He surfaced from sleep with no memories of dreams. His head was clear and quiet – the thoughts and memories of others were hidden behind their mental screens. The heat was gone, as was the closeness of the memory of the searing pain. He shuddered if he tried to think of it, but it was distant, something in the past.

He opened his eyes and sat up, opening and closing his hands. He felt…good. No, fantastic. Better than he'd felt in a very long time. Maybe even since he'd chosen to accept his humanity. He was not sure why his body felt so rested and balanced. Then he remembered Sinead falling to the floor, the power she had pushed into him as he burned.

She gave up her health for mine.

He pulled off the bedclothes and jumped to the floor, opening himself to her thoughts. But all he heard were dreams – pleasant dreams in forest glades. He relaxed – she had not hurt herself. Well, not mortally, anyway.

He looked around the room, for the first time really taking in his surroundings. It was fancy – not as fancy as the hotel in Val Royeaux or the Winter Palace, but still far more lavish than the cozy inns and taverns they had stayed in up until Nevarra. Chairs with carved curlicues, tables with swooping, rounded feet, that sort of thing.

He cracked open the door and peeked through. The outer room, a common room, was just as opulent - set up like a parlor of sorts, a large fireplace at one end with a long table framed with large chairs in front of it. Long windows were on the north and east walls, and the sun shone off every silver bevel and accent, making the room sparkle.

Dorian was reading in a low chair near the balcony windows. He looked up to the sound of Cole closing his room door behind him.

"Ah, you're awake." Dorian closed the book, stood and walked over to Cole, taking his chin by the hand and turning his head side to side. "Your fever's gone. Eyes look clear. I'm no expert on these sorts of things, but I'd say you're cured completely. One good night's sleep after that madness our Lady Lotus pulls, and just like that, cured. Ha! How do you feel?"

"I feel…well." Better than well. He was brimming with energy. He wanted to run long distances, jump up onto the rooves of the city. "Very well."

"Well, you certainly don't smell it. Or look it. Find a clean set of clothes – we're going to the baths."

Cole cocked his head. "Both of us?"

"Yes, both of us. You see, I – this is somewhat awkward, but – perhaps it's better to show you." Dorian dragged Cole back into his room, creating a few balls of light as he did so. "Now, typically I'd allow Krem to take care of this sort of thing, but, well, he doesn't really have the experience you need." He pushed Cole in front of a floor length mirror set next to the wardrobe.

Cole blinked and raised his brows. The first thing he noticed was the light blond fur that covered his face. He brushed his knuckles over the rough, prickly hair.

"Oh, yes. That was a surprise to all of us," Dorian said with a chuckle. "Congratulations, Cole, on becoming a man. All in one day, it seems. That Seer Hana did a number on you."

"I –" his surprise was quickly replaced with distress. "My hair!" He ran a hand through what was left of his locks – his hair was only two or three inches long all the way around his head, and cut away choppily.

"Ah, that. Sinead felt your hair was sopping up your sweat and leaving you with a chill."

"I think I remember…" He pulled at a few strands moodily. "I liked my hair."

Dorian rolled his eyes. "Don't worry, give it a few months and you're head will once again be crowned with a scruffy, unkempt mop. For now, we'll get that cleaned up."

Cole let his hand fall from his head. He stared at himself another moment, no longer surprised or distressed. More critical.

"I'm very pink," he said finally.

"Probably a new extra-human coat. Like skin under a scab. Now come along, no more stalling. I'm looking forward to scrubbing off the last few days myself. Clothes are in the wardrobe."

As Cole grabbed a set of trousers, shirt and tunic and stockings, he asked, "it's only been a few days?"

"Well, since I took a decent bath, ye – oh! You mean, since we arrived in Nevarra? Oh no. It's been almost two weeks. I can understand you not knowing. You were out of it for most of the time. Kept muttering about the Depth. Very eerie."

Cole clutched the clothes to his chest. He felt the threads that bound Sinead to Titus. "Titus seeks, searching the eluvians for our scent. Why did we stay still for so long?"

