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“Back the FUCK off my mage,” she snarled, appearing in front of him in a whirl of blades and a spray of blood as she knocked the Venatori that had been pressing him back, dangerous and dexterous like a dagger herself. He felt a surge of violent adoration at her protectiveness, and perhaps something far more carnal as she stepped over the body to face the harlequin in its sneering mask, assassin’s blade to assassin’s blade.
It is merely the wine. She is protective of all her people, he reminded himself; she more frequently snarled that particular dire imprecation at enemies attacking Dorian, who was far flashier and drew far more attention in combat.
And, he thought belatedly, people had died.
Unfortunately, he was finding that to be terribly attractive, when she was the one doing the killing.
He had known battle before the Veil to be largely something to be conducted at a distance, fire, frost, lightning, the elegant casting of spell against spell. There were the practitioners of the Dirth’ena Enasalin, but that too was surgical, precise. Horrific still, but in a different way.
The way that she fought was primal, a whirl of blades as fang and claw, flickering in and out of stealth across the battlefield, streamers of scarlet in her wake, her feet sure even as she left crimson footsteps to mark her passing.
She had turned it into a dance, some treacherous part of himself had thought, watching as she glanced quickly to see that all who had opposed her were dead while she flicked blood off of her dagger tips with an elegant snap of the wrist with a renewed spike of arousal.
This is unseemly, he admonished himself as she spoke with Briala.
It did not appear to be helping.
She had, wisely, worn a charcoal tabard and an oxblood shawl over her chainmail. It hid the blood well, and the rest could be covered with her dark surcoat that she had stashed in a planter behind a shrub as they hurried to straighten themselves and return to the ball before she was missed.
She had missed a small spatter of blood near her mouth as she had wiped it hastily with a spit moistened corner of her shawl.
“Allow me,” he said, and she turned her face up to him as he removed his glove. It had, perhaps, been a mistake to remove his glove and touch her skin with his bare skin as he lightly tipped her chin up with his crooked forefinger and wiped the mark away from the corner of her mouth with the drag of his thumb along the edge of her lip. In so doing, he had smeared the rouge that Vivienne had carefully applied to them, as if she had been feverishly kissed in some dark corner.
And if they were not currently trying to stop an assassination and if Dorian and Cole were not standing right there, he would be sorely tempted to do so. It was, perhaps, fortunate that Cole was too overwhelmed by the many thoughts and feelings of the throng of people at the ball to attend to his own feelings.
“Ir abelas,” he said, gesturing to her face. “I have smeared your lip rouge.”
She sighed, and dug a tiny pot out of her belt pouch and handed it to him.
“Would you mind?” she asked. “I don’t have a mirror.”
This was dangerous and unwise. Dorian would undoubtedly perform the task as well as he, though it was a service he had performed before in days long dead. He excused the indulgence as a weakness caused by the wine, though he thought privately to himself the intoxication was not so much the wine as her.
He lingered as he dipped his middle finger into the small pot of red ocher, delicately patted it onto the exquisite fullness of her lower lip, as he held her chin in his hand and turned it this way and that to check his work and she yielded to his touch. He could feel the pulse behind her ear hot and fluttering under his fingertip as his heart beat loud in his own ears.
“Dorian?” he asked curtly, looking aside to seek a second opinion to prevent himself from bending to taste her lips with his own.
Dorian stepped closer and he belatedly dropped his hand to his side, rubbing his fingertips together in the memory of brushing her lips with them.
“Look at me?” Dorian asked her. “Turn?” and she dutifully spun slowly and raised an eyebrow in question.
Dorian nodded his head.
“Good as new,” he said approvingly. “Perhaps we will make a manservant of you after all, Solas.”
Her head whipped around and she glared at Dorian with lips pressed tightly together.
“Solas,” she said, clipped and precise, “is not my servant any more than you are, Dorian.”
“I took no offense, Inquisitor,” he said quickly, preempting Dorian’s own stammered explanation, with yet another surge of adoration and lust at her quick leap to his defense. “A harmless quip. Come, let us return to the festivities.”
“It’s always a harmless little joke,” she muttered, but slipped out the door.
He and Dorian spent a few more moments straightening jackets and sashes; he had assisted Dorian with putting his hair back in order, and Dorian had removed a fleck of blood from the tip of his ear. Cole had already vanished.
“I do apologize, Solas,” Dorian said, clapping a hand to his arm as they prepared to leave. “It was not my intention to offend.”
He shook his head.
“It is no matter, Dorian,” he said. “The Inquisitor merely feels the strain of this night. There is a great deal riding on the outcome. And you are safe to reveal a little of that irritation to.”
