[Trigger warning for self-harm in the context of blood magic.]

Adara sat on the floor of the bedroom she had claimed as her own quarters.

It would have made more sense for the Warden Commander to take the largest suite for her own use, the one used by the Arls and Arlessas themselves for generations, but it felt too big. The expanse of space somehow made her feel very small. She could have fit nearly half the Circle apprentices' bunks in that room with space left over. Instead, it contained only her. The empty space made the long nights, when sleep was driven away by fear of darkspawn dreams, feel even longer. And lonelier. It hadn't taken long for Adara to decide it was better to keep the largest suite as guest quarters. She selected a smaller room for herself nearby that had a view of the forest beyond the Keep's walls. Nathaniel claimed the room used to belong to Delilah, and that she had liked to sit in the window and watch the sun set.

That didn't do anything to make her feel like less of a trespasser in someone else's home, but she had to agree with Delilah about the view.

Adara sat on the floor with her legs crossed, frowning in concentration as she attempted to magically knit the severed tendons in her left hand back together, weaving magic through muscle with her right hand. A neat pile of healing supplies, both arcane and not, was at her knee. She was making steady, if slow, progress, but she wasn't the most skilled healer. Wynne had taught her as much as she could during their travels, but that wasn't a replacement for the years of training Adara had always assumed she would undertake in the Circle. That had been her original plan, before Jowan made his chaotic and disastrous escape. After her Harrowing, she would train until she was the best damn healer in the Circle, and then she would surely be allowed to find a position outside of it, perhaps serving in some noble family's household.

This was better. At least, she believed it to be better some days. Adara had freedom now that she could not have even fathomed as a young girl in the Circle. For all intents and purposes, she answered to no one and served no one. The tradeoff was that she had never wanted the responsibility of leadership either. Or the kind of position that led to multiple assassination plots against her. Or a lifespan cut short by the poisonous darkspawn taint inside of her. If she could hear the blood moving through her veins, she imagined it would sound like sand in an hourglass.

How free could she be when her fate was already decided?

She heard a loud, quick rapping at the door just a moment before it was flung open hard enough to slam against the opposite wall. Adara jumped, the magic in her hand flaring before sputtering out. Jowan crossed the room and knelt down beside her. "I just heard what happened. Are you alright?"

"Maker, Jowan, you have to wait after you knock!" Jowan struggled with many social norms outside of the Circle, one of which being the privacy someone expected behind a closed door. He was getting better about it, even with Adara, but he had clearly forgotten in his worry. "We've talked about this."

He did have the presence of mind to look abashed. "I'm sorry! I was worried! You know Hawke never tells a full story. He told me to mind my own business." Adara bit the inside of her lip to keep from smiling. She could picture the look that must have been on Carver's face as Jowan pestered him for details. It was hard to be too annoyed with Jowan for barging in when she knew it was out of concern. He was more of a brother to her than her real brother, the latter being no more than a few fuzzy childhood memories.

Jowan looked down at her neck and then her hands. "Maker's breath. Let me see."

"I'm taking care of it," she said, holding her hands well away from him but tipping her head back so he could see her neck. That had been easy enough to heal, just a simple cut through flesh. None of the fiddly bits messing with muscles and tendons. The skin there was whole, with just a pinkish mark left behind that would go away in time. "I'm a better healer than you."

Jowan huffed dismissively. "You're better at everything than me. I still want to see. I need to know you're alright."

"I'm not finished yet!"

She played keep-away for a minute, but Jowan had a long reach and was eventually able to grab her by the forearms. "This is why we should have sent Sigrun to the Circle to recruit first instead of Orzammar. We need more proper healers around, especially since Anders—"

Jowan fell silent with a frown, studying her forearms. He was quiet as he touched his fingers to a small cluster of scars, a handful of slim pink lines on her arms and wrists that occasionally crisscrossed over each other. "I don't remember seeing those before," he said, and she knew that by 'before' he meant before her Harrowing, the Blight, and his own actions had drastically changed the course of both of their lives.

Adara pulled out of his grasp, her cheeks flushed. The marks weren't all that noticeable. They shouldn't have scarred at all, but Adara would swear that blood magic wounds healed more poorly than they should. They could reasonably be explained away as shallow defensive wounds to most people, but Jowan had his own history that made him not like most people. He knew what she had done. Maybe he could feel it even more than he could see it.

"When? How long?" he asked, his already pale face taking on an almost grayish pallor. "Why?"

"You're hardly in a position to ask me any of that," Adara snapped, and then regretted it. Maker, if anybody could understand, it was Jowan. She looked down at her hands, which grew blurry from the tears that suddenly filled her eyes.

"'Dara," he said gently. "You know me."

She did. Jowan wouldn't tell a soul if she bade him not to, but more importantly, he was on her side. Always had been. He wouldn't look at her any differently now that he knew what she had resorted to in her weaker moments. She drew in a deep, wavering breath and looking up at the ceiling to blink away her tears. "It wasn't all that often," she said to the ceiling. "And not since the Blight ended."

Adara chewed on her lip, not wanting to dredge up what she was going to say next. "It started after Redcliffe, after the ritual with Isolde." Jowan paled further, if that was even possible, and looked down at his own hands. Adara knew the guilt still ate away at him. Even in the quest to atone for his mistakes, he had caused further harm and had done so intentionally. Isolde had died—horribly—so that Jowan could use her life's energy to send Adara into the Fade, to challenge the demon possessing her son. It had to be done, but his conscience couldn't understand that.

