Archive of Our Own

Garrett Hawke was called in to see the First Enchanter after he set Karl Thekla’s beard on fire, right there in the library, in front of the man’s first year force magic students. The students, with their boring lives, were thrilled; Karl Thekla, with his singed facial hair, was not thrilled; and Garrett, with his occasionally ungenerous streak, would have readily admitted to feeling a thrill or two about the whole thing. But it was the First Enchanter’s thrills—or lack thereof—that mattered in this place.

It wouldn’t have been quite so awful, but the First Enchanter just so happened to be Garrett’s father. So that was awkward.

Then again, it was really always awkward.

Garrett stood across from Father’s desk in time-honored tradition, in a very familiar position, about to be chastised, terribly over the whole procedure. He stared out the window instead of meeting his father’s eyes, and did that fidgeting thing everyone in any position of authority seemed to have been trained to hate, while his father—First Enchanter Father, as Garrett sometimes called him—remained silent.

It simply wasn’t fair, Garrett reasoned, that the one man who knew him best was also the one man tasked with doling out his frequent punishments. Malcolm Hawke knew better than anyone that Garrett loathed a portentous silence. And First Enchanter Malcolm Hawke was better positioned than anyone to use that personal knowledge against him.

At last, Garrett sighed, and Father sighed, and a few birds flew past the high tower window, chirping happily with the advent of spring.

‘I suppose you want to know why I did it,’ Garrett said, toying with his thumbnail to prove how very unaffected he was by all this. All this: the promise of halved meals for a week, or archiving with some stultifyingly boring old senior enchanter for a month to cool his bootheels; it was never an exciting sentence, a real one, like time spent in solitary. Always little things, menial tasks, hateful ones, that dealt far worse blows to Garrett’s ego—his sense of accomplishment—than it did to his natural inclination toward wickedness. A wicked deed was only as successful as its consequences. Or so Garrett believed, anyway.

‘That would be appreciated,’ Father replied.

Garrett chanced a look his way. He didn’t seem angry, nor did he seem amused—in fact, he didn’t seem much of anything, other than patient, perfect at his job, the lone voice of reason in an unreasonable world. And also a bit smug, Garrett suspected, because how could a man be so much better than everyone else without some inflation of his own ego?

If only he would have gotten mad, everything could have been easier. He would shout, giving Garrett the excuse to start shouting, too; then, they’d bicker like members of a real family, not a mage of the Circle and his highest superior. Maybe afterward, they’d hug a bit or something, like they used to, when Garrett was very young, a time he couldn’t precisely remember, but was certain had happened anyway.

And then, he admitted with a sigh, all his friends would have tormented him endlessly, turning on him like wild mabaris turned on their lords, for using the relationship to his benefit. For accepting special privileges. For embracing the First Enchanter, which would have seemed like unforgivable brown-nosing to everyone else.

Once again, Father was right. Insufferably, interminably, incomparably right.

Garrett frowned.

‘Your motives,’ Father prompted patiently.

‘The heart wants what it wants, Father,’ Garrett began, flicking a bit of hangnail aside to appear extremely casual. ‘You may take away my freedom, but you can’t possibly take away my feelings.’

For a moment, brief and shining as it was, it seemed as though a crack in the First Enchanter guise Father wore was about to run deeper than usual. His lips twitched sideways, and his fingers lifted off the edge of his desk, where they’d been resting so beatifically just seconds before. Then, he stilled; it was merely a ripple sent across the calm water, and Garrett smiled very tensely, an expression not always the opposite of a frown, just perhaps less obvious than one.

‘I understand you’re now at that age—’ Father began.

‘And I hate Fereldans,’ Garrett continued impetuously. Sometimes, he wanted to find that crack and force it open—he wanted to know what his father was really thinking. If he was really thinking anything at all. That impulse was mainly why he said so many stupid things. ‘I also…hate beards. Ugly ones. Gray ones. I was doing the man a favor, really, when you think about it.’

‘—at that age,’ Father repeated, undaunted, ‘and I’m all for letting you want what you want—so long as it doesn’t involve lighting another man’s face on fire in front of impressionable thirteen year-olds.’

‘It was merely a suggestion,’ Garrett said. ‘Made for his own good, I’ll point out. You’re always telling me to get more involved with the other mages, Father.’

Malcolm pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, and took a deep, patient breath. ‘When I said that, Garrett, I was thinking something more along the lines of starting a conversation with your peers—not attempting to roast Karl Thekla like a boar on a spit.’ His tone was mild, not warmed with any personal fire, to suggest it was his son he was speaking to, and not any other mage who’d behaved badly.

That voice, the First Enchanter voice, grated on Garrett’s nerves more than anything else; it niggled under his skin like a burr working its way through the thin summer weave of his robes, pricking the sensitive flesh beneath his smalls.

‘I suppose I might have taken some liberties with the interpretation,’ Garrett admitted, if only because he knew he’d be held forever, without some show of contrition.

Malcolm sighed, rubbing at his left temple, where his hair was more salt than pepper these days. ‘I never have problems like this with your sister, you know.’

‘Bethany’s only fourteen.’ Garrett waved a hand to dismiss the silly notion. There was something about the First Enchanter’s office, the musty smell of parchment and the sharp scent of leather bindings that made him feel itchy. He dug his nails in against his knees, rubbing his hands up and down his thighs. It was only in that room that he thought he perhaps understood all the mages who felt compelled to escape the tower, to brave the blighted wilds of Ferelden with only their staffs to protect them. ‘Give it time. I’m sure she’ll come around.’

*

There was the usual crowd of casual acquaintances and well-wishers waiting for Garrett when he finally slipped free of the First Enchanter’s clutches. Some of them Garrett recognized as the apprentices from the fire demonstration, eager for tips and pointers on how to achieve the same level of magnificence as Garrett displayed so naturally every day, usually without thinking.

In fact, not thinking was probably the only way to achieve magnificence. It loosened the muscles, freed the spirit, and liberated the mind from pesky inhibitions. Like thought, and caution—the opposite of greatness.

Garrett smiled, and made a mental note to write that little gem down later, for future generations to appreciate.

One of the gathered number, hidden amidst the rest, was Jowan, someone who’d long since given up on magnificence; he slipped through the crowd like a pale fish to take Garrett’s arm, dragging him away from his throng of admirers, much to everyone’s dismay.

‘Are you insane?’ Jowan whispered, barely before they were out of earshot, not at all concerned about what Garrett’s devotees would think to see him lectured by a peer. ‘I want you to answer me honestly—did you lose your mind sometime between now and breakfast? Because if so, I’m sure some sort of appeal can be made to Knight-Commander Greagoir on your behalf. They could enter a plea of madness; it probably happens all the time.’

‘You’re not making sense,’ Garrett said. It seemed an obvious thing to point out, but one often had to cover the basics with Jowan in order to get anywhere in particular. ‘Don’t let it bother you; I’ll do my best to catch up eventually.’

‘Using harmful magic outside of lessons?’ Jowan was so focused on walking quickly that he nearly toppled a few unwitting first-year apprentices who’d blundered into their path. ‘To attack a senior mage? I’m surprised they didn’t haul you to Aeonar then and there, or at the very least, make you tranquil.’

‘I didn’t attack anyone,’ Garrett reasoned, sidestepping a loose stone in the floor. ‘…I was testing alternative methods of shaving. Father used to do it all the time.’

‘Your father…’ Jowan said, and rubbed at the new growth of stubble on his own sallow cheeks, looking decidedly ashen. Jowan, Garrett had discovered within the first few hours of meeting him, was the sort of person who couldn’t seem to make up his mind about anything, and whether or not he wanted a beard was no exception. It would have suited him—filling out his cheeks and making his jaw seem at least a little stronger—but like all decisions that might have benefited him, Jowan chose to waffle about it instead of doing anything. ‘It’s lucky you have him to depend on. Your cousin’s been worried sick about you.’

Garrett pressed a hand to his heart, clutching the dark blue fabric of his robes. ‘Not dear Cousin Amell. How could I be so cruel?’

‘Well, he has,’ Jowan muttered darkly. ‘It’s true.’

Garrett smoothed his robes down again and shrugged. ‘Yet I’m sure he’ll find another cause to over-identify with in short order. I hear the elemental mages have no space to practice their spells in. Maybe he can take up their plight, next.’

They turned the corner together, Garrett’s feet having automatically carried him to the medical wing, where the spirit healers did most of their work. It was a path Garrett tread often, though the fruit it bore was nearly as capricious and scarce as the man he was unconsciously searching out.

Despite how it appeared, he wasn’t there out of concern for Karl Thekla, nor to apologize, as his father had suggested might be prudent. Despite the disappointment it sowed in Malcolm and doubtless Leandra as well, Garrett wasn’t as good a man as all that.

It was one thing to have the commitment to destroy a man’s beard publicly. It was quite another to capitulate so soon after having done it; Garrett believed recanting now would merely display a despicable weakness of character.

Jowan lingered behind Garrett as Garrett lingered at the door, with a cursory glance through the neat chamber with its clean little cots. A few younger mages were working on poultices together; the scent of fresh elfroot vied with the lye in a new batch of soap. One of the templars, nameless in Garrett’s mind, sturdy shoulders and finely-polished armor and all, was being treated by a senior enchanter—heavy helmet removed, fresh gash along his cheek, shifting about uneasily as healing magic sparked so close to his eye.

Spells made them all uncomfortable, even when they were designed specifically to help them—the poor, unfortunate, magic-less masses—to heal those who couldn’t heal themselves. It all seemed rather contradictory to Garrett, and also rather stupid.

But then, that was a templar for you.

Garrett sighed, and pretended to be very interested in the embroidery on his robe-sleeve just as he noticed Karl Thekla seated on a cot in the distance, his back to the door, hopefully being treated for non-serious yet nonetheless uncomfortable burns.

‘You’ve got balls of silverite,’ Jowan said in appreciation.

‘Do I?’ Garrett asked. ‘I mean, I do, it’s true, but what exactly inspired the observation?’

Jowan hesitated. ‘You’re going to walk right up to him and apologize, aren’t you? While he’s still being treated for the wounds you inflicted? And it’s not even as though he can say anything to you—he might be a senior mage, but your father is the First Enchanter. I mean, it’s not as though you can do anything you want, there are the templars to consider, and the Knight-Commander, but the things you get away with…’

Jowan, Garrett understood, was now off in his own little corner of wretched imagination; better to fantasize about things than actually do them, since ‘doing’ so often meant ‘being caught,’ at least in their world. The Circle Tower wasn’t exactly the most private of places. When someone did something, it was common knowledge by the next day at the very latest, and sometimes even before that evening’s supper. Gossip was all they had—gossip and romances with creased pages and worn ink and broken bindings. Other people’s lives, living vicariously—Garrett didn’t believe in that.

He did, however, enjoy the gossip the same as anyone, since there was nothing better to do that didn’t involve slaps on the wrist from the First Enchanter. It was how he’d heard of the Knight-Commander’s rumored indiscretions with an unnamed senior enchanter, as well as the existence of their possible bastard love-child. That sort of thing.

It was also how he’d heard of Karl Thekla’s involvement with Anders, healer and escape-artist extraordinaire, dusty blond who told ghastly, inappropriate jokes at supper. Garrett still remembered the first time he’d ever seen the man: flanked by the two templars dragging him through past the library door, dripping on the runners, managing to pause for just long enough to flick a bit of water out of one ear, and wave cheekily at everyone who was staring at him.

There were few people in the tower Garrett could, without any hint of sarcasm, call delightful. But Anders was one of them.

Karl Thekla, a stern taskmaster when it came to teaching someone fist of the maker, was not.

Currently, both men involved—literally—were hunched together in the farthest corner of the chamber, Anders down on his knees, cupping Karl’s burnt whiskers in the palm of one white hand. They were murmuring to each other, and Garrett was too far away to hear them.

He’d promised not to light anyone’s hair on fire again, and for once, he’d meant it, since he could hardly hope to maintain his reputation simply by repeating his greatest feats over and over again. He had to come up with something new and exciting every time, something even more absurd and even more wonderful, or everyone would stop paying attention to him, the worst possible fate he could imagine.

Still, despite that promise, and also the promise of a far more unpleasant retribution, Garrett was tempted—a one-time only thing—to re-enact his latest and greatest. An encore performance, as it were.

‘…But in any case, if you don’t go up to him, he’ll probably think you’re planning murder,’ Jowan finished, the sound of his voice changing pitch and consistency, just enough to remind Garrett he was still there. ‘I mean, not that I’ve done much, ah, planning like that in my day, mind you, but I’d think—I mean, if it’s something you are planning, isn’t it better not to tip him off about it?’

‘Why, Jowan,’ Garrett said, reeling away from the door just as he saw Anders rest one hand on Karl Thekla’s skirted knee, ‘that’s the most sensible thing you’ve ever said to me.’

‘Perhaps,’ Jowan agreed. ‘Or maybe you’ve just never really been listening.’

*

What with being tasked to scrub the halls from dawn each morning to well past sundown each night, and being accosted at every turn by the newest members of his growing acolyte brigade, Garrett didn’t have any time at all to seek Karl Thekla out again, and apologize to him. There was no point in doing something like that if one didn’t do it sincerely, after all—or in front of the right audience, to prove oneself, with witnesses, to be the bigger man.

Even if one was still technically the smaller man. And also the younger man. And also without so thick a beard.

All the same, despite his beardless youth, Garrett was not built for scrubbing. His knees always started to ache after the first hour, the heels of his hands after the third. His robes were wet, and each regiment of templars that tracked through brought with them fresh mud under their plate boots. They laughed when they noticed the mess, having decided that any mage who had something besides magic to keep him occupied was one they didn’t have to worry about.

‘Sorry,’ murmured one of the new templars, a blue-eyed fellow with a nervous mouth and hair like a scrubbing brush. With his strength of character, or rather the obvious lack thereof, he wasn’t going to last a month in the Circle Tower. Garrett was already anticipating his inevitable meltdown and expulsion with some excitement, and also some regret. He had apologized, after all.

Until then, however, Garrett was more than willing to dwell on the back of his neck as he went by, scurrying swiftly after his peers.

A few moments passed—dull, empty moments, shared only between Garrett and the thick-cut stones of the floor, with dirt lurking deep within the cracks—before he heard another pass of hard leather bootfalls coming toward him. Why, Ser Cullen, he imagined himself saying in low tones, polished as the slate beneath his knees, How incredibly shiny you’re looking today. And what fabulous posture.

‘Excuse me—’ said a voice that most certainly did not belong to any templar, even the shy ones. Garrett turned too quickly in recognition, catching the bucket of soap water and lemon with his knee. He had to scrabble in order to keep it from falling, slopping the dregs of his washing water over the tops of Anders’s boots.

Because it was Anders, of course; because that was the way Garrett’s life worked, not just lately, but in general. The object of his affection lavished attention on Karl Thekla, the burnt remains of his scruffy beard and the raw, red skin blistering just beneath, but did he ever have a moment for Garrett—far more dashing, virile and quick-witted?

Apparently not—unless Garrett was on his hands and knees, robes damp to the waist, the left side of his jaw feeling decidedly sudsy. The irony of the situation wasn’t lost on Garrett, despite the necessary insensitivity of his callow youth.

‘Hello,’ Garrett said casually. ‘I mean, good evening. I mean—lovely weather we’re having, don’t you think? The cross-breeze is especially nice from down here.’

‘Oh.’ Anders’s face changed, his lips quirking in an expression that seemed to be a smile he was fighting off. Or perhaps it was a grimace of despair. ‘It’s the arsonist. Hello to you, too, arsonist. I didn’t recognize you hidden amidst all that…floor.’ Anders waved a hand, indicating the wet rock all around them. ‘This is what counts for punishment these days, I take it? In my day, the price for attempting to make a roast out of a man was far more distressing.’

‘I wasn’t going to eat him,’ Garrett said, rocking back on his heels. ‘Too tough—too hairy. …Have you really set a man on fire, Anders?’

‘Only a templar,’ Anders confessed, leaning against the wall and affecting a sigh. He was wearing robes of a deep turquoise today, with gray feathered pauldrons, fastened by a gold clasp at his throat. Pieces of his hair had come loose in a way that made Garrett’s fingers itch with the urge to tie them back, smooth them against the rest and brush his thumb against the shell of Anders’s ear. Sometimes he lost himself in imagining what it would be like to get his hands on Anders’s hair, combing it for him in the morning, drawing it away to reveal the pale nape of his neck. ‘My very first, you know. He was supervising my lessons. I managed to convince the First Enchanter that it was an accident, but it was a very close thing.’

‘You’ll have to teach me about it sometime,’ Garrett said.

‘Oh no,’ Anders replied. ‘I think you’ve got the hang of it quite well enough yourself, actually.’

Garrett laughed pleasantly, and so did Anders, before he cast a look over his shoulder, down the length of the hall. He seemed nervous somehow, and fidgety. Garrett wondered if he was waiting for someone—if this was his special meeting spot with Karl Thekla, and Garrett’s punishment was interfering—or if he was genuinely afraid that Garrett really was an arsonist, and wanted to be sure there were plenty of witnesses about, should something go awry.

‘I’m not an arsonist,’ Garrett said impulsively. Then, he told himself it wasn’t as bizarre a conversation starter as it seemed, and there was really no more natural way to broach the issue, aside from taking the most direct route. It didn’t sound as convincing as he hoped it would, but then, Anders hadn’t fled the scene already. That had to mean something. It was practically a vote of confidence.

‘Aren’t you?’ Anders flicked an invisible speck of dust off one of his feathers. ‘I wonder. How many mages do you have to light on fire before the title applies?’

‘How many templars do you have to light on fire before the same is true?’ Garrett countered.

Anders blinked like a startled cat. ‘Well, that’s hardly an accurate analogy,’ he replied, the beginnings of a grin making his mouth go all crooked. ‘Mages are mages, and templars are templars. It’s apples and oranges. Fereldans and Orlesians. City elves and Dalish. What I mean is, templars don’t count.’

‘I’ll have to light one of those on fire next, then,’ Garrett said.

‘I wouldn’t recommend it,’ Anders told him, ‘but I will cheer you on. In private. Very quietly, so that no one can hear it.’

‘Kind of you,’ Garrett said.

Anders bowed, very shallow, not much more than a bob of the head. ‘I am nothing, if not magnanimous,’ he replied.

It was the most they’d ever spoken to one another, a genuine conversation, and a rather good one at that. But the moment Garrett consented to telling himself this was going well—even better, considering since he’d only set the man’s lover’s face on fire earlier that week—all the natural flow immediately became blocked, and an uncertain silence descended over them, against the cool, slick stone. Garrett realized he was still holding the sponge, and the right sleeve of his robe was soaked up to the elbow, and there were definitely soap suds dripping down along the side of his jaw, over his neck, splatting fatly upon his collar. But he couldn’t reach up to wipe his face without drawing attention to the whole thing, and that would be his first mistake—aside from all the other mistakes the First Enchanter and various templars and his senior mages and his own mother and occasionally complete strangers liked to point out. So he leaned back and tried to make it the whole thing appear planned, as though soap suds were a look he cultivated, something fresh and incomprehensible from Orlais.

‘You have something on your face,’ Anders said, indicating the general area on his own with a flick of a slim forefinger. ‘Would you like me to burn it off for you?’

‘Ah,’ Garrett said, dropping the sponge into the bucket with a sad little plop. ‘No. I mean—do you want to? I thought you were against scorching mages in general. And that applies to me. It’s my brother that’s in training to be a templar; if you want to scorch him, feel free.’

Anders let out a laugh that was more startled than amused. ‘You’re a strange little family, aren’t you? Hawkes. …Do me a favor and don’t tell your father I said that.’

‘I couldn’t if I wanted to,’ Garrett said, in a manner he hoped was as charming as it sounded in his head. ‘We rarely speak, Father and I. He’s much too busy greasing Knight-Commander Greagoir’s palm in order to keep things running smoothly, so I hear.’

‘So long as that’s all he’s greasing,’ Anders said, his eyes twinkling. Then a rosy flush spread over his cheeks, coloring his skin up to the tips of his ears. ‘Oh, Maker—I didn’t mean—you’re his son, so that’s not really a joke as much as it is a rather creepy insinuation about a family member. Terribly sorry. You should probably ignore a great deal of what I say, actually. All the senior enchanters do. …You aren’t going to light my beard on fire now, are you?’

‘You don’t have a beard,’ Garrett observed.

Anders touched his cheek, fingers grazing the dark stubble there. ‘Well, what do you know? I suppose I’m safe after all. I always knew there might be some good in not committing fully to one look or the other.’

‘I think it suits you,’ Garrett offered, surreptitiously attempting to wring his sleeve out into the bucket. ‘It’s very—’

He was cut off by a loud creak from the far-off door that marked the entryway to the stairs. Anders glanced swiftly over his shoulder, then back to Garrett.

‘Well, this has been just lovely, don’t you think?’ he said, plucking a loose feather from his shoulder and smoothing out the rest. ‘We should do this again sometime, you and I. ‘Arsonist and escape artist’ has a certain ring to it, don’t you think? Also, it sounded distinctly as though you were about to pay me a compliment just then, and I have strong feelings about being complimented—I believe it should happen liberally and often, mostly to me, but occasionally to other people, in small, less-generous amounts.’

Before Garrett could answer—noble words such as I’m your man sticking in his throat, though he’d seen them written in the novels Senior Enchanter Wynne favored at least a dozen times before—Anders was gone in a flurry of tousled golden hair and a swish of dark skirts. He moved quickly down the long stone corridor, disappearing into one of the unmarked mahogany doors that lined the walls; Garrett heard it fall shut, the echo of the sound bouncing heavily along the arched ceiling.

Garrett could have kicked himself, but he wasn’t flexible enough for it, and he didn’t want to slip on the damp floor.

In the wake of Anders’s sudden vanishing act—before Garrett could wrap his mind around returning to something as mundane as scrubbing floors—three templars rounded the corner. The clanking of their armor made an almost pleasant harmony, like the work of many dwarves pounding their anvils in tandem.