Dorian gave him a sympathetic smile and took him by the shoulders as they left the suite for the open indoor walkway of the hotel. "I don't know if you know this, but your lady friend is a tad stubborn. And by tad, I mean she threatened to lock herself in your room and melt the latch if Krem ever suggested moving to another location more than once. When told that we could simply break down the door, she said we could try. The look on her face made me less than inclined to test her."

Cole shook his head as they descended the stairs. "She does not stop when she thinks she's right."

"Well, she wasn't wrong. If we had moved you while you were having a breathing fit, things might not have gone well for you. And I rather like having you alive, if you don't mind my saying so."

He gave Dorian a small smile. "I don't."

Dorian patted him on the back and cleared his throat. "Yes, well. No more of that! Last thing we need is an overabundance of sentiment. Ah! Here we are."

He pulled open one of a set of large, wooden doors with iron trim, and they entered a small lobby made of marble blocks. A bard in a dress that was less dress and more yellow-piece-of-fabric-draped-over-her-delicate-places strummed her lute in a far corner. A young woman stood behind a long counter, her bright red hair piled atop her head in rolling curls and wearing a white, flowing, sleeveless shift. She smiled at them.

"Two to bathe?"

"If you please," Dorian said. "Private."

The woman nodded and led them through a hallway, past an open room framed in wood lattice where women and men lounged in large, steaming pools. There was a lot of giggling echoing over the tiles.

"The baths at this hotel try to mimic the Tevinter experience of the Great Baths," Dorian said under his breath. "It does so sloppily, of course. Not all of them double as brothels."

The woman stopped at a door and faced them. She stepped up to Cole, smiling. "Are you sure you want this bath to be…unaccompanied?"

"Um." She was very round. Her face, her hips, her breasts, which were fairly large – Cole wondered if they hurt her back. But she wasn't thinking about backs. She was thinking about money, and under the money the very explicit things she would do for said money, in particular the things she would do to him for said money, and in her opinion it would be a fun romp with a green lad. He flushed and felt warm in the most pleasant way.

"Yes, private," Dorian said quickly.

"Your friend may disagree."

"Ahah, my friend is not quite ready for accompanied attractions." He opened the door and shoved Cole through. "Thank you for your help."

"She was friendly," Cole said brightly as Dorian entered the small, cubby-lined entry room.

"Oh, yes, very," Dorian replied with a wry smile.

Stripped and wrapped in towels, they went into the bathing room. A pool of hot water sat in the center of the room, various oils and soaps laid out on a stone ledge that hung over the pool. A copper tub stood in one corner of the room, condensation dappling its surface.

"Now, Tevinter baths are a thing of ritual," Dorian said, approaching the soap ledge. "One does not simply hop in and scrub down like a boy in a watering hole. You soak in oil, then sit in the bath until your hands are wrinkled. Soap up, rinse off, and it's a dip in the cold bath. That's the copper tub. It's more than a cleansing experience, it's cathartic – like going to confession."

Cole eyed the soaps, picking one up and smelling it. He wrinkled his nose.

"It smells like sweat. And deer."

"That would be the musk."

"Why do you want to smell like deer, Dorian?"

"Animal magnetism." Cole gave him a confused look. Dorian sighed. "Just…follow my lead."

They bathed in Tevinter fashion, which Cole felt was a bit too oily and musky and, at the end, cold for his taste. He preferred scrubbing down in a cool pond with whatever soap was on hand. Then, dressed in clean clothes – Dorian told him to leave his old shirt and trousers for the staff to burn – they walked over to the barber's room.

"A shave and a trim for me, don't touch the mustache," Dorian said, giving the barber a few coins. "My friend needs that mess on his head cleaned up."

"And a shave?" the barber asked.

"Good question." Dorian took Cole aside. "You have come to an important crossroads that every young man must face in his life – to shave, or not to shave? And if yes to shave, how much? How much, Cole?"

