Cullen's experience with royal palaces was limited, but he was fairly certain such a large space had no right feeling so… small. The rooms felt close, constricting, and he felt as if he'd trod the expanse of it ten times over in the past two days.

Two days. An instant in some cases, an eternity in others.

The mood was of course alleviated in no way by Hawke or Fenris, who were prowling about, both restless, both too quiet, too tense with worry. He knew perfectly well Hawke was entirely unused to waiting; she preferred action — he'd known that almost from the moment he first laid eyes on her. The waiting, the not-knowing, frayed her temper, outbursts of which growing ever more frequent. At the other end of the spectrum, Fenris stalked the grand halls in utter stony silence, and woe to anyone who dared interrupt that quiet. Hawke shot arrows at targets until the muscles in her arms trembled, while Fenris trained in the yard until nothing but hay and burlap remained of the army of practice dummies. They didn't speak to one another. They didn't speak to anyone else, either.

Varric and Isabela kept their own counsel, searching for leads and clues in their own way. Through it all Isabela was uncharacteristically quiet, watching over Varric, who clearly felt responsible for Amelle's disappearance. Cullen had never seen the dwarf so subdued.

He couldn't blame any of them. He was growing impatient as well — he suspected he simply hid it better. Like Hawke, Cullen disliked having nothing to do but wait. More than that, he disliked someone else dictating how long they were meant to wonder. And that she was using Amelle as either a pawn or a target for retribution… Cullen could hardly bear it.

It was early — few other than the servants were awake, so far as he could tell, and the smells of the morning meal wafted up from the palace kitchens. Cullen had slept ill, and, rather than tossing in his too-fine sheets, decided to patrol the palace's perimeter. Patrolling not pacing, he reassured himself. Patrolling. It was entirely different.

He stopped in a vast, pristine courtyard, and looked up at an elaborately carved statue of Andraste, Amelle's words rising up in his memory like tendrils of smoke.

I… accept what I am, Cullen. And I know… I know what can happen if—I know. And… and I don't want that to happen — ever, if I can help it. I don't want to be a mindless… thing that would slaughter those I care about without compunction. Being trapped like that is… it's worse than death.

Two days. He knew all that could be inflicted on another in two days and tried without success to think of those doomed mages in the Tower who had succumbed to fear and helplessness. Tilting his head up at the statue, Cullen sent up a quick, silent prayer.

Please, keep her safe.

The moment of supplication ended abruptly when a voice called out behind him, "Knight-Commander?"

Cullen turned, a frown already pulling at his lips. The prince was flanked by two guards—one of whom was the young soldier who'd attended them when they'd come too late to the camp. Two days. Do not think what may be done to a person in two days. "Knight-Captain if you must, Your Highness," he said. "I was never invested with the other, and gave it up when I left Kirkwall." He shrugged. "If she's heard of my defection, the Divine may have already stripped me of my rank entirely." Once again, Cullen glanced toward the statue. The Maker's Bride gazed back, serene and untroubled. He wished he could feel half so calm himself. "Perhaps just Cullen would be best. That much I still know for truth."

"Perhaps the Divine is displeased with both of us," the prince agreed. "I would like to believe she will hear reason when it is spoken, but until then you be just Cullen and I will be just Sebastian, and perhaps we will put right the wrongs done against her people."

It was a noble sentiment. Cullen tried to drown the voice that said it was as fruitless as it was noble. Is there anyone less one of Divine Justinia's people than an apostate mage? "Is there news?"

Sebastian shook his head, and Cullen could not miss the pained wince that creased the prince's brow. "None. My Eyes have been combing the city to no avail. Jessamine has disappeared without a trace."

"There are always traces," Cullen replied, hating the way his voice betrayed him, raising the final syllable almost into the inflection of a question.

"She has been adept at erasing them." Sebastian looked as tired as Cullen felt.

"And Hawke?"

Sebastian pushed a hand through his hair, heedless of the disarray it left behind. His eyes searched out Andraste's as well, lingering on the statue a moment too long before he replied, "The same. If words could kill, she'd have left a string of corpses in her wake. Only Tasia will even attempt to speak with her now. She is a bowstring liable to snap at the slightest provocation."

