Carver had always been a contrarian, or in his older sister's words, a little shit. It was a large part of why Aveline had seen to it that his application to join the city guard in Kirkwall had been chucked in the trash. He didn't think this was a fair assessment from either of them. He never liked being told what to do, but he followed orders when it was important and when the orders weren't stupid.

So, when Adara used her commander voice to tell him to get lost, he only considered it for a minute before deciding to ignore it. She was just pissed off to catch him at the Sheath, that was all.

Carver wasn't sure if it was embarrassment, guilt, or something else that was chewing away at his insides, and it did nothing to make his mood less stormy. Adara had no reason to be mad at him anyway. Sure, they had shared a couple of moments recently, but she'd had days to say something to him if she wanted something else. It's not like he could just swagger up to the damn Commander of the Fucking Grey in Ferelden and ask if she would like to fool around, like she was a farmer's daughter at a barn raising. It had been humiliating enough for one of them to turn him down (usually to dance with Vivian instead, but he couldn't start getting pissed off about that again right now).

He had caught Adara looking, too. More than once. It was doubly frustrating.

He grumbled under his breath as he stalked down the street in the direction she had gone. And she was wandering around cities by herself again. Maybe all people should be forced to spend just one single fortnight in Kirkwall, Carver thought darkly, so they would learn why it was never a good idea to go it alone. Especially if you were a tiny elf woman who didn't even come up to Carver's chest. Even a powerful mage could be caught by surprise and gutted like a fish before they had a chance to react. Maker knew he had seen enough of that in Kirkwall.

He stormed past a couple of women walking with baskets of laundry on their hips. They jumped out of his way with wide eyes, exchanging alarmed glances about the broad-shouldered man in a Grey Warden uniform stomping down the street muttering about "Maker-damned common fucking sense."

Carver wasn't sure what he would say to Adara when he caught up with her. She might be pissed off that he'd decided to follow her. Maybe if she got pissed off enough, she would break down the wall she had built up between them in order to yell at him about it, and he could figure something out from there. He knew how to handle being yelled at.

He followed her all the way to the docks, where she disappeared into a warehouse. Maker, what was she doing? It's like she was looking for trouble on purpose. With a put-upon sigh, he leaned against the wall outside and crossed his arms, prepared to wait however long he needed to before she came back out.

He had barely gotten his arms crossed when he heard the unmistakable sounds of a fight breaking out inside. "See, I fucking knew it," he said aloud to no one as he drew his greatsword, before tearing the door open.

Carver probably should have let his eyes adjust to the dark before charging towards the sound of the struggle, but he heard Adara scream out once in pain and knew he had to move. If she died here, he wouldn't get to tell her 'I told you so' and it suddenly felt vitally important that he got the opportunity.

In the dim light, he nearly crashed into a gangly man that was almost as tall as he was but only half as broad. Something glinted in his hands, and Carver didn't wait to see more. He was too close to the man—and too surrounded by crates, what was all this shit?—to really get a good swing with his sword, so he opted to smash him in the face with the pommel instead. Something cracked loudly in his opponent's face, and he went down hard.

As his eyes adjusted to the lighting, he could make out a dim glyph on the floor and a trail of blood that Adara was leaving behind her. She was stalking towards a woman who was struggling to stand.

"KEILI, NOW WOULD BE GOOD," the woman yelled.

Adara stopped walking with a sharp jerk, letting out a choking gasp of pain. Fuck, magic. He got a wobbling sensation in his stomach, the feeling of someone nearby pulling at the Fade. Carver sometimes hated that he could feel it but not use it the way his sisters could. Like it was mocking him, making sure he could never forget about this power he wasn't deemed good enough to wield. After how the last few years had gone, though, he was begrudgingly coming to appreciate having a heightened sense of when people were doing weird magical shit. It made it a lot easier to stop them.

Carver scanned the room quickly, trying to find the source of the spell, and his eyes fell on a crouched human woman with a staff in hand. He crossed to her in three paces, swinging his sword in a broad horizontal arc. The blade split her staff in two and then, as it continued on its path, split the mage herself in two as well. She let out a gurgling scream that turned into just gurgling, and then silence.

Behind him, he heard Adara draw in a loud and ragged breath, as if she had been held underwater for a long time and was finally breaking through to the surface. Someone was drawing energy from the Fade again, but this time it was her. Conjured stone appeared between her spread hands, growing larger than Carver's head before she hurled it at the last woman standing. When the small boulder collided with the woman's head, there was a horribly wet, crunching sound.

Then silence.

Adara turned to look at him, and he braced to be scolded. To his great surprise, she didn't. "Carver? What are you doing here?" she asked. He noted the ashen pallor of her face.

"Following you so I could ask you the same thing," he said. Carver frowned at the amount of blood dripping from her hands and from under her jaw. Maybe he would say 'I told you so' later. "You okay?"

