"Regret bringing the wayward into the Maker's fold yet, Herald?" Solas jokes lightly.

Adaar groans and throws her arms over her face.

The ground is about the only thing that's offered her comfort in a while, gently cradling her like one cradles a babe, keeping her from sinking into the earth as she would surely like to. The Breach is a mere scar in the night sky, but if she thought that meant her freedom she was dead wrong; not a moment goes by where some Inquisition operative or another comes to her asking about the mages, as though Fiona's just another flower vase in the corner. How many lyrium potions do we need? An apprentice set the Inquisitor's horse on fire again and we're too scared to tell her, what should we do? As if Adaar has the foggiest. She's worked with (max) one other mage at a time, and she's supposed to know Circle operations? She'd done the saving. Her job is over. She's ready to go back to being asked no questions and shooting lightning at fools.

This spot near the apothecary is the only corner of Haven not filled with celebrations, perhaps on Solas's reputation of standoffishness.

"If you didn't want to be everyone's savior," Varric points out from the stool he's dragged out of the Singing Maiden, "you maybe should have thought of that before becoming everyone's savior."

"Honestly," Isabela agrees, fingers in Adaar's hair. "Who even runs away to Redcliffe of all places? If I were to slip the lead, I'd go somewhere with a bit more panache."

"Such as?" Adaar asks, view of the world still blocked by her arms.

"Llomerryn. Rialto. Hell, I hear even Amaranthine's somewhere to be these days." Her fingers snag. "Blast. I'm no good at this. Why can't you get on your little elf friends to braid it for you? They're good at it, I knew one Dalish that could start manifesting flowers if you so much as mentioned you needed your hair done."

"You offered," Adaar snorts. "And manifesting flowers sounds more like a mage thing than an elf thing."

"Well there's both right there!" Isabela points. "Covers all our bases."

"I wouldn't dare intervene," Solas says, "not when that bird's nest is coming along so perfectly."

"Oh, boo on you," Isabela says.

"Creampuff and Daisy would probably get along," Varric says. "You're both always getting yourselves into some sort of deep shit. I bet you could bond over it."

Humming, Adaar lets her head fall back into Isabela's lap. The distant sounds of celebration are almost manic, as though, like her, they hadn't truly thought this whole mark-of-divine thing was going to work. Surrounded by friends, hearing revelry at a distance—Adaar is almost content.

"Your Worship?"

There goes that.

Lysas, persistently turning over rocks looking for beetles, has found her despite her very clever hiding spot. He says, "Seeker Pentaghast would like to speak to you."

"Of course she does. Alright, alright I'm up."

"And," Lysas continues, "the Inquisitor wishes to speak with Captain Isabela and Master Tethras."

This is not worthy of an, of course she does. Isabela and Varric share a look of concern.

Everyone's still wishing-to-speak in the same location however, and the four of them push into the snug war room at the back of the chantry to find it crammed with people. When the cultists who built this place however many centuries ago designed it, they had no doubt imagined it as a place to store spare linens, or whatever guff chantries shove in their backrooms. Not the human sacrifices, though. Those were done upfront, if Adaar's heard correctly. Anyway, no matter its former purpose the room is now full to bursting.

"Herald," Cassandra says, forehead creased. "This is Knight-Templar Barris. He brings news of Therinfal Redoubt."

Who needs news when the state of the huddled templars speaks volumes. Even as she thinks it, one of them collapses, probably from exhaustion.

"Forgive us," the one Cassandra called Barris says, "we've been moving since we've left Therinfal. We thought if we could go anywhere, if anyone would still be willing to help the Order it would be the Champion-"

He doesn't look much better than his friend. There's an untreated gash on the side of his head that's crusted into cherry-colored bark.

"Slow down," Adaar says. "Just tell me what happened."

"The Elder One has taken control of the Order. We're all that's left."

As Barris unwinds his tale for new ears, the war room becomes a series of tableaus. The fainted templar is carted off. Cassandra and Cullen are tapping fingers on the map. Hawke has taken Varric and Isabela aside in hushed conversation that twists Adaar's gut with premonition.