Adara put her hand on his knee. "Hey. We've talked about this. We had no other choice," she said softly. Besides killing the child, the only other option was the Circle of Magi, and the roundtrip would have taken days. How could they afford days when the demon inside Connor was taking so many lives so quickly? They might have returned with mages and lyrium, but they also might have returned to find no one left alive at all.

"The point is, I saw how blood magic could be a solution when there were no other options. And after that… well, we found ourselves short on options an awful lot."

They were spent, and they hadn't even reached the mountaintop yet. Adara didn't think they were going to at all: the dragon cultists never seemed to stop coming, no matter how many were cut down by sword and spell.

She knelt on her hands and knees, forcing herself to draw in the ragged breaths she needed to be able to stand again. On the ground beside her, the corpse of a cultist mage stared at her with bloodied, empty eye sockets, and her stomach twisted to recall the way her spell had caused them to pop.

She had no more spells in her, and she had no more lyrium. Empty, broken vials lay scattered around her. She could still taste the lyrium on her tongue—like hot metal—and feel the way her heart seemed to pound too hard in her chest, but the mana was already spent. Did Morrigan have more? Was Morrigan even still alive? Adara couldn't see her.

The sounds of battle and shouting reverberated through the cavern, blending into one horrible sound, until she heard a pained cry that made her heart stop. Father Kolgrim had driven Alistair to the ground and kicked his shield away. Alistair was bleeding, dazed, not moving quickly enough. Kolgrim swung his enormous battleax over his head, and when he brought it down, there would be no saving Alistair. Adara would never reach him in time, and the rest of their party were similarly locked in a struggle for their lives.

There is one thing we can do, she thought.

"No," she said to herself, struggling to her feet. Where was her knife? She drew it, the blade short and dull—not meant for fighting, but it would do. She grimaced as she dragged the blade through her flesh. She was surprised at how easy it was and how much power could be hers to command.

"Stop," she said through gritted teeth.

Kolgrim's booming roar was victorious as he began to swing the axe in an arcing path above his head—then he stopped. The roaring stopped, and the axe was still as the cult leader stood frozen in place. Adara could see his face: he was afraid.

Her own blood dripped down her arm as her hand stretched out to Kolgrim. "Let it go," she said softly. The ax crashed to the stone floor. Kolgrim began to twitch, struggling against her hold on him. She staggered closer, face contorting from the effort. Alistair shook his head to clear it and gaped up at Kolgrim before turning his gaze to Adara. The look of horror he wore was enough to break her heart.

"Alistair, finish it. I can't hold him," she said.

Kolgrim was helpless in her grasp, and she could see the conflict in Alistair's face. Cutting down a bound opponent was not an honorable act: it was only slaughter. They would probably all die if he didn't. Honor had no place here.

Still, he swung his sword and severed Kolgrim's head from his neck, and then it was over.

Adara couldn't meet Alistair's eyes, but she felt his arms wrap around her anyway. "Adara, that…"

"I didn't know what else to do," she whispered. "I couldn't—I'm sorry."

"Do not apologize for giving Alistair the chance to live another day," Morrigan snapped with venom in her voice. The witch of the wilds leaned heavily against her staff, her breath coming laboriously. "We are here to do what must be done, and you both need to stop being children about it."

Alistair said nothing for a long moment, then he pressed a kiss to the top of her head. "Thank you," he said. "I do mean it. You did what you had to." Adara wasn't sure if he meant that, but she couldn't regret it. Not while he was still alive for her to hold in her arms.

That was the first time, but it hadn't been the last. She resorted to blood magic again and again: when they fought werewolves, when they battled their way through the Deep Roads for what felt like lifetimes, when they struggled to push through the darkspawn to reach the top of Fort Drakon before it was too late. It was easier to do each time, both mentally and physically, and there was power in her blood that could be headier than lyrium if she gave in to it. Eventually it began to frighten her too much.

She rested her head on Jowan's shoulder, and they were silent for a while. "That's almost funny," he said after a few minutes. "Redcliffe is where you got the idea you should start, and it's when I knew I had to stop. Really and truly properly stop, I mean." He fell silent again, and Adara didn't press him to continue.

"There was a moment where I thought I'd killed you. Isolde was dead, and you looked so shocked when you went down. I could've sworn you stopped breathing. I thought Alistair was going to run me through…" He drew in a shuddering breath. "Even when I knew you were alright, I couldn't shake that fear. Everything you've done for me, and I killed you because I'm a huge idiot?"

"Well, you still have time," she couldn't quite stop herself from quipping.

Jowan actually laughed a little, and she was glad to draw him back from his darkest thoughts. They had always been able to do that for each other in the Circle. "Maker, that would be the last thing I ever did, wouldn't it? Hawke would actually tear me limb from limb."

"Jowan, it's not like that," she said, but her protest sounded much more halfhearted than it had in Denerim. When she saw Carver in that warehouse, it wasn't just relief at receiving backup that she felt. She was glad that he was there.

Jowan just made an 'mmhmm' sound and didn't argue with her. She almost wished that he would.

"I'll leave you alone now, let you finish with your hands," he said, giving her shoulder a good squeeze. "I'd offer to help but…" Jowan was not as poor a mage as he believed, but he was correct that healing was well out of his wheelhouse. Adara had seen him make injuries worse when he tried to heal them. "I'll bring you some food."

"Thanks," she said. "Then you should rest. I'm not really sure what I expect to hear from Zevran tomorrow. If there's a need to move quickly, I want everyone prepared."

After Jowan left, the room felt emptier than it had before. Adara looked down at her hands and sighed. There were still a few hours of work left to be done before she had full use of them again. She summoned her magic, blue and cool, and set to work with renewed concentration.