A/N: Thank you for the feedback!

...-...

It had taken two days to prepare the Avvar's dead for sky burials, and to gather weapons and other personal effects to be returned to the fallen's families. Between the two clans, they'd lost almost half of their people—all three of their mages had been felled, forcing them to rely on poultices and potions for healing, which put their few injured at risk.

Because of their heavy losses, the Avvar had left the lowlanders' horses in the wilds. Originally, before they'd known how many lowlanders would be involved, they'd planned to return with a few of the stronger steeds. By the end of it, even if they'd wanted to take them, they hadn't the resources or manpower to take care of so many beasts.

They were now en route to Shadow Wolf Keep, though the trip was proving to be a slow and miserable one. They were three nights into their journey, and they'd barely made a dent in their travels. They'd lost too many and gained too little for anyone to feel that victory songs were in order, and Thane Blackwall had spent the first two evenings speaking with one or two of his people in low voices, not including Cullen in whatever their plans were. They had managed to capture one of the chevaliers, at least, and to find what Thane Blackwall said looked like orders of some kind on the captain of the chevaliers' body, though none of them had been able to read enough of it to figure out what it meant. The Shadow Wolves' had already started questioning their prisoner, but it was abundantly clear that he didn't know what was going on. The captain might have, but not this simple knight.

At this point, the Shadow wolves were just keeping the chevalier alive long enough that they would be able to get him to their hold. Their augur was a necromancer, according to Thane Blackwall, and would be able to extract any important details that the chevalier sought to withhold from them after he expired.

Raising the dead didn't sit well with Cullen. While he didn't mind some magic, certain things—like necromancy—just felt like it went too far. Even if they did need information, it was better to let the dead rest, rather than risk angering the Gods by playing with their corpses.

If they could have just caught the captain, Cullen was sure they would have already been able to get the answers they were after—Thane Blackwall would have known who was setting up his clan, and Cullen could have found out why the lowlander woman was supposed to die. However, the man had, upon seeing he would be captured, slit his own throat rather than be taken alive. Cullen had pointed out that they could have brought his body back for the necromancer, if he was able to obtain information from the dead, but Thane Blackwall had just shook his head. The body would have decomposed too much by the time they reached the keep, and the soul would have been gone too long for the memories to have stayed.

That was why it had become so important to keep the prisoners alive.

Prisoners…

That Thane Blackwall and his wolves insisted on using plural did not sit well with Cullen. A lot of things the Shadow Wolves did didn't sit well with him, though he'd yet to have a chance to really talk to Thane Blackwall about any of it.

Cassandra had suggested to Cullen after the second night on the road that they not linger in the other clan's keep once they arrived. She and several of the others—of the thirteen of them, only eight Red Lions remained—wished to simply keep a steady course home. It had taken a little over two weeks to get to the raid site, and it would be even longer to get home, with their few injured. That was far too long for both the thane and chief warrior to be gone.

It didn't help that most of Cullen's people wondered if they wouldn't be turned on once they reached the Shadow Wolves' hold. Cullen was sure they wouldn't be—Thane Blackwall had promised his augur would heal them, in thanks for their assistance, if they went back with them—but the others had less faith in the Shadow Wolves, and in Mia. After all—as Cassandra pointed out—she'd already abandoned them once, and a woman's allegiance was to her hold, not to her kin.

While Cullen understood their concerns, he couldn't bring himself to okay the split from the group. The Shadow Wolves were fewer in number—there were only six of them left—and Cullen thought it would be better if they helped the other clan with their horses and belongings—and those damnable trunks.

At least until others from their hold reached them. They'd sent someone ahead to get help, and were expecting that they'd be meeting said assistance well before they reached the hold.

Earlier that night, Cassandra had pulled Cullen aside to ask if he was truly sticking around for the Shadow Wolves, or if he had other motivations. Even as he'd dismissed the notion, he'd known exactly what she meant.

The lowlander woman had been a pain to bring along to most—Cullen had had to bicker and argue with Thane Blackwall just to get them to bring her, much less tend to her many injuries. She'd yet to regain consciousness since the night of the raid, and Cullen knew that at this point, all the healer was trying to do was to make sure she made it to the hold alive. They were planning on giving her over to the necromancer as well.

She'd fought so fucking hard. She would have fought him to her dying breath if he hadn't told her they might have the same enemy.

Her frame was slender, but she had the heart of a warrior.

