AN: Two chapters in two weeks! I'm going to be on vacation next Friday, so expect the next update to come on Friday, Aug 30. We are nearing the end (I'm thinking 44 chapters will do it and this is chapter 34), and as soon as I finish the last chapter and all the remaining chapters make it through my wonderful, amazing, where-would-I-be-without-her beta analect, the updates will happen more frequently - maybe once a week?

Reviews are wonderful - they let me know if this story is getting boring, what's liked, what's not. Am I too detailed? Is the jumps-through-time confusing? Do the changing narratives need some kind of precursor, even if it is just labeling the Chapter with "Beenie" or "Sammie"? Any feedback is welcome. Honestly.

Today, we visit with the Knight Commander, whose motivations are finally revealed.

9:36 Dragon, Late Summer

There was no such thing as a magical mirror.

If there were, Samantha would stare into it and see the future she was supposed to have: her own rosy cheeks puffed out in a permanent smile with Corbinian laughing beside her, his callused fingertips rubbing her fat belly, their child curled up within. She would be annoyed by petty things, like naming traditions and whose social gathering she was going to snub. Across the city, there would be no Circle Tower, no mages, no Templars. There would be no reason to take Innley away, because Innley would never have been a mage.

He would come to her side at the birth of her child, laughing with her as they cooed over the perfect combination of disparate features: the baby's Mayweather-brown hair and the Vael-blue eyes. They would figure out a suitable nickname to call the child in place of the ridiculous Vael name that the poor thing would be given – Valerian, Cyprian, Octavian – Val, Cy, Avi. They would sneak each other furtive looks every time Corbinian's mother spoke, her drippy, agonizing drawl would have driven him mad. They would roll their eyes at their parents' pride in them, as if marrying into royalty was the end-point of life. What's next? they wouldn't ask. No more quizzes on history, just silence during Chantry service and prideful smiles across the brunch table.

And when Innley married, she would be with his bride before the big event, fluffing her hair and smiling at her into a mirror, both of their cheeks pained from the sheer happiness they would both feel.

But there were no magical mirrors out there.

She rose from her cushioned stool carved of oak, walking stoically down the hallways of the palace. The windows were tall and wide, but even so, the cherry wood paneling of the walls darkened the corridor. The doorways were lined with gold trim, an accent added two generations ago, and reflected the Maker's light too brightly, for she had to squint when she passed a window. She glanced at the Duke and Duchess Vael as she passed their portraits; blue military and black velvet ghosts.

The guards pulled the front doors back as she approached, the early morning light momentarily blinding her until she emerged onto the granite walkway and the world's colors faded in: bright green, new pink, pale yellow, soft white.

Goran, dressed in a heavily-embroidered vest, was standing anxiously at the palace gates, peppering Keis with questions as she mounted her horse. Samantha watched the tall woman, her black hair pulled back into a long pony's tail behind her head. She watched Keis adjust the leather straps of her armor, turn to check that her packs were securely closed, and then nimbly wrap the horse's reins around her large palms and hoisted herself into the saddle. Her horse was well-stocked: a blanket, packs that contained utensils and cookware, plus another pack solely for an assortment of weapons, most of which Samantha couldn't name. Keis pulled on the reins, turning the horse in a circle while she snipped orders at her group: three other men, one of which was Marke, the mage who had tracked Corbinian in the swamps. Then she turned to Samantha.

Keis said, "I will return."

She said it so casually, as though she was leaving just for the afternoon. But she wasn't.

Upon the news that Innley was dead, Royal Guard Specialist Keis had requested Goran's permission to put together a small group with the goal of finding Corbinian Vael and bringing him home. She rationalized that Samantha was no longer in danger; the Flint Mercenaries, Lady Johane, and now Innley were all dead. Goran had approved, and while Samantha felt that if anyone could bring Corbinian home, it was Keis, the growing space between them as her horse trotted away felt progressively colder.

Samantha hadn't been truly left by herself in years. She glanced at Goran, the Prince fumbled with his cravat as he watched Keis disappear on the horizon. A few moments later, he bade her a good day as he had done every day for the past week, tiredly turning as his entourage escorted him across town to Starkhaven's Council Building where he would spend the rest of the day in meetings with various city leaders. He had cancelled half those meetings over the summer while the Eberstarks were in town, and so he had to make up for lost time. Prince Regent Garrity had done well navigating the bureaucracy of the Starkhaven Council, but Goran insisted on remaining at his side, determined to make himself into a prince, no matter how difficult the task. As far as Samantha knew, most of the land disputes had been settled, and nearly all wills had been taken out of probate.

