Chapter Text
"Lonely rivers flow to the sea, to the sea
To the open arms of the sea.
Lonely rivers sigh, wait for me, wait for me
I'll be coming home, wait for me."
—The Righteous Brothers, Unchained Melody
A cold wind blew across the white-tipped crests of the Waking Sea, tangling through Aria’s hair and leaving her laughing at the sting. Their winter cloaks—all but unnecessary now that spring had finally come to the shores of Ostwick—snapped and furled in brightly-colored sails behind them. It was all Aria could do not to wrest open the buckle that held hers firmly in place and go racing across the sand. She wanted to lift her skirts about skinned and skinny knees and run just as fast as she could, face tipped up and heart soaring somewhere far above Trevelyan Manor: like one of the birds Raul loved to mimic.
Free and happy and—
Dayna caught her wrist with a laugh. “I know that expression,” her older sister said, tugging Aria back a full step. Her own red hair had been neatly (wisely) plaited into two long braids, but her round cheeks were just as freckled as Aria’s. “If you want to fly free, little bird, you’re going to have to pay the piper. Recite your numbers and you can leave my side at any time.”
Aria made a face. “I hate this game,” she said.
“Oh, now, isn’t that sad?” Dayna gave her wrist another little tug, lips quirking into a lopsided grin. She was fifteen to Aria’s nearly-eleven and liked to pretend she was the boss of everyone. Especially when it came to—in her words—making sure the ever-growing Trevelyan brood didn’t grow up into a Maker-forsaken gang of backwater savages. “My heart is breaking for you.”
“That can’t be true. You’d have to have a heart first,” Aria muttered, then laughed when Dayna gave her a teasing shove, letting her go. She let the momentum carry her, spinning out like a top beneath the wide blue sky, skirts lifting indecently about her legs. The bright eggshell blue cloak lifted and snapped around her, caught high on the breeze like drifts of smoke. It would fly straight into the sun if she let it go now—she was sure of it. “Come on, Dayna. The day’s too beautiful for math.”
Dayna just shook her head. “You’d say that if it were spitting rain.”
“True!” Aria beamed.
Before Dayna could think of a response, a bird called from high on the cliffs, answered seconds later by another further down the beach. Dayna tapped Aria’s shoulder and pointed past her with a quirk of her brows. “Look,” she said. “Pirates.”
Aria twisted, one hand lifting to shield her eyes. Sure enough, two small figures were perched on the rocks just past the half-hidden cavern, watching them. One gave a jaunty wave. “We should arm ourselves and drive them from our shores,” Aria said, squinting to try to make out features. “Teach them a lesson they won’t soon forget.”
“We could do that,” Dayna said placidly; just past her shoulder, another child was clambering down the rocky cliffside. He paused just long enough to press his fingers to his lips and give a second trilling birdcall, answered again by one of those distant figures. “Or we could bring them their sandwiches, like we promised.”
“Or we could do that,” Aria agreed. She grabbed a messy handful of windswept hair and shoved it out of her eyes. “Ho there, Raul!” she called as her older brother dropped the last ten feet to the shore. He’d left his winter cloak behind, along with his shoes. “Any news from the house?”
Raul dusted off his sandy hands and trotted over to join them. He was just a couple of years older than Aria but already growing into his height. The world, it seemed, was determined to be unfair. “Father’s gone off to visit Lord and Lady Riley,” he said. “Mother’s down for a nap, and Tante’s busy with the twins.”
Aria made a face. “Poor Tante,” she said. The twins—Cassius and Josselyn—weren’t quite old enough to be interesting, but they were more than able to be a royal pain. Their howling kept half the house up as Mother and Tante walked them up and down the creaking old steps, trying to soothe their colic. “But good news for the rest of us.”
“Good news for the rest of us,” Raul echoed with a gap-toothed smile. He tipped his head toward Dayna. “Did you tell her yet?”
Aria twisted around to look at her sister, catching the tail end of her stern glare. “No,” Dayna said between grit teeth. “And you weren’t supposed to either. Petyr was very clear.”
“Tell me what?” Aria asked. Neither said anything. “Tell me what?” she tried again.
“Nothing,” Dayna said, just as Raul said, “Something really big.”