"As you would be, in her place."

Sebastian did not bother denying it. He only nodded wearily. So wearily. "Knight-C—Cullen, I would have your counsel."

He turned to face Sebastian fully. "Of course."

Sebastian gave a quick, sharp nod to the soldiers flanking him. "Leave us a moment, if you will." The guards exchanged a look and moved to the other end of the courtyard, out of earshot but still able to see Sebastian's every move. Once they were alone, Sebastian turned back to Cullen. "There is… something."

Something in his tone both pricked his interest and commanded his attention. He met Sebastian's eyes steadily, controlling the flutter of hope in his chest. "Something that is… not a trace?"

"It may prove fruitless, but I believe it is a path worth exploring. This waiting. It is… maddening."

"I suspect that's largely the point." Sebastian nodded in silent agreement as Cullen added, "It's harder than most suspect, doing nothing."

The prince's expression darkened. "Remaining idle under such circumstances is not something to which I am accustomed."

"Nor I." But there was no enemy present to fight, no trail, no clues. At the moment there was nothing for any of them to focus on beyond a situation that was entirely out of their control. Cullen was well and truly tired of being thrust into situations wherein he found himself at the mercy of another's mad whims. He suspected the same of Sebastian.

"It is true Jessamine has all but vanished; however, there remains one loose end."

"That sounds… unexpectedly sloppy of her. What is it?"

Just then, a pair of pages, one fair-haired and the other ginger, both blissfully unaware of the tension in the palace, ran pell-mell across the courtyard, shouting back and forth at each other, their young voices reverberating off the stones in the midst of a game:

"I'll get you, filthy Archdemon!" the fair-haired page yelled.

"No you won't, stupid Grey Warden!" shouted the redheaded one. "And you're just a girl anyway!"

The little blond boy stopped, indignant and red-faced. "I AM NOT A GIRL!"

The other laughed and kept running, only to call out behind him, "You wanted to be the Grey Warden!"

The chase began anew. "I wanted to be the other one! Hey, wait up!"

Soon the shouts faded, but the moment — so normal, so natural — had been painfully discordant. Cullen shook his head briefly in a vain attempt to clear it and looked back at Sebastian. "You were saying?"

"We're still holding the pretender who usurped my throne. Morven."

Cullen thought a moment. "The one you now suspect Jessamine of being allied with from the start?"

"The very same. He currently occupies a cell in my dungeon, and until very recently he'd been… unhelpfully unconscious."

It was not a trace, exactly, but it was something, Cullen had to admit. "He is now significantly less unconscious?" He arched an eyebrow at Sebastian. "By his own volition?"

Sebastian's face remained impassive. "Does it matter?"

"It may influence how helpful — and truthful — he'll be."

The prince's smile was tight, his eyes cold. "Then we'll have to make him realize honesty and helpfulness are in his… best interests."

A shudder of uneasiness ran the length of Cullen's spine. It was the cage again, and the demons whispering promises and threats. The promises were worse. The promises were always worse. "I… even for Amelle, I will not put a man to torture. I cannot."

"I know," Sebastian said.

"Then why—?"

The prince met Cullen's gaze unflinchingly. "I trust you to stop me if I go too far."

Cullen saw the truth of it in Sebastian's eyes. After a considering pause, he reached out his arm. Sebastian traded grips with him, and with a last glance toward Andraste's serene visage—keep us all safe—Cullen turned from the courtyard and followed the prince of Starkhaven to the dungeons. Much as he clung to hope—the fragile thread of hope—Cullen hoped the cost of it would not be too dear.

#

As soon as Cullen fell in at Sebastian's side the prince was glad he'd made the decision to hunt the templar down and ask his help. He'd debated it some time. He didn't know Cullen well, but the Knight-Captain had been a frequent visitor to the chantry—even more frequent than duty dictated. More frequent a visitor than Meredith had ever been, to own the truth. And Kiara trusted him. She did not bestow her trust easily. It was enough for Sebastian.