Now that Keis had left, Samantha would have to pass her time without the warrior there to stare at her and, normally, she would probably retreat to the Prince's Royal Parlor, seat herself on the pink loveseat next to those Antivan vases that framed the glass display that housed Corbinian's golden armor plate. Maybe she would write letters to friends or play the piano or read. She would eventually get lonely, she knew, and call upon her friends to distract her. She would call on Arianna, who had finally been given her father's title – she was now the Contessa of Salle – which she had inscribed on little cards and sent out to all the high society of the Free Marches. The young Lord Garrity, Benjamin, hadn't received a card, and rumor was that he was thoroughly spurned.

She would definitely write to Sophine Eberstark, whom everyone called Sophie, certain that someday she would become a permanent resident of Starkhaven. The nobility of Starkhaven gossiped about a political marriage, and their horror at such a thing was enough to induce eye-rolling. In Starkhaven, military leaders weren't considered well-bred, and no Princess of Starkhaven had ever been born from such a low status. But Sophie was quite sophisticated, Samantha thought. She was also wonderfully adventurous and curious, though at times she forgot about Starkhaven's rigid culture of decorum and spoke out of turn. At the Fortneys' thirtieth anniversary celebration, Sophine had inadvertently insulted Lady Garrity with a simple comment on her hat – an overwhelming monstrosity made of dragon-lizard scales – by asking if her neck hurt from keeping it upright. Samantha had nearly fainted from holding her laughter inside.

She supposed she might even write to Vincent Tyler, who had spent most of the summer in Orlais, rumored to be nearly engaged to some Orlesian heiress. She would try to write to Flora who was still under the impression that her bowskills at killing people would win her Sebastian's affection. And of course, she would write to Sebastian himself. He wrote to her sparingly, seemingly distracted by the politics of Kirkwall and the actions of the Champion, with whom he had forged a personal relationship. Or so he claimed.

But she wasn't going to write to her friends on this day.

As she walked back into the palace, she took a detour past the grand staircase and lazily walked down a long, darkened, and narrow hallway to one of the sitting rooms. A roll of parchment, an assortment of ink bottles, and a bundle of quills sat elegantly organized at one of the desks, an old yet majestic looking piece carved of oak. She maneuvered around the fainting lounges and small card tables, setting herself in one of the highback chairs and as she pulled a length of parchment from the roll, her thoughts turned to her brother. The brother who had died not long ago. The brother who had become an abomination, a maleficar, and a murderer. She thought about his selfish desires, and how he had been so consumed by them that he readily spilt the blood of those he loved – had he loved her? – to obtain the freedom for which he had sold his soul. Assuming, of course, that the Knight Commander was right, and Innley had been mostly responsible for the Circle Tower's destruction. Unfathomable lies! They must be... How could he have been the catalyst for such a bloodbath?

He wants to spare you, but you are a selfish, shallow waste of a life. He will understand.

He loved her! He did! And why would he have done it, surely knowing that those mages that survived would be punished for his actions with less freedom – the very ideal that Innley was fighting for? Samantha turned that thought over in her head a few times, dipping the tip of a quill into an ink bottle. Did all mages deserve harsher restrictions for a single mage's actions? Did the Chantry have a choice in their response? How much had the Knight Commander known before the Circle Tower's destruction?

The Knight Commander, Ser Rayce Taraamäe, the man who had sent her a formal invitation to tour the Circle more than five times and had signed his name himself without his title – a gesture so informal that Samantha felt the strong urge to burn the invitation lest Goran find it and think something unbecoming of her.

There is a debt between us.

Steadying the quill in her fingers, she began to write formally,

Knight Commander Rayce,

Your insistence that there exists some debt between us requires an explanation that is long overdue. It is impolite to harbor such liability when I can relieve you of this burden. Allow us to discuss it so that I may absolve you of this requirement or that you may pay your reparations.

