Thanks to all of you for reading - and special thanks to suilven for her speedy and thoughtful betaing and her enthusiastic support! End of this chapter is NSFW.

Cullen looked over the War Table, his hand hovering above one of the pieces. He knew them all; he could visualize the faces of the soldiers they symbolized and could practically see them marching. But toward what? The Inquisitor's field report had been sketchy at best.

He could hear people coming down the hall toward the War Room, subdued voices, and he removed his hand from the table and straightened his back, waiting. The headache hovered just at the back of his neck, as it always did, tightening the muscles there and straining the tendons, but it was nothing he couldn't endure.

"Ah, Cullen, already ahead of us. Prepared as always, I hope?" The Inquisitor smiled, but there was a weariness in his eyes.

"Of course. Just waiting for orders."

"Never that." Thule shook his head. "I want your counsel before we make any commitments."

Cassandra was behind the Inquisitor, and Leliana and King Alistair and Hawke and Bethany. Josephine was moving more slowly down the hall, reading as she walked. She looked up as she came in, only then realizing they were all ahead of her.

"I am so sorry. This letter—the duchess's handwriting is so terribly small. I apologize for letting it distract me."

"Don't trouble yourself, Josie," Leliana told her. "You were only a moment behind the rest of us."

"Oh, I am glad." Josephine slid a fresh sheet of paper onto her ever-present board and took up her quill.

The Inquisitor quickly summarized what they had found in the Western Approach. Bethany closed her eyes during the recital, her face drawn with pain. Alistair looked lost, dazed by what he had seen.

"None of the Fereldan Wardens were there," Hawke said, glancing between the King and her sister. "I … suppose they're with the rest of the Wardens? We found letters that said the Wardens are gathering at Adamant Fortress."

"We have to go there." Cassandra glanced with some sympathy at the two Wardens in the room, and then away. She had never let emotion keep her from her duty. "If Corypheus is building a demon army …"

"You're right," Alistair said hoarsely. "Whatever has happened to the Wardens, we do them no favors by letting them remain under the control of Corypheus—and their own fears."

Bethany nodded. Her amber eyes were bright with tears, and a single drop rolled slowly down her cheek.

"Then the armies of the Inquisition will be with you. And ready," Cullen said grimly. "They—we have all been looking for a chance to get back at Corypheus for Haven."

"That we have." Thule nodded. He looked up at Cullen inquisitively. "Are you joining us, Commander?"

"If you'll have me."

"Nothing I'd like better than to know you're leading our armies."

Cullen nodded gravely. The headache tightened at the back of his neck and started to throb, and he wondered, with a sudden sharp apprehension, if he could get through a battle without the lyrium. He had done it at Haven, but Haven had been a surprise attack—and, regardless of what anyone else might think, Cullen knew that at Haven, he had failed. Would he fail again at Adamant?

Alistair listened to the plans being made around him, but he felt distant from them. As though he were lost in a fog, hearing voices from somewhere else, talking about something that didn't matter.

But it did matter, because these were the Grey Wardens. These were his friends, his family, his people, in a way that few understood. Fereldans were supposed to be his people, and they were, but the Grey Wardens shared the taint in his blood. They were connected to him under the skin and in the beating of their hearts, pumping that blackened blood through their veins. The Wardens in Amaranthine had saved him in those first months after the Blight; he had made himself a bit of a nuisance with Caron, hovering about whenever he could get away from Denerim. Anders' bright cheer, before … everything … Sigrun's jokes, her hands always in his pocket looking for something to steal. Velanna, so haughty and unapproachable, reminding him inescapably of Morrigan. Nate, so glum and downcast, but underneath it beginning to heal from the wounds his father's death—and life—had left him with. And Oghren, Alistair's drinking buddy, veteran of the Blight, his red beard bristling. Where were they now, Nate and Oghren and Sigrun? What were they doing? How was it possible those intelligent people had fallen so neatly into Corypheus's trap?

