The journey was made in peaceful quiet, with Ellana casting shy glances at Solas. He was calm, happy, with the lightest of smiles laying across his lips.

Josephine had grumbled at the Inquisitors refusal to give a time of return, but Ellana held firm. This was to be a serious conversation, one that would likely determine the course of her relationship with Solas. She knew that whatever he had to say would be big, as it was something he had struggled with for nearly half a year. But she had faith in him - in her. Hadn't she forgiven Blackwall for the things he'd done when he'd been another man? Even if Solas's secret was as bad, she was sure they could get past it. After all, he worked harder than Blackwall to stop Corypheus.

They left their harts in the cave just beyond the grotto, noses deep in bags of oats hung from their necks. They would be occupied for quite some time.

Solas led her over the stones peeping out of the water, her hand clasped tightly in his. Ellana's heart swole to bursting. He was freer with his affections than he'd ever been before, his mask dropped completely from his face. Joy radiated from his very being, and he turned to look at her often, as if seeking to share his bliss. He turned, stepping backwards with sure feet over the slick rocks, mischief alight in his eyes. Ellana laughed as he playfully showed off, his balance far superior to hers.

He kissed the tips of her fingers, and dropped her hand, pulling her close as they approached the still pool of water flanked by the giant hart statues.

"Can you feel it?" he asked, voice tinged with nervousness. "The veil is thin here, tingles on the skin."

Ellana cocked her head, searching for the sensation he described. And once she paid attention - there it was. A light buzzing of energy, dancing along her nerves. "That's the veil?" she asked, having never been conscious of its presence before.

He laughed, smiling widely. "Yes, the spirits press close. Many lovers have come here to make their vows."

Ellana blushed, dropping her eyes. "Is that what we are doing here?"

A finger curled under her chin, brought her head back up. "Would you object if we were?" She opened her mouth, but he spoke before she could. "No, no. I am sorry. Ir abelas. I should not tease. I have brought you here for another purpose." He paused, became serious, the light joy draining from his countenance. "Ellana. Vhenan. You have been hunted by the Dread Wolf for months now. He joins your dreams nearly every night." His hands slid down her arms to grip her hands tightly.

Her grasp was equally strong. "Yes, of course. You know this. Why?"

"And you do not fear him anymore? In fact, you believe his story about what happened to the Pantheon?"

His questions were so urgent, so serious, she offered him the answers anew, though he was familiar with them already. "I feared him at first. But he has never threatened me. Has in fact, defended me. So many of our stories are wrong...what's one more? He has proven himself steadfast and loyal through his actions. I know that he may still betray me at some point in the future, but...could I not say that of us all?"

"Vhenan," Solas's eyes shone with gratitude and love. "You do not know what it means to me, to hear those words fall from your lips. But -" he gave her fingers a squeeze and let them go. "You will, very soon."

"Solas?" she asked as he began to back away. "Where are you going? You're starting to scare me."

"Do not worry, ma vhenan. My heart, my love. I swear you are in no danger from me. Whatever happens, you are never in any danger from me."

He backed farther away, and only the knowledge that there was only one exit from this grotto - and he was nowhere near it - kept her from leaping after him. Instead, she curled one hand around her waist, the other came up to rest against the racing pulse at the base of her throat. "Solas? Please, what are you…"

"Vhenan, I love you." His next words were a plea, a request, almost a beg. "Trust me."

She swallowed hard, and nodded once.

He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and changed.

Of all the things he had done in his long life. Of all the wars and lies. All the sacrifices. This was the hardest.

Solas reached for the veil, gossamer as finest lace, and pulled himself into it. A surge in power, a twist, push, and he was back in the physical world in the form it knew him best in. He dulled his power, no snow fell from his coat.

It had been so fast, so effortless, that he'd slipped to and from from the veil before she had even noticed his absence. In her eyes, all she had seen was a rush of green energy, and then a wolf where the man had been. He sat down, curled his tail around his paws, and pricked his ears, waiting for her response.