And then the bells start to ring.

"They mustn't've been too far behind us," Barris says. His eyes are wide and hallowed.

It's ridiculous that a report detailing the end of every templar in southern Thedas can become second priority, but within minutes the Inquisition leadership is outside and calling for stations, blades drawing and glinting in the night. Adaar watches her breath coalesce as she charges after, seeing the dots of light in the distance through the white huff of it. The torches dip beyond the wall as she grows closer. Like a flood pouring in. Or an avalanche.

The monster that first meets Adaar when she takes to the training yard is not human. Most of her can't believe it was ever human—its lips are eaten away by the red crystal, leaving only perpetually smiling gums and two shards where its sockets should have been. It dies under her flames, and its scream isn't human either. Animal. From the fade or beyond. Lunch-losing either way, and she has to wipe her mouth while staggering from one fight to the next.

When the first wave has dashed itself apart on their defenses, they stand on the primitive lookout and gaze up onto mountains that have always watched over them.

"What?" Varric says. There's a bit of blood dripping from his nose. "He wasn't happy the first time? Had to come back to seconds?"

Adaar does a double take between the specter on the mountain and the huddle of companions, who are taking in the scene with an extra layer of grim surprise that Adaar wasn't privy to.

"You know this Elder One?" she asks.

Hawke does not take her eyes off the cliff. "Yes."

"Herald," Cassandra jostles her, "come, we should buy time for those trying to get inside the walls."

There's no end to them. It doesn't make a proper battle, with sides and high ground and fighting until unacceptable losses. Or maybe this is where a battle becomes a war, Adaar thinks. Even still, there is no strategy that she can see to the monstrosities that crawl over the pitiful barricades, more like they're trying to overwhelm them with numbers than actually take the pilgrimage. It might still work. Haven is hardly anything more than timber and an ancient, heretical murder temple.

"He's coming," Hawke says when they stumble back inside hours later. She is supporting Lysette under one arm. A chunk of her ear has been left somewhere outside the gates.

Cullen accepts this news with cool bloodlessness. What's he going to do about it? They might as well be delivering reports to the Maker for all they're going to get helpful direction, the Inquisition's leadership down in the thick but no word yet what they're supposed to do beyond that. Adaar supports herself on the back of a chair. The fighting has turned her legs jelly-filled, but she can't sit down, not with that…Archdemon out there.

"We can turn the trebuchets against the mountains," Cullen says.

"And bury Haven?" Hawke contends.

The conversation glides far away. If she could just get another lyrium potion in her, she might be able to pull through, get a little rejuvenation flowing…

"Sit, Poppet," Isabela tells her.

"But I…"

"Sit."

Isabela passes her a flask. It's just water, but it gets the taste of bile out of her mouth. She tries to hand it to Varric after, but he blanches and says, "You keep it."

She only comes to when she hears Hawke ask, "Didn't I tell you to throw him out?"

Chancellor Roderick—Adaar hasn't seen him in some time. And, based on the wound in his side this might also be the last time, but still he impresses her, standing up mostly straight as he begins to babble about mountain tunnels and summer voyages. Her mind latches onto that, that simple promise of escape, mulling it over. That's what she really wants. What she should've gone for ages ago when she first had the chance, instead of coming back to get hunted down by a damn dragon of all things.

She doesn't understand how everyone in the room isn't jumping at the chance.

Hawke nods. To Cullen, she says, "Commander, I need you to get these people to safety."

Ah right, that's why, Adaar despairs. We've been cosmically assigned the mantle of heroic sacrifices.

Cullen salutes with blind adoration. Pointless martyrdom is what's expected.

"Herald, you're with me," Hawke adds, to really drive it home.

"Why me?" Adaar asks.

"You heard Barris. You're who he wants. We've got to hold his attention for as long as he can."

"Or you're who he wants," Isabela snaps. "Forget what the templars said, he's banging our door for a reason, and you're not sending us off when he very well might be out to even the score."

"Captain." Hawke, gently, excruciatingly, places a hand lightly on Isabela's shoulder, thumb joints in the gauntlet just barely touching her neck. "We very well may all die here, tonight. Since when have you stood on sentimentality?"