Surely, the friends and families of the Orlesian Wardens must be asking themselves the same thing, he thought. Wondering where it had all gone wrong. He had to remember that his fellow Wardens were the victims; he had to make sure everyone remembered.

He drew his attention back to the plans for the assault. He couldn't commit the Fereldan army to a joint task force with the Inquisition, not without having to do a lot of fast-talking with his advisors. Particularly his uncle Teagan, who had been uncharacteristically angry with the Inquisition for their actions in the Hinterlands and Redcliffe. Why, Alistair wasn't certain, unless it was that they made Teagan look bad by fixing the mess there before he could. Teagan as he aged was becoming even more rigid than Eamon had been, and Alistair was sad to see it.

He didn't explain the political issues to the others in the room, however; he let them think the army wasn't in a position to be mobilized quickly, which was close enough to true that he could lie unblushingly. Leliana glanced at him sharply, but she didn't say anything, and he hoped she wouldn't try to probe too deeply into his hesitance.

When the meeting was over, Alistair wanted to settle a personal curiosity. He ambled casually down to the barn, finding the man who called himself Warden Blackwall carving a small statue of a gryphon.

Blackwall looked up. "Oh. It's you. I've been wondering."

"You know I know."

"Figured you would." His face set, hard and unreadable. "I didn't kill him, if that's what you're wanting to know."

"Among other things, it was." Alistair leaned against the doorway. "Do you want to tell me about it?"

"Are you going to give me away?"

Alistair frowned. He hadn't thought that far ahead. "I don't think so," he said slowly. "They tell me I'm not a great judge of character, so I probably should … but you've been here this long under Leliana's eye, and she's let you stay. If she trusts you around her Inquisitor, then that counts for more with me than the fact that you aren't who you say you are. Running from something?"

Blackwall hesitated. "You could say that."

"Some of us wish we could." It was the first time he had said it aloud, that he wished with all his heart he could run from being king, run toward something he wanted, while he still had some life left to live.

"No, you don't. Take it from me." Blackwall turned back to the gryphon, his carving knife running smoothly over its curves, minute shavings drifting off of it.

"Just … one question."

Blackwall held still, waiting, but he didn't look at Alistair again.

"Did he die well?"

"Does anyone?"

"In battle, I meant."

"Yes. Against darkspawn."

Alistair nodded, satisfied. "As a Warden should."

Varric could tell what was up just by watching the faces as the others left the War Room. The Inquisition was going to battle. Which meant he was going to battle.

His only experience with real combat, soldiers and all, had been at Haven. Oh, sure, the fight against Meredith and her Templars in Kirkwall had been battle-like, but not what you might call formally joined. He didn't mind admitting, at least to himself, that he was scared shitless. Varric quite liked living. He liked watching people and writing about them, he liked the warmth of the fire behind him and the feel of his comfortable chair. He liked good food and wine and witty banter with friends. He liked having Hawke around again, even a Hawke with shadows in her eyes. He liked nice clothes and a soft bed and a hot bath at the end of the day—and the prospect that any day now Bianca might show up to relieve him of the clothes, share the bed, and lounge naked in the bath.

Varric dragged his thoughts away from that last image sternly. No time to dwell on that kind of thinking, no time at all. There never was, really. If she was away, he was better off not thinking about her, and if she was here, there was almost always a complication. If this was a story, he'd slap his character in the face and call him an idiot.

He chuckled at the image. Hawke would probably do just that if he ever told her the true story of Bianca—but then, Hawke was hardly one to talk, carrying the image of the King of Ferelden around practically embroidered on her sleeve.

Drawing a piece of paper to him, he tried to work on the next chapter of Hard in Hightown, but what came to his pen was something else.

Dear Bianca,

We're heading into battle. Not something I'm sure you ever imagined hearing me say, and I bet the picture in your mind is pretty ridiculous. Hold onto it, because if you're reading this, it's the last image of me you'll ever have, and I want you to have something to laugh at.

