Work Text:
She was in a strange mood, a combination of exhilaration at her victory, anger at the waste of life and at the entire negligent lassitude of the Orlesian empire, really; chafing at the bonds of being Inquisitor, of carrying the entire fate of the world in the palm of her hand. She’d let them assume she was a harmless rabbit out of her depth, a figurehead puppeted by her advisors; then she’d beaten them all at their own Game. They’d forgotten that perhaps her pointed ears came with fangs; she was Dalish and she stood in Halamshiral on the ground that had been promised to her people, the ground where their journey was supposed to have ended, the ground where the Emerald Knights of the Dales had fought with wolves, as wolves in a pack, to defend it, and the People endured still.
She could have, if she’d chosen, put all three of them on a leash: Gaspard, Briala, Celene. But she knew that leash wouldn’t hold forever, and she hadn’t wanted to be the one holding it. As Vivienne said, a leash could be pulled from either end, so she’d let Gaspard take the consequences of losing a civil war, and hoped that love might smooth the way instead. She wasn’t sure if Briala loved Celene still, but stranger things had happened and she trusted that Briala was at least shrewd enough to use Celene’s to her advantage.
She’d at least had a single dance on the balcony with Solas where she’d slipped her own leash for a moment, though not entirely. A single dance on the balcony, instead of in the middle of the ballroom floor. She had been conflicted about that, had chafed at the fact that dancing with him in the ballroom would have been a scandal, even as she’d been glad to keep the moment for themselves. After all, it wouldn’t be appropriate for the Inquisitor to dance with her ‘elven manservant’. She was still furious about that, and she didn’t know who to rake over the coals about it. The entirety of southern Thedas, probably. She suspected (given that Sera had been introduced as ‘her ladyship Mai Balsych of Korse’) what had happened was that the sneering Orlesian herald had looked Solas up and down and said something along the lines of ‘you must be the Inquisitor’s elven manservant?’ and Solas had replied in the very cutting sardonic way that he had sometimes something along the lines of ‘Ah yes, indeed I must be; of course an elf could certainly never be anything other than a servant.’
The evening was winding to a close, and everyone else was in the ballroom, where all the maneuvers of the Game were being conducted. She’d left the balcony first, on his suggestion, and immediately gotten caught by one after another increasingly intoxicated noble who had some favor or other they’d wanted and had been hoping the Inquisitor was naive and inexperienced enough to promise something she shouldn’t until she’d finally been rescued by Vivienne with a whispered “you deserve some rest, my dear” and had then run into a quite tipsy Sera on her way back to her room.
“'‘Quizitor!” Sera slurred, hanging onto her shoulder, “hadda take a piss, heard the servants say there’s gonna be a party in the lower guest gardens, thought you might want to go if you can remember what it’s like not to be a fancy noble. I’m not going, sounds too elfy. Gonna go back and drink all their wine and eat all the rest of that fancy ham. Don’t care if it tastes sad.”
It stung, a little bit, what Sera had said, and she wondered exactly where Sera had relieved herself, but decided that was someone else’s problem. Potentially Josephine’s if Sera hadn’t been careful, but more likely the problem of whatever noble that Sera had decided needed it. And this was the kind of thing she’d done before when she was only a spy for her clan, seeing what the rumblings were from the city elves, who typically had a better understanding of the political undercurrents in a region from sheer necessity, though she wasn’t intending on spying now; she just wanted a break from, as Sera said, ‘being a fancy noble’.
She knew that she wasn’t one; that the court’s tolerance of her was entirely due to the fact that she had amassed a great deal of temporary political power, and that power and influence could be gone as swiftly as a change in the weather on the Storm Coast. And she knew that, for now, she needed to care about keeping it. They had thwarted Corypheus’ plans here, but he still had the orb, it was highly unlikely that he’d just decide to go away, and sheer self-interest at trying to avoid the end of the world didn’t appear to be a sufficient motivation for people to help. So, she had cleaned up the Orlesians’ inane political squabble so she could get on with keeping the world from slipping into the Dark Future she’d seen at Redcliffe, and it was that sense of narrowly averted disaster, of the wind rustling the leaves of her vallasdahlen, as the Dalish saying went, that had her restless tonight.
Her skin felt like it was buzzing and she needed to move, and she wanted something that felt like her old self. Real dancing, where people moved for the joy of it, rather than to be seen as a move in the Grand Game sounded like just the thing. And she’d only had one dance with Solas, formal, restrained. She wondered if he’d like to join her. She kept remembering how he’d been in the Dark Future; she wanted to see him vibrantly and reassuringly alive.
