1

Ellyn tried on her new apprentice robes. She was getting a new one every few months this year. They were not exactly new, of course; apprentices became mages, and mages no longer needed their old robes. Ellyn was twelve now and had began to appreciate the boning built into them. Men noticed her, and no wonder. Her long blond curls flowed down her back, tied off with a careless knot of twine. Her skin always seemed to glow in the eternal candle light that lit the halls of the Circle Tower.

Even for a mage, she was otherworldly to say the least. Where she walked, voices hushed and people bowed their heads. Anders was surprised to find that her feet actually touched the ground. He got down on his hands and knees and checked once, just to be sure. She just glowered at him.

Anders was eighteen. To him, little Ellyn was always little, curves hinted at through her robes notwithstanding. Her mentality did not show him any different. She giggled easily, chased him through the halls, and threw pie at him in the mess hall not one week ago.

Anders was not so innocent. There were women; of course there were. He was eighteen, handsome, and his charm that saved him as a child now helped him bed women. The girls had no illusions of his faithfulness. In the circle, dalliances were accepted as a matter of course, love almost never. Love was a strong emotion and strong emotions led to deals with demons - or so they were told.

Love meant having something to lose. Love meant a demon - or a templar - had something to hold over you.

Ellyn believed that she loved Anders. It was what she felt for him when she was only six. It had not changed. Neither had she. Her body might have grown, but her innocence and purity remained the same. She was watched constantly and separated from all the other apprentices since the very first day she arrived at the circle. No one was to approach her alone, no one was to speak to her without accompaniment by a templar. She was one of the very few people in the Circle to have her own private chambers.

No wonder then, that she still behaved like a six year old.

Spirit Healers were possessed mages and must be guarded at all times. She was, or so she had them believe. As far as the Circle was concerned, she never left the tower, never went anywhere without Ser Clara, never spent any time with Anders.

"Andraste's flaming hair." Anders began.

"Um...Andraste's flaming robes!"

"No, you have to keep the third word and drop the second. Try again."

"Andraste's itchy hair?"

"Better, but … lame. Probably true. Who has time to wash their hair when there's a war going on?" Anders laughed.

They were hiding in the pantry. The circle had a large pantry, and it wasn't exactly cold. The food was cold. The pantry was not. It was a magical contradiction that mages understood and apprenticed accepted. It made for a nice place to hide after dinner time.

"How about...Andraste's frozen hair?"

"Also lame."

"Maybe it's the hair part that's lame." Ellyn pouted. "Just keep it and keep going. Drop the third this time and keep the second, right?"

"Yup. Andraste's frozen knickers!"

"That's dirty! No knickers!"

"That's dirtier!" Anders wrapped his arms around her shoulders and wrestled Ellyn to the ground. They collapsed in a giggling heap, Ellyn kicking and punching ineffectually. "One...two...and she's DOWN!"

"No fair! You're stronger than me." Ellyn protested through intermittent laughter.

And you can kill me in a second if you wanted to, Anders thought. Fortunately for him, she did not. With their real families only a line recorded in the library, they chose each other. While he dallied with women, he loved only Ellyn with the kind of love reserved for little sisters. Ellyn was family. In the back of his mind he wondered if this was the same over-protection that everyone had for her in her presence, but he felt privileged - he alone had her love in return.

"What do you want to do? We have another hour until bed time."

"Your bed time. Not my bed time." Anders was a mage now, having passed his harrowing. "I can go to sleep whenever I want."

"Neh neh neh," Ellyn rolled her eyes at him. "Want to go see the cat, magey?"

"We can't just go see the cat. It's outside the main doors, and the doors are guarded by templars."

"Yes we can."

"No we can't."

"Yes we can."

"Ok. I'll bite. How do you expect to go past the templars? Is there some secret underground tunnel I don't know about? And if there is, why didn't you tell me this before?" Anders raised an eyebrow. "A drink at the tavern across the lake would've been a nice break once in a while."

"Well, I don't know how to get across the lake, but just going outside is easy. I just walk through the door." Ellyn made a gesture with two fingers of a man walking through through the door. "Just like that."

"You what?" Anders shook his head, "and they just let you?"

"Come with me." Ellyn took his hand. They went through the kitchen and out into the main apprentice quarters, passing by one templar, then another. It wasn't long before Anders realized that they never saw them. The atmosphere around them felt different. Usually, there was a calming aura surrounding Ellyn. Now there was nothing. It was more than that, though. It was as though she tore a hole in reality and hid in it, moving it along with her, and by extension, him.

