"Hey, Chief, get up. Camp's on the move!"

The Iron Bull groaned, pushing himself up off the ground. They hadn't managed to salvage a cot big enough for him, and sleeping in blankets on the snowy dirt was not doing anything for his morale. "'Bout time," he growled. "Where to?"

Krem was holding a cup of something hot and steaming that smelled like wet weeds. "Tea?" he asked.

"How can you people drink that crap?" The Iron Bull thought with longing of the cocoa of Seheron. "Seriously, Krem, where are we going?"

"Nobody knows."

"What the fuck does that mean?"

"The Herald's already off, heading north."

The Iron Bull frowned. "North? There's nothing there except ... mountains. And why's the Herald leading? She doesn't know this area any better than the rest of us."

Krem raised his eyebrows. "Seems to me if someone had legs longer than the average tree and was a lot taller than the drifts, that person could catch up to the Herald, maybe blaze a trail for her through the snow, and find out where we're all going."

"Krem."

"Chief."

His second-in-command grinned at him cheekily, and the Iron Bull bit back a groan. Krem always seemed to know more than was good for him. He should've been the spy. "What is there to eat?"

A few minutes later, a large hunk of dry bread in his hand, the Iron Bull was plowing through the snow, getting ahead of those of the Inquisition that were already on the move. There were enough people in the caravan that it was a fairly slow-going process to get started.

The Iron Bull passed Cullen and Leliana, deep in conversation. "Hey," he said, slowing a bit. "Where are we headed?"

Cullen shrugged. "The Herald says to trust her, she knows what she's doing."

"And you're following, just like that?"

"She is ... changed, since Haven," Leliana said. "I am willing to give her the benefit of the doubt." She shrugged, too, smiling a little. "Besides, it is better to be moving toward the middle of nowhere than stuck standing in it. Eventually, we have to come to somewhere."

"Sure. Makes sense to me." It didn't, but the whole thing seemed odd. The Iron Bull picked up speed.

He could see Ren in the distance, and it surprised him a little and alarmed him a lot more how much he looked forward to catching up to her. He hadn't had a chance to talk to her since he had brought her back to camp; he'd hung around while she was being healed enough to know she was going to make a full recovery, but otherwise had kept his distance, and he had to admit to himself that he had ... missed her. Which was not good, and should have had him pausing right now, but instead he found himself moving faster.

She was floundering in the snow, her boots sinking in at every step, and she didn't have any more protection against the cold than she'd had when he found her after Haven. What had those assholes been thinking, letting her set off alone like this, without forcing a heavier coat on her, at least?

"Boss," he called.

"What?" she snapped, turning around. Her face was red, her hair hanging around it in damp clumps.

"Let me go ahead of you. I can break the path through the snow."

"I'm supposed to do this," she said, but she was already tiring, he could see that.

"Supposed to do what?" The Iron Bull had caught up to her now, and he only just managed to resist the temptation to put his hand on her head, stroking the red hair that shone in the sun and the glare off the snow.

"Supposed to lead the Inquisition to its new home." Ren struggled a few more steps before the Iron Bull yielded to temptation far enough to grasp her shoulder and hold her still so he could pull ahead. "Hey!"

"If you wear yourself out halfway there fighting with the snow, how does that look?" he asked mildly, pushing through the snow and letting her follow him. "This something the elf cooked up?"

"How did you know?"

He wasn't about to tell her that he'd been keeping his eye on her, and had seen her closeted in conversation with Solas last night after the big sing-along. He'd also seen her huddled on the ground shaking afterward, and only his sense that she needed to be alone to work through her troubles had kept him from going to her. "I get around."

Behind him, Ren watched his back, relieved at having him there—not just to break the trail, but because he was one of the few people she could talk to more or less freely. Ben-Hassrath or not, he'd always been straight with her. And, even more, because she had missed him, missed talking to him and being around him and hearing his voice. "Yes, this is Solas's idea." After a few steps, much easier now that he was breaking through the snow ahead of her, she said, "Bull."

