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She froze where she stood, straining her ears. Something was amiss. It was too early to say what, but she’d stake her job on it – hell, her life. Suddenly she found herself grappling with the unsettling sense she wasn’t half so alone as she’d first assumed, and it wasn’t an idea that sat well with her.
Slowly, keeping her movements smooth so as to appear natural, she glanced to her left. The city’s chains hung heavy over her head, the metal made dark by the night. In the daylight, its links were a sickly mélange of greens and reds and blacks: the ravages of time, the sea, and untold bloodshed, in that order. Normally she found them difficult to look at; they were a reminder of her home’s grim past, a testament to the bottomless hunger slowly hollowing the place from the inside out. Tonight, however, under the cover of darkness, they were nothing more than great, heavy shadows standing watch. None too different from her, really.
Just as slowly, she glanced to her right. The fortress loomed large beneath the moon, and, unlike the chains, was made no friendlier by the dark. Instead, it took on a significantly more sinister cast, its shadows growing longer and longer by the moment – sharper, darker, crueler. A perpetual audience of bronze surrounded it, the statues’ expressions made all the more gruesome by the thin, silvery starlight.
Had it been one of them to trip her senses? Had she, in a moment of idle woolgathering, mistaken a bronze silhouette for one made of flesh?
No. No, that would’ve been too simple. Too convenient.
“Tension quite suits you. Has anyone ever told you that?”
Her hand had been on the pommel of her sword, but in a flash, she drew it by the hilt. A pivot, nothing more, and the blade’s point gleamed at the interloper’s throat. It caught just enough moonlight to illuminate her smile; a different sort of weapon, the Knight-Captain thought, but a weapon, nonetheless.
“It puts such color in your cheeks…” As she spoke, she moved, and as she moved, her form became clearer against the shadows. Not much clearer, of course (that would be bad for business), just enough to show her what she wanted to be seen. A hand wrapped in a dark glove slid up to the blade, delicately caressing its steely edge. “You stop holding yourself like such a good little soldier, too. I would say it’s a refreshing change, but then I’d be lying. The adjectives that actually spring to mind are…significantly less wholesome, say.”
Before she could do anything she might later come to regret, the Knight-Captain sheathed her sword once more. It was as much grace as she was willing to show this one. “We had an agreement, I thought,” she began, her eyes tracking the other woman as she sauntered out from the shadow and into the torchlight.
Her movements were sinuous, fluid in all the ways you expected a pickpocket to be – and then some. Each step seemed at once calculated and improvised; were it not for the faint creaking of her dark leathers, she might’ve been a ghost, the cobblestones were so silent beneath her. She reached up to remove her hood, and when she shook her head, hair dark and lustrous as raven’s feathers fell about her shoulders.
“Funny thing about agreements,” she said with a sidelong smile, her eyes glinting like uncut sapphires in the night. “They only last until someone disagrees.”
As the Knight-Captain watched, the smuggler made a grand show of stretching her arms out, humming a long, self-indulgent note as she bowed her back, rolled her neck, put all of that flexible strength of hers on full display. Refusing to entertain her theatrics, she quickly averted her eyes. Patter with this one was dangerous, she knew – that lesson, she’d learned the hard way.
“Go now and I’ll pretend I didn’t see you.”
“A generous offer! However, I’m nothing if not one for negotiation.” Averting her eyes, she realized too late, had been a mistake; the smuggler was on her in a moment, the attack made no less devastating by the absence of her knives.
In a flash, there was a boot hooked around her ankle, sweeping her leg out from under her, and…she fell. Beneath the weight of her shock, her shame, her plate, the Knight-Captain went to one knee, catching herself just in time to register the soft, supple leather of the smuggler’s glove. Her chin was tipped up and up and up until she was looking into those bright, mischievous eyes, and no matter how she turned, how she fought, she could not shake her.
“I have a different proposition for you, Knight-Captain.” When she laughed – oh, when she laughed – the sound was maddeningly sweet, making her think not of honeyed threats or back-alley blackmail but Chantry bells. Chantry bells on a crisp spring morning. “One…significantly less wholesome, say.”
Her heart leapt into her throat as she –
“Oh, please tell me that’s what I think it is…”
A soldier. A Seeker. The Right Hand of the Divine herself. And still Cassandra jumped. She slammed the book shut just an instant too late, and then Hawke jumped as well, pulling her hand back before her fingers could be caught between the pages.
“What are you—?!”
Instead of seeming cowed, Hawke’s grin only grew wider, her eyes glinting like…well, not to put too fine a point on things, but…like uncut sapphires in the afternoon sun. “It is, isn’t it? It is! I’d recognize that horrible cover from a mile away! That sneak!”
