Guess where to find the translations.

In case you're worried, Lisell is 100% lying about what she plans to do to Briala. You really think she would just give an adversary that information? In anything that is specific to her plans for the future, remember that while talking to Solas she is the definition of an unreliable narrator. Some of it is probably true...but only because she sees a benefit in telling him the truth.


In Confidence

Lisell. Dark robe. Dark hair, shorter than - shorter than what?

A book.

"I can't talk - or read - while I'm busy kissing you." That was reasonable. Too reasonable.

"Y isalan dhava ma."

"Y isalan dava…"

But this time I don't let her finish. I pull her to me. Kiss her. Now that I know how it ends, why would I let her waste any time on a book?

"Solas!"

The sound of her voice is different - not in its tone, its pitch, or the cadence of her speech. It is different...differently.

Later. She doesn't resist as I pull her close for another kiss. Now that I know how it ends - now that I know -

How do I know?


I came fully awake with the abruptness of a snapped bone, and reality and dream parted ways just as completely. I had Lisell by the waist. A breath ago I was kissing her - I could still taste her lips - but when I froze she used the opportunity to lift her mouth from mine.

Memory began to filter in and I released her with a stab of apprehension. What must she think? Had I terrified her?

But, though no longer pressed so tightly against me, she didn't move away immediately, and I realized she was shaking. My first, panicked thought was tears - but then she rested her forehead on my shoulder, and I understood it was laughter.

Not understanding, I apologized anyway.

With the help of her right arm, which I now perceived she had been using to shake me awake before I pulled her onto the bed, she carefully maneuvered herself a few handbreadths away, but when I could see her face, she was still smiling. Ruefully, perhaps, but smiling.

"I don't believe I have ever had occasion to wake you before," she told me as she found a comfortable position - harder, without her left arm to support her head. "When you sleep, you very much...commit." Another burble of laughter escaped.

"I was dreaming," I explained. My voice still held the rumble of sleep, but my mind was getting sharper.

"Yes, I caught that," she retorted. "'Y isalan dhava ma.'"

My hand twitched, muscles responding instinctively to the request, before I realized she was quoting what I had said in my sleep. "I was dreaming of another time, before I - before you asked that I - "

She flopped onto her back with a huff of air. "Solas, ma lath, I need you to take my condition for eating less…" She hesitated. "Not less seriously," she said before I could suggest it. "Less rigidly. I need you to continue taking it seriously, but perhaps with more flexibility."

When she glanced my way, I could only stare back in confusion.

"Whatever else is true," she explained, turning again to stare up at the canopy covering the bed, "we love each other. You are still the first person I turn to when I have something to share - in my own mind during the time we have spent apart. Of course it will sometimes be your first instinct - or mine - to reach for the other. I'm not asking for perfection, just...an acknowledgement of my autonomy." Her gaze flickered over my face before returning to the shadows above our heads. "Since you aren't being entirely respectful of it in other areas."

As true as what she said was, I still believed my reasons were good - I couldn't respect a deranged plan like walking Nevarra, through days of wilderness, to board a ship to sail more than a week to Starkhaven. Alone. Even when she had possessed both her arms and had been in her best condition for battle, she hadn't gone on scouting missions alone. And if someone recognized her? The possible horrors were too great to contemplate.

Even so, I didn't argue - I was all too aware that she had settled on a deranged course at least partly in response to the fear and uncertainty I had left her to stew in while I chose the more convenient path of not thinking of her.

"I am grateful for the...flexibility," I said instead. One of my hands lay between us, my fingers nearly brushing a strand of her hair. She had taken out her braid sometime while I slept.

"Don't be," she responded, turning onto her side again, her face serious. "It isn't really for you. I'm just trying to keep my own sanity intact."

"I am grateful for your sanity as well," I told her.

That earned me a smile - and I began to see why she might pursue mine. Winning that one, in this moment, felt like an accomplishment I might take pride in.

"What were you dreaming of?" she asked, apparently intending to continue the conversation.

"Was there a reason you felt the need to wake me?" I asked, glancing around the rest of the room for the first time. It was dark outside, but the light didn't yet linger as it did in the summer. It might still be fairly early.

"Yes, I was getting tired. Now I'm not," she said with a shrug. "Or are you trying to avoid telling me of your dream?" she teased. "Maybe it didn't involve me at all?"

Her tone was light, and, looking in her eyes, I found no shadows. She didn't fear my dreams. "Usually, there would be no question - I have control of my dreams, and you are the only one I would ever wish to dream of, if I dared dream of such things. This night was...somewhat exceptional. I was too tired and did not have the mental discipline to remain aware, so the dream caught me off guard. But it was still you. I believe it would always be you, regardless."

"Sweet talker." She nudged the hand that lay between us with her elbow. "What did you dream of? You told me that once, didn't you? Y isalan dhava ma." She tilted her head appealingly.

"The night you wanted to finish your book," I reminded her.