‘You,’ the tallest of the lot said, dark hair framing a scarred face. He paused near Garrett and his bucket, gesturing pointedly. ‘Have you seen a mage pass by here?’

Garrett switched gears abruptly, white teeth flashing in his least helpful grin. ‘Have I seen a mage passing through the mage quarters? You know, I’m not entirely sure. Is this a new game? Because I have to tell you, there are better ways to waste your time in this place. I know at least…’ He paused to knock them off on his clean, wet fingers, which were already pruning. ‘…twelve of them. No; thirteen. I could teach you, if you like, but not in the hallway. I know what the rumors about me say, and they’re mostly true—but I do have some standards.’

‘Forget it,’ another templar said. ‘You’ll never get a straight answer from the robes. And definitely not that one.’

‘Besides which, I’ve been scrubbing,’ Garrett told them, indicating his bucket. He took out the sponge and squeezed it onto the floor, showing them what he meant, just to assist their poor imaginations. ‘People pass by all the time. If you could describe the boots of the mage you’re looking for, then maybe…’

There was a long pause, meaningful, accusatory, in which everyone in the area—all three templars, and Garrett himself, on a completely different level from the rest—contemplated how annoying it was that Garrett was the First Enchanter’s son, and there was really nothing any of them could do about it. It meant different things for each of them, of course; Garrett’s annoyance was in no way related to the templars’ annoyance, even though it was caused by the same unavoidable truth.

Then, the finality of that factoid sinking in fully, the templars clanked off in another direction—the wrong direction, Garrett noted, and began to whistle an Orlesian tune, to help his work pass a little more quickly.

*

Anders found him a few days later—after being noticeably absent from the common areas, the library and the mess hall during all the times Garrett was accustomed to catching sight of him—while Garrett was presumably studying, but was in fact reading a very naughty picture-book that came all the way from Llomerryn. It had handy illustrations and everything, a few graphs and detailed instructions, and Garrett slammed the ancient tome and the less-ancient contraband shut the moment a shadow fell across the pages, managing to catch his thumb in-between the covers, and stifling a yelp.

‘No worries,’ Anders said generously, flopping down onto the library bench beside him. ‘It’s nothing I haven’t seen before. Do you think I got to be a talented spirit healer just by reading all the notes on the subject? Hardly. Without Orlesian farces and Rivaini romances I wouldn’t be half the mage I am today. Nor half the degenerate. Arsonist,’ he added, with a brief tip of his head, reaching over to pry the pages of the book open.

Garrett contemplated resisting, then gave up entirely, trying instead to sneak furtive glances in Anders’s direction. Surely his expression would change, and that pleasant, pink blush would rise high on his cheeks the moment he saw the diagrams on the very first page.

‘Well,’ Anders said instead, not even batting an eye. ‘That’s a new one. I don’t really think that legs are supposed to bend that way. But maybe that’s just my first instinct as a healer. It ruins so many things.’

‘Fascinating,’ Garrett murmured.

Anders looked over at him, catching him staring, and arched a brow, while Garrett quickly swung his attention to the ceiling, the crack in the support beam from a particularly rainy spring some years back. The bench beneath them creaked as he swung his legs out, crossing them at the ankle, palms digging into the worn velvet cushioning.

‘Anyway…’ Anders deposited the book back in his lap, neat-as-you-please, without showing any inclination of returning it to Garrett. ‘I know this is practically consorting with the enemy, since you did very nearly burn my friend’s nose off, and I don’t thank people often—don’t have much reason to thank them, come to think of it—but you did help me out the other night, and I’ve decided to forgive you because of it. Just as long as you stop this habit of tossing fire at people’s faces, because I must admit, I find that behavior unbearably disturbing.’

Garrett licked his lips, hoping it didn’t look as nervous and shifty as it felt. ‘…Friend?’ he asked, instead of the hundred other things that would have been less creepy, and more subtle.

Anders blinked. ‘Karl Thekla. You remember him. Rather broad fellow, with the face you found so objectionable.’

‘Not the face,’ Garrett protested. ‘It was the beard. I don’t— I didn’t— I’m a very impulsive person, you see. I go wherever the wind blows me. The heart wants what it wants and you can’t take away my feelings and… That sort of thing.’

Somehow, the speech had sounded better, more majestic, more convincing, when offered to his father, the first time Garrett had thought of it.

Anders squinted now, staring very hard at him; the burden of his scrutiny was nearly too much for Garrett to bear. ‘Were you dropped on your head as a baby?’ he asked finally.

‘Possibly,’ Garrett admitted. ‘My parents did move around a lot, once. Maybe, in all the shuffle—with all the chests of personal belongings to carry…’

Anders scuffed his heel against the floor, poking at a bit of tassled rug that stuck up over an uneven stone. ‘Just as long as you keep positive about it. That’s the spirit. Don’t let it get you down.’

‘I never do,’ Garrett said.

‘Well,’ Anders replied. He clasped his hands in front of him, studying a cuticle, a little streak of elfroot stain running from the tip of his thumb to the heel, which he rubbed at thoughtfully. ‘Now that you feel suitably chastised and I feel suitably unburdened from the weight of my gratitude, I suppose we can get around to you complimenting me again. Or rather, for the first time. Since we were so rudely interrupted before. Templars,’ he added, shaking his head sadly. ‘My least favorite thing about them—it’s not their unbearable self-righteousness, nor their very big, very scary swords. It’s the fact that they have no sense of timing whatsoever. Can’t tell jokes, can’t read a room… Awful, really.’

‘Tell me about it.’ Garrett threw his arm over the back of his chair, affecting a casual yawn. ‘They can’t even let you enjoy your own punishment in peace.’

‘Were you enjoying scrubbing those floors?’ Anders asked. ‘You did seem curiously cheerful. Personally, I’d have given up within the first few hours. Tricked a few apprentices into doing it for me, or just…thrown the water down the hall and hope it did the trick.’

‘I don’t mind spending time on my knees,’ Garrett said, artfully looking away just as he was overcome by a moment of acute personal embarrassment. The problem with saying things he’d read first in The Rose of Orlais, or White Hot Antivan Summer was that none of those books were about two men. Anders was no blushing damsel—he was too clever to gape like a sloe-eyed calf, and he was too surefooted in his boots to swoon.

Garrett did what he could, but he often felt as though he’d been dropped onstage with a copy of someone else’s script.

Anders shifted in his chair, clearing his throat. When Garrett dared to glance back, he saw the beginnings of a flush spreading dark across his cheeks, low this time, just below his cheekbones. Privately, Garrett thanked the Anderfels for giving its people such an easy complexion to read.

‘Well,’ Anders said again, drumming his fingers against the naughty book in his lap. Garrett fought the urge to reach for it, to touch those quick fingers and make a gesture toward intimacy. ‘That wasn’t quite a compliment, but I suppose it might suffice…’ He trailed off, looking wary. ‘This isn’t some sort of joke, is it? Your father isn’t standing right behind me, waiting to fry me with his terrible chain lightning?’

Garrett bit his lip, tugging with his teeth to keep it from becoming a true scowl. Somehow, no matter who he was talking to, his father always came up. ‘Not unless he’s taken to trailing me while under cover of invisibility. Which I’m told is a magic rogues employ, not mages.’

‘Oh,’ Anders said. His lips parted, revealing his teeth, in a small grin. Garrett realized in that moment that he was sitting in a corner of the library with Anders, and Anders was smiling at him. It was everything he’d ever imagined for himself, taking his rightful place there instead of the Karl Theklas of the world. Steady, staid, broad of shoulder and of face, but far too strict to be interesting. ‘I suppose I’ll take your word for it. Do you know, I’ve never had to ask anyone that question before. Have you ever thought about it? The fact that you’re probably the only man in this tower who lives with his family? Not counting, of course, your templar-in-training brother, but I’m sure he’ll join the oppression soon enough.’

Garrett paused. He had thought about it. In fact, the idea was something that caught him most often late at night, and he chewed on it eternally whenever he couldn’t sleep, like a bit of old stewing root that hadn’t been cooked properly. They were all prisoners of a kind—mages and templars alike, since none could leave the Circle as freely as they wished—but he was the only man unfortunate enough not to have even the freedom of growing up independently.

Instead, his father was both watchdog and warden for him.

There was no possible way not to think about it.

‘Lucky me,’ Garrett said simply, fingers tracing the grooves of a sigil someone had carved into the back of his seat.

Anders studied him for a moment, eyes the color of tree sap when it crystallized. Garrett hadn’t seen a tree in years, but he remembered Fereldan’s forests, the way the sun shone through the leaves on particularly fine days. He thought the comparison was apt enough.

‘You don’t mean that,’ Anders said, after a brief silence. ‘But you will someday. You’re smarter than you pretend to be, Arsonist.’

Garrett ducked his head at the unexpected compliment. He’d been told better things, by handsomer people, but none of them mattered because they weren’t Anders, in this moment.

‘Next time,’ Garrett promised, ‘I’ll be better at complimenting you.’

‘Good.’ Anders rose with a nod. ‘You’re bound to get a lot of practice if you spend any time with me. I require constant attention. I have middling to high standards. Simply put: you’ll have to improve.’

Garrett leaned forward to watch him go, shamelessly staring at the sway of Anders’s hips and the delicate arch of his wrists. It was only after Anders had rounded the first row of stacks—and Garrett’s attention was broken by Senior Enchanter Sweeney’s lecture on summoning fonts—that he realized his favorite book from Llomerryn was missing.

*

Sundays were always set aside for family visitation. It was a routine Malcolm Hawke had instituted personally, once Carver had decided to leave the immediate confines of Lake Calenhad and pursue a burgeoning career as a templar. And, Garrett suspected, if Mother wasn’t given some opportunity to see her three children regularly, there was no telling what would happen. Something awful, probably resulting in the destruction of the tower.

Personally, Garrett wanted to see it, just a little bit. But he also didn’t want to see it—one of the many contradictions of his life these days, with Garrett at the precarious age of eighteen, and still afflicted by the childish tendencies of yesteryear despite his dedication to convincing everyone he was very much a man.

Also, Sunday late-lunches were slightly more awkward now that Carver had made his admittedly offensive choice to join the one group of people that persisted in tormenting three-fourths of the rest of his dear family.

Then again, Carver was very good at tormenting. It was likely that templaring might just be the one thing he’d ever succeed at. And success, for someone like Carver, was a dangerous thing. Garrett privately felt he should never be allowed to attain it, at any cost, because his head was already so large, and—for his own safety—it couldn’t possibly grow any more, lest it might pop.

There was also the added complication of everyone going round the table to explain, in detail, what they’d been up to lately. Carver spoke at great length of his latest sword-and-shield techniques, proudly showing off his grandest bruises; Bethany explained, ever so sincerely, that she’d received highest praise that week from all of her instructors, was a child prodigy and a saint among lesser mortals, saved fifteen kittens and three babies from marauding Orlesians, all while learning spells some mages past their Harrowing couldn’t accomplish.

And then, it was Garrett’s turn.

Garrett shifted in his chair, picking at his nail again, until Mother cleared her throat. She hated that habit of his, called it messy and vulgar, especially when people were eating, or, as she put it, trying to eat. Garrett sighed, dropping his hands to his sides, then promptly sat on them. In a show of good faith, but also, aggravated frustration.

‘Yes, Garrett,’ Father said mildly. ‘Why don’t you tell us all what you’ve been up to?’

‘Well,’ Garrett began, wondering how far he could get reciting the plot of Dane and the Werewolf with his name switched in for Dane and Karl Thekla’s for the Werewolf before somebody noticed what he was doing. Somehow, he knew telling everyone what had really happened was out of the question, since flirting with one of the most notorious troublemakers in the Circle and also violently attacking said troublemaker’s lover with fire were out of the question. Not in front of Carver or Bethany—they needed to know, in order to understand true excellence, and also, feel madly jealous of his escapades—but there was still his dear, sweet mother to consider. He didn’t want her fainting in so delicious a bowl of stew. ‘What haven’t I done, really? It’s all been such a blur of excitement that I don’t even know where to start.’

‘If you start with scrubbing the floors, the whole story would hardly make sense,’ Father prompted, still mild but also helpful now, too. Garrett looked over to him, to try and pin a face on pure evil, but Malcolm Hawke was delicately blowing on a hot spoonful of Mother’s famous broth. ‘Delicious, Leandra. How I miss your cooking during the week.’ Then, without missing a beat, he added, ‘So perhaps it’s best, Garrett, to start at the very beginning?’

‘You were scrubbing floors?’ Carver asked incredulously. Garrett felt enormous satisfaction when his voice—he was fourteen now, after all—cracked, and his cheeks burst out in splotchy red. ‘Sometimes I wish I was a mage. Just so I could be there to watch you make a bloody fool of yourself.’

‘Carver,’ Mother said. ‘Language.’

‘Sorry, Mother,’ Carver muttered, sticking his tongue out at his soup.

‘That’s right, Carver,’ Garrett said. ‘There’s a fine, upstanding ambition for you. The words of a hero—the words of a future templar—someone please mark them down for posterity.’

‘Garrett,’ Mother added.

‘…Sorry, Mother,’ Garrett said, but only because Father was staring dangerously at him.

‘Oh, if no one else is going to say it, then I will,’ Bethany said finally, with a roll of her eyes. Ever since she’d turned thirteen, she’d come to the conclusion that both her brothers were idiots. ‘Carver, Garrett lit a man on fire this week. For no reason, either; not as far as I can tell. He’s a very nice man. Not our brother—the man he tried to murder. But, you know brother. It’s a miracle I have any friends at all, because he’s always doing things like this to people. It’s ghastly.’

‘To be fair,’ Garrett began, at least able to appreciate Carver’s mixture of awe-struck horror, the only appropriate reaction in the bunch, ‘I didn’t actually light him on fire. I lit his beard on fire. Will no one ever get the details of this story right?’

Bethany sniffed. ‘I don’t see that there’s much of a difference.’

‘Well, there is,’ Garrett replied. ‘A very fine difference. Besides which, I did it all for noble reasons.’

‘Did you?’ Father asked, suddenly keen. ‘And what reasons would those be, Garrett?’

Suddenly, Garrett felt trapped, as though his own father had just transformed into the First Enchanter before his very eyes. He’d done this on purpose, Garrett realized, in order to understand the finer workings of his son’s tortured mind, then use them against him in a professional capacity. Sunday late-lunches were all a guise, a pretense, in order for Malcolm Hawke to plumb the secret recesses of Garrett’s heart.

Was nothing sacred anymore? Was nothing safe?

Garrett felt like lighting a few choice other people on fire—Father had a beard, after all, and it would be in perfect keeping with the theme. Then, he wondered how he’d be tried: on a matter of attempted patricide, or as one unimportant mage attacking his terribly important superior.

‘I can’t say,’ Garrett admitted, pressing the tips of his fingers together so hard they turned white. ‘It would compromise the integrity of certain other parties. And I wouldn’t want to do that. You know how I feel about integrity, Father. Not to mention the respect I hold for the other mages in the Circle.’

Bethany—bless her heart—actually snorted.

‘Mm,’ Father managed, giving Garrett a skeptical look. He couldn’t really say anything in front of Mother, however; both he and Garrett knew it. Their situation took more of a toll on her than she’d ever admit, and no one wanted to make things worse by playing up Garrett’s persistently bad behavior.

Sometimes Garrett wondered whether it wouldn’t have been better for them all to live as apostates. They could have taken a tour of every single backwater outpost in Ferelden, tramping through the woods and mud, finally settling in an unassuming place, like Lothering, which had an only one incredibly small chantry, and just a handful of templars to speak of.

If he closed his eyes, Garrett could practically hear the creak of its famous windmill, dirty canvas sails flapping in the breeze.

It sounded like freedom itself.

Unfortunately, he could also picture his family beneath it. Bethany would have hated it there, since it lacked the intellectual stimulation she required on an hourly basis, and Carver would have complained every chance he got about the stink of farm animals; Mother would have worried herself sick over the years, turning gray before her time, and Father would have died far too young, due to the responsibilities of keeping everyone out of danger.

Somehow, despite its drawbacks, life in the Circle Tower had probably been the right decision to make for the Hawkes, though Garrett couldn’t imagine any other mage he knew coming to the same conclusion for themselves. Was it any wonder he felt excluded from his peers? It certainly wasn’t thanks to sheer stubbornness that Garrett held himself apart the others. Part of it had something to do with the fact that he wasn’t anything like them at all, and everyone sensed it, and ostracized him accordingly. If he acted first, it wasn’t to prove them right, but rather to inform them he didn’t need their approval, just their respect, by means of their fear.

‘That’s a load of cow dung,’ Carver observed cheerfully. He was too busy being proud of himself to duck Mother’s hand when she swiped at the back of his head. Garrett hid his grin behind a forkful of fresh summer greens, and Bethany caught his eye across the table, just to let him know she knew what he was doing.

She was too clever for her own good, Bethany. She was the one Father was going to have to watch out for. Garrett could hardly wait four years, just to see who she’d be lighting on fire over love; finally having the chance to say ‘I told you so’ was going to be sweet victory indeed.

Then, Bethany would just have to hope that Garrett and Malcolm didn’t torch the suitor himself, alongside Bethany’s unlucky rivals.

*

As always, Sunday’s late-lunch was both interminable and over too quickly. Carver was the first to leave, citing the captain’s desire to have recruits begin discipline training that evening. Mother pressed her lips together tightly, but didn’t raise a word in protest. Bethany left soon after, claiming to have a project that needed working on, and she couldn’t very well concentrate in so commonplace a setting.

‘The properties of dragon’s blood,’ she said, eyes sparkling like the polished worry-stones favored by Senior Enchanter Torrin. ‘It’s for extra-credit, really. No one expects us to ever use dragon’s blood in any of our spells, but it does sound rather exciting, doesn’t it?’

‘Better than a bezoar,’ Father said.

‘Malcolm.’ Mother shot him a dark look while simultaneously patting his arm. A mixed message, to be sure. ‘…At least you waited until we’d finished eating, this time.’

Not too long after that, Father himself was called away. The First Enchanter could never really take time off his important work in the tower; an hour here and a handful of minutes there were all he could spare, on a good day. There was always something that needed tending to—release forms to be signed, new templars to be sworn in, Knight-Commanders to be appeased, and so on. Malcolm Hawke was the man they trusted to do it all; sometimes Garrett felt certain that the entire stone structure of the tower rested on Father’s broad shoulders. He never showed the weight of his myriad duties, but Garrett couldn’t imagine how he actually bore them.

Bore being the operative word, in this case.

‘Well,’ Garrett said, wiping his mouth with a clean linen napkin, then tossing into his empty plate. ‘This has been positively enchanting, Mother. Do you like what I did, there? Because I’m a mage and everything? Enchantment… Yes; it’s very funny. I reserve all my best jokes for you.’

‘Garrett,’ Mother said. She leaned across the table, resting her slender hand over his own. Her gaze was keen and blue—not the Hawke gaze, but the clear-eyed look of an Amell. Garrett had seen it on his sainted cousin’s face more than once before, when he was trying to be helpful, trying to be a martyr. Desperate for attention, that one. At least it didn’t make Garrett want to punch his mother. ‘A mother knows when one of her children is suffering. Even when that child seems to be causing most of that suffering himself.’

‘As I understand it,’ Garrett told her, ‘that’s what suffering is.’

‘Only the worst kind, I’m afraid,’ Mother replied.

Garrett wished for something to do with his hands, or a distraction provided by a group of freshly brought-in mages too young to know he wasn’t someone to revere, or Jowan’s sudden, pallid appearance to cast a pall over the room. He wished for the clank and clod-hopping of clumsy templars—never a dull moment in the tower; never a moment to oneself, either, and certainly never enough time or space or independence to have feelings, much less discuss them. In fact, it was shocking that Karl Thekla and Anders ever managed to sneak away together at all, but then everyone said they did, and so it positively had to be true.

However, Mother’s house—which she lived in completely alone now, save for the occasional visit from a concerned neighbor—was the opposite of the tower across Lake Calenhad, packed full of nosy, prying, bored, helpless people, all of them assigned to their little roles, desperate to break free, desperate to avoid the consequences of freedom. Everything was neat in Mother’s house, private, and it smelled of only one person: Mother, her favored soaps and clean clothes, and something else that Garrett remembered from childhood, nothing to do with perfumes, nothing that could be replaced.

It also smelled of stew, and Carver’s sweat beneath the templar training armor he refused to take off, and whatever it was Bethany kept in her satchels, arcane ingredients, just in case.

And she thought Garrett was the social outcast. Poor girl. She had absolutely no idea.

Garrett breathed in deeply. This was what home would smell like, he supposed, if he had a home; the place where he lived wasn’t exactly personal, or cozy or homely, nor was he able to enjoy a nap in peace without someone bursting into the dormitory, all the smells and chaos and snoring of communal living.

Then again, Garrett was so accustomed to commotions—commotion itself as a way of life—that all the quiet he was confronted with at Mother’s was often unbearable. He coughed once, to puncture it; after all, portentous silences were his greatest natural enemy. He was the only one he could trust to get rid of them once and for all, and now that everyone else was gone, he and his mother could talk seriously, without having to worry about interruptions or Carver choking on his own tongue during a bout of raucous laughter.

Fortunately, Mother wasn’t also a First Enchanter. That would have been far too much of an unhappy coincidence.

‘When Father and you first met,’ Garrett began, drumming his fingers against the table, and wishing he didn’t have two parents who were both unremittingly insightful, ‘how did you… I mean, he must have done something, to show you how he felt.’

‘Well, he didn’t light anyone else on fire, if that’s what you’re asking,’ Mother said.

‘Oh,’ Garrett replied.

Of course not.

‘He did, however, hex the Comte de Launcet, which as I recall made all his hair fall out.’ Mother paused. ‘The poor man had to wear a wig for months. He had cat fur pasted on for eyebrows. And in the summer, too… It must be something you inherited from Malcolm’s side of the family. The Amells certainly aren’t that unsubtle.’