"I've only ever stood on sentimentality you bitch." There's a plea in Isabela's voice.

"Captain," Hawke says again. "We're all going to die, and there are those you can still help. I'm not one of them. Now, are you or are you not going to protect these people?"

It's this that finally clicks the conversation into place. Hawke is making Isabela leave, in the same way she's making Adaar stay.

"Damn you," Isabela says. "Damn you."

"That's not an answer."

"Oh it's an answer, you wouldn't bait me like that unless you know it." She composes herself. Adaar half thinks she's going to bat Hawke's hand aside, but when she opens her eyes again, she's calm. "Alright Commander, let's clear out that temple."

"Are you sure I should not-" Cassandra attempts, but Hawke only shakes her head.

"No. I am perfectly capable of protecting the Herald."

Probably not what she was asking, but Cassandra's pained face makes it clear the message is received. It's mirrored on Varric's, even on Cullen's to an extent.

But Hawke pushes them to action with a, "Go. We can only stall him for so long, go."

Adaar envies them, can't understand why they envy her. Why, after everything, can they not bring themselves to part from this madwoman? It's hard to imagine that kind of devotion when all Adaar can do is hate her—hate her as the dragon brings fire overhead, hate her as a behemoth made of pure red lyrium claws itself over the battlement and roars at them. Hawke hacks off its arm. This barely slows it. Same with the ice spell, though Adaar gets more creative and throws some under its peglegs. That sends it skittering, but more of the Order crawl over the walls, or jump, or sneak behind Adaar and nearly take off her head. At least one would have succeeded if not for Hawke whipping a grappling chain around the creature's neck. After a retributive beheading, the waves assaulting the trebuchet slow. It's the first time they've had a moment to breathe.

"Here," Hawke hands her a lyrium potion. "Stay strong. We almost have it."

Not comforting words. Hawke brought her out here just to drown her and she has the audacity to pretend to care? She downs the bottle.

For one fleeting moment, when the trebuchet is wound as tight as the bowstrings Adaar had tried and failed to draw in her youth, she thinks they might actually survive this. If it works the way the first shot did, then they may have time to run back before the snowfall overtakes them. They just have to aim for the invading army instead of themselves, she might just make it out of here.

Hawke is doing most of the work with her shoulder against the mechanism, and it's just about locked into place when the dragon turns.

Something so large shouldn't be able to fly. To look at it too long hurts her mind, unable to absorb that it's real, hovering, turning its motion into a dive straight toward them.

"Adaar!"

In its jaws is another winding bowstring, the tension in the trebuchet but more visceral, bright enough to see at this distance. Fire—red and liquid.

"Adaar, move!"

Hawke shoves her, waking her from her shock-fixed state, and she stumbles backward. They start running down the trail to the chantry, but it's too late. Miniscule and bipedal, they have no chance to outstrip the charging dragon, and the whole world disintegrates into ashes and heat.

She goes flying. The Elder One steps out of myth and into terrifying reality.

It feels like the avalanche came for her after all, what with the force she's been slammed onto her back. The dragon smells, a powerful brimstone odor, and it has not killed her yet, but she can sense its monstrous weight only a few yards away, closing off escape. She senses it with something supernatural, something other. It is pushing down the earth around it, and pushing down the fade too.

Hawke is trying to stand. Out the corner of her eye Adaar can see her hobbling to a three point stance, legs straight and trembling, her shield pressed flat to the dirt to give her a wide stance. She manages to pull herself up as the darkspawn steps into what remains of Haven.

"Corypheus," she says. Blood runs down the left half of her face, turning it entirely red. "You seem to have gained a bit of self-confidence since we last spoke. Dumat finally bestow upon you those answers?"

"I have come under no name but my own. This time, I will give this world the god it needs."

His voice, that of the vision at the Breach. Slay the Qunari.

Adaar rolls to her knees.

"Do you not remember how this went before, darkspawn?" Hawke says. "You should have stayed in your prison. Dragon or no, I'll rid the world of you once more."

