<i>Enslavement.  </i>He had said a word she had never heard a truly devoted Templar used when describing the situation most mages in Ferelden were faced with.  It felt strange to talk to him like this.  Some part of her wanted to pour her feelings out to him, to tell him everything she had learned and where she had been.  Lana stopped herself, both because she feared it would make him feel as if she abandoned him and because she was not really sure that she knew the man standing next to her.  Would whatever brainwashing they had done to him come back up and cause him to call her a blood-mage again?<br/><br/>"It isn't."  She agreed as they reached the top of the steps of the inn.  Again she took his hand and led them both inside to their room, where a bottle of ale now waited for them.  His hand was warm and rough against hers.  Rougher than she remembered it.  "Tevinter isn't like that.  I mean, there are demons, but I wouldn't call them rampant...It's actually quite...lovely.  Severe, but lovely.   I spent a year or so there, before I traveled to the Free Marches to help a friend."  She had lived in Asariel for a time, a beautiful coastal city where she could smell the sea air each morning.  She had reveled in the open skies and seas.  It felt like the perfect place to find freedom.<br/><br/>"You said that to me, about Tevinter.  We never talked seriously about any of it, we knew it was impossible, but sometimes...we dreamed together.  Thought of what our lives would be like if we were...not who we are."  Lana sighed and released his hand.  She walked over to the table where the bottle of ale sat and poured a cup for each of them, turning to offer one to him once she was done.<br/><br/>"You need to know this, I did not want to run....Isabella gave me no choice and she used her magic to throw me out that window and then...I couldn't let her sacrifice mean nothing.  I knew that they would just kill me if I tried to return.  Knight-Commander Greagoir would have killed Warden Amell, was he allowed to do so, he would not have given my life a second thought."  Tears began to well up in her eyes, though she quickly lifted a hand to brush them away.  The words felt heavy and hard in her mouth, so much so that she was not sure she could speak them.<br/><br/>"I--I knew what they did to Cullen.  He had feelings for a mage and the demons used it to twist his mind, and then...Then the Order did the same thing to him they did to you.  They took pieces of his life away from him.  I just...I am not a blood mage, Ellion, but I should not have left you at their mercy.  It is the one thing in this life I truly regret."  She had dreamed of him so many times and she now understood why she had come back here, to a place where they would most likely kill her.  Some small part of her, deeply buried, hoped to see him again.  One last time, before she lost it all.