Lady Samantha Mayweather

She looked down at her cold words scratched hastily across the parchment and thought of the only question that was left that mattered: Why didn't Ser Rayce order the Rite of Tranquility for Innley? How would things be different, she wondered, and would she have felt that it was justified? Of course not; she had been ignorant of everything in his life so far – why would she have felt Tranquility was necessary? But... Lady Johane, the Flint Mercenaries, the Antivan Slavers, the Isolationists… would it have been someone else if not Innley? Did that even matter?

Determined not to give into her weaknesses, Samantha rose from the writing desk, reaching for the long velvet rope that rang the bell.

Why should she care so much about what the Knight Commander thinks, anyway? What debt? Innley was dead. There could be no reparations for that.

The servant arrived moments later, a sterling silver tray shining on his red-gloved fingertips.

"Deliver this to the Knight Commander." Samantha placed the folded and sealed letter on the tray. "Immediately."

The boy's talon-like fingers snatched up the small folded paper, and he dashed from the room so fast, Samantha startled at his sudden departure.

There. She was committed now to meeting the Knight Commander, and whenever he wrote her back, they would set up a formal time and discuss things civilly. Like nobility ought to. But now that she was set on a path, she felt impatient for her journey to begin. She had so many things to do, things to organize and plan and decide – the first being what to do with her estate.

She quickly grabbed her coat and gloves as she dashed from the room. Keis wasn't around to follow her anymore, and being truly alone was an odd, yet pleasant experience. Even so, this new-found freedom still felt stifled when some guard at the palace's thick steel gates demanded to know where she was headed before he would open them up. But once on the granite path, she barely had to look up to remember the way. Of course, she had made this journey hundreds of times. Skipping barefoot along the smooth stone path when she was a child to a leisurely stroll on the arm of Corbinian, to the last time she made the short trip: on the arm of Goran with a gaggle of Templars and guards. But now she went to her estate alone.

Someone had been keeping the bushes trimmed – probably on Goran's order. The vines had grown higher along the face of the house, but to some in Starkhaven, that was a status symbol. The Prestons, who had ties to Starkhaven that dated back to the Towers Age, felt strongly about vines, but some of those families who were second-generation or younger, like the Tylers, felt that the vines were tacky. Goran had long stopped paying attention to the current trends, and thus without the wisdom of a princess or duchess, there was no opinion to copy. Samantha thought that the ladies of this town desperately needed a new Princess. Why shouldn't it be Sophie Eberstark?

Removing a thick key from her jacket pocket, she slipped it into the lock and twisted. It took some doing, but the oversized door finally creaked to life. Samantha had always hated at how heavy the door was.

She sighed deeply once she stepped inside – Goran had apparently made plans for the house to be cleaned, and often, too. Only the slightest traces of dust could be seen on the banister, and fresh flowers bloomed from inside tall glass vases. But it was also silent as a graveyard. Still a tomb, she thought. She had a mind to visit her father's study, where he would sip brandy alone after she and her mother had retired for the evening, or perhaps to the library where she had read aloud to her parents so many times. But it was the wide staircase of the front entryway that commanded her attention, and her gaze unwittingly drifted up to the upstairs hallway. Without thinking, she placed a gloved hand on the railing, and slowly began to ascend the stairs, expecting the ghosts of her parents to make some noise somewhere, but there was nothing.

She walked a few feet down the hallway, finally pausing and turning to face the picture of flowers that had replaced Innley. This pretty picture of flowers seemed innocuous enough, but it actually masked the true problem with this home: that it was all a big lie. There had once been laughter in these hallways, tutors and music, movement and life. Somehow, when Innley was sent to the Circle, all life had ceased in this house. She had become the project to repair the family name, and Innley had become the stain which her parents had feverishly rearranged the decorations to cover up.

Samantha hated that painting. It was inanimate, tepid, and it had replaced a living, breathing, loving soul. She hated that painting just as she hated her parents for placing it on the wall without comment. She hated it in the same way that she hated society for coercing her parents into believing that Innley was a monster. She blamed all of them for what he became, but most of all, she blamed Innley for letting the monsters win.

Without thinking, she lifted her fingers to sides of the frame, and upon contact, felt all the muscles in her body tighten. Gripping it firmly she yanked it off the wall with one clean jerk. With a cry that echoed throughout her clean house, she brought the painting down upon the floor with such force that the frame splintered, scattering small wood chips across the rug. She lifted it up and brought it back down again and again, each time more violently than the last, and when she was finished, nothing but small bits of wood and canvas were left in her grip. She fell to her knees amongst the ruins of the Innley's replacement, her body wracked by sobs that had been so long held inside.

