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The sky is dark, the moon chalk-white
Sleep, my child; be quiet and still
Should you not by morning wake
Warm and safe with your fathers you’ll lay
Someone was singing a lullaby.
Rook suspected she knew the specific someone, even before she made the decision to creep very slowly towards the open flaps of the tent. Firstly, Emmrich had disappeared—the place where he should have been, a sleeping pallet set so close to hers that the edges overlapped, was rumpled and warm but empty. Secondly, (and this was the big clue as to the singer’s identity) the song was a Nevarran lullaby. One Rook recognized from her own childhood. Like most Nevarran lullabies, it was slow and a little creepy and contained words like ‘death’ and ‘grave.’ Rook must have known the story of this one, once, but the years had taken it from her. She only recognized the tune of it from the spinning ball of melancholy that opened in her stomach at the sound.
Emmrich was perched on a rock very close to one of the still-burning camp fires. They were camped with a clan of Dalish, Veil Jumpers among them—a wayward team of the faction they’d tracked down at the behest of Strife. By the time they encountered each other and performed Strife’s insisted-upon wellness check, the hour had been late and the Eluvian back to the Lighthouse too far of a walk to justify in the dark. Much of the clan had retired to the aravels for the night. Everyone still awake was either engaged in sentry duty or preparing the camp to be packed up in the morning. Everyone, that is, save the young woman sitting next to Emmrich on an adjacent blanket, legs folded under her as she rocked with a whimpering bundle in her arms.
It was to this very sad bundle that Emmrich was singing. His voice was sonorously baritone and seemed to carry through the entire camp. He wiggled his fingers over the blankets as he sang. Gentle blue swirls of magic leapt from his fingertips, twirling through the chill. Slowly, the whimpering stopped.
“Thank you,” said the woman holding the bundle. She sounded about two parts relieved and five parts senselessly exhausted. Her words slurred a bit. “She’s so colicky. It’s so hard to get her to sleep some nights.”
“Such things always pass,” Emmrich said. Rook could hear the smile in his voice even with his face turned away from her. “Our earliest days bring with them their own set of discomforts. She simply isn’t sure how to exist in the world, quite yet.”
“Hadn’t thought of it like that,” mumbled the woman. Then, in the tone of the truly delirious, “You’re so kind. I wish my father had been nearly so kind. Your children are lucky.”
“Ah,” Emmrich said, and he somehow managed to put so much melancholy into that one syllable that Rook’s heart tried very hard to get up and walk out of her chest. “That’s very kind of you to say. Unfortunately, I never became one. A father, that is.”
“Oh. I’m sorry, I just assumed…earlier, you were telling a story about—well, I thought it was your little boy, but I must have—”
“Oh! Manfred. Yes, of course you’d think—Manfred is my ward, you see. A spirit who I’m helping to guide…”
There Emmrich went, chattering on as the woman’s eyes glazed over. Rook retreated backwards into the tent, crawling awkwardly in reverse until she found his pillow in the dark. The pillowcase was soft, almost absurdly so for something Emmrich was willing to drag into the forest with him. It smelled strongly of him and, less so, of incense and spicey cologne. She wedged it between her chin and chest as she fell drowsily against her sleep pallet. Closing her eyes, she fell into something that wasn’t quite a dream so much as a parade of images—memories and daydreams of the day that her mind tempted her into sleep with.
Outside the tent, Emmrich was singing again. A different verse of the same lullaby, no less melancholy. Rook listened and breathed against his pillow, remembering his eyes in the forest that day, watching his elegant hands flow through magical gestures to calm wisps and deter those creatures in the forest that would stumble unwittingly into mischief. She fell slowly into a half-dream wherein she listened to him sing, his head in her lap and his ear against her stomach. She was warm, safe, and she felt his hand slide along her arm, the cool sensation of his jewelry against her.
It took her longer than it should have to realize that those were his actual rings on his actual hand.