"Yeah, boss?"

"That kid, the one who showed up ahead of the Templars."

"Cole."

"Right." She hesitated. "I think we should tell him to go."

"Why?"

"He gives me the creeps."

The Iron Bull could understand that—if he understood the kid correctly, he was some kind of a spirit in a human body. Definitely creepy. But he had a sense that Cole was important, that he had something to contribute to the Inquisition. "He warned us about the Templars, led the way up the mountain when Roderick couldn't talk. Seems to be on our side."

"You think I should keep him around?"

"I think it can't hurt." He shrugged. "You know, the Qunari don't believe in blowing off a viable resource."

"No. I suppose you're right."

"So you want to tell me why you're leading us on a wild goose chase on the say-so of a mysterious elf?"

Ren sighed. "He seemed to be making a lot of sense. Besides, where else were we going to go? We couldn't just keep sitting there arguing. At least Solas had a practical solution. Bull, what do you think of him?"

The Iron Bull snorted. "He's weird."

"Yes, and?"

"He's not telling us everything."

"No kidding. How much did you see of Corypheus before—at Haven?"

The Iron Bull turned around, walking backward as he frowned down at her. "Nothing." He looked over her head, seeing that the rest of the Inquisition trailed fairly far behind, so he stopped moving and let his frown deepen into a scowl. "And don't you ever fucking do that again."

"What?" Ren asked, surprised at the sharp edge to his voice.

"You know what you did. It wasn't your decision whether we stood and fought with you or ran like scared little chickens—it was ours. Mine." Her blue eyes were wide, guilty, as he held her gaze. "You tricked me into thinking you were behind me. You know damned well I would never have left you there alone otherwise."

"I know." She pressed her lips together to keep them from trembling, not wanting him to see how much having him angry with her distressed her. But he had died for her once at Redcliffe—she couldn't have endured having him die again at Haven. There wouldn't have been any way to go back in time and fix things this time. "Enough people had died for me already, Bull. All those soldiers, and the workers …" Ren shuddered. "I wasn't going to have your death on my hands, too."

"Not your call. Never going to be your call, are we clear? I'm with you until we take down this Corypheus asshole, and if that means I go down fighting at your side, or in front of you, that's my decision. And a whole lot better than knowing I ran off and left you there alone. You think I could have lived with that, if you had died?" He looked down into her eyes, fighting off the urge to pull her against him and kiss her until ... Oh, fuck, what was he thinking? It was one thing to promise himself into her service because she had earned it, because the Inquisition needed her and therefore she needed him, because he thought it—and she—were a cause worth fighting for. It was quite another thing to feel this ... attraction, this draw toward her.

Ren had seen that look before, but never from him; she felt a heat build inside her and a desire to pull his head down so she could kiss him, to feel his body against hers. It was the best feeling she'd had since Corypheus's army had first appeared outside Haven—she felt like Ren again, instead of this Herald person she had never asked to become. But the Iron Bull blinked, erasing the hunger that had been in his eye, and stepped back, breaking the moment.

She took a deep breath to bring herself back to the conversation. "What am I supposed to do, Bull, just say 'okay' to the idea that you're willing to die fighting with me—for me? Because I'm not okay with it."

"You have to be. You're leading the Inquisition now—you have to accept the idea that people are going to die for it, and by extension, for you."

Ren looked away. Foolish to protest that she didn't want lead the Inquisition—that ship had sailed. "We need to keep moving."

"Not until you promise never to do that again. I mean it, Morvoren."

Her name, her real name, sounded so natural coming from him. Ren nodded, albeit reluctantly. Because he was right, at the heart of it all, and she was being a romantic fool to think she could lead the Inquisition without ever losing anyone. "I promise."

"Good." He nodded sharply, then turned around and kept moving through the snow. "What were you saying about Solas?"

