Chapter Text
The aftermath of their first kiss was frantic and chaotic, like the fluttering of wings as summer birds landed home in time for spring. It had lifted something up in her, but it had also passed as quickly as it had started. Luella only had the vague feeling of self-assuredness and the faint echo of a hot tongue thrust inside her mouth to guide her through the solid form of If I could take a little time to think. Walking an endless hallway, waiting for a door to unlock from the other side. She knew how to wait, she knew how to wait, she knew how to wait. She would have him take all the time he would need.
But she was also weak to the will of her own curiosity, even while struggling against the elastic pull of him. Luella felt herself grow concerned she would wear the memory out somehow, spinning it around her mind like the blueprint to an unfamiliar place, like a treasure map. It was agony. Each night she found under her pillow, like a charm, the reminisce of it: muffled sensations like a dream of a dream felt through layers of gauze, followed by the urge to reach out and grasp for familiarity, grasp for someone who’d shared that same moment, so that she would know she hadn’t conjured all of it herself.
Still, she did not mention it. In truth, Luella feared the urge within herself to push closer; in his hesitation, she had seen something like a child—something to nurture, to encourage. Whatever had made him able to stop her, to face her as an equal, was something she desired more than romance, if a choice had to be made; she’d have him as a friend of the heart, rather than an obedient lover. And if contemplation had him reconsider, then so be it—she would have him completely certain, or not at all.
All she could do was be his companion, as if nothing had happened: drop into his space, sit into his loveseat and watch him work, talk to him, ask him of his Dreams, paint an illustration of what his rejection would lead to, if she could have her way: a bond unbroken, warm still in the palm of their friendship, unchanged. A kiss could be moved past, but Solas had to remain, for as long as he would have her.
Indeed, the real torment would have been the distance, all throughout the tune of the cordial dance one stepped through anytime friendship grew roots so deep it found something other than water. The quiet gasp of a moment, when future lovers would pull back to let minds sober, was agonisingly reminiscent of losing him. Having to stay away entirely would have felt like something irreparable had broken between them in the Fade, like she had bound them to the stiff politeness of acquaintanceship indefinitely. She guarded him against the notion with a vicious fervour, claiming the sharp sting of it all to herself.
She dreamt of finding him and apologising, of taking it all back if only so that any silence between them would cease. As she braided her hair for the nights, she manifested dreams where he would take her lapse in stride, his view of her unchanging, the stream of their conversation yet again finding its riverbed without effort. She missed the unassuming nonchalance of his careful eyes on her; missed him with a weight so terrible it frightened her to the bones, so awful it steeled her to the heartbreak of giving him up to her own cowardice—only so that she would get to speak to him again, hide nothing, flow freely.
But even on the occasions when Solas was cast in her dreams, he was too coy. There was no doubt in Luella’s mind that a demon lay behind the vision of him each night, for he seemed so unaware of her torment, so receptive to her touch. Each night the apology withered in her throat to the sound of him greeting her by name. Each night she allowed herself to linger at a careful distance, just to hear his voice. Each night she entertained this demon-Solas, talked and talked and talked until regret broke through the cracks in her dream-scape, alongside the dawn-light.
Thus she spun like thread for him for weeks: thin and taut, but held together. She took the side entrance to the library and gave him all of the space he would need, but she greeted him softly all the same, spoke to him all the same. She did not think of his eyes, she did not think of his mouth, she did not think of his hands.
Their second kiss was sudden. Clumsy.
Luella had prepared for something else entirely, when she’d invited him up to her bedchambers. The pain of loss rang about him with the endless echo of a bell-tower and she no longer had it in her to portray him as an object of desire—it was unthinkable. His sorrow was a caged animal, and she intended to provide it the space to growl and roar and slash and claw with no mind for anyone, for she knew it wouldn't hurt her. She would wrap herself around it like a vine, she would embrace it like soft leaves of autumn, and she'd hold it as it shook until the tremors turned to huffs turned to sleep.
His friend had died before him. Luella had seen it happen: there one moment, gone the next, leaving the drawn-out trail of begging for his help behind, the one-sided memory of helplessness deaf in their haste. Without intention, she had mirrored the tension in his body, had felt the outrage, the squander—and while her heart had raged at the waste of an innocent life, she’d known Solas had naturally felt something yet heavier.