"Lady Samantha?"

She startled out of her despair so suddenly, drawing her breath inside her body and holding it there with her hands over her mouth – who had heard her? Who was there? She sat silently on the floor of the upstairs hallway, both embarrassed and irritated that someone had entered her family's estate unbidden.

Footfalls creaked on the floorboards. "My lady, I am sorry to disturb… I was told that I could find you here…"

His accent was Orlesian, and his voice familiar. By the Maker himself… it was the Knight Commander! Why had she sent him that letter?

Bringing her hands down, she smoothed out the skirt of her dress. She composed herself before calling back, "Ser Rayce? One moment. I'll be right down."

She had to take several breaths, holding herself steady against the wall and she brought out a handkerchief from her coat pocket to draw underneath her eyes, trying to broker her calm in the one place where she had no control.

When she descended the stairs, Ser Rayce was standing uncomfortably in the small front room, his hands fumbling with a hat. He wasn't wearing his armor on this occasion, but rather a plain black suit and a long grey wool coat. If not for the plainness of his attire, he might have looked almost normal. Once she reached the bottom of the stairs, he gave a hasty bow, and she curtsied in return.

"I received your letter," he said, evaluating her carefully. "I must ask, are you well?"

She gave a curt nod, embarrassed that he should have been inside her estate for her breakdown. She wondered how much he had overheard. "It is nothing, ser. I was…" Her breath came out shaky. "Decorating."

He reached for her hand, turning over her palm where they both noticed tiny splinters embedded in the soft silk of her gloves. "Decorating."

She nearly laughed at the obviousness of her lie. "Yes. Re-decorating, you could say. I'm so sorry, I was not expecting a response from you in person."

"I received your letter and left immediately." His accent made the last word sound cut short, as if bitten in two. "The guards at the palace informed me that you had come here."

She nodded, feeling like she might tear up again. She saw him glance over her shoulder, the curiosity in his black eyes traveling up the stairs and she thought she might die of embarrassment if he went up there and saw the mess of the flower painting. Samantha had to do something to get him out of the house. She had to do something to get herself out, too.

"Perhaps you'd like to see my estate's gardens, ser?" she offered. "Some fresh air might do me some good."

"Of course," he said, placing his hat upon his head and offering her his elbow. She took it gingerly, and led him through the kitchens to the terrace in the back. The long deck opened wide into the finely manicured gardens. Goran's servants had been busy out here, too, it seemed.

"Your estate is lovely," he said rather stiffly. Was he nervous?

Samantha felt fatigued with formalities. "I don't care how it looks. I don't care if it burns down tomorrow."

"You don't mean that."

"What if I did? What would you think of me then?" She turned to face him.

"I would think…" He paused, his expression softening as he looked at her. "I would want to comfort you."

That wasn't the answer she wanted or expected. There was something in his demeanor that was entirely too warm, too gentle, and as much as she desired warmth, she felt only the coldness of a widow's heart. "Why are you always so familiar with me?"

"Why won't you visit the Circle?" he countered.

"I don't want to visit the Circle." She scowled at him petulantly, thinking of Innley and that dungeon, dripping water and dark corners.

He nodded thoughtfully, turning to lead her down the steps, through the shrubs and bushes that were heavy with overgrown leaves. Underneath their feet, petals of myriad colors littered the earth and made for a far more beautiful landscape than Samantha could stand. How could the Maker continue to send the sunlight down when he couldn't manage to send Corbinian home?

He asked her the next question slowly. "Is it… because of me?"

Partly yes, but she didn't want to give him any more power over her, so instead she said, "Too many of Starkhaven's tragedies have occurred there."

He stopped in the gardens, bringing her to a halt at his side. His enveloping gaze settled upon her like a warm blanket. "You imagine it a place of woe? Dungeons and joyless mages?"

Yes. That's it exactly. But instead of revealing her true feelings, she withered under his unbearably soft stare. "Why do you want me to tour the Circle?"

"Perhaps I think you'll see it differently now."

