Hello friends, I was a dummy and cut the last chapter in the wrong spot, so if you read it Thursday or Friday I would, of course, advise going back to read the updated end to ch. 5 before proceeding with this one.

Also, I just realized has been pulling my POV change separators from the document when I upload it? Sorry about that, I'll go back and fix them now and that should make this easier to read.


"Nimue! Nimue!" She never should have listened to Leliana, to leave Nimue behind at Skyhold—! Her daughter's absence had been carving a hole in Guinevere's chest since that terrible thought had first whispered into the dark of her mind: Solas is Fen'Harel. Solas is the Dread Wolf. Her hand burned for her daughter's soft, small body in her grip, and her urgency had grown only more powerful with every word out of Solas' mouth.

"Nimue!" She didn't care if she was making a scene; she didn't care what the rest of the Inquisition thought. She was sprinting up the steps, shoving past anyone who did not get out of her way, crashing into the walls in the stairwell as she swung around the turns. "Nimue!" The crib in her room was empty, and Guinevere almost screamed.

What have you done with her! As she raced back down the stairs, she plowed into Cassandra, who had accompanied her back to Skyhold, on a brief detour from her work reforming the Seekers of Truth, after getting the truth of Solas' identity and his plan from Gwen. Fortunately for Cassandra, there was no chance of Guinevere unbalancing her.

"She's gone! Nimue!"

"We'll find her," Cassandra assured her at once, looking down into Gwen's panicked eyes. "She can't be far, and I don't think Solas would hurt her." The yet was buried in Cassandra's voice.

"Are you looking for the baby?" Both women snapped their attention to a foot soldier who had approached their commotion.

"Where is she?" Guinevere looked like she might seize the man and Cassandra tensed to intervene.

"Out in the garden with Scout Harding, last I saw." Guinevere, who had never considered, in her alarm, a more innocuous possibility for Nimue's absence, looked up at Cassandra again, then took off in that direction, flying out into the courtyard garden.

"Nimue!"

"Inquisitor!" The genial Harding waved from a checkered blanked laid out on the ground, and ripping up blades of grass at the edge of the blanket was Nimue.

"Mamae!" When she saw her mother bursting through the foliage like a crazed horse loosed on an unsuspecting garden, her plump face split into a smile, and she waved her fat hands. "Mamae is home!" Guinevere hit the grass on her knees and pulled the puzzled child into her arm, squeezing Nimue against her chest until she squirmed and whined in protest.

Harding cast a bewildered look at Cassandra, bringing up the rear, as Guinevere nearly wept over her daughter's curly black head.

"Is something wrong?" she asked. "I'm sorry if I caused any trouble; I only thought she might like a bit of fresh air, and we didn't know when you'd be back…"

"It's not you," Cassandra said. "The Exalted Council was…well, we'll discuss it later." Nimue protested again, louder, and Guinevere at last loosened her grip, holding the child on her knees so she could see her face. "Things are not good." Cassandra's grim tone would have conveyed that even without the blunt admission, but Guinevere didn't tear her eyes from Nimue to see how Harding was responding.

"She's been alright since we've been gone?" she asked Harding. Still a little wide-eyed over the possibility she had caused upset with the Inquisitor's child, and the foreboding nature of Cassandra's commentary, Harding nodded.

"Nothing unusual here," she said. "Ambassador Montilyet's been keeping a good eye on her." They were hardly short of helping hands—once it was out that the Inquisitor had a baby, plenty in the Inquisition were ready to join in raising the girl, and little Nimue was never without a lap to sit on, a toy to bite, or a song to put her to sleep.

"Thank you, Lace." Guinevere rose to her feet, cradling the child in her arm, which was when Harding seemed to realize she was now short of a hand.

"By the Stone! What happened to your—"

"That's for the discussion later," Cassandra cut in. Harding's eyes were wider than ever when Guinevere took Nimue off. She didn't waste time trying to get back to her own room; she was desperate just for a private location anywhere and she found herself in a guest room that had not yet been renovated in which to have her little meltdown.

"Oh, Nimue!" She collapsed on the floor, her back against the wall, holding Nimue in her good arm, pressing her lips again and again to the top of her daughter's head. "Oh, gods, lethallan. I was so afraid…" She took deep breaths and let Nimue pull at her ears and her clothes, but insistently returned the child to her lap every time Nimue tried to crawl away. Eventually, she got her frenzy under control, and relaxed enough to study Nimue.