She had seen the suffocating cape of grief hanging from his shoulders as he’d turned on the shemlen mages, and for a moment it’d had her consider casting all distance aside and throwing herself before him, laying their distorted lifeless bodies at his feet like a feeble offering on a lonely shrine. Then she had thought better of it: let him, too, have the memory of vengeance at his fingers. And so she had let him snuff them out, beautifully dreadful without his staff, all while she had held his trembling hand. The coal-dust flame in her heart had reached for him and wept and wept and wept.
The man on her balcony still carried the ghost of that moment. Hunched over the railing, he was almost down to her height, which gave Luella the strange sensation of seeing how he must have been as a child: sad-eyed and lost, feigning concentration while frantically searching for something confusing in the texture of the floor between them.
When he finally met her eyes, his voice cracked through its dry, broken silence.
“What were you like? Before the Anchor?”
She heard herself stutter a question, grasping for a reply among the deck of soft, comforting words she had prepared for him. Solas was already off-script.
“Has it affected you? Changed you in any way?” And then, as she still considered silently, “Has it changed your mind? Your morals? Your—” she heard him gulp air “—spirit?”
Luella loved his sharp mind, she loved the way it always took her by surprise, how no question between them was ever leading but the trail of them still came to the same destination. Despite that, she desperately wished for this one moment to somehow reveal to her what he needed to hear in her answer.
And that he needed something she was sure of, for his eyes were wide on her, his position that of careful restraint. She wondered if the thought occurred to him too, then, that she’d readily let him piece her apart, even if only to look at the clockwork. She wondered if the dull flicker of hope behind his pupils betrayed a real plight for truth. All the same, she gave it to him.
“Its aftermath has changed me, perhaps. The breach, the rifts, meeting everyone,” meeting you, she swallowed, “but underneath it I’m the same I’ve always been. The anchor just makes it easier to read at night.”
“Ah.” He smiled at her soft fumble for humour and a stupid flutter thrashed inside her canary heart.
“Why do you ask?”
He should have expected the question in return, yet still it made him pause, withdrawn as if fishing for a pre-written script of his own, and falling short. He looked so tired, so cold in the foreground of the snowy slopes. Luella longed to hide him inside her room, to get the fire going, to boil him something hot to drink. She didn’t want to interrupt.
“In the Exalted Plains, when…” A start, a pause. “You show a wisdom I have not seen since…” Another, another. “You…”
She had little control over herself then, seeing his breath breaking, his shoulders trembling—all she could do was reach for his hand on the railing, and rest hers on top of it. Lightly, lightly, so that when his cold skin felt her cold skin and registered what she had done, he could pull away with ease. He didn’t. Looking at their hands, red with frost, he seemed to finally wrangle the knot of his thoughts out.
“You are not what I expected.”
Luella tried to read his meaning, but his eyes were still on the balustrade, so instead she gently ran her thumb over the knuckle of his index finger.
“I’ve been the same I’ve always been to you, Solas. What did I do that was so surprising?”
His breath was visible before him. When he looked back at her, it was with an expression so piercing it almost had her flinch; the keen weight of him seeing her was concentrated, penetrating, as if nothing of hers could remain hidden ever again. From the corner of her mind, Luella observed the thought that she wouldn’t want to hide anything, anyway.
“You have shown subtlety in your actions, a wisdom that goes against everything I have anticipated.”
“I only let you end the fools who hurt your friend.” She saw his mouth open and rushed to finish her thought. ”You would have done the same.”
“I would have, yes. It is not what I meant.”
His eyes were soft, his hand was cold. Luella suddenly became aware there was an unopened bottle of spiced wine in her cellar. A collection of stoneware mugs she’d received as a congratulations-gift, or a thank-you gift, or a save-me gift from one frail human or another. They all called out to the frail man before her, yet only she seemed to hear. Perhaps inside was too much for him, perhaps he needed a moment of her privacy without the implied intimacy of the place she slept in.
“What, then?” She suppressed her shiver.
“You arrived at their ritual and saw a demon, yet still treated her as someone worth protecting. Jumped at it, like it was the most natural thing to you.”
“I recognised her only because you knew her.”
“But you recognised her all the same.” He was looking at her so intently, so softly, as if he were a little bird, hatched too early for spring. Afraid. “The thought has haunted me ever since I left you in the Plains. If the Dalish could raise someone like you, someone with a spirit like yours, have I misjudged them?”
Luella waited for his rhetoric to finish its alluring dance, to drop its other foot with gentle determination, but Solas only looked at her expectantly.
