Fenris' shock and confusion welled over Anna like a tidal wave, followed swiftly by red hot rage. She lay on the straw in her little cell and tried to breathe shallowly through her aching chest and send calm to him at the same time. In hindsight, sex on the first date had probably not been a good idea, but she had wanted him from the moment he stepped through the door. Now she could feel the anticipated bond hum between them, growing stronger and stronger by the minute. Soon she would be able to enter his dreams. She would explain everything then. Until then all she could do was try to calm him.

The door to her cell opened and Anna slowly raised her head to look at whoever had entered. It was a young, beautiful woman in a rich silk robe. She was everything Anna was not: elegant, refined, slender, exotic and beautiful. If the situation had been different, Anna would have been intimidated by the stranger. Now she just felt tired. She didn't know how long it had been since she'd last eaten: time had no meaning here.

"So" sneered the woman and took a few steps into the cell. "You are the fabled dog lord my master's prize ran off to rut with." Her exquisite face twisted into an ugly grimace.

Anna didn't reply. She would have loved to give this woman a piece of her mind, but her tongue was stuck to the roof of her mouth and it felt as though her throat was full of nettles. Maker, she was so thirsty!

The woman scowled even more when Anna apparently ignored her, and in a flash she was standing over her kicking her several times in the side with her dainty feet. She struck the broken ribs and in an instant, all Anna knew was darkness.

When she came to, she was kneeling uncomfortably on a stone floor, two heavy guards standing over her, their spears poking into her bruised back. If her mouth had not been so dry she would have cried out, but all she could manage was a low groan. One of the guards grabbed hold of her dirty, matted hair and forced her head back. Her sore muscles cried in pain and her eyes watered. Through the blur she could see a man sitting on a raised stone throne. He looked to be about the same age as her own father, grey at the temples and with fine lines around his eyes and mouth, and he was dressed in a robe even more costly and elegant than that uppity brat who had called her a dog lord. He was leaning back on the throne, looking for all the world as a bored king, and there was something about his eyes that made her blood run cold.

"So" he said in a voice as smooth as honey. "This is the fabled Anna. From Ferelden, I've come to understand. And you have a little secret, don't you?" Anna tried to speak, but still could not move her tongue. Her head was aching horribly, making it difficult to focus on what the man was saying. He sneered at her as if she was something unpleasant he had wiped off from his shoe.

"A templar." He spat out the word like a piece of raw meat in his midday stew. "What business have you in Tevinter, spellsword?" Anna tried desperately to speak, but could only managed a groan. Somehow, the man understood the sound and made an impatient gesture.

"Give her drink, blast it!" He ordered harshly, and one of the men holding Anna's arms in an unforgiving grip scrambled to obey him.

The water was sweet and cool, and Anna drank as much as she could. In her haste she spilled half the first ladle over herself and nearly choked on the rest, coughing and spluttering, but thankfully the guard just refilled it. It felt as if she'd drunk a bucketful when she'd finally drunk herself unthirsty. Then she turned to the man on the throne and licked her cracked lips.

"Fenris." She managed to get out. "I've come for Fenris." The man's face, who until now had been serene as a deep river, now cleared to show the shark swimming beneath the surface. Anna couldn't hold back a flinch when she looked into his blazing eyes, but she did not look away. She would not falter now that she had gotten this far.
"Why do you want my pet?" He asked, his fury barely constrained.

"He is my mage." Anna replied proudly, refusing to back down or bare her throat even if he was the one with the bigger teeth. The man stood up from his throne and stalked towards her, steps swift and measured, but betraying his rage. He stopped right in front of her, forcing her to bend her head back until her muscles screamed in order to keep his gaze.

"Is that so, spellsword. You want to take my prized possession and what, dance off into every after?" He sneered. Anna met his gaze unflinchingly.

"I will free him and take him with me to a circle where he will be trained to master his abilities. And I will be his guardian and protector. His warrior and his companion." The man laughed at her.

"His warrior, you say! Well, a warrior you will prove yourself! It might even be amusing." He eyed her speculatively, as if trying to determine her value like a gemstone on display. Anna's neck muscles were getting numb at this point but she refused to avert her gaze. To her immense satisfaction, he was the first to look away. He turned away from her, and strolled back to the throne, muttering to himself as he walked. She couldn't make out the words; they were spoken quietly and in a language that was unfamiliar to her. She looked straight ahead of her, giving her poor neck some reprieve, and watched him in silent defiance. Whatever he threw at her, she would emerge victorious. Fenris depended on her. Finally it seemed as if the man had reached a decision, and he sat down on his throne again, leaning back against the backrest and stretching his legs out in front of himself.

"I will challenge you" he said, still sounding amused. "To the three-fold challenge. If you win, I will give you my slave boy and you will both be free to leave Tevinter in whatever manner you wish. If you fail, I'll have you burned at the stake as he watches. Understand?" Anna nodded. She had no idea what he was talking about, but here was her chance to free them both served to her on a platter. No matter how it turned out, she would be a fool not to take the offer.

"I understand." she said, feeling proud of herself that her voice did not tremble.

"Excellent." he nodded at the guards who pulled Anna on her feet and started dragging her out of the hall. "I will send you to the arena in the morning." He waited until they had left, then turned to a dark corner of the room.

"I expect you heard all of it." He said to the figure standing there, still and silent as a marble statue.

