Apologies for the unscheduled posting gap! There will be a couple more over the course of the summer, what with travel, etc. Thank you all for reading and sticking with me, and special thanks to suilven for her thoughtful and lightning-fast betaing.

Dinner wasn't a low-key event. It couldn't have been. He as the King of Ferelden and Hawke as the Champion of Kirkwall turned heads wherever they went; they were the subject of gossip and the object of stares and whispers. Alistair remembered a time when it had been just two of them, a man and a woman, unremarked and unregarded. Of course, the woman had gone on to become the Hero of Ferelden, which just showed what people knew. Anyone on this street could go on to change the world, he thought, idly watching a clean-shaven red-haired dwarf with a tattoo marked across his face hurry through the marketplace.

But the woman at his side made it as easy to forget his past and his present as anyone could. "You never told me how it was that your family came to Kirkwall," he said to her.

"I'm not sure you would believe me if I told you."

"Try me. I've believed a lot of impossible things." Alistair tried not to think of any of them right now; all of them would lead him down the dark tunnel of his past to Leyden, and he wanted to stay here with Hawke. Lilias, he reminded himself.

"In that case … we flew on the back of a dragon."

He chuckled. "That's one I haven't heard before."

"Really? Because I do it all the time." She grinned. "You must not know the right people."

"Apparently I don't. I'll have to get right on that."

"You should."

"What was it like?" he asked.

Hawke closed her eyes as if she were remembering the feeling of flight. "Beautiful, really." A shadow crossed her face. "Or it would have been if Mother and Bethany and Aveline hadn't all been weeping for those we left behind."

"You weren't weeping?"

Her eyes met his, clear and blue and strong. "Someone had to keep their wits about them and take care of the others."

Without thinking, he took a step toward her, standing very close, still looking into those beautiful eyes. "And do you always?"

"What?"

"Keep your wits about you." He was speaking softly, not wanting to startle the moment and send it scurrying away.

"Yes. Always." But the words were whispers, breathless and tremulous, and her mouth was shaping itself to be kissed.

And then behind him a peddler came calling "Fresh fish! Mackerel, sturgeon, cod! Fresh fish!" and the moment was gone.

Alistair kept his horse on a tight rein, trying his best to keep behind Lilias. What he really wanted was to spur the horse forward and ask her any one of the thousand questions that crowded his mind. How was she? Where had she been? What had really happened that day in Kirkwall? And, perhaps most important and most impossible of all, did she still think about him the way he thought about her?

He wanted to know about her sister, as well. The news about the Wardens was disturbing, to say the least, especially when taken alongside the song in his head. Where could they have gone? Why would they have gone without speaking to him? He was no particular friend to Warden Caron, who had been the commander at Amaranthine, but surely Oghren would have spoken to him before leaving for parts unknown.

In his abstraction, he had let the horse drift forward to catch up with Lilias's. She looked at him over her shoulder as he drew near, her eyes wide and a little fearful. Alistair was stung by that—he was a bumbling idiot, yes, he wasn't denying that, but he didn't think he'd ever done anything to make her afraid of him. She made as if to spur the horse ahead, but he caught the reins.

"Would it really be so bad just to talk to me for a few minutes?" he asked, then smiled. "Please. Riding along with only myself to talk to tends to make for some repetitive conversations."

Her lips tightened, and for a moment he expected scathing sarcasm, but then she relaxed a bit. "I can't say my own company is all that satisfying right now, either. I keep thinking of Bethany."

"You're afraid she's in danger?"

"All the other Wardens have disappeared. Of course I'm afraid!" She looked at him, her blue eyes widening. "Oh! I mean—"

"No, it's all right. The thought has crossed my mind, too." Alistair shook his head. "I don't know where they went, or why, and I—half of me wonders why they didn't take me, and half of me is relieved not to be wherever they are."

"You know something, don't you? Something you're not telling me?"

"It's a bit of a—"

"Grey Warden secret," Lilias finished for him, bitterly. "I've been on the receiving end of those words far more often than I would have liked."

"You have to admit, you weren't exactly forthcoming about all of your activities and entanglements, either," he pointed out.

"We were talking about Bethany." Lilias's voice was low and dangerous.

"So we were. When was the last time you heard from her?"

"Shortly before we left for Skyhold."

"Left from where?"

Lilias frowned at him. "I'm not telling you that. I was perfectly content to hide from the world until Corypheus rose again, and I intend to go back."

"Just stick your head in the sand? Must be nice." Alistair remembered how hard he had argued with Leyden, begging her to understand that all he wanted was to be a Grey Warden, to love her and fight darkspawn and not to have to step into the shoes of a man who had never wanted him and lead a country. All those arguments had fallen on deaf ears; he'd never had a choice. Meanwhile, Hawke had run and hidden away when she could have been leading the Inquisition. He wasn't sure if he disapproved or if he envied her.

"No one was calling for your head, based on something someone else did."

"You could have sided with Meredith."

"You met her. Would you have sided with her? Would you have let her put an entire Circle to death for the actions of a single apostate?"

He wouldn't have. They both knew that. "I would have helped you," he said softly. "If you had come to me …"

Lilias looked at him, her eyes wide and filled with pain. "Never. I would never have put you in that position, no matter how much I—no matter what. There is such a thing as the greater good."