She could have pushed back more, she could have really disagreed with his assignment of rarity upon her. It was only common sense, when you have called a wise man by your side, to heed his every word.
In reality, Luella had been famished for his knowledge ever since the dizzy day she’d first awakened in Haven; the careful mosaic of visions he’d relayed had soldered into her like stained glass, fit to decorate the grandest of chapels whereas her years as First had built but a shrine. She had foolishly fallen beside him, foolishly prodded for more and more and more, categorising any little glimpse of something new into the gaping maw inside her mind. It was only natural for him to change her. It was only natural she’d see spirits differently, after him.
But Solas would not have that. He was a clever man, and the truth was right before him, plain as day: she was a stupid Dalish girl standing on the shoulders of giants, his place firm among their ranks. Had he wanted to see it, he would have. Her further dismissal would only shape like rebuttal, and so out of care for him, out of the wish to protect him from arguments in the cold, she swallowed the undeserved admiration.
It still stuck like a fish-bone in her throat.
“You know I’d never say the Dalish are perfect. We are often stuck in our own ways, many of us too stubborn to look outside the limits of the known. But it has been to protect something sacred, something precious and fragile that shemlen have threatened. I know you know this too.” A breath, a breath, evading her. “I’ve been taught to remember the ancient ways, to the extent anyone remembers them. It’s my honour, it’s my duty to live by them. I’m only grateful for what more I have come to learn from you.”
Solas shook his head, a quick silencing motion, kind in its command under the smile on his lips.
“I have only given you what you yourself have sought out.” A beat. “Perhaps this is it, then. I suppose it must be.” His hand rolled underneath hers, held it to his palm. The freezing spot where the metal railing had touched him felt hot, burning against her skin. “Most people act with so little understanding of the world. You do not.”
Her thumb traced up and down his pinky, cheerful in the chill. She was silent, too silent, as the shock of his body moving, alive, was overwhelming her through the little point they’d closed contact in. The little motion, as the angle changed when he stepped closer, broke her.
“You sound like you got the answer you wanted.”
“I did.”
“Care to share, Solas?”
“Hm?”
The question asked nothing of her, but the tone of it was an order, a sleeping command he must have woven into her when she hadn’t been looking. It pulled her back far enough to watch them standing on the balcony, only inches apart; it repainted the statement, a hesitant rosy red, like heat rising to her face.
Luella was hiding in plain sight before him, and she knew it. Veiled beneath the stubborn confidence of her shell, the jocular tint of her wording, she was completely naked to him. His breath was soft, so soft, muffled through the silky numbness of the frosty air.
“Care to share the answer you got?” She whispered, voice unnecessary in such close proximity.
“I yield.” A flash of something breaking in him as he smiled. “This is my answer.”
“Ah.” Her bottom lip brushed against his with the movement, a quick greeting.
Luella felt him let her go, felt her hands rest lightly by his neck, felt his fingers slide into her hair, cradling her face to his as he spoke. An equal matter of holding her close and holding her distant.
“You do not know what you are doing. You do not know what you do to me.” His voice struggled against its whisper, a small and broken sound. “You do not understand, it would be so much kinder to let this go now, let it wither. You can still do it. You can stop this, still.” Each breath intake released another chant, another plea, another prayer. “I thought I could, but losing you—” Their foreheads pressed, their noses touched. “It would break me. I need you. I need you to stop me now.”
She let him wash over her, let his words trickle down her skin, as if spring had sprung its wild reckless head and rained warm rain upon them both: a blessing, an omen.
“I do not want to.”
He made a sound as he kissed her, a desperate guttural thing, which seemed to reverberate through her bones like a bell announcing his arrival. A crash, an unfamiliar eldritch feeling of heat melting the snow, of teeth clashing with teeth clashing with lips, clashing with tongues. Luella felt the world tilt back under his force, which had her grasping not to stumble, for his shoulder, his neck, his back. When he pulled back for air and grabbed her behind, her gasp had him narrowly miss her mouth, his tongue leaving a wet trace into the corner of her lips in its haste to meet hers.
She was pliable in his hands, melted soft like clay he’d worked for weeks, every press of every finger changing her entirely, irreversibly. Solas only hummed approvingly at her every sigh, sipped them from her mouth with the clumsy urgency of a man who had only known drought before, then pushed her ahead for more and more and more.
