. She was exhausted, leaning heavily on her staff, sweating and gasping for breath. The hunter approached her, his sword drawn.

Fenris knew how this would end.

He twisted his hand frantically, then used his free hand to tear at the wound he'd created in the hunter's abdomen. One second - five seconds - ten seconds -

His hand came out a mess, but uninjured. Fenris barely had time to react before he heard Nyssa's agonized scream.

The hunter shouted as Fenris slammed into him. His next words died in his throat as the greatsword near cut him in half with one blow.

Fenris allowed himself a moment to rest, his chest heaving as he bent double. The rustle of movement nearby roused him enough to look up, only to see Nyssa on her knees with her hands covered in blood, pale and shaking. He went to her.

"Where are you hurt?"

"I don't…" she stopped, teeth chattering. "I don't know. I can't-"

Fenris followed the smear of blood on her shoulder and found a great slash across her back, deep enough to part skin and underlying muscle. Not a serious wound, but serious enough. He told her as much.

He checked the dead Tevinters while she climbed to her feet and let the staff support her. They had little useful on them besides gold and rations, but he hadn't expected any less. When he was done he returned to her and said, "We should take shelter."

"Yes," Nyssa said. She was still pale but the tremours had begun to subside, and seemed to improve as she breathed deeply. "Do you see that statue just off the road?"

Fenris followed the direction of her pointing. It was hard to see through the trees, especially covered in moss, but he made out the vague shape of a woman. "I see it."

"That is a statue of Mythal. There may be a shrine nearby we can shelter in. I'll need to heal myself."

"You need rest first," Fenris replied, and took her free hand. "Lean on me. It will be easier to walk."

"I'm fine, Fenris," she said, irritated. "It's not my first battle."

"Even so, it is dangerous to exhaust yourself. I would think as a mage you would know that."

Nyssa laughed wryly. "The altus was a little tougher than I thought."

"More likely you used up too much of your mana with your parlour tricks."

She laughed again and leaned against his side, and together they followed the path off the road.