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“Do not think her gone soft in age,” Morrigan had warned them, before they left her behind. “My mother is many things. ‘Forgiving’ is not among them.”
“We need a plan.” Emma spread the map across the damp ground, weighing down the corners with stones. Her fingers traced the route through the swamp.
“The water crossings dictate our approach. Flemeth’s hut is here, deep in the wetlands.”
“Lovely,” Alistair said, crouching beside her, close enough she could feel warmth radiating from his heavy plate. “Nothing says ‘friendly visit’ like trudging through a swamp.”
Emma glanced at the greaves, depressing the soft ground as he shifted.
“The mud will compromise your footing in that plate. Repositioning will be worse.”
Alistair flexed his gauntlet. “You think I ought to go in mail? We don’t know what she turns into. If it’s large, I’ll need the mass.” He looked up. “But it’s your call.”
Emma stared at the map, though she saw only black, sucking water, the swamp filling his helm. She could order him to strip down sixty pounds of steel and he’d do it.
“Wear what you want,” she said softly. “Just don’t fall in.”
“Right,” Alistair said. “No falling in. Noted. I’ll carve it on something, just so I won’t forget.”
Emma tapped the parchment. “Sten and Alistair take point. I’ll coordinate from center. Zevran and Leliana on flanks, Wynne on barriers. If we hit deep water on the way, Zevran is on reconnaissance.”
Zevran lounged against a tree, cleaning his nails with a dagger. “How delightfully practical,” he purred, “Though I notice our formation keeps certain people admirably clear of the water. Our fearless leader seems less than enthusiastic about getting her feet wet.”
“It’s called tactical positioning,” said Alistair. He’d already placed himself between her and Zevran’s knowing smirk. “She coordinates with f—”
“We leave in an hour,” Emma cut him off. “Check your supplies.”
Zevran’s smile widened into something sharp. “Of course.”
As the others dispersed, Alistair lingered. Emma felt a flash of irritation.
“Remember what we practiced at Redcliffe.” He said. “If—”
“I remember,” she said. But the swamp would not be like the lake.
He picked up her hand on the map.
“Don’t—” she started, but didn’t continue. She squeezed back.
“Don’t what?” he asked. “Don’t stand here? Don’t breathe? Don’t fail to notice that you’re gripping that map like it’s trying to escape?”
She sighed. “If you make me laugh today, I’ll lose my edge.”
He smiled. “No, I think my jokes are perfectly timed, thank you very much.”
The blighted swamp had reclaimed itself. The Korcari Wilds pressed in on all sides, thick with rot and a fog that turned the midday sun to a sickly yellow smear. Water had risen over the paths, grabbing at their boots with every step.
They fell into formation without thought, weeks of travel having established a habit of their positions. It still felt wrong.
Morrigan’s place in the formation was occupied by Wynne.
“Cheerful place,” Alistair muttered, slapping at something with too many legs. “Really captures that ‘slow descent into madness’ aesthetic.”
Emma lifted her robes clear of the mud as she watched his back. He stomped through the mud more briskly than she managed. The armor from the vault in Redcliffe was good quality. Flexible.
“Shh.” Leliana held up a hand, arrow already half-knocked. “Something moves ahead.”
“Just a giant leech,” Zevran reported, reappearing from the mist. “Already dead, thankfully. Though the size suggests we should watch the water.”
He stopped.
“There.” Alistair pointed through the trees. He looked back at her.
She remembered waking here. The mutual surprise and relief the other survived. How he used to look at her like that. And that pinched line in his brow. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d actually seen it. Only natural it would come back now.
“Well, well. The young Warden and her merry band.” Flemeth stood silhouetted in the doorframe. “Lovely Morrigan has at last found someone willing to dance to her tune. Such enchanting music she plays, wouldn’t you say?”
Emma stopped short of the threshold, then shrugged. The old witch’s gaze drifted past her.
Alistair: “Not really. She’s rather cranky.”
“A sullen song is no less a song, and so here you are. And why dance? Why not sing?” Flemeth’s laugh hissed through the reeds. “What has Morrigan told you, hmm? What little plan has she hatched this time?”
“She knows how you extend your lifespan.”
“That she does.” Flemeth stepped forward. The mud did not take her weight. “The question is: do you?” A tilt of her head, curious.
“Ahh, but it is an old story. One Flemeth has heard before—and told.” Her eyes returned to Emma; Emma shivered in the cold. “Let us skip to the ending. Do you slay the old wretch as Morrigan bids, or does the tale take a different turn?”
“Now is your chance to tell me the truth.”
Flemeth straightened, chuckling.
