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"Well, it would appear Andruil remembers what I like."
I looked up to find his eyes - grey tipping into violet in this memory - appraising me frankly as I set down the tray. I had, of course, taken it from its rightful keeper, giving the spirit that might have taken this role a taste of my mortal memories and emotions in exchange. I wasn't certain the spirit would return - exposure to me had solidified it, and it was unlikely to remain satisfied with playing a servant for whom Fen'Harel had not even spared a second glance. Ironic that my mere appearance in this memory made it a hypothetical by changing everything. I had always been to Solas’s taste, and he certainly spared me a second glance now that I was here.
He reached out a hand as he spoke to take one of mine - I now had two when I visited the Fade, at least when I wished. I let him - but immediately pulled it gently from his grasp.
“Excuse me,” I told him, unwilling to give him an opening after a beginning like that. “I’m rather busy at the moment.” Then I turned towards the door, trying to decide whether I wanted to pause long enough to say what I was thinking. A real servant wouldn’t dare, but I was me, and I dared all sorts of things - particularly where the Dread Wolf was concerned.
“Wait,” he said, and though his voice was lazy and slightly amused, it was still clearly an order. Worse - I found myself obeying instinctively.
“I’m busy,” I insisted, not turning to look at him. “Besides,” I added, “if Andruil did remember your preferences, you would be a fool to accept the offer. Have you forgotten that the two of you are rivals in this negotiation - if not outright adversaries?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him go still, and made my retreat while he was too surprised to stop me.
Outside the door, I breathed a sigh of relief. Fen’Harel’s attitude was cold in this memory of Manlaveth - colder than I had ever seen it. He was gorgeous, of course: his hair fell over his shoulders in long chestnut ropes, and he had decorated each one with golden bands set with onyx, hematite, moonstones, and milky white quartz. Gold twisted around his bared upper arms, accentuating his lean strength. Atop his head, he wore a crown whose focal point was a wolf skull, its eye sockets set with bright yellow topaz, giving it a grisly semblance of life. In the privacy of the suite Andruil had arranged for him, he had cast aside his robe and wore only a quilted silk jerkin and close-fitting breeches made of samite, both edged with black silk embroidery. He was both stunning and a little ridiculous in all his ostentatious finery.
I preferred him both as a slightly uncertain young man in Nehnadahlen, and also as a reclusive scholar in my own time, but I would be lying if I said this version held no attractions for me. Solas always attracted me, even when I found him reprehensible. Especially , perhaps, when I found him reprehensible - logically I knew that bedding him would not change his mind about any of his most deplorable schemes, but the idea that it might still enticed me.
Or it was possible I simply wanted to be with him - to touch and taste and smell him - any way I could. It had been a long time. Caring for both our daughter and my other duties left me with little drive to seek comfort anywhere else - if I even accepted the idea that I might find it somewhere else, which was another question I hadn’t had the mental or emotional space to ponder.
So - here I was, using or abusing this memory of Manlaveth to seduce Fen’Harel, or perhaps to allow him to seduce me, or perhaps merely to find out if one of us could seduce the other. I hadn’t yet decided. I certainly had little respect for him as he was. Was respect a prerequisite for sex? Obviously not universally. For me? I hadn’t decided that yet, either.
At the other end of the long hall leading to Fen’Harel’s suite, there was a commotion, and a woman I recognized as the castellan of this grand estate appeared around the corner, looking flustered and angry. I had familiarized myself with all the potential players before inserting myself here, even though, as a general rule, someone in my position would likely not have ever interacted with her directly.
I fell into the pose any real servant would assume, stepping aside and then waiting, head bowed, until she either concluded her business or ordered me away. It seemed, however, that I was her business. She stalked up to me, trailed by two less-senior servants, one brandishing lists and the other a sending crystal. “What are you about, girl?” she demanded, her eyes cold as her hand twitched to smack me - slaves, I had already seen, were beaten regularly here, though of course the castellan was too important to take such unpleasant duties upon herself. Just because I was not branded didn’t mean I would escape a blow or several if I had done something wrong. “Fen’Harel commands you to return, and if you leave him before he is finished with you, I will do a thousand times worse to you than he would ever dream of doing.”
