The next day, we set out from Redcliffe, and after a couple of hours we reach an appropriate clearing in which to set up camp.

I notice Alistair glancing at me guiltily as he makes his way over to Neria. Suspicious. "I think we should talk about what happened. In Redcliffe."

Neria regards him, raising her eyebrows. "I think it turned out quite well, don't you?"

"Yes, well I did want to thank you. You went out of your way to save the Arl's family and you did it, even though it would have been easier not to. There's been so much death and destruction, it… well it makes me feel good that at least we were able to do something good. I owed the Arl that much."

Huh? What does Alistair owe the Arl for?

"If we can stop the Blight, we'll do much more good."

"…You're right."

"Why do I feel like there's something else you wanted to tell me, Alistair?" Alistair's eyes flit between me and Neria.

"Well, because… there is. It's just that, at the castle, Lady Isolde mentioned that she would eventually send Connor to the Circle, you know, after all that's happened."

Neria's eyes narrow dangerously. I've never seen her look like that before. Alistair falters, but keeps going. "I-I just feel like there was a lesson to be learned there—"

Neria holds up a hand, cutting him off. "And let me guess, the lesson is that mages belong safely locked away in the Circle, is that it?"

"No, what I mean is that untrained mages can be a danger to themselves, as well as others." Alistair explains seriously.

"She's not untrained, she was in the Circle and she has me, as well as two other proficient mages in our party, unlike Connor who only had the help of his non-mage mother as well as Jowan, a runaway blood mage," Neria snaps.

Jowan was the mage Lady Isolde hired in secret? No wonder everything went to the void.

"She is not. Connor. She would never make a deal with a demon! Would you, da'len?" I jump a little, not expecting to be invited to this conversation.

I shake my head fervently. Alistair sighs, wiping a hand over his face. "I'm not saying you would, Faellathi. I'm saying that, despite what happened at the Circle the last time we were there, it's the safer place for you to be, in the long run." I shake my head again, eyes filling with tears as I start to panic.

"No, I wouldn't. They already tried to kill me, once, and it didn't work, I-I faced the demon, and it couldn't get me," I blurted, leaving out the part where the spirit of Hope helped me fight said demon. Sorry to take all the credit, Hope, but I'm not going back to the Circle so that Greagoir can find some other way to kill me.

Everyone stares at me, confused. Ah, rats.

"What are you talking about, Fae?" Neria asks, concerned. She takes one of my hands in both of hers. "Who tried to kill you? A demon? Was it during the revolt?"

I stare down at my boots. "No… it was during my Harrowing."

"Your what?" Neria asks, blanching.

I'd been trying to avoid this particular conversation. I take a deep breath. "A couple of days before things went crazy, the templars took me to the Harrowing chamber at night, and they made me do the Harrowing. Knight-Commander Greagoir was there, it was on his orders. The First Enchanter didn't find out until it was too late to stop it. They all thought I was going to die, but I didn't." I let my words sink in, and no one says anything for a few moments.

"Why?" Neria asks hollowly, not looking me in the eye. Is she…crying?

"I don't know for sure. Evelina said he wanted to get rid of me because I was going to be one of Irving's favourites in your place, and he was trying to make Irving look weak by getting rid of all his friends, but another mage, uh, I can't remember his name, said it was to scare the other mages into not complaining about the Circle. But now, I mean technically, I'm a full mage too. That's good, right?"

"Maker," Alistair puts his face in his hands.

"Still think the Circle is the safest place for her?" Neria asks dryly, but there's no humour in her eyes now.

"Hardly," Alistair concedes.

"Wynne, did you know about this?"

Wynne looks sombre. "No. I'd heard the rumour, but there were several rumours going around the Circle in the days leading up to Uldred's rebellion, each more nefarious than the last. I wouldn't have guessed this one was true in a million years."

This new confession seems to have done the trick though, because Alistair drops the subject of me going back to the Circle. He even sneaks some cookies into my hand later by way of apology; I kick him in the shin, to let him know I'm still mad, but then I give him a hug to let him know he's forgiven, for now.

As for the rest of the day, this time, only Neria, Alistair, Wynne and Barkspawn leave to go exploring; the veterans of the battle. The rest of the day is pretty long and boring. I enjoyed it; I think I was starting to miss boredom after all the recent chaos. Having talked each other's ears off the day before, I had decided to give Leliana a break and try to make conversation with Morrigan, but she had her nose buried in an even bigger tome than she was reading before and she promptly shooed me away.

So, I finally muster up the courage to speak to Sten, and to my surprise, he's not as mean as I thought he would be. He's blunt, like Morrigan, but I think that's just the way he talks, whereas Morrigan just doesn't like people very much. I don't blame her for that, though, seeing as she's spent her whole life with only her mother, who sounds a bit mad.

Anyway, I bring Sten some cookies that Bodahn had picked up in Redcliffe, and I think it helps. Either way, he seems content enough to answer my questions about the Qunari, and I have a lot of questions about the Qunari, because I didn't know they existed until a couple of days ago. He tells me about the Qun, which is the set of laws all Qunari live by, and the roles that they all play in their society. They don't have names in the Qunari, they just call each other by what their role is, so Sten isn't really his personal name, it's more like a rank, kind of like a captain I think. He tells me a little about the island where the Qunari live, Par Vollen, which is much warmer than Ferelden, and smells like tea and incense.

I know when I've exhausted Sten's patience, because he makes a quip about allowing a child saarebas to wander unaccompanied (saarebas is the Qunlat word for mage), so I wander off, unaccompanied, back to Leliana, who's making alterations to my breeches so that I don't have to keep tying them in a knot at the waist.

Our Ostagar veterans return after sunset, looking solemn. Alistair's carrying a large sack over his shoulder, filled with King Cailan's armour, which had been looted from his body by the darkspawn piece by piece. They'd found his body too, and given him a proper funeral pyre, as befitted a king, and they'd even found the ogre which killed Duncan; or rather, the ogre had found them; another darkspawn had somehow brought it back to life. They knew it had killed Duncan because they'd found his twin daggers both still embedded in the ogre's body.

The next day, I expected we'd be packing up camp and travelling onwards to Denerim, but Neria is gone when I wake up, along with Alistair, Wynne, Sten, Leliana, Zevran and Barkspawn. I trot over to Morrigan's designated sleeping area to ask her where the others went. I don't know what answer I was expecting, but it definitely wasn't "they've gone to kill my mother."