The hand at the base of her throat crept upwards, her eyes round, mouth open in a soundless gasp. She stared at him for long moments, only the soft flow of water behind him disturbing the peace of the grotto. Her breathing was fast, but not harsh. Her heartbeat elevated, but not panicked. What was she thinking?

He whined, and stretched out towards her, laying on his belly, hips canted to the side, imitating the statues she had cleaned all those months ago. Please, vhenan, please. Trust me. Do not hate me. Do not run.

"Fen'Harel?" She said eventually, and if his hearing had not been so good, he would have heard nothing at all.

He whined again, trying to comfort her, his nose dipping in both apology and assent.

"Solas...is...Fen'Harel? That is his real name? You're real name?" He wished he could tell if that was wonder or disgust in her voice.

He rumbled pleasantly in his throat, laid his head on his paws, tried to stare at her as soulfully as he'd seen the mabari pups do.

It made her laugh.

He grumbled, but did not move, beyond a small twitch of his tail.

She sighed and sat down, and he resisted the urge to raise his head. From this height, he was able to look her in the eyes. To move would be to tower over her.

"How is this possible?" she whispered. "Solas is Fen'Harel. It seems like some sort of joke."

He rolled his head, giving a negative without ever moving his snout.

She watched him with sad eyes. "I had no idea. You really are a trickster. Is anything about Solas true?"

He cried out, heart-pain at the accusation. It is true that I love you. It is true that I want to help. Solas is me. There is just more to see than the mask.

She crept closer, and he froze. But she kept coming, and he began to breathe again.

"Shhh, shh. It's alright. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. Didn't I promise that I would trust you? And here I am, breaking it already." She reached out, fearlessly, and smoothed a hand up his nose to rest atop his broad crown.

He closed his eyes and whuffed out a breath, taking comfort in her touch.

"I didn't know what you meant, when you said that you'd been trying to tell me the truth. It makes sense now. I thought you were going to say that you had children or that you quit the field of battle, or something. Not...not something this big."

He peered up at her, anxiously.

She smiled down at him, tears in her eyes. "You always try so hard not to frighten me. It's almost like you are afraid of me, instead."

He quivered.

"Oh, Solas," and she bent down to wrap her arms around him, face pressed to his forehead, arms around his muzzle. So, so close to his teeth. But she didn't seem to care. "What happened? Why are you so alone? In your memory, you mention having people, ones who are free from slavery. Where are they now? Do none of them remember you as you were?"

The sound that escaped him was soft and broken-hearted, his whole body shook with some nameless emotion.

"Change," she whispered into his fur. "Change. Change, please. I need to talk to you," she choked on her tears.

He moved, and she let him go. He raised his head, magic swirled, and the man she loved knelt before her.

With a wordless cry, she flung herself at him, and she caught a glimpse of his startled expression. Her arms came around his shoulders, one gripping the back of his neck. She hit him with such force that she drove them to the ground, and he grinned, even as his arms came up to catch her, keep her safe from the tumble. She trembled, and he threaded the fingers of one hand through her hair, massaging her scalp lightly, crooning into her ear.

"Ir abelas, I am sorry. Forgive me, please. Forgive my deception. I did not know...I never expected," he stopped, unable to find the words.

Ellana smiled, and lifted her head. "They say you have a gilded tongue. That you could talk the crows from their nest, and the squirrel from its stash. And yet, here you are, speechless before me. Maybe I'm the god."

He grinned crookedly at her, and she thought it was the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen. "You will hear no argument from me."

She stared down at him, freed one hand to trace the lines of his face. He closed his eyes, leaned into her touch, a sound of deep contentment escaping him.

"Months. You've lied for months. A part of me thinks I should be mad." His eyes snapped open in despair, but she kept talking. "But I can't be. Oh, I'm a little irritated that you would scare the shit out of me at night, and then be so concerned in the morning." She gave him a mild glare and his ears flushed a most becoming red. "But mostly I just understand. What were you to do? If you'd told me who you were from the beginning, I would have laughed or been terrified. I never would have trusted you."