And she'd fought so, so, so…

He tended to her at night, after everyone save whoever was stuck with the night watch had gone to bed. He knew that they had probably mentioned him heading into the lowlander's tent to the others, but no one had come to him yet, imploring him not to waste his energies on her. The Shadow Wolves might have picked a fight with him on the matter, except that he used his people's salves and poultices, so that they couldn't claim he was wasting their resources.

It surprised him how much he wanted to see her open her eyes again. He'd sit next to her after tending to her injuries, watching the way her chest fell in such shallow, painful breaths, and wishing that he could do anything to ease her pain. He'd run his fingers against her cheeks a few times, resting his hands there to let their warmth sink in. He'd thought she looked better for it, though it could have just been his ill-fated hopes.

Tonight, though…

He'd slipped into her tent after everyone was asleep, only to find Cassandra already there, brushing out the tangles in the lowlander's hair in silence. As he entered, Cassandra merely glanced up and then bowed her head to him. "Thane."

He stood there, stooped just inside the tent, not sure what to do.

Finally, Cassandra sighed, "I thought this might ease any headaches, or just be soothing in her dreams."

With a grunt, Cullen sat down next to her, gaze resting on the lowlander. Her wounds weren't getting better, but they weren't getting worse either. He supposed that in itself was a small miracle. Perhaps the Gods were deciding what to do with her, same as the Avvar.

Her bandages had already been changed, and fresh salves applied.

"Am I so obvious?" Cullen asked as he looked up to see Cassandra's disapproving frown.

"Only to those with eyes," Cassandra replied, sitting back and stretching her fingers. As she did so, she nodded with her chin toward the lowlander. "What is it about this woman that has you so enamored? As I recall, she wasn't the most impressive creature."

"She has a common enemy with us," Cullen shrugged, shifting a little as Cassandra narrowed her eyes, studying him.

"My thane… Cullen. I could use help with this rat's nest. You used to brush Rosalie's hair, did you not?" Quietly, Cullen moved around until he was sitting beside Cassandra at the lowlander's head, legs crossed. He found a second brush there, waiting for him. Cassandra sighed and resumed brushing out the knots in the lowlander's white-blonde hair. It was longer than Cullen had realized and damp with sweat. "What you meant to say was that she has a common enemy with the Shadow Wolves."

"Who we are working with."

"For the raid," Cassandra corrected, "and to help them get their prizes back to their hold."

"Thane Blackwall has offered to gift us other trinkets from previous raids," Cullen said slowly. It had been the last thing he and his fellow thane had actually talked about, before the two clans had seemed to split, merely tolerating each other's company for the trek home. "…Since he believes those books may be important to unraveling whatever mysteries still lie around this raid."

Cassandra was the one to grunt this time. "Honestly?"

"What?"

"I do not think the clan will be happy if we come back with leftovers that the Shadow Wolves did not want. It would be better to tell them that everything in the carriage was useless, or to try to negotiate for a few of the empty trunks instead."

Cullen frowned. "We're getting four of them. Thane Blackwall said we could fill them with what we wanted—cloths, leathers, anything from their stores, so long as it is within reason."

"Good," Cassandra murmured, a flicker of a smile gracing her stern features for just a second. "I was worried you were too smitten to think of the clan. Forgive me."

"I'm not smitten," Cullen grumbled, leaning forward a little to work on a rather large tangle.

Rolling her eyes, Cassandra nodded. "Of course. Because you always sneak around camps to gaze longingly at nameless women."

"I'm not—"

"And glance over your shoulder while riding to make sure that same stranger is being tended to. And tend to her yourself in the dark hours. And—"

"Enough," Cullen snapped, though when he glanced at Cassandra, he noticed a small quirk in her lips that wouldn't be held down. "I'm not smitten."

"As you say."

"You could at least say that like you believe me." Cullen let his gaze wander to the lowlander's face. Her brow twitched together a moment, as though she could feel him watching her, though a soft groan followed, and her face relaxed again. "Do you think she'll live?"

"Why are you so infatuated with her?"

"She's not…" Cullen shook his head slowly, gaze never leaving the lowlander's sallow face, the circles around her eyes dark and thick, her black eye a smear against what might have been pretty features. "You were not a part of the clan when my mother was alive, but she was star struck with lowlander culture. She used to collect books and little things from their world. My father even got her a ball gown once." He smiled faintly. "She used to tell us these ridiculous stories about all the things that lowlanders did. They were mostly just reinforcements behind those stereotypes we have for them. But she had reasons for them, too. Reasons that often didn't make any sense to us, but were fun to hear none-the-less."

