Chapter 8: All Happy Families

Once again, Fenris was being denied sight of Hawke's face as they spoke. But it was where some strange tidal wave had put them while Fenris was still trying to comprehend the hug Merrill had greeted him with and he had, for an instant, been hard pressed to summon his distaste for her choices, washed away by her sincerity, it seemed. Grim-faced, Anders was bent over a tome with Kameron and after releasing him, Merrill went to join them.

Isabela had jostled him a little, putting him in the place he was, with his back resting on a rack of wine barrels, positioned so to mirror Hawke, leaning on the same rack, just around the corner but invisible all the same as the silence stretched and gained weight despite the quite murmuring of the others around the room.

Thinking back, Fenris only now realised how tense Hawke had been in all the months since leaving Kirkwall, his charm straining to the breaking point by the sheer necessity of carrying them all forward.

"I've been thinking about what you said," Fenris began, for something to say, unsure whether Hawke was waiting for Fenris to break the silence, whether it was out of amusement or out of apprehension.

"I've settled on 'honoured'," Hawke said with humour that could have been all real, though not in this place and this time.

"Not that," Fenris heard a growl in his own voice and he hadn't quite wanted to put it there. "You said you envied me for not having those memories."

"Ah, that. Don't hold it against me, it had been a long night even before you showed up."

Fenris cleared his throat. Hawke was too good at derailing any discussion if it suited him to do so. It had never been comfortable to be on the receiving end of it, but this was too important to just let slide, but the words wouldn't quite come. It was moments like this when her remembered how much of his life had been taken away, of experience and knowledge about what it meant to live in the world. Never mind how much of it would have been an experience of slavery, not in the end.

"I won't, then," Fenris finally said, conceding defeat on the subject. He knew what Hawke had meant and perhaps he should still appreciate how willing Hawke had been to show his vulnerability, even for a moment.

Fenris took a breath. "I still don't like any of this, but when I was planning my next move, I didn't really know where to go. You said we were family and while I never had any family worth remembering, I know at least that families should go through thick and thin together."

"What's left our families, anyway," Hawke said mildly.

"Then we will be two remnants," Fenris said, not quite a conclusion, but not a resolution either. "I owe you more than I realised. Deserting you as I have was wrong, but I make no apologies for my opinions. I know the truth of mages."

Hawke made no answer at all, only the weight of his silence as it clawed around the corners like claws.

Fenris added, "But I think you know it, too."

He never expected an answer, much less the answer he got.

Hawke said, "Even if I did, we don't all make the same choices. Otherwise they wouldn't be choices, would they?"

A slight vibration went through the shelf at his back, revealing that Hawke had shook himself free of it and indeed, he stepped into Fenris' field of vision with his typical nonchalance, notwithstanding how stripped raw Hawke's very self must have become in the times just past.

For a moment, it looked as if Hawke would gave him a companionable pat on the shoulder — and for a moment, Fenris wondered what he would make of such a gesture — but then Hawke instead only flashed him a quick smile, brilliant and genuine and gone again into the twilight.

Isabela, trading flirts with Zevran, caught Fenris' gaze and gave him a wink.

Ophélie had been vast asleep when her townhouse was taken with frightening efficiency. By the time two Templars dragged her from her bed, her guards had already been tied up and the rest of the staff herded into the courtyard.

Still drowsy from sleep and light-headed from the shock, Ophélie was still rendered speechless when a Templar pushed her own dressing gown into her hands. She put it on mechanically, what else would she have done? The Templar gripped her shoulder and pushed her to sit in an armchair by the fireplace. The embers there glowed in dull, midnight weakness, soon to be extinguished and for some reason, Ophélie watched it for the longest time as if mesmerised.

She was a peer of Orlais, a noblewoman and though her standing might be quite low in the hierarchy — especially in Val Royeaux itself — but such treatment was still inconceivable. In her experience, such things happened in playwrights' fantasies or, at best, in gossip shared in ballrooms over sparkling wine. It was more than thrilling, to have the mysterious assassin in her life and all the adventure he had brought with him. Still, it wasn't supposed to touch her, or threaten her. It wasn't supposed to come in the dark like this, transforming the velveteen nights of her imagination in something harsh and unyielding.