The Champion had only been with them a short while (short enough, in fact, that the sting had not yet gone out of Varric’s betrayal, peace offering or no), but in that time, Cassandra had come to realize she’d much preferred the version of her that lived in legend: the Hawke one heard whispered about in Kirkwall, the one the Chantry spoke of through gritted teeth, the one she’d lived and loved and grieved alongside in page after page of The Tale of the Champion. When contained within the bounds of a story, she was a force of nature, a woman whose bare, unbridled determination was rivaled only by her endless wit.
In reality, however, she was little more than a silver-tongued menace—an underground thug who barely bothered wiping the blood from her knuckles or the dirt from her face before sitting for a meal or sauntering into the War Room with her arms akimbo. Quite frankly, Cassandra had grown tired of her impudence, her sarcasm, her jeering.
But, to her great misfortune, there was one thing Varric had gotten right in all of that flowery, rambling exposition: The woman had a laugh like Chantry bells on a warm spring morning.
And her smile was nothing short of radiant (when it hadn’t gone all sharp at the edges, anyway).
And her eyes—
…Maker’s breath, fine! Perhaps there was still some flicker of admiration for the Champion kindling deep in her chest.
Hawke nodded down towards the book she held in her hands. “Have you gotten to the part where we fuck? He spent too long writing that mess to cut it out, I’m sure. His editor would’ve skinned him alive out of principle.”
Deep, deep, deep in her chest.
Cooling with every passing moment.
Of all the places to sit and relax today, why oh why had she stayed so close to the Herald’s Rest?!
When finally she found herself in control of her faculties once more, Cassandra quickly set the book out of Hawke’s reach. “I beg your pardon?!”
But Hawke, damn her, only laughed. Low, slow, and soft, a world apart from the head-back roaring she’d grown so accustomed to hearing from the Inquisitor’s other companions. Her smirk was a sickle, a weapon in its own right, and as she perched herself upon the edge of the courtyard’s lower rampart, Cassandra thought she understood (just for a moment) that she’d been lucky not to find her waiting in Kirkwall.
If this was how she comported herself in a strange new land, what must she have been like in the comfort of her own home? A demon, certainly. A monster.
“Unless I’m terribly mistaken—and I’m not—that,” she nodded again towards the book, “is the next installment of Swords & Shields. An atrocity so abhorrent as to be condemned by at least five separate cloisters in the Marches alone.”
She willed herself to believe the heat on her face was nothing more than a shaft of sunlight. The slow, mocking pendulum swing of Hawke’s legs made it a very, very difficult thing.
Next time she decided to pass her time in the fresh air, she thought she’d give the tavern a wide berth. Just in case.
“It—” Cassandra began, then found she had no defense to give. The cover left so very little up for debate. “I hardly—”
“Five at least, Seeker Pentaghast!” Cool as you please, she held her hand out, and while the clawed gauntlets of her regalia were nowhere to be seen, there was nevertheless a sense of danger present in the crooking of her fingers, the openness of her palm; Cassandra had sidestepped bear traps in the Fereldan Hinterlands that had troubled her less. “May I? I won’t steal it from you, perish the thought! I just want to hold the horrid thing in my own hands! Feel the weight of it, you know. Varric promised a friend of ours, promised her oh-so-sweetly in fact, that it would never see the light of day, so I’m sure you of all people can understand my desire to hold it, to heft it. I want to reckon with the weight of such a terrible thing. How much does a lie weigh, I wonder? How glossy are its covers? Do its pages have a nice matte finish, or will they riddle me with papercuts before I even reach the dedication? Inquiring minds must know.”
It went without saying that she had no intention of doing that. Any of it. Pride and pride alone kept her from throwing the blasted thing over the retaining wall and off the mountain altogether for deniability’s sake—it was bad enough that the Inquisitor knew the sort of dreck she paged through in her spare time, not to mention Varric! Handing the book to Hawke? Providing her with proof of her own shame? Never. Never! Not if her very life depended on it!
But before she could say as much, before she could find words or composure enough, something she’d heard her say stopped her cold.
“‘We?’” Cassandra asked, feeling her eyes go wide despite herself. “What do you mean, ‘we?’”
Hawke didn’t answer. No…no, that would’ve been too easy. Much too easy. Instead, she once more wiggled her fingers, beckoning.
“I’m not giving you the book,” she insisted, relieved to feel her exasperation tempering her humiliation. She sounded like herself again, at least. That wasn’t much, but it was certainly better than tripping over her own words.
Hawke simply blinked. Slowly. Strategically. It wasn’t natural, the way her eyelashes curled so perfectly.
“I’m not.”
Her eyebrows went up. Her sly smile remained.