Under normal circumstances Sebastian would have turned to Kiara for help interrogating Morven—You and I both know getting answers from recalcitrant villains is something of a forte—but Kiara was…

Sebastian remembered the beach. He remembered Thrask and Grace and Amelle's still form crumpled on the sand. He remembered the rain of arrows. He remembered the blood on Kiara's face, and the coldness in her eyes, and the way she so utterly fell to pieces afterward. She was too close to that now. He saw it in the way she stalked and snapped—she had to be angry so she wouldn't cave to despair. He was, in truth, almost glad of it: he knew Kiara Hawke's grief, and rightfully feared it.

He could not contemplate what would happen if Amelle—

No. He would not think it, not so long as there could be hope. Not so long as he had loose ends—this single loose end—to follow. For now, at least, Sebastian needed Morven alive. He was relatively certain Kiara would not see things the same way, if the pretender's guilt or collusion was admitted. It was the beach all over again, and he did not want to see it end in the same carnage. Necessity required restraint.

Restraint Sebastian feared would elude him when faced with Morven's recalcitrance. A tight knot of emotion tangled in his breast—fear, anger, frustration, hate—and if the pretender taunted him or spoke words he did not want to hear, Sebastian did not trust himself to react any more rationally than Kiara would in his place. Cullen's presence was solid and silent, a half-step behind him, and his gaze was wary and watchful, but not distrustful. Sebastian valued that.

He will stop me, he thought over and over. He will stop me if I go too far.

When they entered the dungeons, Sebastian waved the guards back to their ease. Whatever he was, Morven was no threat. Illness had stolen all the flesh from his form; Sebastian could have counted the man's bones beneath the taut, sallow skin stretched tight over them, had he been so inclined. Sending a slantwise glance Cullen's way, Sebastian was relieved to see the templar's expression unchanged. Wary. Watchful. Still not distrustful. Not yet.

Morven turned his head and his swallow was audible. His Vael eyes had lost some of their fire. Sickness had rendered them pale and watery, and had stolen much of their defiance. "Forgive me," Morven rasped. "I would rise, but I find I cannot."

"Give the man water," Cullen ordered. When one of the guards looked to him for confirmation, Sebastian nodded.

Cullen himself knelt at the man's side, tilting the waterskin. More water slid down Morven's face than into his mouth, but the pretender's expression was still grateful. "She's gone," Morven said once he'd drunk his fill.

"She?" Sebastian asked coolly.

Morven closed his eyes and lay back on the straw mattress that stank of his filth and his illness. "Jessamine," Morven said, drawing the word out long.

"And how would you know that?"

The skeleton sighed. "I'd still be sleeping if she was here, wouldn't I? Surprised I woke up at all, to own the truth."

Traces. Everyone leaves traces.

Sebastian narrowed his eyes. "It is because of Jessamine you are alive."

Morven snorted and the subtle movement seemed to wrack his whole frame. "If she truly has gone, then it's hardly a favor she's done me, is it?"

"You'd have preferred to die, then."

"Isn't that the whole point of taking poison in the first place?"

Sebastian considered this as he crossed his arms over his chest. There was something odd about the question, but he couldn't put his finger on it. If death had been denied him, perhaps offering Morven what he truly desired would reap better results than more common methods of persuasion. "And yet she saved your life despite your obvious wishes." He nodded at the stone walls surrounding them. "Despite your current circumstances."

"Well," the pretender replied, and the sneer was more pronounced on his emaciated face, "she is a healer, after all."

Sebastian had barely opened his mouth, a sharp retort upon his lips, when Cullen said quietly, "Knowing potions and poisons does not a healer make, ser."

"Not like the little mage bitch that saved his life, eh?" he said, jerking his chin at Sebastian.

"Were I you, ser," Cullen said, and though he still spoke softly, his voice grew icy, "I would choose my words with more care in present company."

Morven's expression was mutinous, but he subsided. Sebastian was very nearly disappointed at this, but it was a fleeting emotion; more important things were at stake than his own disappointment. He inclined his head at the prisoner. "So far you have admitted to knowing of Jessamine's absence and of Amelle Hawke's existence. As it happens, those are the two topics I wish to discuss with you."

