She smears at the blood, and he's busy at the work he'd hoped to avoid, seeing that no one else on the crowded floor will overhear. But whatever she gets out of this place, the decision itself will do.

"You came upon a pool of corrupted lyrium," Brine, grey, a jog to memory. "How did the Darkspawn behave around it?"

That much was absent from the written account. Assured of the door, he does up one sleeve. Another: The veins gnarl black up his wrists, branches wired about a tight line of scar.