“The truth, she says. As though it were a simple thing. As though it could be handed over, neat and whole.” She shook her head. “No. Far better the lie. Far better the comfort of blankets… and the shadow cast by a mother’s love.”
She turned, reaching into the hut through the window. As if she had been prepared for this. She faced Emma again, grimoire in hand.
“Morrigan wishes my grimoire? Take it as a trophy. Tell her I am slain.”
Emma tilted her head, but did not move.
“She won’t believe that.”
Flemeth’s eyes flashed. She extended the book. “We believe what we want to believe. It is all we ever do.”
“If I do this,” Emma glanced at Flemeth’s hands, “what happens to you?”
Flemeth withdrew the book, tucking it under one arm.
“I go.” She was sharp and casual. “Perhaps I surprise her one day. Or perhaps I simply watch.” Her gaze lifted, distant for a breath. “It would be interesting, wouldn’t it? To see what she becomes when she believes herself free.” Her eyes dropped back to Emma. “Would you give an old woman that?”
“No,” said Emma. She decided when Morrigan asked. This silly conversation only confirmed it.
“Shame.” Flemeth sat the grimoire aside, on the sill. “And here I thought you had come to listen.”
“I asked for the truth.”
“You did not come to be persuaded,” she said at last. “You came to satisfy yourself that you had heard.” Emma’s jaw tightened. Alistair huffed quietly into his helm beside her. “A tidy habit.”
“I came to kill you,” countered Emma.
“Ha! You choose,” Flemeth continued, almost kindly. “Then you make the world agree.” Her head tilted, considering. “Dangerous, in time.”
“Is that what you taught Morrigan?”
“I taught Morrigan many things. We see how those lessons suit her, now.”
Emma inclined her head a moment. Offering a last chance, silently. Flemeth smiled and curtsied, as if accepting a courtesy.
“It is a dance poor Flemeth knows well.” She turned, setting the grimoire back into the dark of the hut. “Let us see if she remembers the steps.”
The wind dropped. The reeds bent outward. Emma looked at her companions. Leliana’s hand already at her quiver. Sten just still, ready. Wynne, grave and unsurprised. Zevran turning one dagger over in his fingers with anticipation.
“Come, then.” Flemeth continued, her voice already elsewhere. “She will earn what she takes.”
They braced themselves for the transformation. The line of Flemeth’s shoulder buckled, the cloth tore where there was no seam.
And Alistair, shifting closer, his voice low: “We can walk away.”
“And let Morrigan be possessed? By her own mother?”
“No—I— You’re right.”
The old woman’s neck lengthened. Then the canopy gave way. The bog’s surface shivered with rings, spreading outward. And Flemeth rose from the muck. Not the woman, not the hag of the Wilds. Something else, swamp water sliding off her scales in sheets.
“Great. A disapproving parent who is also a dragon,” Alistair was already braced, shield raised on instinct.
“Form up,” Emma commanded. “Spread out, don’t group where her breath can catch us all. Wynne, barriers on the melees. Leliana, Zevran—”
“Wings,” Leliana said, already moving, already calculating angles.
“Already on it,” Zevran said, and vanished into the fog.
The glow started in Flemeth’s throat, light building inward. Emma had a half-second before fire turned the swamp to steam.
She dove to ground behind a rotted trunk, bark detonating above her, flame licking both sides, as she stared into the surface of the swamp, slick and black as oil, rippling against the wind and shining where it shouldn’t.
She pulled her attention from it and looked over the log. Alistair was dodging the dragon’s claws, his shield catching glancing impacts that dented steel.
Emma sent a bolt of energy that sparked harmlessly off dragon hide. Leliana’s enchanted arrows flew true, and Flemeth roared as they embedded in her. Her tail caught Sten mid-torso and he hit a tree with a crack that made Emma wince.
Wynne was already there, blue light flowing from her hands.
“We’re not hurting her enough!” Alistair yelled, diving under another swipe. He’d been drawing her, fighting in the narrow space under her neck where the scales gave way to softer tissue. His cuirass was striped with gouges where her claws had skidded off the plates.
Emma’s spells were sticky, landing too far, or too sudden. She tried frost and shadow. Flemeth’s hide shed it with a violet hiss. She switched; her staff pulsed, lighting blades and arrows still in the air with flame.
That worked.
Flemeth reared to fight fire with fire, breathing a blast that rolled off Alistair’s shield like molten sunlight, briefly lighting the field beyond seeing. She reared back, about to snap, and Alistair had exactly the wrong amount of room.
Emma cast the force field as Flemeth’s head dropped. Her massive jaw clamped down on him with a crunch as the barrier closed around him. Her fangs creaked against packed pressure distributed perfectly against the impact. Flemeth bit it, roared, thrashed and bit again. It held.