"Yes, so I've been told, many times. Usually by people who wanted me to give something up for it. When does it end? When does my service to the greater good let me get something back, to make up for everything I've lost?"

He regretted the words the moment they tumbled from his mouth.

Lilias sat frozen on the back of her horse, her knuckles white on the reins. "There you go again, always looking for a consolation prize. Nothing ever changes." She spurred the horse on, and Alistair let her go, cursing his own clumsiness.

Crestwood was stormy, the weather suiting Lilias's mood perfectly. She welcomed the beat of the rain on her shoulders and the crack of thunder in the sky to take her mind off of her worries about Bethany and her unsettled emotions about Alistair.

Even more welcome were the walking corpses that seemed to have overrun the area; both Lilias and Alistair were glad to have a chance to exercise their blades against something so straightforward. His retinue wasn't so happy; clearly they had not been through the kinds of fights necessary to see a walking corpse as just another foe.

But even as she enjoyed the exhilaration of a fight, and tried not to watch Alistair's finely trained, powerfully muscled body, clearly still in top condition, Lilias wondered if these corpses were to do with her sister. Had Bethany cracked? Had she become a blood mage, or … an abomination? After all this way, if she had lost her sister …

She followed the map across Crestwood and finally came to the cave where Bethany said she'd be hiding. Near the entrance, not so close as to alarm Bethany, she gave the little whistle their father had taught them when they were children. Her heart leaped when the whistle was returned. Bethany was the only person still alive who would recognize that whistle.

Lilias hurried down the dark passageway, only vaguely aware of Alistair behind her. She didn't want to admit to herself how much safer his presence made her feel. "Beth? Beth, it's me!"

"Here. Who's that with you?"

"He's a friend. It's all right."

A figure emerged from the shadows, a slender, hooded figure, who threw back her head to reveal a thin, hunted face with only the bright glitter of Bethany's amber eyes to tell Lilias that this was her sister again at last. She framed Bethany's face in her hands. "Oh, my darling, what happened to you?"

Bethany started to answer, but caught her breath. In an instant, a dagger had appeared in her hand. "That's a Warden with you. What is this? I told you to come alone."

"No! No, it's all right, really." Lilias caught her sister's wrist. "This is Alistair."

"Alistair … the King of Ferelden Alistair?"

"The same." Alistair nodded at Bethany. "I'm here as support, and to ask some questions. Whatever's happened, I don't know anything about it." He held up his hands. "I promise, nothing is going to happen to you under my watch."

"Do you—do you hear it?" Bethany asked him.

"Yes."

Lilias looked between the two of them. "Hear what? And don't say Grey Warden secrets."

"The song. The Calling," Alistair said. "It is a Grey Warden secret, but it's also too much to explain now."

"Is this it?" Bethany asked him.

He shook his head. "I don't think so. I … No. It's more like the Blight, really. But with no darkspawn …"

"They were scared. Terribly scared. Caron … Caron got a letter from someone in Orlais, and then—we were all supposed to get ready to leave. Immediately. I … it didn't feel right to me. There was talk of a ritual."

"What about Corypheus?" Lilias asked. "I thought you wrote that the Wardens didn't even want to talk about him; that once we'd killed him they were more than happy to let the matter rest." She shook her head. "I still don't know how he lived."

"The Archdemon can survive wounds that seem fatal," Alistair said. "By possessing the body of the nearest tainted creature. Is it possible this Corypheus has the same ability?"

Bethany's face paled even further than it already was. "If he can, and if all the Wardens have gone no one knows where …"

"He's essentially immortal." Lilias looked at her sister, and then at Alistair.

"You said they talked of a ritual," Alistair said. "What kind of ritual?"

"It was confused; it didn't make a lot of sense. Commander Caron said something about preventing future Blights before they started, but … I don't know how you could do that. How could they do that?" she asked Alistair.

"I don't think they can."

"That's what I said to them, and they—" Bethany shivered. "They were my friends. My family. My brothers and sisters, and I … I had to flee for my life from them."

"Do you know where they went?"

"I know the general direction," Bethany said. "I imagine if we went there, we could feel them."

"Yes. We probably could."

"But you won't, will you?" Lilias asked, concerned. "The two of you, against two nations worth of crazed Wardens?"

Alistair's strong hand cupped her elbow reassuringly. "The three of us. And the Inquisition."

"The Inquisition? I thought you were hiding from them." Bethany searched Lilias's face questioningly.

"Varric's with them, and he asked me to come. I met with them. The Inquisitor seems like a good man. He's coming here, and …"

Bethany stiffened, and Lilias put a hand on her arm.

"Trust me, sister, please. It's you and me again, Hawke and Hawke. We'll get through this together." She smiled. "There's an old friend of yours with the Inquisition, too. Remember Sister Leliana?"

"Leliana?" Bethany shook her head. "There's a name I haven't heard in a long time. I doubt she even remembers me."

"She remembers. She said so. I think she'd like to see you again. Come back to Skyhold with me, Beth."

There was a moment when Lilias thought she might refuse, and then she relaxed, and nodded. "All right."