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“You would like Mia, I think,” Cullen told Solona on one of their weekly library chats. She would get out of her classes and head straight for Cullen’s early-evening guard post by the library doors, and they would pass the time before supper talking about anything and everything that crossed their minds. It was his favorite part of the week.
This week, Cullen found himself talking about family. Solona, who couldn’t remember her own family, hung onto his every word with the sort of fascination borne of ill-disguised longing. Cullen recognized it well from his childhood watching the templars at Honnleath’s chantry.
“She was a lot like you — not ‘was’ — still is, I assume,” Cullen said, wincing at his blunder. “I haven’t actually seen her since I joined the templars.”
Solona didn’t question that like some of the other templars did. It wasn’t as if he was disallowed time away from the Circle now that he’d taken his vows, but he was still new here, and he wanted Knight-Commander Greagoir to think highly of his work ethic, no matter how homesick it left him. Solona understood that.
“You must miss them all terribly,” she said.
“I do,” Cullen sighed. “We write often, of course, but… it’s not the same.”
He trailed off, and Solona let him fall silent, lost in remembrance of home. She leaned her head against the wall beside him, content to watch the memories flit across his face. A wistful smile tugged at the corner of his lips.
“You know what I’ve missed most, lately? The chess matches. No one here has any interest in it,” Cullen chuckled. “Mia taught me how to play… Maker’s breath, that was ten years ago now. She always used to lord it over me something terrible when she won, which was all the time.”
“And that sounds like me?” Solona said with mock-offense.
Cullen covered up a laugh with his gauntlet-ed hand. “N-no! I only meant you’re clever.”
Solona grinned like a cat who got the cream. “Tell me more about how clever I am.”
Cullen glared at her.
The next week, Solona arrived at their rendezvous spot with a chess board clutched to her chest.
“Teach me,” she said.
“W-what?”
“Teach me how to play chess,” she repeated, holding the board out in front of her. It wasn’t hers, he knew; apprentices weren’t allowed out of the Circle to shop for personal items, and she’d already confessed she didn’t have anything like it from home. She must have borrowed it from one of the other mages. “I’ve always wanted to learn, but like you said, there’s no one here to teach me. So teach me.”
She smiled at Cullen with that brilliantly cheeky grin of hers that always made him weak at the knees. He stared at her, his mouth hanging open inside his helmet. Had she really listened to him talk about how homesick he was without anyone to tease him over chess matches, and she’d gone out and found a board for him?
“I know I can’t replace family,” she said, her smile fading to something softer, “but maybe… it’ll be nice just to play again?”
Of course she had.
And so their weekly library chats turned into weekly chess chats.
He warned her that he might be a little rusty at first, but she just laughed and said that was perfect, because she’d never had any skills to gather rust in the first place. It hardly mattered, anyway; she took to the game with the same quick understanding and creative talent as she did everything else she set her mind to. Soon, she was winning as many games as she was losing. Cullen had no doubt that, if they kept playing for much longer, he wouldn’t stand a chance against her.
He couldn’t wait.
Unfortunately, neither could the Blight.
Clawed fingers plucked Cullen’s king from the board and turned it this way and that, studying it. She smiled at him, predatory, like a cat who got the cream. Her eyes burned with purple fire.
“Checkmate,” purred the demon who wore Solona’s face.
He didn’t play a single game of chess in Kirkwall. It felt… wrong, somehow. He asked Meredith once if she played, but she never had the time to take him up on the offer. He wasn’t even sure he’d want to, if she had.
He was excited at first to hear that Dorian played. But Dorian, he soon learned, was only a decent chess partner when he wasn’t an incorrigible cheat. At least his cheeky smack-talk was a familiar distraction.
This match, Cullen could already tell he was cheating. While Dorian wasn’t looking, Cullen quietly replaced his mage that Dorian stole.
“Why do I even…” Cullen muttered. The sound of footsteps on the courtyard grass — Inquisitor Trevelyan’s footsteps — pulled his focus away. He dropped his piece and moved to stand up, his back straightening at attention immediately. “Inquisitor.”
“Leaving, are you? Does this mean I win?” Dorian said innocently.
Cullen sat back down.
“Please, don’t stop on my account,” Inquisitor Trevelyan — Andri — said, with just a hint of Dorian’s teasing tone.
Cullen had to fold his hands in front of his face just to hide the blush that always seemed to appear at the same time as Andri. “Alright. Your move.”
“You need to come to terms with my inevitable victory,” Dorian said, picking up his rook. “You’ll feel much better.”
Andri cleared her throat. “Wasn’t that piece further to the left when I got here?”
Cullen looked down. Sure enough, Dorian’s rook had moved a square while Cullen was distracted by Andri’s arrival, and his mage had mysteriously vanished again. His heart made a pathetically hopeful leap in his chest as he looked back up at Andri. “Do you play?”
“Do I? I love chess!” she said, beaming. “It was all the rage in the Ostwick Circle.”
Dorian groaned. “Great, there’s two of you now.”
Cullen caught Andri’s eye and laughed.
“Don’t get smug. There will be no living with you.” Dorian said. He glanced between the two of them with a sly look, then sighed dramatically, “Oh, fine, I’ll concede your victory. This time.”
And with that, he stood up, and it was just Cullen and Andri around the chess table.
“I should return to my duties as well,” Cullen said sheepishly. “Unless… you would care for a game?”
“Prepare the board, Commander.” Andri swept into the seat Dorian had just vacated, tucking her blonde hair behind her ear with all the grace of a noble-born mage. She grinned at Cullen, and he grinned back.
It was the most relaxed he’d felt since… well, since those weekly chats over a chess board in Kinloch Hold.