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The knock on the door to her quarters was authoritative and left no doubt as to who it was, though Adra had not truly expected her to show. She’d been half jesting, her voice tinged with sarcasm when she’d spoken the invitation out loud. Both hoping for it to happen and trying to spare herself the disappointment if it shouldn’t.
*
“Have you not been taught not to stare?”
The Inquisitor had been glaring at her, like she had been not long ago in the Emperor’s throne room. Their eyes had met there, during an address of his, handing out yet another recommendation which Adra did not care to receive, never sure of where to settle her gaze in the crowd of nobles she did not belong amongst and then unable to tear it away from this woman with eyes like burning embers.
“I could ask you the same” Adra had replied, quiet but teasing, testing the waters of this unlikely conversation. The intricate metal mask Inquisitor Lödwyn was wearing had not offered any insight to her emotions, but she had thought to have detected the slightest spark of amusement in her inscrutable tone, and that had emboldened her.
“I have not been to court for a long time. I don’t quite seem to remember the intricacies of how one is to behave.”
“If you wish to spend some time revising them, I might offer my help.”
*
That very same mask was what she was met with as she opened the door now.
Again, the Inquisitor was mustering her intensely, like someone would muster a bug they were about to squish. Adra was well-acquainted with being looked at like a bug, the disgust and curiosity when people saw the fungal growths on her face, the colorful lichen covering her cheeks, yet this felt different. Though it was hard to read any sort of expression beyond the mask, it was like she wasn't looking at the growths at all, just at her, all the way right down into her soul. Adra wondered what she saw. If she liked what she saw.
“Inquisitor” she said in lieu of a greeting, stepping closer, if only to escape the glare that could have intimidated even the most fearless soldier into shrinking. Their bodies weren’t quite touching yet, not close enough to note the absence of breath passing through lips forged out of metal that should have been ghosting over Adra’s face, or the lack of human warmth that should have been radiating from Inquisitor Lödwyn’s body. Blissfully unaware, Adra reached out to trace her fingers over the golden designs inlaid into the black iron of her armor, spirals and flames, slowly working her way down toward the buckles at her waist.
“Adra.”
Her name sounded so good, said with the Inquisitor’s deep and steady voice. She must have asked after it, for Adra had not introduced herself during their brief previous encounters, but then again, it should not have been too hard for someone of her standing and line of work to find out who she was. As a godlike, Adra did stand out at court, whether she wanted to or not. And it was not like she hadn’t asked after Inquisitor Lödwyn in return.
*
As soon as the attention of the room had moved away from her, Adra had leaned towards the fellow military officer next to her, a man she had fought alongside before, to quietly ask about the masked woman standing across the room.
“It’s Inquisitor Lödwyn of the Steel Garotte” he had answered. “Have you not heard of her?”
She had heard of her, tangentially at least, the way most people in the Aedyran military had done, feared and famous for her unparalleled devotion to Woedica, but seeing her in person had been something different entirely. Never had there been word about her looks, about strange masks or fascinating eyes.
“Wasn’t she stationed in the Deadfire?” she had whispered back.
“She recently returned. Not very successfully, people say.”
*
She hummed, low in her throat, in response to her name, starting to earnestly tug at the fastenings of the Inquisitor’s armor, when gloved hands wrapped around her wrists.
“I am not the same woman that once headed to the Deadfire. You will not like what you find there.”
“I will be the judge of what I like.”
Adra strained against the grip, but brute strength had never been her forte, relying on dexterity and technique and her gun in battle. Inquisitor Lödwyn did not budge, not for a long moment filled with only the sound of Adra’s heartbeat, loud to her own ears, until she did, incrementally, guiding one of her hands to slip under the edges of the chest plate. There, her fingers met fabric first, and then- not the smoothness of skin, but wet, naked flesh, soft to the touch like an overripe fruit, the smell of death and decay wafting up as the layers of armor and clothes were disturbed, like autumn leaves rotting on the forest floor.
It was in that moment, when her fingers reached deep enough into the flesh to feel bone, that Adra understood. The remark her fellow soldier had made about the Inquisitor’s failure in the Deadfire, rumors of her death that she had heard but not believed, for she had so obviously been walking around like a living, breathing thing. Yet she was not.
“I know what you are” she muttered, though she did not speak the word. A Death Guard.