Emma felt an echo of that pressure resound in her, a splitting pain that had her drop to her knees behind the log. She downed a lyrium potion, swallowing hard, pushing the pressure back out.
He was safe. He was also completely stopped, mid-stride, mid-breath, watching as the dragon hit the barrier uselessly, then slid past him.
Flemeth’s head turned. Not toward him. He watched the dragon dash toward the log Emma was hiding behind.
“Em—”
It didn’t carry.
Zevran was loosing at close range in reckless rhythm, pulling the dragon’s attention in increments, buying seconds as Emma fled. His footwork was good and he knew it, but he was working toward the edge of something he couldn’t maintain.
She screamed: “Drive her back!” Into the water.
Zevran laughed, breathless. But they moved anyway, harrying Flemeth toward the murky pool. Emma felt her chest tighten as they got closer, the dark water reflecting nothing, promising everything she feared.
They herded Flemeth by degrees—Leliana’s fire arrows striking under the jaw and wing joint to steer rather than wound, Zevran kiting, Wynne holding everyone together, while Emma hit exposed angles from center. Flemeth, focused forward, didn’t feel her claws sinking deep into the mud. She reared up, wings spreading for balance—
Emma screamed. Her spell, a concentrated lance of arcane entropy, struck the exposed point. Piercing arrows followed.
Flemeth staggered. Her slit-pupil gaze dropped directly to Zevran, still too close, bow half-drawn. Her tail lashed, spraying mud, and she pivoted toward him like a serpent scenting prey. The amateur archer lowered his bow, eyes flicking to Emma with a quiet plea for help.
Emma drove the butt of her staff into the earth and sent a concentrated pulse of thermal energy not at Flemeth, but directly into the bubbling muck beneath her.
A sheet of orange light raced across the surface of the pool. Flemeth shrieked as the firey incineration of the gas film licked her softer underbelly. The dragon’s head whipped toward the source of the heat.
Flemeth lunged, her massive weight churning the mud. Emma scrambled backward, her boots slipping on the slick peat. That’s when the force field split.
Emma heard it before she felt it—a deep crack, like frozen lake—and then Alistair was out. He didn’t look for his footing; he simply threw himself into the gap between her and the dragon the same way he always did: loud, forward, without waiting.
“Hey! Over here, you overgrown lizard!”
Flemeth rounded and swiped. Her claw caught him mid-turn.
It wasn’t a clean hit; it was a crushing one. The strike flung him back into a deeper part of the bog, where he vanished beneath the surface. The splash was deep and sickening. Then nothing. No shout.
Just the ripple closing in on itself. The dank smells hit her in waves, heavy with what it swallowed, iron and peat.
Above Emma, Flemeth was rearing again. Leliana was repositioning, arrow nocked, tracking the wing joint. The formation was holding.
Emma waded toward the rippling spot where the bubbles still broke. She found the flutter of his pulse, distant under the water. She lost it immediately. It slipped away, sinking. Something in the swamp absorbed it.
If Alistair could surface on his own, he would have already.
The cold hit her thighs and she kept moving. Her next spell fizzled in her hand, the water taking the charge and spreading it to nothing, a sensation like breath lost in the wind. Every instinct screamed at her—someone else—anyone else—
But she put him there. He was drowning because she insisted they come here. Because she moved Flemeth toward the water. So she pushed deeper, the swamp closing around her waist.
Behind her, Zevran glanced at Emma, visibly shaking, struggling to push herself into the depth. He looked back, at the path between the dragon and the water’s edge. The escape route.
He cursed himself. Then he followed her in.
“Warden!”
“His armor,” she gasped, as if drowning already. “It’s too heavy—”
“Go. I’ll cover your back.”
The dragon’s tail split the water behind them. The the waves rocked her, ringing like a bell. She kept moving as wingbeats churned the bog’s surface and the interior of Emma’s stomach. Lost a step, and caught herself before she fell forward into the silty clouds.
Flemeth was rearing again, wings spreading to take flight. Leliana’s whistling arrows trailed with arcs of fire and punctured the webbing. The dragon roared, staggered, wings shredded and smouldering. Zevran seized the opening, loosing arrows into the wounds.
Emma got a glimpse of the dragon reeling backward as she plunged into the liquid darkness. The bog’s once stagnent fermentation wailed from all directions, furious with being actively rocked, smothering the light, strobing from Flemeth’s sweeping breaths. Visibility clouded to arm’s length.
She tried to locate his pulse again. Too many beats punded through the silt, echoing and wrong, bent and copied, horizontal and doubling back. She swam toward it and hit a root.