Garrett recalled Cousin Amell, his guileless eyes and his happy little mouth. The darling of the Fereldan Circle certainly didn’t have the face of someone who lit people’s beards on fire or forced premature baldness on them.

Then again, it was always the ones you didn’t expect who turned out to be the most terrifying. Cousin Amell couldn’t keep up that innocent act forever, and Garrett was looking forward to the day the truth was finally revealed. He was probably a blood mage, or part Orlesian, or something equally offensive to Fereldan sensibilities.

However, Garrett wasn’t looking forward to the rest of this conversation with his mother. It was his own fault; he’d broached the topic, and now he had to live with the consequences. But trying to imagine his parents as two young people in love—as they had to be, in order to produce three whole children—made him squirm in his chair like Carver on Feastday: so eager for presents, so wary of pranks.

‘In any case,’ Mother said, gentling, the one thing that made Garrett feel guiltier than any other, ‘I never did something quite so obvious. I simply made sure to intercept all letters sent from any other interested parties—and there were many; your father was just as handsome as you, when he was your age. A better and less violent way to eliminate all competition, I think.’

Garrett had to hold himself back when he realized he was gaping, a most unattractive expression. He tried to form words, but they wouldn’t come, and Mother covered her mouth with one hand, coughing delicately.

‘Don’t give me that look,’ she said. ‘It isn’t as though I could simply do nothing. But it isn’t as though I found it necessary to be arrested, either. Do you understand what I’m saying?’

Something told Garrett he’d never quite be able to understand it, not in its entirety; that would be the greatest challenge and possibly the greatest failure of his entire life. He could spend an eternity questing to comprehend the secrets hidden in Leandra Hawke’s quiet smile, and always be left with yet more arcane wisdom to be discovered.

‘I don’t think I want to hear any more,’ Garrett told her, instead of begging for the answers, like he probably should have. He was going to need all the help he could get, especially since he’d had no idea—until now—that his own mother was capable of being so devious.

‘That’s all for the best, I suppose.’ Mother reached out to pat his hand again, then took it, and held it close. ‘I wish you all the best, Garrett, but do try not to catch the object of your affections in the crossfire. It won’t make your case any more convincing; that much is certain.’

‘Duly noted, Mother,’ Garrett said. Then, because she’d raised him not to be a complete savage, he added: ‘Thank you.’

‘You’re very welcome,’ Mother murmured slyly.

*

As far as Garrett could tell, Anders didn’t write any letters to Karl. The two spoke often enough that perhaps it wasn’t strictly necessary, but that made their interactions all the more difficult to intercept. What Mother didn’t understand was that Garrett had been stopping communications in his own, small way. Or rather, his own, large way.

It was merely that his interference hadn’t worked out exactly as planned. And also, fire had been involved.

‘Leave some for the rest of us, why don’t you?’ snapped a rather pretty mage with ginger hair. She was one of Senior Enchanter Wynne’s apprentices, which meant she likely had about as little time for dilly-dallying as the woman herself.

Garrett looked down, startled out of his reverie. He’d been tasked with gathering herbs for some of the spirit healers—a thankless bit of work in the direct sunlight of the roof garden. Already he could feel the back of his neck blistering. It did him some good to imagine how much worse the burns on Karl’s face must have been, but at the same time, it also felt like divine punishment—tit for tat, as it were. So the salve wasn’t quite as soothing as it might have been.

His pouch was full almost to bursting with thick, white tubers, the dirt under his nails a testament to how long he’d been digging.

‘All yours, Petra,’ Garrett murmured graciously, stepping away. ‘Though I’d pick a different area if I were you—this one’s all tapped out.’

As he shaded his eyes from the sun—straightening his back for what felt like the first time in hours—a strong hand closed around Garrett’s elbow, pulling him to one side.

‘Petra, really’ Garrett said, smiling foolishly. ‘Not in front of the elfroot.’

‘Who’s Petra?’ Anders asked, skin pink and collar damp with sweat. ‘No, don’t tell me—a friend of yours, I’m sure. Of course when I say friend, what I really mean is something of a far saucier nature, which can’t be discussed in front of any variety of healing herb. It’s that salacious. These poor roots will shrivel right up at the first hint of gossip.’

‘We aren’t friends,’ Garrett blurted, far too quickly. In one fell stroke, he’d managed to eliminate what might have amounted to an alluring point of mystery between them. Well done, idiot, he told himself, in a voice that sounded suspiciously like Carver’s.

Anders squinted at him again. Anders was always squinting at him. And he always wore the same expression while doing so, like he couldn’t quite make up his mind whether he should laugh or be afraid.

‘You’re rather antisocial, aren’t you, Arsonist?’ he asked. ‘I suppose that’s to be expected, really. People who light other people on fire don’t exactly conjure up an image of friendliness.’ He drew Garrett over to an unoccupied corner of the garden, hidden behind a flowering bushel of deathroot. Its uses in the tower were strictly monitored; mages were never allowed to gather more than enough to create a very weak sleeping draught after an incident with some apprentices about twenty years back. It had all happened before Garrett’s time, but the rules were still in place, for obvious, preventative reasons.

A shame, since Garrett could think of more than a few people in the tower who’d benefit from a good week’s sleep, not to mention all the blessed silence.

‘I have a name,’ Garrett pointed out. Now seemed like as good a time as any to mention it, meeting Anders’s gaze under the broiling sun.

‘I know,’ Anders said, flashing his teeth in a smile that dazzled against his scruff. ‘It’s Garrett.’

Rather abruptly, Garrett realized he finally knew what it felt like to swoon. Thought it was probably due more to working in the noonday sunlight for hours than the low, intimate tones of Anders’s voice when he’d said: Garrett.

Garrett steadied himself against the sandstone wall of the garden, one palm flat on the gritty stone.

‘That’s the one,’ Garrett managed. ‘Somewhat less distinctive than arsonist, I’m sure.’

‘Oh, no, you’re quite distinct,’ Anders said, waving his hand. ‘If you so much as whisper the name Garrett in the library, everyone covers their beards. It’s wonderful fun, really. I’ve done it at least a half dozen times already. Can we talk about me, now? I have only a very limited attention span for other people and this about covers it.’

Garrett faltered. He was used to quick-paced conversations, since it was impossible to get a word in edgewise with Carver, Bethany and Father all at the same table. Mother had taken to it by being quiet, whereas Garrett combated the difficulty by becoming as loud as possible, a tongue honed on thorny challenges.

But when it came to thorny challenges, Anders was proving to be the thorniest of all. Garrett reached out casually to lean against a wall, placing his palm directly over a flowering vine, with actual thorns, and bit back a yelp of surprise.

‘Let’s hope those aren’t poisonous,’ Anders said cheerfully. ‘Is your hand all right?’

‘Barely noticed it,’ Garrett choked out.

‘Oh, so you’re that type.’ Anders was squinting again. ‘The stoic type. And here I thought you were the funny type, or the lunatic type. Or the fiery type. I can’t decide if I’m relieved or disappointed.’

‘And what type are you?’ Garrett asked, attempting to do as Anders instructed, and guide the conversation back toward his favorite topic: himself.

Anders’s eyes sparkled. He folded his bare arms over his chest, pale skin and a few faint freckles, sun-kissed golden hairs along the backs barely catching the light in this peaceful little spot of shade. ‘I’m the delicate type,’ he said, after some thought. ‘The sensitive type. The exotic flower type, planted in hearty Fereldan mud and fertilized by all the—well, you know.’

‘Dog shit?’ Garrett supplied.

‘Well, I wasn’t going to say it,’ Anders said. ‘Being the delicate and sensitive type, I’d never.’

Time alone with Anders beneath a blooming bower at last, and Garrett’s palm was bleeding all down his wrist while he chose to discuss feces with the man.

This wasn’t going the way it was supposed to. What would Mother say?

Carefully, Garrett maneuvered his hand behind his back to obscure his wounds from view, and attempted to pretend the topic of conversation was one he’d picked on purpose, because he wasn’t limited by the usual social standards that held so many people back. He was real, immediate, passionate, and without fear. The palm of his hand really stung, but without pain of some sort, there could be no progress.

‘You know, I could take a look at your hand for you, if you wanted,’ Anders offered, trying to peer around Garrett’s shoulder. He even rested one hand against Garrett’s arm to do so, cooling and gentle through the thin fabric of his robes. For a moment, Garrett was able to forget about everything terrible, and smell him: elfroot and soap and skin, healing poultices and the sunlit warmth of his hair. ‘I am a healer. A very good one, too. That could be one more thing you complimented me on—if you were to experience its full benefits for yourself.’

‘I could even compliment you on it without mentioning dog shit,’ Garrett said weakly.

Anders shrugged. ‘Suit yourself. But I assure you, none of that would be involved in my healing. I’m not Fereldan, after all. I don’t feel the explicit need to include it in everything.’

Garrett decided to offer his hand, gracefully, to be inspected, if only because he liked the idea of Anders tending to his wounds the same way he’d looked after Karl Thekla’s. True to form, Anders touched the back of his knuckles with a gentle caress, brushing his fingertips over Garrett’s injured palm. A little burst of healing warmth later, and Garrett was whole again.

‘You’re amazing,’ Garrett told him.

‘Aah,’ Anders said, fingers lingering along the back of Garrett’s wrist, stroking the small bone at the base of his hand. ‘Now that’s more like it. I knew you had it in you, Garrett.’

‘I mean it,’ Garrett said, heartened by the small success. ‘You’re the best healer I’ve ever been healed by.’

‘And now you know why I do it,’ Anders replied, setting him free. ‘There’s no reward for a job well-done like the accolades of your peers. Thank you, you’re so kind; I’ll be here…for the rest of my life, probably, if the templars have anything to say about it.’ He affected a tiny bow, then straightened, tucking a stray lock of hair behind his ear. ‘By the by, Garrett, you didn’t happen to collect any extra deathroot during all that digging around, did you? My patch of the garden was a bit too much in the shade and all of mine turned out like the runts of the litter. Pathetic, really. Can’t have scrawny deathroot, now can you?’

‘Oh,’ Garrett said, articulately, and reached into his satchel. His deathroot was, he noted proudly, very robust in appearance, from one of the healthier bushes nearby, large and thick and glossy, and Anders oohed and ahhed as he appropriated them.

‘Very nice indeed, Garrett,’ he said. ‘You’re a veritable deathroot master. I’m saved.’

Then, with a wink and a wave, he disappeared behind the nearby stanchion, with its flowering vines and common garden vegetables. Try as Garrett might for the rest of the afternoon to spot him amongst the others, there was no sign of Anders bent over and slaving away in the sunlight, toiling in the dirt with the rest of them.

*

Two days later, when Garrett learned from Jowan—who’d learned from Cousin Amell, who’d learned from someone else, and so on—that three of the Knight-Commander’s most trusted templars had mysteriously fallen into a deep sleep after supper, right around the time they’d begun their evening patrol, and subsequently Anders had once again gone missing, it all fell into place.

‘Ohhh,’ Garrett said. ‘Deathroot.’

‘Well that’s a strange reaction to have,’ Jowan replied, a bit suspiciously. ‘Don’t tell me you had something to do with this?’

In the world of templars and mages, ‘unwitting accomplice’ was only ever treated with equal severity as witting accomplice. ‘Nothing at all,’ Garrett said smoothly. ‘Did you know it’s quite possible one or both of my parents dropped me on my head as an infant? Sometimes I just say words without really meaning to.’

‘Hm,’ Jowan murmured, understandably uncertain. ‘That doesn’t seem too surprising.’

Anders’s latest disappearing act had the entire tower abuzz with gossip, and Garrett, being personally invested in the whole ordeal, even more than usual, found himself constantly in the thick of it. As though there was even the slimmest hope someone might actually know something that hadn’t been warped unrecognizably by hearsay and exaggeration.

‘He’ll get us all locked up at this rate,’ Petra said, bent over her books in the library with another of Wynne’s apprentices. All of them had the same look about them, what some might call serious, what Garrett called sour-faced. ‘Does he even think about how this affects the rest of us?’

‘I think you can stop at does he even think?’ the apprentice said. ‘And the answer would be: no, not at all.’

Garrett moved away, threading through the stacks like a nymph through the trees. As much as he would have liked to light Petra on fire, the brief conversations he’d had with Anders had given him something to think about—most specifically that Garrett didn’t actually want to be known as the arsonist for the rest of his life. Even the smallest of actions could build a rather large reputation in the tower. He’d much rather be known as ‘the handsome one,’ or ‘the funny one’ than ‘the one who put his hands on thorns that time and ruined his best summer robes.’

It was a wonder Anders continued to talk to him at all, really.

Garrett made a right turn at the summoning tomes, then found himself in the midst of mythical creatures and their properties. But, more importantly: Karl Thekla was sitting at a nearby table, arms crossed as he spoke with Senior Enchanter Leorah.

Thinking quickly, Garrett ducked behind a sub-section on Fade beasts, fingers running over the thick leather bindings with their titles written in fading gold. If anyone knew anything about where Anders had gone, it had to be Karl. Even better, Garrett could enjoy a moment of small, mean victory over the discovery that Anders had left without taking Karl with him.

Perhaps, when he’d said they were friends, what Anders had really meant was acquaintances, or that they barely knew or liked one another, really. Certainly not friends of that other nature, the one that couldn’t be mentioned in front of innocent elfroot.

Unfortunately, as Garrett strained to overhear, Karl and Leorah weren’t discussing Anders’s latest escape, nor a designated meeting place he’d left behind for close friends and intimately interested parties. Instead, heads leaned together with the air of two peers sharing a deeply important discussion, they were flapping their gums about some infestation of giant spiders in the storeroom. It was Senior Enchanter Leorah’s first assignment, and she was too frightened to tell anyone, lest her seniors lose their tempers and take it as reason enough for all elves to be prohibited from occupying positions of power—on and on and on it went, until Garrett felt his calves beginning to cramp with the force of holding stock-still amidst dusty volumes on sea-beasts and ancient breeds of dragons.

Normally, the topic of giant spiders was something inherently entertaining. Yet somehow these two managed to make it the complete opposite.

Finally, mercifully, Leorah thanked Karl for listening and took her leave. Garrett bit the corner of his lip, debating whether it was worth following Karl to see where he might go next. Surely he had to know something. Surely he didn’t spend his days indulging in one mind-numbingly boring conversation after another.

The man in question let out a dry cough, pushing his chair back from the table with a scrape of wood against stone.

‘You can come out now,’ Karl said, just loud enough that Garrett couldn’t pretend not to hear him. ‘Unless you’re planning on lighting my face on fire again, in which case I’d really prefer it if you didn’t.’

Garrett peered around the stacks like a halla caught in an arrow’s sights. His fingers twitched—the automatic urge to light fire to some part of Karl’s anatomy was almost overwhelming—but he tugged a book free from the shelves instead, pulling it down nonchalantly to give his hands something else to do.

‘Elvorn’s Grande Bestiary,’ Garrett said, thumping the cover with pleased confidence. ‘Do you know, I’ve been looking for this old thing everywhere? Persistence pays off yet again.’

Karl seemed unimpressed. ‘Are you following me?’ he asked flatly. ‘I only ask because this has happened to me once before, and while I can assure you I’m flattered, my face is still healing from our last encounter.’

Garrett tossed a surreptitious glance Karl’s way, and was disappointed to discover his face didn’t look like it was still healing. It looked healed already, past tense, no flaky red bits or lingering rashes or anything.

Garrett sighed. ‘I’m not following you,’ he insisted. ‘I was just… It’s the library, you understand; it’s a common area. It isn’t as though I’ve ambushed you in your chambers in the night. Personally, I think you’re overreacting.’

Karl made a face. It was, thanks to Garrett’s attentions, a rather patchy face, like a wild hermit living in the Brecilian Forest. The skin might have healed, but the hair hadn’t grown back evenly at all, and the scorched remains of Karl’s beard proved a stunning reminder of Garrett’s handiwork. He had to wonder why Karl didn’t just shave the damned thing off—but perhaps the skin surrounding the area was still too raw for that.

It was possible—not likely, but possible—that Garrett had overreacted. Somewhat. A little. The face was so obvious a place, so sensitive; if he’d lit some other, less noticeable piece of the anatomy on fire, then he would have been well within his limits, but the beard might just have been going too far.

‘You were listening to that entire conversation, however,’ Karl said finally. Garrett couldn’t blame Karl for not knowing quite what to do with him; most people had that reaction to Garrett, because he was impetuous and spontaneous and delightful. ‘Though I suppose if you want to turn your budding career as tower arsonist on those spiders, it might be appreciated.’

‘Better than turning them on you again, am I right?’ Garrett asked. He laughed, and sighed, and waited for Karl to laugh, too.

Karl didn’t laugh. Instead, he rubbed thoughtfully at a corner of his jaw, a little bald patch right underneath his chin, with the pad of his thumb, and fixed Garrett with an unwavering stare so intense that Garrett had no idea what to do with himself. It was far more impressive than the worst of Father’s glares, though there was something similar about it, searching, probing, uncovering age-old guilt and laying it bare for all the world to see. Garrett did his best to laugh again in the face of it, to smile back and thwart all of Karl’s designs, but he felt his smile waver, then crack, then shatter tremendously in the wake of such a masterful onslaught.

Karl Thekla was no ordinary opponent.

Knowing he’d lost, absolutely hating himself for it, Garrett looked away. He heard Karl shift, leaning back against the desk, with his palms against the edge and his legs crossed at the ankles, no doubt feeling smug and self-satisfied because of his petty triumph.

Garrett glowered down at Elvorn’s Grande Bestiary. If he’d been able to light something on fire with his eyes, then he would have just cinched his position as the tower’s resident arsonist right then and there. Fortunately, he had more control than that—if only barely.

‘Hm,’ Karl Thekla said.

Garrett supposed he was probably waiting for an apology, one that would never come. After this—being so thoroughly trounced, so obviously outclassed, despite his initial victory—Garrett would never stoop so low as to give Karl the upper hand again. He squared his shoulders and tightened his jaw, re-reading the same line on spirit hogs so many times his eyes began to water.

‘Hm?’ he asked nonchalantly.

‘Hm,’ Karl repeated.

Unhelpful. Garrett felt his molars grind into a fine powder, one he would soon choke on, and tragically die from swallowing. He flipped the page before him, moving on to sacred halla, and reminded himself to blink before his eyes fell out.

‘Hm,’ he agreed.

For a moment—brief as it was—he thought he heard Karl Thekla laugh. Then, he realized it was a cough, hopefully brought on by some consumptive disease, but rather more likely because of his advanced age and all the dust in this area of the stacks.

‘Fascinating conversation we’ve just had,’ Karl murmured. ‘Illuminating, really.’

‘You started it,’ Garrett pointed out, all-too aware of how childish the comeback sounded.

‘Not that I make a habit of conversing with my assailants,’ Karl added. ‘But—no. I rather thought I would extend the invitation for you to hunt spiders with me this afternoon. In the interest of protecting others from your apparently directionless energy, at the very least.’

Garrett paused, naturally suspicious. ‘You want me to fight giant spiders with you?’

‘One of the more unusual ideas I’ve ever had, yes,’ Karl confirmed. ‘Not the most unusual, but… Close.’

Garrett shut the tome; a cloud of dust rose up from the cover, nearly sending him into a fit. When it all cleared, Karl was still standing across the way, looking as innocent as an Amell—which was to say, not innocent at all. He had ulterior motives, absolutely—revenge first and foremost, starting with Garrett’s tragic and untimely death deep below the rest of the tower. ‘You’re just hoping to kill me in the cellars and make it look like an accident,’ Garrett said, prepared to use the bestiary as a projectile should Karl become violent the moment he realized Garrett had him all figured out.

‘Oh, come now,’ Karl said, disbelieving. ‘Surely you wouldn’t let your guard down long enough for me to do something like that.’

It sounded like a challenge.

‘I accept,’ Garrett replied.

*

Hours later, covered in spidersilk and something the exact texture and consistency of slug-slime, and also missing his left boot, Garrett had lit seven giant spiders on fire, exactly three more giant spiders than Karl Thekla had pounded to paste with one of his force spells.

They went up in flames with a sizzle and a hiss that was incredibly satisfying; Garrett couldn’t decide whether the smell of burning spider corpses or burning hair was more vile.

‘Where were you?’ Father demanded, passing him in the hall, eyes widening when he saw the streaks of char and smeared black blood on Garrett’s face and robes. It probably did look rather questionable, even by Garrett’s standards. But still, if Father believed every last rumor he heard about his own son, he’d have to lock him up in the Aeonar itself to keep him out of trouble.

‘I was in the cellars with Karl Thekla,’ Garrett replied. ‘We were killing giant spiders together. Eleven of them, to be exact.’

‘Garrett,’ Father began, ‘you look as though you’ve just been on a murderous rampage. I hardly think making light of something like that is appropriate.’

‘Murderous rampage and ridding the cellars of giant spiders can come off as rather similar,’ Karl Thekla murmured, trotting by with a slight limp. ‘Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference. I’ve made the same mistake myself, once or twice.’

‘No need to worry about me, Father,’ Garrett added. ‘Please excuse me now. I must adjourn to the washroom for a hero’s bath.’

The mage quarters he shared with five of his peers—other lucky boys and girls who’d passed their Harrowings as well—was blessedly empty when Garrett finally made his way back to his room. He prepared his bath while stripping out of his clothes; the robes themselves were utterly caked in filth, hopelessly stained, good for nothing but to be cut up and used as rags by the Tranquil who minded the tower shops. Garrett would miss them, but they hadn’t been his favorite pair to begin with.

He’d once again reached an age where every single piece of his clothing felt pinched and too small. He was growing again—it was probably time to speak with someone about that soon, before he bared his hairy calves to the world at large.

Garrett settled into the bath, closing his eyes and rubbing a handful of scalding water over his face. Dark spider-blood sloughed off his skin and out of his hair. He wriggled his shoulders back against the stone surface of the tub and luxuriated in a moment’s silence.