The girl was, of course, no different than when she had left. But now Guinevere knew what ran in her blood; she knew what Nimue was. She had born a child by Fen'Harel. It was like something out of myth or story.

Bored of her mother's hysteria, Nimue found a seat on the floor and entertained herself with a bit of rock or rubble, bashing it against the stone floor, greatly pleased with the resultant racket.

There was never a moment Guinevere had thought her anything other than a baby; she could have been any elven child. But what myth ran in her veins? What power? What destiny?

Solas knew her name.

The moment it passed his lips Guinevere thought she might expire on the spot. What was she afraid of, though? That Solas would hurt Nimue? Did she really believe that? Some part of you does, she thought. Or you wouldn't be afraid. Being a mother, she had found, made her afraid of all kinds of things she had never thought about in the past. Letting her child loose into the world felt like watching a group of people play catch with a treasured family heirloom.

He was willing to destroy Thedas to restore the Elvhen, though…what was one little life, even if it was his child's? And he knew Gwen could not lower her staff against him; she could not allow him to bring such ruin on the world, even if she understood why he wanted to do it. To succeed, he had to remove her from his chessboard.

But you lied to me. I loved you.

Why Solas had lied was obvious, and no amount of pain she felt over his lies convinced her it had been totally unreasonable, from his perspective. But you let me love you, she thought bitterly. The hours they spent in discussion about elven art, language, culture; the walks before camp had woken, in the early hours of the morning when they seemed the only ones alive in the world; the way he took her hands when he showed her a casting technique; the dreaming…With every breath he had lied, and he had known what that lie would come to, and he let her fall anyway (and worse, let her think she would be caught).

I would not lay with you under false pretenses.

But you did! she wanted to scream. The night in the Emerald Graves: their tender embrace, and the swath of stars over the clearing like a million little wishes, and the rustle of the wind in the leaves like the whole world breathing with them, and the way he had looked at her, as if she held the moon in her arms!—all these things that had formed such a sweet memory had turned to ash in Guinevere's mouth. When she had laid beside him in the grass, and told him of all the things they would do when the Inquisition was done, had it pained him at all? What was it he'd said?

It would please me to go with you. Something like that. Not a lie, but a deceit, he would say. Necessary. He couldn't tell her the truth. But he let her go on, believing they had a future together.

Fen'Harel ma ghilana. The Trickster had led her down this path, and she had been too foolish to see it, for all the keeper's teachings. Gods…what would she tell the clan about this, about Solas? About the Veil? The gods? Her head began to ache, and she returned a simpler question: that of who had told Solas about Nimue.

Agents of Fen'Harel have penetrated the Inquisition.

Rising to her feet, Guinevere grabbed Nimue and threw open the door. She strode out to the garden, where Harding was folding up the blanket and gathering her books.

"Where is Siobhan?" she demanded without preamble.


Solas had dismissed Siobhan earlier that day, telling Finian to find a new assignment for her. Guinevere had fired her less than an hour after returning to Skyhold, and Siobhan was positively incensed (and convinced Vivienne had something to do with it, despite having long departed for Val Royeaux and the College of Magi), but Solas did not have the energy to manage her upset. It was just as well—he didn't think he could take any more of questioning her about Gwen and Nimue, pretending he had some strategic interest in her answers, and corralling his reactions appropriately. The only other thing she could report was that the Inquisition was doing a great purge of its servants, and vastly shrinking its overall force, but that it was not disbanding, as far she could tell.

Guinevere was retooling for a new purpose.

Solas…var lath vir suledin!

Her words, and her agonized wails as the anchor burned through her flesh echoed relentlessly in his mind, plaguing him when he tried to sleep and stealing his focus during his waking hours. Guinevere was convinced he could be "saved." It would have hurt less for her to curse and condemn him as the wicked, misanthropic liar Dalish mythology always told her he would be.

He should not have mentioned Nimue. It told her he knew about the girl's existence (but would Gwen not have determined that on her own?), and he had seen the panic flare in her eyes with that knowledge. Did she think he would harm the babe?