“Shh, shh,” he murmured when she startled towards wakefulness. He’d pulled the flaps of the tent closed, and she couldn’t see him so much as feel him, cradling her from behind like an enormous, adoring parenthesis. “It’s me. Forgive me for leaving you, darling. I needed to clear my head.”
“Bad dream?” Rook mumbled. Nobody in the Lighthouse slept well. Between anxieties associated with their mission, scheming demons and baby griffins, it was a miracle anyone slept at all. Emmrich typically managed it better than most, but she knew him to be no stranger to nightmares and insomnia. The gravity of the task at hand seemed to weigh heaviest at night.
“Not as such. Some nights, the mind wanders, and the feet can only follow. I took a walk.” This was clearly all he wanted to say on the subject. To change it, he tugged briefly on the corner of his pillow, teasing. “Does this belong to you now? No matter, I have another.”
Rook blinked the dream out of her eyes and mumbled, “You have…two pillows? In your camp supplies?”
Emmrich sighed between her shoulder blades. “I fear that you and Harding will never accept that I simply have differing opinions on how uncomfortable it’s reasonable to be, even in nature.”
She laughed and, despite her words, clutched his pillow closer to herself—if that was even possible. The rumble of his responding laughter against her was like a blanket, something heavy and warm settling over her. She stretched into his hand until she felt a crick in her back give way with a gentle pop, and she could settle just a little further against the bedroll and, deliciously, his body.
“You were singing,” she mumbled, after a moment of quiet. His hand had slipped under her shirt, gentle and kind. This was how she fell asleep now, more often than not, and the response to his touch on her stomach was utterly instinctive at this point. She could feel her very heartbeat slow as he caressed her.
“I was,” he murmured. “One of the Dalish we’re camped with is a rather fussy newborn.”
“Mm. I heard. What song was it? I remember it…I think.” She buried her face into the pillow again. “Oh. Hmm. Smells good.”
“Does it?” Another of those sweet chuckles hummed into her back as his fingers traced along her ribs. Up they swept to the swell of her breast, and down they swept to the peak of her hip. He didn’t seem to mind or notice that her stomach began to tremble. “I’ll admit to not laundering it as often as I should. I suspect it smells of nothing so much as sweat.”
“I like it,” she whispered. “Smells like…a man. My man.”
He kissed her neck, right behind her ear where she liked it best. She giggled and buried her nose into one of the pleats of the pillowcase, then shifted down so that the next time his hand made its meandering journey up towards her breast, his fingers alighted on her nipple. A slow, delicate ache pooled inside her.
“I remember that lullaby,” Rook said again. His fingers squeezed and pinched tenderly as her nipple pebbled between them. She loved his hands. “There was a woman…one of the Watchers who took me in, she would sing it to me when I…couldn’t sleep. I used to have nightmares. Can’t remember why.”
“If I had to guess, that mind of yours,” Emmrich murmured. He shifted closer, and she delighted in the erection now pressed snug against the cleft of her backside. He was a blessed man, Emmrich Volkarin; beautiful hands, a beautiful face. A beautiful handful of a cock. He rocked his hips against her in a loving, maddening drag that sent her toes curling against the bedroll. “As for the lullaby—it’s one of my favorites.”
“It’s sad,” Rook whispered. “I remember it’s sad.”
“It is,” Emmrich agreed. “But also beautiful. It tells children they are loved, and will be loved still even should they pass into the next world. A sentiment I find extremely important—my own fears notwithstanding, I wouldn’t want my child to fear death.”
Rook hummed, settling into the cocoon of his body. His hand played at her still, idly caressing her loose breasts, tracing a hexagonal shape onto her sternum that she believed to be the tombscript character for ‘beloved.’ Feeling it, affection for him rose in her throat until it was almost physical; she couldn’t help but giggle again, even as she began to sink earnestly into sleep. Emmrich still shifted against her; patient, unobtrusive and hard. He wasn’t one to mention it, much less insist, but something had made him want her tonight.
“Emmrich,” she mumbled. “Can I ask you something?”
“Certainly, my darling.”