He hoped that wherever Anders was right now, he was alone, too.

Not that he wanted Anders to be lonely. The only person he wanted to be lonely was Karl Thekla, and even that was mostly out of habit. No; Garrett had spent a long time watching Anders, observing his motions and cataloguing his every expression in a fearsome library of infatuation he could visit at any point in his mind, whenever he had the inclination or the opportunity. So Garrett knew that, while Anders was frightfully clever, and fantastically good at entertaining an audience, there was also the occasional moment—wistful and dark in the depths of his eyes—when he merely looked incredibly weary of the whole procession.

Even if Anders liked people—and it was evident that he did, at least somewhat—it grew tiring not to get any privacy at all. Garrett knew that well enough.

He shifted in the bath, water sloshing over the edge, resting his heels against the bottom of the tub and spreading his legs, knees pressed up against either end. It’d been a long time since he had any privacy, either, the kind of privacy a teenage boy needed on occasion, when he was hopelessly taken with someone without ever actually having the opportunity to take them, as it were.

Garrett drew in a deep breath, then let it out as a sigh, wet fingers wrapping around his wet cock in the hot water. There had never been an opportunity for him to do this while completely naked, completely alone. His earlier experiments were colored by the necessary claustrophobia of their environment—body buried under his blankets and robes, curled into the fetal position at night. He’d nearly scorched a hole in the wool with a spark of experimental electricity, but ultimately the entire practice had proved well worth it. Satisfying, if rushed.

Anyway, it got the job done.

Garrett let his head fall back against the rim of the tub with careless force, thumb rubbing a long, indulgent line along the shaft of his cock, coaxing it toward hardness. Since he was thinking about Anders—since he was naked, eighteen, and always thinking about Anders—it didn’t take long. Anders had probably done this in the bath once. Maybe he was doing it right now, celebrating his escape and freedom with another form of release.

He touched the head with tentative fingertips, fighting the urge to send the barest of shocks through his skin. It was too dangerous in water, and the only epitaph worse than ‘arsonist’ would be ‘electrocuted while touching himself in the bath.’ If anything, he didn’t want to give the templars the satisfaction of reclaiming his waterlogged corpse.

Instead, Garrett wondered if Anders’s inner thighs were as pale, as delicate as the rest of him. He thought about parting them, palms against the smooth skin, his own hands callused and brown from scrubbing floors and working in the garden. Garrett had read about the things one could do to a man between his legs, with hands or mouth. It was all very…intriguing, and while he knew it happened—and sometimes heard it firsthand for himself—he’d never found anyone he liked better than Anders to practice with.

It was difficult being such a discerning person sometimes, having such high standards. So often Garrett found himself limited to incredibly few options.

He pushed his hips off the surface of the bath, gently rocking now with the motion of his hand. The water lent an odd weightless quality to his body—it made it easier for him to manipulate his position, and easier to throw himself wholeheartedly into the act. Still, he was furtive, knowing that at any moment the door might be thrown open, one of his dorm-mates barging in, with Garrett bound to have a new nickname after that. He’d light them all on fire if he had to just to keep them quiet, but even he was capable of recognizing it’d be preferable if things didn’t come to that.

Sensibly, Garrett sped up, entranced by the friction of his rough palm combined with the slick soap and the cooling water, the steam in the air around him, his own sweat, the back of his neck and his forehead damp. A wave of water splashed up against his face and he very nearly slipped under the water as he came, with a jagged whimper, biting his lower lip to cut himself off.

Then, he sank bonelessly back into the tub, letting his toes curl and his feet arch, a happy state where thought came but didn’t matter, where sweet restless pulses of pleasure coursed through his muscles, and sticky things rose to the top of the water, already clouded with dirt and his own dirty acts.

*

The next morning, everyone was talking about Anders’s return, late the night before, to the circle tower—unwilling, of course. Garrett served himself a hearty portion of fresh bread and butter—he was still growing, after all—and found himself relieved, and sad, and mostly disappointed when he realized he’d been expecting it all along, not a matter of if, but rather of when. As far as Garrett knew, Anders had attempted escape four times now—the first was legendary, a rope made of undergarments dangling out the tower window; he must have collected them for months in order to gather the necessary amount—but this effort, just like the others, had ended almost before it began.

A large group of Garrett’s peers, both mages and templars putting their differences aside and working together for once, had set up a betting pool of sorts. Those lucky few who’d guessed the hour and the day correctly were reaping the benefits, celebrating with the clinking of tea-mugs and, in Garrett’s opinion, rather ugly laughter.

Garrett was surprised he couldn’t hear Knight-Commander Greagoir shouting about it all the way in the mess hall. There were times when he thought it appropriate someone held his father accountable for everything, but more often than that he felt annoyed that anyone would dare treat Father the way he knew the Knight-Commander did, not because Father had told him about their private meanings, but because Garrett eavesdropped on them more than occasionally.

Errant, lingering bonds of familial loyalty—those pesky little things. They might not last until Garrett’s twentieth birthday, but until them, he suffered them nobly.

Garrett glanced up from buttering a roll, searching the hall for Karl Thekla, but the man’s familiar, graying ginger head, his patchy beard and his square shoulders, were nowhere to be found.

Garrett frowned, and gripped his knife more tightly.

‘That’s meant to be a utensil, not a weapon,’ Jowan said, judiciously inching away.

The whole display—Garrett’s peers’ inability to understand the gravitas of the situation, and the possibility that Karl Thekla was comforting Anders even now—was nearly enough to make Garrett lose his appetite. But then, he’d been so famished that morning, and breakfast was so delicious, that he couldn’t bring himself to begin his hunger strike just yet.

Maybe after lunch.

Before his self-conducted studies began, he took the long route to the library, the one that swung him near the First Enchanter’s offices; as expected, the door to Father’s innermost chamber was shut, and Knight-Commander Greagoir was shouting behind it.

‘—in solitary, but the fact of the matter is he’s giving the others ideas—’ Garrett heard the Knight-Commander saying, muffled, but nonetheless clear. He always enunciated so beautifully when he was furious.

It was all Garrett needed to hear.

‘Solitary’ wasn’t worse than the Aeonar, but all Garrett had been told, what little his father alluded to and the rumors spread—possibly by Anders himself—made it sound extremely unpleasant. A cell buried deep underground, surrounded by dank rock in the center of Lake Calenhad, couldn’t have been an enjoyable way to spend a few days, nor even a few hours. Anders, Garrett had already decided, needed sunlight the same way elfroot did. He was, by his own admission, delicate—a state of being no one else in the tower could possibly understand.

Garrett contemplated, briefly, how he was going to get all the way down there; he could be charming when he wanted to be, but the trouble was he had something of a reputation, one that alerted templars and senior mages alike to be on their guard whenever they saw him.

Lighting Karl Thekla’s beard on fire hadn’t helped that reputation. Up until Anders’s little break-out, Garrett had been the most popular topic of conversation, and no one would willingly give him the keys to anywhere, he was sure of it.

Garrett did, however, have Leorah on his side. After all, he’d cleared the cellars of those pesky spiders for her, with a little help from Karl Thekla, although the old man had really just been slowing him down. And, Garrett knew now from having explored them, the cellars themselves led all over the place, a very intricate web of twists and turns; they were below the tower, and solitary was also below the tower, and Garrett swanned past Leorah’s guard quite easily under the pretense of checking to make sure all the spiders were well and truly dead.

Karl had probably experienced the same stroke of genius himself. He might have passed exactly this way just hours before, to fly to Anders’s side the moment he could.

Garrett tried not to think about what he’d do if he found them both there. Be very sad, most likely. Throw himself off a balcony or drown himself in the lake. Wear dark robes and take a vow of silence. Light someone on fire. There were so many ways to express himself; perhaps he’d spring for all four.

Something hissed in the darkness, and Garrett jumped, but it turned out it was only a false alarm, Garrett stepping on a spidersilk gland and causing the thing to explode.

After scraping his boot off to the best of his abilities on a nearby rock, Garrett continued through the half-familiar tunnels, banging his head on stalactites as he went.

It wasn’t that he missed having Karl around. He wasn’t frightened of the deep, the close walls, the shivering, scuttling sounds that echoed above and below, the whispers in the darkness. He lit a wisp of light to lead the way, and whistled to himself as he did so. He didn’t need Karl Thekla around, save perhaps as slower, meatier bait, for any unforeseen deep-stalkers to feast upon while Garrett made his escape.

There was a scampering noise in the dark, slower than a spider, with fewer hairy legs and clicking foreclaws, but it sent pebbles skittering across the rock floor and it made the hairs on the back of Garrett’s neck stand up nonetheless. He turned quickly, knocking his staff against a stalagmite half by accident. If the sound just so happened to scare away any approaching features from Elvorn’s Grande Bestiary, then all the better.

‘Don’t come any closer,’ a shaky voice said from behind a sharp turn. ‘I’m very dangerous, you know. Unless you’re just a giant spider, in which case you…have no idea what I’m saying right now. I might as well be telling you to eat me because I’m very delicious. You don’t sound like a spider, though. Last I checked, spiders couldn’t whistle.’

Garrett hesitated. ‘…Anders?’

‘Well,’ Anders said, after a pause of his own. Garrett heard the shuffling of robes, then saw his head poke out from behind the rocky corner. ‘Isn’t this funny. We really have to stop meeting this way, Garrett.’

‘But I thought you were in solitary,’ Garrett blurted, his visions of a grand entrance dissipating like mist over the lake on a hot summer morning.

‘Oh, I am,’ Anders explained. ‘But it’s very…small in that cell. And it’s not as though I haven’t been in there so many times I don’t know how to get out. Now, I know what you’re thinking: But Anders, what about the spider infestation? Doesn’t that worry you? And it does, it really does, more than you know. More than words can say. But it’s preferable, sometimes; I like to have my choices. So I let myself out, stretch my legs, get my bearings, keep my sanity, and then I lock myself back in when I hear the templars coming. They make a lot of noise, you see. All that armor. Very useful.’

‘There aren’t any more spiders,’ Garrett said, lowering his staff at last. ‘I killed them all.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Anders asked, blinking widely in the dark.

‘With Karl Thekla,’ Garrett added. ‘Killed them. As a favor to Senior Enchanter Leorah, you see. So she wouldn’t be fired. Apparently Karl’s very concerned about elf rights, or something like that. I admit I wasn’t really paying attention.’

‘Aah,’ Anders said, scrabbling for an appropriate rocky shelf to settle down on as comfortably as possible. They were between store rooms now, in one of the long, stone corridors that ran between the everyday-use supplies, and items kept in stock only for emergency purposes. ‘I think that’s a story that bears repeating in more than alluring sound bites.’ He rubbed his hands together, then held them out expectantly, as one might do before a hearth. ‘If you wouldn’t mind lighting one of your famous fires for me, Garrett? For me, not on me; there’s a good man.’

With a grin and a bloom of heat from the end of his staff, Garrett obliged the request. If the fire happened to attract any spiders that they’d missed, he’d take it as an opportunity to impress Anders further.

*

Anders made him go over the story three times, beginning to end and inside-out before he’d accepted it as fact, and even then he seemed rather skeptical.

‘And you didn’t even try to light him on fire while you were down here, alone, together, with no other witnesses?’ Anders asked, feathered shoulders hunched where he sat on the other side of the fire. As Garrett had suspected, Anders was a sensitive sort of person—the kind who didn’t fare well at night, surrounded by so much cold earth. Of course, it didn’t help that he wore the most impractical robes Garrett had ever seen—they were Tevinter in origin, unless he was much mistaken, and about as attractive as they were ridiculous.

The urge to go over to Anders and sit next to him, offering the warmth of his own body as comfort, was quite strong, but at the same time, something was holding Garrett back. The memory of his indiscretion in the bath had risen hot and heavy in his mind, making him sweat under his robes, making it suddenly rather difficult to look Anders in the eye. To make matters worse, the broken crate Garrett was sitting on creaked ominously every time he shifted his weight, which also made it incredibly difficult to hide how much he was fidgeting..

‘There were a lot of spiders,’ Garrett said, immediately not following his own good advice by leaning forward to stoke the fire with a flare from his fingertips. ‘They made better targets.’

‘Hmm.’ Anders’s eyes were keen over the crackling flames. He licked his lips, tugging at the bottom one with his teeth. ‘I really don’t know what to make of you sometimes, Garrett. Don’t frown—it’s actually a good thing. With so many people you know exactly what to make of them, and then there’s no point in getting to know anyone at all. A gesture here, or a comment there, and you’ve already learned everything you’ll ever need to—and most of it tends to be unfavorable, I’m afraid. But you… I can’t quite make you out.’

‘And that’s a good thing?’ Garrett ventured. The box beneath him gave way with a crackle of splintering wood, and he stood quickly to avoid falling on his ass.

Anders watched him, managing to smile in place of laughing outright. ‘A very good thing, I should think. It means you’re worth getting to know. As long as you steer clear of that nasty habit of lighting people’s facial hair on fire, of course. Maybe you need a hobby.’

‘…I brought cards,’ Garrett said, feeling in his pocket for the deck. At the time it had seemed like a childish afterthought, but now that he’d seen firsthand what Anders had to work with down here, he no longer regretted the decision.

Cards were better than nothing at all. And they were definitely better than being devoured alive by a second wave of unexpected spiders—their other only other option for a good night’s entertainment in the tower’s depths.

He knew he’d guessed right when Anders’s face lit up like a Wintersend candle. ‘Did you really?’ He scooted sideways on his rock, his posture coming to life as he eagerly gestured Garrett over, patting the gray stone beside him. ‘Of course you did; you’re so delightful. It feels like an age since anyone’s dared to bring a deck of cards within fifty feet of me. What’s the game to be then, Ser Arsonist? I feel it only fair to warn you that it does not matter in the slightest, since I am equally terrible at all of them.’

‘Even Wicked Grace?’ Garrett asked, settling himself on Anders’s warm rock, reluctantly placing the cards between them. He kept his eyes on the deck, fingers nimbly shuffling before he began to deal.

Not being able to meet Anders’s eyes was going to make it incredibly difficult to tell whether he was bluffing or not.

‘Especially Wicked Grace,’ Anders said, with a mournful sigh. ‘But even more especially Diamondback.’

‘But Wicked Grace is so easy,’ Garrett said. ‘I mean, there’s practically only one rule, and even then, you don’t always have to follow it.’

‘Garrett,’ Anders told him, very patiently, ‘this thing that you do where you insult my prowess, my skills, my abilities—that’s simply got to stop right now, before we go any further.’

Garrett blinked, then dealt the cards, wondering if he was quick enough—and Anders easily distracted enough—for it to be possible to cheat. For Anders’s benefit, of course. If he was caught at it, it would all be very embarrassing, but if he wasn’t, then… Well, then Anders would think Garrett was an abominable card player, even worse than he was, and cease to hold any respect for him.

So Garrett decided against that particular tactic of courtship. Even if, sometimes, it worked in books.

‘But you said yourself…’ he pointed out instead, tearing the bandage off and peeking cautiously at his hand. He hadn’t cheated, so it was all going to be about sheer, brazen luck. Already he had a straight, dwarven diamonds high. He contemplated throwing one of them out and thereby throwing the game, somewhat wracked with indecision as to whether winning or losing would be the best course of action.

‘That’s different.’ Anders squinted at his own cards with the same intense scrutiny he usually reserved for Garrett, when he’d just said something particularly humiliating. Garrett was beginning to understand that it was the look he wore for things he couldn’t, as he admitted himself, quite make out. ‘I am allowed to insult myself all I please, or not insult myself, as I see fit—but you are only allowed to not insult me. Do you see how that works?’

‘This is all very complicated,’ Garrett admitted.

‘Not really.’ Anders leaned over to pat him on his knee, revealing his entire hand—which was, Garrett wasn’t surprised to see, absolutely abysmal. Not even a forge-hammer amongst the lot. ‘Don’t worry. You’re clever enough. I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it.’

‘And I’m sure…you’re good at other things,’ Garrett ventured carefully. Anders delicately cleared his throat. ‘Did I say good? Because I didn’t mean good. I meant excellent.’

‘Be more specific,’ Anders suggested, plucking two cards out from the deck, seemingly at random, and tossing them back into the pile. ‘It’s one thing to be general, but I find it really helps when you personalize your compliments.’

‘You did a marvelous job on Karl Thekla’s face, for example,’ Garrett continued, feeling heartened by the encouragement. He decided not to throw out either of his dwarven diamonds. No matter how much he liked Anders—a feeling that intensified into outright ache whenever their knees bumped together, sitting so close by the fire—he still loved winning. Years of playing with Carver had taught him the importance of never capitulating, not even when one’s opponent seemed fit to cry with frustration. Or perhaps especially not then. ‘I mean, there weren’t even any blisters. If it weren’t for the hair problem, no one would ever know he’d almost gone up in flames.’

‘He does look funny, doesn’t he?’ Anders was staring at his new cards with a mixture of despair and dismay. When he caught Garrett watching him, he quickly adopted a new expression, probably meant to throw Garrett off the scent—smiling, showing off his teeth, earring sparkling in the low firelight. ‘Like a very old cat or something. The first time I saw him I burst out laughing. I don’t think he appreciated that,’ Anders added, ‘but as you can see, I find it difficult not to be scathingly honest about everything.’

‘Another excellent quality,’ Garrett said.

Anders tutted and shook his head. ‘You used excellent already. Garrett. I’m disappointed; you’re going to have to expand your vocabulary. Try using ‘luminous’ or something.’

‘Another luminous quality,’ Garrett offered, just to humor him.

‘Well…’ Anders scratched at a patch of stubble on his cheek. ‘Maybe not luminous. But something like luminous. What if it sounds better when it’s a superlative for something else? ‘My luminous honesty.’ Doesn’t that sound better, Garrett?’

Garrett knew, or thought he’d known, how this was all supposed to work. Luminous would have suited Anders’s eyes, which lit up the darkened tunnel far better than the scant fire did, or his personality, which was warm and irrepressible despite the fact that he was presumably being punished right at this very moment. And Garrett had read countless books, a few of them more like instruction manuals, that dealt with the subtle art of wooing a lover speechless with honeyed words. But when Garrett opened his mouth to say You’re luminous, Anders; everything about you is luminous, Anders held out his hand for Garrett to check.

‘I think I’ve already lost,’ he said. ‘Is that possible? I mean, it hasn’t even been one full round yet.’

Garrett blinked, and did his best to reformulate his response. Your cards are luminous, Anders didn’t exactly have the same ring to it. ‘You have lost,’ he said, after a brief perusal of Anders’s cards. ‘Now that takes talent.’

‘And you’re getting the hang of this complimenting thing,’ Anders replied. ‘See? I knew you’d cotton on to it.’

*

Garrett spent the rest of the evening trouncing Anders soundly, even when he was trying not to, but Anders was the most cheerful person he’d ever met when it came to being trounced. They were half-way through Anders’s seventeenth disastrous loss when they heard the clanking of armor sounding in the distance, and Garrett quickly put the fire out, while Anders scrambled to his feet.

‘Don’t get eaten by any spiders on your way back,’ Anders whispered, and brushed by Garrett as he scampered off, so close that Garrett could feel the press of his body in the dark.

Garrett had another wank that night, beneath the covers this time, all hot and sweaty and uncomfortable. He also had a feeling one of his roommates knew he was doing it; there was a loud and pointed Shh! from another bunk over, and Garrett reminded himself to oil one of his bedposts the next morning, so it wouldn’t be quite so squeaky.

It was worth it when he thought about how close he’d been sitting to Anders just that night, how they’d been able to enjoy one another’s company without any interruptions from interfering busybodies like Karl Thekla. Nothing had happened, and yet everything could have happened. It was that promise of infinite possibility Garrett found so intriguing. He’d never imagined finding a secret place to court the object of his affections, but now that he had one, he couldn’t picture his life without it.

That was all the impetus Garrett needed to visit Anders every night of his solitary confinement. They met between storerooms, and also at a variety of other junctions in the long, twisting tunnels that stretched for winding miles beneath the confines of the tower. Anders never allowed them to meet in the same place twice, claiming it threw the templars off their trail. It was unlike him to be so cautious, but then, maybe he was learning something from an attitude that had gotten him caught so many times before.

Also gratifying was that every time they met, Karl was nowhere to be seen. Garrett knew he was around—had seen him at breakfasts and in the library, still growing out that beard—but unless he was far bolder than Garrett knew, and was sneaking in to see Anders during a templar guard’s very long lunch-break, then he’d abandoned Anders completely.

Very intriguing.

Mostly, they did nothing more intimate than playing rounds of Diamondback and Wicked Grace by the light of Garrett’s fires. One night, they sat too close to a healer’s storeroom, and nearly set the poultices ablaze when Anders turned up half a straight of dwarven diamonds—his best hand yet.

‘That was bracing.’ Anders whistled, his sleeve damp from a glittering rush of ice he’d sent out to keep the entire place from going up in flames. ‘For a moment there, I almost thought you were going to live up to your name.’

‘What—Garrett?’ Garrett asked, smiling coyly as he kicked the firepit back into some semblance of order. Despite appearances and petty coincidences, he had other talents besides arson. Like small-talk, and compliments, and wooing. In between rounds of cards, they had actual discussions, and Garrett was even starting to feel better at it.

‘No, the other one,’ Anders said, playing along beautifully. He examined his pauldrons, lower lip jutting out with a pout as he tugged a few scorched feathers free. They drifted like falling ash onto the glowing coals of the fire, and Anders lifted his eyes, meeting Garrett’s gaze. ‘Of course, if you want Garrett to be synonymous with the flames of passion running wildly out of control, that’s an entirely different matter.’

That look alone sent a spike of heat straight through Garrett’s belly, like a hot iron making furrows in the snow. Mere fire couldn’t compare to the tricks Anders did with those eyes.