As opposed to when? The time she had visited Innley in the dungeons? The time that the Templars delivered her brother to her between the stacks in the Circle Library only to usher him away, escorted at every moment? Perhaps that time in the courtyard where he had appeared so angry, not just at the Circle, but at her as well, that he could barely contain his rage and the Templar at his side could barely contain his hope that Innley would lash out? The Circle was not a place for touring. People were either dragged in or snuck out, and that was it.

"Or perhaps you want me to see it differently," she accused, studying his reaction, finding it easier to fight than to unearth common ground. "Perhaps you want me to see the mages differently?"

"Perhaps I think every noble should see its… what did you call it? Its prison?"

"The mages aren't treated well there. I would bet you don't know a single mage."

"And you know them all?" His mouth spread into a small smile that Samantha found completely irritating. "Yet you never visit…"

"I suppose it's easier that way," she accused bitterly, ignoring his quip. "You can order the Rite of Tranquility without ever feeling remorse."

He didn't flinch. "I always feel remorse."

There was no response to that. Ser Rayce lifted his chin to the sky, flicking his fingers against the brim of his head to set it farther off his head. He squinted against the setting sun, looking across the way to an enormous tree at the very edge of her estate. It had grown so large and so wild that the fence separating her estate's gardens from the Tyler estate had buckled, its wooden planks pushed up in different directions. Samantha remembered the plank that kept her and Innley's initials and wondered if that was broken, too.

He gestured to the treetop. "This is a Tree of Heaven, is it not? A territorial weed, if I am not mistaken."

She remembered this tree. She remembered walking this way with Corbinian one fine spring afternoon after Chantry service and talking about Innley. About their worries that he would be made tranquil. About how he seemed so angry… She blinked away the uncertainty, feeling flummoxed by Ser Rayce's utterly unpredictable and confusing topics of conversation. "I suppose the Rite is as simple as chopping down a tree, then? If you don't know the mage, then it's easier to—"

"I imagine your family battled with this tree for decades, but once they were gone, there was no one left to fight it." He ignored her and pointed to the treetops. "See how tall it is? How wild it is? How it overshadows everything? Only death grows in the absence of the Maker's light."

He was right; there was a large azalea bush that was wilting in the shade of the tree. Its buds were all dead.

He proffered a small smile. "You try to prevent it from ever growing so large, but for every branch you snip, three grow in its place. It eats up all the groundwater, and soaks up all the sunshine. Its stench covers everything."

Samantha narrowed her eyes, understanding that he was drawing some kind of metaphor from the tree, but she still let him continue.

"So you do what you can and try to dig up the roots," he said casually. "But really, the roots are stretching down as much as the tree grows up."

After a moment, she asked, "So if you can't kill it, and you can't let it grow, what's to be done?"

"Maintenance."

She wasn't sure exactly what he meant by that, and let her face convey it plainly.

"The tree will not trim itself," he said frankly.

She tired of this metaphor. "You are speaking of Templars and mages."

He cracked a grin. "My lady, I know nothing of trees."

She huffed – how he vexed her! "Then you are suggesting that magic and mages are just… limbs to be amputated! Cut back when they grow too big?"

He gave her a funny look. "I don't need to suggest it; it is a matter of Chantry policy. Magic is a sin in the Maker's eyes, and no amount of practice will ever bring forgiveness. Even the oldest mages are like children, and demons all carry candy."

"Evil can reside in those without magic—"

"—but will never be as dangerous as those with it." He turned, stepping between Samantha and the tree. "Demons are the true enemy, but the mage is a willing host. That is why there are these rules. That is why the Chantry invokes the Rite of Tranquility. Surely, your own experience has taught you this."

It felt unfair that he would throw her own trauma back at her in order to make a point, and she felt angry, her care of propriety leaving her. "And yet, your own rules betray you. You are supposed to safeguard the mages from demons, and yet it still happens."

He evaluated her academically. "You blame me. For your brother. Perhaps you think I turned him into monster?"

Yes! she wanted to scream at him, but courtesy demanded she hold her tongue. "Innley was manipulated—"

"By choice."

"—and you were supposed to protect—"

"And I failed." He bit down on the words with bitterness. "I know what you think but will not ask: Why did I not make your brother Tranquil?"

She swallowed hard, waiting for his answer and refusing to shrink under his intimidating gaze.

"The answer is obvious."