What we've had together has been stupid, and glorious, and wickedly illicit, and dangerous, and I wouldn't have missed a minute. Sometimes I wish there had been a lot more minutes, and sometimes I'm glad they've been so few, because they've all been branded on my memory. Don't ask me why I've gotten all mushy in the imminence of combat. Must be in the air. Lots of hearts and flowers around here … or people wishing for them, which is close enough.

Looks like I won't see you before we go, unless you show up unexpectedly in the middle of the fighting, and I wouldn't put it past you. In case I don't make it back, you should know there's an account in your name in Kirkwall, and deeds to a few pieces of property in a safebox at Hawke's estate. My publishers richly deserve you and all the pain you're likely to bring into their lives suing for my royalties—soak them good on my behalf, will you?

If I ever did tell anyone our story, I doubt they'd understand, but I do, and I wouldn't change a thing.

Varric

He would leave it, with the runed stone, in the lockbox Josephine kept for him in her office. Josephine was a good egg, trustworthy, and she knew how to be discreet.

He blotted the letter, rolling it and sealing it, and got up to see who might be up for a game of Wicked Grace. It had to beat moping around waiting to be told where to point Bianca.

After dinner, Thule went looking for Cassandra. He tried not to; he tried to think of other things to do, other people to talk to. There was no shortage. But she was where he wanted to be, and with the army preparing to move out, more tonight than usual. They fought together all the time—she was with him practically everywhere he went, her shield always at his side. But this felt different, more formal.

It must have felt so to her, too, because he finally found her bent over the War Table, staring at all the pieces on the march toward Adamant fortress.

She didn't turn as he came in, as if she had been expecting him. Maybe she had. "Do you know that all of this once belonged to Tevinter? Andraste changed all that. And the Blights. What does the Maker have planned next? Will we change the map, too?"

"We already have," Thule said, gesturing to Skyhold around them. "We're making the world a better place."

"Yes, because everyone agrees on what 'better' means." She sighed. "I want a world in which we respect tradition but do not fear change, in which we right past wrongs rather than avenging them. But I do not know how many agree with me, and I do not know if my wanting these things makes them right."

"They're laudable goals, at least."

"Perhaps. But it takes precious little effort to paint even an act of compassion as damaging." She looked down at him, her eyes wide, searching for something in his face. "What is it that guides you? You make decisions that shake the world, yet you always seem so assured. I wish I had your confidence."

Thule was startled into a laugh. "I wish I had yours. It's all in your perspective, I guess." He frowned at her thoughtfully. "You almost sound like you admire me. I'm just a dwarf, you know. Until this—" he raised his hand where the Anchor flashed—"I was nothing more than a petty criminal."

"It is because of that that I do admire you. I may not always agree, but I cannot imagine anyone else who could do what you have done. You were a prisoner, reviled by everyone. I was convinced of your guilt, as were so many others. But you have emerged from every trial victorious. And your background … You have come up from nothing to become very much something. That is worthy of admiration."

He felt as if he must be glowing from her praise. He wanted to melt into the floor. Without thinking, he stepped closer to her, very close, and looked up into those wide grey eyes, so unusually soft and vulnerable. "If I'm guided by anything, it's you." He wished he had Varric's command of language, to tell her all the ways that she moved and inspired him.

She swallowed as if his words had touched her unexpectedly, but her reply was tart. "The blind leading the blind."

Thule reached for her hands, folding them into his, amazed that she allowed it, that she curled her fingers around his so willingly. "I don't think you're blind."

"Clearly you haven't been paying attention," she said.

Their eyes held each other, the moment heady around them, the very air intoxicating. "Haven't I?" he asked softly, his meaning clear. He had been paying attention to nothing but her practically since they met, and he was fairly sure she knew it.

For a brief second, he thought there might be something, he thought she might lean down and … But she pulled her hands away, holding them together behind her back as if she didn't want them free to move of their own volition. "If anyone had told me when we first met that I would be pleased to have you lead me, I would have throttled them."

He laughed. "I'm sure you would have. Especially if it had been me."

Cassandra's answering smile warmed him all through. "The Maker chose very well."

"Thank you. I hope … I hope we can call each other friends."