The Templar had shifted out of her line of sight, stood somewhere off to the side and behind her. She felt his bulky presence, looming in the darkness. She heard noise from the other rooms as the Templars searched them: scrape of wood on metal on wood from cupboards and dressers and other furniture, dull thuds of books being ripped from shelves, sometimes a quick discussion would take place, calls back and forth for coordination. Overall, however, they were surprisingly quiet. It occurred to Ophélie that her neighbours probably wouldn't have noticed anything was amiss, no great conflagration at all. Just a raid, in the middle of the night, in the most cultured country in Thedas.

Her thoughts spun wildly in her head, still chased by the remnants of sleep and the insistence that this here could be nothing but a nightmare and it would soon enough release her from its grip. Except it didn't and her mind began to clear ever so slowly, almost as if it was feeding from the meagre energy of the dead flames in the fireplace.

Ophélie realised she was shivering and she pulled the gown closer around her. And the movement seemed to break the spell, shock her fully awake from one moment to the next and only then did she begin to feel afraid. Because there were so very few reasons for the Templars to come to her as they had and no amount of affronted nobility would dissuade them. What did happen to the accomplices of apostates? Even those wellborn and wealthy, Templar authority on the matter was nearly absolute, after all.

Quiet click of boots on the polished floor. Ophélie turned her head to watch a woman peel herself from the shadows that spilled from the darkened hallway into the room. She walked with intense deliberation, armoured like the others, but her head bare of any helmet and revealing the elegant cast of her serious face. The mark on her armour was different, not the Templars' sword and flames, though she obviously was the one in charge.

Not knowing what else to do, she tried for affronted aristocracy anyway. "How dare you intrude in my house like this?"

The woman crossed the room with the same measured strides only to stop a few steps away from Ophélie and regard her thoughtfully for a long moment.

Ophélie continued, "I demand an apology! I demand you release me and my people at once!"

"I am to believe you are innocent?" the woman asked and her deep voice cut through the act like a slap in the face.

"Innocent?" Ophélie echoed incredulously. "I don't even know what you accuse me off! Of course I'm innocent!"

A curt shake of the head. "Your servants tell me you have a Fereldan in your employment?"

"So?"

"Only a few days ago he arrived her with an odd entourage, humans and elves both. Do you know who they were?"

Ophélie managed to bear the woman's gaze for barely a heartbeat before it's weight seemed to press her further into the plush of the armchair.

"Friends of Master Ballagh," she said and pushed her chin forward defiantly. "The stewart told me we were understaffed, they were to be new servants."

Again, the woman shook her head and an edge came into her voice. "Where are they now?"

Avoiding the woman's piercing gaze, Ophélie pushed her chin forward defiantly. "It's the middle of the night, in their beds, before they were dragged from them by you and your brutes."

A beat. Then the woman rushed forward like a striking serpent, put both hands on the armchair on either side of Ophélie, leaned in until their faces were level with each other. "You have been harbouring an apostate and several fugitive criminals from Kirkwall. You are an accomplice to their crimes and you will be punished accordingly."

The woman drew back a fraction, just enough for Ophélie to dare a breath.

"Or you help me. With no holding back." The woman pushed herself free from the armchair, stepped away and crossed her arms over her chest, stared down at Ophélie. "I ask again: Where are they now?"

Leliana kept her head down on her lengthy walk through the city and down to the waterfront. Not since running from Marjolaine had she felt this stalked. Fragments of thoughts chased each other in her head, equally unwelcome and distracting as the smattering of people in the streets so late at night. It wasn't a crowd by any sense of the word, not dense enough to get lost in, but more than enough people who would be able to recognise a pretty, red-headed woman with too-expensive clothes and the hunted look in her eyes.

If Cassandra had other sources…

If Kameron hadn't understood her message…

If she had been wrong all along… what then?

Cassandra would take Ophélie's townhouse, the girl the sacrificial lamb for the cause — whatever that might be. Finding nothing but the trait gone cold of Hawke's presence at Ophélie's house, who knew what Cassandra would do? She was a Seeker, half a legend in her own right, every shred of her reputation earned. Such a woman would not be so easily deterred from her goal. Leliana had tried telling her there was no danger, but she couldn't blame Cassandra for not taking her word for it.

