Niall's eyes were fixed on Anders as he tried to process the proposition that had just been made. It hung in the air between them – a shot at freedom. The word sounded so grand – freedom – it was something people wanted, in theory at least. It was what motivated would-be adventurers to leave their homes in all the novel's Niall had read. But to someone who'd lived in the Tower for as long as he could remember, it was a concept that may as well only exist between the pages of a book. It wasn't something he had ever craved – perhaps he had entertained the idea in the abstract, a what-if hypothetical as plausible as what if the tranquil could fly? He'd joked with Torrin from time to time that he'd happily live as an isolationist, shacked up in some cave in a forest at the edge of nowhere - but never once had he seriously considered the possibility that he would not be in Kinloch Hold until his dying day.

"Cat got your tongue?" Anders smiled but there was an edge in his voice that betrayed his eagerness to hear Niall's response.

"I don't know what to say." It was a weak answer but all he could come up with. Escape was not the dream of any sane mage, the notion was for lunatics, lunatics with a death wish. But looking at Anders' face filled with reluctant hope as he searched his friend's expression for any sign of willingness to join him – he didn't look like a man on a suicide mission. How, after everything he'd been through, Anders was still able to summon enough optimism to believe his next escape would work out – Niall thought it was nothing short of awe inspiring.

His whole life had been in the Tower, he had only fleeting memories of his mother and a time before magic and mages. He did recall the day he was taken from her though. Two templars had been summoned to their local chantry after his mother had brought Niall to the Revered Mother and told him firmly to show her what you can do with your hand. Niall had obediently clenched his tiny hand into a fist, screwed his eyes shut in concentration, and waited a few seconds until shards of ice began to form beneath his skin, starting in his palm and branching backwards. They were melted within seconds by which time the Revered Mother's face was ashen.

The templars came within the hour. As they prepared to take him away, Niall's mother placed a hand on each of her son's shoulders and with her face resolutely expressionless, she told him to be strong because the Maker meant him for great things.

So, those first few years in the Tower, although Niall was as frightened and homesick as any of the other children, he clung tightly to the idea that he was there for a reason, there because the Maker willed it. That thought made him studious and resilient, but it also quashed any flicker of rebellion in him that might have led to thoughts of escape. And while he'd long since grown out of any notion that he was special, the obedience it had forged in him still lingered.

And then there was the other thing. The thing that he had spent weeks ignoring. Whenever the thought of it had drifted to the edge of his consciousness, Niall had refused to acknowledged it. The Litany of Adralla, which was sitting in the Circle's stockroom waiting in case he should need to use it when, if, Uldred returned.

Anders was still looking at him, expectantly.

"I - can't." he managed after an eternity of silence had passed between them.

Anders forced himself to shrug, letting go of the hope he had allowed himself that Niall might say yes.

"I suppose you were a long-shot. You're loss, Enchanter." He paused, "Although, it would have been nice to have the company."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't apologise – please. Really we barely know each other and here I am asking you to risk your life."

Niall couldn't meet his eye. He realised he hadn't even asked what Anders' plan was. Would it matter, he wondered to himself, if the escape plan was brilliant, would it change his mind? Whatever Anders was planning was surely terrifying – involving days, maybe weeks, of not knowing if they'd make it to whatever end destination Anders had in mind. And even then, there would never really be an end. They could make it across the sea and all that would await them on the other side would be a new batch of templars to evade. No – no Niall couldn't do it; he never had been brave.

At least he knew the Tower. He had his research, friends, and enough day-to-day distractions that, in time, all the horrors he had been forced to confront these past weeks would fade into the background again. The acute awareness of the templars' blades, and blood magic, and possession would go back to being just as hazy as before, ever present yet never quite acknowledged.

"When?" asked Niall, "When are you going to…"

"Two nights from now." Anders cut him off, turned his back to Niall and started rooting through one of the boxes of supplies stacked in the cavern, "So, as you can imagine, lots to do."

Niall took his cue to leave. As walked away, he tried not to wonder what his decision would need for his friend, or whether Anders attempting to carry out a plan intended for three on his own would be the death of him.

-o0o-

Niall could barely keep his eyes open as he tried valiantly to eat the grapefruit that was meant to be his breakfast, but the dexterity required to extract the fruit was beyond him. He hadn't slept at all last night, his mind replaying his conversation with Anders over and over. Images of Anders drowning, of a templar's sword through his chest, of him chained again to the wall of the cell they had kept him in for over a year. Again and again the pictures appeared in his mind, the horrors making him all the more sure he'd made the right choice in refusing to go along with Anders' plan. Then, just as sleep had almost found him, Niall began to see a second set of images. Jowan, standing on the bank of Lake Calenhad, probably soaking wet and covered in blood but free. Then the picture changed and he saw himself and Anders, standing in Jowan's place. And that, more than any other, had been the one thought he couldn't shake from his mind.

