The book lay forgotten in his lap, the pages fluttering in the breeze. Someone had left a library window open, the wind catching in the circular walls. It was a near-constant irritation he experienced, those above making decisions which impacted his work, his sleep, his sanity.

Things had been... strained since they left the Temple of Mythal. The anger, crackling between them like lightning, had only heightened after they pushed through the eluvian and back into Skyhold's walls. She had attempted to speak to him, her words drowning in the only thunderous clamor of his heartbeat as he watched her eyes, the swirling bright threads weaving into her irises. She did not know what she carried within her. He did not know how it would react to this new intruder.

Twice now he had dreamed of her after the events of the Arbor Wilds. The dreams came unbidden, thick and dark in a primeval forest under a moonless sky. She stood clad in iridescent white garments, shimmering in the dark. Each time she raised her arms to him, pulling him into the thick damp grass. Then the laugh, low and ancient. The words, threatening echoes of ages past, whispered against his ear through clenched teeth.

Then he would see it, the darkness in her eyes thick and overpowering. Reminding him that it was there, that it saw him. That it knew.

All of his machinations, his hesitant steps, his work, and care could be lost in an instant if the shard of spirit she carried rejected this binding. Solas did not know how far the mark would go to keep itself safe.

Evelyn entered then, continuing her maddening habit of appearing whenever he thought about her too hard, or for too long. He wondered then if the power within her had begun its dark whispers of him. What it told her in the dead of night, what stories it wove. "You're angry with me."

He stood. "Is that a question, or a statement?"

"It's a truth, I think." She jutted one hip out as she crossed her arms, her standard I'm being quite serious stance, one that she likely honed through years of being taken less than seriously by her brethren.

"I would not say I am angry," his words were measured, careful, hesitant to give away anything that might cause that glint to appear just behind her eyes, shimmering behind her teeth. "I made my feelings on the Well clear."

"And what would you have had me do? Let Morrigan drink it? You said yourself that her motivations were selfish."

"That does not mean it was a burden I believed you should bear."

"Then who? You weren't exactly eager. Should I have just left it for Corypheus?"

"No," Solas sighed, shook his head. "It was a no-win scenario. I know you did what you believed to be right."

"And you believe it to be wrong."

"I believe it to be ill-advised and reckless."

"As you believe me to be."

"Not usually, no."

She frowned. "Not usually?"

"You have been behaving... differently."

"Since?"

"Do not make me say it."

Evelyn made a derisive noise. "Since Vael, you mean."

Solas was silent.

"You've been treating me strangely since we returned. You don't want to talk. You don't want to sit with me. You scurry around as if I'm set to explode. I don't believe I'm the one behaving differently at all. If anything, my behavior is in response to yours."

He leaned against his desk, resting his hand on an open book. Her eyes followed the movement and he saw it there, again, that glint of recognition, of cold and lizardlike curiosity. "Are you," he said slowly, "quite alright?"

"Looking for vindication?"

"It is a genuine concern, vhenan."

Evelyn's face fell at the word. "You don't want to hear about this."

"Perhaps not, but you should tell me, all the same."

She placed a hand over her mouth for a moment, when she spoke the words were hushed and a bit frantic. "It's... it's as if there's another voice inside my head but one I can't always understand. It whispers, and sometimes I can make out a word or a phrase but mostly it doesn't make any sense." Her eyes darted up again, "Sometimes I think it is speaking to you."

Solas felt the cold chill run down his spine. "To me?"

"Or at you. About you. I don't know," she shivered slightly. "It will sound insane."

"Say it anyway."

"I feel like it would rather I went away."

"You feel that?"

"It's hard to explain it's like... it's almost a pressure, in my head. Pushing the me that still is me out. Wanting to see through my eyes, wanting to craft my words."

"Your words to me."

She nodded.

"Why do you think that is?"

"I don't know," she breathed. He could hear the edge of tears in her voice. "Maybe because it senses how I feel for you and it's latched on to that part of me. It's strange. It's like it knows you. Does it read my thoughts?"

Despite the panicked burn in his chest, he was unable to resist the quiver of her lower lip, the way her eyes searched his. Taking her wrists in his hands, he pulled her to him, wrapping his arms around her, hands in her hair, resting his chin on the crown of her head. "It would not have been better to let Morrigan have it, vhenan. Perhaps this was the best of outcomes. Perhaps we should have allowed Abelas to destroy it entirely. Regardless, what is done is done. Now we must decide how to live with the decision."

Her head felt fevered, too warm against his skin. How could she not be? Within her raged a war, just beneath the surface; the struggle of spirits too weak to overtake, just strong enough to inflame. What havoc they would wreak before he could find a solution was beyond his comprehension - a thought he found deeply unsettling.

There were methods, of course, of extraction; mystical secrets lost to the mages of today that involved neither manipulation of the veil nor blood magic to accomplish. It was once a routine practice among the young, an attempt to lose themselves in an intoxicating high brought about by the intermingling of souls within one's self. The Avaar had a similar ritual, although it involved only a single spirit in a setting not unlike the Harrowing. There were materials he would need to gather, places he would need to travel, a particular book long forgotten he would need to re-locate.

He glanced down at her, still buried in his shoulder. It would involve travel, time, distance. She would ask questions, risk unlocking what slept within. This would be easier had he not become so... entangled. It was a lingering irritation, always in the back of his mind. What have I done? There were things he had yet to accomplish, stories yet to be written, and none of them involved him carrying on a love affair with the existing center of the world he was attempting to bring crashing down around them. And now... now she carried a thing he never intended, a lost and angry spirit, full of vengeance and power. A spirit who had once been united in a cause, broken and forced into a position of sentry. With it she could wield the Great Dragon.

If the other piece inside her would allow it.

When he'd attempted to unlock the orb, finding himself too weak to accomplish this task alone, he thought the ancient magister would provide an easy foil. Both rift and Tevinter ghoul would be swallowed up in the opening, leaving behind the key he needed to unlock the final door, to release the old world.

Instead, Evelyn Trevelyan had somehow interrupted the ceremony, absorbed the magic that swelled from inside the orb and taken in the shard of the other, the one who had helped him seal away the ancient rift power.

"It comes to this, Fen'Harel," moonlight white hair spilling undone over her shoulders.

"I cannot finish this without it."

She nodded then, eyes aflame. "A lock requires a key. This is what you ask of me."

"I would do it myself, if I could."

"They would kill you gladly for it."

"They would kill me for less."

Her hand then, cold as marble against his cheek. '"Then I give it willingly." She pulled from her cloak a silver knife, halla relief carved into the blade.

Evelyn stared up at him, and within her eyes he saw the power of which she was unaware, piercing him with the sharpness of its knowing.

Once, shortly after they'd first arrived at Skyhold, he had asked her if she felt differently since the mark. In truth, he had desperately wanted to know that some sliver of the spirit was part of her, was an explanation for the attraction he felt himself unable to control. Now that he knew the truth, it was even more difficult to do what he knew he needed to do, going forward.

He would either have to tell her, truly tell her what she carried, or end this. Either option would hurt, but it was what was necessary to save her life.

"Come away with me."

Such a simple request, one she was all too happy to acquiesce. Evelyn Trevelyan, willowy and tired, followed behind him without question. He'd puzzled this over in his mind, how to broach the subject, how to tell her what needed to no longer be hidden. Where to even begin with such things. The location was key. He feared telling her at Skyhold, feared her running to an adviser in a blind panic and spilling what he had revealed before he had a chance to fully explain himself. It needed to be somewhere safe, secure, intimate. A place linked to him inextricably, somewhere where she could understand why he was who and what he was.

There was only one such place.