She nodded and turned over her hands, peering down at them before trying to clench them into fists with a little hiss of pain. "Garrote," she said by way of explanation.

Carver crossed in front of her and took one of her hands—Maker, her hands were tiny—in his own, uncurling her fingers so he could see the palm. The cut was about as deep as it could get without severing half her hand. Still frowning, he gently lifted her chin to see the damage beneath her jaw. It was a nasty cut that went to the bone but if it had been a few inches lower…

"I got lucky," she said quietly.

He scowled. "You're damn right you got lucky. Fuck were you thinking?" When did he start sounding like his own mum? "Can you fix this?" he said, jerking his chin at her hands.

Adara nodded. "I can stop the bleeding at least. And do the rest later." She tried to experimentally spread her fingers and winced at the motion. "Might be some finicky work." Her hands lit up with a soft blue glow that reflected on her face, giving her an ethereal look.

"Did you know these people?" Carver asked, going to the woman whose head had been crushed in by Fade-conjured stone, and nudging her in the side with the toe of his boot.

"No. I was supposed to meet someone here. Or thought I was. It was a trap."

"Clearly," he said, dragging a hand through his hair with painful force. He didn't know why he was so pissed off. Her scream of pain had awoken something primal and protective in him, and he didn't like thinking about how it would have played out had he not followed her.

Adara inspected each of her fallen attackers. When she reached the mage, she gasped. Carver raised his eyebrows. It was kind of gross to see someone split in half like that, viscera spilling out that were never meant to see the light of day, but he had seen Adara blast things into much smaller, grosser pieces before.

"I know her. Knew her. From the Circle."

"Guess you pissed her off?" Carver said with a shrug. She gave him a glare that he found more cute than scary, but he wasn't stupid enough to say that out loud.

Adara lowered herself to her knees and crouched beside the dead mage. "Her name was Keili. She thought we were cursed by the Maker. She even wanted the templars to annul the Circle in the end," she said softly.

Carver's mouth twisted to one side, unsure what to say. He might have agreed about the cursed part. Mages were doomed to a dangerous existence, one with a lot of collateral damage. He used to consider himself part of that collateral damage, trapped living just half a life because of the need to protect his family. He had even once or twice allowed himself to darkly wish that they had gotten caught and been dragged off to a Circle, so he could finally live his life for himself. Just the memory of thinking it filled him with shame.

Cursed existence or not, Carver couldn't agree with slaughtering every living soul in a Circle, right down to the smallest children. It was kind of a shock to hear about a mage who did. Keili must have had an amount of self-loathing that was almost impressive in its horrific scope.

"Mad at you because you stopped it, maybe?" he suggested.

Adara looked… sad, in an exhausted kind of way. He had seen a touch of it before, in Denerim after they had met with King Alistair, but he was pretty sure he was getting a glimpse of something deeper now. "Yeah, maybe," she said quietly.

A new voice spoke up from behind them, and Carver immediately shifted into a fighting stance. "Unfortunately, this mage is not the only one so aggrieved." The accent was Antivan, and an elven man with blonde hair stepped into view. He was wiping blood from a long dagger with a wicked curve to it.

Carver didn't have much time to debate whether he ought to run the elf through with his sword before he had a chance to attack. Adara climbed to her feet and nearly ran to the other elf, throwing her arms around his neck. "Zevran!"

"I am sorry to be so very unfashionably late. I was detained by the rest of this little group," Zevran said, gesturing back the way he came.

Carver frowned. Or had he ever stopped frowning? "There are more?"

"Were. Of this bunch, anyway. There is unfortunately a good deal more of them in total."

"How did they know I would be here? Did they intercept your letter and follow you?" Adara said, a frown of her own darkening her face.

Zevran's brows raised. "Letter? I sent no letter. I followed them here. I was hoping to make quick work of this little gang of miscreants before visiting you and telling you what I have learned of the Faithful. A bit of good news to sprinkle in with the bad, yes?"

"The Faithful?" Adara echoed.

Carver pinched the bridge of his nose between his eyes. "Can you two talk later? I don't want to answer any questions from the guard about this," he said, gesturing to the corpses around them.

"I'll have to tell Constable Aidan about it anyway," Adara said with a sigh. Carver didn't like how pale she still looked and glanced at her hands to make sure the bleeding hadn't started again.

"Fine, but later. You need to get that taken care of," he said, pointing to her half-healed hands. "And we need to hear everything this guy has to say."

Adara raised her eyebrows sharply, and Carver belatedly realized he was essentially barking orders at his commanding officer. "I mean. If you think that's a good plan. Ma'am," he backpedaled.

Adara looked like she had more to say on that point, but Zevran's laughter interrupted them. "Oh, it would take years for you to hear everything I have to say! We will stick with the relevant information, hmm?"

Carver did not like Zevran. "Maker's breath, that's what I meant."

It was going to be a long walk back to Vigil's Keep.