"I only have so many fingers you can break, you know. Or are you going to use the knife again?" Morven's smile was closer to a grimace, but it chilled him nonetheless. "If you want to use me for archery practice again I promise I won't move. Couldn't if I tried."

Cullen shot him a look, which Sebastian ignored, keeping his gaze on Morven. "What else do you know of Amelle Hawke?"

He narrowed rheumy eyes at Sebastian and seemed to turn the question over in his mind before answering, "She's an apostate from Kirkwall, the Champion's sister—" and there was no denying the vitriol loaded into that single word, "—and the sole reason you're standing there and I'm lying here."

"Is Jessamine acting on your order, then?" Cullen asked. But Morven only laughed — a horrible, raspy sound that quickly turned to a wet, hacking cough. Cullen offered him more water, but Sebastian noted the templar seemed less than pleased about it. After several minutes, Morven was once again breathing normally.

"My order? I was bloody well unconscious when she left, you idiots. No. If some mage is stupid enough to come on the basis of a letter from a woman she doesn't even know, then she deserves what she gets."

Sebastian took a step closer, his patience dwindling, his fingers itching to grasp Morven's hand, to bend back finger after finger until his screams drowned out each cracking snap. "Indeed. And what do you deserve, Morven?"

He had a few ideas. None of them pleasant.

"Better than this," the other man spat. His tongue darted out to moisten dry lips. Something about the gesture made Sebastian's stomach turn over. "She ruined it all, and she didn't even know it."

"Who ruined it all? Jessamine, by foiling your suicide?" Sebastian asked. "Are you so craven? You would choose the Void over repentance?"

Morven shook his head; the straw rasped beneath his skull. His cheekbones looked sharp as knives; Sebastian half-expected them to break through the fragile skin at any moment. "Thick, thick, thick, thick." Then the pretender smiled, and it took all Sebastian's will to keep from smashing his fist into that contemptuous smirk to destroy it completely.

"Amelle ruined it all," Cullen said. It was not a question, and Morven's lips twitched. "But ruined what? She was in Kirkwall. You were here."

"I'm the prince of Starkhaven," Morven declared as grandly as his frail body and hoarse voice would allow. "Or I would have been, if you'd stayed dead, you pompous prick, with your prayers and your pretensions. She promised me. She promised me." Fervor made the pretender cough again, and it took several moments for the spasm to cease. Tears ran from the corners of his eyes, dampening the dirty sheet beneath him.

Sebastian swallowed hard and crossed to the other side of the room, clenching and unclenching his right hand into a fist.

If some mage is stupid enough to come on the basis of a letter from a woman she doesn't even know, then she deserves what she gets.

"How did you know about the letter?" Sebastian asked the wall abruptly.

Morven coughed, and said nothing.

Turning, Sebastian faced the pretender but directed his question at Cullen. "He was imprisoned by then. He was guarded heavily every hour of the day and night. Kiara was still unconscious when he was brought down here. How did he know about the letter Jessamine sent Amelle? Unless—"

"Jessamine told him," Cullen said.

"Knowing potions and poisons does not a healer make," Sebastian breathed. "She gave you the poison, too. To keep you from talking. To keep me from breaking you. To keep you silent."

Morven remained silent, but his lips twitched. Sebastian did not think the swallowed expression was a smile this time.

"But she did not kill you when she could have. Curious. So very curious. Why, Morven? If you were merely a loose thread in some plot of hers, why did she not simply… snip you?"

The pretender blinked. And said nothing. An echo of his smirk returned.

Sebastian looked hard at the other man, meeting his eyes unwaveringly. There was no doubt about it — he had Vael eyes. He'd passed for Connall — physically, at least — for weeks. Seconds ticked by as he held Morven's gaze; the other man looked away first. "Let's consider all the reasons she didn't let you die, shall we?"

"It's not as if she did me a favor."

"Punishment, then, for not being convincing enough?" mused Cullen.