Oh she's bluffing. Very obviously bluffing. If Hawke is bluffing this is so, so bad.

As Adaar is clambering for stability, she can feel the dragon beside her, feel its breath as a reminder. She taps into her magic, but what can she cast against that?

"I was not the only one who lost greatly in our last encounter. But your speeches are inconsequential," Corypheus says. "I have come for the anchor, nothing more."

"Monster," Hawke hisses. She stands in front of Adaar, shield forward, blade nearly grazing the earth. "You will not have her."

Up, Adaar tells herself. As if her useless limbs would obey something as trivial as her. Hawke has put herself between a sniveling Herald and doom, and Adaar must help. The first of the darkspawn's clawed strikes is batted aside with the shield, the magic in its palm dissipating. Adaar has seen Hawke kill magic before, but it's not enough, not when another swing comes around and tosses Hawke aside with its sheer physicality.

"No," Adaar barely chokes out, the Inquistor's body disappearing into what remains of Haven's outer wall, a snowdrift now made of lumber and fire.

Corypheus advances. The single obstacle between him and his goal is gone, and he wrenches Adaar's arm as he lifts her off the ground entirely.

"Tevinter…we once had such great power," he says, dangling his broken toy. "This we crafted to reach the Heavens."

His face, warped, inches from her own, does not have the necessary muscles to shape the twisted puddles of flesh into a frown. His breath smells like the dragon. Chemical. Like deep within the earth where it should have remained.

"Spoilt," he snarls at the unresponsive curse on her hand. "Like all things here. To make my way through the ages only to reach the ungrateful and the unworthy. You are blind, to not even know shame when you ruin what was meant to be divine."

"I've been doing that a lot it seems," Adaar manages feebly. "This really isn't like me. Honest."

He squeezes so hard something in her wrist cracks. She screams until the rawness in her throat foretells that she may as well have been breathing fire herself.

"Stains upon the world. Beasts and mistakes." His spittle covers her face. The dragon's maw is looming so close to them both, anticipatory.

"We beasts happen to run the show up here," a voice calls out. "I suggest you get used to it."

Adaar has just enough slack to peer around the darkspawn's shoulder and see when Hawke kicks the last notch on the trebuchet.

The rock is much like the dragon, when Adaar thinks about it. Something so large simply floating in the air. But then it kisses the mountainside with violence from which it was severed in the first place, and the Frostbacks rush in on them who dared to cower in their shadow.

Strings cut, she falls, the darkspawn swearing an ancient tongue but she loses track of him a mere instant after that. The dragon takes off with a gale of leathery wings, a bodyguard scooping its charge the instant there's even a chance he might come to harm. Damn. At the very least she'd hoped the avalanche would take him too, but even that's been whisked away. She's back at the bottom, feeling every rock in her spine as the snow comes to sweep her away-

"Up, Adaar."

She also apparently doesn't even get to indulge lying dazed for a second while she goes all melodramatic about her oncoming demise, as even that luxury is against Hawke's strict possibility of never a moment's rest. The way Hawke gets her to her feet is with a roll, and then an elbow tug, and then they are sprinting until the mountain comes down on their heads and the world falls under their feet.

It's a long drop into the old caverns. Adaar hits every rib in her chest on the way back down.

"Urf…" she says, getting her palms under her. "Couldn't have let us die up on the surface? Now we're buried and we have time to think about it."

Silence.

"Inquisitor?"

"Present."

The voice that responds is lacking something essential, its absence terrifying to Adaar in an entirely different way than the run through the snow had attacked her heart only a minute ago. She finds Hawke in the dark. It could be easier, so she makes it easier, igniting the mark and illuminating the Inquisitor with a splinter the size of a spearpoint jutting out of her side.

"Shit…"

Hawke barely stirs at her approach. The blood on her face has yet to dry, and it bisects her features almost perfectly. Her gaze is expectant, waiting, and looking at the state of her Adaar sees how simple it would be to run. How easy it would be to be free, Adaar thinks. Easier than ever before, when the legions of the faithful think her dead and the only one who knows otherwise has a piece of Haven's wall through an important artery. It wouldn't even involve any sort of spontaneous acts of violence that she'd dismissed very early in her imprisonment; all it'd involve is turning away. Hawke even expects it of her by the way she's looking at Adaar. Waiting for the other shoe to drop.