Ah. No wonder she wanted to strike me - and no wonder she didn’t dare. She thought he had propositioned me, I had refused, and that he now claimed my person by right of his authority as a god. A god could not be given a servant bearing the marks of another's hand to rape. I couldn’t help feeling a thread of dark amusement twined with searing anger. I had dismissed Solas, and in retaliation he threatened what he thought was my livelihood?
How petty. How...negligently cruel.
I bowed my head and shoulders before the seething diatribe that followed - returning, generally, to the theme of my utter worthlessness and the consequent worthlessness of all my thoughts and desires - and tried to decide just how angry I was.
It took a few long moments for the castellan to realize she was now thwarting Fen’Harel’s demands, but she finally ordered me back to his suite with unconcealed loathing, and I obeyed, feigning the appropriate level of fear.
I discarded the pretense as soon as I re-entered the room, though I could taste Fen’Harel gathering a spell. My understanding of spellcraft was still too limited to identify it, but I understood when it pinned me in place just inside the room.
A petty display of power - almost as bad as the castellan’s - calculated to frighten and cow. Was this how he brought women to bed? My opinion of him sank lower.
I looked at him, concealing my anger with ease, as he got up and paced towards me, a smile pulling at one side of his mouth. I made no attempt to fight him or his spell as he came close, leaning down to smell the skin on my neck. I didn’t even tense. “You are no more a servant than I am,” he murmured in my ear, sending shivers up my spine. These, too, I ignored, giving no sign of them. “You belong to Mythal,” he concluded, pulling away with a self-satisfied smile.
I tilted my head to glance at him, still holding back my anger, but letting a touch of my amusement show. Technically, his guess might be something akin to truth, but with Mythal dead, her power over me was limited. Moreover, my actions here had less than nothing to do with her. “I belong to myself,” I assured him. “And though I have not always been a servant, I am one now. Don’t deny it as though you are offering me a compliment. You aren’t.”
I said it off-handedly, as though asking him not to refill my wine glass, but his smile spread. “Is that anger I hear in the lion cub’s roar?”
Hearing him dub me a lion cub was so unexpected that I laughed. “No,” I assured him. “When I want to roar at you, you will know it.”
His eyes narrowed. “Somehow, I don’t doubt it,” he murmured, more to himself than to me, walking a few steps away before he turned to glance at me again. "I am missing something." He studied me.
"A great deal, I would imagine, if your current behavior is representative," I replied conversationally.
"You appear to have a low opinion of me," he observed.
"Lower all the time," I agreed easily. Playing inscrutable and mysterious was beginning to bore me, so I offered him an observation in the hope of moving the conversation along: "I knew someone, once, who was familiar with you. Of all the so-called gods, I thought you had to be the least objectionable, no matter what he said of your failings. But now I see he was right - you are fundamentally no different than any of them."
He raised an eyebrow. "I won't kill you for expressing doubt in my divinity," he said. "Try obtaining that forbearance from any other of the so-called gods."
I smiled. "Yes, of course. How magnanimous. Your wisdom is truly peerless."
His ears turned red and he looked away, lips thinning - and suddenly I was free of his spell. " You ," he insisted, "are no more a servant than I am."
"Well," I replied with a shrug, "I suppose you wouldn't have survived this long, if you were entirely blind. I am not a servant by trade," I allowed.
"Nor an assassin." He smirked at me. "You talk too much to be an assassin."
"I wouldn't be enough of a fool to take a contract on your life even if I were," I assured him. "You may be an abject failure as both a god and a politician, but no one could argue with your skill as a mage."
His eyes narrowed. "Have a care, little lioness," he said, his voice composed of equal parts danger and seduction, "that almost sounded like a compliment."
"It almost was a compliment," I admitted with a laugh. "I'm not averse to offering you compliments when I can do so honestly. For instance: your appearance takes my breath away, and I particularly admire the way you have arranged your hair. Though," I added thoughtfully, "the wolf skull is somewhat off-putting."
When my eyes again met his, he was staring at me in open surprise. "You are the strangest woman I have ever met."
"Thank you," I replied.
He frowned. " That was not a compliment," he informed me.
I laughed at him. "Nonsense. You're bored by most people. Aren't you fond of joking that most share a single soul, giving rise to their predictability and lack of creativity?" His eyes widened and I tilted my head appealingly. "Of course strange is a compliment, coming from you."
"What are you doing here?" he demanded.
"Working," I replied, giving him an impish smile. "All right," I went on after a beat, "I saw a chance to meet you, I was curious, and I took it. I can't say more than that without involving others who don't deserve retribution."