"Sacrifice in Stone," she said with a smile, and then laughed. "Oh - of course. You will never know how much - I don't know that I ever thanked you for it, but I appreciated your help immensely. More as the years have gone on, perhaps - I still have my copy at Skyhold, and let myself read it around once a year, when I'm feeling particularly hunted."

I raised an eyebrow at her. "You cried on my shoulder until near dawn."

"That is precisely how you know it was a good story," she retorted. "And nothing is as relaxing as the aftermath of a good cry."

It was an effort not to smile. Though I was tempted to put that particular conclusion down to naiveté, perhaps feeling hunted did not lend itself well to sexual release, and she had identified the correct remedy for her particular irritants.

"Were you dreaming about how that night might have ended differently?" she asked, her gaze flickering across my face.

Dangerous ground. "This time, yes, I suppose, though I had no thoughts beyond kissing you. I dreamed of it last night, too - and that was simply the memory, played out." I decided to move the conversation to safer territory. "It was - an interesting reminder. You were different, then."

"Younger," she agreed. "In - a lot of ways."

Perhaps not such safe territory after all, though the dangers were different.

"Solas," she said before I could come up with a way of retreating again, "I have been thinking of what you said, last night." Color touched her cheeks and darkened her lips. "Before the part about making me forget my name."

What had I said? I had reiterated my belief in her near-perfection. "Which part?" I asked.

"The part about - how you make me doubt things about myself," she explained. "I - you - I know you must have seen that I never used to doubt myself, not seriously. Everything I worked to attain, I managed to take hold of. The lesson of my life was, try harder, and eventually you will have what you want. Until you."

I knew - I had thought similar things myself - and yet hearing it from her lips hurt many times worse than any of my own thoughts. "Ir abelas, vhenan," I whispered.

Her gaze was steady. "I know you are, but - " Her chin went up a little, and she set her jaw stubbornly. "Tel'abelas, arasha. Yes, you broke my confidence, but that just shows how brittle it was - a child's confidence in her place at the center of the world."

"That doesn't justify - " I began.

"I know," she cut me off. "But…" Her gaze became introspective and she frowned. "A part of me wanted - wished - that Corypheus had killed me after you left. Not always, but sometimes in dark moments. Before that, I thought - so many things, in succession, but I really believed I would bring you to your senses and we would be together. After - I had to face the truth. You were gone. And - yes, I broke. Then I only had two choices: to give up everything, run away, lose myself somewhere - or to find the pieces of my confidence and discover a way to reforge it into something I could live with. I can't say I wasn't willing to give up on myself. I was, sometimes. But there were still others who needed me, and I couldn't quite throw away the world because of my own broken heart. So I chose reforging. And then, to my surprise, I didn't become - a pasted-together thing with pieces still missing. I - became stronger."

I wished I could believe her, but I didn't know if I did. Her gaze dropped to the counterpane and she traced its embroidered pattern with one finger. "I know you look at me and see all the fault lines left behind - but I don't think you see the pattern they make. Like - like chainmail. What I was before was solid, but brittle - not - not very adaptable. Now - yes, maybe sometimes you see a ring or two come loose, but the entire structure isn't under threat from losing a link or two in the weave. And - honestly, it's not that hard to fix. I already did the hard part. The rest is just...maintenance.

"Besides," she went on, "I never could have done what I do now if my life's lesson hadn't changed. I was a terrible politician."

"I thought you were quite impressive at Halamshiral," I protested mildly, still turning her metaphor over in my mind. "Thrown to the varterral, you turned them on each other and came out having tamed the two most dangerous."

"You haven't spent enough time immersed in the politics of Val Royeaux," she replied with a rueful laugh. "I was lucky. I came in as an outsider, an unknown, and even so, I had to rely on every bit of advice Josephine, Leliana, and Vivienne gave me. That was enough, then, but I saw politics as a battlefield, and that kind of view is how a smart man like Gaspard de Chalon ends up dead instead of sitting on a throne."

"It seems much like a battlefield to me," I told her. "Words and small gestures instead of weapons and feints."

"No," she said with a laugh. "On a battlefield, you know the general shape of who is and isn't on your side. Politics is more like - a dueling ground, only there are a thousand duels happening at once. And in Orlais, at least, all the participants are masked. Some of them you may know, either because they have allowed you to know, or because you recognize the little flourishes they use as they fend off their opponents, but you can't possibly identify all of them. Fight in a way considered out of bounds, and watch your own 'side' attempt to put you down with at least as much fervor as your avowed enemies. Step between combatants in the wrong duel, and both may turn on you. But stay out of a duel you should have been a part of? Whoever wins is coming for you next. Just trying harder is near the surest possible way to get yourself killed. It may superficially look like a battlefield, but they have very little in common."

I had played my share of political games, and wasn't convinced they were all as complicated as Lisell presented them - but, then, perhaps I had played more poorly than I had ever imagined.

She waited another moment to see if I had anything to say, and then went on: "In any case, returning to the present - Leliana cannot spend her days advising me. Vivienne's concerns no longer align very closely with mine. Josephine's work isn't to promote me or the Inquisition, it's far more complicated than that - and she needs a partner, not a pawn. Or even a knight."

