Thank you to everyone for reading and reviewing, and sorry this chapter took so long.


Time passed slowly for the creature. Day or night did not matter, only the relentless pain and anger remained. During its moments of clarity, it knew where it was.

Weisshaupt.

Grey Wardens.

Locked in one of the abandoned griffon aeries, high on top of the fortress, it had one thought in its mind.

Revenge. Revenge against those that had bound it. It would make them suffer for what was done and how it was being used.


Fenris was the first one to realize something was horribly wrong.

At first, it had started so slowly that it had gone unnoticed by the elf. But as two weeks passed, Fenris could no longer ignore the changes inside of him.

Or what was coming out.

It was like a dam had cracked and broken, and everything that he was came flooding out, overflowing and drowning everything that he did and said.

He was so angry. And the hate, the hate was a barely leashed thing. He hated Aedan for his culpability in convincing Anders to take his throne. He hated Zevran for using his insecurities against him. He even hated Anders at times. With those fucking robes, and that blighted staff, Anders was becoming what Fenris had thought he never would.

A mage with a thirst for power.

Anders had changed. He held himself straighter, and his voice was laced with a confidence that he'd never had before. It'd been something that Fenris had always wanted for him, and now that he had it, the elf couldn't help but feel that his lover was slipping out of his grasp.

When he wasn't angry, his subconscious whispered in his mind, sending tendrils of doubt that he had always tried to keep locked away. Doubt that he'd thought he'd gotten passed.

But they came anyway, telling him that Anders no longer needed him, that he was correct in thinking that all mages only saw him for what they could get out of him, that Anders never saw him, the real Fenris, but a tool to be used.

At night he clung to Anders desperately, muttering words of love and need against his skin. Fenris felt pathetic and weak. He'd become one of those fools had had always pitied, the ones that lived only for their lovers and lost themselves completely in the process. It was unhealthy, and it invariably led to destruction.

Most of all Fenris hated himself.

Anders barely deigned to speak to him anymore, and wouldn't even meet his eyes in the morning. He was always busy on important business. Always. And Fenris was not welcome, and didn't Fenris understand?

Fenris understood all right. He understood that there was more than a kernel of truth in his fears and doubts.

There was no room for an elven ex-slave in Anders' new life, and the mage was making that abundantly clear each day.

Fenris wanted to scream at him that Anders had been the one to lie in the end. But like a coward he said nothing, because he did not want to lose what little time he had left with him.

One evening, Anders had come back to their room to see Fenris sitting on their bed, a dagger in his hand and his hair scattered around him like the torn remnants of their relationship. His hair now shorn as short as it had been when he first came to Kirkwall, Anders had said nothing.

Fenris didn't know what hurt worse. That Anders had not seemed to care, or that Fenris had done it in a fit of passive-aggressiveness in the first place. He had felt like an Orlesian courtesan, throwing a tantrum in order to get her lover to pay attention to her.

This wasn't like him.

This wasn't like either of them

He had no one to confide in. Years before, he would have laughed if someone had told him he would miss the way he could tell another of his problems and concerns. But now that he'd lost that connection, he felt even more adrift.

Aedan… Aedan had changed as well. He had become violent and cold, less of a friend, and more of the hard ass Warden-Commander.

Zevran was no different, but his change had taken on a more disturbing form.

He had cornered Fenris more than once, his hands moving over the other elf's body. He would whisper in Fenris' ear that Anders didn't want him anymore, and couldn't Zevran comfort him? Fenris felt disgusted by the way his body would react then. He'd grow hard in his leggings, and for just the briefest moment, he would think about how lonely he had become. Even Zevran's version of love was better than the indifference he got from Anders.

But even though he had cut his hair,-the hair he had kept long for Anders despite how much it aggravated him-he still wore a beaded hair tie around his wrist. As long as he had that and Anders' body each night, there was still hope.

And that hope was dying, as everything around Fenris began to fall apart.


The dining hall at Weisshaupt was more than triple the size of the one at the Vigil. Wardens crowded a room packed with tables and benches. The sound of hundreds of men eating at the same time was almost deafening and disorienting. But it was background noise to Fenris as he locked eyes on the table across the room.

He was not seated at the long table set on a dais with Aedan, Frey and Anders. He was relegated to the opposite end of the room with Zevran. The food tasted like ashes in his mouth as Anders said something to Frey that had the First Warden throwing his head back in laughter. Fenris tightened his hand around his knife, as images danced in his head of leaping over the table the thrusting it into Frey's skull. Or better yet, he could forego the blade to shove his hand into the man's chest. Maybe the next First Warden wouldn't underestimate him then.

Next to him, Zevran flirted outrageously with the wardens at their table. Fenris growled in the back of his throat and tried to ignore the way the men were leering at the assassin. Zevran was acting no better than a whore plying his trade. And the wardens… the wardens paid were definitely paying attention to him now.

It seemed that the Anders had a use for elves after all, even if it was just for a bit of the exotic in the bedchamber-or in Zevran's case, on the floor. The other elf slipped under the table and one of the wardens gasped in surprised and then moaned his appreciation. Fenris curled his lip in a disgusted sneer.

But how was he any better than Zevran these days? Each night he crawled to Anders on hands and knees and begged the mage to fuck him.