"Don't deserve," he repeated, trying to growl but in practice sounding rather satisfied. I was a little surprised by how easily stroked his ego was, but then again - I believe you might somehow be surprised to learn I am not a handsome man . It hadn’t seemed to bother him much by then, but in Nehnadahlen part of his surprise at my advances had come from the difference he perceived in our appearances. This was many ages later, and I would have thought this Solas far beyond all of that - but perhaps not. “And what was it about me that piqued your curiosity?” he asked.
“Everything,” I laughed. “You’re the Dread Wolf, aren’t you? He who hunts alone . The trickster. The rebel.” I looked away. “I have read some of what you have said about the rights of spirits and found it persuasive. I thought it admirable when you began fighting for those same rights for all the oppressed within the empire. And I have sought your image in the Fade, curious what one of the Evanuris who spurned godhood might look like.”
When I glanced at him again, he looked insufferably pleased with himself. How did he make the expression so appealing? He drifted a step closer. “And did you like what you saw, little lioness?”
“I already told you I did,” I replied, but I said it a little too quickly, with a little too much force, revealing how deeply I felt that single step.
He heard my uncertainty and came another step nearer - and now he was close enough to touch. I couldn’t yet feel the heat from his body - could only catch the barest hints of his scent - and yet my skin prickled with a stubborn awareness of him. His smile was wicked. “Did you think of me, while other men sheathed themselves inside you?” he asked, clearly taken with the idea.
“No,” I was pleased to be able to reply. “There have been few other men, and I was certainly never thinking of you when I bedded them.” I paused for a beat, watching his eyes narrow with dissatisfaction. “I saved those thoughts for the privacy of my own bed when I had no one else to distract me.”
The smile re-emerged, and he reached out to touch my face.
"My opinion of you is still abysmally low," I reminded him, turning away sharply, regretting it even as I did it. But - well. I feared greater regrets if I let him seduce me without making any of the points I felt the need to make after seeing what he had been like at this time of his life. "Your appearance, however pleasing, cannot possibly atone for your cruelty. I can't even decide at this point if it's worse if your behavior is thoughtless or petty."
His brows rose in surprise.
"Thoughtless, then," I sighed. "You realize that the castellan ordered me back in here to be raped."
He blinked for a moment, and then scowled. "This estate doesn't belong to me. I cannot be held responsible for its management."
"And you also refuse to be held responsible for how you respond to its poor management,” I retorted, giving him a hard look. “I understand.”
He let out a long breath through his nose. “I...apologize. If my actions were thoughtless.”
I waited.
“Well?” he snapped as the silence stretched. “What more could you possibly want?”
“Pretend, for a moment, that you respect me,” I instructed him, “and then ask yourself that question.” I couldn’t believe I was teaching basic empathy to a man thousands of years older than me, but this was apparently Elvhenan, where Solas - and not just Solas, but this Solas - was a shining example of power used with admirable restraint. No wonder the damned empire had fallen.
He closed his eyes for a moment. “Can I pay your way free of this place?” he asked quietly.
“Better,” I allowed. “And no - I have no need of your help. Consider saving it for those who do - and perhaps offer before insulting or wronging them.”
“I cannot believe I am allowing a servant to lecture me on ethics,” he pinched the bridge of his nose.
“We all do strange things because of attraction,” I assured him. “ I can’t believe I am wasting my time lecturing an entitled brat who occasionally pretends to godhood on ethics, and yet here we are.”
"You're trying to make me angry," he said with a small smile that said he had no intention of letting me get the better of him.
"Quite the contrary, I am mirroring your dismissiveness back at you so you have the chance to observe yourself." I crossed my arms, enjoying the ability to do so. "How do you like it?"
His eyes fell to my breasts, and I realized the gesture had pushed them up a little. "I...like it a great deal," he said, his tone abstracted, and I suspected he had entirely lost the thread of the conversation.
I shifted my hands to my hips with an eye-roll he failed to notice. “How do you like it now ?”
“Your pardon?” he asked, dragging his eyes to my face, past my patronizing smile, until his gaze met mine.
“That’s rather what I thought,” I said, looking away with a laugh. “You know, you will never get what you want from Andruil if you go into this negotiation thinking with your cock.”
Again, that wicked smile - almost enough to make me lose the thread of the conversation. I swallowed. “Are you here to help me tame it?” he asked.