"I did not want to lie," he began.

"But what else could you possibly do?"

He nodded. "I didn't know if my plan would work. You were so scared that first night."

"Oh, I was terrified. That night, and the next, and the next. For weeks I tumbled between terror and confusion." She threw her head back, her laugh a merry tinkle in the air. "Solas was my only solace from Fen'Harel!"

He chuckled, hands feathering at her side. He grasped, shifted, and laid her gently in the grass beside him. He turned over, braced his head against his hand, and traced the lines of her face with one delicate finger. "I did not lie, when I called you ma vhenan." There was such love in his gaze that it stole her breath away. "I have never loved another as I love you, and I never will."

She smiled, captured his hand, pressed a kiss to its center. "How are you here?" she whispered. "Where did you go?"

He became solemn, but the love never dulled from his eyes. "I slept." He took a deep breath, gathering his words. "After I banished the rest of the Pantheon to the golden city - yes, I was the one that created it, not some absent Maker - I stayed with the people for a time. Trying to help them form a government that didn't rely on gods. But," he shook his head, tracing the line of her brow. "They couldn't do it. For ages beyond their memory, the Pantheon was all that they had. And while my own people did not view me as god, they still looked to me for guidance. For judgements. And even as they slowly took control of the other peoples, they still turned to me. I found myself atop a lonely pillar. He Who Hunts Alone. They needed their gods, desired their gods. I had let the farce go on too long, and they didn't know how to function without our ever-changing rules. They were just as crippled with the Pantheon's absence as they had been with its presence. At the time, I could see no other solution but to remove myself from them - force them to govern themselves, as it were." He looked down, his hand slipping away from her face.

She caught it, tugged, kissed whatever bit of skin on his face she could reach. He turned his head, caught her lips with his, and she could taste his regret, a sour spot on his tongue. He sighed and pulled away.

"I decided to sleep. To banish myself for a thousand years, to allow them to grow without any influence but their own. I did not know of humans. Of their overwhelming will to war. I did not know that a scant hundred years after I went to sleep, that Elvhenan would be overrun by another set of quickling children, far more brutal than the children of stone, who wanted no part of our land of the sky." He looked up into her eyes, voice urgent. "I did not know! I expected to wake to a world grander than Elvhenan. To find wonders I'd never imagined, a place of peace and prosperity, where all men were equal and slaves to none!"

"That was your dream, when you slept for all those years?" she asked with sympathy.

"Not...dream. There is no fade in unethara. But, my hope. Yes."

Ellana looked down, trying to absorb everything, accept that the words he was telling her now where the whole and final truth. The scar on her hand caught her attention. The anchor; his mark. She flexed her hand, watching the faint tinge of green in her palm shift in the light. "How did Corypheus get your orb?"

He stopped breathing.

She did not look up. Did not ask again. More than what he'd done to the Pantheon, more that his lies about his true identity, this was the question that had the ability to break them.

"I gave it to him."

Her head snapped up, and she stared at him in horrified disbelief.

"I thought it would kill him."

Ellana frowned, sat up, ran a hand through her hair.

Solas - Fen'Harel - did the same, his shoulders rounded with misery. "Upon awakening from unethara, the first thing I did was go back to sleep. A true sleep, where I could enter the Beyond. I sought out Wisdom, knowing that it had been gathering knowledge for centuries, and would be willing to share what it knew with me." A fleeting smile flickered across his face as he studied his hands. "I was too weak to find it. But it sensed my return, though I was greatly diminished, and came to me joyously. We spoke for an eternity, and by the time I awoke the second time, I knew what had happened to the world - how my dream never came to pass." He sighed, and Ellana heard the heartbreak in the sound.

How must it have felt, she wondered, to wake after a thousand years, to find this was the reality he had fought for. How he must have raged, furious at himself for abandoning his people. What he had thought would save them, force them to independence, had crippled them. Instead of a world full of freemen, his people were outcasts. Servants, or banished wanderers. None with a land of their own.