"Oi!" Petra exclaimed as Niall plunged his spoon into the fruit at a strange angle and sent juice spurting across their table. He had been almost forgotten she was there.

"Sorry."

Petra frowned, "Are you still not sleeping properly after -,"

She trailed of but she'd said enough that Niall's eyes darted towards the templar on duty at the door, as though to check the man hadn't heard what she'd alluded to. It didn't matter whether or not there was a templar within earshot, there was nowhere in the Tower now where it didn't feel like they knew exactly what Niall was saying. He didn't bother to correct her about the most recent cause of his insomnia.

"Not really." He answered, forcing himself to pay attention to his friend again. In truth, even if last night he had been plagued with different thought, Niall hadn't managed more than an hour or two of uninterrupted sleep since the templars had taken him and it was taking its toll. He was still driving himself mad jumping at the slightest noise outside his door.

They lapsed back into silence.

All he could think about was Anders' offer. Freedom. And everything that might entail. Living in the Tower seemed sometimes to have the strange effect of warping time. It could feel like a mage had lived there for an eternity, everyday very much like the next and no prospect of things changing for the better. Their lives were endless yet entirely static. But the truth was Niall was still a relatively young man.

"Petra?"

"Mm?"

"Do you think we'd be married?"

Petra's eyes widened, having no idea where the question had come from.

"What are you on about?" she kept her voice light.

"I mean – if we were mundanes? Out there in the real world, like real people? Do you think if we'd met out there, we'd be married?"

"Is this a love confession?" she teased, or tried to but Niall, eyes bloodshot from exhaustion, found himself holding her gaze with an unnerving intensity. He was determined, now that he'd voiced the question, to see this line of thought through to its end. It was something he had never put in words before but always wondered.

Petra's lips parted as her instinct was to try a final time to defuse the tension, but something stopped her. Instead, she settled for a slight nod.

"Probably," was all she said.

"Me too," Niall continued, "when we first met, I-,"

"I know," she acknowledged solemnly, "I loved you too back then. Of course, I did. We both knew. But we both knew too that we couldn't. So -,"

"So, never let ourselves go there. And instead, you're best friend."

Petra just nodded because there it was, the thing neither of them had acknowledged in all their years of friendship – the simple truth that they would have fallen in love with each other were they not trapped in a place that made love like that impossible. A sense of grief passed between them as Petra reach across the table and placed her hand over his.

She studied his face, trying to discern what had prompted the morbid exercise in hypotheticals.

"Are you sure you're doing alright?" she asked quietly.

"Sorry," he said, the brief surge of bravery he had summoned having been used up in confessing what had gone unsaid for so long, "It was something Anders said yesterday that's all, it got me thinking."

Petra looked unconvinced but seemed to accept his explanation, still not completely recovered from the unexpected weight of their breakfast conversation.

"It's no good, you know, dwelling on what ifs. We're mages. The Circle walls are the edges of our world. Thinking about that for too long isn't never a good idea."

"Sorry, you're right."

"Anyway," she said, changing the subject, "You can't go around proposing marriage to me, what would your Senior Enchanter say."

Niall tensed.

"Torrin's been avoiding me," he replied, his mind returning to his actual life instead of the thousand possibilities that had been laid out in front of him when Anders' made his offer.

At first, Niall had been terrified that Torrin had disappeared but when he'd asked around it seemed Torrin was still teaching as usual, the only change to his schedule had been no longer seeing Niall. The last time they had been together Torrin had offered to let him stay the night, a small gesture that Niall knew hadn't been made lightly, not when he took into account the other man's aversion to both blatant rule breaking and other people messing up his personal quarters. But then the templars had taken Niall and he'd heard nothing from Torrin since. He had no idea why, but truthfully, he'd been too preoccupied to properly investigate.

"You know, Leorah told me he stopped her in the corridor yesterday and asked how you were doing. Although, she said he seemed – off, somehow."

"I haven't seen him in days."

"Strange." Mused Petra, turning her attention back to her breakfast.

What that could mean, Niall had no idea, but it was time he found out.

-o0o-

Enough was enough. If Torrin had a problem he could damn well tell Niall what it was. They weren't children after all and the Circle offered more to worry about than why a grown man was immature enough to be avoiding him. Or at least, that was what was going through Niall's mind when he accosted one of Torrin's apprentices in their dorm and demanded to know where the man's next class would be. Now armed with the number of the room he was guaranteed to find Torrin in, Niall marched straight towards it.

He reached the door a couple of minutes before the end of the class so slumped against the wall outside and waited. In a twisted way he hoped they were about to launch into a ruinous argument, or that Torrin would break down weeping and beg for forgiveness, neither reaction would be in character for either of them but still, Niall could live in hope for a gratuitous outpouring of emotion as a distraction from everything he was trying not to think about.