It was reckless, but she found she couldn’t be bothered to care as she changed quickly from her surcoat and maille to a soft high necked tunic, leggings, and leg wraps, pulled her decorative pin from her hair to secure it with a few simple bent hairpins instead, slipped thin nughide suede gloves on her hands to conceal the mark and a mask over her face to hide her vallaslin . She hadn’t hidden her vallaslin for the Orlesian nobility, she would for this; the servants deserved their own party, without having to worry about what the Inquisitor might do. If anyone asked why she was unfamiliar, she’d say that she was recently come from Jader. It was close enough to the Fereldan border that it wasn’t uncommon for elves from Fereldan to cross in the hope of upward mobility, and it was seen as provincial by sheer proximity to Fereldan, which would allow for any social errors to be overlooked.
And just like that she was invisible without having to slip into stealth at all. Not a new trick for her; she’d gone into human towns and cities many times to gather information for the clan. But she thought this time might be the most enjoyable.
She thought for a moment to walk through the halls, then thought better of it. She’d been climbing around trellises all evening, what was one more excursion?
She opened her window to the night breeze, stepped out on the wide and frankly impractical ledges outside the windows; terribly unsafe, giving the apparent ease with which assassins infiltrated the palace, but convenient at the moment. Solas had been placed in a separate wing from her, Cassandra, Josephine, Leiliana, and Cullen. She closed her eyes, got her mental map of the palace arranged in her head as she breathed in the night air; wine, the smoke from fireworks, flowers, and a hint of blood underneath it all, heard the murmur of less polished, more lively music coming from the gardens. She slipped through the shadows to Solas’ room.
He had taken some advantage in being overlooked as the Inquisitor’s elven manservant to slip into the library and peruse the bookshelves before he had retired to his chambers. The library had seemed more of a place for secret trysts than for serious study; some place to pose oneself artistically as if one was lost in a book, a chance meeting that was prearranged. He found this to be substantiated by the large selection of romantic tales, poetry, and erotic novels. He selected a slim volume of Orlesian courtly poetry and returned virtuously to his room alone.
He had laid aside his helmet (which still provided him with a great deal of private amusement, and he thought he had looked quite striking in the helm), shed his gloves, the belt, the sash, the coat, loosened the collar of the fine linen undershirt at his throat, toed off his boots, pulled off the thick wool stockings underneath, rolled his shirt sleeves to the elbow and his trousers to the knee. Left the various parts of his formal attire draped somewhat haphazardly across the furniture, to be true, but it had been a fine evening; he could still taste the bright acidity of the wine on his lips and the fading sweetness of the petit fours. He had not tasted her lips, though he had more than half a mind to, as they danced on the balcony. But the setting was far too open, and his inhibitions had been far too lowered by the wine, and he wished to do nothing that might compromise her or mar her victory. Or, perhaps, bring him too close to testing his own resolve not to lay with her before speaking of his past or laying it aside completely, in the exhilaration of her triumph and the glittering unreality of the setting.
But he could indulge in a little light reading before he slept. He sat with a contented sigh in the plush armchair by the fire, his feet lazily crossed on the ottoman in front of him, and opened the book.
The hunter, chaste,
the huntress chased
to slay him with a glance.
Her prize his mask,
with empty eyes,
to watch the clutch of hands.
How terribly Orlesian, to find the removal of the mask to be the erotic focus of the tercets. But he was feeling expansive this evening, and he allowed himself the indulgence of imagining her as the huntress, Dalish hunter as she was, with himself as the hunted, as she had approached him confidently on her balcony, daring him with mischief dancing in her sparkling gray eyes to kiss her. Or perhaps, as she might have dared him to kiss her on the balcony as they had danced just now, had the evening been less tiring. To catch him with a teasing glance, to capture him with a kiss, to steal into the shadows with hot breath and hands, stifling soft sighs, too mindful of the danger of discovery to let anything progress too far, aching with unfulfilled want.
He shifted in the chair.
He turned the page.
And he heard a faint noise at his window, as if there were someone there, tapping or trying to gain secretive entrance.
He readied a spell as he quietly rose from his chair, padded over the luxurious plush of the opulent cobalt and ivory rug, and drew the curtain back with a swift snap.
She quietly swung the window open with a gentle nudge and a smile, taking his proffered hand, crouching on the sill before lightly jumping to the floor.
“Aneth ara,” she said.