And she obliged, while her hands were on his face, while her hands were on his neck, while her thumb stroked the soft spot underneath his ear, the warm edge of his earlobe. Her fingers felt at the hem of his neckline, jovial and joyous in the lightness of their greeting with the hot skin underneath, where they seemed to effortlessly conjure goosebumps. Distantly, she considered if his press against her constituted magic, if this was what bewitchment would have been like.
The kiss ended reluctantly, with Solas chasing after her once, twice, meeting their lips softly again and again. Luella was loath to interrupt, the friction between her fingertips and his shirt an intoxicating grip of static electricity, which had her convinced she wouldn’t have to pull to have it come off: it would succumb to her as she would succumb to him.
Instead, she managed to steal a fluttering peck on the tip of his nose before he pulled away, winded, flushed. They had found themselves several paces inside, the glass balcony entrance gaping longingly in their absence, tongues of cold air lapping after their trace. Solas jolted, busying himself to close the doors, frost-bitten flush fighting to obscure the one already there.
The kiss that followed was all him.
Luella had only thought it fair payment for her patience, to have him set their pace, make the first move. All she provided was plenty of opportunity—lingering at the rotunda late at night, lounging in his loveseat, reading whichever book he had atop his pile out loud as he sketched his plans for the next fresco. In reality, she forgot herself entirely—simply basked in his friendship, the air it eased about her heart to be around him. Her company in his company, their voices rippled over the echoing silence of his space after dark.
The first night she inevitably dozed off mid-sentence, Luella woke to his lips pressed to her forehead, gentle and quiet as a secret. Then, as she roused, disoriented and hazy with sleep, he kissed her properly.
There was no thunder, there were no drums, no fanfare; only the quiet spark of their lips parting and meeting again sounded in the tired hours of the night. The motion was like a little bird, its flutters light and trembling in their soft erratic chaos, the very tips of feathers on mortal skin. As she moved against him, Solas sighed into her, a small quiet sound of relief. She'd only stroked his cheek.
That was the first night they shared a bed, though it was still an entirely chaste ordeal: a stumble toward her chambers, hand in warm hand; the immediate door to his room greeting her by the rotunda, all plans thwarted.
The dread of the endless stairs of her alternative gave way for her body's yearn for warmth and so his hand, his gentle hand, unlocked his space for her. A more eloquent mind would have noted that everything around them was space he'd gifted her, that the turning of this lock was just a ritual to mark the moment in time. Luella merely crawled into the narrow cave of his blanket and slept soundly, anchored by the weight of his arm, lulled by the sea-waves of his breathing.
In absence of certainty over which direction the Inquisitor should take in her craft, Josephine had elected to invite all three tutors to Skyhold.
A week later, Luella was no closer to settling on one, than she'd been prior to their arrival. Every day she woke up and split her time equally between the candidates, only taking breaks for the occasional meal in-between endless walks, demonstrations, witticisms—an unending string of confusing dynamics in which she was both assessing and being assessed, each sentence both a mirror and a trap. The process was taxing, mentally and physically, but she had little choice in the matter of timing, for any single step away from the path to specialisation immediately led her to someone or something to remind her of its urgency.
In her mental list of dreadful tasks the Inquisition had bestowed upon her, rejecting knowledge was immediately locked at the top.
Would picking only one not be inevitably discouraging to the troops in its turn? If a young necromancer mage were to hear her idolised Herald of Andraste had the choice of her path and picked another, would that not sting of dismissal? If Luella picked away from knight-enchantment, would her front-line fighters not feel abandoned, alone to bare their flesh for the immediate onslaught whilst she anonymously slung curses from a distance? Would it not be a cowardly waste to have the power of the Anchor and not harvest it for urging rift magic to her purpose, the very thing she seemed to be here for?
By the third day, Luella had forgotten the last time she went to sleep without a headache.
At first the answer had been simple: a knee-jerk response written in the marrow of her bones, that the only path she could take was one that involved no rejection. She dreaded the intensity of a triple curriculum, but she also knew something none of her advisors seemed to grasp. It was rooted in experience, in the stubborn steadiness of believing something others had tried and failed to disprove, in the glimmer of pride at recognising oneself despite circumstances: she could handle it.
Sleep evaded her already under the torment of this crossroads; what difference would it make to sacrifice her rest for a couple months longer? By the time spring would break the exhaustion of winter's short, dark days, she would be done. Her dreams would be three times sweeter, knowing the head she lay upon her pillow would be filled with everything she had within her grasp.
