My husband and I have been listening to The Book of the New Sun tetralogy and then staying up way too late to discuss and argue about it. Mark of a work with considerable literary value, I suppose, though he's more interested in speculating on the solutions to unresolved puzzles than...I don't know, analyzing the class structures of the society through a Marxist lens or trying to determine how much the narrative actually pushes back against Severian's problematic assumptions about women.

The point is: I should really sleep more.

Reckoning

Since I didn't yet have a bed - and Solas categorically didn't share my opinion regarding the floor as a perfectly reasonable place to sleep even when other options were available - I stayed that night in the room he had been moved to. It was still modestly sized - even leaving aside the new standards for "large" that my chamber now dictated - but the bed was big enough for us both and there was just enough space for two people to move about without constantly bumping into each other. If they were careful, anyway.

He had also been given or had otherwise acquired several more mattresses, all filled with feathers. I made him remove three.

We ate there together, too - he brought pasties and fruit-filled hand pies from the kitchen, relieving me of the need to eat in either the great hall or at the tavern. I was grateful. Approximately the last thing I wanted to do was sit in the middle of a staring crowd while I ate, even allowing that I wouldn't be able to see most of them staring.

It was almost enough to make me yet again put off asking at least some of the questions I needed to ask.

Almost.

We ate quietly - I was thinking and he appeared to have made a survey of Skyhold's library. He had several books stacked on his desk and, between neat bites of his meal, he opened them one by one to read through the chapter titles. I admired the play of expression across his face from my place on the edge of his bed, pleased I could so within Skyhold's walls, while I tried to decide how to frame my questions. When my pie was only a fond memory, I gathered my courage and began: "Solas, I need to talk to you."

He looked up from his book, his gaze appraising me as he no doubt felt my apprehension through our bond. "About what, vhenan?"

"I…" How was I to say it? Directly, I supposed - there was no tactful way to say what needed to be said, and apparently honesty between us was going to have to start with me. "I can tell when you're lying, and often when you're withholding something."

Through our bond, for an instant, I felt him weighing my words - then, for a brief moment, there was unbridled panic. His eyes widened and I saw him swallow - but that was all, and then he had it under control again, reduced to no more than uneasiness. "Ah." His brow furrowed as he no doubt did a quick review of our history and the lies he had told. "Our bond expanded after our time on the Storm Coast, and yet…"

And yet I had continued to rely on him - continued sharing a tent and pressing forward with our physical relationship. "Well, I don't think you're as good at lying as you think you are," I told him, repeatedly smoothing a strand of my hair between my fingers to avoid looking at him. "You told Cassandra the very first time we met that you couldn't imagine a mage having power the Anchor provides - as though it isn't self-evidently a spell that was created by someone . I didn't say anything because I didn't want to be blamed for its creation, but...I don't know what you thought I would think."

He blinked at me for a moment, and then laughed ruefully. "I don't believe, at that point, that I had any particular regard for your thoughts on any subject." I risked a glance at him and saw him pass a hand across his face. "I am a fool."

"Sometimes," I allowed. "Which...is no different from anyone else. Later, I thought you weren't telling me things because the humans keep looking to me for answers and I'm not terribly adept at lying. But…"

"But?" he echoed.

"You lied to me about the shivas'lath, at least by omission," I told him, averting my eyes again and wrapping my arms around myself. "You know more about it than you're admitting, or your knowledge comes from somewhere besides the Fade - I can't tell."

"Why have you not brought this up before now?" he asked.

"In part, I know there's a great deal you haven't lied about, most of it much more vital than what you have lied about. In part…" I looked at him, sitting across from me at the desk, his shoulders slumped as he stared at his hands. "In part, I know you're a good man, in spite of your words, and I trust you have good reasons for at least most of the lies you have told."

He looked up sharply, opening his mouth to argue.

"Solas, I don't think bad people become healers," I interrupted with considerable asperity before he could even begin to speak.

"And, as I keep saying, I am not a healer," he replied in the same tone.

"Aven dur'dirtha la'var siljosathen ha'misa," I retorted. "You're only the first one to volunteer any time anyone needs healing. You only do it with surpassing skill and patience. You only treat your patients with dignity and respect, no matter whom they may be."

He seemed mildly at a loss. "Nevertheless...I am not a healer."

"I've known you almost my entire life," I reminded him. "You have never let your opinion of the Dalish blind you to me, as an individual. In spite of your prejudices against my people, I think you would attempt to see any of us you met as individuals, because that is what you do."

His head fell into his hands. "If I do, it is in spite of myself and not because of it."