Aria frowned, looking between the two. It wasn’t that she was unused to her family keeping secrets from her—she’d been born…different…after all, with a fire burning inside her that Father insisted she never let anyone outside their family discover—but usually they managed to keep their whispers more subtle than this. “All right, then,” she said, turning back toward the distant cavern. The two small figures were standing now, clearly waiting for them. “Well, until you decide which story you want to go with, we should get the others their sandwiches.”
“Oh, there’s food?” Raul said, taking a step closer—
—only to trip when Dayna stuck out an ankle, nearly sending him sprawling across the sand. “Not if we get there before you,” her sister called, shooting Aria a bright-eyed glance…and the two of them were off in a shot, racing across the beach with their brilliant cloaks snapping like mabari at their heels.
Aria easily broke out into the lead, heart winging higher and higher in her chest with each step. She felt almost like she was flying across the grey beach: a flame licking the jagged shoreline, each step quickening that elemental thrum she never could seem to smother. It filled her lungs with lightning and threw sparks from the streaming ends of her long copper hair. The very earth seemed to buoy up beneath her feet, and if she just let herself reach deep inside herself, she could…
No, Aria thought, tamping down on the impulse, refusing to let herself call up the spell begging to be unleased. You can’t, you can’t, you can’t.
Raul called something from behind them and the figures—two more of her siblings, Timothy and Petyr standing in wait—began to swim into focus. Timothy was hopping restlessly from foot to foot, a wild sort of excitement answering her own, but Petyr kept him from racing out to meet her.
Oldest of the Trevelyans, big and strong and kind, Petyr watched Aria sprint toward him with a small smile twisting his lips, his own matching copper-colored hair tufted up about his handsome face from the wind.
Aria skidded to a stop a few paces away, hands reaching out to slap against cold rock. “First!” she crowed, spinning around just as Raul tumbled in behind her. She caught his arm before he could go spilling face-first into the waiting rocks, laughing and yanking him back to his feet when he would have overbalanced. “I got here first.”
“You cheated,” he protested, slinging an arm around her neck, and Petyr shook his head in amusement as Dayna jogged up to join them, her twin braids snapping behind her.
“I didn’t cheat,” Aria said, digging a sharp elbow into her brother’s side. Timothy had finally managed to wriggle free of their eldest brother’s grasp, ducking around the rocks to poke at the basket Dayna held folded in the crook of one arm. “Dayna cheated for me. I just took shameless advantage.”
Raul rolled his eyes. “That’s still cheating, isn’t it, Petyr?”
“It’s funny that it’s never cheating when he does it, isn’t it, Petyr?” Aria parroted.
Behind them, Dayna sighed and slapped at Timothy’s hands, pushing her way forward until she was standing next to her own twin: the eldest two of the whole family, and practically the king and queen of this little forgotten corner of Ostwick, with its wild storms and endless moors. “I brought food and drink,” she said, focused on Petyr. “I couldn’t smuggle out an extra blanket without someone noticing, but I figured we could use our cloaks.”
“Good thinking,” Petyr said, voice gone intermittently deep now that he was turning into a man.
Aria looked between them, then glanced at Raul and Timothy. Neither seemed at all surprised by the exchange, which meant they were all in on the secret…whatever that may be. “Should I know what’s going on?” she asked, shoving aside any flash of hurt feelings. Her siblings tried so hard to make her feel like she was one of them, even when they all knew she was something different, dangerous. She owed them the benefit of the doubt.
“No,” Petyr said, but before Aria could feel her heart plummet again, he quirked a smile and added: “But that’s mostly because we’ve been better than usual at keeping it a surprise.”
“Some of us have been better than usual,” Dayna added with a look toward Raul. He just shrugged philosophically.
A surprise sounded so much better than a secret. A surprise meant she was invited to be part of this—whatever this was. Aria began to smile back, warmth blooming inside her skinny chest as Petyr moved to gently clasp her on the shoulder. “Come on,” he said, copper head tilted toward copper head. “Let’s get inside the cave and I’ll explain everything.”
Timothy gave a sudden hoot and darted around them—away from Dayna—something suspiciously sandwich-shaped clutched in one grubby hand. Petyr shot his twin a look and she just sighed, pushing the basket closed again. “One down,” she said. “But it’s all right: I packed plenty more.”
Aria let herself be led past the jumble of rocks that all but hid the entrance to the cavern, anticipation building in her belly. She had to lift her skirts to keep the hems from dragging through shallow basins of water—the cave was close enough to the Waking Sea that at high tide, its mouth filled with frothing waves. It was dangerous to come out here without a close eye on the tides and time: spend too long, and you could easily find yourself trapped for half a day, waiting until the waters had receded safely again.
