I freed them, she wants to say, I freed them and I was their mother and they were mine, but this foreigner won't understand. They always think she means ownership when she says mine, like there are no gradations of familiarity. A Tevinter can only own or be owned, they think. What simple people they must appear to be. But the world is very simple when one is a savage; she pities them, and in doing so remains superior.

"I faced worse than your people before I was nine." At least, she doesn't think they'll starve her, doesn't think they'll bleed her for an ancient god. "If they were capable of scaring me, the war would be over by now."