The Warden-Commander was not what Daishell had been expecting. She was not as ugly as he’d imagined, and not as attractive as he’d hoped. She was shorter than the stories said, taller than most women he’d met, smiled more than he had pictured and frowned more often than was becoming of a noblewoman. She was thicker about the waist and better endowed in the chest and hips than her armor made her look, narrower in her shoulders and less muscular than the tales would have made him think. She was always colder to the touch than her flushed cheeks hinted, and there was always a great deal more fire in her words than her tone would betray.
He was not ever sure if he was disappointed or impressed; she did not seem to care either way.
“Who are you, again?” she’d asked that first day they’d met, the ice in her glance and her voice serving to ensure that it was taken to be the insult that she’d intended it to be. He’d questioned her judgment too soon, it seemed, for something so trivial he could not remember it. But she was very quick to show him back to his place beneath her.
“I have been assigned to you by the Chantry,” he’d told her with a slight bow of his head, knowing very well she already knew this. “To watch over the apostates in your care.”
“I have no apostates in my care,” she informed him. “Only Grey Wardens.”
“The Chantry believes-“
“The Chantry’s business is not mine, nor is mine the Chantry’s. The Chantry has no power here,” she’d been swift to cut him off, and Daishell would never forget the way she looked at him in that moment, like a snake coiled to strike, or – as she was Ferelden – perhaps a dog poised to lunge at his throat – either way, it had made an impression. “Nor do you. Appointed to me or not. You’d do well to remember that.”
She’d been making a show of protecting him, Daishell had naturally assumed, the blonde mage who had stood at her side in that hallway, who’d looked back over his shoulder at him nervously even as Inara had guided him away. She’d been snarling and barking like a tiny guard dog, trained to sound tough from behind the fence. Perhaps he had enthralled her. Perhaps he was fucking her. Perhaps she loved him.
Whatever the reason, Daishell did not put too much stock in her warning.
That was his first mistake. It was far from his last.
“You wear a symbol of Andraste,” he commented idly another day, regretting it almost immediately after the words had left his lips as her eyes flashed at him like lightning, and she scowled at him as dark clouds rolled through those eyes. He was almost afraid of the growl of thunder that would no doubt crawl from her lips. “But you deny the authority of the Chantry.”
“I deny the authority of the Chantry here, within my walls,” the rumble was not so startling as he’d braced himself for. The storm must have been a distance off yet, he gathered. “I am not delusional enough to deny its authority over Ferelden.”
“You have need of the Chantry’s guidance within your walls,” he frowned. “You have apostates-“
“I have Grey Wardens,” she corrected with passion. The storm was coming on quickly. “There are no apostates here.”
Daishell looked around; that blonde mage was nowhere to be found. He apparently betrayed more confusion than he’d meant to on his face, because she was quick to ask him what he was looking for.
“You really… believe that, do you?” he questioned.
He was answered by the lightning in her eyes, the cold wind as she turned her back on him to walk away.
“You can’t trust mages,” he called after her.
“Perhaps you can’t,” was her response.
He wasn’t sure he wanted to know what she meant.