"That makes even less sense than 'I didn't love you, I just wanted to,'" I informed him.

He didn't argue - or agree. "Why now? You have been content to let me go on making a fool of myself for this long. What changed?" I looked away, hurt - he was the liar and somehow I was in the wrong for not bringing it up? " Ir abelas," he sighed, "that...did not come out precisely as intended." Not quite true - I had felt his surge of resentment to accompany the words. But his regret was so thick and stifling now, and I knew he regretted the emotion as thoroughly as the sentiments it had given rise to.

"I saw you in a dream while we were apart in the Fallow Mire - the sort of dream I used to have of you all the time, before we actually met." I drew my knees up and wrapped my arms around them. "You were younger, but not that much younger. I could only tell because you had piercings in your ears and you seemed to be very particularly upset by the way people had treated you recently - I assume my people."

"Was I...unkind, impatient with you?" he asked, vaguely horrified by the thought.

"Of course not," I replied. "I told you - you have always treated me as an individual, not someone faceless to take your frustrations out on. In any case," I went on, "you didn't remember me. We talked about things troubling us for a while, and you asked about my history among my people when I mentioned I was no longer living with my clan. I told you about my vallaslin. And you…" I took a breath, steeling myself against the alarm beating at me through our bond, "you told me a reason that the spell my clan used might have failed."

I waited, watching him, as he looked away. "If you were dedicated to some other...member of the pantheon," he said.

"Why didn't you tell me?" I asked, not letting myself feel angry - not yet.

"At first, because I didn't know you, cared little for you, and cared even less for your connection to your clan," he replied, internally cringing away from his memory of that time. He gave me a sober glance. "Do not claim I have always treated you as an individual, Inana. At the beginning of all this, I saw the conduct of your clan with regards to you as confirmation of all my opinions of the Dalish. You were a symbol to me - not a person. Undelan ma, vhenan. Ir abelas."

"And later?" I asked, wondering if he was trying to get around addressing his full reason by bringing up and apologizing for his prejudices.

If he was, at least he didn't try to dodge the question again. "Later...I feared the shivas'lath was to blame, and - " His expression - and the feelings behind it - were a complex tangle of guilt, fear, and resentment.

"Is that possible?" I asked before he could decide how to express his feelings.

He laughed humorlessly. "The spells woven into Dalish vallaslin are a cobbled-together mess of barely-remembered bindings that likely once served entirely different purposes," he replied with considerable acid. "Of course it's possible - likely, even. Though I lack the memory of agreeing to the bond, I dislike the thought that I may be responsible for any of what you suffered."

"I apparently agreed to it, too," I reminded him.

"It isn't certain that you knew the full consequences of what you were agreeing to, whereas I very likely did," he replied.

"And you very likely told me," I retorted. "I know you, ma vhenan - that isn't a choice you would have taken away from me."

"I very much hope you're correct," he murmured, almost too low for me to hear. He took a deep, fortifying breath. "Are you going to demand answers to the rest of my lies?" he asked.

"Would you give them to me if I did?" I wondered.

His expression was somewhat sour. "In truth, I...don't know. Some of them, without a doubt."

"Do you have good reasons for lying?" I asked.

"I certainly believe so," he replied cautiously. "Objectively? Who can say?"

"I trust you, and I...at least trust there are good intentions behind your reasons, even if I find out someday that I disagree with them," I told him, reaching across the space between us to rest my fingers against his wrist. "Just - please don't keep things from me that are about me. I deserve to know my own secrets. And," I felt my brow furrow, "you might consider simply admitting when you don't intend to tell me something. I prefer that to being lied to." I didn't promise not to piece together his secrets from whatever I could learn, in part because I didn't think natural curiosity would allow me to keep a promise like that, and in part because my dreams seemed determined to throw interesting scraps of information my way. I didn't know if he noticed the omission - I mostly hoped he didn't. If his guard were relaxed, perhaps I might collect enough scraps to start forming intelligible pictures.

"I will do my best, vhenan." He wasn't lying when he said it, but he was terrified. I wondered whether the specter of failure drove his fear, or whether he already knew of something he would have to tell me at some point in the future. "In that case, I ought to mention one thing that you have apparently not yet considered - perhaps because, for you, our association has not been...strictly bound by time."

Ironic that I had thought the same thing about his experience with our relationship - but I supposed it didn't entirely count since he didn't remember. "What is that?" I asked.

"The shivas'lath disrupting the function of your vallaslin implies that we agreed to the bond before you were an adult in the eyes of your people," he said.