Not him. She propelled herself forward, ignoring the panic demanding her surface. The signs of life she had been following dissipated against the fade.
Something touched her shoulder, it was Zevran pointing left.
She kicked through, every stroke fighting suction. Vibrating from somewhere above, the muffled percussion of Sten’s sword hacking, Leliana’s arrows finding their marks. And the temperature. A wash of heat from Flemeth’s breath finding range, briefly turning the murk to almost luminous.
Something metallic caught the light in that moment. A shoulder plate, half-buried, bubbles leaking through a helm, anchored at a wretched angle into the mud. It was him. He’d hit hard and cratered into the bottom. The light diffused and went dark again.
She kicked blind, eyes adjusting. Her lungs ached as she reached him and clawed at the plates. Her fingers slid off the steel.
Belt first.
Zevran appeared at her flank and mimed cutting. She summoned a thread of flame to his dagger, water taking its tithe, some of the charge bleeding off. The blade burned faint gold.
Emma pointed and he sawed through the first strap. She moved to the next, finding the edge of the buckle by feel. Then failed to pry the armour open as Zevran kept sawing through swollen leather buckles of the chasis.
There was no leverage. The swamp’s pressure had pinned the suit closed, the mud sealed him in, and every tug she managed sent more silt blooming until she couldn’t see her own hands. Alistair was still too heavy, the water too thick.
She pressed her palm flat against the breastplate seam and cast.
The spell hit the water and spread wrong—too wide, destabilizing the sediment. She tried again, smaller, forced the glyph inward, and reversed the spin. The detonation flickered silently, with a pressure change she felt in her teeth. The mud holding him loosened. The breastplate buckled and a gap appeared– a finger’s width, maybe less. She jammed her hand in and felt the strap, swollen tight.
Keep going.
She cut. Zevran cut.
For a second, she felt blood quivering inside, weak and intermitant.
And then suddenly, everything pushed on her. Her fingers curled, nails dragged past the insignia, hands slipped. She flailed and was carried away by another wave from above.
It was Flemeth landing, or taking off, or trying to. The surface churned white before she lost sight of it, all sense of direction ripped away. She focused entirely on supressing the urge to scream.
I’m going to drown. We’re both going to drown.
Suddenly she felt calm, pulled by the water, weightless, no connection to up or down. Her head was light, limbs dense, lungs trembling under the pressure of the swamp, ready to surrender the little she had left.
No more running for our lives…No more darkspawn, no more camping in the middle of nowhere…
Then, as she started inhaling the swamp, Zevran grabbed her and pulled her back. He slammed her against the breastplate and she held.
She pushed Zevran away. With every last thing she had, she forced the next repulsion glyph blindly, pushing her magic under the edges of the steel.
She heard bone crack. It was felt more than heard, a transmission routed through her palm pressed against his enclosure. But the mud released him. The force sucked her in, then exploded outward.
The force ripped through the mud and kicked them upward. Emma grabbed Alistair and pulled. Armor peeled away: breastplate, a spaulder, gauntlet. Up was a direction she was only mostly sure of.
Emma broke the surface with a jagged, burning gasp.
The air was thick with the stench of ancient rot and sulfur. A foul, ugly geyser of black silt and ancient rot erupted, spraying the dragon. The gout of flame intended for Leliana veered wildly into the trees. Flemeth arched, exposing the pale, vibrating scales of her throat.
Leliana was a silhouette against the rain, and she didn’t miss. The arrow hissed through the downpour and buried itself deep in the soft tissue where the dragon’s fire began its climb.
Flemeth’s roar died in a wet, choked gurgle. The dragon’s front talon stumbled blindly into the churning hole Emma just vacated. Waves of displacement washed over them.
Emma stayed clamped to Alistair. She was gagging on the swamp and barely treading the surface. They bobbed as she fought his weight dragging her.
“Help.” The word came out as barely a croak.
Rain hammered down on them, turning the swamp’s surface into boiling skin. Sten was already near the water’s edge, squelching toward them.
And then there were hands: Zevran pushing from below, Sten hauling from the bank. The water clung with suction and released the Wardens reluctantly, with a wet slurp. They sprawled onto the soggy ground.
“Alistair—”
His helmet knocked against her arm. Dead weight. She rolled herself onto her elbow, grabbed his shoulder and pulled him onto his side. He didn’t move, didn’t make a sound.
The helmet was still locked down. Emma slammed the heel of her hand against the hinge—nothing. She wedged her knife under the seam and levered. The blade caught, slipped, caught again. She shoved her weight behind it.
The hinge gave with a splintering crack. The knife snapped at the hilt.
