In which Inana fits some pieces together.

Puzzle

Solas managed to fall asleep before I had even finished washing up the bowls we had eaten from - so as near "instantly" as was possible - and I breathed a small sigh of relief. While he had remained with me, it hadn't been so difficult to keep my thoughts in check. I was genuinely concerned for him and wanted most to do whatever I could to support him through this period of intense mourning. But that didn't mean I would overlook whatever he might let slip in his distress, and once he was asleep I thought I could reflect on it safely without him becoming aware of my suspicions. If he knew he had been caught in a contradiction, I was certain he would be more vigilant in the future.

His timelines didn't work. Though I didn't know his precise age, he looked ten or fifteen years my senior, and I might be persuaded to believe he was twenty years older. According to the memories Wisdom had returned to him, we had taken our oaths before I entered the world bodily. That would mean he had been - generously - twenty at the time, and yet he had told me that he would not trust a binding to hold for anyone more than a year or two younger than I was.

Even if I allowed that he had probably been an extraordinary young man (as I was certain he had been), this question nagged at me: what fascination could a 20-year-old not yet, by his own implication, a master of the Dreamer's path hold for an ancient spirit like Wisdom? Why would she arrange what amounted to a marriage for him? Why modesty, of all spirits?

Yes, his name meant Pride. Yes, he was proud. But had all that been so apparent in a man so young? And what significance was it even if it had been apparent? Many young men were proud. To my knowledge, ancient spirits didn't search the Fade for mates that would suit them - temper them, one might even say.

I sat on my rock and drew my knees to my chest, poking absently at the fire with the end of a stick I had broken from one of the limbs Solas had piled nearby, pondering the mystery. I kept coming back to his careful misdirection regarding his skill as a Dreamer. It implied…what? Well, that Wisdom hadn't approached him when he was a young and unskilled mage at all, but at some other time. Which called into question my timeline for his life. Which meant he was older - probably considerably older - than he appeared.

And there was a type of sleep that my people told stories of - the long sleep that had allowed the minds of our reputedly immortal ancestors to wander the Fade unburdened by difficult memories or bitter purpose.

Uthenera.

I got to my feet, unable to remain seated, but only shifted my weight restlessly from one foot to the other. Pacing in the dark, beside a fire, wouldn't have been wise with my inability to see clearly, and I wasn't so agitated I was likely to forget it.

It was impossible. Of course it was impossible. If Solas were one of the ancient Elvhen, then that implied there were others. Surely we would know , wouldn't we? They would have approached us.

Wouldn't they?

I remembered Solas's opinions on the Dalish and bit my lip. Perhaps not.

After all, how would we know whether an elf was one of the Elvhen or not? Solas looked a little different from the average man - he was taller and broader - but Sera and I didn't resemble the classic picture of elven women , either. It was all within a spectrum we could label "normal enough."

He didn't have the bearing of a man who had spent most of his life in the wilderness, I realized, and immediately wondered how I hadn't seen it before. I had spent my entire life with men and women who roamed the wilderness. We were a rough and unrefined lot; I laughed myself nearly sick every single time Sera got drunk enough to belch out a verse of whatever Maryden was singing in the tavern. Solas rarely spent time in the tavern at all, and the one time he had witnessed one of Sera's performances, he had cast his eyes to the heavens, heaved a put-upon sigh, and immediately found a reason he needed to leave. Dorian, similarly, had taken to flicking water at her until she stopped.

("Just like training a cat," Dorian had said smugly the first time it worked.

"Oi, you say that again and I'll scratch your bloody eyes till they're…bloody," Sera had slurred in response.

"'Out,' my dear," Dorian had retorted calmly. "The word you're searching for is 'out.'")

For all that Dorian chided Solas over his wardrobe, their manners were really very similar. Solas could go toe-to-toe with Vivienne on clever, backhanded compliments, and he left her without a good retort just as often as she did the same to him. How had I never noticed?

Everything but Solas's clothing practically screamed aristocrat, and the more comfortable he became, the more the veneer of the humble apostate crumbled to reveal an elegant and refined scholar and artist.

How much did he dislike dressing the way he did?

I dropped onto my rock and hid my face against my knees. "Fucking Creators," I whispered into the private space my curled body created, "my bondmate is one the fucking Elvhen, and he has been working very hard to keep me from finding out. Fuck. Fuck. Fucking fuck!" The last curse came out as a whisper-scream, the most expression I could allow myself with the subject of my musings sleeping a stone's throw away.

I had always wondered why a man in his prime acted as though he were the most ancient and world-weary of all the clan elders I had ever met.

My head shot up again abruptly. Why would he keep this from me?

There was more that I was missing - there had to be. Solas had never given me the impression that spirits - especially spirits not even associated with love or romance - went around facilitating bonds. Our situation was clearly very unusual.

So why had Wisdom done it? Exactly how exceptional was Solas?

I thought of my dreams. Perhaps I had been seeing through the eyes of the spirit I had once been - in which case Solas was at least a little wrong when he said I possessed no memories of that time. They were just…disjointed, and felt as though they belonged to someone else. Likely because they did.

