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"We should … make some sort of camp, Hawke," Varric said into the silence that followed the defeat of the darkspawn.

"Not here," she said, looking around at the tainted bodies. "Farther in."

He couldn't argue with that.

Blondie could, however. "Bethany, Varric, you two go on ahead and find a spot to spend the night. I'm going to look Hawke over thoroughly to make sure nothing got on her, no wounds or any place she could have been tainted, and we'll catch up."

They did as he said, recognizing that it was the most sensible suggestion. Panic filled Varric, and it took everything he had to walk away from Mina, terrified that she might have been poisoned by the darkspawn blood. The rest of them were safe—Blondie had put himself between Varric and Sunshine, making sure the darkspawn didn't come near them, and of course, he was already tainted. But Mina …

Sunshine's voice cut into his worries. "Varric, look at this."

She stood in the doorway of a room full of cells. In one of them, a desire demon was held in stasis. "Another one."

"Just what we all needed."

After a long moment of silence, both of them too drained to think about what to do about this unexpected demon, Sunshine said, "We should leave it be."

"We should not," Hawke snapped from behind them. "Spend the night in the same room as a desire demon, no matter how captured? No, thank you."

Varric looked up at her, thinking how incredibly beautiful she was. He shook his head. Probably she was right. He always did find her beautiful, but most of the time he was perfectly able to keep the thought at the back of his mind. Right now, he was hard put to think about anything else. "Hawke's right," he said with a resigned sigh. "She always is."

Hawke seemed to have more energy than the rest of them, so she did most of the heavy lifting in the fight that ensued once she had freed the demon. When it was dead, Varric collapsed on a dusty bunk in one of the unused cells, his eyes nearly closed when he heard a strange man's voice.

"I've bought our freedom, Leandra," the voice said.

As one, Mina and Bethany gasped and reached for each other. There was no question but that this was their father's voice, speaking aloud to their mother. Some part of his essence had been left here in this tower, held in stasis just like the demons he had bound.

"We can go home now," he went on, "us and the baby. We'll be together. I hope it takes after you, love. I wouldn't wish this magic on anyone."

Bethany gasped softly in pain at his words, her eyes filling with tears.

Their father's voice dropped. It was filled with anguish. "May they never know what I've done here."

He sold them short, Mina thought. She knew now what he had done, and she thanked him for it. Yes, it had been blood magic, but it had bought them an entire life—free, and together. It had bought them Bethany and Carver.

"He was talking about you," Bethany said sadly. "Mother must have been pregnant with you when they left Kirkwall."

"No doubt that was why they left. To keep Mother's family from hiding me, or claiming me for their own somehow."

"He—he didn't want his child to be a mage. Do you think—do you think he was unhappy about my magic?"

Hawke threw an arm around her sister's shoulders, holding her fiercely. "No. I think he was worried—afraid for you, afraid for us, if the wrong people found out, and until he had trained you to use it safely. But he was so proud of you, and how strong you are. Magic by itself isn't the danger."

Bethany nodded. "If he was … disappointed, it never showed in my training. They say as much in the Circle. My instructors keep commenting on how well I was trained. I had no comparison when we were growing up, but now …" She looked around. "And all along, Father was hiding all of this, and he had the strength and the skill to do this, to defend against the dangers and the temptations, to …"

"To keep us all safe for a long time." For the first time in a long time, Hawke thought of the shadow of himself her father had been at the end of his life. She had always thought he had worn himself out carrying the burden of his family—and he had, but not at all in the way she had imagined. She thought of the number of times she had compared herself to him, thinking of her own life force being drained from her by the constant demands of her siblings and her mother, and it sickened her to think how selfish and how ungrateful she had been.

"Sometimes I wonder why he gave up so much to try to make our lives normal," Bethany said softly.

"Because he wanted to be normal, I'm guessing. He wanted—to be something other than a mage. To be a husband, and a father, and a member of the community." And he had been. He had lived his dream. She had been part of that dream. She hoped she had helped, that her sword arm and her careful adherence to his teachings and her support of the family had given him a longer life than he might have had otherwise.

And her dream? Hawke carefully did not look over to the now-occupied bunk where a certain very attractive dwarf was snoring. That was a foolish dream, a waste of time, something that could never be. But what to put in place of it? She had no idea.