Arya wakes once to see Theo hovering over her, brow furrowed in concentration and the tip of his tongue poking out from between his teeth. He makes a soothing sound in the back of his throat, and Arya closes her eyes and drifts off again.


Bellanaris rushed through the halls, a feeling that something was wrong propelling her forward. The halls were remarkably empty- usually they were filled with servants, all of them wearing the same vallaslin she herself had on her face. Tonight, there were no servants. She was the only person in the hallway, and it only served to further remind her how strange and wrong the world felt. She wrapped the Fade tight around her, used it to propel herself forward all the faster.

The heavy doors to Mythal's chambers were cracked. That, too, was unusual. Mythal was often meticulous about closing her doors- if she was in her chambers, they were often shut and warded. There were few in the world who could pass through the wards- Bellanaris herself, Lanaste, Solas, and Elgar'nan. She had asked once, why Elgar'nan was allowed admittance into the chambers. Mythal had only reminded her that he was her husband, even if it was only in name now.

The dread intensifies the closer she gets to the door. Whatever she sees, she knows it will not be good. But Bellanaris has never shied away from terrible things, so she steps forward, one hand on the worn wood, and pushes the door open.

Mythal is arranged on her bed, arms crossed over her chest. Were it not for the blood soaking the white sheets beneath her, Bellanaris would have thought she was only sleeping. Even so, she hurries forward, her fingers fumbling at Mythal's neck to find the pulse point. She has seen her lady endure far worse wounds than this.

But there is no pulse, and Mythal lays still, not even the gentle rise and fall of her chest. A sharp keen is torn from Bellanaris's throat. Footsteps sound from the hall, but Bella does not turn to look at them until the door slams back against the wall.

Solas stands in the doorway, and even from here Bellanaris can see the way he shakes. She glances back down at Mythal before she pushes herself to her feet. She lets her hands rest at her sides when she turns to face him.

"We must act quickly," she says. Solas does not answer, only steps forward with a quiet whimper. He sinks to his knees at Mythal's side.

Bellanaris steps forward and presses a kiss to the wolf skull bone that holds his hair in place. Still, he does not answer, and so she turns and walks away. There is too much to do to linger idle at the bedside of a corpse. There will be time to mourn later.


Once, she had been a spirit. She thinks she might have been the oldest spirit in the world, but it has been so long that she no longer remembers. Isn't that the curse of eternity, after all? An eternity to learn things, to know things, and the oldest of them slip away like grains of sand between her fingers. Once, that had bothered her, but no longer.

Her memories of a time before the rise of the elvhen are distance and foggy, but some of them are still there. Some of them still exist in sparkling clarity, and sometimes she is lucky enough to find one of those memories.

This is one of them, marked by a sparkling river. She is both very young and very old. She had already borne Lanaste from herself and both of them have taken bodies. Their bodies, this time, are young too. Teenagers, really.

They sit on the bank of the river, under the shade of a willow tree. It is late afternoon. They had spent the day chasing each other through the forest. Once, they had stopped to pick raspberries. Their fingers are stained pink. Tomorrow, their day will go much the same.

"I hope we never forget this," Lanaste murmurs. Bellanaris blinks her eyes open- she is laying with her head in his lap, and she had been dozing.

"What do you mean?" she asks. There is nothing remarkable about this moment. It will be one of many.

"The world will change. We'll change with it, until we decided we can take no more, and then we will die and won't come back. I only hope, when things are bad, or when things are so different we can barely recognize each other, that we remember this. Or moments like this," he says, fingers trailing through her hair.

"We'll probably look back on it with more nostalgia than it is worth. Perhaps we will say something about the good old days, and we will sound like the elders we meet in the villages," she says, a faint smile on her face. Even knowing that things will change, she does not think they will change too much. Or, rather, she thinks that no matter how much things change, eventually it will come back to this. She and Lanaste will always find each other, and one day, after the world has been made and unmade and made again, they will find themselves on the banks of a river and they will eat raspberries together again.