Solas had worn vallaslin - I knew that now - but I very much doubted he had been a slave. He had mentioned something about the priest caste bearing the marks, as well, and that seemed a better fit. He had been marked for Mythal. He had been a priest of Mythal?

A disillusioned one, it seemed - he had removed her vallaslin and now spoke slightingly of the Creators, when he spoke of them at all.

I chewed on my lip, trying to remember more. There was the dream with Deshanna, but it had never repeated and was now faded - I could only remember brief pieces with any clarity. My conversation with Solas - about taking on a body, perhaps? - was much clearer. It should have been, after the number of times it had been repeated.

But - wait - though that conversation seemed to fit neatly in with what a spirit taking physical form seemed to entail, everything I had said implied Solas had done whatever it was I wanted to do before I had.

Oh fucking Creators, had Solas once been a spirit?

But Pride - Pride was a demon's name, not a spirit's. Were demons once able to take on bodies? Had he done it as I had, or as Cole had? Mythal had just been fine with a pride demon - or a former pride demon, anyway - joining her priesthood?

I realized I was chewing my lip much too hard when I tasted blood, and took a deep breath, cutting off my racing thoughts. Whatever my dream seemed to be implying, I didn't know anything. Technically, I didn't even know that the memories were mine. Fenedhis, I didn't even know Solas was one of the Elvhen.

What was he doing with the Inquisition? Had he been chasing the focus Corypheus now wielded?

Had it been Mythal's?

He was so insistent that we recover it, if possible. What was he planning to do with it?

I could only speculate, though my first thought was that perhaps he meant to somehow call Mythal back from her prison in the Beyond, to return her to the People. And yet that didn't fit with my image of the disillusioned priest, unless it was more complicated than I was capable of understanding with my limited information.

Well - as a blanket assumption, that was probably a good one. I was filling in a lot of blanks with my own guesswork.

How could I not, though? This was my history, my people, my gods…and my heart.

Why was he keeping all this from me?

Wisdom hadn't approved. Would she have told me if we had had more time?

It had grown late while I sat thinking, and I realized I still needed to mix and drink my potion - not that I would have been able to sleep if I had tried. Not with so many thoughts spinning through my mind. Even so, it worked best with a lead-in dose, so it was better to take the first dose well before one was likely to grow tired.

I searched my packs until I came up with the three well-wrapped vials I had placed there, then poured judicious amounts into an empty flask, shaking it hard to make sure it was all mixed properly. Then I added two drops from a lyrium potion, and swirled the resulting concoction much more gently, letting the lyrium activate the other ingredients.

It tasted like a forge when I drank it: fire and metal - but also, incongruously, incense. I sputtered for a moment as the strange shapes of dreams I wouldn't be having tonight rose before my eyes, but they broke up and blew away swiftly, leaving me slightly more alert.

I was still restless. As good as Solas's wards were, they were also simple, meant only to alert him to the presence of possible enemies - and I had tampered with them besides. I paced their boundary, rearranging threads I had disturbed and ensuring that they would function as they were meant to, and then, just inside, placed another, even simpler line of wards. These were a small aversion charm and would warn away animals that approached from mere curiosity. Within those , I placed a third line to sicken and weaken anyone or anything that might pass the first two lines of defense.

The important tasks accomplished, I paused for a moment to listen to the night sounds and smell the breeze. Both were unfamiliar - there were no real plains within my clan's range. Coastline, the wetlands of the Minanter's estuary, forests further inland, and the tall foothills of the mountains west of Ansburg. Those were drier - the south-facing slopes forested while the north retained only enough water to support grasses and low shrubs. The plains were entirely new to me, smelling, even in this cool season, somewhat of dust and sun-warmed sedimentary stone, subtly different from the basalt I was accustomed to in the foothills. The river, too, smelled different - more of silt and less of plants, either the rotting or growing kind.

Dirthavaren. The Promise, broken. My ancestors had once walked this ground and farmed these gently rolling hills, but I couldn't picture it now that I had seen it in human hands. It made me wonder whether we had ever been anything other than what we were now - a broken people divided over decisions made by those who had come long before us. In light of that, wasn't it absurd to think Solas might be some sort of vestige of a glorious past in which we had controlled an empire, lived for centuries, and, instead of dying, had fallen into a deep sleep to walk the paths of the Fade, perhaps for the rest of eternity?

It felt absurd.

I looked down at my glowing left hand. Then again, many aspects of my life felt impossible or absurd. In a few weeks, I would enter the palace of an empress in an effort to maintain the stability of one of the great kingdoms of Thedas, while also trying to hold her to some account for the murder of other people with ears shaped like my own.

In light of that , as well as almost everything else I had done in recent months, it seemed foolish to think Solas couldn't be one of the Elvhen.

I took a breath and looked toward the blurred glow of the fire. It was time to begin making my peace with the possibility. Much as it sometimes seemed he wanted to, Solas wouldn't sleep forever, and I needed to be composed when he woke.