Leliana stopped on a corner and lifted her head to take a longer look at her surrounding, nominally to orient herself, but also so she could scan the street behind her for anyone suspicious. She bent down and fiddled with her boot, covering her pause.

She spotted no one who had no business here, only herself as it were: Betraying faith and Chantry for a friendship that had sat on the shelf, unused for almost a decade and a man whom she had met three times to exchange a handful of mostly meaningless words.

Yet, she could barely imagine not helping them. Not in any true sense. She could see the choice right in front of her, how hard it was, the treason she would commit, but for all her imagination she could not picture it. She could not see herself in the Divine's office as she told her of Kameron and Hawke. She could not summon the words even to her mind of how she would have told Cassandra about L'auberge de la Coraline. She could have revealed Hawke as soon as she learned of him, before Kameron had even been there and perhaps she would have been spared. But the pictures in her mind were pale and ill-defined, forever the paths she would not take.

How easily Kameron had been able to predict her motivation irked her ever so slightly, an irritation that seemed to increase with every step she took.

What if Kameron was not the hero in this story? Hawke not the tragic-romantic lover and Anders not the idealistic, though misguided, martyr of a just cause?

Someone nearly bumped in Leliana and she stopped, sidestepped nimbly and watched as the drunken man mumbled an apology and shuffled his way down the street. She eyed him, suspicious beyond all reason, but the man did nothing to prove her right. Her purse was still in its place and no incriminating evidence — of whatever nature — had been left there, either.

Turning back, she stood under the sign of L'auberge de la Coraline, its writing lit by a flickering lamp, painting the letters in obscenely bright red.

Leliana laughed to herself, despite or because of the ridiculousness of the situation. All her fretting, all her worry, all of it, and here she was anyway, the meaningless of the fight with her conscience revealed for all to see.

Thankfully, there was no one else on the street right then to marvel at the strange woman and remember her, for later, when the Templars came, armed with questions and cold steel.

Isabela was keeping watch of the taproom from a corner of the bar, making a good show of a depressed sailor nursing her beer. She was on her feet quick as a panther the moment Leliana appeared in the doorway and it was an amazing display of skill to watch. For all her obvious charms, Isabela knew perfectly well how not to draw attention when such a thing didn't suit her. The bartender glanced up as she passed and it was obvious he forgot about her the moment his attention was caught by the waitress. The men playing dice on the table in a corner didn't even look up, though Isabela was close enough to be groped by any of them. The merchant, in obvious negotiations, noticed nothing about it at all.

"Our last lost lamb!" Isabela greeted her and slung an arm around her shoulder.

"Last?" Leliana asked.

Isabela sniggered. "My lost faith in a happy ending has been reviving these last few days." She gently pulled Leliana around and steered her to the back of the room. "Ready for the finale?"

Isabela led her down the stone steps into the sprawling basement of the Coraline, through cold-rooms for fresh meat and vegetables into rooms staked floor to ceiling with casks of wine and beer, barrels of salted fish. Until they reached an almost empty room on the far end of a dimly lit corridor.

"Leliana!" Zevran's accented voice greeted her as Isabela pushed her through the narrow door ahead of her. Before Leliana had time to take in any more of the scene in the room, she was pulled into a hearty embrace by Zevran and for that moment, the joy of the reunion drove away all other concerns. She squeezed him right back then released him, pushing him to arms' length to look in his face. Of all the companions during the Blight, she and Zevran had had a special accord, an acceptance between people of similar shady trades and secretive pasts. He looked older, hard-won experience frosting his cheerful features like a muffling veil. Only the sparkle in his eyes was the same. She thought he would be seeing much the same in her own face.

Past Zevran, she spotted Hawke sitting on a crate across the room. Leliana couldn't read Hawke's face across the distance and through the corpselight glow of the blood-and-lyrium ritual laid out on the floor between them. But even without it, she didn't know Hawke well enough to pass any form of judgement on his state of mind. He seemed peaceful, or at least contemplative, if such a thing was even possible.

He greeted her with a slight smile and a nod.

Fenris stood by the door, tall and imposing, but hidden in shadow. Anyone uninvited entering this room would be finding Fenris quite the obstacle to their progress. He had his arms crossed over his chest, eyes focused on the ritual with slight, subconscious distaste curling one corner of his mouth.