She felt her throat constrict, the anger and fear and helplessness that she had felt for so long threatened to reach her eyes and leak out, placating her heart for another day. She might have given in to it, but not today. Not in front of him. She took a breath and forced it back down, keeping her glare steady and saying nothing.

"You do not know, then?" He waited another moment before sighing deeply. "When I was a younger man, back in Orlais, I knew a mage… She was very important to me. Because I was a Templar, I thought that she and I could fight off whatever came for her, as she so often promised. She promised… that there was nothing they could offer her." He spoke softer. "She was wrong."

Samantha kept still. "What happened to her?"

"The same thing that happens to all mages who break their promises," he answered sadly.

She could feel her heart softening and cursed its predictability. "She was… possessed?"

He nodded slowly. "It's like a knife, you see. Once the demon gets the blade in, all they need to do is twist. You can't simply refuse to bleed."

Samantha took a breath before she asked, "Was she your wife?"

The corner of his mouth twitched. "My wife died in childbirth."

She drew a sharp breath, understanding who the mage was, how painful it must have been, to lose one and then the other. Just like Samantha had. They had both lost so much at such young ages. In the sunny and colorful garden, a new weed stretched from the earth, one small and thorny, twisting around her, reaching across the space between them, and connecting her to him. She understood loss to magic. She could understand this.

Samantha whispered the answer to the unasked question, "She was your daughter."

He looked down, and, for the first time since she had known him, said nothing in response. From the way his shoulders fell, Samantha knew she had hit upon the truth. He seemed so sad now, but perhaps he had always been that way. His eyes were so dark, and the lines of his face were all falling down, and she had always assumed they were from laughter, but now she suspected they were actually from despair.

Ser Rayce removed his hat, fumbling with the inside liner. "I thought I could protect her. And then one day, she needed more protection than I could give." He blinked once. Twice. "The Knight Commander of Orlais ordered her made tranquil."

Samantha's mouth dropped open. She couldn't help it. "So she lives?"

He nodded again. "Afterwards... the way she looked at me… I was like anyone else in the world. No one and everyone at the same time. Death is almost better, I think. The one you love is gone no matter what, but when they are made Tranquil, they become walking reminders of what was lost. I could not bear it."

She brought a hand to her lips to hide their quiver as he continued, "Tranquility. Possession. I devoted all my time to studying it. To reverse it. I worked with other mages and other Templars on it. There are… ideas—rituals—theories. One idea was very promising, but it involved spirits in the Fade. Though the Divine is an open-minded woman, there were many opposed to the idea, and it didn't help that our early experiments were... unsuccessful. I was sent away before I could finish my work, and after a truly unfortunate setback, the project was scrapped. There are... others... who still continue the work, albeit in a different way. But now we come to the part of the story that involves you."

"Me?"

"My lady," Ser Rayce reached out and took her hand. "The debt I owe you is much greater than any apology I could give."

She shook her head. "I don't understand—what debt?"

His expression changed; he seemed altogether mournful, his eyes filling with regret. "Your brother recognized you in that dungeon cell."

Bewildered, Samantha's mind whirred back in time to that first visit to the Circle Tower where she saw Innley crumpled on the floor, his eyes vacant and his skin scabbed over from self-injury. Water dripping and darkness. Always darkness.

The Knight Commander continued: "My Genevieve never recognized me. No mage in the throes of possession has ever recognized anyone – but your brother recognized you. That meant something to me. I remember reading and re-reading through my notes on the experiments that we conducted at Adamant, and I managed to replicate some of them. Part of the experiment was allowing your continued visits. You and the Marquess. And it seemed like it worked! I thought Andraste had blessed me, because your young brother improved! I wrote to the Divine, the Chantry in Orlais, even to my colleagues back at Adamant, and many came to see his recovery, to study my methods and my notes. But he wasn't cured... The demons... They were still with him."

What? Samantha felt dizzy, trying to wrap her head around the idea that all of those times that she saw Innley, that he had been in counsel with demons – how could that be possible?

"When that other girl began to visit, things changed."

Helena Luxley flashed into Samantha's mind, with her eyes wide as Vincent led her away... at a ridiculous party so many years ago.

