Chapter Text
The first time she came, Samson didn’t recognize her. She kept to the shadows of the dungeon, her skirts hissing against the flagstones just out of sight, and she never came closer, never said a word. He should have expected gawking. The Inquisition had made him out to be some sort of boogeyman—a monster to be feared rather than a man. They’d put him in a cage like a circus bear, it stood to reason someone would come to bait him.
He’d shouted at her at first, tried to jab and jeer to elicit a reaction from his unwelcome audience, but it didn’t work. She didn’t even move; a hazy, out-of-focus silhouette whose golden auburn hair occasionally caught the light, revealing its color but nothing more. Clearly, she wasn’t there to interrogate or torture him, and she wouldn’t allow him even the entertainment of her disgust, so Samson quickly grew bored with the exercise of attempting it.
He lay on his cot, facing the wall, and listened to the lyrium song in his blood.
When he next thought to check, sitting up to peer into the gloom, she was gone.