Strands of tension filled the room like an unseen web, tangling loyalties and distrust, hate and love and an ache which could as easily be hope as it could be hopelessness. Leliana had some idea of the people collected in this room and she entertained a brief moment picturing Cassandra trying to take them. She wasn't quite sure what she thought about the slaughter that would follow, had she truly decided to sell them out. Because despite the uncertainty of the alliances here, against a clear foe, they would stand together. This was her side, after all, where she belonged. For bad or worse. Her doubts would return in time, but at least she would have some answers for them then.

"I'm glad you came," Kameron said as he left his place and sauntered over to her. "Thank you for the warning."

"Only this once," she said, though the ice was faint in her voice and the lie apparent to both of them. Kameron had the decency not to press her on the topic, but he didn't need to.

He turned away from her and the apprehension in the room focused on him. He caught Merrill's gaze, who nodded and then Hawke's, who slipped easily to his feet.

"Let's get this show on the road," Hawke said, clapping his hands. "Isabela, I want you back in the taproom, keeping an eye on surprise visitors and Fenris out in the hallway just in case. Zevran…"

"I'd prefer Zevran to stay in here," Kameron interjected and Hawke nodded again.

"What about me?" Leliana asked. Hawke watched her for a long moment and she couldn't quite shake the impression he was contemplating all the different ways to kill or at least incapacitate her.

"Stay, or join Fenris or try to keep Isabela from getting so drunk and so laid she forgets about watching out for Templars. Shouldn't be that hard, she's a good multi-tasker."

Leliana hesitated for a long minute. Nothing should go wrong, at least not regarding the Templars or Cassandra and the Seekers. There were no trails leading to this inn, at least none that could be smelt out this quickly. There was another danger, however, one far closer than an intrusion from outside. There would be three mages in the Fade, two of them blood mages and one already possessed. If something went wrong at all, the true danger lay was in this room.

"I'd rather stay," she said and something must have given her away, because Kameron gave a quick, savage grin and said, "Strike true."

For a mage, the intricate workings of the ritual would paint itself in a glowing manifestation of magic through the empty air of the room. In the perception of a mage, the power called would seem to make the floor shiver and the walls tremble. A mage's senses would stand on edge, like any man's facing an oncoming thunderstorm, only a thousandfold stronger, beating through flesh and bone like a pulse or a tide pulling everything with it.

For someone who was not a mage, the ritual appeared quite mundane, unspectacular and anticlimactic. In truth, very little happened where it would be seen by the naked eye. Leliana settled herself in the shadows of corner, close to the door where Fenris had been when she had come in. A part of her was surprised to find Zevran moved further away from the door and instead picked to sit on the crate where the tome still lay in the imitation of relaxation that hid his readiness to spring.

Hawke, Anders and Kameron lay down on the chalk marks and Merrill let a dribble of their combined blood fall on their foreheads and then drew the line of crimson back to the bowl at the centre. Anders locked up, his skin flickered blue for a second and then he slumped and paled, seemed to fade to the point where Leliana expected him to become transparent. In the lyrium glow the three looked like corpses and Merrill's elven face became grim and alien. The confidence with which she went through her motions made her seem a necromancer who thought of herself as an artist even as she cut her subjects to pieces.

Merrill settled herself at the other side of the bowl, presiding over the three lifeless forms. She held herself motionless there, gathering the strands of power to herself, impressing her will on them. She reached forward, gripped the bowl with both hands and, taking care not to sever the soaked strings, dipped the bowl of blood over, spilling it past the lyrium and to the floor. The blood spread in a puddle around Merrill's kneeling form, too much of it and far too bright for comfort.

The horizon in the Fade had the look of fake distance to it. Stage props placed at sufficiently far away to fool a rural audience, but with no more actual depth than a painting of garish colours and conventional motive. Likewise, the tint of the sky was somehow subtly wrong, not quite as blue as it should be, edging into purple and yellow at the edges, where the artist had not smudged the colours as carefully as at the centre.

Dark earth compressed under their boots, pebbles thrown on a village path to give some stability against the mud a recent rain had left in it's wake, but that, too, left the aftertaste of imitation, a roast made of cardboard and served on expensive porcelain and neither host nor guests were willing to admit it didn't much work as a proper meal.