"I let them think that they were meeting in secret, but I approved her visits because I thought that contact with loved ones might play some role in helping the mage fight away the demons. It wasn't so. He changed with her, he became angry, selfish, he tried to escape twice—" Samantha's jaw dropped. "—and he started refusing his duties. It wasn't long after that when the Tower rebelled."

Samantha didn't know what to say. The Knight Commander had experimented on her brother in an effort to save him, because he had seen in Innley what he had not seen in any other possessed mage – a fighting chance to save him. She blinked a few times, trying to understand what debt he could owe her, because at that moment, it seemed to her that she owed him. He had tried to save Innley. Who cared about his reasons?

"If only we could have—" He brought his hand up, balled into a fist as if he trying to wrench something open. "—unlocked the secrets to possession… maybe I could have saved your brother." His hand dropped back to his hat and the corners of his mouth pointed down. "Maybe I could have saved my Genevieve."

That was why Ser Rayce was so familiar with her! Samantha was the replacement daughter, the girl who suffered from the same kind of loss as he. Demons had taken family away from them both. The only difference was that her brother had died, and his daughter had been made Tranquil – and then Samantha understood why Ser Rayce hadn't made Innley tranquil! He didn't want to take Innley away from his family the way his daughter had been taken away from him...

She released a shaky breath and then, steeling her resolve, reached a hand out to him, her gloved fingertips landing on the soft fabric on his coat. He was a Templar whose own daughter was a mage. And now, even after all this time – likely decades – he still worked to save her. How was he any different than herself or Goran, who still believed that Corbinian was alive, and who was willing to risk the lives of Starkhaven's own to find him and bring him home?

The tragedy of the ambitious and driven Knight Commander of Starkhaven wedged into her chest like a knife, twisting, and she couldn't refuse to bleed.

Ser Rayce gave her a small smile. "So you see, there is a debt between us, because I used your brother to further my own goals."

Samantha spoke quietly. "You aren't responsible for what Innley did."

"My lady, you contradict yourself," he replied in kind. "On the one hand, you say that mages are victims, but then you blame your brother for accepting the demon's offer. Which is it? Are the mages at fault or is it as you said earlier: it is a Templar's job to safeguard the mages from demons."

"Mages must be strong, but the Templars and the Chantry…" She thought of that picture of flowers that now lay in pieces on the floor of the upstairs hallway. "Their methods are extreme. The same organization that locks the mages up are the ones educating us on why they are monsters. If the stigma of being a mage weren't so great, then maybe so many wouldn't feel abandoned, and then the demons would have nothing to tempt them with."

He covered her hand with his. "I'm sorry, my lady. That is a naïve point of view. Look at Tevinter. Look at how a handful of mages have shaped an entire society with magic. With slavery. You would not have the freedoms you have without the Chantry."

"And that is a narrow point of view," she countered. "There are many non-magister run countries, and they all developed differently. They aren't all full of slavery."

"Yes," he admitted, chuckling. "Some are run on the backs of working men and women. But they are only slaves of a different sort."

"But not to magic."

"You miss my point," he said patiently. "Those who have influence will always use it. Whether it comes from magic or coin, it matters not. You think free mages would be gentle? Fair? You think they wouldn't take what they want just like anyone else? The only difference between us and Tevinter is the Chantry."

She looked back to the Tree of Heaven. "Then maybe there is no solution to this problem. Maybe there will always be corruptive forces that trump the goodwill of women and men."

And then he said something that surprised her: "And maybe Andraste has stopped pleading for us after all. And we are on our own."

She didn't want to believe that, speaking slowly without looking at him. "That's not—" But he interrupted her.

"I tell you this, because I see you more often than you know. I see the sadness in your eyes." Ser Rayce lifted his gaze to the surrounding gardens. "I see the reticence to visit this beautiful home." He brought his gentle black gaze back down, and it felt heavier upon her this time. "Your family died. You did not."

An unexpected burst of tears sprang from her eyes and she looked away, bringing her fingers up to hide them, but he reached for her wrist to keep her from escaping. And then he said, "Survive this, Lady Samantha. Do not let this loss kill you the way it has killed so many others. The way it has killed me."

In those dark eyes, beneath the driving ambition that masked the bitterness for the institution he served, past the sardonic remarks and the curious queries, she could see his heart, abandoned by his faith and boiled by decades of horrors. Of things Samantha had only grazed the surface. Of a life changed repeatedly, one harrowing at a time.