"Or we will be locked in the middle of a war, and when things seem too great and terrible to bear, we will remember that it was not always so, and it will not stay that way. It is memories like this that will give us hope," he tells her, and Bellanaris thinks there might be something worth remembering in there. But for now, she is content to let the days slip away, to spend them lazy on the banks of a river, going wherever the wind decides to take them.

"You sound incredibly idealistic," she remarks, and Lanaste laughs.

"We all need a little idealism every now and then," he tells her. Moments later, he gently nudges her off his lap, and strips down to his smalls before wading into the river.


It is dark when Arya wakes. Many of the bedrolls in the tent are now occupied. Whatever Eldris decided in the ruin must have passed while she slept. She can't decide if she minds or not, so she gives up trying to figure it out. Instead, she slips between the bedrolls until she can duck outside.

The night air is cold. She had forgotten that not long ago they were in the dead of winter. That, and Fereldan is often cold, even in the heights of summer. Maybe she'll get Lysander to take her somewhere warm. Somewhere she can lounge on a warm beach and stand with the ocean lapping at her feet. Antiva, maybe, or Rivian.

"How do you feel?" Theo asks from his place by the fire, and Arya jumps. She glances over at him and realizes he must be on watch. Gingerly, she sits down next to him.

"Fine. I'm…surprised. I remember waking up earlier, but I was so tired it was like I couldn't," she says, picking up a stick and poking absentmindedly at the flames.

"That's what happens when you use too much magic at once," he says, a faint smile on his face, but he looks troubled, too.

"You look…Did something happen?" she asks.

"I'd hoped to wait until we got back to camp to talk to you. I don't suppose I could say that anything really happened- Zathrian was lurking nearby, and we managed to convince him to broker peace. Eldris…got rather angry at him, for being so stubborn, so Eden and I had to take over. In the end, though, we convinced Zathrian. Eden went back to the camp to let Lanaya know what happened- I'm sure she'll paint a pretty picture with Zathrian as a hero. She's good at that," he says, but still, that troubled look is on his face.

"That's good, though. So…why the long face?" she asks, one eyebrow raised. She's got to admit she's more curious now than she is concerned- if it was truly so bad, she doubted Theo would be beating around the bush while everyone else slept.

"I insisted on examining you earlier. I wanted to make sure you were okay- you'd been having problems earlier, and Leliana told me that you'd thrown up, and after you exhausted yourself like that I wanted to make sure there wasn't any other problem," he says, fingers tapping on his thigh.

"What, did you find out I'm dying or something?" she asks, but now there's a hard ball of anxiety in the pit of her stomach. She's got a feeling that everything is about to change, and she's not entirely sure she's ready for it.

"Not…exactly. You're pregnant," he says, and she stares at him for a few seconds.

"I'm sorry…what?" she asks, counting back in her head. Had she had a period recently? Had she been drinking the teas that Morrigan had recommended? She knew she hadn't been casting the spells, growing lax over the winter because she hadn't been having much sex with anyone at all, much less anyone who could do this.

"You're pregnant. Fairly early along, too. I'd wager around nearly two months," he says. Two months? With the travel time that would mean…well, it was probably Lysander's, at any rate. Cailan hadn't been sleeping with her lately, mostly on her insistence that he save it for Anora.

"You're…sure?" she asks, unable to resist glancing down at her stomach. Pregnant? It…didn't feel real, if she were honest.

"Yes. I…If you don't want to do this, there are ways that I can…help. I do think you should tell Lysander though, just so he knows and can help with any emotional repercussions. And if you do wish to keep it I…congratulate you," he says, eyes trained on the fire like he isn't quite sure what to say.

"I…think I want to keep it? I dunno. I'll talk to Lysander before anything. Will this…Can I still get the vallaslin?" she asks, brow furrowed. Well. This would probably throw a wrench in their plans. She probably couldn't help with the archdemon like this, but at least this was the last of the quests they needed to do. There was no civil war and no Landsmeet, which meant there was little left to do but wait for the end of it. And if she were honest with herself, that was a fight she wouldn't mind missing.

