Today's the day of me posting stuff i feel eh towards, apparently. Well, I hope you like it. :)
The Circle wasn't so bad, Bethany told the apprentices. The Circle was a place of learning, she said when the little girls and boys were crying. The Circle could protect them, teach them, heal them.
A hard lie to tell when you were walled in by stone, fed gruel, and locked in cells. A transparent one, too, unless you put strength in your voice even as they took your books and staffs. It got harder day by day, and Bethany worried that someday she wouldn't have the will to say those words.
Bethany never believed any of her own words unless the First Enchanter was there.
It was stupid and she knew it. The First Enchanter was still a mage, and mages in Kirkwall had little to no rights. But he stood up for them, got in shouting matches for them, defended his people when even other mages might stand down.
He'd been protecting his Circle for twenty years, and if anyone could stand up to Meredith and win, it would be him.
She thought that for a long time. But it wasn't true, it never was, because it wasn't an equal playing field. Orsino was a lone figure in a sea of hostility, where his opponents could and did take away the ground beneath his feet the moment they didn't like the words out of his mouth. The power struggle was a pretense; in order to have a power struggle, both sides need equal power.
It was a fight Orsino could not win. It took her three years to realize it, to reach through her tired hope and see the truth. Orsino knew it better than her, he had to, and yet he still fought. For them, for his mages, for the simple truth that they were people who didn't deserve to be condemned for actions they didn't commit.
"We need to talk to the Champion's sister."
The templars all wore the same face, impassive and cold. Those were the faces of men and women who'd been trained to take orders, to do whatever the Order commanded. Bethany didn't trust those faces, and she certainly didn't want to go with them. But she had no choice.
"You can't have her."
Bethany had, for once, forgotten Orsino. He rose like a snake to strike the templars with words, and fury was taut in every line of his face.
She looked from Orsino to the templars. He strode to stand between her and them.
"It is not within your right to take her," he said. "She has nothing to do with the Champion. She hasn't left the Circle since she came here."
"We must question her about the Champion's actions."
"She doesn't know," said Orsino firmly. "Tell Meredith she has to come to me before she can just take my mages."
His mages. She was one of his mages. She felt safer, somehow, knowing that.
The templars exchanged dark looks.
"Fine," said the leader. "But don't think you won't pay for this, Orsino. You are on thin ice as it is."
"I have been on thin ice for a decade," said Orsino harshly. "I will manage."
He waited until the templars were out of the room before he turned to her, giving her an encouraging smile. He looked tired. Tired but strong, a man who wanted to stop fighting but wouldn't until the fight was over, one way or another.
He smoothed his gray hair back as he waited for a reply from her. She smiled weakly at him. "Thank you. I don't know what they would have done...thank you."
"The Champion is lucky to have you as a sister," said Orsino. "You faced those templars very well."
She laughed. "I have faced worse."
"But not like that, I doubt. Templars have a knack for stripping away anything human-" He smirked at that, but for a lake of a better term he continued. "-and making you feeling little more like a monster, something that needs to be scraped off the floor and shut away."
"Is that how they make you feel?" she heard herself ask, horrified a split second later, a mortified blush spreading up her cheeks. Maker, had she really just asked that?
He laughed, though, and seemed to understand. "A long time ago, perhaps, but I don't have the luxury anymore."
"Thank you," said said, cheeks still red. "Not just for this. For...for all of your hard work."
He looked surprised, then grateful. "Thank you for noticing."
It was this conversation she remembered at the end, when he slit his own wrists and used drained his body with blood magic. She looked into those desperate eyes and knew that Meredith had finally gotten her way.
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