“And she’s a Dalish elf in the middle of the Orlesian court,” said Dorian. “I’ve overheard what they’re saying about her. She must have too. And yet she only asked if I was doing well, if anyone was troubling me. I should have thought before I spoke.”
“She plays the Game well,” he replied. “She gives little sign she is affected.”
He allowed Dorian to proceed him out of the room and adjusted the fall of his jacket to be more concealing.
He watched from the balcony as she danced with the Grand Duchess. He wanted desperately to dance with her on that floor, to watch her move around it in his arms as gracefully and with as much power and force as she danced her way across a battlefield. And this was another kind of battle, a duel for information and influence, bloodless at this moment perhaps, but a misstep at court could shed the blood of thousands in attrition or open conflict.
She had trained as an assassin, but he did not think that it was that which had made her so adept in the games of intrigue and influence that were the same in any age. She watched, as keen of an observer of people as she had undoubtedly been while tracking prey as a hunter for her clan. She was dangerous with the quickness of her mind and the cleverness of her tongue as she was with her weapons. He should not have been surprised, but he had foolishly underestimated her and the Dalish who had sent her; had foolishly forgotten that she had come to the Conclave as Clan Lavellan’s spy. Merely because the Dalish were nomadic it did not follow that they were simply pastoral and unaccustomed to the interplay of politics. They were, in many ways, likely more aware of the political currents across Thedas from sheer necessity. Outsiders were always a tantalizing target when a ruler who felt they were losing their grip on power needed to consolidate it.
Vivienne leaned in to admonish him quietly.
“Solas, dear,” she said, “you’re staring.”
He pulled his eyes away to address the accusation.
“Everyone is staring, First Enchanter,” he said, his eyes slipping back to her as she dipped the Grand Duchess, “the Inquisitor commands the attention of the ballroom as she commands a battlefield.”
Vivienne laughed lightly.
“The Game, after all, is only another type of battlefield,” she said, and quietly, so that only he could hear, “and that is precisely why you must be more careful, my dear.”
He was aware she was correct, and yet seemed to find it difficult to be any more cautious.
He accepted another glass of wine from the servants that he might at least appear to be doing something else.
She did not speak to him the next time she passed into the room, only stopped to speak casually to the Iron Bull, who wandered over a little later to present him with a napkin full of spiced nuts.
“You gotta try these, Solas!” he said jocularly, clapping him on the back as he passed him the nuts. “Sweet, and with a little heat on the back end.”
He took the nuts, with his thanks and a nod.
Royal Wing was written carelessly on the napkin in wine, under the nuts. He dropped the napkin casually into his own partially finished glass of wine when he was done with the nuts and left it on the sill as he wandered off. It was a delight to work with professionals.
Dorian was there already when he arrived, as was Cole, and she slipped in shortly after.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” she said with a little smile.
They heard a scream shortly after as they explored the halls, and she burst in the door and kicked another one of the murderous harlequins out of the window. He heard the crunch as they landed on the ground below, but she had already knelt and was speaking reassuringly to the servant she’d saved.
He did not find violence arousing, he told himself firmly. It was an unfortunate necessity.
But unfortunately, neither his body nor his mind seemed to agree with his stated sensibilities. Perhaps it was her protectiveness that he found so horribly attractive? He had been the implement wielded for the protection of others; he must have been protected in turn at some point. He could not recall when or by whom, until she had vowed that she would protect him, in a perilous position in her own right.
It had not been a surprise when they had walked into a trap laid by the Grand Duchess. The mark had crackled before they had ever entered the room, and she had held up a hand and told them to be on their guard. He had been preparing to cast a barrier, as had Dorian, but she had flicked her fingers at them to tell them to hold, and he had, with complete faith in her abilities, barely flinched as the archers had loosed their arrows and she had rolled and ripped the rift open.
And then the battle was engaged. They had thought that her pointed ears made her a rabbit. Prey. But they had forgotten that wolves had pointed ears too, and she was a wolf among the pampered lapdogs of the Orlesian court. He had wished her a good hunt, earlier in the evening. She was hunting very well indeed, as she leapt lightly from stealth to sink her daggers into a Venatori spine, to pull them free in a graceful arc that intersected the throat of another in a spray of crimson.
“Barrier, Solas!” hissed Dorian, casting a fireball. “Are you drunk?!”
He was, but not on wine, and he belatedly cast just as she ducked under the sweep of a terror’s claw. She flashed him a quick smile with blood spattering her cheek before flicking a dagger at the Venatori that were pressing Dorian and the Venatori went down under the blades of the spirits that presented themselves as her shades.
She spoke with Gaspard’s frankly remarkably slow-witted mercenary after she had sealed the rift, but then he supposed not all mercenaries could be as quick on the uptake as the Iron Bull and the Chargers. She offered the man a job with the Inquisition and sent him to Commander Cullen to have as evidence of Gaspard’s treachery, though he hardly supposed that it would be needed; the Grand Duke had been openly pursuing a civil war for some time.
