Petrana weighs what she says next for what feels like a very long time. It is long enough to stretch the silence awkwardly, and the way she continues staring fixedly ahead of herself is—

Neither of them are terribly well-suited to the conversation that they're having. There's a reason that she's avoided having it.

“I didn't know what my husband's crime was, when I followed him into exile.”

She isn't changing the subject.

“He had been convicted. By the grace of his uncle's great love for him, he was not executed, but instead permanently exiled from the empire. I had been engaged to marry him; we had had such dreams. We had thought to use the influence and power we might, in our small way, wield to push incremental change—that we might teach our daughters to read even had we a son, and make such a thing unremarkable. I was pregnant, and very young, and I followed him. He was very reasonable, when he explained to me. He was very persuasive. We would be alone. Unprotected. He could not be with me always. I would have to learn some means of protecting myself, our child. I was so small. It would be foolish to give me a blade. He would teach me witchcraft.”

Every step along the path had made sense when she took it.

“I would be safe at his side, then, and no where else. I would face execution, if I fled him. It was not something I considered, when he was working his enchantment into my ring, that he would always know where I was. He did this for my protection. I understood that this was necessary.”

(She doesn't wear it, any more. The enchantment on it had broken when she fell into Thedas, and it is in a box, in a drawer, to be thought about another day.)

“By the end, my husband was my emperor. He did not kill me with his hands. It is—improper for a wife to leave her lord. It is high treason, when he is sovereign.”