…which suddenly explained the extra food and Dayna’s comment about blankets.
“Are we staying here through the tide?” she asked, half-twisting to look up at Petyr. The light was twilight-dim, dwindling more and more the deeper they ventured. A cozy firelight called them toward the far back of the cavern, where the rocks were wide and elevated and dry enough for an impromptu campsite. But here, Petyr’s expression was all but lost to darkness. All Aria could see was that distant flicker of light in his eyes, like burning coals.
(Like demons in the dark.)
She shivered, nearly missing his reply. “…don’t know how long this will take,” Petyr was saying. “So we waited until we knew Father would be away and Tante would be too distracted to worry. It’s okay,” he added, teeth flashing in what should have been a reassuring smile. “I’ll walk you through it.”
“What do you mean by it?” Aria twisted around to catch a glimpse of Raul and Dayna, but Petyr kept a firm-yet-gentle grip on her arm.
“Careful,” he said, catching her when she nearly slipped on an uneven patch of stone. She darted her gaze back to him, but—thank the Maker—they were passing out of the heavy darkness and into the growing light of the campfire. Its light caught against the curling ends of his hair. The glowing coals of his eyes were nothing but friendly, familiar hazel, and that sudden gut-clench of fear she’d felt (low and thrumming and primal as a demon’s whisper) seemed silly in the face of his smile.
Aria blew out a long breath and mentally repeated the mantra Tante had taught her back in the early days when nightmares brought her shrieking awake every night, flames dancing at her fingertips. If I trust in the Maker, I have no reason to fear. There is nothing in the darkness but the promise of his light.
Timothy poked a stick into the fire, sending sparks swirling toward the high cavern ceiling as they approached. Sticky jelly smeared his cheeks, and he grinned around his final bite. “It’s all ready,” he said, voice coming out garbled.
Petyr just shook his head. “All right. You and Raul get the bed ready. Aria, could you give Raul your cloak?”
It seemed easier to just do what he asked and wait for her answers. She reached up, wresting open the clasp and swirling the bright blue cloak off her shoulders with a flourish. A few feet away, Dayna snorted with amusement and did the same—more subtly, as was her wont.
Both cloaks were handed over with silent formality, and Raul and Timothy scurried over rock to begin laying them out some distance back from the fire.
Petyr turned to her. “You know I went abroad with Father a few months back.”
“Yes,” Aria said. “I remember.”
“We traveled to Starkhaven, and Kirkwall, then down to Orlais.”
Aria tilted her head, brows slowly knitting. It wasn’t like Petyr to draw things out into unnecessary lengths—telling stories they both knew she remembered. “I know where you traveled,” she said, looking between the twins. “You wrote us letters. You told us all about it when you got back.”
Petyr hesitated. “I didn’t tell you all about it,” he said, then paused again—so uncertain, so hesitant, so unlike him that the hairs along her arms were standing up again.
Before she could demand to know what was happening, Dayna cleared her throat and gently took her hand. “Let’s sit,” she said, “and Petyr can explain everything he heard about Voices.”
“Voices?” Aria echoed, confused. Worried. Scared. She let her sister tug her toward the fire, however, willingly dropping onto a flat-topped rock. Her skirts pooled around her, and Aria let go of Dayna only to wrap her arms around her drawn-up legs, holding herself close and tight. “I don’t understand. What—”
Something horrible occurred to her.
“Oh,” Aria breathed, looking between them as they sat just before her, side by side but angled in her direction—a well-meaning wall. Hemming her in or keeping others out? Maker, did it really matter, in the end? “Oh, no, I promise, I promise I haven’t been hearing any more voices. They stopped not long after the dreams, and I—”
“That’s not what we meant,” Petyr interrupted quickly, shooting a panicked glance at his sister.
Dayna’s smile was reassuring. “We know you’d never listen to demons, even if you are a…” She was kind enough to let the rest die off. “No. What Petyr means is something different than that. I guess you could say it’s the opposite of that.”
“I don’t understand,” Aria said, heart still hammering like a wild thing in her chest. Even with their reassurances, she couldn’t seem to convince herself that her brother and sister weren’t trying to accuse her of using her forbidden gifts. Of communing with demons. Of…of any number of horrible, unspeakable things.