His eyes rested on Anders and his thoughts turned violent. Anders was one step from setting himself up as a magister. He was a mage with powerful ties to the wardens, and would soon become king if he had his way. He cared not for the chantry and their divine laws. What was to prevent him from abolishing the circles in the Anderfels completely? What was to prevent him from allying with Tevinter, the country that Anders had always professed to admire?

Nothing.

Nothing but Fenris.

Anders had shown his true self in the Anderfels, and Fenris felt betrayed. All mages were the same. Give them a taste of power, and they only wanted more. Even Hawke, who he counted as one of his good friends, wanted power. She had gone into the Deep Roads to gain money to return her family to their former glory, and she was now Viscount of Kirkwall. Maybe Anders regretted that Fenris had helped to drive Vengeance from him. The mage had been diminished since the demon had left. He had never spoken much about it, but the topic came up more and more often of late. But Anders was now confident and strong in his own power, using his magic indiscriminately for even the most minor of tasks. He had always taken pride in his ability to heal, but now he would use it for mundane things like lighting a fire.

And what did that make Fenris?

A thrall to another mage, that's what. A slave who begged for the meager scraps of affection from their master. Even their lovemaking had turned sour. Anders took the lead now, fucking Fenris until the elf was pleading and writhing under him, using his brands against him to spur his lust onto terrifying heights.

Fenris had not escaped Danarius. He had only run to another mage, one that in the end was just like all the others.

As the conversation buzzed around him, a thought wormed its way into Fenris' mind. The moaning of the warden next to him. The laughter of Frey and Aedan. Anders' boisterous voice. The noise clamored and clanged in his ears, resonating in his skull until all thought but one was drowned out by the din.

He had to stop Anders.

He had to kill him.

He had to…

His brain stuttered to a halt and Fenris shot to his feet, stumbling over the bench behind him. He had to get out of here. His eyes darted around the room. This wasn't him. He would never…

It came to him, like a splash of cold water. Frey had told them that the blood mage he had killed had created dissention among his ranks, but what if he hadn't been the only blood mage in the fortress? None of them were acting like themselves, or more, they were acting too much like themselves.

Fenris with his anger and self-loathing.

Aedan with his cold command.

Zevran with his lust.

Anders falling into the role of king-to-be so easily, and eschewing everything else.

It was like something had reached inside each one of them and pulled out their deepest, most secret selves and showed it to them in the light of day. Their psyche was cracked, and their inner most selves were bleeding freely, leaking out to stain their every thought and action.

That very first cold night they had spent in Weisshaupt, Fenris had been feeling it even then. He had told Anders there was something wrong with Weisshaupt, and the mage had agreed. But it was so much more than either of them had assumed. It was like a miasma, a taint that permeated the very stones of the fortress. Fenris had needed Anders that night, just as he had needed to be consumed by him every night since. It wasn't that his feelings weren't real, but that they were more, twisted and corrupted until he had felt naked and vulnerable.

A whispered thought in his head told him that he was wrong, that Anders was at fault. Fenris squeezed his eyes shut, blocking out the sight of the mage. He took a few calming breaths and opened them again, looking around the room with fresh eyes.

A few wardens were fighting in one end of the room, their fists flying while their comrades-in-arms were urging them on.

The warden near him gasped and groaned, and his head tilted back in ecstasy.

Just like the main hall, paintings and tapestries heralding the glory of the Grey Wardens hung from every wall.

Aedan looked upon Anders, not as an old friend who had fought alongside him and saved his life more than once, but as a tool, with cold, dispassionate eyes.

And Anders…

Anders looked every inch a mage king. His hair was neatly pulled back, and his face cleanly shaven. He even wore robes that were far richer than those he was use to-a gift given to him by Frey. Even his bearing had changed. He sat straighter in his chair with his shoulders pulled back. There was no hesitation in his speech, no fear of what he was about to embark upon and why. He was Adelric, and he was the rightful heir.

Fenris' heart was pounding in his chest from the force of his realization.

The fight he and Anders had. He had capitulated so easily. And Anders had agreed to Frey and Aedan's plan. There had been no second guessing himself. There had been no bemoaning of the responsibility that was about to be thrust on him.

He had agreed.

And there had been no talk of running.

Fenris had thought it was because Anders was finally coming into his own, no matter how much he hated it. But there were certain things in this world and the next that would always hold true. One of them was that Anders-Anders the mage, Anders the apostate, Anders the Grey Warden, Anders the healer of Darktown, Anders of the mage rebellion-would never set himself up as king.

He loved his students at Vigil's Keep.

He loved his work with Wynne.

He loved his friends.

He loved Fenris.

This was not that Anders.

And Fenris would never, never in all the life he had left with the mage until Anders' Calling finally came, think to hurt him.

Now the anger that consumed Fenris was all his own. The difference was tangible. Something was trying to tear them apart, and cause them to hurt each other, either emotionally, or physically. And if there was anything that Fenris would kill for, it was to prevent Anders from being hurt.

Fenris' brands flared in his rage. And it was a testament to how far gone the whole dining hall was, that no one so much as blinked. Magic was not his area of expertise, but he did know one thing.

Demons and blood mages, once killed, their magic died with them.