Chapter Text
The first thing she felt was the sticky wetness against her skin.
It soaked through the thin soles of her boots and crept between her toes. It dripped down the back of her neck, caught in the hairs standing on end there.
The stone beneath her feet shifted like a living shadow.
The air tasted of rust and something fouler, like breath trapped too long in a sealed mouth. Like a secret swollen and rotting behind clenched teeth. She stood with her hands half-curled at her sides, heart battering against her ribs hard enough to ache.
A corridor stretched before her, narrow and arched, built of black stone blocks slick with condensation. There was no torchlight, no glow, nothing to justify sight. And yet a dim sheen clung to the walls. When she took her first step forward, she could see only two paces ahead and two behind. Beyond that, the dark swallowed everything.
The air pulsed with a vile sound. A low vibration, almost beneath hearing. It pressed against her eardrums and settled behind her eyes.
Behind her, something shifted.
Cloth brushing stone. The faint drag of something that did not lift its feet fully when it moved.
Her lungs refused to fill.
She darted forward.
Her boots slipped on the slick floor. She fell. Her shoulder struck the wall and smeared across cold slime. It coated her skin as a voice spoke into the deadened silence.
I see you, little raven.
The words came to her mind, though no voice had uttered them. They slid through her, sending a dark shudder through her bones.
She scrambled back, palms slapping wet stone, fingers slipping. She forced herself upright and staggered forward, refusing to look behind her.
The corridor narrowed with each stride, pressing in on her, the ceiling dipping lower until she felt it graze the crown of her head.
Moisture dripped steadily from above, striking her scalp and running down her spine.
To her left stood cells carved into the wall, each barred by iron thick with rust. Within them lay heaps of bone and cloth. Rib cages collapsed inward. Skulls tilted at unnatural angles. In one cell, a skeleton sat upright against the far wall, jaw hanging open as though caught mid-scream.
As she passed, its skull turned toward her.
The eye sockets were empty, yet somehow they still followed her as she ran.
At the bend, she glanced right—only to realize that something in the blackness moved. It writhed and stretched, its edges dissolving and reforming. It had no fixed shape. One moment it loomed tall and thin, the next it crouched low on elongated limbs.
It screeched.
Still, she ran.
The ink-thing dragged itself along the wall parallel to her, keeping pace. Its surface rippled, and faces pressed outward from within it. Faces she knew. Men and women and children.
She screamed, but no noise came.
It was like muk had been piled down her throat and she gagged, coughing compulsively, collapsing to the floor—
Just before a shimmering mirror.
In its broken surface she glimpsed herself.
She lay on her side before it, chest heaving soundlessly, fingers clawing at her throat. No air entered. Her lungs convulsed around nothing. The corridor’s low vibration pressed harder, burrowing behind her eyes.
Her Hair hung in filthy strands. Grime streaked across her cheekbones. Blood slick at the corner of her mouth.
She didn’t remember bleeding.
Her reflection lifted a hand.
She had not.
The mirrored fingers pressed flat against the interior of the glass and a crack spread outward from the point of contact.
Her own hand trembled against the stone floor.
Behind her, something dragged closer.
The scrape was deliberate now. Cloth. Skin. Something wet.
Her reflection smiled obscenely wide, teeth showing.
She tore her gaze away, rose, and ran harder.
The corridor bent left, then right, then left again in tight, irrational turns. Each curve concealed the length ahead until she collided with it. The air thickened and pressed into her lungs, damp and stale. Her braid snagged on a protruding nail. Pain ripped across her scalp. She wrenched free, leaving strands of hair clinging to the rusted metal.
Another turn.
Another mirror.
This one was shattered into jagged shards that still clung within the frame. Each fragment reflected a different part of her. An eye. The hollow of her throat. Fingers curled tight enough to whiten the knuckles.
In one sliver she saw something else.
The shape behind her.
It bled into the dark around it, a deeper absence within an absence.
She spun.
The corridor lay empty.
The shape remained in the mirror shard.
It tilted its head, six bright amethyst eyes blinking open at her.
I see you, little raven.
The thought slid through her skull again, intimate and invasive.
She fled.
The mirrors multiplied. Every few strides, another one. Another fractured self. Some reflections wept silently, tears trailing down cheeks she did not feel wet. Others stared with hollow vacancy. One bared its teeth and mouthed warnings she could not hear.
One mirror showed her kneeling.
A hand gripped her chin and forced her head up.
It wasn’t a memory of something she had ever lived. Not specifically. But suddenly it was hers. She could feel a man’s fingers there on her skin. The scent of oil and sweat. The press of eyes on her. The knowledge of being owned.
Her breath caught in her throat.
A raven cawed.
The sound cut through the stone like a blade.
She froze.