I hesitated a beat too long - and then a whisper of his magic caressed me, touching my cheek like a cool breeze, sliding down my throat, slipping into the front of my bodice. “I am here ,” I squeaked as it brushed my nipple, sending a dart of pleasure through me, “because I have been ordered not to leave until I am dismissed.”
The magic dissipated as he frowned at me - but then that terrible, provocative smile was back, even as he put on an air of unconcern and took a step back. “Very well then,” he said, “you are free to go.”
“Oh,” I said, caught off guard.
“You are also free to stay,” he continued.
“Oh,” I repeated, realizing he had outsmarted me. Well, what did I expect? He was several thousand years older than I was, with who could say how many seductions to his name, and even though his ability to manipulate people and social situations was, generally speaking, a ridiculous mess, he was fiercely intelligent.
Besides, I had already admitted to wanting him. All he had to do was find a way to make me trip over my own desire. The only thing holding me back was…
Was what? It hardly mattered how much empathy I pounded into his hard head - this was a spirit, not the real Solas. I couldn't change the past.
No - my problem was that I wanted to see my Solas in him, somewhere, because if I didn’t…
Where did I even begin? I still wanted Solas and not someone else. I wanted to know how much influence I had over him - or would have had over him, at other times in his life. And, most absurd: I might later feel I had betrayed him and our bond if I didn’t confine myself to some recognizable version of him. As though this weren’t all his doing in the first place.
“I’m here because I have been attracted to you since the first time I saw you,” I told him, this time closing the space between us myself. “You aren’t what I thought you would be - if I tried to recount all the ways you have disappointed me, you would think me mad - but there is still something in you that makes me hope. Demands hope, really - almost coerces it.” I glanced up at him and found him staring at me, bewildered and yet obviously captivated. “Hope is usually such a taxing emotion; it’s rather pleasant to have it drawn from me without any effort on my part.”
He brought his hand to my cheek, and his fingers on my jaw tilted my face toward him so that he could touch his lips to mine. Lightly. Gently. It wasn’t at all the devouring kiss I would have expected based on his behavior moments before. "What manner of creature are you?" he asked, his voice low and rough.
I didn't know what he was asking. "Merely one of the People," I replied when it became clear he was waiting for some sort of answer. "I have never been particularly significant myself, though circumstance has forced me to accomplish difficult tasks now and again."
His thumb traced my jaw and then touched my lips lightly. "I don't believe that for an instant," he told me, and then his brow furrowed. "Nothing about you makes sense. I cannot possibly care for your hopes and disappointments. I should not. I don't. Do I?"
His thumb still rested against my lips, and so as I replied they brushed against it, like a series of brief kisses: "Perhaps the sudden lack of boredom has intoxicated you. Or maybe, in truth, you enjoy arguing as much as I appear to." He might have had the same thought, because his eyes darkened with unconcealed desire as I spoke, and I swallowed, my mouth going dry. My tongue touched my lips, wetting them, and caught his thumb at the same time.
He sucked in a breath, and so I did it again - deliberately this time, slowly, investigating the flavor and texture of his skin. His other hand found my ass as he groaned, pulling me against him where I could feel his growing erection. I rubbed against him and closed my mouth over the tip of his thumb.
He released me with a gasp, stepping back. "What do you think of me?" he demanded in a growl as I blinked at him, uncertain what was happening.
"Think of you?" I repeated foolishly, wits dulled with lust and the taste of Solas’s skin on my tongue.
"Is your opinion of me - how did you put it? - still abysmally low?" he clarified with a scowl.
"Oh." My cheeks heated. "I...hardly know," I confessed. I looked away. "You're still…"
"'An entitled brat who occasionally pretends to godhood'?" he offered.
"I was going to say 'incapable of understanding what it is like to be without power' and I likely would have added 'incredibly self-absorbed and a little selfish,' but…" I shrugged, "I suppose there's something to be said for brevity."
He clearly didn't want to be amused, but just as clearly was.
"Why do you care?" I wondered.
"I don't," he told me automatically, the amusement fading. "I don't...know," he corrected himself, and then glared at me. "The fault is certainly yours."
I raised an eyebrow. "You're welcome?"