On the fifth night, Garrett decided to change things up a bit, and brought Anders a few of his favorite books. He couldn’t explain the daring, impulsive act, beyond a more general feeling: that it might not be entirely healthy for the budding seed of a relationship to be tainted so thoroughly by one party’s insistence on beating the other party at cards.

Anders hadn’t seemed to mind, but it was clear from the outset that he liked the books even better than losing at Diamondback. He coaxed Garrett at once to re-enact key dramatic scenes with him, and the stone tunnels rang with hushed but nevertheless inappropriate peals of choked laughter as Lady Talia Lyonne traded pointed barbs with the handsome but arrogant chevalier, Garren, in The Rose of Orlais.

‘Garren is awfully close to Garrett, you know,’ Anders observed, wiping a tear from his eye. He’d thrown off his pauldrons and let down his hair, in order, he’d explained, to be more convincing in his role of fashionable Orlesian noblewoman. ‘Is there something you aren’t telling me? A hidden author in the family, perhaps? I’ve always suspected that Amell fellow has a secret or two locked away in his wardrobe.’

‘Cousin Amell doesn’t have the imagination for stories,’ Garrett said. He punctuated his remark with an arrogant toss of his head—just for practice.

Anders wasn’t the only one who could devote himself to the portrayal of a character.

It was the least sleep Garrett gotten in weeks, and while he’d never paid much attention in class to begin with, Garrett’s visits to Anders left him with little time for anything else—no longer avoiding doing things he was supposed to, but outright sleeping through them. It was inevitable that his father would eventually notice, although to his credit, it took him far longer than Garrett had initially expected.

But then, he was always so busy. Bumbling apprentices required his attention just as much as demanding senior enchanters and difficult templars and all the rest, and Garrett had always known his place was rather low on his father’s long list of concerns.

‘So, Garrett—I haven’t been hearing any reports about you at all lately,’ Father said, coming up behind Garrett in the hall, on his way to an afternoon lecture. It was a well-planned ambush—there were no doors for Garrett to suddenly dart into, no corners for him to make a quick dash around, no nearby mages or even templars to use as a human shield between them.

Garrett’s eyes darted about nervously before he decided a nice chat with Father was probably preferable to enduring one of Senior Enchanter Wynne’s difficult lessons in life, learning, and liberty—or rather, lack thereof. He always napped through those lectures anyway, suffering the brunt of Wynne’s verbal beatings when she caught him snoring, then forgot about everything by supper.

Simple enough to manage, but there was no reason not to take the excuse while it stood and bow out of the routine entirely. It was easiest to forget something you never had to endure in the first place, after all.

‘It’s almost as if we’ve become strangers lately,’ Father added, while Garrett turned around to face him, affecting his best Company Smile. ‘I’m so accustomed to learning about all your exploits from breathless templars with melted armor and furious senior enchanters holding burn salves to their faces—without all that, I confess to feeling somewhat adrift.’

Garrett tried not to sigh too heavily. But really, he thought privately, why was it that no one of his Father’s age was ever able to make up his mind about anything? ‘First you want me to behave myself,’ Garrett said, ‘and then you come to me complaining that I’m behaving myself too well? Really, Father; is it any wonder I’m a—what was it you called me?—ah, yes: a confused young man.’

Malcolm Hawke looked unimpressed. ‘I already knew you’d been eavesdropping on that particular conversation with the Knight-Commander,’ he said. ‘Which is why I didn’t tell him anything I didn’t intend for you to hear.’

Garrett fumbled, then reclaimed his equilibrium admirably. ‘Just letting you know your brilliant plan worked, Father,’ he said. ‘I’m all cured now. Helplessly, hopelessly well-behaved, one might say. No longer a confused young man—and frankly, I suspect it was hearing those words that finally set me on the path toward reform. Thank you for standing by me through thick and thin. It’s meant a lot over the years.’

‘Garrett,’ Malcolm warned.

‘First Enchanter,’ Garrett replied, as a few young templars passed them by.

Father nodded toward them as they went, and they did their best to pretend they weren’t trying to figure out what was happening, if Garrett had finally struck again, if they’d be able to eavesdrop on the conversation from just around the corner. Garrett promised himself to make the conversation as boring as possible for them, all the while flashing his father his very white teeth.

‘Are we quite finished?’ Garrett asked. ‘I believe I’m late for a lesson with Senior Enchanter Wynne. Senior Enchanter Wynne is absolutely my favorite,’ he added, laying it on a little thick, just to keep Father on his toes. ‘Her level-headedness, her strong sense of practicality, her refusal to let my raucous snoring punctuate her teaching points…’ Garrett sighed fondly. ‘What a wonderful woman. I do hope, one day, I can be just like her.’

For a moment, Garrett wondered if he hadn’t gone too far. His father was the First Enchanter, after all—a fact no one, not even Anders, ever allowed Garrett to forget—and he didn’t really need a reason, Garrett supposed, to have Garrett locked up for a bit while he tried to figure out what was going on with him.

‘If you’re in some kind of trouble…’ Father began.

Garrett was in some kind of trouble, he thought—but it wasn’t the sort of trouble Father had come to expect. The snares and pitfalls of the heart were far beyond Malcolm Hawke’s ability to understand these days, with a life so cluttered by consent forms and personal appeals and meetings with the Knight-Commander and all the other mages he cared for just as if they were his own. Or perhaps better than if they were his own, in order to make a point about not indulging in favoritism. Except, of course, where Bethany was concerned—but then, no one could disagree that Bethany deserved to be everyone’s favorite.

‘I’ll see you on Sunday, Father,’ Garrett told him, loosening the collar of his robes and starting off down the hall. ‘Don’t forget to bring your appetite.’

‘Don’t forget to bring Garrett with you,’ Father called after him. ‘You know, strange lad. Violent outbursts. Difficult fellow. My son. If you happen to see him at your lecture, you might tell him I miss him.’

It was a dirty tactic, and Garrett tried not to think about it too much—since it would keep him from using the comfortable chairs in Senior Enchanter Wynne’s corner of the library as they were first intended: to guide him, on their velvety cushions, toward a lovely mid-afternoon nap.

*

After two weeks in solitary, Anders was finally set free, and Garrett tried not to be awful and disappointed about it, since really, Anders deserved a night’s sleep in a comfortable bed for once, and also, a hot bath.

But once he’d had both those things, he was surrounded by the attentions of so many interested parties, all clamoring to hear his latest tale, and Garrett either had to fight his way through a crowd of adolescents like he was one of them, or simply avoid being near Anders at all until the commotion had passed.

Disappointment couldn’t describe the feeling of having once been special, unique, alone with a person, then suddenly being relegated to occupying the same status as everyone else. At one point, over a sea of tousled heads, Anders caught Garrett’s eye as he passed by, and waved, with wiggly fingers, but there was nothing more than that, no hint of what they’d shared while the rest of the tower slept.

For the first time, with a sharp twist in his belly like a garden stake forced to splinter, Garrett thought he knew what drove people to blood magic. It wasn’t anything grandiose, like the desire to rule over Ferelden, or to raise a skeleton army with demon legionnaires; in fact, Garrett could think of very few people for whom the latter would apply. No, it was something more commonplace than that, something as simple as needing to know what your lover was thinking, and realizing that knowledge was well within your grasp.

That didn’t mean he’d ever do it. He wasn’t quite so far gone as all that yet. But still, it plagued him.

He wondered whether Father had ever felt like this, shut out of Mother’s high society world, without even the narrowest crack to wriggle in through. No wonder he’d hexed the Comte de Launcet. Garrett would have done the same thing, or probably worse.

In fact, it was enough to make him want to tear all his own hair out of his head. Or perhaps light it on fire.

He’d be stark-raving mad if this kept up much longer—swinging from the rafters in his smallclothes or hurling potted plants down from the rooftop garden onto unsuspecting templars passing below. Occasionally people did go mad in the books, when someone didn’t return their feelings—they locked themselves away in attics and rent their garments, or ran away from home and spent their days wandering the moors in the mist, pale wraiths of their former selves.

As far as Garrett knew, however, there weren’t any moors near Lake Calenhad or in the surrounding areas. It was probably better to avoid going mad altogether if he couldn’t do it properly.

But it did sting to see Anders in the library two stacks over without even a glance to spare for Garrett or his predicament. He was instead holding court over a group of mages who’d newly passed their Harrowing, plus Jowan, who still hadn’t.

‘His story changes every time I hear it,’ Garrett commented, for no reason other than to convince Jowan what he’d just heard was nothing more than a pack of lies. ‘You don’t really believe he found a route to the Deep Roads down there and fought off a genlock by himself, do you?’

‘I have problems of my own, you know,’ Jowan said, shrugging Garrett off. He looked paler than usual, the dark bags under his eyes so pronounced that Garrett wanted to ask whether he could carry his books in them. ‘Maybe I like to take my mind off of them by listening to someone else tell wild tales for a whole afternoon. Did you ever think of that?’

‘No,’ Garrett said, honestly. Under normal circumstances, he’d have patted Jowan on the shoulder, but the man looked so greasy and miserable that Garrett was afraid one good thump would knock him over. ‘Don’t worry. I’m sure you’ll pass your Harrowing someday.’

‘It’s not that,’ Jowan hissed. He looked over his shoulder, left and right, then tugged Garrett sideways into the section on magical relativism and the libertarian movement. Garrett allowed it, but not without wondering whether Anders was watching. Still, erratic behavior from Jowan was rather par for the course, and Garrett let himself imagine for one mean, selfish moment that there was some sort of horrible scandal brewing around Cousin Amell.

Despite each fresh disappointment, Garrett still managed to live in hope.

Jowan took a deep breath, then straightened up to his full height. ‘I’m in love,’ he announced. Somehow, he managed to make it sound like a terrible wasting disease, a rash he couldn’t cure, a lingering problem with his digestion.

Then again, as the sound of Anders’s jolly laughter broke through the silence of the library once more, Garrett wondered whether that wasn’t an apt description of the condition after all.

*

He spent the afternoon performing an uncharacteristic act of charity and actually listened to Jowan unburden himself about his lady friend. She was an initiate in the Circle who’d not yet taken her vows; they had to meet in secret in the tower’s chapel, always at night, never knowing when they might be caught; the paranoia was driving Jowan mad, probably more than his errant romantic feelings. Admittedly, Garrett’s meager sympathies dried up in short order—once he realized that not only did Lily return Jowan’s affections, but they’d had several opportunities to arrange for lover’s trysts.

Requited lover’s trysts, at that.

It was all incredibly unfair that even someone as miserable as Jowan should find love, with a person, without even the mitigating factor of having to navigate around Karl Thekla.

‘There, there,’ Garrett said, scanning the books behind Jowan’s head for what felt like the hundredth time. ‘I’m sure it’ll all work out eventually.’

‘I should say the same to you,’ Jowan said, with a rare flash of insight. Apparently it didn’t matter much to him whether his conversational partner was listening, just as long as he had someone to talk to. Already he looked a little less deathly pale; perhaps the act of unburdening himself emotionally had caused him to feel physically lighter. ‘Don’t look at me like that. I might not know much, but I know the agony of love when I see it. You can’t give up hope. Sometimes it helps to be a little more…assertive than usual? Although I doubt that’s your problem. Please don’t light anything on fire.’

Garrett wondered, idly, when people would finally stop saying that to him. He wasn’t swinging from the rafters yet, after all, and it was astonishingly unfair that one act of frustration should mark a man enough that even his friends—or rather, lingering acquaintances—would so radically change their opinions of him. It was one thing to be a rebellious young upstart who engaged in charming acts of anarchy, and quite another to scare away all potential comrades in arms by making it obvious one was physically dangerous to all and sundry.

Intimidation, Garrett was coming to realize, was a double-edged sword, or a staff with two heads. As much as he hated to agree with his father about anything, there was the distinct possibility he was harming his own chances by being so unpredictable.

He wanted to be awe-inspiring, not beastly. The subtlety between the two was something to contemplate for future endeavors, in any case.

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ Garrett told Jowan, surrendering himself to the theories of a dead man—who had likely, if one could judge by the writings of Garrett’s chosen volume, bored himself into the grave. ‘Perhaps you need more sunlight. Your paleness is starting to glow.’

‘Here’s an idea,’ Jowan suggested. ‘Why don’t you just let the fellow know how you feel, rather than hoping he picks up on all your clever little clues? I’d certainly be perplexed,’ he added, crossing his arms over his chest. ‘It’s not exactly as though you’re using universal signs. Anyway, it worked for me and Lily. Not lighting anyone on fire, that is. Not in the literal sense.’

Garrett refrained from alienating the one person who continued to regularly talk to him—if only out of mutual desperation, an inability to befriend anyone else even slightly more normal—by informing him there was absolutely no similarity between the two situations. Anders was far more complex than Lily, and clearly had higher standards. It was apples and oranges, templars and mages, to borrow one of Anders’s clever comparisons.

‘All I’m saying is,’ Jowan concluded, almost having the audacity to look smug, ‘I’m meeting with Lily this very night. And you’re feeding Mr. Wiggums, then retiring early to your dormitory room, alone. Do you see where I’ve made the mental leap necessary to determine your way just…isn’t working out for you?’

It was hard—basically insufferable—to realize that Jowan, of all people, had just experienced a revelation so superbly obvious even a child should have been capable of grasping its dimensions, whereas Garrett himself had somehow missed it.

*

Garrett sat alone in the stacks for a time once Jowan left, listening to Anders’s laugh rise above the rest, light and airy and vague. It didn’t sound as genuinely amused as when there’d been just the two of them crouched next to barrels full of preserved elfroot and bandages, next to a fire Garrett kept so hopefully stoked.

So Garrett decided to take action.

He could waste away if he wanted to, but that was no fun, and—much as he hated to admit it—Jowan had a point. There was something to be said for taking the direct approach, even if that something was ultimately terrifying.

But Garrett was strong, brave, master of giant spiders and conqueror of cellars. He was the great chevalier Garren, too, but only upon request, only when Anders was there to watch him. He was going to have to take this one step further, and continue these nocturnal visits now that Anders was topside.

It was the least he could do. For Anders’s sake, really, as well as his own.

All he needed was a stack of playing cards and The Rose of Orlais, each tucked away into their respective belt-pouches; he already knew the schedule of the nighttime guard, how to avoid each patrol, and where Anders’s little room was, settled in neatly between two other little rooms just like his own, gilded numbering beside the unassuming door.

Due to all his flagrant acts of literal escapism, Anders had actually been rewarded with his own private quarters amongst the senior enchanters who, due to position, weren’t forced into suffering completely communal living any longer. Ostensibly, it was to keep him from corrupting any potential roommates. Very clever; Garrett could only assume it was all a part of Anders’s great plan to make life in the tower as pleasant for himself as possible, trips to solitary notwithstanding.

Garrett snuck along the corridors with ease, deck of cards slapping against one thigh, The Rose of Orlais bruising the other, avoiding the occasional pair of sleepy templars attempting to stand at attention, feeling equal parts exhilarated and nauseous. He knew—because despite the turmoil of emotions and desires that was his particular age, he actually understood himself, at least sometimes—that if he stopped at any point, he’d lose momentum, and therefore never make it to Anders’s room at all. There were worse things, and also possibly less humiliating things, but the last thing Garrett wanted, even beyond making a fool of himself in front of the one person who really mattered, was to let Jowan surpass him in any arena.

It wasn’t fair, wasn’t just, wasn’t right. And, even worse, Garrett would have no one to blame but himself if he actually allowed this preposterous state of affairs to continue.

Frankly, it was a sin against the Maker. Garrett was only doing what he must, in order to keep Thedas in proper balance.

Once in front of Anders’s door, however, the wild compulsion, the sheer gravitational force, that had drawn him through the quieted halls suddenly bottomed out, and Garrett was left merely with a wealth of energy, a deck of playing cards, and an old book that wasn’t even his. Not exactly the finest weapons—but then, he really had to stop thinking of all this as an attack.

That was what had gotten him labeled as an arsonist in the first place. And he was trying to change that part around now, presumably for the better.

He’d done enough deliberating. It was time to act. Garrett tested the handle of Anders’s door to find it unlocked, then turned it before he could think himself out of it, slipping into the darkened room. Before, their time together had worked so well precisely because he’d had an idea and he’d ran with it. All impulse, no thought—the recipe for greatness. Anders hadn’t been expecting him, but he’d welcomed Garrett’s company readily enough.

That had to mean something.

There was a candle flickering just behind a standing screen, and Garrett stepped toward it hopefully, knowing from their time together underground that Anders wasn’t the sort of person who could sleep with anything bright nearby.

‘Anders?’ he began hopefully, if a little tentative, stepping toward the light. It was time to say something clever beyond that, Garrett knew, something like: I hope you didn’t think I’d let you out of being trounced at Diamondback, just because you’re no longer incarcerated.

But the words disappeared somewhere between Garrett’s tongue and his lips. The scene that confronted him seared itself into the flesh of his mind before Garrett could be certain what that scene even was. Then, all the pieces fell into place one by one, a fractured sort of imagery, making a terrible sense once it came together: Anders, seated on the bed; dark, rumpled robes drawn up to his waist, boots still on; and Karl Thekla’s impossibly bearded face in his lap. Anders’s head was cast back, his white throat bared to the room at large. His thighs were exactly as pale as the rest of him, just as Garrett had hoped, one of them slender and soft-looking beneath Karl’s hand. His knee trembled as he caught his heel against the back of the bed.

His fingers were knotted in Karl’s graying hair.

Garrett cleared his throat, catching a glimpse of something damp and pink under Karl’s lips. The twin weights of the cards and book felt like rocks Garrett had tied to his belt—and sinking to the bottom of Lake Calenhad did seem like an alluring prospect right about now.

Then, Anders twitched to attention, quickly dropping the folds of his robes to obscure what was happening beneath them.

As if it wasn’t already far too late for that.

‘Hello, Garrett,’ Anders said. His voice was amused, but there was a brittle quality to it that Garrett had never heard before. ‘Don’t worry—everyone learns that all-too important lesson about knocking on closed doors eventually. Never too late, that’s what I always say; never too sorry, however, is a contradiction in—ahh—terms.’

‘Anders,’ Karl murmured, muffled and wet from beneath Anders’s robes.

It was the sound of his voice that did it—the chiding, the promise of kindness, the reminder that Karl Thekla was here at all when he hadn’t been there any of the nights Anders had really needed company. Red hot anger flashed in Garrett’s mind; hormones mixed with disappointment and the most incendiary element of all, which was magic. And then, the thick, dusty drapes next to Anders’s bedside caught aflame.

Garrett startled back a step, nearly tripping over his own bootlaces, wondering whether he shouldn’t at least try and put it out, when his eyes traveled back to Anders and Karl, the two of them still trapped in an intimate embrace that really shouldn’t have been given an audience, no matter how little privacy they had in the Circle to begin with.

The little flames sizzled and hissed, shooting up the length of the thin fabric, singing the window-frame and heating the glass.

‘Sorry,’ Garrett muttered hoarsely, looking everywhere but at Anders’s face, everywhere but the fire, although both burned him equally. ‘I didn’t mean to— I’m sorry. Beg pardon. I really must—go.’

Fleeing wasn’t the bravest course of action, but Garrett had already done quite enough to be ashamed of for one night. Turning tail was the least of his worries after walking in on Anders and Karl, not to mention starting another fire in both their vicinities.

Karl would probably be the man to put it out, if he could take his mouth off of Anders’s cock long enough to play the hero.

Garrett kept his head down and his feet moving forward until he was out of there, out of the dormitory wing altogether, pounding down the stairs, unsure of what pained him more—the disappointment, or the embarrassment. He was horrified by the prospect that one or both of them might try to follow him, but he heard no bootfalls against the slate floor. There was no indication that Anders and Karl hadn’t cast a casual ice-spell, then had a good laugh together, then returned to what Garrett had only momentarily interrupted them doing.

And why shouldn’t they? It was what Garrett would have done, if he was in Karl’s place. Tenaciously marking what he wanted with lips, teeth, and tongue…

But he wasn’t in Karl’s place, despite everything he’d done to try and get there, and maybe—all things considered—it was time for Garrett to accept that. Perhaps the first step to overcoming his reputation as an arsonist was to remove the thing that kept making him feel like lighting things on fire.

If that didn’t work, he’d run away to the Frostback Mountains and throw himself off the highest, snowiest peak. The dwarves would someday find his corpse and compose ballads about The Mage Who Fell Into The Sky, and Anders would be moved to weeping every time he heard it.

Yes, Garrett thought; he rather liked that prospect.

*

He conveyed his plans the next miserable afternoon to the only creature in the tower whom Garrett now trusted to handle his troubles with the sensitivity they merited: Mr. Wiggums.

A cat, even though Garrett was actually a dog person.

The elderly orange sack of bones had been a resident of the tower ever since Garrett’s arrival, and they’d bonded as a stray kitten and a lonely boy; together, they’d weathered Malcolm Hawke’s appointment as First Enchanter, a dearth of mice to hunt in the study, Garrett’s Harrowing, countless bowls of sub-par milk, and the various injustices of living with twin siblings.

Mr. Wiggums’ age had nothing to do with his lugubrious attitude toward life; there were times when he didn’t move for days, even weeks, from his perch on a hidden bench just beneath a narrow little window, slumbering like the dead in a meager shaft of sunlight. The only indication Mr. Wiggums was, in fact, still alive was the occasional twitch of his whiskers when Garrett petted him on the back of the head, between his ears—which were so devoid now of fur that they reminded Garrett unfortunately of Karl Thekla’s beard.

Thinking about Karl Thekla’s beard made Garrett think about where that beard had been recently, and he couldn’t help but feel betrayed by Mr. Wiggums, who was supposed to be an ally in all things, or at the very least, a friend.

Still, Garrett rubbed his finger along the knobby bone at the top of Mr. Wiggums’ otherwise very flat head, down between his loose scruff, feeling him—faintly, from a great, sleepy distance—begin to purr, a low rumble that shook him all the way through each brittle bone.