"Like what?"

"Oh, like the lowlander women didn't fight because they were supposed to be strictly homemakers, and they were required to study cooking and cleaning above swordplay and strategy. That sort of thing." He nudged Cassandra with an elbow. "They'd have stuck you in one of their frilly dresses." When she scoffed, he grinned, though it faded quickly. He shrugged a little, reaching out to brush some of the lowlander's hair from her face with his fingers. "Yet this woman…she's…not like the stories at all."

Cassandra lifted one of the woman's thin arms. "She looks frail enough to me. Though…she did have quite a mouth on her." She smirked. "I could barely understand half of what she said, just that she was very angry."

"She stood against me," Cullen couldn't help as his smile returned. "With these injuries, she stood against me, ready to fight to the end."

"Plenty of others have challenged you, Cullen," Cassandra reminded him, setting the woman's arm back beneath the furs so that she wouldn't be cold.

With a faint smirk that tugged on his scar, Cullen shook his head. "They challenged me because they knew I wasn't meant to be thane, because they assumed I was weak. They did it with fair confidence that they might win." He ran his fingers over her hair before beginning to brush it again. "It wasn't the same with her. She didn't care who I was. She fought because she wouldn't be caged."

"I think you are reading too much into her actions," Cassandra stated, moving on to the next lock of hair. "You are building her into some fierce beast in your head, and if she wakes up, you will be quite disappointed with the reality of who she is."

Cullen recognized that Cassandra was simply concerned for him, but it didn't dull her words any. Typically, he appreciated her input. She was one of the few he trusted unconditionally. She was the only one—aside from Branson and Rosalie—who was always honest with him, who never bit back her opinion just because he outranked her.

He often thanked the Gods that his augur had taken her for a wife, for his life would have been so much less without her there to stand by him, shoulder to shoulder.

However, on this matter…

She hadn't seen what he'd seen.

They spent the rest of their time there in silence, finally getting the last of the twists and tangles out of the lowlander's hair and braiding it down one of her shoulders. Cassandra left first, finally breaking their silence to tell him he should get more sleep than he was allowing himself.

When she was gone, he stared down at the lowlander for another moment before starting after his chief warrior. He paused as he stepped around the woman, leaning down to whisper, "Please don't die," and praying to the Gods that he wouldn't dream of her death.

Sleep would not come so easily to him.

As he slipped back through the camp, he was surprised to find Thane Blackwall waiting for him near his tent. His fellow thane motioned toward the woods, asking him to step just outside of their camp to talk in private.

"So it looks like you were right," Thane Blackwall finally offered when they were far enough away that those on watch wouldn't overhear them, arms crossed, head bowed forward ever so slightly, his gaze on Cullen. "The woman is our best bet, assuming my augur can't read the books." He paused before adding, "And even then, talking to her will likely take less time than flipping through all those wastes of trees."

Cullen nodded, not sure what he was expected to say to that.

Thane Blackwall had not wanted to bring the lowlander woman with them at all when Cullen had first brought her back—by the time he'd returned to that miserable clearing, the fighting had ended. Their captured chevalier said the woman was wanted for attempted murder—he'd later confessed that he didn't know if that was true, only that she'd gotten in someone's way, and they wanted her gone. When they'd burned all their enemies' bodies, they'd left her cloak—overcoat according to Thane Blackwall—with the bodies, to make it look like she was among them so that they wouldn't have more lowlanders roaming the woods to either finish or save her.

"The chevalier won't give us the name of whoever he's working for," Thane Blackwall began.

Cullen perked up a little, motioning over his shoulder toward the camp, toward the woman. "She said something about…Comte?"

"That's a title, not a name. Though if she knows the title, she probably knows the name." With a shrug, Thane Blackwall shrugged. "The chevalier doesn't know why she had to die in an Avvar attack. He might keep some things from us, but I believe him when he says he doesn't know about that part. Here's hoping she does."

"Hopefully," Cullen murmured, not seeing the point to their conversation. While he was glad that Thane Blackwall had finally decided to include him in whatever was going on again, he wasn't sure that there was really a point at the moment.

"We were threatened with being drawn into Orlesian politics, too," Thane Blackwall added, a rueful grin spreading across his lips, barely visible behind his beard. "Though, if they're trying to pin things on us, I'd say we're already in them."