(Of seeing eyes in the darkness and the occasional light pressure on her thoughts, as if someone were listening to everything she said with hungry intent.)
Petyr took a bracing breath. “A few years ago, back when Tante first came to live with us—” back when the dreams had first begun, ice creeping across Aria’s pillowcase every morning “—I overheard her and Mother talking about Voices. Tante said that if Mother and Father helped you find your Voice, then you wouldn’t have to worry about demons anymore. You wouldn’t have to worry about someone coming to take you away.”
She looked between the twins, then over her shoulder at Raul and Timothy. Their expressions were a four-way mirror, reflecting earnest belief, but…
“Why would Mother and Father not do what Tante said, then?” she asked, voice a small thing in the sudden big, crushing darkness of the cavern. “It would ruin the family if someone discovered what I can do—Father says so all the time. If there was some way to keep anyone from ever finding out, then why…”
Why, why, why. The word echoed through her thoughts even as she bit off the rest of the question, because, Maker, it only led to more. Things like why haven’t you told me before and why are you telling me now?
A few years ago, she may have leapt up and demanded to know the truth—and inevitably, that was when thunder would begin to rumble, or the fireplace would throw unexpected sparks, or she’d feel that tug deep in her chest, wonderful and terrible all at once.
Now, with patience and long experience, she had learned to fold her hands tight in her lap and wait to be told which way the wind would carry her…but even now, there was still that angry, willful spark she had to fight to smother in her chest, demanding to know why why why. Why was she dangerous, why was she her family’s dirty little secret, why couldn’t she be told anything, why could she never hope to leave this place, why would the Templars want to take her when all she’d ever done was love too fiercely and trust the Maker to guide her?
Why did demons want to take her thoughts; why her?
Maybe that last one most of all.
Aria swallowed back an anxious noise, expression placid as deep waters hiding dangerous currents, waiting.
Petyr swore. “Look,” he said. “I probably should have told you a long time ago, but I didn’t know what they meant and… And I was scared.”
Of you, seemed to hang in the air; thankfully, they all loved her enough not to say it.
“We scoured the library for anything we could find,” Dayna added. “Petyr and I. We read through every book. Whenever I was invited to a neighbor’s hall, I would find an excuse to slip away and search their libraries, too.” She sighed and spread her hands. “We never found anything useful, though.”
“But when Father took me with him on this trip, I decided it was my chance to figure out what I could,” Petyr said, taking up the tale. “We were passing through proper lord’s houses—families who could actually afford living in those big old homes. We went to chantrys and viscount keeps and oh, all sorts of places with all sorts of people. And I found out everything we need to know about Voices.”
Dayna looked at her twin with arched brows and he colored, ducking his head. “Well,” Petyr admitted. “Maybe not everything we need to know. But enough to help you find yours.”
“We helped!” Timothy added, leaning forward to grab at a loose copper curl, giving it a tug. “We did what Petyr said and gathered all this stuff for you.”
“And between the two of us, Dayna and I managed to steal all the lyrium we’ll need.”
That had Aria shooting up to her feet, shocked. “Petyr!” she gasped, hand flying up to cover her mouth as her ever-responsible twin siblings each reached for the corner of a lockbox she hadn’t yet noticed. Half-hidden by Dayna’s skirts, it didn’t look like much—but when Petyr twisted in the rusted key and pulled upon the lid, she instinctively drew back, pulse racing, because…
Because this was dangerous, wasn’t it? This was against everything that had ever been drummed into her head, over and over and over again, like a whip’s lash. To take lyrium, to willingly call on magic, to give in to her own nature… It was wrong, it was sinful, it was was not allowed.
But somehow, in the safety of their cave, it didn’t look so very wicked. Aria stared at the two pretty rows of bottles, glowing blue-white liquid quiescent inside, and thought: Oh, but it’s the color of my cloak.
It was a stupid thing to notice—even stupider to care about—but something about that connection had her shoulders slowly relaxing. Or was it the earnest way her siblings were looking at her, conviction in their eyes as if they were offering her a lifeline instead of the greatest temptation she’d ever faced?
Aria bit the tip of her finger, eyes flicking between the rows of lyrium and her older brother’s eyes. This felt like too great a transgression to consider (her father’s voice echoing like a second conscience, cruelly yanking her to task whenever she strayed), and yet… A Voice. Safety. A haven from fear.