There was something soothing about pets, Garrett thought idly, whether one was giving them or receiving them, that pacified the soul of even the most savage beast. He wondered if, in days long past, anyone had ever thought to gently rub a palm over the scaly spot right between a dragon’s eyes, or tickle an archdemon just below the chin. It might have solved a great deal of strife and famine and slaughter if they had.

If only Garrett could someday be in charge of things. Not all of Thedas; that would be far too much. Just a city, a big one, might be enough to satisfy him.

He also wished he had someone to pet him just then, in turn, since one act of kindness generally deserved another to reward it.

But Garrett’s life had never really worked out in that regard; even when he’d been a good boy, for a brief period lasting just over a week after his thirteenth birthday—in the hopes of convincing the Maker, or whoever else was listening, to make Carver disappear—he hadn’t managed to turn the tides of the world in his favor. Understandably, he’d quit that venture before wasting too much of his time not having fun, and never looked back, at least not during daylight hours.

‘My, what an adorable picture the two of you make,’ Anders’s voice said suddenly, with no more warning than a creak of the floorboards to signal his appearance—a sound that came just after he began to speak. ‘One would almost think you aren’t bent on burning this place to the ground. An arsonist mass-murderer, if you will. Just arsonist doesn’t really cover it anymore, does it?’

Mr. Wiggums cracked one eye open in reprove as Garrett’s hand froze; then, he managed a breathy half-yowl, half-yawn to encourage him to continue. But, because Mr. Wiggums ultimately didn’t care what anyone else did around him, he immediately went back to sleep.

Traitor, Garrett thought uncharitably—but then, cats always were.

‘Is this your co-conspirator, I take it?’ Anders continued cheerfully, when Garrett refused to reply—or rather, wisely chose not to incriminate himself any further. Still, despite the fact that Garrett was very clearly a danger to others as well as to himself, but especially to others, Anders stepped closer, crouching down beside the bench, poking Mr. Wiggums’ nose with his forefinger. ‘He does look savage. Isn’t that right, Mr. Wiggums? Yes he does.’

Mr. Wiggums didn’t so much as flick a whisker, accepting the gross indignity with the same poise he displayed no matter the situation, no matter the company, no matter the locale—and, a moment later, he began to fart. Garrett wrinkled his nose, and Anders seemed blissfully unaware of the new development; Garrett could only hope Anders didn’t catch wind of it, and think it wasn’t the cat.

‘I had no idea you were on such close terms with Mr. Wiggums,’ Anders went on, nobly bearing the entire brunt of the conversation by himself, perhaps not even noticing he was the only one talking, perhaps enjoying it that he was. ‘He’s very particular about his choice of friends, you know. Cats in general have high standards, of course; that’s why we get along so swimmingly. Then again, I’ve always suspected Mr. Wiggums might secretly be devious, in which case it doesn’t surprise me one bit to find the two of you plotting the downfall of the tower together.’ He concluded the funny little speech with a wiggle of his nose and a chuff of his forefinger, right beneath the long, whiskery hairs on Mr. Wiggums’ chin, and a few words that weren’t words at all, but rather loving, garbled syllables, soggy and soft and incredibly affectionate.

Once again, Mr. Wiggums began to purr.

‘Or perhaps you set a few mice on fire for him?’ Anders concluded, now tapping his own chin, looking up at Garrett with that wonderful light in his eyes. ‘A few other cats muscling in on his territory?’

Somehow, despite everything, Anders was smiling. That should have made things better, but Garrett found it only made things worse.

‘Mr. Wiggums has no idea about my exploits, actually,’ Garrett said, finding his voice at last. ‘So I’d prefer it if you didn’t mention them here, and ruin my reputation with him entirely.’

Anders made a noise of understanding, rocking back on his heels. ‘Oh. Oh, of course. I see how it is. On your best behavior for Mr. Wiggums, but lighting all my things and all my friends on fire. What have I done to deserve such an honor?’

Garrett quickly looked away, squinting at the dirty glass of the windowpane. He knew he could have so easily scooted over, let Anders in to sit beside him, the warm length of his thigh and hip pressed up against Garrett’s body, but for whatever reason, Garrett was incapable of doing anything right for himself. Instead, he asked, ‘What are you doing here, Anders?’

‘Do you know, I’ve often asked myself the exact same question,’ Anders said, settling onto the floor at last. ‘Anders what are you doing here? You’re so clearly made for something better, something grander than all this. Then, much like Mr. Wiggums here, I fall asleep and forget all about it afterward.’ He offered Garrett a warm smile that—given the circumstances—ought to have violated some sort of law. ‘Well, that, and Karl seemed to think I should seek you out. Talk to you. Try to get to the bottom of this dreadful habit you’ve picked up. He might have come himself, you see, but once burned, twice shy, after all, and twice burned is probably four times shy. Maybe even worse.’

‘I didn’t actually burn him this time,’ Garrett pointed out, a stickler for correcting all the wrong details as usual, while managing to avoid all the right ones. ‘Just—something near him.’

‘That is an improvement,’ Anders admitted. ‘Or is it simply that your aim is getting worse?’ While pretending to rub at the white spot on the side of Mr. Wiggums’s head, he surreptitiously stretched his leg out, poking Garrett with his boot. ‘It’s just that it’s been brought to my attention that I might have handled the whole thing rather badly. I may act as though my life is all kissing and moonlight orgies in the roof garden—and don’t get me wrong, I’ve had my fair share of…well, anyway—the point I’m trying to make is that I was as surprised as you were by the whole, ah, shall we say…incident?’ Anders laughed, possessed of at least enough self-awareness to sound properly embarrassed about the whole thing.

Garrett should have felt relieved. He didn’t. ‘You’re here because of Karl?’

‘Hm. Yes,’ Anders said. He stopped bobbing his foot up and down, no longer tapping Garrett’s calf. ‘He’s got all sorts of ideas, you see, about how to talk to people. If it were up to me, I’d have let nature take its course, allowed things to blow over just as Andraste and the Maker intended, curtains and hearts to mend themselves… That sort of thing.’

‘Hm,’ Garrett echoed. Mr. Wiggums’s tail lashed just once, as though picking up on his inner turmoil. Perhaps it shouldn’t have mattered, but he’d allowed himself to think that maybe Anders had come here to tell him that last night was a huge mistake—that it was a desire demon, or he’d seen Garrett’s face and everything had at last fallen into place.

But life, Garrett was beginning to discover, was very different from books. If she’d been a real person, Lady Talia Lyonne would probably have married someone else, someone more sensible, with square shoulders and a dependable personality—or Garren would have settled down with a nice peasant girl, one who was appropriately impressed by his wealth and holdings. There was nothing real that held them together, just two enormous personalities and the mad impression they deserved something more. Or mutual boredom. Or mutual insanity.

Garrett was beginning to think authors should have been made to live before they were allowed to write about the lives of others.

‘I quite agree,’ Anders said, with a flash of white teeth. He let out a sigh, posture relaxing in a way that seemed to Garrett to be highly inappropriate for the situation. ‘I’m so glad we got all that straightened out—I hate it when things are awkward between friends.’

‘You can tell Karl that everything’s fine,’ Garrett said. There was a fine crack in the window glass, he noted, and a small procession of ants was crawling in through another, in the leftmost lower pane. ‘I’ve no intention of interrupting your time together again; I’m sure he’ll be thrilled to hear it. He’s safe from all future fires. At least any that I might start.’

That beard was still a fire hazard, as far as he was concerned, but Garrett would allow others to do the honors from then on.

‘Garrett,’ Anders said, playfully joggling at his leg once again. ‘Did you know—that didn’t sound at all sincere. It sounded awkward, and I’ve only just told you how much I dislike that.’

‘Because you don’t like things to be awkward between you and your friends?’ Garrett wondered aloud.

‘Precisely,’ Anders said. Mr. Wiggums made a noise like a rusty old plow breaking down, then shifted to rest his head on top of Garrett’s boot. ‘I’m glad you were paying such close attention—it’s a wonderful feeling, being listened to. I think there’s hope for you yet.’

‘But I’m not friends with Karl,’ Garrett told him. He tore his gaze away from the window, bravely meeting Anders’s…shoulder with his eyes. ‘We aren’t even friends the way you are with Karl.’

Anders’s lips twitched, though he swiftly tamped down the urge to smile. ‘I’m sure that might be arranged if you weren’t so keen to light him on fire all the time, Garrett. He might not look it, but he’s an absolute rogue to the core.’

This time, even Garrett couldn’t pinpoint the place this conversation had gone amiss. He only knew that he’d become ensnared in a discussion that covered none of the points he wanted it to, and had in fact introduced several new topics he really didn’t want to think about.

He might have left then and there if it wasn’t for Mr. Wiggums curled up on his boot.

‘Tell Karl thank you from me,’ Garrett said, folding his arms. It was only a half second later that he realized he’d used his father’s tone, saved for when First Enchanter Hawke wanted a conversation ended. But then, having picked up on the similarity, he wasn’t able to stop it, only to make it even worse. ‘I don’t think there’s much else to say, really.’

Mother had tried to warn him about this, Garrett realized; something about suffering and causing it himself and how that was life’s greatest tragedy and so on. But he hadn’t listened to her, and now he was here, both tragic and suffering, just as she’d predicted.

Anders poked him again, with the tip of his toe, then quickly retracted his leg, as though he felt more fire was forthcoming. When Garrett did nothing but stare at the far wall, he could almost feel Anders deflate.

‘Now this isn’t how things were supposed to go,’ Anders murmured, almost sounding a bit distraught. Garrett was at war with himself, wanting very badly to turn and laugh and pretend his bad mood was just a joke, to swallow his own pride and his own unhappiness in order to make Anders happy. Yet the closer he came to biting back disappointment and accepting his place as Anders’s friend—not his friend the way Karl Thekla was his friend, but at least the way Garrett could be his friend, if he stopped being such an idiot first—the farther that possibility was, shrinking in the distance, only a dim point of light on the horizon, before sinking out of sight completely.

Garrett had no idea how a person could want one thing so badly, yet stubbornly refuse at all turns to grant it to themselves. Was there no end to the contradictions of manhood?

‘Garrett,’ Anders said.

Garrett’s eye twitched. He liked the way Anders said his name, all nervous and hopeful, testing the waters, shifting closer along the bench.

‘Garrett,’ Anders added, even more nervous and even more hopeful, drawing out the e, tongue tapping against his teeth with the final consonant.

Garrett did his best not to blink. Just once more, he thought—one more time, and it would reset the balance, make them friends again, or friends for the first time, since Garrett had no idea what they were to each other before. One thing on Garrett’s end, apparently, and quite another on Anders’s. And never the same thing at the same time; that was the problem, really, where things had all gone so terribly wrong.

‘Oh, never mind,’ Anders said, unexpectedly brittle, and stood quickly enough to upset Mr. Wiggums, who did nothing at all to show he was upset. Garrett simply knew—because he had a wealth of intuition for everyone who didn’t matter.

When it came to those who did, however, he was blind as a nug in heat, and twice as stupid.

The sound of Anders stalking off had a certain finality in the bootfalls, stirring a cloud of dust from a nearby shelf, knocking one of the books over onto its side with a dull clap.

‘Now that isn’t how things were supposed to go,’ Garrett repeated, this time to himself. Only a cat was there to listen to him, and Garrett hoped his life hadn’t been broken so irreparably that there would be only cats in its future—a fat lot of them, whom he spoke to as if they were people, once he’d alienated everyone else in he’d ever known, just by being stubborn.

*

Garrett attempted to return to the darkspawn-may-care ways of his youth—which seemed so close now, but also so far—yet he was incapable of reclaiming the same joy and feckless inspiration that once colored his days. Even mixing up the smallclothes of the senior enchanters during wash day had lost its spark, and once that happened, Garrett knew there was no turning back from the path toward maturity at this stage in the game. This loss had changed him, forever; it had marked him, and if he hadn’t been a man before—which he so often suspected he had—then now he really was, without question or pause.

The problem wasn’t just what he’d lost—since, to be perfectly honest, he’d never really had anything to begin with—but rather what he couldn’t look forward to anymore. He tried to play Diamondback with Jowan one evening after supper, but it just wasn’t the same; when Jowan lost, he wasn’t nearly so charming about it, but actually rather sullen, saying all kinds of rude things about Garrett’s mother, and after no more than ten minutes of being soundly beaten he made some excuse about meeting Lily, and left Garrett with no one else to entertain him.

At least Anders had never abandoned Garrett in the middle of one of their nighttime trysts to spend time with Karl. Although, to be fair, Karl had been up in the tower, while Anders was all the way down in solitary.

Garrett was aware he was making excuses for Anders now, but he still didn’t want to be the one to capitulate, and if this pride had to be the burden he carried with him from now until his funeral pyre in some undisclosed future, then so be it. He was prepared. His mind and his heart were ready.

‘I can’t help but notice you’re acting particularly bizarre, Garrett,’ Father told him, during a scheduled meeting, one that happened every Saturday afternoon. A clever tactic—Father was always trying to ascertain whether or not Garrett was going to spring something unpleasant on the rest of the family during Sunday late-lunches—and Garrett almost contemplated, albeit very briefly, actually telling his father what was wrong.

Then, he realized he didn’t know what would be worse: his father’s confusion, or his kind understanding.

‘You’re absolutely right, Father,’ Garrett said, going glassy-eyed and vague, a technique for avoidance that had taken him years to perfect, like a mabari learning to play dead out in the Kocari Wilds. ‘I think I’m coming down with something. May I please be excused from herbology this afternoon? All that dirt and sunlight can’t possibly be good for my constitution.’

‘Actually, I’m rather sure the opposite of that would be true,’ Malcolm Hawke said, but Garrett knew from the timbre of his voice that he had no idea what was going on.

It would all be better that way. Garrett preferred to suffer in private.

There was one incident that nearly proved to be fatal, when he ran into Karl Thekla just outside his father’s office—literally ran into him—and he harbored the brief, bright fear that the man was here to tell Malcolm everything. Then, it faded, as Karl cleared his throat and looked politely elsewhere, so as to avoid making things awkward.

Just as Anders preferred it.

‘Just trying to keep you on your toes,’ Garrett said miserably. ‘Watch out. My head is actually considered a dangerous weapon by three out of four senior enchanters.’

‘I can’t imagine why,’ Karl replied, with a rather dry sense of timing, as Garrett fled toward parts unknown.

The real problem was that there was no one so interesting as Anders in the entire tower, and thus Garrett had ruined himself for other forms of distraction. He’d backed himself into a real corner this time, and he had no one to blame but himself.

He couldn’t even cheer himself up by imagining the usual: that Mr. Wiggums could talk, and that he did so in a funny voice like Senior Enchanter Sweeney’s. With his creaks and his whistles and his squeaks, he’d put all Garrett’s affairs to rest by telling him he was acting childish, and that—understandably, since no one could contradict a cat and feel quite right about themselves after—would be that.

It wasn’t as if Anders had known Garrett harbored feelings of a volatile nature for him. Despite acting like an idiot—an idiot with the capacity for becoming a human torch, so at least it was the best kind of idiot—Garrett played his cards rather close to the vest. And, demonstrably, Anders was terrible at cards. He couldn’t win despite his best efforts, or even the best efforts of those he was playing with. Somehow, Anders’s lack of skill always managed to outweigh Garrett’s best cheating.

In retrospect, it was no wonder he’d been utterly oblivious.

Knowing that didn’t make Garrett feel any less stupid, however. It was an uncomfortable situation on all accounts. He felt like he was wearing his too-small robes, except this time it was his own skin Garrett felt trapped in. A man couldn’t change that—no matter how hard he tried, no matter how badly he wished it.

Occasionally, when he passed Cousin Amell in the hall, the little bastard would offer Garrett a blue-eyed look of sympathy that let him know Mother must have written and asked him to keep an eye on her eldest son. Garrett bore the attention with an even-handed mix of resentment and humiliation, but chose never to actually respond to it.

Even an arsonist had his limits.

*

The days passed in a fog of low-grade boredom. Garrett’s life seemed drained of all its color, until it resembled nothing more than the slop they called pudding in the mess hall, and great gobbets of clotted phlegm outside of it.

Things were no longer even interesting enough to be called miserable. They simply existed, and Garrett attempted to grow used to the new tenor and tone of his life now that it lacked all forms of anticipation. Perhaps that was the secret of living in the Circle. Maybe wanting things as badly as he wanted Anders only led to heartache, and that was the lesson they all had to learn eventually.

He might even have managed to convince himself of it, too, were it not for the fact that, while he was down in the dregs of the apprentice’s quarters seeking out Bethany—so he could feel better about himself by comparing his life to one that was even more insufferable—Garrett ran into Anders.

Or rather, he ran into half of Anders.

The other half, conspicuously, was leaning out the window, robes tugged up to his knees. It was unmistakably Anders, though—because Anders was only one man wore a blond ponytail with such dashing indifference, not to mention Garrett could see the gold hoop winking in his ear.

Garrett’s pulse rattled noisily in his chest, making itself known for the first time in days.

So he did still have a heart, then. For a while, it had been up for debate.

‘What are you doing?’ Garrett asked. He meant to sound authoritative, but instead it all came out as a child’s demand, indignant at this fresh upset to his status quo.

Anders twitched, nearly dropping over the sill; it was only through an extraordinary feat of flexibility that he managed to right himself again, and Garrett felt a nervous throb of guilt at the sight of him floundering. Then, after a moment’s precarious uncertainty, Anders slid his body back inside, gripping the window-frame with one hand and setting his boot back on the ground.

‘Arsonist,’ Anders said, with a curt nod. Garrett did his best to tell himself he didn’t miss Garrett, in that voice, with a quirk of the lips and a cock of the head, and of course failed horribly. ‘You certainly have impeccable timing, I’ll give you that.’

‘That’s it?’ Garrett asked. ‘You’re leaving?’

Anders glanced out the window, then back toward Garrett. ‘That’s right; I am leaving. Or rather, I will leave, once people stop interrupting me.’

Garrett fought off the urge to run to the window, and instead clarified his initial question. ‘You were going to leave without telling anyone?’

‘I usually find that telling everyone doesn’t bode well for the continued success of my plan,’ Anders said. He swung his body around to face Garrett fully, crossing his legs at the ankle, still leaning in the open window. It didn’t look very safe. ‘Or hadn’t you noticed the gossip in this place travels faster than it does in the Pearl on a Sunday? Not that I’ve ever been to the Pearl, mind you, much less on a Sunday; I just know these things. They’re common knowledge. Besides—you made it rather clear you didn’t want to talk to me, so how could I trust you with my parting words? It’s possible I might have misread the situation, of course, but then again, absolute silence makes such a pointed statement. Difficult to misunderstand nothing, isn’t it? Even for someone like me.’

This, Garrett realized, was his moment to apologize. Anders hadn’t asked for it in as many words, but it seemed to be what he wanted.

‘I—’ Garrett began.

Then, before he could make it any further, Anders fell out the window.

It all seemed to happen very slowly, but in reality it probably happened very quickly, as Anders re-crossed his legs, trying to make himself more comfortable, completely losing his balance in the process, and whirling his arms about like the blades on a windmill as he pitched backward into the sky. A look of such pure shock—not to mention weightlessness—passed over his face, his mouth a perfect, round ‘o’ of surprise, and Garrett moved without thinking, lunging forward to grab him by the boots.

In retrospect, it was a terrible plan that could only end one way: with Anders wildly grasping for purchase, landing his fingers tight in Garrett’s hair, and managing only to pull Garrett out the window with him. At least it was better than what it felt like at first—which was that Anders was trying, with only his hands, to decapitate him.

They landed some few seconds later in a tangled heap, Garrett’s wrist beneath Anders’s ass, Anders’s left bootheel halfway inside Garrett’s ear. The rest of Garrett’s face was shoved into Anders’s lap, and with Anders fingers raking through his hair, he couldn’t help but think they must have looked very raunchy indeed, just like one of the more advanced diagrams from his book from Llomerryn. Garrett had always dreamed of trying it out, and here he was doing so with Anders, of all people.

But it was the textbook definition of irony, since after all, this both was and was not what Garrett had in mind when he pictured the clandestine moment.

‘Bleugh,’ Anders groaned, turning around to spit a clump of grass out of his mouth. ‘Lucky that was only two stories, am I right? Any more than three and we’d probably be a fine paste, fit only to spread on the Knight-Commander’s toast at breakfast. Hang on; allow me to remove my foot from your head, shall I?’

True to his word, Anders managed to twist his leg free, then roll off Garrett’s arm, flopping onto his back on the ground and staring up, dazed, at the bright sky. When he didn’t make any move to shove Garrett off, Garrett remained as he was with his head against Anders’s hip, listening to the sound of his stomach gurgling nervously, various other noises—Garrett’s own rushing pulse, dull panic, and distant pain chief among them—still ringing in his ears.

‘Why is it,’ Anders asked, breathless, ‘that we’re always interrupted just when you’re about to get to the good bits? And now you can’t apologize, because I’ve probably broken your wrist with my rear end, which means I have to apologize instead. You did this on purpose, didn’t you, Garrett? Pushed me out the window with your mind?’

‘I couldn’t possibly have done that because I’m a terrible force mage,’ Garrett told him, adrenaline spiking too high for him to sound sour about it. ‘Just ask Karl Thekla.’

Very carefully, he levered himself up onto his good arm, casting a nervous glance toward the window they’d only just fallen out of, then another, equally nervous glance back toward Anders. His lips were still parted, his chest rising and falling heavily, his hair tousled and tugging free of its length of leather cord, a few stray locks falling over his forehead and across one eye. As Garrett noticed it, Anders did too, and he wrinkled his face up, trying to blow it away.

Garrett asked himself, What would Mother do? She was really the only decent role model he had left.

But Garrett already knew the answer to that; without thinking any more about it, since thinking always ruined everything, Garrett shifted his weight to his other side, and brushed the hair out of Anders’s face with his good hand, a soft little flick of his fingers, thumb brushing against the curve of Anders’s cheek.