He was, for a brief moment, not entirely certain that he had not fallen asleep in that chair, drowsing off from a combination of wine and the released excitement of the evening; hoped that this might be some nocturnal invention of his own desire. He longed to greet her with a kiss, but here, in private, in this space and time which seemed dangerously removed from their normal responsibilities? He could hardly imagine that it would remain only a kiss if she gave him any encouragement. He had no illusions regarding his own strength to resist her. And he knew the Fade far too well to allow himself to be deceived by his longing for her unexpected arrival to be merely a fantasy that he could freely indulge himself in.
He took a judicious step backwards.
“Vhenan,” he replied. “This is unexpected.”
“I’m sorry to disturb you,” she apologized, “if you wanted to sleep. But the servants are having a celebration in the guest gardens, and I wondered, if you wanted…”
She sounded wistful, as if she were longing for a simpler time, when there were no considerations to be had as she danced; when she did not have to dance as the Inquisitor, but could dance simply as a hunter of clan Lavellan for the joy of movement.
It was unwise.
He could refuse, return to his book and his bed virtuously alone. But he was all too familiar with the strictures of command, of the necessity of shedding them for a time that duty might not consume you entirely. It was a battle he had lost with himself, during the rebellion. She had helped him, strangely enough, to find himself again. How then, could he deny her this when it would mean so much to her?
“A moment,” he said, walking to the desk where a simple domino mask lay. He had not been privy to the discussion that had taken place between her, Lady Montilyet, and the First Enchanter on the matter, but he had been aware that the First Enchanter had supported her decision completely to refrain from wearing one as a clear statement of the Inquisition’s position as an independent organization and intention to remain so, though he suspected it had been less of a clever political gambit and more of a Dalish inclination to avoid showing any signs of appeasement to the Orlesian Empire in the palace that had been built on a broken promise to her people. And yet, she wore one now to conceal her identity that she might partake in some simple amusement. He could do no less.
“I don’t know that will make much of a difference, Solas,” she said. “You’re quite tall compared to most of the city elves.”
“Perhaps not on its own,” he said, as he tied it on. “But it should, nonetheless, be recognized as an attempt at concealing identity. Orlais is a culture that values presentation and appearances above all else. Social customs will do the rest. Shall we?”
“How are you at climbing trellises?” she challenged him with a smile.
“Do you think that because I am a scholar and a mage that I have never engaged in the occasional escapade under the cover of moonlight?” he asked, amused. “Lead the way.”
He was quiet and surefooted behind her as he stepped noiselessly onto the ledge and followed her through the moonlight towards the lower guest gardens. He’d clearly done this sort of thing before, and she didn’t think that you picked up this sort of quiet catlike skill as a young man in a small village or in the Fade, though perhaps it had been something he had picked up sneaking out to meet a sweetheart whose parents hadn’t approved of him like the pair they’d practically tripped over in Crestwood. She didn’t think Solas seemed like the type, though, for a whirlwind youthful infatuation. He wasn’t skilled enough at cleaning game to have picked up his quiet stealth as much of a hunter. He could do it, but not with the easy practice of someone who had been hunting most of their life. If he’d never encountered Templars before, it hadn’t been escaping a Circle. She suspected he’d been in Tevinter, or near it, though not likely a former slave; she hadn’t met many former slaves with his bearing. Possibly helping free some slaves, though, or raiding Tevinter slave caravans before they could disappear into the Imperium.
In some ways, he seemed to have grown up less cautious that she would have expected. Even the Dalish were wary in and around human settlements. Solas, somehow, hadn’t been, hadn’t effaced himself, even though he was a mage and an elf. It was a good tactic, to walk in somewhere like you assumed everyone would recognize that you weren’t to be trifled with, something she’d learned. Sera did it too, but with a chip on her shoulder, like she was daring people to test it. But with Solas, somehow, it didn’t seem like it was something he’d ever had to think about. She could hear the sounds of improvised music now, something with more life and less precision and formality than they had played in the ballroom, sounds of laughter.
They crouched on the corner of the flat section of the roof looking down at the festivities.
“We’re going to have to slide down the roof onto the top of that arbor and then climb down from there,” she whispered. “You ready?”
“Not yet,” he murmured huskily.
She was very briefly startled as he turned her face to his, slipping her mask up slightly before his lips met hers, wine and heat and hunger, tongue flicking into her mouth as he kissed her breathless and then he pulled back and gave her the most smug, mischievous look that she’d ever seen on his face, even half covered with his mask, and slid gracefully down the slates of the roof to land lightly on the top of the arbor and drop down into the shadows at the side in one swift and effortless movement to stroll away casually without looking up.
She was blushing and flustered and dizzy, and infuriatingly, needed a moment to make sure her mask was in place (and to be perfectly honest, regain her composure). He really didn’t have any business to be that good at kissing. Or to show her up like that.