Cullen nodded his head once, biting the inside of his cheek. He had a strange feeling he wasn't going to like where this was going. "You know, if you think she'll be so useful, you should probably be tending to her with more care."

With a laugh, Thane Blackwall moved a step closer, reaching out and patting Cullen's shoulder. "Why? We only need the prisoners to reach the hold. My augur can deal with her after that."

"Well, she's not really our prisoner," Cullen objected, remembering his promise. He'd assured her he wouldn't let any harm come to her.

Before Cullen could voice that, another bark of a laugh escaped Thane Blackwall. He patted Cullen's shoulder again and headed back into the camp. "You're right; she's not our prisoner. She's mine."

…-…

Katrina's dreams were wild and confusing, punctuated with flares of pain and a murmur of voices that made no sense.

At some times, she was fleeing through an endless woods, branches taking on human-like hands to claw at her desperately, tugging her backwards, twisting in her hair and jerking her scalp. They stung her arms, face, and neck, and no matter where she turned, the trees looked exactly alike. Even when she stood still, the wind whipped the branches into her, twigs raking across her every which way.

Then the hellish nightmare would subside. Instead, she would hear voices murmuring in the background, or horses clopping along quietly.

She would open her eyes and be sitting in her family's drawing room, with her brothers and parents talking on the other side of the room about things that bored her immensely. Politics. She'd catch Clarence's eye as their oldest brother, Gregory, continued to explain to him the finer points of whatever political mishap had happened most recently. When Gregory turned to talk to their father, Clarence would grin and hold whatever he had near him—quill, letter opener, stick—in his hand and then point it toward her, mouthing 'en garde'.

Katrina would find something—usually a hair clip—and hold it up in return, and they would silently duel across the room until Gregory turned back. Then both of them would hide their weapons. Clarence would lean into his hand, fingers curled against his chin, as though he had been listening the whole time. Katrina would do her best to find something to have been busy with, though Gregory knew she'd been up to something unbecoming of a lady.

He and her parents would sigh, frowns etched into their features as though they were statues, incapable of giving her a smile.

Sometimes, Amelia was there, sitting next to her and quietly cheering during their pretend sparring as Clarence feigned injury. She always rooted for Katrina.

Other times, Michael, their youngest sibling, was there as well, sneaking behind the furniture to grab Gregory as he tried to write some important letter. Gregory would jump from his seat, cursing and glaring, trying in vain to grip their younger brother and shake some sense into him. Michael would always run to Katrina and use her as a shield, despite her protests that she was the worst person to choose for such a thing.

She'd laugh at Gregory's scowl, telling Michael to apologize as he leaned against her, his chin on her shoulder.

Then, the dream would twist again.

Suddenly it wasn't Michael behind her, but someone else, muscular arms gripping her as snow flooded the study, burying everything she was familiar with. She'd scream as her parents and siblings disappeared beneath the flurry of white, but they would simply sit there, continuing their conversations, not noticing as she vanished from their world.

She'd try to move against those wretched arms, feeling her breath catch in her chest, but the cold made it so hard to do anything. As he held her, knights in gleaming armor would march forward, blades drawn. Her sister's betrothed led them with that detestable, hateful look plastered to his face.

He would stop short, one eye vanishing as he watched the knights march on, sabers angled toward her. She clawed at the arms holding her, begging him to just let her go. Let her run.

And then, as the blades slashed at her hip and head, the world would fade away again, and she'd be curled in a cave with bears. Despite being sure they would eat her, they'd simply draped themselves over her, nuzzling their fur against her skin, grumbling slightly with words that sounded more human than growl.

Sometimes the bears would sit around her, growling quietly at one another in that same, almost human speech. She would try to understand what they were saying, to see if it was a language she knew, but it always eluded her. Their numbers varied, though it was generally only one or two near her.

Once, she heard an oddly accented voice whisper through all of it, "Please don't die."

For a moment, memories started to line up, a clearing in a snowy woods appeared, with horses and swords and shouts and bodies. Pain exploded from every inch of her and—

And then it faded away into one of the other dreams, the pains that came with those memories pushing her back under, letting her rest mercifully instead of facing those horrid aches and sharp stabs of agony.

Still, as she slipped away, she had to wonder who would plea with her so sincerely before she was swept up in another dream that had come to meet her.