Her face hardened. "That night in Halamshiral, I didn't tame any varterral, I merely cowed most of them and convinced the two most dangerous not to come at me from the front. When I return - Briala and I will have a reckoning, if Leliana has not already dealt with her."

"You are aware Briala was, at least in part, behind the attack?" I asked, mildly impressed.

"My best guess before you disavowed the attack - and this assumes I can trust what you tell me, which it seems I do - was that the two of you had finally allied. It's a scenario that has given me more than a few sleepless nights," she admitted.

"Briala cares far too much for her power in the world as it is to wager her life on more power in another," I told Lisell.

"I'm aware," she replied. "That has certainly been true, it likely continues to be true. But - these fault lines in my confidence? Learning them has given me something I never knew I needed - the capacity to read some of the fault lines in others. And there are circumstances in which Briala would become a true believer in your cause. All it would require is the weight of enough personal loss, and she would shatter, ready to be used for whatever purpose you cared to put her."

Would Briala be useful to me? Or was Lisell playing the Game now, trying to tempt me into an action that would either expose me or weaken Briala? I would have to think on it. No matter what she said, I wasn't fool enough to believe she had let down her guard enough to give me useful information that didn't also benefit her in some way. "What will you do to Briala?" I wondered aloud.

"That depends on what Leliana has done," she answered. "I know what Leliana will try - place an agent or two in Briala's household, and then let her know it, so she knows we know what she did, and also that we have the reach to remove her if she becomes inconvenient. But placing agents close enough and quietly enough isn't simple, so Leliana might not manage it. If that is the case, it will be on me and on Josephine to quietly, but not too quietly, stir anti-elven sentiment to a small degree, in just the right places, in order to make Briala's position precarious - and then calm it again."

"And if you misjudge?" I asked, not entirely certain I approved.

"Then people die," she said evenly. "That is always the consequence that hangs over all I do."

A truth I could not argue with. "Have you come to enjoy the Game?" I asked instead.

She hesitated. "I would, I think, if it were all meaningless counters of status and prestige. But it isn't. Lives ride on whispers on ballroom floors, on courses presented at banquets, on smiles and frowns in the right - or wrong - places. It's repulsive. I play, and I play fiercely, to the best of my ability, because there is no other way to right the wrongs I want to see righted. But I am rarely tempted to forget the loathsome difference between the insignificance of the actions and the enormity of the consequences."

I took a breath, contemplating all she had said. "I took pleasure in it, seeing you somehow both face the harsher truths of what being Inquisitor meant, and yet also retain your - innocence, I suppose," I admitted to her. "You put on the role like a set of formal vestments, and then took them off again when they were no longer necessary. I don't believe that is entirely true anymore - you have grown into the role, or it has grown into you. I have little pleasure in seeing it, and yet - I believe I admire you all the more for it."

Lisell's lips turned up slightly in a smile more resigned than grateful. "How often is gaining wisdom pleasurable? It doesn't mean it isn't worth having. You called me wise once before - the first time you ever told me you loved me."

"I remember," I tell her, my lips suddenly feeling alive with the memory of the kisses we had exchanged on her balcony that day.

"You were wrong. I was merely thoughtful, then." She shrugged her right shoulder. "It isn't a bad way to begin, but it isn't the same."

"And now you are wise?" I teased.

"That can only be assessed after the fact," she told me. "I'm wiser."

I wished I had been so clear-sighted when similarly young. "Vhenan'ara, I - " I ought not say it, but here we were lying on this bed, exchanging confidences - and she had given more than I had. "I still curse the fate that brought you to this time, when I needed you so much more - so many things might have transpired differently, had I had your wisdom at my side while I was...choosing among terrible options." When I remembered that past, it now felt as though a gaping absence followed me from decision to disastrous decision, twisting everything I tried to do as I spun in my own thoughts, dizzy with my inability to trust anyone.

"Mar'abelas in're mis ara shasha." Lisell's gaze tethered me to the present with a compassion I little deserved as she reached out to trace the edge of my ear with her fingers. I allowed her touch to soothe me, and then caught her hand, pressing a kiss to her palm.

"You are the last person I should turn to for consolation - " I began.

She hushed me with her fingers against my lips. "Eolasan. Eolasas. You have no way of forcing sympathy from me, and so you also know I offer it freely, in spite of everything we are...and aren't."

I closed my eyes, unable to face her as I accepted the comfort of her touch. And for a short space, I lied to myself again and let myself believe it changed...anything.


Sometime, I'm going to order these alphabetically just to screw with you. Not this time, though:

Y isalan dhava ma: "But I desire to kiss you," in case you forgot

Ma lath: My love

Ir abelas: I'm sorry

Vhenan: Heart/home

Tel'abelas: I'm not sorry, literally I think it would be..."no sorrow"?

Arasha: My joy

Vhenan'ara: Heart's desire

Mar'abelas in're mis ara shasha: Your sorrow is a blade in my happiness

Eolasan, eolasas: I know, you know