“Why do you have a favorite lullaby?”
Emmrich’s hand stopped its roaming all at once, pausing over her navel. She rolled just slightly, far enough to see the corner of his face if she craned her neck. His gaze had blanked a little, gone hazy and just slightly distant.
“It’s just not…” Rook considered her words, caressed the back of his hand. She could feel each moving tendon through the fabric of her thin chemise. “Not something most people have, a favorite lullaby. Aside from, y’know—”
“Parents,” Emmrich finished for her. “Yes, darling, I understand what you—yes.”
“I mean, people know lullabies, I suppose. But that one…it’s not quite Mary Had a Little Nug, is it? It’s…a Nevarran song. For Nevarran babies.”
“Which mine would have been,” Emmrich whispered. “Had I had them.”
“Oh,” she whispered back. They observed each other for a moment in the almost perfect dark. Rook opened and closed her mouth several times, cleared her throat, and said, “Would have been.”
“Once one reaches a certain age, childlessness becomes an inevitability.”
“Emmrich,” Rook whispered, in the tone of conspiracy. “You know that you wouldn’t be carrying the child, right?”
His beautiful eyes rolled in his head like two big, exasperated marbles. “Obviously.”
Rook would always be fascinated by the way that he could say with his mouth something like the word obviously and make it sound to her ears like fucking duh. Didn’t know how he did it, but it was impressive all the same.
“Emmrich,” she said again, very gently this time, because she was wading into the proverbial deep end and she’d never been a good swimmer. “Do you—well. If I were…what if I said that I…want them?”
For a moment, he seemed to stop breathing. His hand tentatively resumed its petting, now on a somewhat determined path. “Dearest…I want you to know that I don’t expect anything of you. All things considered, our relationship is relatively new, and the disparity in our ages alone is reason to give one pause. I wouldn’t want you to make any regrettable decisions just to…please me.”
“You think I would regret having your children?”
Emmrich’s face gave a strange lurch. He said, “Of course not,” in that neat, haughty way of his. She snorted gracelessly through her nose. “I simply think you shouldn’t rush any decisions, darling. The Gods still live. When this is all over and you’ve had the time to…reflect, you may feel differently.”
Rook rolled her eyes. “Oh, as if. You’re it for me, Professor, and I’ve told you before.”
“And I’ve told you before, darling—please don’t use my title, especially not while—“
Rook reached a hand up her own shirt and found his wrist, summarily dragging his hand to her breast, where she very badly wanted it. Emmrich bit off a groan into her neck and, below, his cock jumped against her. Feeling it, Rook genuinely considered saying something crazy like, the moment I met you, I knew I was looking at the father of my children. Considered it, but realized that it had the potential to alarm him, and she herself still hadn’t quite made peace with the ravenous hole that had opened in her when Professor Emmrich Volkarin introduced himself and shook her hand. She’d never thought herself to be capable of experiencing that kind of instant want. She’d spent weeks feeling like Thedas’ greatest depraved lunatic, coveting every little smirk and shrug Emmrich graced her with. It still drove her crazy, all the damn time.
Yeah. Yeah, she wanted to have his babies.
Instead of any of this, she said, “You’d make a good dad, Emmrich. Our children would be lucky.”
His hand enveloped her breast fully, a precise handful for his grasp like she was made to be molded into the contours of his palms. The way a simple touch from him, the most perfunctory of gropes, could make her feel like it was the very first time anyone had ever put a hand under her shirt—it was fucking inspiring. She’d had lovers, casual dalliances and more serious arrangements alike. She’d come into womanhood in the shadowed corridors of the Necropolis against the greater backdrop of Nevarra City, and Nevarrans were, despite the long-suffered corpse metaphors, a passionate people. Emmrich was exhibit A, B, and C of this phenomenon, and Maker how she’d never known her body could ache for another person’s. She’d had lovers but—
“Say that again?” he whispered, wet against the nape of her neck, and he didn’t wait for her response before taking the tip of her ear in his mouth.