Air hit his face and he didn’t breathe.
She tore the satchel open one-handed and choked down a mana potion. The cold of it hit her blood. She pushed outward with the spell, reaching—
Her hands were shaking.
It bridged the gap between them; she felt his heart’s heavy stillness inside her own chest, a dead weight that refused to move. She pressed both palms flat against his sternum and tried to drag the rhythm out of nothing. She used her own heartbeat as a reference.
No correspondence. Nothing. She was doing nothing.
She shoved at his back with her forearm, tilting him, then pressed again. His body convulsed. It was a sharp, electric spasm of muscle, ugly and not alive, no breath.
Emma persisted, desperately pulling at the threads of the veil. And the heavy, humid air of the Korcari Wilds ruptured. The rhythm of her hands ceased. No pushing, no pulling. The timing was no longer hers to keep.
The Fade simply ceased to be elsewhere. The boundary between mud beneath them and the dream thinned and tore open, with a sound of torn silk. A sense of vertigo slammed into her, along with a sudden, cold scent of deep water and sun-bleached stone.
She pressed her forehead down against his shoulder and held on.
and Alistair bucked, coughing violently, gasping and expelling liquid.
Emma kept her hands on him, feeling the frantic, jagged restart of his pulse. He sputtered, coughed, groaned, an ugly sound of drowning undone.
The weight she was holding, or that was holding her, was gone. The vacancy it left behind was freezing. She didn’t know where the influence retreated to. Nor if the alignment could ever be forced again.
He breathed, wet and rattling, with desperate inhalations. Feeling came back in stabbing increments, working up from his hands like a thousand tiny needles.
His eyes cracked open, and took in Emma almost on top of him, braced on one elbow, soaked through, hair plastered flat, her palm still radiating a fading, unnatural warmth into his lungs.
The ground rattled gently. A tree gave, and came down with the massive shambling sounds of Flemeth’s struggle to rise. Zevran looked toward it, pressed his fist briefly to his mouth and breathed out slow.
Emma forced herself up, dragging Alistair with her. He felt vaguely aware of her arm curling around him, lifting as he ejected goo on every other exhale.
“You… can’t swim.”
“Neither can you, apparently.”
“Meant to…”
“Shut up. Just breathe.”
Alistair’s eyes fluttered, unfocused, a hand pawing weakly at his torn doublet. He tried to speak again and promptly choked.
Emma stared at the ground where he retched. In the middle of the black, oily peat of the swamp, the puddle he ejected was startlingly, impossibly clear.
Leliana approached, bow lowered. Her hands were unsteady as she worked the ruined string free, stealing glances at the Wardens, eyes shining.
“Keep him upright,” Wynne’s voice crept up from behind, sharp and professional. “He’s aspirated half the—”
She stopped.
Emma didn’t hear her arrive. Wynne crouched beside them, eyes flicking once to the ground, to the clear runoff, then back to Alistair’s face.
“Keep him upright,” she repeated, slowly, although Emma was already doing it.
“Maker’s mercy.” Zevran sat back on his heels, dragging a hand through his wet hair. For a moment, he stared at the bog they’d just come out of. “Remind me never to fish for Wardens again.”
“You owe me a new bowstring,” Leliana said, very quietly.
Zevran passed a potion over. Emma took it and managed to get most of it into Alistair. She hooked her arm tighter under his shoulders to keep him from folding back into the mud—it hurt him. He shuddered against her, a sharp and involuntary recoil.
“Em.” Alistair’s voice found more purchase. “Ow—”
She didn’t loosen her grip. She held the angle for his lungs to keep draining.
“Don’t talk. Sit up. Please.”
He was limp and heavy, tried and failed to straighten. She braced him, arms shaking as he sagged against her. The ground felt unsteady. The mana potion was already wearing thin. She could feel the later problem sliding into sooner, fast.
“Alistair.” She could feel everything. She could still feel him breathing. That was the point. She held onto it.
His arm she held him by latched onto her, slow and clumsy, but there.
Her breath caught. She pressed her face into his wet hair and her shoulders shook. She was holding this back since she went under and now it was simply not possible to hold it any longer.
She felt him hold to her just a bit tighter.
Sten stopped behind her, with heavy footsteps and the sucking displacement of mud. Emma looked up.
“It is dead.”
She nodded an acknowledgement.
“We did it,” Emma’s lungs were still working out some of their own dark goo. She spat before she whispered to Alistair, “she’s gone.” For now.
Leliana shook out a bedroll onto a raised platform of root above the mire, occasionally checking on them, her gaze flicking back over her shoulder. Together, they got him onto the dry ground. Emma swayed as she dropped to her knees beside him, the adrenaline draining out and leaving her hollow and cold.
