#heart.

"You seem to have forgotten you travel with a wanted terrorist and deserter of the Grey Wardens."

Her thoughts suddenly come to a screeching stop, drowning in the silence now enveloping the room. Hawke's voice is suddenly far too tight for comfort. "Speak carefully, Warden."

Trisha regards her thoughtfully, stepping closer with her hands folded neatly behind her back. She circles the table, pacing around the Champion, and only her blood pounding in her ears prevents Hawke from snatching the dagger at the Warden’s belt and plunging it repeatedly between her ribs until she's too torn to even fucking twitch near Hawke’s loved ones ever again.

"I'll be blunt, then." Trisha pauses next to her shoulder. "The only reason Anders was not immediately apprehended and dragged to Weisshaupt is my intervention. Several dead comrades is no small thing to forgive – the First Warden would be well within his rights to demand his immediate arrest." Hawke's nails are now biting sharply into her palms. "If he's fortunate, he’ll just be thrown in a dungeon, perhaps even conscripted back into the Order. If he's unfortunate, however, he will be handed directly to the Chantry. I'm sure you can imagine what would happen next."

Hawke feels her heart sink in her chest.

The Commander's smile dims. "However, as an abomination who has mysteriously evaded the worst of the Taint, he holds significant... research value. My colleague certainly seems eager to investigate the source of his longevity."

In a single, furious heartbeat, Esther whips around and snatches Trisha by the front of her robes, yanking her up on her toes and slamming her against the wall with a force that shakes the torch on its hooks. A poisonous snarl tears from her chest. "Go any further, and you will wish for the Void."

"I give the order," Trisha responds tersely, maintaining eye contact with an effort that is undoubtedly fueled by sheer spite, "and he will be clapped in irons before you can draw your blade."

"You do that, and there won't even be enough left of you to burn."

"By then, it would already be too late."

Esther's nostrils flare. "You're bluffing. Anders is your friend. You wouldn't betray him like that."

Trisha remains impassively calm despite the white-knuckled grip crushing her collar. She tilts her chin upward. "Perhaps," she agrees smoothly. Her smile is as relaxed as it is chilling. "If only you could be certain."

Despite herself, Hawke's breathing grows erratic. The notion of this foolish, empty-headed woman serving Anders to the wolves on a silver platter makes her want to claw the skin off her face to see if she even bleeds. But the ease with which the Warden-Commander all but shrugs off her threats ignites a sickening coil of panic deep in her stomach. Anders in chains and in the wretched clutches of everything he'd been so desperate to escape is a thought that she wants to drown in blood. Four fucking years of watching him waste away and rot himself from the inside out until every familiar, kind, gentle part of him had bled like pus from a festering wound… and now, just when he's finally begun to look at her with eyes that aren't just vacant glass, the crushing inevitability of their doomed future has suddenly sharpened into a gleaming scythe that poises to split open his throat and bleed him dry on the stone.

And the smug little shit standing in front of her happens to hold the handle.

In a perfect world, Hawke would have already torn out her jugular and made her gargle her vocal cords until she choked to death. In this world, all she can do is shove Trisha away and stand in the center of the room with her chest heaving. The Warden-Commander stumbles a bit, catching herself against the wall, and straightens her robes with a dignified clearing of her throat.

Esther stares at the floor with an expression that threatens to crack and shatter under the suffocating weight of Trisha's gaze. She struggles to force her lungs to breathe normally. "You won't lay a finger on him," she rasps, teeth grinding together. "I won't allow it."