She’d expected to see him uncomfortable and out of his element at the ball, but he’d accepted wine from the servants and watched the festivities with practiced grace like he’d been doing it all his life. She’d been remarkably taken by his insouciant self-assuredness; enjoyed seeing this side of Solas, loftily and casually commanding. She hadn’t felt right about asking the servants for anything at the Winter Palace; hadn’t even wanted to bother the Inquisition’s own support staff for tea, and she’d insisted on taking care of her room in Skyhold herself, though that was partially a desire not to bother the support staff as well as not wanting other people in the only space that was hers. Leliana had allied with her to talk Josephine around on that. After all, if she was the only one who was supposed to be in her room, it would keep it far more secure from prying eyes or assassination attempts.
Solas had been comfortable with being waited on in Haven and at Skyhold too, now that she thought about it. Courteous to a fault, as always, but it had seemed oddly natural to him. She’d thought it merely his natural air of command that had made her think ‘Keeper’ when they had first met, but she wondered now if it might be more. It did happen sometimes, further to the North, that some city elves were able to acquire enough wealth and status to have servants of their own. Perhaps he’d grown up in a merchant family, and then something had happened. Possibly Solas’ own strong sense of justice, or possibly some humans had been jealous to see elves doing better than they had been. He’d said he was cocky and hot blooded and always ready for a fight, when he was younger. It was self-assurance rather than cockiness now, and he was more strategic, but he wasn’t exactly willing to back down from a fight now either, though it tended to be with his biting wit instead.
Though she was definitely willing to accuse him of being entirely as cocky and hot-blooded as he’d been as a young man, if rather more amorous than bellicose at the moment.
She followed, just as light on her feet, though she’d slipped between the beams at the top to climb down the back of the trellis into the shadows.
She waited and watched for a moment, observing the other people as well as Solas, taking in how people interacted with one another before joining in as she always did. She wasn’t sure, at first, if this celebration was more Orlesian or more elven. Her clan sang the Uthenera at memorials to their dead, sad at the start, at the end a promise to find joy and love another day, but the Dalish customs were more somber; singing, but no dancing. A lot of people had died in the palace today, a lot of people whose lives wouldn’t have mattered to the nobility except as an inconvenience that they’d need to find more servants, but who must have mattered a great deal to these people here, friends, lovers, family. This didn’t seem to be much different from the start of an Arlathvhen, where people remembered those who had been lost through song and story and dance, and she remembered what Celene’s attendants had told her about the Orlesians celebrating solemn occasions with revelry. Perhaps it was something of both. She wondered if they sang the Uthenera for their dead, or if it was only Chantry hymns.
Solas was rather more out of his element here than he had been at the ball, she thought as she watched. As if sneaking around on rooftops was easy, as if rubbing elbows with the Orlesian elite was easy, but now that they were with their own people, he was at a loss. He was standing like he was at court, like he expected someone to come around and offer him drinks and canapés. Odd, since he had been the one to tell her to watch the servants, not that she’d needed the instruction.
It was, of course, entirely the wrong thing to do at a celebration like this, and the other people here were starting to give him odd looks.
He realized, belatedly, that he was somewhat out of his element. He had been at any number of court functions and celebrations of one kind or another, where the rules had been clear and he had been sought out for his opinions or influence or had sought out others in the Grand Game in a complex interplay of favors and secrets and intrigue and power. He had never been at any celebration where he had not been a dignitary of some kind or another, save for the impromptu celebration at Haven after the Breach had been sealed, and he had spent most of it before Corypheus’ attack deciding whether or not to leave and continue his search for the orb elsewhere, or whether to remain (for the resources of the Inquisition, he had told himself, though he had been aware that it was less the resources of the Inquisition and more the presence of the Inquisition’s Herald). He did not know what to do in this type of situation, an informal celebration among what he supposed were peers. He had always watched at a distance. And these were not his people in any case.
But she took him by the elbow as he stood awkward and aloof, looking up at him with a crooked grin, and she was his people and she pulled him into a throng of dancers, laughing as she missed the steps at first, as they danced hand in hand in a circle of other people, moving in and out, trading partners, linking elbows, coming back together. She was so at ease here, laughing and tossing little flirtatious quips back as she danced. He was far more awkward, picking up the steps of the simple folk dance quickly, but not the manner. His attention was too on her to respond easily to the attempts of the others to engage him.
She whirled to him again, pulled him out of the throng of dancers, and into the fumeur. No one was smoking now, but the table was laid with broken meats and half empty bottles, taken from the festivities in the ballroom, or those things that had not been deemed pretty enough to serve, people casually taking things from the tables, grabbing bottles and passing them around, laughing and talking, fanning themselves with napkins in the close heat of the press of bodies in the room.
