There's a lot of her life she's missing and if she's taken to Kirkwall then it's because it soothes her homesickness as much as it makes her long for the docks and the harbour, for the islands stretching out far as the eye can see, for the palace looming large and her place in the world. Her work was something she could see the end result of and the world loved her for being her, not universally but there's a difference here that she feels keenly. Understands.

Duelling used to keep her place in that world. Before she was ever a guard and after. It was who she was and how she was measured, now she always has to measure her impulses against bigger things because the rules are different. It's no different to what people here have lived with their whole lives but she's not so impulsive as she was. Not now. Not ever again so long as she lives in Thedas.

"I was the one that fetched the gauntlet," she says instead, because she needs to say something to fill the silence as a place opens up in her that roars like the sea and laughs like the guards and Leandra when it's the end of a long day and they're all calling one another out for imagined slights to make their queen laugh because they love her. "It was that or a filthy glove. What else was I to do? That's tradition too, I had to teach him quickly."

She was meant to fetch a glove. She hasn't answered the first question. She won't. She can't. (It feels very odd even now not to be someone's guard.)