Bethany was sure the color of her cheeks was as bright as the flames that exploded from the tip of her staff. It had been Isabela's intent, of course; the pirate took great joy in her attempts to make her younger companion blush. Her teasing was usually good-natured, and the two were friends. Their friendship, however, had little effect on the mage's current embarrassment.

In many ways, they were complete opposites. While the Hawke family had spent close to two decades hiding their daughter's magic, Isabela had been sailing the open seas as the captain of her own ship. She was witty, outspoken, and confident – all traits that had not escaped the notice of either Bethany or her older brother. There was also no denying her devastating beauty and sultry magnetism.

It was her unrepentant sex appeal that had piqued Bethany's interest the most. The candid way in which she discussed her lascivious affairs had initially surprised her. She'd been torn between voicing her shock at the more tawdry tales and secretly wanting to hear more. The offer to borrow some of Isabela's more scandalous books had been politely declined, if for no other reason than she cringed at the thought of her mother investigating such reading material. On the other hand, she had listened attentively to the comparisons between men and women and their various talents, and had even asked the occasional question at the appropriate times.

In retrospect, Bethany really shouldn't have been surprised when the questions were turned back on her. They had been traveling along the Wounded Coast for some sort of job Garrett had taken. Anyone who dared attack them was disposed of quickly with a combination of blades and magic. Between these brief battles, Isabela had resumed her usual risqué chatter, much to the elder Hawke's amusement. As she was describing a love triangle that had ended in a knife fight, she spotted a locked chest nearly hidden beneath the sand at the side of the trail.

There was no pause in her story as she knelt beside it and picked at the lock with one of her daggers. Once it ended, she abruptly switched away from the topic of her own exploits. "So how many men have you been with?" she casually asked the lone female member of her audience.

Bethany was caught completely off-guard. "I…I haven't…I mean…" she sputtered.

"You're a virgin?" Isabela raised an inquisitive eyebrow before a grin spread across her face. "That's adorable!"

The salty breeze drifting from the seas did nothing to soothe the mage's fiery cheeks, and she still struggled to find suitable words. With one last twist of the dagger, the lock popped open with an audible click, and Isabela opened the lid of the chest. She retrieved a handful of coins and passed them up to Garrett, who was standing behind her. "Your sister is precious," she cooed at him. "Clearly she didn't get that from you."

He laughed. "If you were looking for someone chaste and pure, I'm afraid I can't be of any service to you."

"I'm sure you have plenty of other services to offer…."

"I don't want to intrude, but can we move along?" Anders, the fourth member of their party, had been silent throughout the entire exchange until this point. "I'd hate to be out here after nightfall. Maker knows what could be lurking about, waiting for us."

Isabela stood up and sighed in mock irritation. "I suppose we should get going. Besides, the faster we get out of here, the faster we can continue this conversation over a drink at The Hanged Man."

Bethany was silently grateful for Anders's interruption, but she didn't dare look over at him to thank him. She breathed deeply in an effort to restore her pulse to its original pace and her face to its original hue. It was bad enough that the details of her personal life – or lack thereof – had been revealed in front of her brother, but why did she feel so strange knowing they had been heard by Anders?

Sleep didn't come easy for the apostate healer. Anders frequently found the blissful escape difficult to obtain with everything that weighed on his mind. Some of his burdens were entirely of his own doing, but it was not the plight of the mages or the voice of Justice that kept him awake this night.

It had only been several weeks since Garrett Hawke had barged into his clinic, demanding maps to the Deep Roads. Along with a considerably more diplomatic dwarf, Varric, he had been accompanied by his younger sister. One look at Bethany had stirred something in Anders, reminding him of more carefree times, if only for a fleeting moment. She was serenely beautiful, but even her shy smile couldn't distract him from his more pressing concerns for very long.

Her magical talents had been revealed to him in due time – he hesitated to refer to it as a gift, for he knew all too well how much of a curse they could also be. In some ways, he was immensely jealous of her. He'd managed to sneak a few private conversations with her in the travels led by her brother, and he'd learned of her family's efforts to keep her from the Circle. Her father, also an apostate, had trained her well, and she was one of the most skilled mages he had ever come across.

To describe her as innocent and naïve would not be correct, and Anders had been forced to change his initial perceptions of her. She had seen more than her fair share of death and destruction, and was no stranger to the cruelties of Thedas. He'd seen her kill, and she felt no remorse for the lives that were ended by her hand. Despite all the unfair experiences crammed into her relatively short life, she had maintained a sweet, positive demeanor, fully earning the nickname of "Sunshine" from Varric.

The more time he spent with her, the more time he wanted to spend with her. At night, after his last patient had left his clinic and he was alone once more, his thoughts sometimes wandered to the kind-hearted mage. Since taking the spirit of Justice into his body, he had blocked himself off to the idea of any sort of deep relationship. The Hawkes' entrance into his life had intruded on his relative solitude, and he began to question his decision to reject any friendly offerings from the people of Kirkwall.

Anders stoked the fire in an attempt to ensure that it would keep him warm throughout the night. The flickering flames provided the only light in the room as he slipped beneath the covers of his simple cot and watched the shadows on the walls for a few more moments. He hoped the voice of Justice would stay silent long enough for him to get a few hours of sleep, and he pulled the blanket over his head.

When he closed his eyes, it was not the visions of the suffering refugees or the imprisoned mages that appeared to him. Bethany's face floated in his subconscious, her inquisitive brown eyes probing into him. The dark waves that framed her cheekbones spilled onto her bare shoulders, a stark contrast to the expanse of creamy white skin below the red scarf she always wore. Beyond that, the neckline of her blouse dipped dangerously low, the fabric stretched tight around her body and….

"She is a fellow mage. She is to be protected, not exploited."

The thought that seared through him wasn't entirely his. Anders chose not to argue with the other being that shared his physical form. He exhaled loudly and rolled over, bunching the pillow beneath his head in an effort to find a comfortable position. Squeezing his eyes shut, he tried to push away everything that troubled him and tore at his soul, and waited for sleep to overtake him.