Leliana and Zevran built the tent around them. Wynne swept in with an armful of supplies. “Out of the way, dear. Let me see him.”
Emma shifted back onto her heels give Wynne the elbow room, leaning on her hands. The older mage’s expression darkened. She watched as Wynne’s hands moved over Alistair’s torso.
Emme recognized exactly which injury she’d caused cracking his breastplate open. The snap of it replayed in her ears.
“Broken collarbone. Possibly cracked ribs.”
Leliana brought a satchel of glassware. Emma downed a bitter tincture of stimulants, then withdrew a pungent bottle of brandy, wincing as Wynne narrated the damage.
“And his lungs,” Wynne added grimly, already warming water into steam between her palms. “Fluid. We need to keep it from settling. Emma—don’t pass out on me, now. I’ll need your hands for this.”
Alistair blinked at the bottle. “—getting me drunk?”
“Very.” She tipped it to him, slowly, patiently holding it back when he coughed.
“Your bedside manner has improved considerably,” the Senior Enchanter remarked without looking up. Then, hissed at a precisely calculated volume: “At this particular bedside.”
Emma ignored her.
“Em…” Alistair squinted at her, breaths deepening as the alcohol took effect. “Did you—?”
“Drink.” Emma held it steady while he coughed and tried again. His eyes were glassy as he slumped. She held him up as he sagged, then fumbled with the nearly empty bottle in her trembling hand.
“Alistair.” She squeezed his good arm, discarded the bottle, and held the nape of his neck. “Focus. Sit up. Please.”
“I wanna lie down…”
“Don’t.” He obeyed, slowly, straining.
Emma slid her arms around him, her own muscles trembling with exhaustion as she locked him against her chest.
Wynne shifted to his injured side. “Emma, hold his good shoulder and brace his neck. When I manipulate the bone, he’ll try to pull away.”
“Try to be still,” Wynne said.
“This will hurt,” whispered Emma, under his ear.
He groaned with contempt. “—already hurts!”
Wynne moved her palms into position. “Ready?”
He nodded, steeling himself.
Wynne pulled and pushed in one sharp motion. Bone ground, clicked, and he cried through clenched teeth, shaking and suppressing his strength against Emma’s hold. She clamped her arms tighter, until he went slack.
“Done,” Wynne murmured, immediately resuming a healing pulse over his ribs.
Alistair slid down against Emma, panting, drenched hair sticking to his temple.
“Sit up,” Emma insisted, voice rasping as she pulled him up again.
“Mmhmm,” it was partly a groan. His face pinched as he searched for the pocket of his absent tunic.
Wynne gathered up her bloodied cloths and empty vials. “The worst of it is set. Keep him propped up.”
Emma nodded. The fear hadn’t left. Now she just wanted the tent flaps closed and to reclaim this small patch of ground.
“Thank you.” Emma’s tone was flat, but final. “Please leave.”
“Call for me if his breathing worsens or if he spikes a fever.”
Leliana followed Wynne out, casting one last concerned glance back.
“Leliana,” Emma added, “thanks for the potions.”
“Thanksss…” Alistair echoed faintly as they left.
Emma silently splinted and bandaged him. Her hands weren’t deft anymore, her fingers were numb and clumsy. But she was meticulous as she secured his shoulder around his good side. Finally, she slipped his amulet into a dry pouch and tucked it under the bandages, where he’d kept searching.
His hand met hers there.
“Hi,” he whispered, smiling faintly. “You saved me.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“I will. Endlessly.” His breaths were rough but steadying. Better. “Stay?”
“I have to.” She slipped behind him on his uninjured side, her arm under his. “Make sure you sit.”
“Good.” His head fell back against her shoulder. Her own eyes half-closed, half-asleep, but still refusing to let him slump. He squirmed for a while, unable to find a position that didn’t hurt. Eventually his breathing deepened, the tension left his jaw. Then, barely audible, he mumbled: “Love you.”
It was probably the brandy, but probably true.
“Love you, too,” she whispered, too quiet to wake him.
Emma was eager to get out of the heart of the swamp, but they couldn’t move yet. Wrapped in a blanket that smelled of woodsmoke and mud, she put Bodhan on the recovery of Alistair’s broken armor, which she knew he’d be eager to get back and repair, if possible… Unfortunately, some parts were still missing.
She herself hadn’t looked directly at the water since she escaped it. The thought made her stomach turn.
Morrigan was back before the fire was rebuilt. She heard behind her the whiff of her transformation, the buckles of those long boots too light on the ground. She didn’t expect her so soon.