Sebastian nodded slowly. "Entirely possible, assuming this was her plan to begin with — and it's beginning to sound as if it was." Sebastian paced the length of the small room as he recalled Jessamine's manner as she worked to keep Morven from dying — he remembered how sharp her temper was, how… invested she seemed in saving his life. He allowed himself to wonder for a moment how Amelle might have handled such a situation. She'd saved his own life at a time when another might not have thought he deserved being saved. He had little doubt if it had been Amelle in Jessamine's shoes she would have saved Morven. Amelle was a dedicated healer, though; she ached when those she could not save perished, but she was typically calm and focused as she worked. She did not lose her composure, unless…

He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. Suddenly his head jerked up and he whirled, crossing the room to once more glare down at Morven.

"What is she to you?"

The skeletal man said nothing; he simply looked at Sebastian with the same bland, maddening expression. "What is she to you?" he shouted, loudly enough to make the other man flinch.

Cullen watched him closely, though his eyes still held no judgement. "Sebastian, what—"

Turning to Cullen, Sebastian jabbed a finger in Morven's direction. "When he was on the verge of death, we summoned Jessamine. She could have easily let him die then. She could have told us there was nothing to be done and none of us would have been the wiser."

"She could have quietly and neatly snipped a… troublesome loose end."

"Exactly. But she didn't." Sebastian turned his gaze back upon Morven. "On the contrary, she fought to keep you alive. Fought as hard as Amelle whenever Kiara's injuries threatened to overcome her — when my own wounds were so stubborn to heal. And she was more angry about the cut to your blighted thumb than she was about the poison itself. So I ask you again, Morven, what is Jessamine to you?"

Morven's chin jutted out obstinately, but on his sunken, bony features the expression appeared more a caricature of stubbornness. "And what is such information worth to you?"

The question, the sense of entitlement, sent Sebastian's pulse pounding, his hands curling into fists. But before he could reply, Cullen posed an altogether surprising question, "What is a merciful, painless death worth to you?"

"Less than you'd think," Morven spat back, a spark of defiance in his Vael eyes, "as I'm not actually suicidal."

Cullen blinked and sat back on his heels. His fingers tightened reflexively around the waterskin, sending water splashing over his hand and down the front of his tunic.

Sebastian hunkered down at the pretender's side. "It wasn't punishment, was it? She poisoned you to keep you quiet, and you trusted her to heal you when the danger had passed. Do I have the right of it?"

Sebastian was standing close enough to see Morven swallow, to see the way the man's jaw clenched and the way the corner of his left eye twitched.

"But you woke up to find she'd left you, and that the danger was far, far from over. She's not here to save you now. She's not here to make you sleep and keep you dreaming of better days." Sebastian's voice hardened. When Morven tried to turn his face away, Sebastian reached out and grabbed the man's chin, holding his face still, forcing him to look him in the eye. "She's not here, but I am, and Maker help me, Morven, I am losing what little patience remains to me. You have answers I want. You have answers I need. You pissed yourself when you thought I was going to cut one of your thumbs off? Fingers are nothing. I will break every bone in your hands, and then I will break every bone in your feet. I will shatter your elbows and your knees and your collarbones. It would take hardly any effort at all to smash every rib in that emaciated, sunken chest of yours. I will break every bone in your pathetic body if I think broken bones will induce you to speak. Do you think I will hesitate? Do you doubt my sincerity? I assure you, I am entirely in earnest."

Beside him, Cullen's face was impassive. Good man, Sebastian thought. Stop me when I do, not when I threaten.

The threat is enough, said Kiara's voice.

Morven's eyes were so wide Sebastian knew Kiara's assertion was truth. The man believed him. The man was frightened of him. Good. The ever-present smirk was gone now; to see it finally erased filled him with a thrill of something like triumph.

Swallowing the bitter ugliness of this petty victory, Sebastian repeated insistently, "Who is she to you?"

Morven's lips parted and his throat worked silently. When he squeezed his eyes shut, Sebastian grabbed his chin harder and gave his head a little shake until he opened them again. "She's… she's… I…" the words were torn from him, but they were not enough. They were not answers.

"Who is she?"

Morven gasped and choked and a trickle of blood seeped from the corner of his mouth. He'd bitten his own tongue, Sebastian realized, tightening his fingers hard enough to leave bruises. "If you bite that tongue off I will make your death last an eternity! Who is she?"