She is silent. Her voice, usually so flat even when commanding, has wavered only twice: when she spoke of Anders, and when she had said you will not have her.

There had never been companionship for Adaar amongst her mercenary companies. One day to the next, always just surviving. The way Hawke's friends were willing to lay down their lives is foreign to her. But in that moment in Haven's chantry, she'd felt the briefest glimpse of what that might be like.

She kneels. "Hold the flesh together. When I take it out, I need a little time before I can seal the wound."

That cautious gaze does not leave her. The surprise doesn't show, but Adaar knows it's there by the briefest hesitation before Hawke does what she asks.

Her hands find their way underneath Hawke's shirt, warm and slick with blood in the tunnel air dagger-poised above them. She peels away crumpled armor, her breath close enough to Hawke's that the puffs of air compete to linger the longest. Her finger joints fit over Hawke's knuckles too perfectly.

"On three. One, two…"

Green, not unlike the anchor's, alights the ice cavern briefly. Beneath the skin, the severed artery closes, but the flesh has to be tied with Adaar's scarf to keep it bound, winding the torso twice.

"So you can heal," Hawke says. Bloodloss has sapped her inflection.

"Very minor stuff," Adaar says. "Not like your Enchanter."

"Yet you're very knowledgeable medically. I've heard your discussions with the Apothecary."

"Yes well, when a company hires a mage they have certain expectations. You try explaining to them that entropy and creation are opposing schools and their eyes glaze over, so I've learned to compensate. I picked a bit of botany from my mother."

"Meaning she was a mage or a mercenary?"

"Just a fisherwoman. She stopped being saarebas the day she left the Qun."

"Most mages would say that giving up being is not the option the Maker would like it to be."

Adaar shrugs. "Still. She stopped practicing. Taught me enough to control myself, but the rest she gave up, even the little things like fixing cuts and easing moon cramps. I think she took pride in being a normal person. Enduring as a form of…proof."

"Not so odd. My mother was probably similar."

"Yeah?"

"Mm. Magic runs in her half of the family. Yet when she eloped with a mage, I half think she was getting off on the degeneracy of it all. All that rebellion, and all she ended up with was me: rather disappointing when you think about it." Hawke tilts her head. The light reflecting on her bloodied face turns it void black. "That is, until my sister came along. Vindication."

"That's…awful."

"More awful than your mother who wished you weren't a mage?"

"I didn't say that," Adaar says, frustrated that this was going the way her conversations with Hawke always do.

"No," Hawke says. "You didn't say that."

Above them, ceiling warmed enough by magic and body heat, something drips.

"I didn't know you had a sister," Adaar says.

"I suppose you wouldn't." Hawke closes her eyes. "Give me a moment. I will catch my breath, and then we can go."

She barely has to move, already horizontal on the debris that followed them down through their escape. Adaar's mouth is open, maybe trying to bite on to the tail of the conversation before it goes, but then she lets it pass.

There's still time to escape. As she sits and pulls her knees to her chest, she tells herself that, but she knows she won't, not now. She prods herself with equal parts self-chastisement and bleak reflection; she wants this Inquisition to be something other than a place to escape from, and it only becomes that place if she stays with it. The ickiest kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.

At least, it becomes that place if their Inquisitor doesn't die in a hole. Hawke's breath is shaky, drifting to unconsciousness, and Adaar's breath nearly extinguishes all together whenever she takes a little too long to draw another one. She's not going to make it unless she gets to a proper healer—that becomes fact when Adaar tries to rouse her and she doesn't so much as twitch.

"Inquisitor. Hawke. Dammit Hawke, don't leave me alone down here, not after all that." It's no use. "You know I can't carry you out of here. You're wearing like thirty pounds of armor. Please."