Soon they were outside under the moonlight. There were no templars here. No one thought to post a guard outside the tower when it was surrounded by a lake anyway.

"How did you do that?" Anders panted just a little. In the last stretch, Ellyn ran, out of nervousness more than anything else.

"I made us, um, not seeable." Ellyn was a lot of things. She was talented, beautiful, sweet, cute as a tabby cat. She was also surprisingly inarticulate and dumb. Ask her anything and be prepared for a non-sensical answer.

"Try again. How did you make them not see us?"

"Well, I take the fade, make it look exactly like the hallway and wrap it around us?" She attempted.

"You're saying that while we were in that hallway, we were in the fade?" Anders was dumbfounded. Sending anyone into the fade required a massive amount of lyrium or a lot of life force. This girl just did it without a second thought.

"Exactly!" Ellyn brightened.

"That's impossible, Ellyn." Anders explained. "When one is in the fade, it's only the essence of the mage that is in the fade. The body stays behind. If that's what you did, we'd have collapsed in the hallway outside the mess hall and we'd still be there."

"Not if you're from the fade, Anders." Her eyes glowed for just a split second. He thought it might have been a trick of the moonlight. It had to be. Her voice seemed to echo out here, but that made no sense either. "And we were not in the fade. Those templars, on the other hand..."

Anders have known Ellyn for six years. This woman was something infinitely older. "Who are you?"

"You do not need to know. Not yet." The girl that was not Ellyn cooed. "For now, you need only to know that you can leave whenever you want. They will always find you and drag you back, of course. But if you want to go, all you need do is walk out the front door."

2

Anders felt the urge to flee. To be away. In a bar in Denerim somwhere. Visit a brothel; drink at an inn. Talk to people who were not mages or templars. Being in the tower was akin to holding a hot mug; he wanted so to pull his hand away and it took all his might to keep holding on.

He was not beaten in the Circle. This life was not bad, per say. There was some freedom to be had, the food and wine was good, his bed was warm, and when it was not he was able to find a girl to warm it easily enough. He was, by all accounts, happy with his lot.

But you saw them, did you not? The templars and that apprentice girl in the stockroom. And you did nothing.

It was guilt, through and through. He did nothing. He backed away and pretended that he did not see.

What would you have done if it was Ellyn?

Stupid question. If it was Ellyn they would have died in a blazing wave of firestorms. If it was Ellyn he might have burned down the tower. He would have perished himself defending her innocence if need be.

No. You'd have done nothing. You are a spineless, self-serving man who uses people. You'd only fight to save your own skin.

"Get out of my head!" Anders muttered to himself as he ran up the stairs to the great hall. Ellyn was on the apprentice floor, or she should have been. He needed distance. He was no longer certain if these thoughts were his own.

3

Ellyn sat at the edge of the pier, a tabby cat on her lap. It was not hers, and it was not Anders', but they both loved it. She was not even sure what its name was. It responded to Meow.

Ser Clara stood guard not far away. It had been years since Ellyn arrived, and Clara sometimes wondered why they bothered to set a guard over this harmless little girl. When she was away from Ellyn, things were more simple. Deer waited to be slaughtered by her when she was hungry. If her life was in danger, her assailants might simply kill themselves with the weapons that were meant to harm her. When Ellyn was there in front of her, however, the reason became twisted. She was harmless, small, and unable to use any offensive spells. Of course she needed a guard.

Sometimes Clara found herself wandering the halls during her duty hours, and could not recall how she came to be where she was or why she was not with Ellyn. For the last two months, these episodes lessened. Clara thought it might have been the lyrium they made her take in for her templar powers. It might also have been because Anders was gone, but Clara never thought to connect the two.

Ser Clara had suspicions of the relationship between the two mages, but she was sure that even with his base depravity, Anders would not touch a twelve year old. Now that he was gone she was not so sure. Ellyn seemed to spend her days pining away, waiting. It was a matter of time before they brought him back, but the templars were sent from Denerim, far to the northeast. He might have fled to the south, away from Denerim.

"Clara?"

"Yes, Ellyn?"

"Why would anyone want to run away from the Circle?"

"Well..." Ser Clara struggled to come with an acceptable answer. "It's rather like how you want to come outside once in a while. Some people just want to go farther away, that's all. They want to see the mountains, the city, or...go shopping."

