Adara awoke with a fierce headache, the kind that felt like a sharp-toothed animal was gnawing at one side of her skull. She groaned loudly and crankily from where she was curled up beneath a blanket, as if that would help, but of course it did not. Reluctantly and groggily, she sat up, feeling as though she had the worst kind of hangover.

This was a situation where it undeniably fortunate to be a mage. Her hand glowed gently with magic as she touched it to her temple, and Adara sighed with relief as the pain in her head eased. As she did, she caught a glimpse of her forearm. Startled by what she saw, or rather did not see, she pulled her hand away and held out both arms in front of her, staring in alarm at the delicate flesh of her wrists and forearms.

They were smooth. Unscarred. She frowned as she ran a finger down her arm. The crisscrossing pattern of pale and pinkish lines that had accumulated over the years from blood magic use were gone. Not faded, but gone. Frowning, she pulled up the hem of her shirt and saw that the white fractal scarring that once branched across her stomach—a grim reminder of her time in the Circle—had also disappeared.

Adara did not recognize her surroundings, but that was not important at the moment. She clambered out of the unfamiliar bed, yanking her shirt off as she hurried to the mirror at a nearby dressing table. She peered over her shoulder at her back to see that the jagged claw marks left by a werewolf in the Brecilian were gone as well.

Was this a result of the deal she had made?

Adara could not hear Tenacity as a clear voice in her head. That might have been preferable to facing a daunting tangle of thoughts and trying to determine which ones were her own and which belonged to the spirit. Some threads were easy to pluck free, and others were hopelessly fused together. Ultimately, Adara got the impression that Tenacity had not tried or intended to remove Adara's scars and that it must have simply been an unexpected effect of… whatever they had done. Even Tenacity was a little surprised.

Adara closed her eyes and took a deep breath in an attempt to center herself. She could fret over the consequences of her deal with Tenacity later. Right now she needed to learn what had happened in the wake of the blackpowder explosion, after Carver been resurrected and she had collapsed. How long had she been lying here? Where was 'here'? She left the strange bedchamber in a hurry, tugging her shirt back on as she went.

She got the shirt over her head in enough time to see that she was about to walk into someone but not in enough time to stop herself. Adara crashed into the wall of a man that was Carver Hawke and would have been knocked to the floor if his arm hadn't caught her around the waist.

"Whoa! Where do you think you're going?"

Adara struggled not to burst into tears of relief as she threw her arms around him as far as they would reach. "I was so scared. I thought I'd lost you," she said thickly into his chest. He was really and truly still alive.

Carver held her for a moment before gently pulling her away just enough so that he could see her face. Maker, he looked exhausted. There were dark circles under his eyes, and his usually clean-shaven face had several days' worth of stubble. "I'm fine?" he said with some confusion. "I'm not the one who's been passed out for two days and glowing like a firefly," he said.

Carver urged her back towards the bedroom. "Go on. Oliver will kill me if he catches me letting you wander around."

Adara let herself be shepherded back into the room, but her list of questions was only growing. "Where are we?" she asked first as Carver closed the door behind them.

"The bann's estate in Amaranthine. It's secure enough and well away from the blast area. Nathaniel wanted to have you taken back to the Keep, but I talked him down. Figured you'd rather be nearby when you woke up."

"Thank you," Adara said quietly. "How… how bad is it?"

Carver sank down onto the edge of the bed and rested his elbows on his knees, reaching up to rub his face with both hands. "A city block is more or less gone. I think we've finally gotten all of the wounded to the Chantry, and now it's just…" He looked up and grimaced. "I haven't been counting the dead. It's a lot."

Numbly, Adara sat next to him. Not too close: before this mess, they hadn't seen each other for months and hadn't parted on the best terms, apology letter or no. She sighed heavily and waveringly. The sting of failure to stop the Faithful's plan would be painful enough on its own. To know that so many were dead made it nearly unbearable, and she squeezed her eyes shut.

"What happened to you, Adara?" Carver asked quietly.

"I… I'm not entirely certain, to be honest." Adara suddenly wished she had questioned Wynne in greater detail about her relationship with the spirit of Faith. She had been curious, of course, but they had more important concerns at the time, to say the least. Now that Adara also found herself in a presumably grey area of spirit relationships, she very much wished she could speak to Wynne.

Carver frowned. "That first day, you just kept glowing on and off, like there was a light under your skin. Oliver says that's stopped, but…" he trailed off and turned to look at her with questions and concern in his face. "Something's still different. I can feel it."

"You died," Adara said, her voice soft and her expression hesitant as she dared to meet his eyes. He looked shocked: clearly that wasn't an answer he had been expecting to hear. "You were gone, and I couldn't bear it. And…" she drew in another deep breath. "…a spirit offered to help me."

"A spirit," he echoed flatly.

"We made a deal. It saved you, and in return… it's bound to me now." Or Adara was bound to it; she wasn't sure which one was closest to the truth. "It wants to observe our world."

Carver was quiet for a moment in a way that made Adara brace herself: he was trying to figure out what to react to first, and she didn't think any of it would be pleasant. "What d'you mean, I died? I couldn't have."