The caw came again, closer this time, reverberating through the mirrored gauntlet. It carried no echo. It sounded wet and hoarse, a throat tearing itself open to produce it.
She looked up.
A raven perched on the topmost frame of the nearest mirror. Its feathers were slick with moisture, wings half-spread. Its eyes shone with an intelligence that felt invasive.
It opened its beak.
I see you.
The shape behind her moved in time with the sound.
She stumbled toward the mirror before her without meaning to. Her palm slammed into cold glass.
The surface rippled.
The kneeling woman lifted her face.
Bruises ringed her eyes. Blood split her lip. She opened her mouth and screamed.
This time, the sound burst into the corridor and filled it. It crawled beneath Ellana’s skin and settled in her bones. She jerked back, but the scream continued, rising higher, fraying into something animal.
The mirror fractured further, cracks racing outward like veins splitting flesh.
The thing moved with the sound of feathers in a breeze and then it was on her. Arms black with tar trapped her, pulling her off her feet.
The arms tightened. They slid across her ribs and pinned her elbows to her sides. Cold flooded her chest. The chamber warped around them, mirrors bending inward, glass screaming as cracks raced like lightning through every pane.
This time her voice rose and it echoed too right alongside the voice in her mind.
I found you, little raven.
The tar surged up her throat.
The raven’s wings beat frantically somewhere above her. Feathers brushed her face. The beak snapped inches from her eye.
I found you—
***
Someone was screaming.
For one disorienting instant those suffocating arms were still around her, crushing the air from her lungs while the voice slid through her mind with sick, masculine triumph.
I found you.
She thrashed blindly. Her hands struck solid warmth instead of slick shadow as fabric bunched under her fists. A body shifted behind her, and the arms tightened with force enough to stop her from pitching forward out of the bed.
“Ellana.”
His voice cut through the last splintering shards of the dream. It was close to her ear, roughened by sleep and sharpened by alarm. She tried to wrench away from it, panic still blazing white-hot in her veins, and her heel caught against tangled sheets. The world tilted, but a firm arm banded across her chest and drew her back while another hand slid to the side of her head to keep her from striking the stone wall.
“Breathe.”
She shook. Her throat hurt, a suffocating pain on raw vocal chords.
She struggled again, hands clawing at the arm across her ribs as if it were the thing from the dream. Her nails scraped his skin. She felt the flex of muscle beneath her fingers, the solid resistance of bone. His grip tightened instinctively, not harsh but immovable, anchoring her against him.
“Breathe,” he murmured.
She could not.
Her lungs seized halfway through each inhale, catching on memory. The echo of the raven’s caw still rang in her ears. She tasted iron. She lifted a shaking hand to her mouth. There was no blood dripping from her mouth.
His hand came up to cradle her jaw, thumb brushing the corner of her lips with infinite tenderness. He turned her face slightly toward him, and she saw him.
Blue eyes. Strong, proud features she adored.
Solas.
“In,” he said quietly, drawing a deliberate breath of his own so she could feel the expansion of his chest against her back. “With me.”
She was still trembling.
“In.”
Air crept into her lungs.
“Out.”
It left in a ragged rush.
He did it again, always steady and patient, his palm sliding from her jaw down to rest flat over her sternum. The warmth of his hand spread through the thin linen of her shift. She could feel the tremor in her heartbeat beneath his touch.
The room smelled of embers and wool and the faint, clean scent of his skin.
Not tar. Not smoke. Not foul, vicious shadow.
“Ellana.” The voice was firmer now. “You are safe.”
Her body did not believe it, but she forced her eyes to take in the details around her.
Her fingers were fisted in the fabric of his tunic. She became aware of that slowly, the texture rough against her fingers, the way his pulse beat steadily beneath the skin at his wrist.
Her body sagged against him all at once, the strength going out of her limbs as the last of the nightmare’s grip loosened. He adjusted immediately, shifting so she sat between his legs, her back pressed flush to his chest, his arms still around her but no longer restraining her.
The chamber was warm, the fire in the hearth burning steadily and banishing the shadow of the nightmare. The walls were familiar, covered in their murals. Snapshots of their family.
She trembled, violent shudders. The tears came then, and she turned into him, taking his arms for shelter now.
His chin came to rest lightly against the crown of her head. One hand threaded into her hair, fingers spreading at her scalp in slow, soothing circles. The other lingered between her shoulder blades, feeling the frantic rhythm of her heart, matching his own breathing to something calmer and steadier.
“You are safe,” he said again. “Breathe, my love.”
She closed her eyes.
The memory surged. Black arms tightening. The weightlessness of being lifted off her feet. The voice crawling through her thoughts.
I found you.
Her breath hitched.
His hand moved from her hair, down her arm, to her wrist, then finally to her hand. He pressed her palm flat against his chest, guiding her to feel the steady beat beneath.