"I hope so, too." She nodded, but she also turned away, toward the door. "We still have a long road to travel, Inquisitor, but wherever it takes us … I'm glad you're here."

Thule watched her go. For now, friends was enough. More than enough. But someday …

Even as Bethany rushed off to her room, Lilias followed her. Bethany probably didn't want her to, but this was her little sister—it had been Lilias's job to protect her all their lives. She wasn't going to stop now.

She pushed the door closed behind her. Bethany was standing on the far side of the room, one hand on the night table to steady herself, tears rolling down her face in a steady stream. Her utter silence was more pathetic to Lilias's eye than the loudest sobs would have been. The pain went too deep to voice.

"I have to go," Bethany said at last.

"Not if you don't want to," Lilias responded automatically, but in the end it was true—they were facing down the Grey Wardens, and Bethany had to go.

Her sister didn't bother to negate the optimistic statement, and they stood there, looking at each other, for a long time.

"Father always told me that I was the strong one," Lilias said. "In his endless lectures about how I had to protect you and Carver, about my responsibilities toward the family, he always said I was the strong one. He said you were delicate, and Carver was brittle, and I had to be strong."

"Tell me something I didn't know."

"No, but he was wrong. Because … because I broke, Bethany. Kirkwall broke me. Anders … Alistair … Mother … it was all too much. I couldn't stand under it. But you—you're still here, and you're still strong, and you're still fighting."

Bethany shook her head. "I gave up. I ran and hid."

"You stayed alive, Bethany. You stayed alive, and you brought your information to me, and through me to the Inquisition. You brought me back and made me be part of the world again—I wouldn't have done it for anyone else." She took a careful step toward her sister. "Whatever I make of my life from here, I owe it to you."

"There was a time when I would have given anything to hear those words from my fearless big sister."

"I was never fearless."

"I know that now, now that it's too late. If you had ever—Lilias, if you had ever shared that with me, if I could have known you …"

"We can have that now!"

Bethany simply looked at her, sorrowfully, and Lilias understood that her sister fully expected to die at Adamant.

"Then you don't go," she said forcefully. "You don't go. You … you get away before the armies march. I'll help you. Varric will know a—"

"No."

"But—"

"Not this time. I ran for my life before because it was the only thing I could do, because I was afraid. I didn't understand what I was feeling, what my friends were feeling. But I do now, and if I go to Adamant, maybe—maybe I can stop this. Maybe I can save them," she finished in a whisper.

Lilias reached out for her little sister, and she felt Bethany's thin arms close around her. "I love you, Bethany."

"I love you, too. No matter what else I've said, I love you, too." They clung to one another for a long time, before Bethany withdrew from the embrace. "There's … something I have to do. I'll see you on the march, all right?"

"All right."

Bethany left the room, leaving Lilias standing there alone. Truly alone. "No," she said out loud, firmly. "Father, Mother, no. This will not happen. Not if I can help it."

Leliana knelt before the statue of Andraste in the rookery, waiting for words to come, but she didn't know what to pray for. She hadn't had words for the Maker in a long time. Not since the Conclave. Not since long before the Conclave, if she were being honest with herself. And if she couldn't be honest with herself, then she truly had become what Marjolaine made her.

She heard a sound behind her, a soft scuffing of shoes on the floor, and she turned. Bethany stood there at the top of the stairs, watching her. A small smile crossed Bethany's face. "I'm sorry, were you waiting to pray?"

Leliana smiled, too, in acknowledgement of their first meeting. "I was hoping to pray. As I do every time I kneel before the Maker's Bride."

"But you can't?"

"No. Not in … a very long time."

"Since my cousin?"

The room was silent other than the rustlings of the birds, all the scouts at dinner or in bed, and the silence stretched between them until eventually Leliana yielded. "Yes. In truth, since then."

"She must have been quite something."

"She was. As are you."

Bethany smiled, a hint of bitterness in the corner of her mouth. "I'm surprised you remembered me. I was hardly worth it."

