Solas almost misses the Herald's first stumble. The ground is rocky, and they are climbing uphill over stones wet from the river, so when she slips two handspans before she catches herself, it is easy to dismiss it.

But she stumbles again, an hour later, on flat grassland, and he does not miss how, this time, her face constricts with pain before she rights herself and keeps walking.

No one else notices.

That night, when the fires are lit and camp is struck, Solas makes his way to her side. She does not hear his approach, too occupied with her feet to notice him, but he sees the raw, red blisters covering her soles and something stirs in him. Is it satisfaction, that the pace she sets is as wearying to her as it is to them? Or relief that she is, despite the mark on her hand, as mortal as the rest of her companions?

Is it tenderness?

She prods her heel with a shaking hand, and winces.

"You are in pain," he says without thinking, realizing only when she turns wide, dark eyes on him that he may have misspoken. Nothing in her manner toward him has been anything but friendly; indeed, she seemed eager for his company and stories — but her face shutters. She smiled at him before, with an easy, mobile mouth, fresh as salt spray from the sea. Not now. Not at all.

A sliver of regret slides through him, cold as the water they walked in that morning, for the possibility that he has hurt her.

She recovers quickly, straightening and smiling. "Not used to so much walking," she replies. "I miss the aravels, that's all. Just means I need to toughen up."

Solas has not been alone so long that he cannot recognize a closed door when he sees one, and when Varric calls her name from the other side of camp, he lets her go without another word.

The next day, she falls.

Not far, and not hard, and Blackwall is close enough to help her up moments later, but she cries out as she falls, one leg twisted under her.

The sound goes through Solas like a needle through old cotton, splitting him through the weave at his heart.

"There, now, easy, easy," Blackwall tells her, not letting go of her arm till she stands steady on her feet and gives him a friendly nod. "Lots of warrens in the Hinterlands. Probably put your foot in one. You should be glad you didn't break your ankle."

"Because I don't have enough to worry about," she says, with a low laugh. "Thanks for the hand, Blackwall."

She does not meet Solas's eyes for the rest of the day, not even when he passes her bread over the fire.

For a month, there is near-silence between them. She takes him on her travels as often as before, though when she comes to speak with him, her questions are perfunctory. She asks how he is, how the others are treating him — but no inquiries about the Fade, or the history he saw there.

She spends a great deal of time with Vivienne, in whispered council.

I am not jealous, Solas tells himself, after he finds the Herald with Cassandra in the tavern. He may not be jealous, though the surprise of seeing the Seeker with one hand clasped around a mug of ale does not account for the gnawing and snapping in his belly. It is — something stranger than that, a half-forgotten taste on the back of his tongue.

He decides to stay back, and linger where the fire is warmest. Here, he can watch as Varric tries to avoid Cassandra's eye, and as Sera tosses back a drink and says Bees! to Blackwall. They are all laughing, all happy.

She is happy. As he watches, she claps her hand over her mouth, to hold in laughter or ale, or both.

I am not jealous, he tells himself again, as Cassandra smiles at her fondly, reluctantly. I am not.

Solas leaves before Bull begins to sing, and if he wishes the Herald's eyes had fallen on him once, just once — well, no one will know, and no harm will be done.

Rain keeps them trapped in their tents for two full days. Solas does not regret the enforced rest, though Cassandra paces like a hungry wolf and Varric takes to humming tunes that lodge in one's brain for hours on end. Cassandra snarls whenever she starts to hum along with him, and finally banishes them all to their tents. With nothing else to do, Solas sleeps a dreamless sleep that eases the strain in his muscles as well as hot water would.

He wakes just after dawn. When he peers out his tent flap, he sees the Herald's tent open to the fresh air, and her sitting cross-legged just inside the opening. Her eyes are closed, a smile of pleasure curves her lips. Her hair streams over her shoulders and past her breasts, a thin, frost-white cloud around her face.

It is a waste of time to contemplate what the curve of her skull would look like without her braids to hide it, but he cannot resist. Would her hair feel like corn silk, or cobwebs? He can imagine both these things between his fingers. He is imagining these things.

He has wandered before, but till now he has never felt lost, nor has he felt quite this sense of possibility. She has changed so much; it is only appropriate she changes him as well.

The Herald opens her eyes. Her gaze meets his, the question in it unobscured by the rain.

The next morning, after a fight against bandits that left them all filthy and exhausted, she comes to him as he washes the blood from his arms in the chill river water. The air is clean, the grass green and new and dew-stricken in the early dawn light.