"I'm not expressing gratitude," he told me, frown deepening. "You are beautiful," he continued as though puzzled, "but not that beautiful. Tell me again the things you like about me - hope and all the rest," he demanded. I gave him an ironic smile and he blushed, realizing how it had sounded. "I didn't mean - "
"I know," I interrupted him, still smiling. My smile faded as I thought of what I might say. "It was your passionate defense of spirits that first interested me in the Fade." His eyes went wide. "My talent is negligible, but I use it to explore, learn, and befriend spirits, and I owe that to you."
Confused, or perhaps faintly embarrassed, he looked away. “I didn’t suppose - I was asking you to repeat what you said earlier. I didn’t expect there to be...more.”
Laughter bubbled up from my chest. "Oh, well, I’m sorry I misunderstood. If you object, I can take it back…"
He reached for me, his hands closing on my shoulders. "You wouldn't dare."
"Wouldn't I?"
He took a breath. "Don't. Please." Then he studied me for a moment. "You are fearless - absolutely, brazenly fearless. And yet, you admire me."
"I admired you more before I met you," I reminded him.
"I...am displeased by that," he said as though coming to some sort of revelation. "You have nothing of value. Why would I want your admiration?"
"I wonder what that word even means to you - value ," I responded. "I have nothing of value. The face you want to look at and touch - worthless. The body you want to fuck - worthless. The conversation that dispels your near-eternal boredom - worthless. The admiration that perhaps makes you feel that all your efforts have had some effect on the world - also worthless. Tell me, Fen'Harel: if all that is worthless, what is valuable? What meaning do you assign to that word?"
He stared at me, his hands tightening almost painfully on my shoulders. "You cannot be real."
" You should stop trying to force reality to conform to what makes you comfortable," I retorted, staring him down. I had been annoyed when my Solas had said something similar - and he had been much more diplomatic about it. "Just because your imagination is sadly limited and hopelessly dull, it doesn't follow that the world must be similarly - ”
His mouth descended on mine, hot and demanding, as I had expected it to be the first time. "Roar for me, little lioness," he whispered against my lips, smiling. "I meant: you cannot be real, because I cannot possibly be so fortunate."
"My existence,” I informed him flatly, “has nothing to do with how fortunate you are, you self-absorbed - "
He captured my mouth again before I could finish the insult, his tongue first demanding entrance and then attempting to claim ownership, too. I reveled in it. I slid my hands up his chest and around his neck, pulling myself closer, and he growled with satisfaction. Magic touched me again, whispering along my skin, following Fen’Harel’s hands as they explored my body, but doing it under my clothing. I gasped as a breath of cold stole between my legs to stroke me, mimicking the movement of his tongue against mine, and he laughed. “You like that, do you?” he murmured, his hands finding the laces of my bodice. “Allow me to divest you of this hideous costume, and I will gladly demonstrate more ways in which I can please you.”
The dig about what I was wearing sounded like Dorian, and I laughed. “Servants wear uniforms. I didn’t choose it, you ass.” His answering smile told me that he had been baiting me on purpose. “Don’t provoke lions, Wolf. Haven’t you any sense at all?”
“But your roar is so impressive,” he replied smugly, efficiently stripping me of my garments.
“So are my claws. Don’t give me reason to use them,” I retorted - but I was still laughing and the threat was almost entirely hollow. I applied myself to the laces of his jerkin, pleased to be able to manipulate them here, even if I was still hopeless in the waking world.
He was wearing less than me, even if he was better at undressing another person than I was, and so I finished first, drinking in the sight of him greedily. It had been so long, and I recognized his body, even if it wasn’t exactly as it would be in my own time. This Solas had fewer scars and he wasn’t quite as lean - perhaps at this point in his life he actually remembered to eat on a regular basis. I didn’t realize he had stopped pulling articles of clothing free of my body until he said: “Do you want to devour me, lioness?”
I looked up at him and found him watching me, his smile unexpectedly tender and perhaps touched with surprise. “Yes, thank you,” I replied, and leaned forward, fastening my mouth to his shoulder and biting him lightly before licking my way along his clavicle to the hollow of his throat. “You taste - ” like home , I nearly finished before catching myself, “ - delightful,” I said instead, kissing the place where I could see his pulse beating under his skin. He shivered and let out a heavy breath that was almost a moan. Since he seemed to be enjoying my exploration of him and made no attempt to stop me, I went on, nibbling my way up his neck. I gave his ear a sharper bite, which made him thrust his hips into me with a strangled sound of either pleasure or protest, and then I moved on to his jaw, tracing it with my tongue.
