Chapter Text
Looking back on it, it would seem mere moments had passed between when she’d left Cullen to move to take her place in the Enchanters’ Quarters and when she found herself being escorted out of the tower by Warden-Commander Duncan. She had resolved not to look at anyone. What she had done, she had done in good faith. She had believed in Jowan’s innocence, and between Cullen’s admission and her friend’s story, she had been reminded – and harshly – of the yoke the Circle and the Chantry presented around her neck – around all mages’ necks.
Unbidden, she remembered tracing the vallaslin that curved across mamae’s face with tiny, chubby fingers – after she’d washed them, of course. On mamae’s knee, or in their bed, or as they washed or swept or wove or sewed or built, her mother would tell her how they kept the old ways, including magical ones. How those gifted with magic were accepted as the part of the clan, not locked away in some far-off tower. It was one more example, her mother noted, of how the Dalish were free.
She knew that the desire for freedom -- tinged with desperation -- had been the root of Jowan’s actions. While Owain was a lovely sort who felt fulfilled by his life, making a permanent, fundamental change to who a person was against their will for being different was unconscionable. Even so, regardless of her renewed distrust in the Circle, the potential and history of abuse for blood magic made it too great a risk to take. It had been dangerous; maybe even stupid.
And of course, he’d lied to her.
But also, she knew they were the acts of a man who had feared being severed from himself.
And now Jowan was free, and she was going into exile.
No matter.
Her head was high. Her eyes were up. Tomas’ lessons had been important, but at some point, she’d let herself go soft. She let herself forget that the Circle was little more than a prison: that the Chantry did not have any of their best interests at heart, that she could recognize the value of any individual, but the Circle and the Chantry were systems that were designed to dehumanize and oppress in order to hoard more and more power.
What she had railed against as a child she understood now as an adult. And she would not forget again.
But walking past everyone who had defined her life for over a decade, looking only forward until she and Duncan were out the door and on the skiff to the dock, proved that destroying the soft girl she’d become would require more than a wish to make it so. Somehow, she kept her resolve until that bloody gleaming armor and gleaming hair and those gleaming eyes came into her periphery, when she felt Cullen’s gaze on her.
The glance she cast was as brief and subtle as she could make it, expecting fury and disgust, perhaps the cold that accompanied his duty.
Instead, when she found herself meeting his gaze, she saw something in his eyes soften, as did the line of his lips. It nearly undid her. Her own jaw clenched.
How dare he...
How dare he now, of all moments?
As she walked toward the doors, on the cusp of finally escaping this bloody island, never to return? As she finally, regardless of exile or transgressions or obligations to the Wardens or anything else, had somehow achieved at least this modicum of freedom?
Something in her eyes must have shifted, too, because his hands curled into fists, his lips parted as though to speak before they pressed into a line again.
She turned away then, raising her chin, exhaling as the tower doors opened before them.
She did not look back.