"There was always steel in you. If—if we had had longer, perhaps I could have helped you find it." Leliana had taken a hesitant step toward the other woman, and she half-expected Bethany to turn and leave, but she stayed where she was.

"It's kind of you to say so."

"It's not kind. It's true. Kind would be to tell you … well, in truth, under the circumstances, I don't know if it would be kinder to tell you that you meant nothing to me, or kinder to tell you that it was true love."

"You know, then."

"That you must go to Adamant? Of course you must. That you expect to die there? You wouldn't be here if you did not."

Bethany smiled more fully this time. "That's true enough. You're very good at your job."

"Yes. Sometimes I wish that things were different. That I was different. But … this is where I have come in my life."

"You're doing good work."

"I am. So why do I feel so empty?" Leliana asked in a whisper.

"My life was preserved—why do I feel so angry?" Bethany shrugged. "Perhaps it's because neither of us is where we wanted to be."

Leliana met the other woman's amber eyes across the space between them. "Perhaps … perhaps tonight we could pretend—"

"That we had the chance to choose?"

"Yes."

Bethany nodded, slowly, and Leliana reached out a hand, taking Bethany's in hers and drawing her toward a door almost hidden in the wall nearby. Inside it was Leliana's room, furnished as simply as if she was still in the Chantry.

It had been a long time since their last kiss, and both of them were tentative as their lips met, each fighting to find the woman she had been in the woman she'd become. But as they kissed, they relaxed, their bodies warming into each other.

In keeping with the roles they were inhabiting, Leliana moved first, unbuttoning Bethany's shirt slowly, a single button at a time, soft kisses on the skin as it was revealed. And then the shirt was sliding off Bethany's shoulders and down her arms, and just as slowly Leliana removed the breastband, making the moment last before she moved her hands up over Bethany's stomach to cup the firm breasts in her hands.

Bethany growled low in her throat. Her hands cupped the side of Leliana's face, her mouth hungrily seeking Leliana's. This kiss was passionate, firm, demanding, the kiss of a woman who knew what she wanted, where the last had been that of the young girl she had once been, softer and more tentative. Leliana felt her own hunger rising; how long had it been? She could not remember.

The rest of their clothes came off, piece by piece, as that hot, hungry kiss went on. At last they tumbled together to Leliana's bed, Bethany's leg curving around Leliana's hip to hold them together. Her mouth found Leliana's breast, tugging at the nipple, suckling hard, so that Leliana felt the pull of it, the sweetness and the ache, all the way to her core. She held Bethany's dark head against her, wanting more.

Bethany pushed her back against the pillows, straddling Leliana's hips. Her tongue danced over Leliana's nipples, her hands squeezing and massaging the sensitive breasts. Leliana's fingers clutched Bethany's hips, holding on hard, her legs moving restlessly as the pleasure and the need rose in her.

"Please touch me," she whispered at last. Sister Nightingale, the Left Hand of the Divine, the Inquisition's Spymaster, would never beg, but tonight she could pretend to be just Leliana, and Leliana could ask for what she wanted.

Bethany shifted just enough to reach between Leliana's legs. Her hand slid up and down the sensitive skin on the inside of Leliana's thighs, up and down, slowly, gently, maddening as the fingertips just brushed Leliana's core.

Leliana lifted her hips to get closer to those fingers. She drew Bethany's head down to hers and kissed her again, wildly, and Bethany relented, stroking and circling as Leliana moaned into her mouth.

She caressed Bethany's back, her hands wandering up and down, but Bethany was so thin Leliana could feel her ribs and each knob of her spine, and that was too much like reality. She reached around to touch Bethany, sliding her fingers through the moisture she found there.

Bethany gave a keening cry when Leliana's fingers moved inside her, thrusting back with her hips. She mimicked the motion between Leliana's legs, and they rocked together, kissing passionately, their sighs and moans almost sobs into each other's mouth, the release emotional as well as physical when it came. They clung together, weeping silently, each for her own lost dreams. At some point, the kissing began again, and with it the touching, and so it went for the rest of the night, giving and taking, losing themselves in dreams of what might have been.