Yes, Cassandra thought, it was a good thing the Champion had already fled the city by the time she’d come looking for her. Varric had been difficult enough to press for information; she couldn’t fathom sitting opposite Hawke in an actual interrogation, couldn’t imagine a world where anything she did could squeeze a word of truth from between her lips. Her full, perfectly shaped—
Damn it!
Reluctantly—furiously—she reached behind herself. She grabbed the book and, before her sense of reason could object, dropped it coldly into her waiting hand. “Explain,” she said, and Maker help her, how she hoped the iciness of her tone would protect whatever dignity she had left.
As she might’ve expected, Hawke did anything but explain. Acting as if she were in her own sitting room, she instead stretched out, laying herself down across the rampart with nary a glance towards its width. She yawned (a wide, showy thing), then took to lazily flipping through the serial’s pages.
On the cover, the Knight-Captain’s hair gleamed fiery orange in the sun.
Every so often, she paused, her expression changing to suit the passage she landed on: now a perplexed pout, now a frown, now a grin so sharp and devious as to send a finger of something shooting down Cassandra’s spine. Only once it seemed a lifetime had passed did she speak again, and oh…
Oh.
How she wished she wouldn’t’ve.
“‘Her head spun. In an instant, every bit of training flew from her mind, leaving her awash in a sea of confusion. Should she go for her weapon? She certainly couldn’t risk turning her back on someone as cunning, as cutthroat, as this one. Perhaps she could catch her unawares, go running out of the bunkroom to gain the upper hand. Or perhaps…
“‘But that, of course, was when she heard the click of the lock and knew her time had run out.
“‘“What is it that you want, precisely?” the Knight-Captain snapped, her cheeks going hot with shame as she realized she’d lowered her voice into a whisper, thereby tacitly agreeing to the smuggler’s terms. Why wasn’t she shouting at the top of her lungs? Most of her men were out on patrol, yes, but surely there were some still milling around the barracks, going about their daily assignments.
“‘“I already told you,” the smuggler purred, and as she turned away from the door, the truth blazed hot in her eyes. She pressed herself against the Knight-Captain, their bodies flush without armor to get in the way. “Nothing wholesome.”
“‘And then her hands were in her hair, and she was being pulled into a hot, crashing kiss, and the world around them ceased to exist. There was no fighting it any longer, no pretending, no pretense – the Knight-Captain’s hands found the smuggler’s hips, the curve of her waist, the swell of her breasts, and just before they went toppling onto the bed, she felt the zing of a bite at her lower lip. Tomorrow, she would be ashamed to admit the effect it had on her; tonight, she only wanted more.’”
Hawke snorted as punctuation, dropping the book to her chest as she turned her attention elsewhere. “He extended it! The cad. If she finds out about this…” But then she stopped herself, shaking her head before fluttering her eyelashes in Cassandra’s direction. “I’m getting ahead of myself. Surely by now you’ve noticed certain…similarities between that rascally smuggler and, well, myself.”
Once more blaming the sun for the sudden heat in her cheeks, she narrowed her eyes. “Surely.”
“Mmm. Who am I talking to, you’re sort of the expert on me, aren’t you? Of course you would’ve noticed something so obvious! But…did you realize how very, very much our valiant Knight-Captain resembles a certain…someone else? Judging by the look on your face, I’ll assume the answer is a resounding yes.”
Judging by the look on her face? The look on her face? Was she doing something with her face?! Cassandra did her best to negate whatever that might’ve been, assuming a stony mask of utter indifference, lest Hawke realize the horrible, humiliating truth: If there was anyone the Knight-Captain made her think of, it was herself. That was half the reason she read Varric’s dreadful books in the first place—it was simply too easy to imagine herself in the main character’s shoes! There she was, a beleaguered soldier doing her best to make the city—no, the world at large!—a better place, constantly forced to explain herself, justify her actions, prove her worth in a cruel, unjust system. Of course she saw herself in the Knight-Captain! How could she not?!
The admission, private though it was, came at a high cost. Her face flooded with another wave of heat.
If Varric had based the smuggler on Hawke…and if the Knight-Captain was—
Unaware of her inner turmoil (or perhaps just unmoved by it), Hawke carried on. “And that certain someone is…my dear, dear friend and occasional co-conspirator, Aveline Vallen!” With a flick of her wrist, she turned the front cover towards her, tapping a finger to the Knight-Captain’s flowing hair. “A bit on the nose, eh? I always thought so, anyway, but who am I to call Varric’s judgment into question when he always goes to such great pains to write me, well…like that?”
“What?!” She snapped her mouth shut a moment too late.
Hawke’s grin grew pointed once more.
The idea had all but knocked her head off her shoulders—Aveline Vallen? Kirkwall’s flat-tempered and ill-mannered Captain of the Guard? The inspiration for the Knight-Captain?! It couldn’t be! Maybe the illustration on the cover did resemble her a bit, but…
Oh, Hawke couldn’t keep looking at her like that. Not after reading what she’d just read.