"I…don't know?"

"Of course you don't. Now, not everyone has the jawline and cheekbones to carry the fantastic coiffure upon my own upper lip, and I wouldn't ask you to try. And though you've a decent growth, I wouldn't recommend going the Blackwall route and trying your hand at something large and ungainly. Usually young, fair men just end up with wisps of sadness and regret."

"Regret beards?"

"The most tragic of beards. Now, you could choose to shave it all off, but that does take dedication – every morning in front of a mirror if you can. Perhaps for you a simple goatee is in order? Not too much to maintain, still a proud marker of your masculinity. Unless –"

"Can we stop talking about beards?" Cole asked desperately.

"Hm." Dorian frowned in disapproval. "You're not quite ready, I think. Full shave it is. Ah, ser, when you shave me, please let the young man watch. Then he'll shave himself."

"As you wish." The barber shrugged – his thoughts revealed many strange requests he had received over the years working at the baths. This was nowhere near the top of the list.

They finished with the barber, Cole see sawing between delight at his new blade, just for his face, that Dorian had bought off the barber, and sadness at the further loss of his hair. It was now trimmed down close at the nape of his neck and length was sacrificed for symmetry.

"I didn't mind it how it was," he said as they walked back to the suite, trying to flatten his hair against his head – it tended to fluff up when it was newly clean, and the shortness wasn't helping. "Not too much."

"I minded. I did not want to spend the rest of this little escapade forced to look at a head worse off than a half-shorn sheep."

They came into the suite to find Tal-Ashkaari and Krem at the table, picking out breakfast from a number of platters of fruits and sliced meats and cheeses and breads and sweet rolls.

"Ho, you're awake!" Krem beamed at Cole. "Look at you! No one could tell that just yesterday you were on your deathbed."

"Did you have to call it a deathbed?" Dorian picked up a thin porcelain plate and tore off a bunch of grapes from a bunch.

"It's okay, Dorian. I knew I was dying." Cole was only half listening to them. His stomach was beginning to protest – he had never eaten, and then he had nothing to eat but half a roll and broth, and now a feast was laid out before him. He was starving, in almost the literal sense. However, he was not sure where to start.

Krem caught on. He picked up a plate and started piling it with food. "Right, what's first? You need to try oranges – don't see those down south often, may be your only chance. Cheese, good cheddar and this stuff, it's called Havarti. Some venison, need meat to keep you going, and bread and a sweet roll – they fry them and dip 'em in sugar. Great stuff. And some small ale –" He poured from a pitcher into a horn cup. "– and you're set!" Krem placed the food at the end of the table and waved a hand at the chair.

Everyone was looking at him, which was disconcerting. Krem was excited to see him experience something pleasant. Dorian was amused, if kindly so. Tal-Ashkaari watched everything in silence, itching for her pencil and condemning herself for leaving her notebook in her room to break her fast.

He slowly pulled out the chair and sat, then picked up an orange slice and took a bite.

It was wonderful. Tart and cool and biting and sweet and sticky. He set it down quickly and took a bite of cheese. Equally wonderful, a different wonderful – fatty, softly sour, sharp. The sweet roll was sticky, cloying, the dough melting in his mouth. The venison he avoided. Faint memories drifted from it of the animal it once was. But everything else he ate swiftly, and, still hungry, he stood and contemplated the platters while the others suggested things to try.

"I'm very partial to grapes," Dorian said, taking still more on his plate. "Just be careful of the seeds."

"Try the goat cheese. It's like salty cream. Oh!" Krem held up a hard-boiled egg. "If you're not gonna eat the meat, you should have something sort of like it. Eggs are good for that."

"And it has no memories," Cole said.

"Aauuuh. I guess it wouldn't?"

"You should have some bread." Tal-Ashkaari held up a very small loaf with a hard crust and a soft center. "It will sustain you."

He took a bite of everything, save the meat, amazed at how the flavors mixed together in his mouth – sometimes more pleasantly than others. And the fact that he was not sent reeling by the intensity of the experience was very enjoyable. He could let a bite sit on his tongue as he savored it.