"They'd risk their lives to go to market?"

"Some people take their shopping very seriously?" Ser Clara had no real answer. She was given to the Chantry as a child, and had as much choice as Ellyn where freedom was concerned. Her career choices were either chantry sister or templar, and Clara was not able to imagine a life of quiet contemplation for herself.

"Do you have any brothers or sisters, Clara?"

"I grew up in a Chantry orphanage. I don't know if I had any siblings."

"But if you do, they wouldn't abandon you, would they?"

"Is this what all this crying and waiting is about? Oh Ellyn." Clara breathed a sigh of relief; it wasn't first love or anything complicated. "Anders didn't abandon you. He's just older than most children taken to the circle. For you, this is the only life you remember. For him, there was life before the circle. Besides, he knows you'll be safe and well taken care of here."

"He could've taken me with him then!" Ellyn thumped her hands on the dock and sent the cat running. "Andraste's frozen knickers!"

"He's a horrible influence. Don't let me hear you say that again." Ser Clara resisted the urge to laugh. Ellyn probably imagined Anders shopping at the market for a new staff. Clara knew he was probably in places where he couldn't possibly bring Ellyn along. "One single mage is hard to spot. Two mages, one of them a child, makes an easy description."

Ellyn stewed. She clicked her heels together irritably. "Well, I want to go shopping too!"

"Ellyn," Clara held out a hand and helped her up, her tone suddenly serious. "Don't run away. You're an apprentice. If they find you, they can make you Tranquil."

"No, they can't." Ellyn stuck out her lower lip. "But I'll stay. Mama says it's not my time yet."

"Who says...?" Clara began her question, but found herself losing her train of thought. What was it?

"I'm hungry. Let's go inside for supper."

4

In a small tavern in Lothering, a man in a chantry robe dangled a silver chain with a gold earring in front of Sister Hannah. He held it very still. The earring quivered lightly, scattering candlelight across the table. He reached his other hand over the table and took hers, raising it to the top of the chain.

"Now, you take this and hold it just like I did. Concentrate on it," he held out his now free hand. "Rest your fingertips on my palm, here. Think yes."

Wide-eyed Sister Hannah nodded. "Like this?" The earring began to wave forward and back. Her fingers tapped down ever so imperceptibly.

"So, Sister Hannah, you've spent your entire life in the Chantry." Forward and back, "and you want to be free."

"That's not true." Hannah looked past the ring at him.

"Shh. Talking breaks the spell." He gestured at the earring. "Concentrate."

She shifted her glance to the earring obediently. Chantry sisters. He thought. They're a lot like sheep. Give them a ritual and they'll follow it to a T.

"Oh, but no one ever gave you a choice. You didn't join by choice. You're a beautiful woman wasting away her life chanting..." the ring started going around in a circle, "but you do sound so wonderful and your chant must please the Maker. You deserve freedom once in a while."

That was close. "You will meet a handsome stranger one night." The ring waved forward and back. Jackpot. "And you'll want nothing more than to lean over the table...and..."

"Are you doing what I think you're doing?" Andraste's knickerweasels.

Sister Hannah suddenly saw that the man's face was half an inch from hers, and she was gripping his hand tightly. A templar glowered in front of their table.

Hannah dropped the chain and fled.

"Hey, don't you want this back?" Anders waved the chain and yelled after her.

"Anders," Ser Rylock fumed. The word was never so appropriate; her brows knotted, her gaze steeled, her mouth turned down in a disapproving frown. "You can follow me out, or I can clap you in irons. Your choice."

"Couldn't you wait another five minutes? I was so close!" He whined. "Do you think it's easy to get a chantry robe? I was betting my bar tab on this!"

"You laid a bet against the bartender that you can, what, get a kiss out of a chantry sister?" Rylock was incredulous. From what she knew of this runaway, a bet for just a kiss was a little tame.

"Well, you know. I was going to get more than that but the bartender settled for just the kiss so I wasn't going to raise the stakes just because." Anders smiled and shrugged.

"Keep blabbering like that and I'll have you gagged as well."

"Ooh. Kinky. I didn't know templars are into that." He crossed his arms, leaned against a wood post, and threw on a bedroom smile. Rylock put all her weight behind her gauntleted fist and punched him in the stomach.

"Ow." Anders whimpered from the floor. "You didn't have to do that. Just...let me go get my things and change."