The air was perfectly still, playing at odds with the dusty-green shrubbery lining the path that allowed its leaves to sway gently in a wind that wasn't there.

"You'll notice there is no scent," Kameron said as he turned in a circle, arms spread out as if he were indeed up on a stage and speaking the prologue to a rapt audience of open-mouthed yokels. "That's what gives it away, usually."

Hawke let his gaze wander around the surrounding countryside, than tilted his head back to watch the clouds as they travelled across the artificial sky in three different directions at once. "And the clouds look like dragons and unicorns," he added.

Kameron followed the direction of his gaze and frowned. "I've never seen that," he finally said, then shrugged. "I read a book, once, as a child. It had a picture in it not unlike this."

Before Hawke had a chance to chortle, Kameron continued, "And that's actually the most important thing about the Fade. It is not stable. It picks on our thoughts, conscious or not and it changes even as we try to balance our understanding of it."

He turned on the path. "Vigil's Keep is that way," he said and started walking.

Hawke lingered for a moment longer, watching as the wind ripped the unicorns apart and repainted them as cockatrices, sending them to war against mermaids. A gap opened in their front lines, seemed to tear right through the canopy of sky and horizon to reveal the soaring spires of the Black City, impossibly far away and at the same time, close enough to come hissing down like an executioner's axe.

He pushed the heel of one boot into the soft ground, then watched the imprint as if waiting for something strange to happen to it. When nothing happened, he gave a slight shrug and strode after Kameron without hurry.

"I'm not a Dreamer," Kameron said when Hawke fell into step beside him. "I cannot shape the Fade as they do, but any mage with sufficient determination and power can bend it to his will. All of this," another sweeping gesture with one hand, "is currently held in place by Merrill's mind alone and fuelled by both lyrium and blood. A Dreamer would see the stitches where we've put the pieces together."

"It's certainly a nice location for a leisurely stroll," Hawke remarked with a casualness that went barely skin deep.

"It's for your comfort," Kameron said. "And mine. It takes a while for the body to adjust, you need to trust your instincts more in this place, because it's malleable to who you perceive yourself to be."

He glanced to the side. "You look different here. Not like the fake courtier you pretend to be in Val Royeaux and not like the fugitive down on his luck you were when you got there."

If it was the moment for Hawke to realise this very fact, he gave no outward sign. The black armour of his Kirkwall days fit him as perfectly as it had ever done, gleaming leather, flexible enough to follow his every move, yet with the toughness to withstand any but the most dedicated sword-stroke. Shoulder-guards spiked with silverite and the torn straps of red cloth that wrapped around the scabbards of his shivs — Finesse, Zevran's gift, from a lifetime ago.

"Yes, and you've got the loveliest golden locks I've ever seen on any girl," Hawke remarked. "Makes me want to braid your hair."

A quick smile ghosted over Kameron's face. "I've only recently cut it, my subconsciousness seems to be a bit slow on the uptake."

For all that, his hair was tied back from his face in a queue that looked as if it had been loosened by a long day of hiking or fighting. His armour looked very much like the one out there in the real world, though less worn and dented, the way it would if he had picked it up from the armorer only a few days ago. The sword Vigilance was strapped to his back, unmitigated by the splendour of it sheath. Small wafts of colds were crawling all along its length, far more so than they would outside the Fade.

They walked for a while in silence and though the path before them made a good imitation of solid authenticity, it had a habit of seeming to shift and writhe ahead and behind them like a living thing, like walking on a pinned, but still living serpent that sought to shake them off.

"Vigil's Keep," Hawke began. "What's there that makes it so important?"

"It's where Anders became a Warden, where he met Justice and I met them both."

"For a teary-eyed nostalgia trip?" Hawke asked and the edge of sarcasm cut right through the veneer he had affected before. "You really have no idea what's been going on with either of them in the past years, haven't you?"

"What else is there to do? Our past anchors us. We are nothing without our past." A long pause, stretching until it would become uncomfortable, had this been a normal place, or these been normal man.

Kameron said, "Why do you still distrust me?"