“I—what—?” Rook whimpered and rolled towards him, yanking on his hip while she did so in an obvious bid to pull him atop her. Emmrich went willingly, with no indication that he’d ever wished to exist anywhere except for the warm cradle of her hips and thighs, and it felt like the last piece of a puzzle slotting into place. He was hard against her and filling her nose with the smell of home; she was aching for him and the world was spinning. For a suspended moment, all was right.
“Our children,” Emmrich breathed. “Say that again.” He pushed his hands up, long fingers trailing and reaching over the soft mound of her stomach, thumbs rolling over the hardened buds of her nipples, then up still until her shirt cleared the top of her head and found a happy home for itself crumpled into the corner of the tent, though not before he tossed it with enough force for the whack-thud of it to be heard by anyone still awake in the camp. Rook shivered as gooseflesh erupted from her neck to her navel. Spread her legs that much further. Felt the brief liaison of Emmrich’s fingers in the dark hair under her arms as he trailed them back down her sides.
“Mm,” she hummed, floaty. “Our children. I’ll give them to you. I’ll—oh, Maker. Sometimes it’s all I think about.”
Emmrich pulled back, fixed her with a look that made her feel at once torn open and buried deep. The look of a man who was absolutely clinging to the razor’s edge of control—something wild so close to the surface she could practically see it through his skin, something like the green-hued magic that she was now so familiar with. She wanted to bathe in it; she wanted it inside her.
He said, “You have to know that’s all I’ve ever wanted, my darling.”
She said, “I hope they have your eyes.”
This was, just as she thought it might be, the moment his control tipped over the edge and into the abyss.
“Fuck,” he hissed, and she almost didn’t have time to delight in his profanity—almost, because the lightning strike of it was instantaneous and filled her with the kind of wet heat that she was beginning to associate with him and him exclusively, particularly when the even and tempered veneer of Professor Volkarin cracked and revealed the man underneath. Emmrich, sweet and beautiful and, in this moment, crackling with magic and sex. Did he know, she wondered, that he was the only person in the entire world who could put her on her knees and she would thank him for it?
Either way, it went like this: he swore, low and guttural, fuck, and it filled Rook with the kind of want that entire novels had been written about and failed to capture, and then the buckles on his trousers clanked as he attacked them with one hand. The other, blessedly, found a path up the gapping leg of the briefs she wore. She was wet, swollen with want, and his fingers slipped against her with an ease that was almost embarrassing. She probably would have been embarrassed, if she was a six-months-younger version of herself who’d never met a man whose smile and accent and cock made her want to take his last name.
“Rook,” he panted, “You can’t—you shouldn’t—”
He was so rarely tongue-tied.
“I want to be yours,” Rook whispered.
“You are,” Emmrich said.
“Say it to me.”
He growled and finally freed himself from his trousers. He’d hooked his fingers into the strip of fabric between her legs and yanked to the side, freeing black hair and swollen brown skin. His fingers still swirled. “You’re mine. In every way that matters. When all that’s left behind are your bones and my bones—even then, the world will know you were mine.”
“Yes,” Rook whimpered. “More, more, please.” She had no idea if she was begging for more of his body or more of his voice. Likely enough, both. She crooked her leg against the small of his back, rested it there against the surprisingly generous and shapely swell of his ass, and pulled him in like some many-limbed monstrosity with its prey.
“They’ll know,” Emmrich breathed, getting going now, and how she loved it when he got carried away with himself. It was a favored pastime, probably, of people who talked for a living—and it was so lucky for him, then, and perfect for her that she could sit and listen to him for hours. “When they see the permanent geometry of your bones, they’ll know you carried my children. Even in a hundred years, even in the next Age, and the Age after that—when they see the shape of you, they’ll know you were loved by me.”
The glistening, purpled head of his cock dragged against her, nudging the place where she, too, was hard and wanting. A strand of his starlight silver hair was curled against the curve of his shapely nose and—fuck, she hoped they had his nose too. She hoped he would hit the bottom of her womb and put hazel-eyed, regally-nosed babies inside her. She hoped they would look just like him and everyone, everyone would know who their father was.