He stopped me by taking my face in his hands as I neared his chin, his mouth melding desperately with mine. "By the Void, lioness," he gasped, "if this is how you treat a man you don't even like , what sort of wanton spirit of desire do you become in love ?"
"I never said I didn't like you," I panted in response, "just that I had a low opinion of you. The two aren't synonymous."
He fell silent for a moment, and I took the opportunity to press more kisses to his neck, my hands exploring his firmly-muscled back. All at once, he began undressing me again, this time with clear determination. I chuckled and helped. When I was entirely bare, he lifted me and carried me to the bed - but he paused after setting me down at the edge, staring into my face.
“You like me - even though you still think me selfish?” he asked.
Did we really need to canvass this topic again ? “What can I say? You charmed me - no doubt as you intended.”
He growled something incomprehensible, and knelt before me. “Lay down,” he ordered, and, at my inquiring look, added: “I intend to improve your opinion of me.”
I did as he instructed, but shook my head. “This wasn’t at all what I - ” Then his tongue touched me, and I realized what a complete fool I would be if I talked him out of this - not just a fool, but an unsatisfied fool. I shut my mouth. I shut it for a while, at least - until his mouth and tongue, and the fingers he pressed inside of me, left me crying out in desperation. And they did, quickly.
He pushed me into orgasm after orgasm - more, I believed, than I ever would have been able to sustain in the waking world. Here, though...it was all in my mind, and there was nothing to hold him back.
When he finally decided that one or both of us had had enough, he joined me on the bed maneuvering me away from the edge, his body hovering over mine. "Wait," I half-sobbed, still dazed with pleasure, but finding this moment reminiscent of another whose conclusion I had never ceased regretting. "I want to taste you, too. Please."
He settled beside me instead of on top of me. "Are you attempting to demonstrate to me precisely how much less selfish you are?" he asked, and I was too far gone to even begin deciding whether he was teasing me or not.
"No," I said in what might fairly have been labeled a whimper, "I - I very selfishly want to taste your cock."
He laughed, and then his fingers brushed my face. “I cannot possibly deny you that. Very well, little lioness - on your knees.”
Of course he was more aggressive than the younger version of him had been in Nehnadahlen - that was simply to be expected. I likely would have found it funny, had he left me less desperate. As it was, touching him - tasting him - felt like water in the desert or coming home after a long sojourn in a foreign land.
Skyhold. It felt like Skyhold. I closed my eyes against the tears that filled them.
I traced Elven runes on the underside of his cock with my tongue. Vhenan . Arasha. Ara’len. Solas. Ar lath ma. Words and phrases I couldn’t say, not to this version of this man. He tangled his hands in my hair as my tongue found and teased particularly sensitive areas, and he urged me nearer, muttering both praises and profanities as I drove him closer to the edge.
He pulled me away before I could drive him over, his hand in my hair tugging my head back so that he could lean over me and kiss me. "You don't lack enthusiasm," he breathed against my mouth. "Come here. I need you."
Perhaps he intended something else, but I rose and immediately climbed over him, pushing him back against the bed with one hand. Beneath me, I could feel his cock twitching eagerly every time my body brushed against it, and his hands on my ass urged me to hurry. Naturally, my response was to slow. I bent, licking the ridged muscles on his abdomen, my breasts coincidentally flattening against his erection, and he groaned, swearing both creatively and with palpable desperation. I laughed, but let him urge me forward until I could look down into his eyes, teetering on the edge of blue, grey, and violet, and feel his tip lined up between my legs.
We both sighed as I sank onto the hard length of him. His hands settled on my hips, guiding me as I rode him. I closed my eyes, losing myself in the pleasure of the moment.
"Beautiful," he breathed.
"But not that beautiful," I teased him, not opening my eyes.
"No. I was utterly, unforgivably wrong. You are perfect." I finally looked at him and found myself staring straight at the Solas I knew and loved. My fingers ghosted against his cheek as I bent and pressed my lips to his, only just swallowing the promises and endearments I would naturally have offered the real Solas. He kissed me back, hands roving my body restlessly. Then he wrapped me firmly in his arms and rolled us over, pinning me beneath him. “This where you belong,” he whispered in my ear. “Do you know it?”
I nodded, catching my breath as he thrust into me.