He had just taken a bite of something sweet and crumbly and dense that Krem called pound cake when one of the bedroom doors slammed open. Cole looked up. Sinead stood in the doorway, wearing nothing but her shift, brown eyes wide, a deep frown on her face. He stopped chewing.

Something was different. Him. He was different. He had always seen her as her, of course, but something clicked together in his mind as it never had before. Her hair, long black waves that curled at the ends, now a thicket of tangles around her head. Her heart-shaped face and large eyes and straight nose that ended with a rounded tip with a small dip. Her slender shape that curved out at the waist. Her golden skin that had browned in their weeks of traveling.

And then she caught his eye, and she gave him a smile of pure radiance. He swallowed hard.

She ran around the table and pressed her ear against his chest then pressed a hand against his cheek.

"You're well. You're healthy and well!" Her smile widened. "You're very pink."

"That's what I said," he said faintly.

"And you shaved!" She was delighted. As she glanced at the men and Dorian said "well, someone had to show him," he decided that he would always shave. Forever. She played with a few locks from his shorn bangs. "I'm sorry about your hair." She felt regret. He would never cut his hair again. "But it is nice to see your eyes." Correction – he would keep his bangs properly trimmed. It was a nuisance not to see, anyway. "Goodness, you smell nice." Deer soap. Shaving, no haircuts – no, bang haircuts, that was it – and deer soap. Where would he find deer soap outside of the baths? Would it be wrong to steal some soap for himself? Technically he was helping Sinead…

She pulled away from him. "What am I doing? I must look a fright. Not to mention the smell." She covered her mouth with her hand. "I haven't even used my tooth rub or mouth rinse in days."

"Ah, tooth rub." Dorian snapped his fingers. "I knew I was forgetting something. After breakfast, Cole, I'll teach you the wonders of tooth rub."

"Hm." Cole was still focused on Sinead, who was growing more aghast at her hygienic state. Something about her actions made him a bit giddy. It was so very her and she was lovely.

"Oh, my mouth smells like something died inside it. I can feel it. I'm off to the baths." With her hand still on her mouth, she ran to her room. There was the sound of flurried opening and closing of drawers and doors, and then she ran past them and out the door, mouth tightly closed, a small bag at her side.

He stared at the door for a moment, then turned around and looked at the others, utterly astounded. "She's beautiful!"

Krem snickered into his cup as Dorian gave him a wide grin.

Tal-Ashkaari cocked a brow. "You did not notice her above average visual appeal before now?"

"No. Yes, from thoughts and wants and desires from others, seeing how they see, but – it's different. Everything fits, the pieces…" he sank into a chair. Again he felt very pleasantly warm, and his stomach was in his chest. And he felt strangely hungry in a way he knew food would not ease.

"Oh, I know that look," Dorian said, circling Cole's face in the air with a finger. "That's a dangerous look."

Krem reached across the table and grabbed Cole's wrist, pulling down his sleeve. He spun the wish bracelet through his fingers – two of the four knots holding it in place had frayed away, but the other two held firm.

"Looks like it's working to me," he said, letting Cole go and giving him a wink. "I mean, at least you've started thinking with your –"

"Sock?" Dorian cut in.

Krem threw a sweet roll at Dorian's head, which he agreed was quite deserved.

"Well, lover boy, keep that vision close to your heart," Krem said. "We won't be seeing her for the rest of the day."

Cole's heart sank. "Why not?"

"Because she's seen far too much of your face," Dorian replied. "She needs a break. You need a break. All of us need a break."

"But what will she do?"

"I am to take her on a –" Tal-Ashkaari paused. Dorian nodded and rolled his hand. She clenched her teeth. "Ladies'. Day. Out."

"Oh, I knew you'd say it eventually," Dorian said, pleased.

"Eat up!" Krem tossed another orange at Cole, which he caught easily. "I'm ready to paint Nevarra red."