"Do you think that Lord Ladomire will go to the queen?" Fenris asked, resting his hip against Mahariel's table.
She cocked an eyebrow at him. "Please don't take this the wrong way, Fenris, but… do you really care?"
"I…" he began to defend himself, but thought better of it, "...see your point." He wet his mouth, choosing his words carefully. "I do. Because that man seems to have a propensity for an abuse of power and I don't particularly care for that sort of behaviour, magical ability aside."
Mahariel nodded. "I follow. As far as Anora, I'm almost sure he won't. And if he does, and if she cares, I'll tell her the same thing I told her in Denerim."
"That being?"
Mahariel cast him a sidelong glance that he could easily interpret as a phrase beginning with "go" and ending with "yourself."
"You didn't get on terribly well with her?"
"Well, considering that I was an elf who was just moments away from taking that title from her until a certain member of the royal family threw himself onto an Archdemon, I would say no, we were never very fond of each other."
Fenris sucked his cheeks in a bit as he digested this information.
"You could have been queen."
Mahariel only nodded, looking back down at the table.
"Wouldn't that have been something."
The frankness with which Fenris said this took a moment to penetrate Mahariel's thick layer of cynicism, longer still with regard to Fenris' penchant for that same inclination, but when she realized that he said this with no malice or underhanded notions, she laughed. Deep from her gut, turning her face pink, she laughed.
"Wouldn't it just!" she exclaimed.
Anders walked in then, through the door to Mahariel's chambers which had been left slightly ajar. "What's all this then?" he asked, his eyes darting from Mahariel to Fenris and back again.
"I could have been queen!" Mahariel laughed, as though this explained everything. She put her head down on the table, still shaking and muttered, "Ah, it could have been me."
Fenris was only smiling broadly, shaking his head.
"Indeed…?" Anders' said, confusion on his face, too baffled to concern himself overmuch with Fenris' presence at just that moment.
Mahariel tried to explain, shoulders still quivering. "Lord Ladomire. His hot-shot 'I'm going to the queen' bullshit." She sucked in a deep breath. "It could have been me." The spell was broken, the mirth was gone. She did not pick her forehead up from the table.
Fenris and Anders exchanged a glance in which they disagreed upon nothing.
