When Anders came to Mahariel's room, he didn't have an answer. He sat at the foot of her bed, she curled up beneath the blankets with a book, and she watched his gears turn. Well, she thought, at least she had made it through to him. He was very obviously reconsidering the question, and he was doing it in her presence, so, she figured, he must have come to terms with the fact that Mahariel was okay with Delia's magic.

Mahariel followed the lines of the novel in front of her with her eyes, but nothing penetrated her brain. She read the same line over and over, but it was no use. She was too busy reading him.

She snapped shut the book. "Anders," she said quietly, but firmly, "come here."

He turned to look at her and when he saw that she did not mean to nag him, he slid across the top of the bedsheets to her side. Loosely, she put her arm behind his back, and he slid down against the pillows until her forearm rested across his shoulders.

They lay there quietly for a few minutes, the candle at Mahariel's bedside flickering every now and again, and a silence unlike any silence Mahariel had known in years seem to drape itself around them. When Anders was ready, she spoke.

"I want to make the right choice." He paused, but she didn't interrupt. She could tell he was still thinking. "Everything in me screams that this is wrong, but then, I have to ask myself, why? I've always questioned exactly that - what is right and what isn't, and I've found the accepted answers wanting. So why this. You and I have seen equally as much horror caused by blood magic, but we've also both seen the horror caused by swords, by arrows, by bare hands alone. Why am I so convinced that this is different?"

"Give yourself more credit than that," she offered. "Blood magic does lend itself to a whole slew of things that even wholesale murder does not. But if the blood is only from willing participants, if I am on guard… I don't know, Anders. You've told me about the things you've done, the things you don't even remember doing. I can keep you here, keep you safe if you want, but you'll be confined here forever. Can you, in good conscious, let yourself back out into the world? You're stronger now, certainly, but what of your work? What of the mages?"

She heard him push down a lump in his throat.

"To be honest, Lyna, I'm not sure that that's going to matter a good deal longer."

Mahariel worked through his meaning, and after a moment, she realized, "The Blight."

He spoke slowly, distantly, almost as though he were not speaking at all. "You must hear it calling. I feel it stronger every day. There's so much more there, so much more blackness… I don't remember when it first appeared, I wasn't often in my right mind, and never thought to look. I know that there is no cure for this, there may never be. But there is a difference between 'no cure' and 'too late.' For you there is no cure. For myself, I fear…" Anders shook his head, and came back to his senses. "I am tired, Lyna. And I am weak. And perhaps staying here… would not be so bad a thing after all. I don't know what more I can do for the mages; I think my work there is done. But that aside, I don't want to lay the burden of Justice on your shoulders. I feel as though my best choice is to be rid of him, no matter where I live out my days."

Not wanting to rush him, it was some moments before Mahariel turned to lay her book on the bedside table and turned back to him, eyes intent. She took both his hands in her free one. "Do you think…" she began for him, unwilling to put words in his mouth.

He looked away from her quickly, then back. His face was still so thin, eyes still sunken, but they were bright and clear when he said, "I… I want to say yes. I just…"

Mahariel shook her head, brown hair cascading around her face and shoulders. "Take your time. You don't have to decide this now."

He pushed her hair behind her long, slender ear and let his hand rest there for a moment, before he brought it down to meet the other in Mahariel's open fingers. "Thank you. But I should decide soon. You know that as well as I do."

She gave him an encouraging smile and squeezed his fingers tightly.

"Did I even tell you that I missed you? Maker, how I missed you."

"Anders, you're here now. And you're getting better, as much as you can be," she wasn't going to kid herself, or lie to him; the Blight had done serious damage. But already he looked a little rounder, a little more himself. "And no matter what you choose, I'll see to it that you're as well off as I can make you."

"It won't be trouble if I… if I want to stay?"

She laughed. "You know as well as I do that I can make plenty of trouble for myself. You're just another drop in the bucket of weird shit that is my life."

And he couldn't argue with that, so he chuckled, laid his head down on her shoulder, and let himself be at peace for the first time in a very long time.