His eyes were fever-bright, an almost entirely different color, and focused with singular intent on the place where he dragged against her. His thumb played at her, slick and broad, and every time his hips nudged forwards another part of her sanity seemed to go missing. She was nothing but sense; his smell, his touch, and the sound of everything. His attentions, their combined panting breath and the quiet sounds of night outside. The leaves rustled, distant animals noised and people existed, strangers and companions alike, unaware of the coupling occurring in their thinly-walled tent.
“Come on,” Rook whispered, feeling insane. “Give it to me. Fuck me like you’re trying to get me pregnant.”
He buried his forehead between her breasts, groaning, bent almost in half now, and she had to resist the impulse to yowl like an animal when the thick, perfect head of his cock popped inside her.
“You are so—” he breathed. She could feel the furrow of his eyebrows, the precious wrinkles on his forehead deepening as he concentrated.
“Insane? Wild?” Rook laughed, panted, wiggled on his dick. “Impulsive—”
“Beautiful,” Emmrich said. “Wonderful. Perfect. Like a dream I wrote down and put away.”
She shivered delightedly. It wasn’t the first time someone had whispered those things to her in a passion. Emmrich, for all his virtues, was probably not immune to the intoxicating effects of a warm body and a wet pussy. He spoke the words prettier than most—perfect; dream; beautiful; they all sounded so fucking gorgeous in his sex-strained voice—but they were, at the end of the day, just words. Her heart had apparently missed that particular missive. It clenched, tried very hard to beat out of her chest, and begged for more with a frantic thump-thump-thump that he had to be able to hear.
“You say that to all the girls,” Rook said, only half-joking. He wasn’t ashamed of his past, or even particularly covetous; she’d heard stories. An Orlesian art dealer he’d passed a summer with years ago. A young man with whom Emmrich had shared passionate afternoons as a Watcher-in-training. Johanna Hezenkoss, though Emmrich had only mentioned this once, very briefly, after wine had made him melancholy.
He laughed, rolled his smiling eyes up to her. “Darling, how often do you imagine I’ve been asked to impregnate someone?”
“Oh, come on. I can’t be the first.”
“Perhaps not.” He sucked her nipple briefly. She whimpered and puddled. “Rest assured, you’ll be the only one I indulge.”
“Maker, I need you,” Rook hissed. “Would you shut up—the things you say—ahh—”
Thankfully mercifully, he set himself to the task—tender thrusts of his hips, a rolling rhythm that filled her perfectly every time.
“The energies of new life, even from the moment of conception, are obvious to those who—who have a sensitivity to fluctuations in the veil between life and death.” He was still going, somehow, even as he worked himself deeply, slowly into her cunt—trying to drive her mad, probably, though he was a bit late to the party in that regard. Rook wasn’t sure she’d ever been sane, and certainly not now that she had him at her shoulder, encouraging and congratulating the calamity of her existence. “Those trained in the necromantic arts are, as you can imagine, particularly perceptive to these fluctuations. When new life springs forth, the ripples sent through the Fade are tangible. Life making space for itself.”
An erotic lecture, apparently, just for her. Knocking You Up 101 with Professor E. Volkarin.
God, she loved him.
“So you—” Rook whined. “You’re saying you’d be able to tell when—”
“Yes,” Emmrich groaned. “Oh, yes, my darling—the moment it took. I would feel the spark of life start in you, I would—I would know it. Know them. From the very start.”
“Oh,” Rook whimpered. “Oh, oh, oh.”