The classroom door opened and a dozen of the older apprentices trickled out, a couple of them glancing sideways at Niall as they passed him. He waited a few moments longer but when Torrin didn't emerge, Niall stepped inside.

The Senior Enchanter was clearing supplies from the desks, only noticing Niall when he cleared his throat causing Torrin to turn around, startled.

"Hello, stranger." Niall said in a neutral tone, unsure how their conversation was about to go.

To his surprise, Torrin smiled when he saw him, only for second though before the expression contorted into a frown.

"You look exhausted," was the first thing he said, so blunt and inadvertently insulting in that way Niall found far more endearing that he should.

"You've been avoiding me."

"I've been busy." Torrin said, so unconvincingly that Niall barked out a cruel laugh.

"Surely you can do better than that. Don't I deserve a better explanation than that – any explanation at all?"

Their eyes met, each daring the other to look away first. Then, to Niall's amazement, Torrin strode across the room to him, and pulled him into a crushing hug.

"It's so good to see you." Torrin mumbled.

It felt clumsy, awkward but Niall allowed himself to sink into the hug anyway. For a few seconds he felt calmer than he had in days, until he remembered the day before, when he himself had pulled Anders in for an equally out-of-character hug, and the overwhelming feeling of pity that had caused him to do it.

Niall pulled away, worried.

"What's wrong?"

"I'm sorry," said Torrin.

"I still don't understand -,"

"Wait." Torrin cut him before and for a moment Niall thought he was leaving, but instead checked none of his students were waiting for him outside then closed the classroom door.

"Leorah's been letting me know how you are. But I shouldn't – I can't see you. I'm sorry." There was real fear in his eyes.

"What do you mean?" When Torrin didn't answer Niall added, "I was terrified they'd taken you too, you know? The templars. When you didn't show up to my room with everyone else – I thought -,"

"They didn't," Torrin looked horrified, "I'm fine, I mean, I'm safe – they had no reason to question me."

Niall's worried look became a glare as he stood up straighter, defensively.

"Are you saying they did have reason to take me – to do what they did to me?"

"I'm not saying that. Of course, that wasn't justified, of course not. I only mean that they had no reason to think I was working with Jowan, whereas you…"

Niall's eyes went wide, horrified by the implication that it wasn't only the templar zealots that were suspicious of him.

"Is that why you're avoiding me? Torrin, do you think I'm a blood mage?"

The phrase hung in the air between them.

"I think," he said slowly, choosing each word with care, "that in the past few weeks you had grown quite close to Jowan. You even suggested I tutor him. And I know how friendly you'd gotten with that Anders, and his reputation is hardly unstained."

"What exactly are you accusing me off?" Anger starting to swell in his gut.

"No, no, you're getting this all wrong-,"

"Am I? Because it sounds like you're accusing me of-,"

"Nothing! I'm not accusing you of anything - its -," he faltered for a second but couldn't stop himself from blurting out, "it's Irving!"

"What?" Niall's voice came out quiet as the revelation drained all the anger out of him and replaced it with dread.

"It was Irving." Torrin repeated, "He asked to see me, the morning after the templars took you and Anders, although I didn't even know that had happened yet." Torrin moved to his desk chair and sat down, giving himself time to collect his thoughts into something coherent.

"He told me our suspicions had been confirmed, that Jowan was a blood mage."

"Our suspicions?"

Torrin nodded, "Irving came to me a few weeks ago, it must have been just after Uldred and the rest left for Ostagar, he told me he'd had concerns about Jowan for a while, and asked me to monitor him for any signs of … of possession."

Niall stayed silent so Torrin continued,

"I didn't really believe it. He was just a normal young man, a little bit cocky perhaps but I put that down to having spent so long under Uldred, he's always let his favourites get away with too much. But I was wrong, wasn't I, he was using blood magic the whole time and I missed it. Irving informed me of my fatal mistake, and that now the boy is at the bottom of the lake and his young initiate will spend her days in Aeonor. And then there was you, right in the middle of it somehow." He paused before finally admitting, "Irving's convinced you're a blood mage. But he has no evidence prove it, and that's what he wanted from me, he informed me it will be my job to find some."

Niall felt his whole body go cold, like he was being held in a Winter's Grasp.

"Torrin," he said slowly, "I swear to you. I have never once, I've never even been tempted to -,"

Torrin held up his hand, "I know. Or at least, I believe you. Perhaps, after I missed what I did with Jowan, perhaps I'm an idiot for trusting you. But, like an old fool, I do. The problem is -,"

"The problem is," Niall finished for him, "that what you believe, or the lack of evidence, none of that will matter if the First Enchanter has already decided I'm guilty."