"He— Corypheus had this orb. It's something to do with the mark on my hand." Ren shuddered, remembering how it had hurt when Corypheus tried to remove the Anchor, like it was going to pull her arm off. "Solas knew about it. How could he have known? He wasn't there. You were the last person to leave camp; if you didn't see the orb, how did he?"

The Iron Bull frowned. "Solas say anything more about it?"

"Only that it was an elven artifact, and we couldn't let that get around because then people would blame the elves." Ren imagined Solas would be appalled if he knew she was discussing this so freely with an admitted Qunari spy.

"And now we're following some path Solas laid out for us?"

"He says there's a fortress up ahead, an empty one left behind long ago, big enough for the entire Inquisition and a lot more yet to come."

The Iron Bull looked back over his shoulder at her, raising his eyebrow. "You trust him?"

Ren looked up at him with a sudden grin. He hadn't seen that smile in entirely too long, and he couldn't help an answering grin at her words. "It's what I do, isn't it? Trust people who most would think were out to screw me over. A cagey dwarf who writes stories and never tells the whole truth, a mysterious elf with no past and no explanation for his presence, a Seeker who still thinks I might have had something to do with the explosion at the Conclave, an Orlesian mage who is probably spying for the Empress ... a Qunari who admits to spying on me for his people." She let the smile fade as her question tumbled unbidden forth from her mouth. "Tell me, Iron Bull, did the Ben-Hassrath order you to go back to Haven and find me after the avalanche?"

He looked away, facing forward again as he kept moving through the snow. "I'm sure they would have, if they'd known about it."

The next question was more deliberate. "Did they tell you to leave the spindleweed by my bed?" She watched his back closely, but there was no change in his body language.

"Oh, you found that?" he asked, trying to keep his voice casual. "It's pretty wilted, but I thought it'd be a nice reminder of home for you."

"Thank you," Ren said softly. "It was." She sighed. "I suppose all my things were lost, again. First the Conclave, then the avalanche."

The Iron Bull cleared his throat. "Actually, I think most of what was in your hut is packed on one of the brontos."

"How did that happen?"

"Well, it took a while to get everyone out of the Chantry, so Krem rounded up some of the sneakier folks and sent them out to collect supplies and whatever they could lay their hands on."

"And they thought to get my things?" Ren asked. She was touched by the gesture, but surprised, too. "But ... I stayed behind. Didn't everyone expect I was going to—to die?"

The Iron Bull looked at her over his shoulder again. "I guess Krem believed in you."

"Just Krem?" The question was out before she thought about it, her voice softer than it should have been.

The Iron Bull looked abruptly away. "Looks like the Big Three do, too."

Ren smiled at the answer. She should have known better. "You think they know they're following someone who doesn't know where she's going?"

"No. Which is pretty much what leadership is all about—getting out in front and convincing people you know what you're doing."

He was making his way through the snow with determination. Ren couldn't help looking at his back and wondering what he would do if she reached out and ran her fingers down his spine, or over one of the many scars along the length of his back.

She'd let him make this about work and the Inquisition for now, but she had made her decision, somewhere here in the snow. She would lead their Inquisition, take them to this mysterious fortress, fight their battles, and kill this darkspawn thing and his dragon, but she wanted something for herself, too, and at last she knew what it was. At some point before all this was over, she wanted this big, sexy, intelligent man, who pretended to be so much less than he was, in her bed ... and she didn't think he would require all that much convincing. Despite his admittedly impressive self-control and the rules he was so determined to stick to, it was evident that whatever was between them, he felt it, too.

Hours later, they paused at the summit of a mountain. Solas had come up to join them, and Cullen and Leliana were only a little way behind. Across the space in front of them, Ren saw a building, a fortress, tall and lordly and welcoming. Solas turned to her, a satisfied smile on his face. "Ren Trevelyan, let me introduce you to Skyhold."