“You entered the swamp. You left the fight. You risked everything.” Morrigan didn’t bother with greeting. “For him.”
Emma didn’t turn around. “Yes.”
“For that fool of a templar—”
“He’s not a templar.”
“So you insist.” Morrigan unfurled her arms in an irritated arc. “A remarkable strategy, in any case. Divide our strength, abandon the field. Perhaps next time we shall all scatter into the muck and hope the enemy simply dies of confusion.”
“You sent me into the Wilds,” Emma spoke louder now. “Out of our way. To slay your mother.”
“That,” she said, precise and cold, “was necessary.”
“It worked,” Emma said. She gestured toward the dog. He guarded a leather bundle, resting his muzzle on it. “She’s dead. The grimoire is yours.”
She turned to look at Morrigan kneeling to retrieve the bundle, to which the argument came second. Muffin wagged himself loose from his post and whined when Morrigan ignored him.
Her leather skirts and velvet hood were dry. Somehow. Her skin barely glistened in the humidity.
Morrigan straightened, crossing her chest with Flemeth’s grimoire underarm. Tucked tight like something she’d rip a throat out for.
“I am… grateful, truly,” she said, stiffly. Then, sharper: “That does not make your decision any less idiotic.”
“He’s half the Wardens in Ferelden,” Emma said. “And—” her brows arched, as if amused, while her spine shivered at the thought, “—I can swim now.”
“Barely,” Morrigan snapped. Then, quieter, more dangerous: “’Tis not about ability, but judgment. You are beginning to make choices based on… sentiment.”
Emma said nothing.
Morrigan stepped closer. Her gaze was direct and unpleasant. “If he died in that water, you’d drown yourself retrieving a corpse. We are not short of corpses. We are short on sense!”
“He did die in the water,” Emma said.
For a second, the argument dropped out from under her. She looked away, at Sten, who fed another branch into the fire. It cracked loudly.
“And you dragged him back,” Morrigan said.
Emma nodded.
“…reckless,” she said, shaking her head.
“I risked everything, for him,” Emma said. “And I put him on the line for you, first.”
Morrigan’s jaw set immediately.
“Do not attempt to make this equivalent,” she said. “Dragging a dead man from the silt while a dragon breathes down your neck is not a plan, Warden. ’Twas… impulsive, in the very least. You are acting on something you don’t control.”
“I made a choice.”
“For a man.”
“For a Warden,” Emma said. “For me.”
Morrigan scoffed. “Convenient.”
“Very,” Emma said. “Because my choices are working. And you’re safer for them.”
Morrigan looked at her like she wanted to argue it into the ground, prove it was different. She looked like she wanted to but couldn’t.
“I would not have mourned him,” she said instead, defaulting to firmer ground. “And if you continue like this, your end will come sooner than your skill and luck can delay it.”
“I know.”
“You do not,” Morrigan said, but the heat was fading. “You simply… proceed regardless.”
Emma didn’t argue that.
Morrigan shifted the grimoire in her arms, like she suddenly didn’t like how it felt.
“I will study the grimoire,” she said. “I will tell you what I find. I will—” She stopped. Emma waited.
“You have my gratitude,” Morrigan said, clipped. “For what you did here.”
And then the witch left abruptly before Emma could respond. Morrigan collapsed into feathers and shadow, as raven tore up into the air without looking back.
Emma stared at the space she left behind.
She and Muffin circled the camp, distantly supervising Wynne fussing over everyone.
When they completed their round, she met Zevran crouched near the fire. His leathers half-off, hair plastered to his face in humid gold tangles. He glanced at Emma’s fingertips, cleansed but still stained of poultices.
“Not the best element for you, no?” he says softly, voice light. “And yet, you pulled off a rescue. That’s a fine irony.”
Emma nodded. “You could’ve run. Thank you.”
Zevran gave her his most quicksilver smile. “Sure, I could’ve. But then who would ruin your reputation for being so calm under pressure?” He patted her shoulder, resigning himself to internalize his performance of comradery. “Besides, the bastard owes me a drink now.”
“I’ll make sure you get it.”
She soon found herself outside Alistair’s tent. Couldn’t bring herself to go back in, but couldn’t leave either. She just sat cross-legged in the damp moss, listening, eyes closed. His breathing was still a little ragged and wet, but steady. Without realizing, she matched her own breaths to the rhythm.
“Emma,” he called, detecting her presence there. She pushed herself through the flap.
“You’re worried about me,” it was dark, but his tone was pleased, lightly teasing. She knew his expression exactly.
“You drowned.” The tent had them close. He felt her shiver.
“Just briefly,” was his best attempt at reassuring her. “Besides, I’ve seen you die twice. Fair’s fair.”