“Say it,” he ordered.
This was far, far too near the truth to be safe - but I said it anyway: “I belong here, with you.” I shifted my hips, “With you inside me.”
“Yes,” he gasped. I felt my pleasure once again beginning to build. “The Dread Wolf has your scent. Shouldn’t you be frightened?”
“Wolves are loyal to their packs.” I could only hope he wouldn’t notice my laughter as I added: “And a lioness is loyal to her pride. If I chose you, and you chose me, what could either of us have to fear?” So much - there was so much to fear, but right now I put it aside and let myself believe I spoke the truth.
He shivered at the sound of his name, even though I was ostensibly using it in an entirely different context. “Tell me you are mine,” he demanded.
Oh no. Of course I was - it was what I dreamed of in the Fade, and cursed him for as I lay awake both before and after. “I’m yours,” I promised, nearly sobbing. “Always.” Vhenan . I didn’t even know whether I said the endearment - the ultimate, forbidden truth - out loud, because I was absolutely coming to pieces - I might have said anything. And besides - even if I did say it, I wasn’t certain he was in any position to notice, because he was right there with me, gasping obscenities into my neck that would have amused me in any other context.
A few dozen heartbeats later, he collapsed beside me, and, for several moments, just breathing felt profound, as though we were the first people ever to notice how good air was. "Silea," he said at last, and I turned onto my side to better see him. "That is what you said your name was, isn't it?"
"It is," I agreed, and then smiled. "How did you ask for me to be sent back to you if you weren't certain of my name?" I wondered.
"Ah. Well. I believe the words the pretty serving girl you assigned me , followed by a brief description of a few salient characteristics, were both involved," he replied, but his blush said that "salient characteristics" had gone somewhat beyond my hair and eye color.
I laughed.
He reached out, brushing my cheek with his fingers. "I…"
Oh. It seemed we were going to address the things I had said - the things he had demanded to hear - at the end. "It doesn't have to mean anything," I told him when he seemed uncertain how to begin. "People say things while - "
He cut me off before I could finish, frowning: "But it did mean something, did it not?"
There was a vulnerability I didn't expect from him bound up in the question. "Yes," I admitted, "it - I meant it, when I said it. That doesn’t mean…"
"I know," he told me quickly. "An exaggeration, perhaps - but one based on something real." He stroked my ear. "You could stay with me, for a time, and we might...explore precisely how much truth lay in those words." His smile became wicked again. "It would offer you the opportunity to berate me daily about my ethical failings."
"That is incredibly tempting, but not an offer I can accept," I told him, resisting his smile. "I have other duties I cannot possibly put aside."
"Such as?" he demanded, haughtiness creeping into his tone.
"A daughter," I said softly. Yours , I wanted to add, but of course that would make no sense and wasn’t exactly true anyway.
His eyes widened. "I - you never said - you aren't - "
"No," I said quickly, realizing what was tripping him up. "Her father is - or was - much older than I am. I...believe he felt the call of uthenera before we even met. Meeting, and being together, changed his intentions for a time, but in the end…" I shrugged, somewhat amazed by how easily these deceptive non-lies came to me now.
" Uthenera will not be put off forever," Fen'Harel agreed solemnly. "How old is she?"
"Two," I answered. "So you see…"
"Yes, of course." He closed his eyes. "The way I live would hardly - would be wrong for raising a child," he said as though to himself - as though trying to convince himself.
"More to the point, it would be wrong to take her from a community of people she loves in order for me to pursue something incredibly uncertain," I told him.
"Of course," he agreed, but he still looked dissatisfied.
I wished I could help, but I couldn't - not truly. All I could offer was another moment or two of physical comfort. He seemed surprised when I moved closer, but wrapped his arm around me after a brief hesitation. “I don’t do this,” he confessed as I pressed a few kisses to his throat.
“Why not? It’s pleasant,” I replied, unconcerned. “Stop attempting to be such a supercilious ass.”
He laughed, his fingers tracing my spine. “You are assuming the women I normally bed would invite such behavior.”
“Choose better bedmates,” I advised.
“I tried,” he whispered, “but, as it happens, my life is not compatible with hers at the moment.”
I looked up at him, and he gathered me closer, bending his head to kiss me. If only our lives had ever been compatible.
Tendrils of his magic swirled around me, caressing my skin, and I knew then that I would be sleeping late that morning.