Fenris' mind was spinning with confusion where he stood in the corner. Who was this woman he had met in the inn? Had she really come to Tevinter only to track him down? Why? What was a templar? And why did she refer to him as "her mage"? He had no magic in him that he knew off. Did she know what she was getting into? What the threefold challenge meant? Surely not, or she would never have agreed. Or would she have? The questions swirled in his head, each one of them making less sense than the last. Finally he decided that he had to find a way to answer the most important one: how in hell had she managed to speak to him inside his head? He had no answers, and he knew better than to mention anything to Danarius. Most likely, such questions would end up with him in the laboratory, tied up while the mad bastard literally probed his brain. Instead he kept quiet throughout the afternoon, doing his chores without discussion, ate his dinner without complaint and when he was finally released he retired to his usual sleeping place - a simple cot in his master's bedroom. Sleep came slowly, uneasily, as his mind still whirred with questions he had no way of answering. And not even the soothing waves of calm and comfort coming from Anna were enough to ease his discomfort. Eventually he fell asleep.

He found himself in a room he knew well, for every item in it was an object he was familiar with to the last detail. But there was a difference to it this time: The woman standing in front of the fireplace. She turned to him and it was Anna who stood there, a glowing sword in her hand.

"So this is your epicentre" she said.

"What are you doing here?" He spat. "This is my dream!"

"Yes, precisely. This is your dream, the only area of the fade I have access to." She was smiling in the way he remembered from the inn, that infuriating all-knowing amused smirk as if she knew something he was not privy too. He had to battle an instinct to slap that smirk off her face. Or kiss it off. He wasn't quite sure which impulse was stronger, so he settled for glowering. Anna sighed deeply, smirk diminishing slightly.

"I suppose I owe you a bloody good explanation" she said, looking everywhere but into his eyes. "How much do you know about templars?" Fenris frowned, if the question was meant to redirect his attention away from her, unfortunately it was working.

"Not much" he snarled, feeling a bit like a bear with a sore paw. "Sword wielding idiots who think mages are better off in collars."

"Well, as much as you'd look delicious in a collar and nothing else-" she leered, but when he kept glowering the leer disappeared and a frown took its place. Fenris found himself strongly disliking that look on her face. It didn't belong there. Anna sighed deeply.

"A templar is… well, think of me as a shield. A protector and guardian. A templar is bonded to a mage, and as such has access to the fade through them, but only to the areas of the fade that their mage visits. In the fade, their main task is to protect the mage from demons and the possibility of possession, like a living weapon. Outside the fade, they are a mage's first line of defence. Basically, the templar is the sword and the mage is the arm. In return, the mage is the templar's constant companion and guardian. In short, templar and mage are bound together, protecting and guiding each other inside and outside of the fade. Steel and Fire. I am steel."

"And you think I am your … fire."

"You sound sceptical."

"I am sceptical. I am no mage." He spat out the last word with a look of disgust on his face. Anna frowned. She was a templar, she could speak to him in his mind and walk in his dreams, what other proof did he need?

"Yet here I stand, in your dream." Her calm was grating on his nerves. She was telling him that he was a mage! Ridiculous! His master was a mage, a hated, disgusting, blood-addicted mage that had made Fenris' life hell for as long as he could remember. He, a mage? Never. Mages were power-mad, evil creatures that tormented anyone and everyone for their own sick amusement. You only had to look at his body to see that. And here stood this crazy woman whom he had spent precisely one night with, talking about how she was his and he was hers and- hold on a moment.

"Bonded!?" He demanded.

"Yes, bonded. Like married but on a soul-deep level. You and me for the rest of our lives."

"I don't even know you!" The protest sounded weak even to his own ears. Married? To this gorgeous woman? Well, if he had to be married…

"So?" Anna looked honestly confused. "What does that matter? Most templars and mages are bonded within an hour of meeting each other. If anything, we are a bit late." She smiled at him again, that blasted smile that insisted on making him forget his ire for a brief moment. Then she cocked her head to the side.

"By the way" she said, thoughtful. "What is the threefold challenge?"

When Fenris woke in the morning it was with a sense of dread seeping through his entire body, centered on his chest and stomach whom both felt as if they were full of rocks, heavy and uncomfortable. He crawled out of bed with great reluctance and went to look for breakfast, wanting nothing more than to stay in bed, wrapped up in sheets that felt like an embrace. Like her embrace, from the dream. It had felt so good to lie there with his head on her chest, her arms around him. It had felt like safety, not a prison. Her hands had been gentle as her fingers stroked the lines on his back.

"One day" she had whispered, "I will ask about these and you will be ready to tell me. But that will not be tonight."

She had not asked him anything else, nor had she spoken about magic. Instead she had told him how it was to grow up a poor man's daughter on a farm in Ferelden, about her two brothers and the sister she had lost when she was but a child.

"She's in a circle somewhere" she had said, "I don't know which one. We were so little, no doubt she's forgotten us." Her voice had been sad, but at the same time accepting. He wondered why she did not question her sister's abduction. But at the same time, the sister was a mage so it was probably better that she was locked away where she could not hurt anyone.

He had felt almost relaxed for the first time he could remember lying there, listening to her voice. Her hair had smelled of flowers and her voice had been like a gentle rainfall, covering him in warmth and sweet scents. He had never been much of a man of words, so he had just laid there and listened to her mostly humorous tales of her brothers. He could hear in every syllable how much she missed them, and wondered if anyone had ever spoken of him that way. He doubted it. No one misses a slave.

She was a warrior, he realised as he descended the stairs. He had felt it in every line of her body, every muscle. And today she would face the first of the first set of challenges to win his freedom. He hated himself for fearing for her life. She was just a templar, he had only known her for a few short weeks. And yet… it felt as if he had known her a lifetime.