If he had thought time would dull his recollection of the softness of her eyes, the scent of her hair, the touch of her calloused palms, he was sorely disappointed. That night still sprang to mind as vividly as if it had been yesterday; and the sound of Gwen's breath, and the warmth of her cheek, and the pulse of her blood at her throat—and the way she looked at him, as if he were not Fen'Harel, only Solas: Solas, whom she loved; Solas, whom she trusted; Solas, whom she defended with word and with spell. Solas, for whom she had hinted that she would leave her clan, surrender her position as first of the keeper, and follow him on whatever journeys he took, if he wished it.

Solas, who had walked away from her.

He should not have taken that night. He hadn't meant to—it had been greedy, and selfish, and she deserved better than that, but now she bore the cost of his impulsive desire. Desire for a life that was not—could never be—his. There had been a moment, looking up at the stars behind her head, and the way they seemed to reflect in her eyes, when he thought damn the Evanuris. Damn the Elvhen. Why should he give her up, give this up, to fight another war for someone else? It was a thought he clung to as long as he could, knowing it would never stay, and it faded cold as he rested his head on Guinevere's breast and felt the repetitive caress of her fingers on the tip of his ear, knowing he was still bound to his task.

Trying to get a grip on his thoughts, Solas shut his eyes, but the memory of hearing Guinevere's voice for the first time in two years swept over him and wrenched the arrow that had been lodged in his heart since he walked away from her bare-faced, embarrassed, and she doesn't know. She thinks it's because of her. When he had turned, when he had seen her, he knew all his memories, all his dreams, were shadows dancing on a cave wall. The sight of her flooded him, feverish, and he felt on the precipice of trading the future of the Elvhen for her to look at him with the tenderness and affection she'd once had, to feel her presence in easy peace with his own, to talk, of nothing, and everything. There was no time for that, of course (this is what he was trading, this is the price he paid for their future, and what was sacrifice worth, if there was no blood price?), but he had still looked, looked to see if—

Had he not been disappointed that Nimue was not with her?

It was good that she was not. The battlefield was no place for a child of such tender years, and it was good that Solas did not see her. She was not his; he had no part of her. It was Guinevere who had born her, birthed her, raised her—the girl was entirely hers. He should not ever begin to feel that he was a part of her.

More than that, Nimue was a weakness. It was common knowledge in Thedas then that the Inquisitor had a baby, conceived during her tenure as Inquisitor. If the true parentage of Nimue became known, he did not like to think at what risk that might put the baby. Nor did he consider it impossible some enemy of his own might try to use her against him. It was best, then, that he stay focused, and keep away from Nimue (Still, she had been born of love, and he wondered if that would make a difference someday, that whatever the failings of her parents—her father—she had been conceived in such tenderness and purity of affection).

But Guinevere…

Once, they had walked in dreams together. He had held her hand through elven ruins; they had danced in resplendent balls long since concluded; they had sat on grassy hilltops and watched ancient civilizations carry on. Sometimes, when they passed some place of significance, Gwen would stretch up to murmur in his ear: Can we dream here?

Now she slept alone, and when Siobhan mentioned Gwen's remark about wishing to be somniari, it jerked on the arrow in his breast. He knew what she thought—if she was a somniari, she could find him, at least in dreams.

In their sleep, perhaps there was a world where he did not have to strike her down to bring back the Elvhen, or where he could put love before honor, before duty.

When he left the Inquisition, he had allowed himself a period to wallow, and then tried to excise Guinevere of Clan Lavellan from his mind. Even Solas would admit this project had not gone smoothly, but when Siobhan brought him the first news about the baby, it had simply fallen to pieces. Now that he had seen her again, it felt like someone had pulled the arrow backwards out of his chest, and trying to stop thinking of her was like trying to stop the wound bleeding.

Haunting her dreams was not fair, and it was not wise, but he thought if he allowed himself this indulgence, he could stay sane in his waking hours. To just catch a glimpse of her while she slept, not to speak to her, or investigate the child, just to see her from afar…

It was like a starving man trying to ration an influx of food.

He was grateful for one thing: Guinevere was not a somniari, and could not see into his dreams the way he could walk in hers. He did not want her to see his fears, nor the palace on the mountainside, magic-made of wood and gold where the sun was perpetually at its first breaking or its falling, and Guinevere lived with Nimue in her arms, and she smiled at him, and passed Nimue to him, and the baby cooed and laid easily against his chest.

No one questioned why wolves howled, and this served him, but somewhere, somehow, he wished that Guinevere would hear, and know his howl from the rest, and know that he cried for her, and now for Nimue, and what might have been theirs, in another world.