“Rook,” Emmrich said, exhuming his face from the heaving depths of her tits only to bury it instead by her neck. His teeth dug into her, scraping a mark into her skin that would welt up purple by morning. Proof of who she belonged to. “Oh, my darling Rook—I’ve dreamed about it. Maker forgive me, but I have. Burying myself in you. Filling you. Fucking my children into you. The Fade gives me such…vivid visions, it’s all I can do to calm myself when I wake up and find you next to me. Dearest, the thoughts I have—”
“Tell me, tell me.” She yanked the shirt out of the back of his trousers (How, why, was it still tucked in? Had he gone to sleep like that? What an adorable freak) and pushed both of her hands up his back to feel the strong, lithe muscles of his shoulders move under his skin. Meanwhile, he fucked her noisily—the merry clinking of his bangles and chains and the wet sound of his balls clapping thunderously against her ass. They were putting a lot of confidence in the sound-muffling properties of muslin.
“I think of you in my office,” Emmrich whispered. He was telling secrets now, whispering them behind the point of her ear so that only she could hear. “I have a break between lectures and you’ve come to me because—because you’re ripe, and we have to take advantage of it—”
“Oh, Professor,” she moaned, maybe a bit too loud.
“Sh-sh.” He pressed his palm briefly over her mouth. She licked it from wrist to fingertips. He laughed, rough and inelegant (Though, to her, he was always elegance personified) and pressed his thumb between her lips, watching with dark eyes as she suckled it. “In my office, I would put you on my desk and fill you. I’d go to my lecture, leave you there naked with your legs in the air—you’d lay there, waiting for it to take.”
His thrusts were turning arrhythmic—a sign of his impending orgasm. He straightened up and tugged her further into his lap, only her head and shoulders touching the bedroll now. She knew the front of his trousers, pulled down just far enough to free his cock and balls and no further, was ruined. She didn’t feel bad about it in the slightest; he had others, and he’d get more.
“I’ve dreamt about watching you grow,” he said, pressing bruises into her hips. “Watching your body change, touching each beautiful new shape you take. I—oh, I’m close—Rook—”
“Inside!” Rook wound her legs even tighter around him, clenching his body to hers until he could do nothing but rock frantically into her. “Please, please, Emmrich—I want it inside me.”
Emmrich’s jaw clenched, and Rook watched the mused strands of his hair bounce against his forehead as he utterly lost it atop her. She’d started losing count of the number of times she’d seen him come, though she’d definitely been counting at first—the sight of it never failed to captivate. The sweet fluttering of his eyelids and the flush of his cheeks were highlights of the experience, though those subtleties were lost to the shadows of the tent. This night, all she saw was the parting of his lips, the silent moan of ecstasy that fixed itself on his face as he emptied himself into her.
“That’s good,” she cooed, rocking gently into him. “That’s so good, Emmrich. I love you, I love you.”
He shuddered, tilted his head back. She wanted nothing more than to kiss the prominent line of the apple bobbing in his throat, but he was still holding her down against the bedroll, and a contortion like that was probably beyond her abilities at the moment anyway. Instead, she found his hand on her hip and pried at it until he allowed her to twine their fingers.
“Darling,” he rasped, once he’d recovered a bit. He raised her hand to his face and spent a moment kissing each of her knuckles. “Oh, my darling. I adore you.” His other smoothed up and down her thigh in a kind of soothing, petting gesture. He was going soft inside her—an intimate sensation. She loosened her legs and released his hips, though he didn’t go far. After pulling himself carefully from her, he laid out beside her, and her thigh moved with him to curl over his hip. They laid there for a moment, faces pressed together.
Eventually, Emmrich raised a hand between them and moved it in a lilting, elegant gesture. Magic, a particular invocation she knew well, misted into being on his fingertips.
“A precaution for you, dearest,” he murmured, and she nodded. It wasn’t unusual for him to offer—despite the potion she took, one could never be too careful. Emmrich had a light hand and a skillful touch, and she’d come to actually enjoy the sensation of the particular incantation he utilized. She’d used them before, on herself and others, and they tended to sting.
Usually, he would pass his hand over her stomach, mumble under his breath, and she would only feel a vague, pleasant warmth fill her for a brief moment as the magic rendered the seed emptied inside her inert. Tonight was no different, though his fingers quickly found their way into the cloud of hair between her thighs. She parted them, wanting him still.