‘Oh,’ Anders said. ‘How very thoughtful of you. Thank you…for that. But shouldn’t you be more careful with your—’

Pain shot through Garrett’s body, from the heel of hand all the way up to his elbow. He shouted in Anders’s face, and pitched forward into his chest, losing control of his body completely.

‘—wrist. Exactly as I thought,’ Anders said, having the decency to sound only mildly horrified by the display. ‘Broken by my ass, clearly. You know, Garrett, part of being a brilliant healer is knowing exactly what needs to be healed—having that good sense, that animal instinct. You’re either born with it or you aren’t.’ He patted at Garrett’s back, not entirely effectual, but somehow soothing; as the pain ebbed, Garrett managed to roll off him again, his new robes stained with grass, Anders’s hair in his face once more. ‘Garrett,’ Anders continued, as he sought out Garrett’s hand, cool fingers warming with his healing touch, ‘I’m beginning to wonder if you aren’t…cursed or something. Strange things happen whenever you’re nearby. Quite frankly, I don’t think you’re ever safe to be around.’

Garrett took a moment to marvel at how wonderful it felt to be healed by a really gentle person; for all Anders acted careless, he was taking great pains to be careful with Garrett now, and it somehow meant more to him than all the sultry looks and wicked winks he’d thrown Garrett’s way in the past.

‘I’m not safe,’ he said, as warmth crept up the length of his wrist, through his fingers, to the very tips. ‘I’m dangerous. Just like the chevalier.’

‘The heart wants what it wants and we can’t take away your feelings,’ Anders murmured. ‘Yes. I remember. Very rousing. Slightly less convincing when you’re falling out windows or setting people on fire because of those convictions, but I’m sure I admire them all the same.’

‘It wasn’t people.’ Garrett yanked up a clump of grass. ‘It was Karl Thekla. …Karl Thekla’s beard, I mean. That’s hardly a person, now is it?’

‘It was his defining characteristic,’ Anders replied. ‘Well, aside from his impressive—you know what, never mind all that. I really should be going.’

‘Right,’ Garrett said, casually flexing his newly healed wrist. ‘Don’t you worry about me. I’ll just scale the wall and slip back in through the window. Or maybe I’ll go around to the front door and knock to be let in again. Do you think Knight-Commander Greagoir will believe I was startled by a rat and fell out of my own accord?’

‘I think you should tell him you fell off the roof onto the back of an enormous winged griffon,’ Anders said, raising his arms wide to indicate the exact scale he was picturing. Then he struggled to his feet, eyeing the horizon ahead of them, the glittering expanse of Lake Calenhad, the very distant docks looking no more promising than a child’s abandoned toys in the bath. ‘You could have escaped then and there, but it was your tremendous personal integrity that bade you to command the mighty beast deposit you safely on the shore.’ He wrinkled his nose in distaste, studying the water. ‘Have I ever told you how much I loathe and detest swimming, Garrett? I’m awful at it.’

‘Even worse than you are at Diamondback?’ Garrett asked, because apparently he never did learn his lesson.

‘Even worse.’ Anders glanced over his shoulder at Garrett, then looked quickly away, huffing a sigh of misery.

Garrett waited, but Anders didn’t move. A dawning realization pushed Garrett to his feet, so he too could examine the still waters of Lake Calenhad, blue beneath the fading sunlight.

‘I suppose I’d better come with you, then,’ Garrett said at last. ‘…Just to be sure you don’t drown. All that bloating…it’d be an awfully embarrassing way to go.’

‘Why, Garrett,’ Anders said. ‘I thought you’d never ask. The chevalier would have offered hours ago. Do you think you’ll be able to carry me on your back?’

*

It took them some time to cross the lake. Anders’s comments about his lack of prowess in swimming hadn’t been cheerful modesty, but rather a gross understatement. To call what he did a ‘dog-paddle’ would be an insult to dogs everywhere. Garrett did what he could in order to shift the water currents, encouraging them to push Anders toward the far banks, but in a way that was hopefully subtle enough to avoid detection—both from Anders and the templar who patrolled the docks. They were soaked to the bone when they came out on the other side, and Garrett shook himself dry like a dog before reaching out to grab Anders’s arm, dragging him soggily up the hill and into the woods.

‘Hey, where’s the fire?’ Anders exclaimed in surprise, stumbling after him. ‘Get it? Did you see what I—oh, never mind. I haven’t even had the chance to wring my robes out. And I think there’s a fish in my boot, Garrett. Garrett, slow down.’

Ninety percent of escapes were foiled within the first four miles of the Circle Tower, Malcolm had told Garrett once. He’d probably never imagined his own son would apply the knowledge practically, but then that was his own fault for being so short-sighted.

‘You’re going to tear my arm out of its socket,’ Anders added, more jolly now that they’d disappeared from the tower grounds. He attempted to fix his hair one-handed, trotting amiably after Garrett as they squelched along the bannorn lands. ‘No—don’t stop, I’m finding it all rather enjoyable. I still remember the fire I had in my belly during my first escape. Much like the fire you lit on Karl’s face. But it’s rather difficult to sustain that all the way to the fifth, I’m afraid. You’re filling me with nostalgia, Garrett. You know I’ve never had anyone to feel things with on an escape before?’

Birds fluttered through the trees overhead, rightly figuring Anders for a wild intruder.

‘Shh,’ Garrett suggested. To his monumental surprise, Anders obeyed.

It wasn’t the romantic elopement Garrett had imagined—instead, they were crashing through the underbrush in robes that grew dry in all but the most uncomfortable of places. The day was hot, but seeking out the sunlight meant traveling over open ground, which Garrett wasn’t willing to do just yet. Were they past the four mile mark? Garrett honestly had no idea. He wondered if Anders even had a plan; he suspected not, and decided for them both to go north toward the coast, lose themselves in the hills. After that, it would be far more difficult for any templars to follow their trail.

However, there was the little problem of phylacteries to consider.

Garrett didn’t dare to ask whether Anders—damp, panting and pink-cheeked, still hobbling along with that supposed fish in his boot—had thought of destroying his phylactery this time. He was too afraid of what the answer might be. Garrett certainly hadn’t thought of it; he hadn’t planned on falling out any windows, either, nor had he even known he’d be leaving the tower until after he’d done so, quite accidentally. It was hardly his fault, but it did make him a liability.

Four miles or forty or four-hundred—so long as the templars searching for him had his phylactery, it really didn’t matter. And while Knight-Commander Greagoir would probably give up somewhere between four and four-hundred miles, and closer to four, at that, Garrett knew his father wouldn’t rest even after four thousand.

And there was always his mother to consider, on top of it all. She’d be right behind Father, Garrett’s phylactery in hand, dressed in dwarven armor, wielding a diamond mace. If the elements didn’t murder Garrett first, she certainly would. As exciting as the scene would be—one for the ages, definitely one for the storybooks—it was still unforgivable to be defeated by one’s own mother.

‘Garrett, I can’t help but notice you’ve been rather silent the past few minutes,’ Anders said. Another flight of birds took to the sky at the sound of his voice, sending a handful of loose leaves fluttering down onto the mossy forest floor below. Shifts and slants of sunlight filtered in from above, turning a rich, deep orange as the sun dipped lower on the horizon, somewhere beyond the trees. Soon it would be nightfall.

This little escape was doomed before it had ever begun, Garrett realized, never anything more than a bit of exercise, a way to stretch their legs; and maybe Anders had always known that. Maybe it was what he wanted. It was better than the alternative, a life lived beyond the boundaries of comfort or expectations. ‘I was hoping we could chat. To keep our spirits up. Bolster our intrepid moods.’

‘Lead the templars right to us,’ Garrett added. He looked back over his shoulder just in time to see Anders frown.

‘You could at least let us enjoy it while it lasts,’ Anders reasoned. Then, he brightened, inexplicably. ‘Every time I get a little bit farther than the last—did you know that? If I’m not made Tranquil by the time I’m at escape attempt number…’ He paused to tally the cost as quickly as he could. ‘…twenty-seven, I’ll probably be halfway to sunny Antiva. They’ll never catch me then. It’s a thought that helps me get through all this Ferelden countryside,’ he added, glancing around, wrinkling his nose, shaking a gob of moss off his boot for emphasis. ‘Antiva has its fair share of mud, of course, and I’m led to believe that said mud is made with three parts dirt and four parts someone’s life-blood, but doesn’t that sound so much more exciting than what we have here: dog shit and dog drool?’

For a moment, Garrett couldn’t believe how ridiculous this all was. Surely Anders had to know—being so much older, and so much more experienced—that all this traipsing about was nothing more than a fool’s errand, a thorn in the side of the templars, not really a bid for freedom at all? It was just a waste of time, something to do in between the prolonged bouts of nothing they suffered back at the tower—but Garrett had always thought there’d be something more just past the lake, and that Anders represented and embodied and yearned for that something more. Just like Garrett did. Just like they all should have done, except most of them had forgotten it long ago, set it aside on shelves, invisible, next to their phylacteries.

Then again, the forest had seemed so much bigger to Garrett when he was little—not that he had any memory of it now, beyond all the green.

It should have been completely devastating—this sudden revelation that nothing was actually as it seemed—but instead, Garrett realized it was actually hilarious.

He started laughing.

‘Oh, good,’ Anders said. ‘You’ve thought of a joke. That’s exactly what we need. Care to tell me your joke, Garrett?’

‘I can’t tell you my joke,’ Garrett replied, ‘because the joke is my entire life, and we haven’t got the time for that—not before the templars catch up to us.’

‘Always being interrupted, is that it?’ Anders sighed. ‘That’s the story of my life, and it’s more like a little ditty than an epic. No; I see how it is. The freedom madness has set in. This happened to me my first time, too; I just didn’t know what to do with myself. I panicked. I froze two barn owls for no reason and yowled like Mr. Wiggums when I stepped on a field mouse.’

Garrett let go of Anders’s arm, pausing to catch his breath against a nearby tree. The rough bark grounded him, as did watching Anders swipe a hand wildly through the air, trying to chase off an invisible bug. The attempt grew more and more heated, until Garrett began to laugh again, and Ander froze, realizing—like a younger cat, no longer past the point of caring about social appearances, like Mr. Wiggums—that his behavior was the cause of someone else’s amusement.

‘May I help you Garrett?’ Anders asked. ‘Are you perhaps choking on something? A large and poisonous bug? Certainly you aren’t laughing at me. I get all puffy from midge bites—I have very delicate skin.’

‘Well,’ Garrett said, on the verge of snorting hysterically, ‘I could always—light it on fire—for you—if you want—’

Anders paused to smooth out his ruffled feathers. ‘I’d accept the offer,’ he sniffed, ‘but I don’t quite trust your aim. That whole curtain incident… Not exactly the strongest recommendation, you see.’

‘I’ll have you know I was aiming for the curtain.’ Garrett wheezed as he drew in a deep breath. It was still painful to think about, but in the fresh air that sting felt as distant as the Circle tower piercing the sky behind them. Garrett could still feel his embarrassment, just as they could still see the shadowy spire looming in the distance over their shoulders, but the hurt seemed older, inconsequential, as though it belonged to another man. ‘Anything else just seemed rather inappropriate. Not to mention sensitive.’

Anders winced. ‘Right. I see your point, then, Garrett. Excellent job in hitting the curtains. If anything larger than a midge attempts to bite me and suck out my poor, delicious blood, I’ll make sure you’ll be the first to know.’

‘I’ll be the only one to know,’ Garrett pointed out, following Anders now through the thinning trees. There weren’t enough that it could be called a proper forest, but they provided a decent cover all the same, and there was moss in place of well-tracked dirt beneath their feet.

Even if it was only a matter of time before the templars hauled them back, Garrett didn’t want to make a shameful showing of his very first escape.

More than four miles, in any case. He didn’t want to be just another of his father’s statistics, but rather, an exception to the general rule.

‘Right you are,’ Anders said, pushing a branch aside, then not bothering to hold it, so that it almost slapped Garrett straight across the face. Garrett dodged quickly to the left, the leaves swiping harmlessly at his neck instead; then, straightening, he almost walked smack into Anders, who’d apparently decided to stop dead directly in front of him.

‘What is it?’ Garrett swept the clearing with a searching gaze. Then, because he couldn’t help himself, he added: ‘Marauding midges?’

‘Thank you for your incredible display of concern,’ Anders said. The unmistakable acidity in his tone made it clear just how much he appreciated that little remark. ‘Alas—no. It’s only that, in all the fuss, I forgot to say goodbye to Mr. Wiggums this morning. I always make a point of bidding him a fond farewell before I head out on one of my daring escapes. He’s like a good luck charm.’

‘Not a very good one, then,’ Garrett observed. Even if Anders had already worked that out for himself, maybe he needed someone else to confirm it for him. Then, before Garrett could think about it too hard, he put his hand on Anders’s shoulder, fingers threading through the silky feathers. His robes were still damp where the feather-spines were sewn into the cloth. ‘Never mind. I’m sure he’ll work it out for himself. He’s a very clever cat. He could probably be First Enchanter, and no one would know the difference.’

‘Yes, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?’ Anders offered Garrett a grin over his shoulder that made his skin prickle, before setting off once more along their crooked not-path. Garrett did his best not to stare, although the combination of Anders and all this independence was making him rather light-headed. ‘First Enchanter Wiggums, so easily persuaded by a nice bowl of milk and pets behind the ears. I’m onto you, Garrett.’

Garrett allowed him to believe that, in addition to letting him take the lead. If Anders had really been onto him—in a frightening, blood-mage, mind-reading sort of way—then he’d have long since realized that Garrett’s sudden upswing in mood had nothing at all to do with Mr. Wiggums, but rather the notion that Anders didn’t seem to mind one way or another whether or not he’d said goodbye to Karl.

Garren the chevalier never gave up, despite near-insurmountable odds and a violently intractable personality. Why should he, Garrett, be any less than equal?

Father would be downright ashamed if he thought his firstborn son couldn’t match up to an Orlesian—and a fictional one, at that.

Even smelling of lake-water, muddy to the ankles and suffering rips and scratches from errant briars, a man had to have some standards.

*

Despite Garrett’s attempts to keep his expectations reasonable, he found himself relieved beyond measure when evening fell at last and there was no sign of the templar hunters, their narrow steel helmets and the cruel curve of their crossbows, projectiles swooshing past him in the dark. Their torches would have been visible before anything else, the tell-tale pulse of lyrium just before they unleashed some unwieldy skill meant to defend them from the big, bad mages when, in fact, they were the ones seeking the mages out.

Templars. Not an ounce of logic amongst them.

It was Garrett who finally suggested they stop for the night. Even though Anders was the more experienced of the two—possibly the most experienced man in the tower when it came to the fine art of escape, and also, being caught again—it was clear he didn’t have an accurate understanding of his own limits. They’d been on the run all evening, not stopping for rest or food, traveling straight through suppertime. Spirit healers might have been possessed of some secret trick to extend their stamina, but unless Anders was chewing on a mysterious life-giving root without sharing the goods, Garrett suspected he was about as tired as he looked.

Mercifully, he managed to keep that observation to himself. You look as bad as Mr. Wiggums right now wasn’t exactly one of the compliments Anders liked so much.

‘I’ll get us something to eat,’ Garrett said instead. He wiggled his fingers, attempting to look slightly more confident than a teenage boy who hadn’t been outside on his own in more than five years. ‘I hope you like your meat charbroiled.’

‘At last,’ Anders replied. ‘A use for all your talents.’

When Garrett returned from the hunt, feeling like a lean provider—but also dirty, and tired, and extremely over pebbles working their way into the soles of his boots, not to mention annoyed at how very fast rabbits, were, and how difficult to catch despite their innocent appearance—Anders was sitting with his knees pulled up to his chest in the darkness, leaning back against the tree, shivering.

Despite all that, he hadn’t even lit a fire.

He was, Garrett was beginning to understand, not concerned with—or prone to acts of—practicality.

‘Do you think your First Enchanter Father might see it that way?’ Anders asked suddenly, without any initial clarification, as Garrett lit them both a fire of soggy shrub and scattered branches. He tried not to feel too delighted that he and Anders were of one mind when it came to nicknames, because it probably didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things—but still, it was thrilling all the same. ‘That I was just trying to help you direct your energy somewhere less dangerous? I mean, really, when you think about it, it’s no good to have someone as hazardous as you locked up with so many defenseless mages. And just think of the templars! Trapped in their roasting pan armor—they’d never stand a chance when you finally snap.’

‘When?’ Garrett asked, somewhat affronted by the implications.

Anders leaned closer to the fire. ‘It’s obviously no longer a matter of if,’ he confirmed.

Garrett stared at the dead rabbit in his hands, and Anders did the same, looking a bit distressed to see it in its current form—fur still on, sad little ears drooping. Garrett felt less like a lean provider now, and more like the brazen murderer Anders seemed to believe would be his future, while Anders poked distractedly at the fire with a long, skinny branch, making bits snap and leap in the makeshift pit.

‘It’s sad, isn’t it?’ Anders sighed. ‘That they have to be so cute, but also, so delicious.’

Garrett chose to clean it somewhere Anders couldn’t see; he had no experience with the task, knew nothing beyond the vagaries set down for him in picaresques, but he managed as best he could, while at the same time losing most of his appetite.

‘I have to tell you, Garrett,’ Anders said, licking his fingers, ‘this is the best I’ve ever eaten on one of these little trips. Yes, that settles it: you’re just going to have to come with me on all future endeavors. Not,’ Anders added quickly, looking sheepish over the guttering flames, ‘that I plan on being caught; oh, no. This one is definitely the one. I’m feeling really good about it. I knew when I woke up this morning today was going to be special.’

‘That’s only because I’m here,’ Garrett reasoned, affecting what he hoped was a cheeky and attractive grin.

‘You have some rabbit meat in your teeth, Garrett,’ Anders said. ‘Right there—no, one over—yes, that’s the one. All gone now. Very good.’

Garrett pretended the fire was the cause of the sudden heat on his cheeks, and busied himself with kicking a few more leaves and things into said fire to keep it from dying out. Then, he glanced to the side, running his tongue over his teeth to make sure he wasn’t missing anything else unseemly.

‘Garrett,’ Anders said, in that way of his, always seeking something, something Garrett wanted very badly to give.

Garrett lounged eagerly—if such a thing were possible. ‘Anders.’

Anders squeezed his arms tighter around his knees. ‘It’s cold,’ he said. Garrett suspected that if he hadn’t been so very fond of him already, it might have come across as needy and demanding.

Still, Garrett was already conditioned against that assumption. ‘Well, Anders, you’re in luck—because I just so happen to be good with fire,’ he said, leaning closer to the pit, placing his hands above the little blaze. ‘Not that that’s a reputation I’ve been looking to encourage, but just this once, I’ll make an exception.’

It occurred to him only as the flames leapt up toward his palms that he’d just missed his golden opportunity to scoot around to the other side of the fire, and warm Anders himself.

With his body.

‘Very impressive,’ Anders said faintly. Then, in a moment of glorious insight—or perhaps something less clever, and more like innate dissatisfaction—he added, ‘But I’m still cold. And don’t take that as your excuse to light me on fire next. I haven’t nearly as much protective hair as Karl, you see, and over the years I’ve grown rather partial to my face as it is.’

‘I’d never,’ Garrett said. He struggled to his feet, making a lurch half around and half literally across the fire, then dropped to Anders’s side, neatly putting out the potentially blazing hem of his robes in the process. ‘It’s a very good face. Probably my favorite.’

Anders’s expression quirked into that same pinched look of expectant scrutiny. He scooted closer along the dirt and moss and crinkly leaves, right up against Garrett’s chest. ‘Oh, Garrett,’ he said, ‘I’m afraid that won’t do at all.’

Garrett hope Anders wouldn’t hear the traitorous thudding of his heart, even though they were so close, and the traitorous thudding was so loud. He checked to make sure no other parts of him were on fire—that would have been disastrous—then casually placed his hand somewhere at Anders’s back; it was almost like putting an arm around his shoulders. ‘Whatever do you mean, Anders?’ he asked, though his voice came out a bit higher than he was expecting, like Carver’s, before last spring, when it had finally started to change.

‘It’s just that good face is really a terrible compliment, when you think about it.’ Anders shook his head; a bit of his loose, soft hair brushed against Garrett’s neck, making him shiver. ‘It’s all…soggy. Indistinct. Completely impersonal, as well. It could apply to anyone, really. No; I won’t have it. Quick: say something about my porcelain skin, or my limpid eyes.’

‘Anders,’ Garrett said. He made the mistake of swallowing, and the words caught in his throat, along with his suddenly enormous tongue.

Maybe that was the problem. There were too many words, most of them belonging to Anders, and Garrett was getting bogged down in them, like a mage who didn’t know how to swim attempting to cross Lake Calenhad without a boat. He needed to do something different, something to upset the balance—the right way, this time, not the wrong way, like he had in the library.

Silence wasn’t the answer; it was something else involving silence.

‘Garrett,’ Anders replied.

And yet there’d probably never be silence around Anders. Sometimes it seemed the only thing for which he had true initiative was leaping out windows and fashioning climbing ropes out of undergarments.

The subtle line of his spine rose and fell beneath Garrett’s palm with every breath he took. Anders stared up at him, eyes all squinty, brow furrowed, nose long, lips parted. Then, as though possessed by some unforeseen spirit of desire—she’d probably been inhabiting him all along—Garrett moved to put a hand beneath Anders’s chin, and tilted his head up to kiss him.

It was far simpler than Garren and Lady Talia’s first kiss, which had occurred with the latter, of all things, on horseback, and Garren had been forced to strain admirably not to drag her from the saddle. It was also Garrett’s first kiss, his first real one, that happened for a reason beyond simple experimentation in the apprentice mage quarters after having stolen a few spirits from his father’s collection of contraband.

Anders went still against him, lips parted in surprise, which made for a rather more welcoming reception than Garrett had been expecting. Then, he remembered he wasn’t actually sure what he’d been expecting, since he’d spent more time reading about people kissing other people instead of practicing it for himself. And generally, when he dealt with Anders, some kind of literal fire was involved.