"That's a misconception you've been having from the start," Hawke said, back to the lightness of before, but with a sharpness in his voice, lend to it by the stillness of the air. "I don't distrust you. It's just I have no reason to trust you. Different thing, more or less. Different enough, anyway. Crazy mages aren't exactly in short supply where I come from."

This time, it was Hawke who didn't give his companion time for a reply. "I think Fenris doesn't have it half wrong about you. Sinister intent or lack thereof, trust on no evidence makes for a short life, although probably of the 'ignorance is bliss' variety. I'm not an idiot. At least, I like to think I'm not."

Kameron stared at the ground under his feet for a while, pensive. Quietly, he said, "While you were travelling with Zevran, did he tell you about our trip to Sharpe's Town?"

"Not that I recall, but all the tales of assassination and moresomes rather blur into each other after a while. We've also had quite a few mentions of bondage, interestingly carved 'toys' and he's really into leather, but I somehow doubt you don't know that."

"The smell of leather, to be precise," Kameron laughed a little, but became serious immediately. "But no, it's not that kind of story. I thought he might have told you, but it's just as well."

The path before them fitted itself between pastures and small fields, farmhouses hidden by the haze of distance and the cutouts of cows chewing their food and watching them with the same amount of disinterest a real cow would have afforded them. The Fade remembered to offer the sound of two birds, singing to each other from the wayside hedge to a pile of firewood by a stable.

"Sharpe's Town is a fishing village on the Coastlands, remarkable only in that it sits on the border between Highever and Amaranthine. We had much rebuilding to do after the Blight and Arl Howe had ravaged both arlings to the best of his ability. It must have been during this effort of bringing order back that Arl Cousland found a list of 'notable citizens' and passed it on to me."

Hawke narrowed his eyes, from the errant ray of sunlight striking his eyes or something else entirely. He didn't look at Kameron and the Warden continued, a thin strand of humour lacing his voice. "I have no idea how she got on that list, but I suppose chance can work in the oddest ways. I had not thought of looking for my mother after the Blight. The Tower was very good at teaching us how our past lives mattered no longer, it didn't even occur to me to…" And fell silent as if he had been slapped.

On either side of them and ahead, the houses grew denser and taller, and the bulk of Vigil's Keep began to peel itself from the undefined Fade, pretending to have always been there. When Kameron picked up the narrative again, his voice was perfectly steady.

"I had three siblings of who I knew, all of them mages and all of them dead. Zevran was with me when I journeyed to Sharpe's Town. It's a nondescript cluster of small houses and salt crusted moorings. It smells of fish and the sea there, no matter where you go. The people didn't trust two armed strangers, but they pointed us to the house and made warding signs against evil behind our backs."

A larger rock churned under Hawke's boot. "My mother always cited Revka for why she wouldn't risk losing children to the Circle. But I'm too old to expect a happy reunion. If there were one, I don't think you'd be telling me."

"She was mad," Kameron said simply. "Her neighbours said she hadn't left the house for years, only took a few steps into the overgrown gardens at night to harvest some of the vegetables that still grew there. The house was large, stately once for that village. There were the mummified corpses of two children in the nursery and she was so terrified we would take them away. She must have killed them for fear the Templars would come again."

As if bypassing the intervening space, listening to the story and its ending, Vigil's Keep was suddenly right in front of them, the open gate and the wide courtyard beyond. It was deserted of people, but with the warmth of them still lingering somehow, as if they would be back in a moment and the silence would be breached by the sound of their everyday lives, as, no doubt, the real Vigil would hold even today.

"What, do we bond now?" Hawke inquired, coming to halt and standing relaxed.

Kameron chuckled. "What I meant to say is this: You — and Bethany — are the only family I have left."

"What about Zevran?"

"Zevran isn't my family. He's my life."

"When you said there is nothing a demon could tempt you with, you were lying, weren't you?"

Another chuckle. "A demon will always find something to tempt us with."

He took another step forward, turned to face Hawke. The Fade exaggerated the contrast of his pale face and the red tattoos there, left odd reflections in his eyes that shouldn't be there. Abruptly, the wind picked up and though the ground had been damp on the way, now the air filled with dust, dry and abrasive, dust-devils dancing behind them and a shiver seemed to roll through the landscape.