She should have been repulsed, especially at how sticky her hand had become. Maybe she should have been afraid, too, of this unnatural creature that had transcended death, this monster created by Woedica’s hand. Then again, they weren’t that different, safe for Adra’s beating heart. Both touched by the gods. Both part of the Emperor’s court and so very clearly out of place there.
“You were foolish to invite me here, but so was I to come” Lödwyn said, never faltering, tone conversational, if she were talking about something as menial as the weather. As is she was not affected by this at all. And yet it might have only been her lack of vocal cords that kept her any sort of emotion from her voice, because at the same time, the hand holding onto Adra's wrist had started to tremble slightly, like Lödwyn was afraid she'd be pushed away should she let go of it.
Adra knew how it felt to be pushed away, quick trysts in the semi-private corners of a war camp that always ended with regret clear on the other person's face, once the lust and the heat of the battle had faded and they really saw her for what she was. She couldn’t do the same, raising the hand that did not remain in the Inquisitor’s grip - the one that was not befouled with bodily fluids - to caress the side of her mask, metal cold against her skin.
“Do you still want this?”
“I shouldn't. I should desire no one’s attention or affection but that of my goddess.”
“But do you?”
“Yes.”
*
Inquisitor Lödwyn had stood at court, her first attendance there after her supposedly shameful return from the Deadfire, and had not felt shame. If she had experienced such emotions before, they’d been a thing of the past, burned away by the devotion to her goddess that had engulfed her entire world in the blinding light of white hot flames.
Except - there had been a dark spot, somewhere in her periphery, vying for her attention. Turning towards it, the movement stiff, in the way a body that was not supposed to be moving anymore moved, had her eyes meeting the ones of a woman, a godlike, beauty in her strangeness. And underneath that beautiful exterior, something else had lingered, pulling her in even though she had not understood what it was. Something intangible, buried by cool, moist earth and overgrown with brambles.
Woedica had whispered a warning in her ear then, and for once, Lödwyn had chosen to ignore it.
*
They were laying on Adra's bed; Lödwyn propped up against the headboard, still in mask and full armor for she had not been comfortable to take it off and Adra had not pushed her to. She herself was naked though, sprawled out wide and unashamed on top of the blankets. Her skin had long broken out in goosebumps in the relatively cool air of her quarters, and yet she did not feel cold. Lödwyn’s touch lingered as a pleasant warmth deep inside the core of her body. Despite her famously firm hand as an Inquisitor, she had been careful and surprisingly gentle where she had needed to be, had whispered sweet little things into her ear, encouraging her, and Adra had thoroughly enjoyed herself.
She also enjoyed this, the quiet company as they both basked in the aftermath, Lödwyn seemingly in no hurry to leave. Adra shifted lazily so that one of her hands was draped in Lödwyn's lap, a small smile sneaking onto her face as she looked up at her.
She could not see Lödwyn working on the words, her body not giving away a single sign, no facial expression or movement, but she could all but feel her ruminating about them before she spoke in the way the silence hung heavily between them.
“I haven't felt this calm, this… human, in what feels like ages. It is like Woedica’s voice dims in your presence.”
Adra frowned at the statement, not knowing what that meant or how that was possible, and she suspected Lödwyn might have been doing the same, if she still had any skin left to wrinkle underneath that mask.
“Is that good or bad?” she asked, just to be sure.
“It should not feel as good as it does. But I suppose that the feeling will soon fade, with time and distance.”
“There need not be any distance. If you want to do this again.”
Lödwyn took the hand that had been resting in her lap, entwining their fingers, pale skin against dark leather gloves. She held onto it as if she'd wanted to say yes, caressing the back of Adra's hand with her thumb, almost reverently.
“The Emperor has ordered me to venture to the Living Lands in a few weeks time, and my goddess wills me to go.”
She knew that she could not measure up to the will of the gods, that the Burned Queen would not stay quiet for long. Adra imagined that if her god - whoever it may be - ever deemed fit to speak to her, that she would be compelled to follow their voice, their will, as well. And so she tried but failed not to feel disappointed at the Inquisitor’s reply.
“Don’t be sad.” It sounded more like a command, though some of its harshness was taken away when Lödwyn lifted her hand to her lips, pressed it against the metal of the mask in something akin to a kiss. “We may make use of the time we have left together.”
“Will you stay the night?”
“Just this once. But know that I do not need to sleep.”
Rolling onto her side, Adra curled closer, impossibly close, tangling her legs with Lödwyn’s and not minding the way the plates of armor digged sharply into her body.
“Oh, I am counting on it.”