"Here," she says, and he turns in time to catch a slippery bar of soap. It smells of lavender — it smells like her, he realizes, clutching it lightly as he can to keep it from escaping his grip. "It'll help. Hope you don't mind the smell."

"Thank you," he says, and offers her a small smile. She returns it, though not with the same warmth he already understands that he misses.

"Solas," she says, "are we going to have a problem?"

She is not a silken cord bound around steel, this Herald, but stone hidden by leaves. Only time will wear her down. She will not break.

"You think I'm weak," she adds, before he can say anything in reply. "And you're not…wrong."

When Solas looks up, she is not smiling any longer. She is thoughtful instead, a patient, weary kind of thoughtful that makes her look far younger than she is — than Solas thinks she is. He knows nothing about her, only the mark on her hand and her clan's name. Why does not knowingfill him with such impatience? These are faster currents than he is used to fording; these are pinpricks he has not felt in what seems an age.

"I do not think you are weak," he says, though it is close enough to a lie to make his teeth ache. "You are — valuable. You are —"

"Don't," she says. "If I have to hear one more person tell me what I am, I'll scream. And then Cassandra will come running, so let's skip right to the explanations, hm?" She sits down on the edge of the river, her knees drawn up to her chest.

"There was a fever, about twenty years ago. We lost…" She closes her eyes, then opens them and looks out across the river, the corners of her mouth tipped down. "It's always too many. I lived, but I haven't been strong. Not the way I should be. So all this walking, this fighting? It's a strain. I get tired easily, and…"

She is understating the case. Solas has seen her pain and her exhaustion, the way the past few months have put lines near her eyes her tattoos barely conceal. She is more than weary, but he will not make her say it.

"We used to ride everywhere," she says, picking up a flat stone and squeezing it in her fist. "In the aravels. Sometimes I can't sleep because I'm so used to everyone's snoring and the hallas sighing. I'd share a tent with Cassandra, but she says I deserve my space. I've never had space before in my life, not even when I was sleeping. And when I was awake, someone always needed me for something, but I knew them. It wasn't like this. Everyone needs me here too, but I couldn't even tell you half their names." She tosses the stone toward the water, where it sinks with barely a ripple beneath the surface. "It must sound ridiculous to you, missing people. Missing noise."

It does, but Solas thinks it would be a strange and sweet pleasure to find the echoes of the Herald's clan in his dreams. Noisy, yes, but warm, welcoming.

"It is unusual," he murmurs. Has a life in a Dalish clan ever occurred to him? A life full of the creaking of wood, the smell of quiet hooved beasts, sharing food and clothes, and nights spent not in the Fade, but in careful watches against what moved in the forest. Would he have learned to braid hair, to hunt? Or would he have been escorted from the clan once his magic showed, with nothing but a pack on his back and a pair of dark eyes following him?

They are silent for a long time, watching the sun slip above the horizon and gild the trees and the water's edge. By degrees, the air warms, and Solas expects her to rise at any moment and walk away.

She does not. She rests her chin on her knees and watches the water.

He will not have another chance like this, not that he can see. She has asked him so many questions, and listened to all his answers; why not satisfy this steady ache in his chest and ask her just one?

"I do not even know your name," he says.

The Herald lifts her head, blinking at him sleepily. "You never answered my question," she replies, her voice almost a whisper.

This moment is a fragile thing, a tracery of hoarfrost or the last ember of an evening's fire. There are so many names for what he feels: longing, curiosity, want. But the longer he watches her face, and the higher the sun rises, the more it seems only one word will fit.

Beginning.

"There will be no problem," he says, and holds out his hand. "Forgive me, if I have hurt you. There is much I don't understand, and —"

She does not wait till the last words are out of his mouth before taking his hand in hers. Her fingers are cold, but her smile — ah, yes, her smile is warm once more.

"Eylis," she says. "I'm Eylis."

Eylis. It has no meaning, nothing beyond its two simple syllables. It is hers, and belongs to no one and nothing else.

"Eylis," he says, smiling himself.

Yes, he thinks, as she does not let go of his hand. This is a beginning.

"So, where to next, Herald?" Varric asks, as Solas shifts the straps of his pack and takes a last sidelong look at Eylis. "What adventures do you have in store for us today?"

She shields her eyes with her hands and stares to the north. Solas feels a warmth in his hands and chest; authority has begun to suit Eylis, as magic suits her, as the sunlight suits her. "To Redcliffe," she says a moment later, with a firm nod. "Let's go talk to the mages."

She sets off, her pace careful. Solas follows close behind.