“Let’s go stop an assassination,” she said with a fierce smile, and he and Dorian followed as she and Cole cut through the rest of the Venatori blocking their way to the ballroom. Cole fetched her surcoat, and he had prepared to wipe the blood from her face and put her in order before she went to confront the court.
“No,” she said, halting him. “Let them see the consequences of their Game. And let them be concerned about what the Inquisitor might do if she did not choose restraint.”
He wished, suddenly and fervently to see her without that restraint, to have seen her in court in Arlathan at his side, to win the day with blood and words and to be free at the end to walk into his arms and then take her to his bed. He wanted her to stain the white sheets of his bed with the blood of her foes, wanted to taste the iron of blood and the sweat of battle as he licked it off her skin while she clawed at his scalp in ecstasy as he knelt between her thighs.
“Solas!” Dorian said, snapping his fingers in front of his face. “Get it together, man, the night’s not over yet.”
He watched as she prowled around the Grand Duchess, a cat with a mouse. It was the perfect statement. She was covered in the blood of those who had tried to kill her; she was eloquent and merciful in her victory. He could hear murmurs rippling throughout the court, surprise, approval. She had apparently decided to allow Gaspard to suffer the fate of failed traitors, though she had possessed the leverage to force all three parties into agreement, had signed his execution with her silence. Ruthless, but wise. Politics were a fickle mistress, and gratitude was the first thing to inspire hatred. Gaspard had his chance for his life earlier, and had thrown it away rising against Celene again. As Inquisitor, she had possessed the pragmatism that Celene had lacked to eliminate that threat permanently. She was not afraid to bloody her hands to achieve a more lasting peace. He felt a fierce thrill of desire.
Though Celene and Briala stepped forward to make their speeches first, it was her victory and the court knew it. Her speech was last, and it was that people would remember among the ornate masked figures, the severely clad Dalish Inquisitor, standing like the bare bloody blade of a knife, vallaslin gracing her cheeks instead of a mask (and he realized, with a start, that he did find them graceful, on her face). A powerful statement of the cost of conflict. She forced the court to confront their willingness to ignore any unpleasantness so long as it did not affect them. It would not last, of course. The rich and powerful found it too easy to forget the people that were affected by their petty squabbles. But, for tonight, the night was hers.
The Iron Bull leaned close to him.
“You’re flushed, Solas,” he said suggestively, “watching the Boss do her thing got you all worked up?”
“The wine,” he excused himself.
The Iron Bull gave him a crooked half smile, but dropped the matter.
The nobles were clamoring for her now, but she slipped away to a secluded balcony. She had asked him to dance. He had said perhaps once the events of the day were concluded. And they were. He wondered if she would still care to. He should retire. He could not trust himself not to compromise her victory. She had earned her peace, would require it even. He would leave her be. He turned aside with a last longing glance.
“I had not thought you a fool, Solas dear,” said Vivienne quietly at his elbow. “It has been a trying day for the Inquisitor, and she has only had the opportunity to dance with people who have treated it as a duel. It is her first ball, and what in the Maker’s name was the point in practicing for it if all the dancing lessons are to be wasted? Discreetly, of course.”
He looked at Vivienne with surprise.
“I’m sure anyone looking for the Inquisitor could be directed elsewhere for a time,” she said. “Why don’t you see if she requires anything. You are, after all, at her service, or so I hope.”
It would be safe enough, the quasi-seclusion of the balcony with its large windows to the ballroom providing a very pointed reminder that they were in public, no matter how unschooled his thoughts and desires.
He gave a stiff bow.
“As you say, First Enchanter,” he said, as he began to track the faint traces of bloody footprints across the marble intent on her; a wolf not hunting his prey but tracking his mate.
She had wiped her face and hands clean at some point, and he breathed in her scent as he leaned next to her on the stone railing of the balcony, and they spoke of the night’s events. Poisonous vysanthum, elfroot, felandaris, overlaid with the cloying metallic scent of drying blood. His mouth watered.
“Quickly,” he said impulsively, pushing off the balcony and bowing, “before the band stops playing, dance with me.”
“I’d love to,” she said, taking his hand with her own that was steeped in the same invisible blood of the difficult decisions of command as his own, and for a few moments it was only the two of them, softness overlaying her sharp steel, a fierce predator quiescent and satiated on the glutted flesh of the Orlesian Empire. She had only brought that great beast to bay for a moment, but for that moment, for this one, she did not need to be the cold bronze and marble edifice of her title, could be only a creature of warm flesh and blood in his arms as they danced. As could he.