She didn't look at him. "A piece of metal went right through your chest, Carver. I tried so hard to heal you, but I couldn't. You just… weren't there anymore." Adara shivered despite herself. The memory of him lying so still, so bloodied and broken, would never leave her.

"That explains the armor," he muttered darkly to himself.

Adara continued: "A spirit of Tenacity felt me refusing to give up, and we bargained."

She didn't think that he would thank her. Anger born of concern was the reaction she had expected, and that's exactly what she got. "Maker, Adara, of all the stupid, reckless—how could you be so—so fucking stupid! What the fuck were you thinking? I thought you knew better than to do something so bloody… so… and people say I'm an idiot! You were supposed to be smarter than this."

Carver glared at her, and she glared right back at him with her chin lifted stubbornly. It was difficult not to bristle up with indignation, even if he did have a valid point in his rambling stream of anger. "I wasn't going to let you die if I could stop it. I'm not sorry," she said.

"Is that why your skin was lighting up?"

"Yes." Adara knew the answer without thinking about it, Tenacity's thoughts only weaving more tightly throughout her own the longer she was awake. "It was… getting comfortable. It shouldn't happen again."

Carver groaned and covered his face with his hands. "Maker damnit. Maker fucking bloody damnit. Can you undo it?"

"No. And I wouldn't if I could: I made a fair deal." Tenacity was pleased by that. "Carver, I'm not an abomination." She might actually be, in the technical sense of the term, but that wasn't the important part. Maker, I really wish I could talk to Wynne.

"I knew a man in Kirkwall who might have said the same thing if he wasn't so busy being turned into a monster by the thing living in his head," Carver said grimly.

"This spirit is still bound to the Fade. It can't control me." Adara wasn't entirely certain that was the case, but she trusted that Tenacity wouldn't. Tenacity was a part of her now, after all, and Adara could feel its intentions as clearly as her own. "It isn't so different from what spirit healers do." It was very different, but Carver didn't have a lot of patience for magic lessons at the best of times. A simpler explanation was better, right? At least until she knew better herself.

Adara drew in another deep breath. "If you're afraid, I understand." It hurt to say, but she meant it. She hadn't considered this outcome, that the man she loved would recoil from her in horror once he learned what she had done, but she couldn't regret any of it. Carver was alive. The rest… well, she could live with the rest if she had to.

They fell silent, Carver with his head in his hands and Adara staring down at her lap. She fidgeted and wrung her hands, catching sight of her unscarred forearms again. She didn't know whether to weep or to laugh. All visible evidence of her blood magic was gone, but it seemed that one fearsome magic had only been replaced by another. Now perhaps she was only a different kind of monster. A more literal kind.

"I'm not afraid of you," Carver said after a long silence. "I'm afraid for you." He lifted his head and met her gaze. His eyes had an intensity behind them, a kind of fierce and stubborn determination that had probably attracted her to the irascible man in the first place. "I won't let you face this by yourself. No matter how poor of a choice you made."

"It brought you back to me. It wasn't a poor choice."

He looked like he wanted to further argue that point, so Adara hushed him by pulling him down to her for a desperate kiss. She tried to fill it with all the things she didn't know how to say: that she had missed him terribly these past few months, that she was frightened to discover there was nothing she would not do for him, that she was so happy he wasn't afraid of her that her heart might burst from it. He returned her kiss in kind, and she climbed into his lap, no longer able to tolerate the distance between them.

Despite his obvious worry and exhaustion, he was clearly as eager as she was. His hands went to her hips and pulled her close enough to feel exactly how eager. When she rolled her hips and ground into him, he groaned against her lips.

The more she writhed against him, the harder his fingers dug into her hips. Finally he leaned back and tipped them sideways onto the bed before rolling her onto her back. They made quick work of their clothing, only breaking contact to toss aside shirts and kick off trousers, until there was nothing between them. When he slid inside her, she gasped at the pressure and at the exquisite feeling of being filled completely.

Everything about him was wonderfully familiar, from the rhythm he set to the low sound he made into her neck when she scraped her fingernails across his chest. It somehow managed to be thrillingly new at the same time: Tenacity's influence, she assumed, and distantly she wondered if she would stop being able to tell the difference.

She gasped out his name as the building heat and pressure inside her finally peaked before crashing around her in waves. He let out a low, choked cry as the pulsing in her muscles pulled him right after her. She tightened her grip on him with her arms and her legs so that she could keep them joined for as long as possible while she reveled in the way he shuddered.

"I missed you," Adara murmured.

Carver held himself up with shaking arms for a moment before falling to his side to keep from crushing her beneath him. "Need you to promise me," he said, tucking her against his chest with one arm. He closed his eyes, and Adara wondered—a bit guiltily—if he had slept at all since the blackpowder explosion. She thought he might have fallen asleep before he finished his thought, but eventually he said: "Promise me you're still you?"

"I promise. I'll always be me," she said softly. He nodded once before giving up the fight against sleep.

Adara was content to remain next to him, running her hands through his hair while she studied his face. "And I'll always love you," she murmured to him. He doesn't look so ill-tempered when he's asleep, she thought fondly before drifting back into sleep herself.