“What,” she began, lowering her hand to clasp her skirts between her fingers to hide the way they trembled. “How…”
“It turns out,” Petyr said, “that every, um, person like you has a Voice in the Fade. If you can go deeper in the Fade—using lyrium—you can find them and bond with them, and they’ll be able to shield you from demons and Templars and magic itself. I think.”
Dayna leaned forward. “Like a soulmate,” she said, practical braids swinging forward. “Isn’t that so romantic, Aria?”
Timothy, now sprawled bored across the makeshift bed, gagged.
Petyr shot him a dark look. “Anyway,” he said. “I figured it was worth a shot. If you’ve got some Voice in the Fade…”
“Soulmate,” Dayna said again, jutting out her chin.
“…then you need to at least try to find them. It’s your duty, right? As a Trevelyan? To make sure you aren’t ever discovered to be a…you know…and taken away and disgrace the family and all that.”
Raoul reached out to snag her spasmodically clenching hand from behind, whirling her around to face him. “And also, we love you and don’t want to lose you,” he said, catching Aria about the waist and spinning her once, off-balance. “But Petyr’s too self-important to say that part.”
“I was getting to that!” Petyr protested, red-faced—and somehow that was enough to open the floodgates. Aria sucked in a breath, skirts swinging wide about her legs as her little brother spun her about, and laughed. The sound was hard, a little too loud, but it felt so very, very good to just give in to the warring fear and relief rising like choking vines in her chest.
A Voice. A soulmate. A way out of the prison that had become her life; could it even be possible?
“I bet he’s tall and strong and handsome,” Dayna said, just old enough that she cared about that sort of thing. She stood, moving around the makeshift bed as Petyr brought the lyrium.
“I bet he has the face of a butt and the butt of a mabari,” Timothy added helpfully.
“Well at least that will be familiar,” Aria said, catching her breath as Raoul spun her down to the bed of cloaks, spread so carefully near (but not too near) the little fire. “I was raised with you lot, after all.”
Timothy snorted a laugh and Raoul gave a playful bark even as Dayna rolled her eyes and knelt next to her head. Petyr took the other side, lockbox of stolen lyrium by his side. Aria was filled to bursting with all sorts of questions, but she bit her tongue at the look in his eyes. He was so serious, so…grown-up, looking like a much kinder shadow of Father in this light.
She loved him so much her heart nearly burst with it. More than that, she trusted him. He wouldn’t send her off into the demon-choked darkness on a fool’s errand; he knew what he was doing, surely, and he would keep her safe.
“I trust you,” Aria murmured, obediently laying out with her hair strung in mermaid coils about her face. She took the first bottle of lyrium, trying to smile as the cold-bright-odd smell filled her head.
Petyr set his jaw and gave a little nod, so certain. She smiled, then pressed her lips to the open mouth of the bottle, sucking in a quick breath before she allowed herself to swallow. The taste was harsh—like ice spearing down her throat—and she sputtered, moving up onto an elbow.
Petyr gently pushed her back even as Dayna caught the bottle of lyrium, tipping it so the rest flowed down Aria’s throat. “It’ll be easier if you do it fast,” she said apologetically. Small hands clamped down on Aria’s shoulders—Raul—and even smaller, slightly sticky ones about her feet—Timothy. She didn’t struggle as they seemed to expect, closing her eyes and swallowing down the bright surge of her powers.
A second vial was pressed to her mouth; a third, a fourth. Trusting her brother not to lead her astray, Aria drank every last drop—struggling against a flicker of fire deep in her breast and the bone-deep chill of the Fade as it wrapped its fingers about her throat, pulling her down down down into a darkness deeper still.
“Petyr,” Aria heard, the whisper drifting over her, around her, gentle eddies pulling her into the sea. “Don’t you think that’s enough?”
“I don’t know,” he whispered back, afraid. “I…I think… I don’t know.”
He sounded younger, then; the childhood friend instead of the fully grown stranger he was becoming, and Aria wanted desperately to reach out and take his hand. I trust you, she thought, each word breaking apart in her drifting, lyrium-bright mind like dandelion seeds on the wind. I trust you, I trust you, I—
She closed her eyes against the darkness, the distant whisper of the Trevelyan siblings’ voices breaking apart around her.
When she opened them again, she was…somewhere else.