"Oh," I replied. "That's…"

"Likely not possible," he finished for me with a small smile. "Bindings of any sort are rarely effective on children, as they often require self-awareness that children lack, and can be rendered void by too much mental or emotional change or development. When did you receive your vallaslin?"

"Sixteen," I replied.

"I doubt the shivas'lath would have worked before - well, truthfully, I wouldn't count on it working for anyone more than a year or two younger than you are now," he said.

"Then that can't be what disrupted my vallaslin, it seems," I said with a shrug.

"Not necessarily." He paused. "There are two possibilities that come to mind. The first is that we are of such consequence to each other that it echoes along our respective timelines, creating effects that technically precede causes."

"That sounds impossible," I informed him.

"You traveled to a potential future, which you then returned from and averted, did you not?" he reminded me. "Time is less simple than your day-to-day experience of it. The problem with that particular sequence of events is that it seems incongruous with the profound dormancy of our bond when we first discovered it. If such echoes were strong enough to disrupt the spells tied to your vallaslin , they should have been strong enough to keep our connection more active."

"All right, what's the second possibility?" I asked.

He hesitated. "You may find this one even less acceptable than the last."

"That would be an accomplishment," I replied.

He shot me a darkly amused look. "Cole's way of entering the world isn't the only way for a spirit to do so. Though I believed the knowledge lost - indeed, it isn't a thing I would have the knowledge or power to accomplish myself - in the past there were those who could call a spirit into the body of an unborn child."

" What ?" I practically yelped. "People - people made unborn children into abominations?" I demanded, horrified.

"That term is a loaded one," he told me, his tone dismissive. "When an uncorrupted spirit joins with a mortal whose own spirit is suited to its nature, the result is...something very different - a graft in which the two forms of consciousness enhance and bring out the best in each other. The process can even be reversed without damage to either, if both are willing. When one is speaking of a very young child, the child's own undefined nature leads to a more complete commingling. The spirit may even lose its memories of its previous life, if the identification is complete enough, and the resulting child merely incorporates the spirit's purpose into her own nature, as a powerful - though not necessarily dominant - facet of her personality."

"You're right," I told him flatly, "I do find that less believable than non-linear time. I also don't see how it relates to our bond."

"Binding a spirit is possible but generally ill-advised, as it risks corrupting the spirit, and the shivas'lath is too complex a binding to ever be entered into safely by any spirit," he began explaining. "Still - there is a place between pure and corrupted at which a third option resides: full personhood. If the binding were made with someone well-suited to the spirit in question, and the newly-complicated spirit immediately called into a body, corruption might be avoided."

"There are a great many ifs in your scenario," I pointed out, but even as I resisted them, a thought nagged at me.

No one knew who my father was. My mother had refused to say, and then hadn't lived long enough even to give birth to me. But Maela had always maintained that she had wanted a child more than anything else - far more than she wanted a bondmate. She had apparently had a number of short-term liaisons for the purpose of conceiving, but she had always been so open about it that it came as a surprise when she wouldn't reveal my father. Maela had always spoken of her refusal with affectionate - but real - irritation. Clans were too small to leave pairings entirely to chance - cousins marrying for too many generations would weaken us, and so genealogies were meticulously kept and considered when a pair decided they wanted to declare a bond. My mother's assurance that my father was someone far enough removed from the clan that no problems would arise was somewhat reassuring, but not conclusive.

Solas's description was suddenly making me wonder if I had a father. Which was an absurd proposition, of course. Probably. "All right, Solas," I sighed, rubbing my forehead, "tell me this: could a spirit choose to be born as a child without - with no previous - lacking physical intervention from - "

He took pity on me and didn't make me find words for what I was trying to ask. "I don't believe so, but...possibly." There was a short pause while he considered the idea. "I imagine it would be far simpler to acquire a willing man, ensure conception magically, and then call the spirit to inhabit the resulting body."

"My mother never would say who my father was," I explained. "Only that he wasn't of the clans, and was so far removed from us that the exact genealogy was unimportant. But that doesn't mean I buy into your theory," I added quickly. "Either of your theories, actually - our bond having nothing to do with my vallaslin seems like the simpler and more obvious conclusion. No need to resort to complex time or the intricacies of creating physical people from spirits."

"I suppose the truth makes little practical difference," he allowed. "Our significance to each other will be what it will be, and your origins matter less than who you are now." He reached across the space separating us to caress my cheek. "You are extraordinary, regardless of your past."

I smiled, and then, before we could begin on any more heavy subjects, jumped on him.

You may assume they had sex (because they did).

Aven dur'dirtha la'var siljosathen ha'misa: Words whisper while actions scream

Undelan ma: I wronged you