“More than anything,” Emmrich whispered, as his fingertips found her clit and framed it with skillful strokes, “I dream of you. A future together. Almost every time I dream, if the Fade is kind to me that night, it shows me you and the home we might build together. The love we’ll make. The safer world we’ll explore together—and yes, my love, even the children we might have.”
“Oh,” Rook whispered. Tears stung her eyes and tried to fall. She had no idea what to do with the emotions trying to overflow out of her—she had neither his skill for the spoken word, nor the presence of mind to articulate with any amount of coherence in the moment. To that end, she opened her mouth and voiced the first nonsense thought that came to mind, which happened to be, “The minute the gods are dead, I’m jumping your bones, bone man.”
Emmrich smiled, teeth showing. Tilted his head in that almost bashful way of his, somehow looking like he hadn’t just whispered several of the filthiest things she’d ever heard. Like his fingers weren’t knuckle-deep in her fluttering cunt.
“You’ll hear no objections from me,” he said.
They kissed for awhile after that, which was the only semi-successful way she’d yet found to quiet him. She let his tongue map the inside of her cheek as she moaned and rode his hand like she was trying to win a prize for it. When she had to break away just to breathe, just to pull enough air into her lungs, he pressed his mouth to her neck and whispered—dearest and sweet Rook and come for me, I can feel how close you are, let it go my darling—
She wailed into his shoulder, shuddering apart against rapid strokes of his fingers.
When it was over, his fingers slid away from her still-twitching sex and rested damp against her hip. The camp was very quiet now, though Rook knew that at the very least, the Dalish on sentry duty were still awake, and probably had at least a vague idea of the recent goings-on inside their tent. She quickly decided that they probably hadn’t been scarred by the experience and put it out of her mind—though she knew that if she mentioned it to Emmrich, he’d blush to his ears and then, after a moment, hide a smug smirk behind his hand.
Maybe she’d bring it up once they were back on the road tomorrow. Just for fun.
Eventually, Emmrich shifted onto his back, and she heard the various clinks and jingles of what she assumed to be the sound of him shimmying out of his trousers. He tutted under his breath, likely from the wet patch he’d found on the front—she smirked—and laid them carefully in the corner of the tent, near where she remembered his waistcoat and cloak to be. Then he went on some odd journey to the other corner of the tent, shifting on his knees, and she wondered to herself (not for the first time) if he just literally could not keep himself from getting distracted. When he returned, it was with her discarded shirt clenched in his hand—and she had to admit that she’d completely forgotten it existed.
“As much as I admire your form, darling,” he said, passing it to her with a kiss, “I don’t always trust our companions to announce themselves, and the tent doesn’t exactly have a door.”
He had a point. Lucanis, who was probably at this very moment sitting on the edge of camp with his eyes focused beadily out into the wilderness, was pretty good about giving people their privacy. He’d perfected a move where he walked backwards into bedrooms and the communal baths, loudly announcing his presence, when it had been just herself, Neve, Bellara and Harding in the Lighthouse with him. Davrin, on the other hand, seemed to have forgotten that privacy was a desirable thing after years in the Warden barracks.
(“So I heard something last night,” Davrin would say in the morning, thumping himself down next to her at breakfast like a ton of bricks. “Something about oh Emmrich get me pre—”
“No you didn’t,” Rook would snap, shoving a hand in his face. “No you didn’t.”)
“You’re not wrong,” she muttered, and put the shirt on.
They settled, arranging pillows and blankets. Emmrich’s hand, of course, found its way under her shirt to her soft stomach, where he began his ritual of petting her to sleep. She closed her eyes and listened to his long, even breaths, and imagined life a year from now. The gods dead, the world saved. A soft bed in Nevarra. His hand on her stomach, and—well. Perhaps there would be a little more of it.
To her surprise and delight, just as she drifted off to sleep, he pressed his mouth behind her ear and, after dropping a final kiss, began to very quietly sing.
She fell asleep and dreamt of his voice. A lullaby in the night. A bundle in his arms.