Josephine hadn't laughed, although Luella had wished she would have, for her actual response rang with the sickly tune of truth. It did not matter what she chose, for the inspiration brought by her developing in any one direction—at this Luella held a snort—would by far overshadow any lingering personal disappointments. She needed to be placed somewhere, she needed to find her seat and play her role and dress her part; she needed to act the specialisation, so that her leadership could be reaffirmed by it. Her people would recognise themselves in anyone who was recognisable, and thus any defined path was an improvement over the unpredictability of her as she was. Solid, clear actions would translate to solid, clear guidance for the Inquisition.
She felt entombed in this box of expectations. Josephine had the grace to appear apologetic.
Cullen, meanwhile, could not hide a bias.
He'd shown no love for the mages, but he'd shown great personal admiration for Luella, at times going so far as to make her wonder if her staff were only decorative in his mind. With the question of her future as a mage on the table, she'd foolishly hoped he'd remain silent, but alas; he was there as their Commander, as her military advisor, and so it was only natural for his preference to be that which best would communicate the Inquisitor's support of her field troops. To fight alongside them, mage and soldier, knight and enchantress.
Luella desperately wanted to be angry with him, but his eyes were low as he spoke, his words careful where they usually lay firm, and his argument was far from one she hadn't considered herself. She wanted to take his advice, she did; she only did not wish to deny herself the other two alternatives. There was a flush over his face as she relayed this, the faint colour of disappointment at one being correct proving yet insufficient. She tried to be kind in her wording. When he met her eyes, wishful thinking coloured them a shade of understanding.
Leliana was completely silent for the entire meeting. When Josephine had prompted her for input, after yet another morning of grasping and falling short of synergy, their spymaster had only given a non-answer: an oily-black dodge of participation so transparent all four saw it for what it was. It was no better than backing the Inquisitor into a corner of their war room; indeed, Luella reckoned she was already trapped, she just did not know how yet.
It only took two hours for it to become apparent.
"Luella." His voice startled her on her way past the rotunda, the click of her shoes falling into a ridiculous little stumble as she tracked her steps back and peeked through the door.
Solas was standing above his table, the paper underneath his hands reflecting the early-noon light on his features from below, giving him an ominous, divine halo. Luella wanted so desperately to pace into his space at this short outstretched invitation, she wanted to forget the foolishness of her organised education and see the lines of his face in the daylight, for the first time in a week. They had only had minutes to themselves for days, only the short stretches of time between her body falling into his loveseat and her eyes closing at the murmur of his voice, but there was no time to be Luella now, she had to be Inquisitor, and the Inquisitor had tutors to entertain after her criminally short break left for—
"Care for lunch?" Solas was looking at her, amusement in his voice. The papers on his table had miraculously organised themselves back into piles.
"Yes," she sighed, "yes, please."
"Good. I am unsure what I would have done with the second portion, otherwise."
The sentence stuttered in her mind with its strangeness. His eyes on her held the weight of a warning, the shameful banner of a turncoat longing to align with his home yet again—tread carefully—a secret, which refused to remain unsaid, but hid behind transparent words for the sake of propriety. She was too tired to play this game with grace.
"You had planned this in advance?"
Solas' features softened apologetically, "Yes and no. Your spymaster put me up to it." He observed her face betray her, quickly adding, "She would have either me or Dorian, and I wanted it to be me."
"For some reason," she raised a brow in soft, defeated mockery.
"For multiple reasons," he offered gently.
He had missed her. Of course he had. After their kiss in the rotunda, indeed in this very spot, he had clung to her like a child, looking at her with disbelief she only recognised for she'd felt it stir within her at the same time. The distance of his initial time for consideration seemed to only have filled him with regret for missing out. He had tugged her closer with every opportunity, placed her hands upon himself as if willing for time to spin backwards and give him the bitter extra week he'd spent away; she'd felt him conjure it in his mind as he inhaled deeply, nose pressed into her neck. She knew this would be silly in retrospect, when years stretched through them one little week would be nothing to remember, but in the frail first steps of their relationship she couldn't hold it against him.
Especially since another week of absence had immediately pulled her away, turning her face from a set of features he'd kiss, into the inhuman anonymous eye of the Inquisitor. She missed him too. Terribly.
"One is more than enough," Luella reached for his hand, let herself be led across the main hall and down towards the kitchens.
Far be it from her to look at a gift for its flaws, she reasoned her advisors' decision for her would be just a little sweeter coming from his mouth. Time with Solas would be worth the disappointment of inaction they'd inevitably force upon her. A perverse, cruel voice at the back of her mind sneered rhetorically of the pain of being twisted against one's own values, for the purpose of war. She somehow knew he'd understand and so there was no point in saying it out loud.