Maker guide her.
“I meant…surely I knew that. Only a fool would’ve missed something so blatant,” she lied, pursing her lips in an attempt to control the rest of her expression. “Not that I’ve had much reason to interact with the Guard-Captain—” Blast! It was even in her title!
“Not anymore, you mean,” Hawke interrupted. She let the implication of the statement linger there, hanging like rashvine nettles between them, then chuckled and went back to the book. “She hated it. Being the leading lady in something as tawdry as this…” Still snickering, she flipped through the rest of the pages. “Hated Hard in Hightown too, come to think of it. Really, she hated most things. It’s what I liked best about her. Made her great fun at the Hanged Man, let me tell you. Greeeat fun.” Then, before she could get a word in edgewise, she made a victorious sound and sat up, shushing Cassandra with one hand while the other held the book steady.
“‘Never before had she known passion like this, the smuggler’s mouth hot at her throat as the sheets twined between them, her hand—’”
“It doesn’t say that!” Cassandra gasped, and, forgetting herself for a moment, made a mad grab for the book.
Hawke pivoted at just the right instant however, holding it out of her reach while striking a (frankly preposterous) pose of over-the-shoulder delight. It was much less demure than it was devious, only furthering the suspicion she was more trouble than she was worth, but at that distance—or lack thereof—the curve of her smirk was devastating. A force comparable to the first shockwave to run through the Conclave, threatening to topple her, leaving her senseless and incapacitated and perfectly, utterly helpless to stop her own destruction.
And then it got worse.
“Oh, it does.” Her voice lowered, becoming a syrupy half-whisper that belonged anywhere but the bright, open expanse of Skyhold’s courtyard. “Keeps going, too…if you can believe such a thing.”
“It does not!” And when had her own voice grown so shrill? Since when had she decided to whisper? Cassandra tried to breathe, tried to snap herself out of the Champion’s thrall…and could not.
If the gleam in her eye was anything to go by, Hawke took notice. She took great notice. “I’m telling you, it does! Goes on for quite a while, in fact. Don’t believe me?” With a coy flutter of her lashes, she held the book out to her, allowing it to be snatched away. “Flip to page 106. About halfway down. Go on, I’ll wait.”
“But you…Guard-Captain Vallen…the two of you…?”
“Hmm?” Hawke continued to smile, her eyes bright but inscrutable, and what a villain she was! What a demon! She was going to make her say it? She was going to make her say it!
“You…you didn’t…you didn’t actually…?”
Her grin threatened to take her out at the knees. “What, you find it hard to believe the two of us ever found ourselves entangled during the course of our friendship? Think about it: the long, perilous flight from Ferelden after she’d lost her dear husband, the late nights of debauchery down at the tavern, the…” She gestured into the air as if trying to recall details from a life other than her own. “…the agonizingly boring ship passage into the Marches…we certainly had opportunities!” Her smirk sharpened further, if such a thing were humanly possible. “Or are you wondering how I could debase myself with someone so stiff? Jaded? Incapable of genuine emotion unless under immediate threat of bodily harm? Hypocritical? Chilly? Tall? You really must give me something here, Seeker—I could go on like this for days, if need be.”
“Women,” she managed, and the sound of her own voice surprised her so greatly, she nearly jumped a second time. “You’re both…women.”
For a beat, Hawke’s grin faltered. Her brow furrowed, and the mischief went from her eyes. It lasted only an instant; then it was back with a vengeance.
Looking a little like the cat that got the cream, she leaned forward, balancing effortlessly atop the rampart. “For the record, Seeker?” she whispered. “That’s never stopped me before.” She glanced away a second later, her attention stolen as someone leaned out of the Herald’s Rest and shouted for her (“Oi! Fancy Pants! This round’s yours, I thought?”). Hawke raised her hand to signal she’d heard, all the while sighing, “Ah, well. Duty calls! Such is the life of a celebrity, I suppose. I meant it, though—page 106, trust me.”
And then, just like that, she was off. Gone. Disappearing into the tavern to leave Cassandra red-faced and mortified in the silence of the courtyard.
It was all she could do to stand there and collect herself for a while, the book hugged tightly to her chest. The human body, she thought, wasn’t meant to endure that level of torment, of torture. What gave the Champion the right to—
On second thought, well, all right, maybe she’d let her off easy.
There was no way she was going to be able to go back to reading, though, absolutely none at all, so instead of getting comfortable in her spot again, Cassandra started for the War Room, hoping and praying the worst of the flushing would leave her face by the time she made the journey.
She made it three steps before curiosity got the better of her.
“Maker!”