"Oh! Yes, there shouldn't be any issues with that. Usually for the ritual, we fast from sundown until sunrise, and we don't sleep. We meditate instead, on who's vallaslin we want. But you already know you want Mythal's, and you already know why, so that's unnecessary. I'll talk to Lanaya, and if she doesn't want to do it, I'll do it as the Second of my clan. I can do it whenever you like, once we get back to camp," he tells her. Bellanaris stirs in the back of her head- the ritual Theo described was nothing like what she'd ever endured in Arlathan. And she'd endured it several times over, inked anew for every life she lived.

"Cool. I guess I'll let you know," she says. They lapse into silence as she stretches out by the campfire, laying on her back, looking up at the stars. She glances at the tattoo on her arm- she'd forgotten about it, for the most part. It was just another part of her now, the same way her magic was. The same way Bellanaris was.


They were all relieved to see the assortment of aravels that marked the Dalish camp. The sun was shining- if Arya had had to walk back through the rain after all of that, she may well have tried to summon a physical manifestation of the weather so she could fight it. Leliana seemed fine- her new scars were still red and puffy, but it was far better than an open wound, and it didn't seem to hinder the bard much. She seemed tired, but ultimately fine.

When they reached the camp, they all scattered. Eldris and Theo slipped away to find Eden, Leliana disappeared into her tent and didn't come back out. Anaba went to find Mithra while Reno goes to look for Morrigan. With the entire group dispersed, Arya makes her way to the aravel she and Lysander have been staying in. She doesn't know whether she should expect him in there or not, but when she opens the door he's propped up against the wall reading a book she thinks he brought from the palace. He looks up when she enters, his whole face lighting up.

"There's the hero of the hour! I take it you worked everything out?" he asks, dog-earing the page he's on before putting the book aside. He stands up and sweeps her into a hug, heedless of all the sweat and grime. At least she'd managed to avoid getting blood on her.

"No thanks to me. Leliana got hurt and I used too much of my magic to try and help her. I slept through everything exciting," she grumbles. Lysander laughs, pressing kisses all over her face.

"At least you missed the dangerous bits," he says, shifting so he stands behind her, stooped so his chin can rest on her shoulder.

"There is that," she agrees. They stand in silence for a few moments before she speaks again. "Listen, I've got something to tell you. Do you think we could sneak away for a bath in the river?" she asks.

"It'll be cold in the river," he says, and she can hear the frown in his voice. She laughs, turning in his arms to kiss the frown away.

"I'll have you to keep me warm," she tells him. He can't say no to that.


The river is cold enough that Arya begins shivering almost immediately. She's doggedly stubborn though, insistent that she scrub off all the dirt and grime. Lysander doesn't stay in the water long, giving himself a cursory scrub before kneeling on the banks of the river to wash his hair. Overall, it is not the worst bath he has ever had, but it is far from the best. Arya is pretty sure it's the worst she's ever had.

It is only once they're clean and dry, sitting on the bank of the river as Arya brushes her hair, that they begin to speak.

"So, what did you want to tell me?" Lysander asks.

"You remember how I mentioned that I used too much magic healing Leliana, right?" she asks. She stares at the ground while she talks.

"Yes?" he answers. She doesn't have to look at him to know the puzzled look on his face.

"While I was sleeping, Theo did a magical examination. He wanted to make sure everything was okay, since I've been sick Bellanaris has been being weird," she says.

"What did he find? I'm guessing it's something serious by the way you're dancing around it," he says. She looks up and shoots him a withering look.

"I'm pregnant, you ass. And it's yours," she says. Lysander stares at her for a moment, eyes wide.

"Oh. Well," he says. She thinks it's the first time she's seen him at a loss for words.

"Yeah," she agrees.

They sit in silence until she's finished brushing her hair. They sit in silence while she uses magic to dry her hair. It is only when she begins to braid her hair that Lysander speaks again.

"So what do you want to do?" he asks, voice quiet. She'd only ever seen him so serious a handful of times before, and most of them centered around the trip they'd made to Highever.

"I…I want to keep it, of course. I just…Should we go ahead and get married?" she asks, twisting to look at him.

"I…probably. I guess we should talk to Theo about it," he says. She nods- she doesn't have anything remotely resembling wedding attire, but she thinks a set of the robes she'd gotten from the temple would do. They were finely made, after all.