Shit. And she can hear other things buzzing in the depths below the ruined temple. Bits of fade torn by the violence of the battle or simply things that have lingered here for much longer, she has no desire to find out. She's going to have to try a carry, daunting as it is. She does her best to rid Hawke of the heaviest pieces, and then she lifts the human into her arms, her sprained wrist screaming at her all the while. The wounded side stays facing Adaar, done so she can at least try to keep the pressure on. Still, the makeshift bandage soaks through as they traverse the tunnels, blooming warm and wet against her own clothes, her cradled Inquisitor feeling forebodingly empty.

Empty doesn't mean light however. The few wraiths she encounters disperse at the mark's light, which is good because she doubts she can fight them with the way her arms are starting to shake. And that's just from the tunnels. When she reaches the pass, she has to contend with the snow, the wind, and wolves howling at a distance that she prays will remain vast. Her pace is a trudge for every step. Abandoned cookfires are hope, but not guidance.

"Alright Isabela," she whispers. "Where would you have taken them?"

She looks up. Finds Peraquialus to orient herself. Then, she marches.

The woman who scoffed at those silly humans and their bundles of coats is long gone—when she finally stumbles into the Inquisition camp she is certain she has known the cold as no other living being has. The light of a torch coming around the cliff's corner is enough to take her to a knee, its very implication of warmth sending her eyelids sagging.

"Herald! Easy, easy now."

Varric. She'd been looking for Isabela, but Varric will do, holding her shoulder to keep her from falling over completely.

"Curly, help me out here."

"Herald," Cullen says. "I can take the Inquisitor, but you need to let go of her."

They've been trying to take Hawke's body from her, all of them. Cassandra is here too with a few more soldiers. Because certainly that's all that's left of her is the body, not with how cold she is in Adaar's arms. Not with how cold they both are. Maybe Adaar's just a body too, and this is her dying dream.

A dying dream of fire. Of Giselle spooning soup into her mouth. Sweet squash, little potatoes. A bit of watercress to give it some crunch.

"I- I can do it," she says, muzzily swinging her legs over the side of the cot.

"Pride can come later, Herald," Giselle says.

"More than that, you're doing it too slow. Gimme."

She makes hands for the bowl, and it doubles as an exercise in making sure her fingers aren't frostbitten. The ones on her ungloved hands are a bit stiffer, but Giselle smiles, and the wooden bowl chases the last of that away.

It takes about three more spoonfuls to return to sanity. She sits up straighter. "The Inquisitor?"

"Awake," Giselle says, a single word putting so much back into place. "They are discussing what we are to do next."

"I need to talk to her," Adaar says.

"If I were to say you need rest, I suppose that would not sway you?"

"You suppose astutely. Thank you for the soup."

Hawke is indeed up and active when Adaar finds the right tent. Her advisors snap and bicker, but at least she's awake, awake and alive.

"Enough," Hawke says. "We won't figure anything out tonight. We'll decide where to go in the morning. Dismissed."

When the last of them have filed past, Adaar says, "Now I'm less surprised you're up. No one could sleep with them barking on their door."

"Isabela can," Hawke says.

Indeed; Isabela appears to be asleep in one of the tent's few chairs, upright with her head supported in one hand. She has a habit of going unnoticed when she wants to.

"We worried her greatly," Hawke explains softly.

"We? I'd say she was worried about one of us much more than the other."

"That gap is actually smaller than you think," Hawke says, her voice a lull when the wind is so harsh outside.

She's bare from the waist up, as well muscled as Adaar has imagined, only modest via the dressing that's been wound round her chest. It's good to see someone's properly bandaged it. One less thing on Adaar's mind. Still, Hawke must be cold with only the hide of the tent keeping in the warmth. Giselle should be in here giving her reprimands on pride.

"Is there something you needed from me, Herald?" Hawke asks.

"We're back to Herald again? Adaar is just for when we're about to become itty bitty little morsels of dragon food?"

The comment makes Hawke raise her brow, and Adaar flinches. She'd meant it as a mild rib, but maybe a bit more honesty than intended escaped with the words. The past day has been more—more peril, more introspection, more everything—than in the past ten years combined. She's not even sure why she's still here.