Hawke made a dismissive gesture with his hand, the mannerism underscoring the similarities of them, even as he discarded them. He said, "Frankly, I've heard better storytellers than you at work and besides, it wasn't necessary. There is nothing about your motivation that I've somehow managed to misunderstand. The opposite, in fact."

As if sensing Kameron phrasing the retort, Hawke added, "Let's go for the cheap shot here, why don't we? If it were the other way around and I'd be in your shoes, saving your… well, your life, would you be taking your eyes off me even for a second?"

The thoughtful expression on Kameron's face remained, settled there like a scavenger intent on staying, perhaps from the memories he had indadvertedly called and the Fade, by his own words, would be responsive to such things.

Hawke tilted his head a little, fixed his gaze on something behind Kameron's shoulder and, almost by accident, Kameron mirrored the gesture.

The Warden said, "Something behind me?"

Hawke nodded mellowly, "Something behind you."

The both moved with dancers' accord, way from each other so as not to hinder each other's movement, with a twist and a half-turn so their stood angled, not quite back to back, but with all angles covered.

The Desire demon purred as she watched. Her appearance wasn't quite fixed, yet, wavering between the preference of both men, trying to arrange herself into a form that would be most appealing to the both of them only to find not enough common ground for just one shape. For all her effort, no demon could hide their true face in the Fade and the horns were there and the claws and the inhuman, wavering flames that served as her hair.

"I heard talk of temptations," she cooed. "And here I am, as called, as dreamed, as wanted. I am Frenzy. I love the tableau you created here." She moved her arm in an arch and the gesture drew her body into perfect, supple display. She took a step forward, then stopped, facing the obvious hostile demeanour of both men.

She laughed, deep in her throat. "My my, such ferocity you bring, such willpower. I am not the first to hear you tread the Fade, but the others want to watch you for longer, see what creatures you are before they would taste you. So tell me, what tempts you?"

"Roast-beef," Hawke said. "Still bloody, you know the kind where the animal hasn't realised it's dead, yet. I could never resist that."

Frenzy regarded him smugly. "Not your mother, then? Singing softly in the night? Not your father? Telling stories of wondrous adventures? Not your family, all safe and sound and at home?" Her voice slithered in quiet, melodious tones, wrapping fingers of mist around the senses.

A strain had put itself on Hawke's voice, betraying the effort it took to unclench his jaw and the hardening of muscle as it kept his casual expression in place. "Dead and gone, demon, and I'm too old to believe in easy answers."

"So quick to dismiss my offer. So caught in your own web. Do you realise how blind you are? All these opportunities you never see. I could show you, you know, how much more you could be."

In the Fade, normal rules did not apply. It takes an earthbound mind a while to get used to it, but Hawke had never been slow to understand new rules. It was a skill you needed when you built your life on breaking them. Faster than muscle and sinew would have carried him, he was on the demon, thrusting his hand along her scalp, tearing her head back and pulling her into an embrace, though hardly the kind she could have seen coming. Finesse seemed to jump into his hand on its own, as if he had called it like the demon, eager to put its blade into her throat.

Frenzy twitched in his grip, but then seemed to snuggle closer into his hold, though she was careful to keep her throat still and not slit it accidentally.

"Let's assume you have nothing I want," Hawke said, voice dropped to a whisper, harsher than her own had been but with some of its cadences.

"Everyone," she said, "wants something."

"Hawke," Kameron cut in. He released the hilt of Vigilance, which he had gripped in the expectation of a battle. "Desire demons love this sort of game. You can't seduce her into a surrender. Just slit her throat and be done with her."

"Before I lay your soul bare?" Frenzy inquired, still writhing sensually in Hawke's arms. "And he sees the true black depths of your lusts?"

"I'm all ears, as they say," Hawke began conversationally. "Then again…"

His grip turned to steel and Frenzy must have had a moment of warning, a premonition of intent and she struggled, long claws snapping for his arms and breaking their edge on his armour, an impotent attempt to protect herself when the game had eluded her grasp.

"… I'm on a schedule."

Finesse tore through her shimmering skin like butter and Frenzy flowed away like water, leaving nothing behind but the beating echo of her dying scream.

Reference

"all happy families" — (Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.) Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

Author's Note: Yeah, the inevitable Fade portion begins. Honestly, I'm not too fond of playing those quests, but let me tell you: They are a riot to write.