“Listen,” he murmured.
She did.
His heart had always been steady as the rock beneath her feet. It beat with a warm familiarity, thumping softly against her skin. She closed her eyes. Breathed in, held it, then out. Her forehead leaned forward, pressing against his shoulder.
She was safe.
“You were not in the Fade,” Solas said then.
Her eyes snapped up to his.
“I-I wasn’t?”
He shook his head.
Confusion knit her brow. “I went to bed before you,” she said slowly. “We were going to explore the Vir Dirthara as it looked before the Veil. I was—” She swallowed. “I was waiting for you.”
“But you were not in the Fade,” he repeated, firmer now. “When you cried out, I reached for you. I searched.” His jaw tightened slightly. “I could not find you.”
The admission hung between them.
She studied his face in the dim glow of the hearth. That was unease there, scrawled into his expression.
“You couldn’t… find me?” she asked.
He did not soften it. “No.”
A flicker of faulty humor tried to rise in her throat. Something about the Dread Wolf losing her scent again.
It withered before it could form.
“Where did you go?”
Ellana opened her mouth to reply, but the words died on her tongue. Her mind clouded.
Memory fled, and though her body still braced for something her mind could not name.
“I don’t remember,” she whispered.
Solas’s palm cupped her cheek, his lips pressing to her temple. “This is the third time this month,” he replied quietly. “They’re coming more frequently now.”
She swallowed, curling deeper into his embrace. She didn’t have words to explain the adrenaline still coursing through her blood or the way her muscles still twitched with remembered fear.
“I don’t know why,” she said. The admission felt thin.
His arm tightened around her waist. “You have been carrying much lately,” he replied. “Your body may be forcing you to confront what you would rather leave untouched.”
She shook her head faintly against his shoulder. “It didn’t feel like a memory.”
“No?”
She pulled back enough to look at him, though she kept one hand fisted in the fabric at his chest. “You’ve always been able to feel me in the Fade. Except when I was pregnant with Sora, right?”
A shadow of remembrance crossed his face. “Yes.”
“It was similar to that time?” she pressed.
“It was not,” he murmured, choosing the words with care, “not quite.”
He leaned back slightly, his gaze moving over her features as though searching for something displaced or misaligned. “When you carried Sora, you were not gone from the Fade. Our daughter’s presence altered your resonance. Your spirit sang differently. I did not recognize the melody at first.” His mouth tightened faintly. “Had I been in a clearer headspace, had my agents not convinced me of your death, I would have understood the truth in time.”
She absorbed that quietly.
“This was different?” she asked.
“Yes.” The answer came without hesitation. “You did not feel… present in the Fade,” he said slowly. “Nor did you feel absent in the way one does when dreaming deeply.” His thumb traced a slow line along her jaw, thoughtful. “It was like your spirit was… occluded.”
The word settled heavily between them.
She arched a brow despite herself. “I’m not pregnant this time.”
A soft breath of laughter left him, brief and genuine. “No. We have both been more cautious than reckless since Sora’s conception.”
The wryness in his tone eased some of the tightness in her chest, but it did not erase it. The smile faded from her face almost immediately. She leaned forward again, pressing her forehead more firmly against his collarbone, drawing comfort from the steady rise and fall beneath her skin.
“I don’t like that you couldn’t reach me,” she admitted.
His hand stilled at her jaw, then slid to cradle the back of her head. He pressed a slow kiss into her hairline.
“Nor do I,” he said quietly.
There was tension in that reply, an anger that was directed inward.
He sighed, pulling her closer. She felt the tension in him though, subtle but unmistakable. The part of him that catalogued threats and measured distances, the cautious general who emerged from battle, had not dismissed this as a simple nightmare. His stillness was too quiet for that.
“Could something block you?” she asked after a moment.
“It would require intent,” he replied. “And knowledge. Most beings within the Fade cannot conceal a spirit from one who knows its shape intimately.” The sound of his breath roughened. “You are not a stranger to me. In many ways, you and I have never been that.”
Her fingers interlaced with his, grounding herself in the warmth of his hand.
“And a being outside the Fade?” she pressed.
She recognized the expression on his face, the consideration. The silence stretched long enough that she could hear the faint shift of embers in the hearth.
“At one time,” he said at last, “I would have answered that no being existed with the power to take you from my side. That nothing could interpose itself between me and my family without consequence.” His gaze did not leave hers. “I swore as much. Before you. Before those we love and care for.”
Ellana’s thumb brushed unconsciously over the silver ring on her third finger. The metal caught the low firelight and gleamed faintly. His ring.
“And now?” she asked.
His eyes seemed darker in the dimness, the blue nearly swallowed by shadow. “Now,” he said slowly, “I am less certain.”