"That's…a good idea," he agrees.

He waits until she finishes her braid, tying it with a ribbon she'd found somewhere, before he leans forward. Gently, he takes her face in his hands and kisses her. Her hands come up, wrapping around his shoulders. They sit like that for a moment after they break their kiss, her head tucked into the crook of his neck.

"Theo said I could still get my vallaslin. I think…I'd like to do it tonight," she says. Lysander pulls back enough to give her another kiss.

"One condition," he says. She looks at him with raised eyebrows.

"And what would that be?" she asks.

"I get to see it first," he tells her, with a grin. She laughs, leaning up to kiss him again.

"I'll try to make it happen," she says.


Arya approaches Theo at supper that night. Most of the clan has already eating, dispersing through the camp to celebrate. There's lots of dancing and even more drinking. With an uneasy start, she realizes that she can't partake. In the alcohol, at least. She sees no reason why she couldn't dance, although she's not too interested.

Theo is sitting by himself, on a log near the fire. Eldris and Eden have disappeared somewhere, likely dancing together. She'd watched Eldris drink far too much blackberry wine earlier, while she was eating.

"You look awfully serious, lethallan," Theo says, by way of greeting.

"I was hoping I could get my vallaslin tonight," she says. She doesn't bother sitting down next to him.

"I thought you might say that. I prepared everything earlier. Come with me," he says, rising from his seat. He leads her through the camp, past groups of elves partying. She thinks she sees Anaba twisted around Mithra, but she averts her eyes to give them privacy before she can be sure.

Theo leads her to an entirely deserted part of the camp, and then he only gathers a bag of supplies.

"Where are we going?" she asks, crossing her arms over her chest. The night was cool- not cold, but enough that she wished she had brought a cloak.

"Into the forest. So we won't be disturbed," he tells her, an easy smile on his face. Arya follows him- they can both see well enough in the dark that they don't need any light. They don't walk far, only until they reach a clearing with a tree stump in the center. He gestures for her to sit on the stump as he kneels on the ground, casting a spell that creates a hovering ball of light. While they hadn't had any trouble navigating to the clearing, he needed to be able to see perfectly for this.

"Walk me through the process?" she asks, a sudden flare of nervousness making her hands shake. She slides them between her thighs to keep them steady.

"I'll show you the different designs we have to honor Mythal, and I'll show you the colors we have. Once you pick everything, I'll prick your finger to add some blood to the ink we'll be using. After that, I'll just have to do the tattoo," he says. From his bag, he pulls out a book, flipping gently through the pages until he finds what he's looking for.

"Are these the designs?" she asks. He nods, turning the book so she can use it. All of the designs for Mythal are spread out on one page- she recognizes most of them from Inquisition. These are also the same designs that Bellanaris had worn, once. She'd gone through all of them at some point- once Mythal trusted her, she'd let her pick the design each life. She runs her fingers over the crinkled paper, finally settling on one.

It was not quite the simplest design. Like all of Mythal's designs, it was made of curling vines. These would go up her cheekbones and branch out across her forehead, coming down onto the bridge of her nose. It only lacked the tree roots on her chin. For the color, she settles on a sky blue. Theo tells her it'll be darker on her skin, but it is something Arya already knows. Of all the different designs Bellanaris had worn, the one constant was the color. And this was a near-perfect replica. She sucks in a breath when Theo pricks her finger, mixing the blood with the ink.

After that comes the hard part. Bellanaris remembers it as being much more painful. Arya thinks it pales in comparison to the feeling of the needle on her arm. Between the two of them, she manages to sit still, her fingers curling into a fist, nails pressing crescent moons into her palms. Theo doesn't speak, even when it's over. He only nods at her, taking a moment to cast a spell to seal the ink to her skin, healing her just enough to make sure the ink stays. After that, he gathers his supplies and leads her back to the camp.


Lysander is absolutely delighted by the vallaslin on her face. It is only when he kisses her, tangling his fingers in her hair, that she realizes she forgot to ask Theo about some sort of wedding.