Once outside and sat alone on the balcony, Luella foolishly waited for his mouth to be full with hot stew before speaking.
"She wanted you to convince me to decide." Her eyes were on him as his brows furrowed. "No? She wanted you to tell me they've decided?"
He somehow did not gulp as he swallowed, infuriatingly collected: "Neither. Although I think your spymaster would have surely rejoiced if either were the case."
"Naturally."
"You have been giving them a terrible time," there was a glint of something in his eyes, a small curl to the corner of his mouth.
"I have been given a terrible time. They've taken it upon themselves to advise me through it."
"And how has that been going?"
His question was genuine, though the dodge of his answer did not escape Luella. Still, she swallowed, then bit; once the thin dam holding her together had cracked, words poured at his feet, freezing in the winter chill.
"Solas, I cannot choose. I quite literally cannot. Every time I feel on the brim of a choice, I feel physically ill at the image of refusing the others—" She was working herself up, not formulating herself completely, desperately, silently hoping Leliana had briefed him sufficiently to fill in the gaps, "They won't have it. It's like anything I say is spoken to a wall. Yesterday, I—" she put her bowl to the side, placed her hands upon her crossed legs for stability, yet remaining ungrounded, "Yesterday I tried to get to a compromise with Josephine and she wouldn't even consider it. Just outright refused. What's the point, then? The point of any of this? They'll just do whatever they want to do, and they'll have me do as they please anyway. What is the point of asking, if the answer isn't up to me?"
He observed her silently as she spoke, a calm stone under the river of her ruminations.
"What compromise did you propose?"
Luella choked out a bitter laugh, then reached for her food again to silence it.
"What does it matter?" The words were uncomfortably unfair in her mouth.
Solas didn't flinch, "It matters."
"I offered to choose. I could specialise on paper, but at the same time retain all three as personal tutors. Then, I could learn the other two disciplines on my own time, while keeping posterity for all who would care."
"Ah."
She nodded, "Josephine would not hear it. She thought it too transparent for everyone outside that I would not have made a choice in the end. I believe the word she used—entirely unironically, mind you,—was optics? Mythal'enaste." [1] Luella felt the heat in her cheeks rise with her voice, flustering pink anger. When she spoke again she did it quietly, "I like her, Solas. I respect her guidance, and I know she knows better than I do, but I cannot keep doing this. I can't."
His eyes were on her, moving side-to-side as if she were a book, as if he were proof-reading calculations. It did not help her flush. It did not help that he was silent. It did not help when he wasn't.
"Leliana liked your idea."
Yet again, she had to put her bowl aside, "What?"
"I believe it is why she came to me in the first place. Dorian as well."
The image flashed before her eyes, clear as a declaration. Of course. Of course.
Of course. "She asked you to tutor me."
"Dorian as well," he repeated, yet his eyes were bold in response to her meaning.
"Yes."
Solas did not say anything after nodding his confirmation. Luella could only hold the bubble of questions for as long as two endlessly long, torturous, bites of a boiled beet. She swallowed.
"What did you tell her?"
He had the pluck to chuckle at her, "Is that a serious question?" Then, when she didn't reply he simply added, "Of course I said yes."
"Dorian as well?"
"Dorian as well."
There was silence for the endless split-of-a-second it took for his voice to reach her ears and for her mind to light up her face in recognition. For a moment, all Luella felt was her heart leaping out of her chest, leaving in its wake the gaping chasm of her inability to ever express a coherent response, her eternal attempts echoing about its walls and filling it with gratitude, relief, love, like a chalice she could spend days having them drink from.
Then her arms were around him, his empty bowl clattering dully on the stone by his feet. As she straddled him her hands quickly found their way to cradle his face, his beautiful bewildered features around his wide perceptive eyes. She kissed him and kissed him and kissed him, pressed her lips to his forehead, his temple, his cheek, his nose, his mouth, then all over again, until he was gasping and holding her still and kissing her back, until he had her laughing in his gentle hands like a bird.
By the time lunch passed, Leliana had manoeuvred yet another crisis out of the way of the Inquisition.
Translations & footnotes
- Mythal'enaste. — lit. "Mythal's blessing" or "Mythal's favour", but in this case used like an exclamation akin to "Good lord." [↑ Go back ]