It wasn't Morven who answered. It was Cullen.

"She's your mother," he said, and Morven sobbed.

"His mother," Sebastian echoed, his stomach turning over unpleasantly as the man on the pallet shuddered, biting at his bloodied lips.

"What makes you say that?" he asked.

"I suppose she could be his sister," Cullen answered. "Though according to your descriptions of her, she is a somewhat older woman — old enough to have an adult child, at the very least, especially if she was young when he was born. A much older sister? Or even a lover, I suppose, though I suspect he wouldn't be so unwilling to give up a mere lover under current… circumstances." There was a weighty pause, and Sebastian had to wonder if Cullen was doing so intentionally. "Any man would be less willing to confess against one with whom he shared blood."

Morven whined, turning his face to the wall.

"You have something to add?" Sebastian asked with deceptive mildness.

"Jessamine is already in a great deal of trouble," said Cullen reasonably, when Morven didn't reply. "And so far she has only abducted a woman. Your silence will not save her."

"If you knew where she was, you wouldn't be down here at all," Morven rasped, and the smothered sobs now lent a disgustingly wet quality to his voice that made it sound less than human. His bitten tongue made him slur. But for all the defiance of his words, Morven sounded somewhat less certain.

"We are down here," answered Sebastian, "because I do not have the patience to await report from the Eyes. We will find Jessamine, Morven. One way or another. It will only go worse for you if you impede us."

"Amelle Hawke is not a woman without friends," explained Cullen with far more patience than Sebastian possessed. He wondered how the templar managed it.

"And what I'll do to you," Sebastian added, "pales in comparison to what her sister will inflict upon you if Amelle is not returned unharmed."

"Unharmed?" Morven echoed raggedly. "How long has it been, then? A day?"

"Two," Cullen supplied.

"My mother's temper is worse than yours," said Morven, leveling a look at Sebastian. "Your little whore's sister—" Sebastian trembled with restraint; if he broke Morven's jaw now, the man could give them nothing useful, "—ruined my life. Our lives. Mother won't thank her for that."

"Then she… does intend to kill Amelle." As he heard himself saying the words, Sebastian's insides twisted and dread turned to rage that knotted in his shoulders, made his hands — already clenched into fists — tighten until the tendons ached.

Morven's reply that made the blood drain from Cullen's face. Sebastian wondered if his own countenance was as pale.

"Eventually," he replied. Blood pounded louder in Sebastian's ears, but before he could speak, Cullen was on his feet, glaring down at the broken man.

"Eventually?" Cullen echoed. "Jessamine has already incapacitated Amelle, has she not? What more does she have planned?" Morven looked alarmed then, and Cullen smiled without humor. "Oh, I know all about Andraste's Wrath. I know what it does, how it affects mages. I know it is illegal and said to be impossible to procure, but I have also seen with my own eyes the return of other such recipes supposedly lost to time. Even without instructions, a true master of herbs and poisons has knowledge most do not. Perhaps she was able to recreate the poison without instruction or assistance — however Jessamine managed to procure Andraste's Wrath, the fact remains she has it, and we know she has used it."

"Eventually," Morven repeated. "Mother is nothing if not patient. I defy either of you to be half so patient. Thirty years she plotted her revenge. Thirty years she planned. Thirty years she waited. And then it was all undone."

"So now she'll take her revenge on a girl whose only crime was healing me?" Sebastian snapped.

"Andraste's tits, you are thick. It's not about the mage. It was never about the mage. The mage fell into her lap like a gift from the bloody Maker, and Mother's never been one to turn down gifts. She's a means to an end."

"Like you were?" Cullen asked.

For a long moment, the only sound in the room was Morven's uneven, hitching breaths. At last he said quietly, "I was going to be Prince of Starkhaven. It's not like I drew the short straw."

"You're not Prince of Starkhaven now," Cullen insisted. "Nor will you ever be. She left you here, Morven. You're so useless she didn't even bother rescuing you. Or killing you. What does that say?"

The pretender went so suddenly grey Sebastian almost thought the man had died. A rasping inhale disproved the theory. "She'll come back for me."