His hand crept up to Anders’s shoulders, thumb sweeping over his bare neck, and finally Anders did move, tongue sliding against Garrett’s mouth with a deliberate care that might potentially have been uncertainty. Garrett’s pulse raced like a herd of wild halla, hooves barely touching the forest floor as they trampled through the underbrush all willy-nilly. Anders gripped at the front of his robes, teeth tugging thoughtfully at Garrett’s lower lip.

That seemed like an indicator of something, and so Garrett stopped, not pulling back, but allowing the natural rhythm of the kiss to carry him out just the same as it had carried him in. Anders’s face was shadowed by their close proximity, stubble scraping at the soft corner of Garrett’s mouth, and the natural light of the fire crackling away merrily to their right. Garrett stroked the prickling hairs that grew above the line of Anders’s jaw, not quite a beard, not enough to conceal the pale skin of his cheek beneath.

‘Ohhh,’ Anders said, realization striking him like a bolt of well-timed chain lightning.

Garrett felt an odd mix of relief and panic. He wondered if Anders was going to talk again, talk instead of kissing, or pull free, or slap him, or do something else that seemed appropriately dramatic. Something with fire, maybe; it was always fire with them.

‘Oh?’ Garrett tried, all too aware that he was still holding Anders in something dangerously close to an embrace, and that neither of them had made any effort to move out of it, or throw themselves screaming into the fire.

‘Oh,’ Anders confirmed, wriggling in Garrett’s arms until he could get a proper look at him. ‘Everything’s so much more understandable now. Although you might have said something before it got to the point of lighting people on fire, Garrett. I’m sure Karl would have appreciated it, at the very least.’

Garrett twitched, as though one of the coals popping in the fire had sprung out and landed in his lap. Surprisingly, Anders moved again, yanking Garrett forward by the front of his robes until their foreheads nearly cracked together.

‘Ignore that,’ Anders said. ‘I didn’t mean—right. That’s probably not what you want to hear at the moment. And I finally understand why! So there’s that to be thankful for. I, for one, believe this trip has been something of a revelation for everyone.’ He rubbed at an itch on his leg, fingers worrying at the thin fabric of his robes. In the firelight his hair was a dusky, burnished gold. Garrett had never seen such a handsome head; he was luminous. There was no other word more suitable. ‘It…occurs to me that I might possibly have not been entirely fair to you. In the grand scheme of things. Over the course of our knowing each other. Hogging all the compliments to myself, you see. And—other things.’

‘Other things?’ Garrett asked, hoarse and hopeful.

‘Other…friendships…’ Anders said slowly. ‘Liberal compliments reserved for them, in front of you, and then, that incident—’ He shook his head, gripping Garrett by the back of his neck, fingers cool against the shorter, sensitive hairs there. ‘How about this: how about we just never speak of that again?’

‘You’re the one who keeps bringing it up,’ Garrett pointed out.

‘Yes, well, you see,’ Anders said, ‘I have this habit of focusing very hard on something when I know I shouldn’t talk about it. And then a terrible thing happens between my brain and my mouth, and instead of not saying anything, I do the exact opposite. You can’t possibly know what that’s like; it’s a very particular affliction.’

‘True.’ Garrett tried, desperately, to think of some way to get back to the kissing part. He knew Anders as well as anyone, from years of study, from nights alone in the cellars together. This could very well go on for a while. ‘But I do have an affliction of my own.’

‘The fire thing?’ Anders asked.

Garrett nodded, brow to brow, heads bumping. ‘The fire thing.’

‘Here’s an idea,’ Anders said. ‘Why don’t you light me on fire?’

There was a pause. Garrett licked his lips. His tongue came very near to Anders’s mouth, and he felt Anders shiver, then wince, fingers tightening against Garrett’s skin, with a tremendously pleasant scrape of nails along the base of his scalp.

‘No—hang on—that wasn’t any good,’ Anders said. ‘Just give me a moment. What I meant was figurative, a figurative fire, the sort lit between two willing bodies. You know, perhaps we’d better roll away from the literal fire, while we’re at it—otherwise this might end in tragedy.’

It was, Garrett suspected, sort of ending in tragedy already—a tragedy in which his lips were parted, and Anders kept saying words against them, rather than swiping his tongue in that way he had, or nibbling on the sensitive flesh. Or maybe it was beginning in tragedy. The best thing about it, though, was that it was tragedy sprinkled with liberal helpings of farce; Garrett was only just starting to realized how often, and how well, those two genres worked together.

‘This?’ Garrett asked, a bit strangled, but managing to form a real word. Under the circumstances, he thought it was quite the admirable effort.

‘This,’ Anders agreed, and slid his free hand between Garrett’s legs, right over the one thing that had tormented him ever since he’d known it could, just around the time he’d hit his first growth spurt, and also discovered he was a mage like his father.

His cock.

Garrett’s hips rocketed forward, and Anders made a little sound of delight; he murmured something about acceptable reactions being compliments too, but Garrett didn’t let him get any farther than that, nights of loneliness and relatively decent instinct taking over instead. He held on, probably for dear life, and kissed all the words off Anders’s lips, until Anders was breathless, panting, his mouth swollen and sore, his pupils blown with desire in the dark.

‘Ah,’ Anders whispered. ‘Youth. I was once like that myself, but you’ll find that with time and experience—’

Garrett kissed him again, getting the hang of it now, understanding it was up to him to remind Anders of certain things—to help him when he couldn’t swim, for example; to keep him on the right path, without getting distracted by ferns or adorable wildlife along the way; and to kiss him when he was talking too much. So basically, to kiss him all the time.

Not too bad a deal, really.

And Anders didn’t seem to mind, either—the working of his clever fingers over the tightening fabric of Garrett’s robes was a prime indication of his willingness to comply with the arrangement.

Garrett moaned. Anders answered him, and butted his hips forward, nipping at Garrett’s upper lip; Garrett realized he was being very selfish when it came to compliments, and especially returning them. At least, after years of practice, he did know what to do with an erection, and he and Anders were of a similar nature when it came to humor and irreverence. Maybe they’d be similar when it came to taste and dicks, as well.

Garrett fumbled for a bit, a pleasant friction that made Anders gasp into the hot little space between their mouths. It really didn’t have to be precise, or clever, or knowledgeable in any way; some men would be happy grinding their bodies against a mattress to get off, and Anders seemed willing enough, climbing up into Garrett’s lap, kicking dirt onto the guttering fire as he did so, bracing himself one-handed on Garrett’s shoulder while the other, finally, batted Garrett’s fingers away.

‘Just a suggestion,’ Anders said, all sweaty, with a scrape of teeth traveling down over Garrett’s neck, tonguing along the racing pulse at his throat. Then, he managed to get both of them in one hand, more or less, just the heads, fingers wrapped wide and pressing the length of their erections together through their smalls and through their robes. It wasn’t enough, not really, but there was dirt everywhere, and moss, and Garrett was falling backward with Anders’s weight above him, trying not to come right there and ruin everything, not to mention stain his clothes.

It was just that everything was happening so quickly; Garrett wanted to cherish it, but at the same time his body felt like one of his fires: an endless, mindless hunger that sought only to consume. He wanted to burn through this feeling straight to the end, the inevitable rush of climax and the boneless relief that came after it.

But he was with Anders this time. There was more than Garrett’s selfish desires to think about—there were also Anders’s selfish desires, another erection pressed hard against his own, rubbing with maddening friction. Despite Anders’s age and experience, Garrett could feel him faltering, the motion of his hips sloppy and eager. Garrett moved to steady them, resting his hand on Anders’s thigh and sliding it back to grip his ass. He could do that now—it was all right; permission had been granted.

As if to prove that point, Anders made a low sound of approval in his throat, pushing back against the touch, then forward again, rocking gratefully in the security of Garrett’s hold.

Now Garrett understood how people managed to get this far into intimate acts without worrying about a thousand little details. It was deceptively simple; all a man had to do was give into instinct. Not the same instinct that insisted he visit physical harm upon a challenger, but something closer to learning to use magic for the first time. Garrett had painful memories of straining until sweat beaded along the back of his neck just to light a candle, which he could do as easily as blink, these days. It was all a matter of having something else to focus on, and the incomparable pleasure shuddering through him with each new press of Anders’s body, each rub of his fingers, was a fitting distraction indeed.

Anders shivered forward, knocking Garrett down on his back in the dirt. He pressed their foreheads together, damp and sweaty, breathing hot puffs of air against Garrett’s cheek.

‘I must say—’ Anders began, voice tremulous as he levered himself up onto his elbows. He snaked his arm out from between them, settling his body between Garrett’s legs, and Garrett, obligingly, spread them further, hauling up his robes like a man of very little character. None of that seemed to matter now. He knew Anders wouldn’t think less of him—not when he had to be just as anxious as Garrett to get to the good stuff, as he put it, before anything interrupted them. Including themselves, their particular natures. ‘You’re very honorable—very honorable indeed, being the one to accept all the stains and the dirt and the creepy-crawly bugs and things. I—personally—wouldn’t want to lie on a knobbled root and bruise my back. Your sacrifice…’ Anders trailed off, squeezing his eyes tight against a gasp. He bucked his hips hard up against Garrett’s, shifting his weight to better align their cocks. ‘What was I saying? Ah yes…it will not go unnoted.’

‘Good,’ Garrett muttered, Anders’s least favorite word—or at least he tried to say it, turning his face against Anders’s warm neck. It came out less like a word, and more like the sound someone made right before dying.

But if he was about to die, then at least he’d do it satisfied, under a free night sky, beneath Anders’s writhing body.

He couldn’t possibly imagine a better fate.

Anders sucked in a breath and dragged his body against Garrett’s, with more purpose this time, bare legs slipping up against Garrett’s thighs, his left boot knocking against Garrett’s calf. He lifted his hand off the ground and planted it firmly against Garrett’s shoulder, dug his nails in, and braced his weight against the hold, so that Garrett could feel his heartbeat right there in that shoulder, thundering like a summer storm. Then, Anders made a fretful noise, a tremor snapping through his body, and Garrett had only the presence of mind to hold on, gripping Anders wherever he could with strong arms just before his body bucked again, twisting wherever Anders saw fit to lead him.

Something unexpected—and also alive, sparking quick and hot—snapped across the very tip of Garrett’s bare erection, along the sensitive slit, damp and free from his smalls. It pulsed under the skin, down along the shaft, the thick vein throbbing all the way to his balls.

Magic, Garrett thought; Anders was magic, and not just in the usual way, but also in the usual way. And it was all over now.

He shuddered and spent himself against Anders’s erection, feeling damp warmth seep through his smallclothes, shoved carelessly to one side, and his bunched robes, riding carelessly up to his hips. The knowledge that it wasn’t all his own beat in his chest alongside his unsteady heartbeat.

He’d done that to Anders. He’d made him that desperate, hard enough to crawl on top of Garrett and push him down in the grass. And do—that other thing, whatever it was, dim little crackles still rolling through Garrett’s flesh, burying themselves deep in his gut.

Anders groaned, hips still working the half-hard length of his cock against Garrett’s own, as if he still had hopes of getting more out of it. Garrett gasped for air, making a noise that was on the precarious verge of being a chuckle.

There wasn’t anything funny about this, though. For just a moment, his life had finally ceased to be one enormous, cosmic joke.

Then, Anders was finished, too, dropping over Garrett like a very heavy blanket, warm and sweaty in places, damp in others, his mouth pressed against the curve of Garrett’s shoulder. Garrett felt him smiling.

‘What,’ Garrett managed, a mess of limbs that had no connection to one another, all of them lying heavy and happy against so much cool moss, ‘what was that?’

Anders made a noise, a deep purring sound in the depths of his chest. He licked his lips, tongue on Garrett’s skin, then let his head roll to one side, scruffy cheek on Garrett’s chest, a few hairs prickling through the thin fabric of his light summer robes. ‘I find it hard to believe,’ he said, completely winded, ‘that you’ve read The Rose of Orlais so many times, but can’t figure out what it is we just did.’

Garrett colored, voice shooting high. ‘No, not that,’ he said.

Anders stretched, and burrowed in closer. ‘Then you’ll have to be more specific.’

‘The other thing,’ Garrett explained, not able to name it. ‘With the sparkle and the fingers that you did. Right toward the end there.’

‘Oh.’ Anders nearly purred again. ‘That. Why didn’t you say so in the first place? Garrett, you’re really going to have to learn to be more specific in the future; all this vagueness just isn’t working out.’

‘Your limpid eyes,’ Garrett agreed dreamily. ‘Your luminous head.’

Anders swatted at him, affectionately, pausing to brush his fingers along Garrett’s jaw, a ticklish caress that made Garrett very happy. He answered it with a touch of his own, against the small of Anders’s lower back, where the muscles dipped, then swelled again, tensing beneath Garrett’s hand. ‘Anyway, to answer your question,’ Anders continued, undaunted, ‘it’s my electricity thing. Or at least—it will be, once I’ve perfected it. And once I’ve managed to pass through the wilderness, out of the tower, beyond Lake Calenhad, and into civilization. That is—I was thinking of making it my thing. What do you think, Garrett?’

‘It sounds better than a fire thing, let me tell you,’ Garrett replied, and beamed up at the stars through the leafy canopy above them, which appeared, as they winked down from behind a few stray clouds, to beam right back.

*

The templars found them the next day—or rather, later that day, but also very early in the morning. Dawn had barely broken when the clanking of armor woke Garrett from his blissful stupor; he and Anders were damp with a fine layer of dew, and very cramped, and even more dirty, but thankfully their captors chose not to mention all the unmistakable stains in their official report.

Sometime after that—a brisk, awkward walk and a slower, more awkward boat ride later—Garrett found himself standing in a familiar position in the First Enchanter’s office. In time-honored tradition, one could almost say.

At least they’d given Garrett a chance to change beforehand; thankfully, he didn’t have to maneuver any plants or desk statuettes to cover himself in certain unmentionable places so his father the First Enchanter wouldn’t notice, and choose a very different line of questioning.

‘I take it the heart just…wanted what it wanted, is that it?’ Father asked.

Not just the heart, Garrett thought, and tried not to grin, clearing his throat instead, attempting to maintain a disaffected seriousness—the sort of vagueness that worked in his favor, and not against him. ‘Something like that,’ he agreed.

‘And now I take away your freedom, but not your feelings; is that also correct?’ Father continued.

Garrett reached up to scrape a bit of dirt and moss from underneath his ear. ‘More or less.’

‘You see, Garrett, I have been listening,’ Father continued, tired enough to pinch his nose between his thumb and forefinger, giving Garrett a tactical advantage—but also taking away his moral high-ground—by revealing just how weary he felt about everything. ‘Rather closely, in fact. Not that what you say ever makes much real sense, not by the standards of someone as well-advanced in his years as I am, but—I do listen. I try to listen, even when you aren’t speaking. I try to understand, as well, although that’s so much harder, because you seem determined, I think, to worry me into an early grave.’

For once, Garrett didn’t have to wonder if this was the same speech Father gave all the mages. For once, Garrett knew beyond question that it wasn’t.

‘And now,’ Father concluded, hands clasped before him on his desk, leaning forward, as though that small gesture, that lone movement, could bridge the no longer insurmountable distance between them, ‘I wake one morning to discover my eldest son is missing; perhaps he’s lighting someone on fire somewhere, I think as I stumble out of bed, and in some ways I rather hope he is, as that would be so much better than so many of the alternatives. I also thank the Maker—if he’s even listening; and sometimes, I do wonder—that we’re here in Ferelden, and not in Kirkwall; I find myself plagued by an acute bout of indigestion, exacerbated by the promise of a rousing exchange with my good friend the Knight-Commander; I ask myself what your mother will do to me when she learns of it, my wife, Leandra, a very fine woman, with a very strong left arm.’ At that, Father rubbed at his jaw, as though he was remembering an old injury. Instinctively, Garrett did the same with his wrist; after all, Anders had only broken it just yesterday. ‘Hard to listen, when I’m so busy. And I’m sure there are times when it seems all the rest takes precedent. Perhaps it should, but it doesn’t always. Do you see what I’m saying?’

Garrett supposed the answer to that was yes, in a roundabout sort of way. There were parts of it he did, and parts of it he didn’t, the same as always. But he didn’t resent the latter so much anymore, or the former, for their separate reasons.

Casually, without tipping his hand too quickly, or giving the game away, Garrett shifted. Then, he leaned his weight onto one foot instead of the other, and moved idly toward Father’s desk, crossing the distance that Malcolm Hawke, as First Enchanter, couldn’t.

After that, he needed to have an excuse, so he picked up one of the chipped statuettes on his father’s desk, poking at the broken nose.

‘Father,’ he said, ‘this is absolutely hideous.’

‘Your mother bought me that when we were first courting,’ Father said, eyes following Garrett’s discontented prodding. ‘I’ll be sure and pass your comments along to her.’

‘Really?’ Garrett asked. ‘That seems rather hurtful, Father—deliberately insulting her taste like that. I had no idea you were so cruel.’ He set the statue back down carefully, adjusting its base so as to keep it in line with the other two. ‘Speaking of Mother…’

‘Yes?’ Father said, expectantly. ‘I’m going to have to deal with her on top of Knight-Commander Greagoir, you know. I’ll have to tell her something. And lying never works; she always knows.’

Garrett remembered that from when he was younger, a touch of nostalgia mitigated only by relief. Then he sighed, locking his hands behind his back like a good little mageling. His gaze fell on a private chest in the corner of Father’s office; it was about the size and shape one might keep letters in, a few brief sentimental mementos of one’s glory days, love affairs long past.

Garrett cleared his throat. ‘You can tell Mother… Tell her I intercepted a few letters of my own. It might not make sense to you, Father, but she’s sure to understand.’

‘I see,’ Father said, not missing a beat. As much as he tried to ignore it—and as much as he’d tried to discourage it while they were growing up—Malcolm Hawke was well-used to the eccentricities of his children. He’d learned not to question them, even if he didn’t always give them free reign. ‘I’ll just take your word for that then, shall I? Trust that you aren’t losing your mind, on top of everything else.’

‘Yes, Father,’ Garrett said. ‘I think that’d be for the best.’

Father’s mouth twitched, the gesture nearly imperceptible beneath his dark beard. Now that was a beard Garrett could appreciate, neatly-trimmed and thick. He’d only thought about lighting it on fire once or twice in the past, and only then because of the offenses committed by his actual father, and not the beard itself. ‘I’m glad we can both agree on wanting what’s best, then. And Garrett? I don’t want to see the templars dragging you back here ever again. Do you understand me?’

Garrett stilled by the door, his hand on the cool metal latch. For a moment, it had almost seemed as if there was a double meaning to Father’s words—but surely he’d misheard.

‘You know, Father,’ Garrett said, glancing over his shoulder, ‘one day, you might not be able to take away my feelings or my freedom.’

Father didn’t nod or lift his head, instead choosing to reach for the first of many release forms that required immediate signing. His quill flew across the page. ‘And a very fine day to you too, son,’ he said.

Garrett left feeling somehow as though they’d made a breakthrough, although neither of them had actually said what they meant to say. Perhaps that was the secret of adult communication, a world Garrett now felt welcomed into with open arms. He didn’t know what Father would do or say if he ever caught wind of the fact that Garrett was planning on destroying his phylactery, or something equally prosaic, but that was all the more reason for him not to be caught—just as Father had suggested.

*

From his First Enchanter Father’s office, Garrett made his way up toward the templar quarters, where he knew Anders was being reprimanded separately, due to this being his fifth offense as opposed to only his first. They’d promised to reunite afterward, whether in the tower or below it, and Anders had confided that the concept of solitary confinement didn’t seem so bad now that he had someone else to share it with.

‘I started work on a tunnel the last time,’ he’d admitted, in a very hush whisper, warm up against the shell of Garrett’s ear. ‘There are all sorts of old paths down there—it’s just a matter of connecting to the right one, you know. Next time we’ll come out right into the Frostback Mountains. They’ll never catch us then; too many dwarves getting in the way!’

Garrett held the words next time against his heart, feeling them beat like a steady drum. Next time, they’d take the proper steps—next time, they’d make sure their phylacteries were destroyed before they left—and next time, they’d head straight for sunny Antiva, just like Anders wanted.

Sunny Antiva, by way of the Frostback Mountains.

There was already someone else waiting outside the Knight-Commander’s door when Garrett arrived—the man’s back was to him, but there was no mistaking those broad shoulders, his modest robes and sensibly-clipped, already-graying hair. Karl Thekla was everywhere Garrett didn’t want him to be—but somehow even that didn’t get under his skin the way it used to. Like the bite of a mosquito, in place of a hornet’s sting.

‘Karl,’ Garrett said, attempting to be the bigger man, and failing spectacularly as he felt a smug grin pass over his face.

Karl nodded in recognition. Then, catching sight of Garrett’s unsubtle expression, he seemed to fight off a laugh. Either that, or a mouse had just run over his ankle. Sometimes it was impossible to tell the difference.

‘You know,’ Karl said, crossing his arms, pausing mid-step, ‘it’s about time Anders had someone younger and even more impetuous than he is to wear him out, for a change.’

Garrett stared at him, gobsmacked. Had his worthy—albeit elderly—rival gone and admitted defeat at last? It was almost too good to be true. Or maybe what Anders had said to begin with really didn’t have a second meaning, and they really were just friends—friends who engaged in other, equally worthwhile pursuits on occasion, but nothing more meaningful than a quick tryst after a trying imprisonment. Whatever it was one did with Anders, who so enjoyed being contrary.

But that wasn’t the place Garrett was interested in occupying. And he was more than willing to invest the time in carving out a new place, however long it took. With liberal use of compliments and everything.

‘However,’ Karl added, a foreboding twinkle in the depths of his blue eyes as he carried on, ‘if you aren’t kind to him, First Enchanter Father or no, I just so happen to know a few fire spells, myself.’

Garrett took his meaning well enough, though he supposed—if things were really to come full circle around here—he’d have to start growing a beard of his own.