"We've already been in your room and got your things." Rylock kicked him, just hard enough to hurt but not break bones. "Get up. Do not think for a second that I will make this easy for you, mage."

5

He was in the stockroom again. It was a series of caverns behind the circle tower, no more than dug holes with unfinished walls. Scones lit the halls here and there, filling the caverns with movement of shadows and light.

An apprentice, barely old enough to be called a woman, had her back against one of the rough walls. Three templars stood around her, stifling any hope of escape. Hair dishevelled, eyes mad with fear, her gaze locked with Anders' far behind the templar in front of her. He pretended not to see and focused on the bottles in front of him, choosing a bottle from the shelf, Anders began to walk away.

"Coward." The girl hissed. Her face morphed into Ellyn's in front of his eyes. The templars appeared to be frozen in place and did not notice anything at all. "Spineless, selfish man."

Anders woke with a start, covered in cold sweat. He was in his own bed in the mages' quarters. Night time. Yes. Everyone else seemed to be asleep. Home. He allowed the word to settle. It wasn't much, but the wines here were better than any he had outside, the bed didn't bite, and the floor was smooth and polished. Escaping only cemented the knowledge that the Circle wasn't such a bad place to live, until he stared straight up at the ceiling and saw bricks.

He missed the open sky. For two months, he tried to sleep outside whenever possible. He made beds out of pine needles, washed his face in the river, took off his boots and walked for miles on soft grass, with no ceiling hanging over him. At night he counted the stars, naming every other one after pretty girls he met, often in their company as they both gazed upward.

Once, he told a girl he was to name a star Angelina for her eyes so reminded him of its sparkle, and she creased her brows prettily and told him that her name was actually Agnes. He only stroked her chin with his thumb, and murmured into her neck, "oh but you will be my Angelina, for you are an angel in my eyes...look how you glow."

She did not protest again that night. Anders knew that women always wanted to believe him, and he let them. He moved on the next morning, well before she woke. Attachment would just be another chain. Besides, if he didn't keep moving, he had no hope of evading the templars.

Anders sighed. Well, he was free to get some wine in the great hall in the middle of the night, anyway. He swung his legs off the bed and stepped into hair.

"Get off my hair," Ellyn clawed at his foot. She was wrapped in a heavy cotton blanket. There was just a hint of shiver in her voice.

"Get up," Anders offered a hand. "You'll catch a cold."

Ellyn ignored his hand and crawled into the bed, burrowing herself in his covers.

"Oh no. No no no no. You're WAY too old for that. Go sleep in your own bed." Anders pulled the covers off in one quick motion. Ellyn hated the cold, and that was the quickest way to dispel her.

"I can't sleep." Ellyn wrapped her arms around him, burying her face into his back. She tightened her grip and pressed against him, "and I missed you."

"Ellyn, don't do that." Anders pulled away, and made himself sound as serious as possible. "Not to any men - or women, for that matter - and you need to stay away from me, understand?"

Her eyes widened and for a moment Anders thought she had the exact look of a kicked puppy. "Maker, I didn't mean it like that." He took her hand, "come on, let's go to your room and I'll read you a story or something."

Ellyn was the only apprentice that had her own room. In reality, it was no more than a storeroom with a makeshift door, but she had one of those big beds that senior enchanters had, there was a vanity table, a mirror - she even had her own dresser.

Just like a princess in a tower, thought Anders. He placed the book back down on her bedside table. Ellyn laid on top of his stomach, using it as a pillow. It was her way of keeping him there. Anders stroked her hair, "now go to sleep."

"Anders? Do you know that templar who brought you back?"

"Rylock? Yeah. I know her alright." Anders grimaced at the memory. "I was bruised for days. She likes to let her fists do the talking. And you know me. I can't shut up to save my life."

"Do you want her gone?"

Anders struggled to listen for any change in her tone. It sounded like Ellyn. "Well, no. She didn't kill me, at least. Who knows what another templar would have done."

"I can make her gone, if you like." Ellyn's breathing was even and slow, nearly asleep. "I don't like that she hit you. She'd just be gone. No one will remember her."

"No, no. I don't want you to hurt anyone." Anders kept his own heartbeat nice and even, giving nothing away. He was reminded of why he wanted to flee in the first place. "I love you. I won't leave you again. Please...just stay the way you are."

As those words left his lips he knew them to be true. He loved her, but it would not be Ellyn that he was leaving.