"Why?" Sebastian pressed. "Placing you on the throne as Connall was a gamble she made and lost. It won't work twice."

"I'm still a Vael. The last, if you're dead."

Sebastian's eyes narrowed. "And you make a fine case for having me see you executed for treason, but you and I both know you'll never sit that throne again. My guards have their orders. If I die, you die. Tell me what she's planning."

"So I can add betrayal to the already lengthy list of my crimes? Perhaps I am craven, and perhaps I am weak, and perhaps I was a foolish, arrogant sod when I sat my ass on that pretty chair in your great hall, but I won't turn on my own family."

"You already have, cousin. As your father did before you. Make amends. Let me save Amelle Hawke. Tell me what she's planning."

Morven grimaced and turned his head. Blood-tinged spittle dribbled from his mouth. "Oh, cousin," he jeered. "You already know. All the pieces are lined up on the board, waiting for her to play them. You're three moves behind. Look at you. You're wasting your time talking to a corpse in a dungeon. I've been trying to tell you all along… if she thought I knew anything that might compromise her, she'd have laced that last sleeping draught with poison. Nothing I say will change what's to come."

"Try," Sebastian ground out. When Morven said nothing, Sebastian reached out and grabbed him by the throat. Long illness and long sleep had left the man's neck thin, fragile; Sebastian could have crushed it with barely a second thought. Blood pounded in his ears, drowning out reason, drowning out even the pitiful mewling noises Morven made. The smirk. The bloody smirk.

Cullen's hand fell heavily on Sebastian's shoulder. "Your Highness," he said, his voice cutting through the blood-rage.

Without releasing Morven, Sebastian snapped, "What?"

"Your Highness," Cullen repeated calmly, firmly. For some reason it was the repetition of the honorific that brought Sebastian back from the brink of madness. You are Prince of Starkhaven. Restraint is necessary. "There is a guard at the door, and one of your pages."

Loosening his grip instead of tightening it was perhaps the most difficult thing Sebastian had ever done, but he did it. "News?" he asked. Cullen inclined his head. Turning back to the gasping pretender, Sebastian repeated, "I die, you die. If Kiara dies, you die. Maker preserve you, but if Amelle Hawke is already dead, you won't see another morning."

"I get it," Morven drawled, his words slurred by his wounded tongue and rendered raspy by his wounded throat. With his bloody lips and his chin smeared with pinkish spittle he looked more a corpse than ever. "I'm a dead man. But you're still three moves behind. I've known I was dead since the day you marched into my hall and shot my hand."

Cullen sent Sebastian a silent look that was only too eloquent, but Sebastian only shook his head and strode past him, exiting the cell to find the ginger page they'd seen earlier, but now he looked harried and out of breath, his eyes wide with what looked very much like fear.

"What have you found?" he asked, keeping his voice down as another guard closed and locked Morven's cell door.

The guard looked down at the page, who seemed doubly alarmed now, put face to face with Sebastian. "Tell him just as you told me, son."

The boy stood up a little straighter, but his voice trembled as he spoke. "It's another one of the platforms, Highness. With the stakes. Like what they used to build to—"

"Burn mages," Sebastian breathed, feeling sick.

From somewhere above, an angry voice shouted out and the timbre of it ricocheted off the walls. Sebastian recognized it immediately.

"You will let me pass, you stuffed tin can, or I swear I'll—"

Sebastian broke into a run, Cullen on his heels; the two of them reached the noise in time to find Isabela with one hand already on her blade and murder flashing in her eyes; Varric stood behind her and to the side, looking similarly mutinous, Bianca in hand.

"Let her pass," Sebastian said sharply, suddenly enough that the guard in question jumped and turned, wide-eyed, to stare at him.

Under normal circumstances, Isabela would have smirked at the guard and made a flip remark as she sauntered past. Instead, she charged past the guard, her expression beyond furious as she looked between Cullen and Sebastian. "We've got trouble, boys. Someone's built a—"

"Pyre," Sebastian said. "I've only just heard."

"Three guesses what it's for," Varric said grimly.

Sebastian only shook his head. "Only if we let it get that far."

"Which we won't," Cullen insisted, with the fervency of a prayer.