She is nineteen now, and still the parade of noblemen with their sons seeking political advantage through marriage persists. The mothers of the sons have joined in as well. Whenever a noblewoman has a function, she is expected to attend and play dress-up while the mothers of marriageable men in the country persist in telling her all of their sons' virtues. She has learned to take it in stride, and continues to put off the power-seekers. She knows that one day she will most likely need to make a match, but so far none of the men have truly captured her interest. She does not feel that she needs to settle just yet. She ceases to believe the constant flattery and the compliments on her skill from the nobles, because they all seem designed to curry favor.

One day, she returns to the family's suite of rooms to find the sound of crying from the rooms her brother and his family share. She enters the room to find her brother's wife weeping desperately. After much consolation, Oriana tells her that she has suffered a miscarriage and that this is the third time that this has happened since Oren's birth. She hugs her distraught sister-in-law and quietly joins in her grief.

Her family has acquired some new mabari hounds. One of them, a healthy and especially intelligent two-year-old, bonds to her at first meeting. As a result, she is the sole member of her family to have a personal war dog. She begins training with the animal and they become constant companions, except when the dog sneaks away to raid the kitchen's food stores. This amuses her but frustrates her onetime nanny, now the castle's cook.

Rory Gilmore has been knighted and is now Ser Gilmore. She is proud of her best friend, and he seems to also be proud of his title. His new duties as a knight of Highever keep him away from the castle at times, but with her also acquiring new responsibilities as the daughter of a Teyrn, she understands. They meet to train when they can.

Over the course of the last six years, he has become a man. He is twenty, nearly twenty-one, and because of his conscious efforts to study and train hard, his mind is sharper than most of the other squires and his archery skills are unparalleled. His build has changed from a skinny, short child to a broad-shouldered, solidly built warrior. His gray eyes seek and find the smallest details, his large hands with long fingers can perform the most delicate of tasks, and despite his size, he can easily move silently and unseen. He is not classically handsome, but his physical prowess and his position as the son of an influential Arl in Ferelden have earned him admirers. He sharpens his wit to deflect many of the women, and occasional men, who try to get into his graces and his bed.

Responding to a letter he has written home describing his studies, Father has asked him about his poisons training. Father asks which of the poisons that he has learned about is the most interesting and the most deadly. Excited to have gained Father's interest in his activities, he researches what he has learned and writes about one of the more obscure poisons his Antivan trainer has taught him about. This particular poison is fascinating because it requires a mage to prepare, it mimics a lengthy illness not unlike consumption, and there is no known antidote. He sends the letter off as soon as he can, but does not receive any letters from Father for several months.

House Branka has been assembled now, and all of his former house has joined the Paragon. His wife continues her research, looking for clues to find the ancient anvil that was used to forge great hulking creatures of metal and stone, the golems, so that she can revive the lost art and reclaim the lost thaigs that the darkspawn have overrun. She spends all of her time on this research. He is left completely alone nearly all the time now. To compensate, he enters Provings constantly and goes on Deep Roads expeditions to fight the darkspawn.

One day, returning home after a long mission to try to drive back the darkspawn out one of the thaigs, he finds that the entire house has disappeared, gone to the Deep Roads where he cannot go. He is the only one left behind. The whispers that started years ago now become full-blown gossip, and even the noble-hunters will have little to do with him. His humiliation drives him to binge drinking far more frequently. He gets into his first bar brawl three months after he has been abandoned.

Four months after he has been abandoned, he becomes friendly with one of the waitresses, a pretty woman named Felsi, after she takes pity on him one night at the bar. They grow close quickly, and soon he starts spending the night with her when she is off shift.

Soon, he thinks. Soon it will be the right time to escape. This will be his sixth attempt to escape Chantry control, and he knows that he needs to truly succeed soon, or the Templars and the Chantry will brand him a maleficar – something he personally abhors – and execute him as such. The idea forms in his head to find out where exactly the mage phylacteries are stored in Denerim and get his destroyed. He quietly starts to gather as much information on their exact location as he can without being noticed.

As he goes about his business, he notices that some of the other mages seem to be unhappy as well. Very few have followed his lead; the templars have done a good job of making him an example to the other mages when he gets caught, imposing harsher punishments each time. But still, whispers start to surface and many of the mages seem to be nervous. He stays far away from the suspicious-acting mages, fearing that any association with them might cause him to be labeled a blood mage before he even gets the chance to get away from the Circle.

While studying and playing the part of a well-behaved, newly-reformed mage, he hears word that the Howe noble family is seeking a new house mage. He immediately goes to the First Enchanter and offers himself as a candidate for the position. The First Enchanter and the Knight Commander both summarily dismiss his candidacy because he is a huge flight risk. They instead appoint one of the other full mages who is far less talented to the position. The First Enchanter tells him that he will probably never get assigned out of the circle, given his history for running away. He despairs of spending the next 50 years or more locked in this prison and continues making plans in the hopes of permanently gaining his freedom.