#twoqueens

I untangled each bundle of braids and snipped them at the base while Solas went back to resting his eyes, still sleepy from our previous activities.

I swallowed the lump in my throat and freed more hair from his head.

The course braids slid to the floor hissing like serpents.

I checked the mirror to see his eyes still closed and Dal’nim unsuccessfully attempting to disassemble one of his braids on her own. She glanced up at me with a coy smile and finger pressed to her lips.

I grimaced and caught my own reflection in the polished shears. They were sharp enough to do the job, they could slice more than just hair.

His neck was exposed, and his eyes were shut.

"You asked me earlier when we played chess ...if I joined the Evanuris in their deleterious game.”

I jumped, startled, and nearly took off my own finger.

He watched me curiously with a brow held in question.

I nodded slowly.

"I was one of the Pawns...then I became a Knight...then a King and then...something more."

"You were a slave?" I asked as gently as I could, trying to recover from my surprise, my tongue coiled around the last word hesitantly.

"Not exactly," Solas explained and finished with a sorrow drenched whisper, "She asked me to fight."

"Mythal?"

Snip.

"Yes." He answered after a pause.

"...so, you had to prove yourself."

"Not to her. Them." He hissed, as if referring to them at all was akin to a heated knife slicing through flesh.

"You became something more? Did Mythal elevate you?" I probed, genuinely interested.

Snip.

 "I ascended as a general to lead her armies against them. To give orders, strategies, plans that ensured success. Victory canonized me as a god...as one of them."

Snip.

The memory that his imagery conjured struck a chord in an already fracturing symphonic resolve.

“Pawns, although simple can accomplish great things.”

In that moment he wasn’t referring to me. He was talking about himself.

Remorse settled into my chest, even though it had no right to. Every time an opportunity arose to kill this man, my own hand hesitated. As if it had a will of its own, its own beating heart, mind and soul. Instead of relishing in the self-serving redemption of ridding this world of its greatest threat, my heart rejected the thought of him drowning in a pool of his own blood.

I would have to convince it otherwise and I was running out of time.

Snip.

I counted all the areas of his body that would be lethal to these sheers.

Snip.

There would be four, I could run them through his eyes, slash his jugular, stab them through his heart, or jab them through his mouth. I had killed others in similar ways, would the Dread Wolf be different?

I warred with myself, my inner voice screaming at me from the abyss of my mind. “You asked for this! Coward!”

I kept waiting for someone, anyone to come in and take Dal'nim away... Even Talek would be acceptable I was desperate, and I would be willing to faint surprise if I had to. Moments past and I delayed time as much as I could.

I bore into his head, devoid of most hair, visions of Dal’nim’s face bathed in his blood haunted me.

It would be now or never.

"Why are you hesitating?"

I nearly choked on my own saliva and I inhaled sharply and met his eyes in the mirror.

His inquisitive gaze climbed down my face and torso to land on my hands, shifting languidly from left to right. A question followed soon after.

“Why are you spinning the shears?"

I caught myself, wrists still rotating as if I was holding my decorated daggers and ready to strike.

The door creaked open with a moan that split the silence. The Inquisition double agent peered in, eyes wide as he took sight of me with the sheers.

I lowered my shaking hand with the sheers, placing them on the table next to the chair.