The admission sent a chill through her. Ellana’s thumb moved, brushing over the silver ring she bore on her third finger. His ring.
“You think something could take me."
“I think,” he replied, voice even but strained at its edges, “that the world has grown more complicated than it was when I made that vow. There are forces at play that were dormant for ages. Powers stirring in corners we once believed sealed.”
Her grip tightened on his hand. “And you think one of them is reaching for me?”
“I do not know.” His gaze seemed far away. “Perhaps we should postpone this trip to see your brother.”
The denial rose sharp in her chest. “The girls have been looking forward to this for months,” she said. “It’s Sora’s sixth nameday. We can’t abandon our plans just because I had a bad dream.”
His jaw set slightly. “It was not merely a bad dream, Ellana. It is the third time this has happened and the first I have been in the Fade aware enough to note the absence.”
“I know that.” Her voice held more edge than she intended. She softened it deliberately. “But if something is stirring, if the world is growing more complicated as you say, hiding in our home will not simplify it.”
“I am not suggesting we hide,” he replied.
“You are suggesting we delay our lives,” she countered. “It’s a distinction without a difference.”
The fire shifted behind them, casting brief light across his face. The tension there had not eased.
“You were unreachable,” he said. “That is no small thing to me.”
She reached up and brushed her thumb along the line of his jaw, easing some of the tension that had gathered there. “Sora has been counting the days. Fenora has packed and repacked the same satchel three times. They want to run between the aravels and show off and eat too much honey cake and be spoiled by their uncle.” A faint smile ghosted her lips. “I want that too.”
He studied her face as she spoke, listening intently.
“If something is coming for me,” she continued, quieter now, “then it is reaching here. In our bed. In this room. Postponing a journey outside of it will not undo that.”
His fingers shifted going to her waist to hold her closer.
“You would walk into the forest knowing there may be something watching?” he asked, a slight smile resting there at the corners of his mouth.
“I would walk into the forest with you, my love,” she corrected. “With our children. With my brother and his clan. Surrounded by people who love us. That feels less like exposure and more like strength.”
He considered that.
“Joy is not a defense,” he said.
“Nor is isolation,” she replied just as fiercely.
At last he exhaled slowly.
“My stubborn wife,” he bemoaned, though the warmth in his voice undercut the complaint.
She leaned forward and kissed him before he could say more. The contact was unhurried, the last brittle shards of fear dissolving as his hand rose to the side of her neck. His thumb traced the curve just below her ear in the way he knew she liked. The taste of him, the warmth of his mouth, steadied her in a way words could not.
“Admit it,” she breathed against his lips, “I’m your match in every way.”
His eyes sparked in the half-light, blue-gray glow catching the glow of the dying fire. “You have always been that, Ellana.”
She rested her forehead against his and let the quiet settle.
“Maybe your friends can look into this?” she asked at last, softer now.
His lips pursed slightly. “Mythal has been silent, as have my allies among the spirits,” he replied. “That can only mean she is moving closer to her goal. If she intends to bring down the Veil, she will have prepared carefully for the reckoning to follow.” His gaze darkened. “That does not lessen the danger.”
She huffed a faint breath at that and brushed her thumb over the matching silver ring on his finger, tracing the worn edge where metal met skin. “The world has always been dangerous,” she said. “We still carved a life out of it.”
His arm slid more firmly around her waist. “And I intend to keep it carved.”
“Then we go,” she said. “We celebrate Sora. We let Fenora run wild.” She smiled and leaned in to kiss him again, softer this time. “You can check in with your friends in the meantime and try to pretend you’re not watching every shadow in the trees.”
“Not every shadow,” he defended mildly. “Just the bigger ones.”
She laughed, the sound unburdened now.
“I’ll let you have the larger ones,” she agreed, then shuddered faintly. “And the spiders.”
His mouth curved. “Ah. So I am to defend our family from mysterious powers and small eight-legged fiends alike.”
“Yes,” she said solemnly. “That is precisely what I married you for.”
His laughter was quiet but real, rumbling beneath her ear. The tension that had coiled through him since she woke eased another measure.
“I will speak with my network,” he said after a moment, more serious now. “Discreetly. If something is stirring beyond the Fade, I would rather know its shape than be surprised by it.”
“And if it’s only my mind?” she asked quietly, not quite meeting his eye.
His thumb at her chin gently guided her gaze back to his. “Then we will face that too,” he said.
She nodded, satisfied with that answer. He pressed a final kiss to her brow and settled them both back against the pillows, his hand resting over hers where it lay, thumb still absently tracing her ring.
“Do you want to try again at the Vir Dirthara?”
She burrowed against him in answer, her eyes fluttering against his chest.
In the silence that came before drifting back to sleep, she heard the faint rasp of wings.