( it’s gentle — as she might measure gentleness from strange — but not subtle, and before she can take the time to consider a thoughtful response, he startles her into a laugh: )

I handed that sword to my husband, ( she says, and means: literally. ) I was—

( it has become easier to discuss. she has got further from it, and been so much changed. maybe softened by how improbably and incongruously apt a thing he managed to say, maybe because they’re already discussing something so intimate, personal and discomforting as the prospect of removing a limb, )

I was much younger than forty. I have, in truth, never known a life not defined by soldiers; I spent much of my marriage in war camps and on campaigns of conquest. Magic was the means by which it was ensured

( passive voice; distancing, )

that were I to run, there would be no place for me but a gallows. ( just a trace of humour: and here she is, after all. ) It wasn’t handed to me, but wrapped around my throat with the intention of removing my agency, my identity, and my value. What you have chosen to become is most admirable, but for myself—

( uncharacteristically, she struggles for a moment to order her thoughts, to express them. )

That I can say now I have those things still is a gift that Thedas gave to me. To not only know myself, but to have a place here as I am— if Madame de Fonce is correct. If her theory holds. Then my anchor-shard is the last tie that binds me to a woman who never knew those things. I feel in some ways that I owe it to her to live for us both, and it is — a victory. To do so in my own power, and not forced to become a thing I am not.