His head came up, and he stared across the placid water of the grotto. But Ellana knew he saw none of it. "It told me many things. None of which I wished to hear. But Wisdom is not Mercy, and I hadn't the strength to drive it away. One of the things it spoke of was Corypheus. No more than a year before I awoke, he was freed from his cage by Hawke. Though Wisdom was not aware that he'd been killed in the fight. If it had known...perhaps things may have happened differently.

"I woke, and retrieved my orb from where it lay next to me while I slept. I had been forced to store the greater portion of my power inside of it, to allow me to enter unethara." He smiled sadly. "We had too much power; our greatest failing. Poisons could not hurt us, age did not touch us. Our connection with the fade was too strong, magic alone sustained us. And my connection was the strongest of all. I literally could not enter uthenara without draining myself. But even then I was too prideful, and could not give it up completely. So I poured it into an object, one I sealed and locked with countless tricks and traps. Layered on top of each other. Even if one somehow stole into my sanctuary while I lay insensate, the unlocking of a single barrier would both kill them with the explosion of power...and revive me with enough magic returned that I could crush whoever managed to survive.

"I picked it up, reached for my magic...and found nothing."

"Nothing?" Ellana gasped, and Solas turned to look at her, as if surprised to find her still there, listening rapturously.

"A singularly unique experience, I assure you. I had never been without." He turned away, leaned back, pressed his hands into the grass, and stared up at the sky as it slowly changed from blue to violet. It was barely four o'clock, but the sun set early in the mountains. "It took me weeks to summon the smallest spark, months to cast a proper firespell. And winter, which had always come easiest to me, was the last to return. I needed my power, I could not stand feeling so helpless. I chose the name Solas, for I knew that Fen'Harel was reviled. And pride was all that I had left.

"I still had the Beyond, and it was a great comfort to me as I traveled. Places that had been well-worn and known to me in the past were fresh and new. Ruins built upon ruins, and I caught up on the history of the world in greater detail as I dreamt in abandoned keeps and battlegrounds.

"I heard more and more whispers of Corypheus. The spirits spoke of how he sought a way into the fade - how he had cracked open my wards around the golden city and started the blights."

"I was wondering about that," Ellana put in, laying down on the grass beside him to stare up at the sky as well. "If you created the golden city in the fade, if it was the Creators who lived there...how did it turn black? What about that unleashed the blight?"

"I have only one explanation, and it horrifies me." Solas sighed. "I did not burst into their throne room unprepared. Mythal and I had long since worked out this contingency plan. I created the golden city around the same time that the war with the Forgotten Ones came to its ugly conclusion. Mythal insisted. She was always far better at reading the threads of time than I was. In that, I have no skill. She foresaw a day in which the Pantheon might need to be locked away, for the protection of the People. I hid my people when June declared that the followers of the Forgotten Ones now belonged to the victors. Spoils of war," Solas's voice caught on the words, black, black hate in his tone. He took a breath, held it, then let it out slowly, the tension bleeding from his form as he did so. He continued in a calmer voice, "The Pantheon, all save Mythal, believed I hid my people in the city they could now see in the Beyond. See, but never reach. Incorrect, but I allowed it, as it kept both my people and its true purpose from their gaze.

"I spent centuries crafting it, moulding it. Populating it with memories of peoples and places so detailed that they would never know it from reality. I tied its image to that of the outside world, so that plants would grow, wither, die. Animals would wander past, seasons would turn. I gave them palaces and filled it with servants, crafted from nothing, that they could use or abuse however they wished, harming none. There were endlessly refreshing tables, filled with the finest of foods from all over the empire, things both delicate and divine. Entertainments, plays, artwork, hunting for those that wished. Everything I could think of, all things that sprung from my imagination - and theirs, though they knew not that I watched their dreams - I gave to them. More than they could ever desire."

"You loved them," Ellana said softly, laying a hand on his arm.

He looked down at her, grief bright in his eyes. "I love them, still."

Ellana tugged gently on the inside of his elbow, urging him to lie down next to her. He did, after some time, and she laced their fingers together. They lay for a while, not speaking, giving him space to regain control of his emotions.