"Why did you…do that? When you saved me?" she asks. "And don't give me the usual practicalities about closing rifts or whatever. That doesn't explain…what you said."

For a moment, Hawke eyes her appraisingly. Then she says, "Corypheus needed my blood to open his prison. Mine, or my sister's. He lured us into his prison, our only escape his death, and while we were trapped down there a darkspawn got her here." Hawke taps her chin. "Some of its blood must have been on the blade. She died before we even reached the surface."

"Blight sickness? So what he said to you…"

"Mm. Yes."

"…I'm sorry," Adaar says, because what else does one say to that? "But you don't mean to tell me you think of me as some little sister, do you?"

"No, of course not."

"What then? A slip in the heat of the moment?"

"Not that either. Just that he could not have you." Hawke breathes through her nose. "That, and I promised Cassandra I'd protect you."

"…You're joking."

"I've been known to."

She thinks this is Hawke smiling at her: the corners of her lips cocked just so, and Adaar thinks she is smiling back. It is a moment, a brief flash where there might just be something of understanding.

That is when the singing starts up.

Adaar lifts the tent flap to see the masses gathered, people kneeling for her, so many eyes—even Leliana's—turned toward her. Hawke comes to her side, the flap draping them both, framing them against the glow from inside toward the starlit without. Her shoulders are back, a glimmer of calculation crystallizing in her eye, that same nugget Adaar saw when knelt before her in their first meeting.

The singing swells. They come and they supplicate. When it is over, Isabela stretches audibly and yawns, "Not even one of the good ones. I know quite a few shanties that'd really make you feel holy."

The fact that Hawke doesn't reply unnerves Adaar.

When Solas asks, "Herald, a word?" she is more than happy to say, "Please."

Skyhold isn't the relief it should be. It is too large, too wanting. It asks Adaar to start giving it some part of herself that she's not willing to hand over, thousands of mages and other Inquisition personnel strolling around and making like they want to take a lock of her hair for a sacred relic. The roof is half-caved in, and there's a chandelier on the floor, but that's where Leliana, Cassandra, and Hawke call her to demand something else of her. Or, more accurately, demand she take something.

"What is it?" Adaar asks.

"A circlet," Leliana says, the object in question in her hands.

"It looks like a crown to me."

"A circlet does not have arches or a covering," Leliana clarifies in that way of hers where she is foaming at the mouth to go into a detailed explanation but is holding herself back, "and does not denote imperial power. In other ways, yes it is a crown. It was specifically made to fit over your horns. It's some of Harrit's better work."

She's seen Harrit make daggers so fine it's enough to make a pirate queen weep, but there are so many other avenues to push that that one doesn't even make the top five. Another one is that she may have only spent time in a chantry for strategic purposes, but even she can tell that the circlet looks suspiciously like the crown in all the paintings of Andraste.

"Guys please," she says nervously between the three of them. "You really don't want to do this. I don't want to do this."

"You already did this," Hawke says. "You chose these mages, made them believe they were selected for a holy purpose. You took the reins. This is what holding those reins looks like."

"…Eugh."

"You will speak to them then?" Cassandra asks.

"That's Adaar's version of yes," Hawke says.

It is. A relucent yes, and Adaar asks we're doing this now? as they step toward the courtyard, but she's agreed all the same.

Hawke is straight backed, arms behind her in military stance as they walk. Nothing about her ever lets you forget she was a soldier once. Her new blade is on the hip facing Adaar as they keep in step.

"Is that my scarf?" Adaar asks.

The flick of orange is wound around the hilt, the way knights tie lady's favors to the grip. Hawke glances down at it. "I thought if I asked if you wanted it back, you'd very morosely say I could keep it, in one of those martyrous scenes you like to make. So I decided to just simply go ahead."

"I'm never morose."

"Go talk to your public, Herald."

It is only the second of Hawke's smiles she's ever seen, it still fills her with vigor enough to come up with a speech that she barely knows as she says it and will forget entirely later. She will kneel, so that the human women can get her fancy new crown on her too-high head, and the Inquisitor will point her new sword at the sky and declare for her, and that flash of orange will promise her that, for now, she is among allies.