Emma settled back to her spot next to him, still warm, still listening to his steady heart and ragged breathing. The tent’s canvas hissed under the resuming rain. For a while, neither spoke.
“You saved me,” he reminded her. Again.
“You’d do the same.”
“Yes, but I didn’t—” He stopped. “Sorry.”
“No, don’t…” she refused the apology.
“And then you stayed here with me. All night.” He squinted, struggling to remember what he’d been through. Mostly, he remembered how closely Emma held him as he struggled to breathe.
“I just… keep seeing you go under,” she admitted.
“Leliana told me you didn’t even hesitate…”
“Oh, I hesitated.” She pulled her knees to her chest. “I really didn’t think I could.”
“But you did… That’s… no one’s ever…”
“Look, Em, when I was underwater, all I could think about is that I hadn’t told you—” He swallowed, staring up at the dark canvas ceiling. “I had a very good speech. Very dramatic. Possibly heroic.” He squinted. “It was excellent. Really wasted, now.”
Emma thought: he had told her. He didn’t remember. Now he was struggling. She decided to save him the trouble.
“I think,” she said slowly, “I’m falling in love with you.”
It wasn’t easy for her, either.
“Emma— You think?” he countered, stunned.
“Why not?” She looked at him, feeling as though she should ask permission somehow, after guessing at where he meant to go.
He chuckled nervously, “Well… I’ve lost everyone who ever mattered to me. Duncan, the other Wardens… But you’re still here. We’re still here. For now.”
“For now is all anyone has,” she gently pressed her forehead into his arm.
“I’m not… good at this part,” he said quietly. “I tend to—uh, die, apparently.”
The pressure of her against him pulled some memory loose—her face buried against his shoulder, breath breaking, trying not to make a sound.
He hadn’t known what to do with that. He still didn’t.
“Emma, I—”
“I know, I know…”
“No,” he said, quieter. “You don’t. Come here.”
She did. He kissed her, then lingered, like he’d forgotten what came after.
“I love you,” he said.
Her breath went brittle, eyes stinging. Before he could second-guess himself, she reached for him.
“You scared me,” she said against his mouth.
“I know. I’m sor—”
She cut him off with another kiss. She kept kissing him.
Emma woke to find herself still in Alistair’s tent, still in all of yesterday’s clothes, his unsplinted arm curled around her shoulder. Outside, she could hear the camp stirring. Leliana’s soft humming, Sten’s heavy footfalls, Zevran making some inappropriate comment that had Wynne scolding him.
“We should get up,” she murmured.
“Mm, no.” Alistair tightened his hold. “The Blight can wait.”
“I failed to consider this. When did you get so wise?”
“When I took a nap in soup. Who knew?”
He laughed, but the sound caught sharply in his chest. He winced, and tried to mask it by pulling her in for a tighter hug. Emma noticed immediately. She shifted the pressure off his chest and slipped from his grip.
“Thanks for not dying,” she said.
“Anytime. Well, no. Let’s never do that again.”
The camp was subdued when Emma emerged. Morrigan sat apart from the others, the grimoire open in her lap but her eyes unfocused. Leliana was trying to maintain normalcy, preparing breakfast while humming nervously. Even Zevran was quiet, sharpening his blades with unusual focus.
Emma approached Morrigan slowly. “May I?”
Morrigan gestured to the log beside her without looking up. “Have you come to ensure I’m not planning to transform into a dragon and eat you all?”
“Are you?”
“Alas, I think not,” she closed the grimoire. “This book… it is not what I expected. ’Tis… history. Memories. Some things she never told me.”
“Anything interesting?”
“Perhaps. Or perhaps it’s all lies, stories crafted to manipulate me even now.”
Morrigan finally looked at Emma, who had no answers.
“I will need time. To study this, to understand what mother—what Flemeth intended.”
“Naturally.”
“I want you to know… that while I may not always prove… worthy… of your friendship. I will always value it.”
“…Good.” Emma was surprised. “Me too,” she added hastily.
It was awkward. Morrigan nodded and walked away, avoiding Alistair approaching slowly with two cups of tea.
“That went better than expected. She didn’t threaten to turn anyone into a toad.”
“There’s still time,” Emma accepted the tea gratefully, warmth seeping into her still-cold hands. She thought maybe she wouldn’t mind being a toad, temporarily.
“So what now? We’ve killed the terrible witch, you’ve conquered your fear of water—”
“I doubt that.”
But Emma was thinking of Morrigan with the grimoire, of Flemeth’s knowing smile before she was, apparently, slain. She unhunched herself and sat upright, squaring her shoulders.