"This is pure speculation, you must understand. They were furious, but still quite sane, when I left them for uthenara." He paused. "I believe that they went mad. Why, I cannot be sure. Perhaps it was the lack of any true company beyond their own. Perhaps it was the removal of their servants, how stripped they were of the power over others they were so familiar with. Perhaps, despite all my careful precautions, they grew bored.

"But it cannot be denied that something warped inside of them. The walls are painted with blood, screams echo along empty corridors. Ghostly battles that rage endlessly shimmer amongst the pillars and gardens. The expended their magic with deadly force over and over again, killing each other, killing themselves. I only spent a few minutes there myself, and came away so shaken…" he shook his head. "It is an evil place now. And if not for the grand importance it has gained amongst the peoples of the world, I would have torn it down years ago. If Corypheus and his magesters walked its halls...if they tasted its food and drank its wine...then they took the madness of the Pantheon into themselves."

Ellana knew she should be shocked. This was so much information - Truth beyond anything she had ever known. Legends from so many peoples, their core facts laid bare. The Golden City of the Maker, blackened by the hubris of man; nothing more than a gilded prison for elvhen who thought themselves gods. Crafted from the fade by a powerful Dreamer - and nothing more. This was too much, too much. She could not handle it, and this was far beyond anything she had imagined. But her question, the important one...she needed to know. "And the orb?"

Solas closed his eyes. "My greatest sin. I thought myself clever. Hadn't I already saved the world once from gods gone mad? Even if the elvhen had not created the world I wished, at least they were not subjected to the Pantheon anymore. I thought to do the same to Corypheus. But I could not simply banish him to the Beyond as I had the Pantheon. I lacked the power, and he had walked out of it alive before. I sought him out, a supplicant to his growing power. I offered him the orb, told him of its promise of power. It was obvious I was not strong enough to use it myself - but my new god could use it to breach the heavens. True lies, all of them. I expected him to crack the first seal, but also that it would take him a long time.

"He took it greedily, feeling the pulse of power buried deep inside. He turned his attentions towards it, forsaking his other plans, giving me time to gather the remnants of power to myself. I planned for two eventualities. First, he would break the first seal, killing himself and all his followers in the process. Thus, removing them as a potential problem for the world. Second, he would not open it, and I would return with enough mana to do so myself, and end him by my own hand."

"Either way, he ceased to be an issue."

"Yes."

Ellana moved his arm up, curling into his side, her head on his shoulder, arm draped across his chest. He made a soft sound of contentment and pulled her closer.

She said nothing about how wrong he was. How Corypheus had managed to do more than just break the first seal. How he had used the death of the Divine to crack it like an egg, spilling all his power at once, grafting the anchor into her hand and tearing a hole into the sky. He'd made so many mistakes, so many misguided actions. She was furious with him - so very, very angry. But she also did not see how he could have foreseen the result of his actions.. He banished the Pantheon to save the people, banished himself to force their independance. It was not his fault that they had failed to make use of his gifts.

As for Corypheus...

Pride was indeed a good name for him. It had been pride that had caused him to give the orb to the ancient magister, pride that had left it in his grasp so long. His mistake was almost unforgivable. He had made a decision. A terrible, horrible decision, and had lied about it for years. If not directly to her, then to the world. But he had also spent that time working tirelessly to correct his mistake. He gave her as much truth as he was able, and set things up to give her even more.

He sacrificed and bled. He exhausted himself healing the wounded. He went out into the field often, the first to rise in the morning and the last to sleep at night. He ordered more books than Dorian, and scoured their contents for knowledge.

Perhaps she was blinded by love for him. Perhaps he told his tale too well. But she believed him. She forgave him.

He tensed against her, his whole body going rigid. But before she could even think to speak, the green energy of the fade rose up around him, and he was gone from the circle of her arms.

"Solas?" she cried, sitting up in alarm, looking at the patch of crushed grass where he had lain. "Solas?"