Chapter Summary:
Rose and Cullen are accompanied by Jowan to an abandoned red templar camp hoping to find critical intelligence. They discover something else entirely.
Fic Summary:
Lady Rose Trevelyan is in over her head.
Her attendance at the Conclave was only meant to distract her from her failures as a daughter. And then it blew a hole in the world. Marked by an unknown magic, armed with only a few relevant skills, Rose fumbles and fights her way across Thedas with a band of shockingly deadly oddballs dedicated to stopping— well, all of it. As apocalyptic forces conspire to break and remake her, Rose is snared between the tentative devotion of the Inquisition’s stalwart commander and the fierce love of legendary warrior Garrett Hawke, two vastly different men both haunted by hindsight.
The trail descends steeply between two rock faces shaggy with ferns and moss into a hidden depression. Red lyrium already taints the air, its cloying effrontery pulling me back into Haven, further still into that dark future. I can’t tell if it’s actually coating my lungs or if it’s the thickness of fear.
“You first,” Cullen says to Jowan, swallowing. I study him for signs he already feels it, hears its saccharine song. He flicks me an impatient, knowing glance. “I’ll be fine.”
“You look after me, I look after you,” I insist quietly. “I could go ahead. Keep you back from the worst of it.”
“Not a chance, Rose.”
“A quick sweep for documents, for artifacts…”
“Not a chance.”
Intractable man. There’s no pulling rank out here, not with so much at stake.
Descending behind Jowan, Cullen grows visibly lank, his grip on his hilt tightening in its sheath, even as his whole body begins to hang. Jowan looks back at him.
“You know. I hadn’t thought about this, but it makes sense that the red stuff would bother you.”
“Does it now?” snaps Cullen, swallowing back what looked like a dry heave. I have serious doubts whether Jowan has the intellect to needle someone intentionally, but I’m beginning to suspect otherwise.
“Well, I found it very interesting that you could not fully fend off the mind control. A templar of your experience would have no trouble with that. Unless…”
Cullen’s frustration flies free from the crushing grip of the lyrium. “Unless what?”
“Unless you’re off the blue,” risks Jowan. My stomach drops out. The last thing I need is for Cullen to be murdering people for their insolence on my watch.
“Mind your words or the deal is off,” grits out Cullen.
Jowan shrugs his shoulders up by his ears. “I was just making conversation.”
“Of course you were.”
A few steps later Jowan continues. “Must be difficult weaning off that stuff. Must take a lot out of you.”
I hurry to break the ratcheting tension. “Jowan perhaps you could tell us more about what we can expect to find in camp.”
He takes the hint or the bait, whatever I’ve thrown his way, his eyes narrowing to a sage-looking squint. A few half-collapsed tents, he reports, the corpses of templars and civilians alike, a dumping ground and of course the shattered remnants of red lyrium all over.
Cullen draws his sword and gestures further into the mossy depths.
“If you’re taking us all for a ride, I will wring—”
“Cullen.” I scold. “A little trust in him. Please.”
“You continue to be wise and magnanimous, my lady Inquisitor,” says Jowan. Cullen scowls, well within his rights to do so. But the situation is beginning to feel as sturdy as one of Adan’s exploding ampules of fire.
We need the intelligence. Desperately.