“I’m starving,” she said, and grabbed a napkin, piling little tidbits of small broken pastries and tarts both savory and sweet, small pieces of cheeses and those same spiced nuts that the Iron Bull had recommended in it before perching herself on the arm of a settee to eat as he leaned against the wall next to her. He was pleased to see her eating now; she so rarely ate well at formal events and tended to pick at her food, and he was sure that she had not eaten tonight. She was still picking at it, breaking off pieces of quiche and tart and putting them back down. He plucked one of the morsels off her napkin and ate it, then offered another to her and she smiled at him and took it, eating it almost furtively, suspiciously, then the rest with more gusto. A relic, he thought, of being a hunter. She had always preferred to see her people fed first.
“Let me get you something to drink,” he said, and she nodded as she ate another tart in quick, neat bites.
There were cheap glass bottles full of some lightly fermented beverage in a tub filled with half melted ice in the corner; fizzy rather than strongly alcoholic he thought as he popped the cork out, smelling of birch and wintergreen, made by some city elf hahren from the sap of a vhenadahl tree, from the scent. Not particularly cold, in the heat of the room, and it was unwise, possibly, to use his magic, as they were both pretending to be less than they were, but he chilled it with a subtle invocation until the glass frosted, and returned to her. She took it with a smile, pressed the chill glass against her heated throat, and he watched a bead of condensation drip down into her jugular notch and pool there, before she took a swig, tossing her head back and then handing it to him with a pleased hum. He drank, enjoying the roughness and bite and crisp sweetness of the beverage, of having his lips touch the cool glass where hers had.
Another couple leaned over to them.
“You two must be new,” the woman said. “I’m Elora, and this is Nelarin.”
"Ghillen,” she lied in glib response, “and this is Soris. We’re here because of the ball of course, and heard there was a party. It’s nice to meet you.”
He understood the purpose of the name she had given him; it was close enough to his own that any slips would likely go unnoticed in the bustle. What he did not understand was her own pseudonym. A clan mate, perhaps, for the name to come so quickly to her tongue.
“First time?” the man asked sympathetically. “Soris looks a little out of his depth.”
“You know how it is,” she said with an easy smile, “not much excitement like this where we’re from.”
“Ooh, let me guess,” said the woman, ‘'It must be Jader!”
“Don’t tell me we were so obvious,” she said, laughing, with a toss of her head and a pose that uncannily caricatured an Orlesian noblewoman. “I was hoping we were going to be terribly sophisticated and no one would be able to tell we didn’t quite fit in.”
He was admiring her ability to dissemble without outright lying for the singular exception of their pseudonyms for the majority of the conversation.
“Do not worry,” said the woman reassuringly, “you are doing just fine. Come, if you are quite refreshed, there is more dancing to be done!”
She carefully placed the empty bottle in the box that had been left for them in the corner; whoever had made the beverage in the first place would undoubtedly reuse the bottles again, even with the vague greenish tint and bubbles of oft recycled glass. He would simply have left it, unthinking, on the table for a servant to collect.
They joined the throng of dancers again, and he watched as she wove in and out and under hands, laughing and jesting and playfully flirtatious with the servants as she delicately probed and listened for the political undercurrents and tidbits of information about the nobles they served, admired the elegant turn of a foot, the graceful extension of her hand, her hair starting to get faintly damp and curl more at the sides of her face and the nape of her neck where it started to slip free.
But she had spent the entire evening engaged in the Grand Game, and at this moment, she could lay her duties aside for another time, and as she returned to him he twirled her out of the dancing and into the shadows behind one of the trellises.
“You,” he said sternly and quietly, “are supposed to be enjoying yourself. Perhaps you need something to take your mind off of the Game.”
They were anonymous here, and the wine and the semi-seclusion of the shadows emboldened him as he pulled her deeper into the cool green concealment of the vines, as she sighed into his mouth, pliant and soft, the thin leather of her glove coming up to caress his cheek, stopped by the smooth papier-mâché of his mask, and he deplored the layers of concealment that separated him from her touch.
“Quiet, vhenan,” he murmured teasingly into her mouth, and she realized that she’d made a little pleased sound, the leaves against her back, Solas hard and hot at her front as he pressed against her, his thigh between hers as her toes drew up his bare calf. She wanted to take her gloves off, to press her fingertips to the fluttering pulse at the base of his throat, to feel the satisfied rumble in his chest under the palm of her hand, but she could only rise on the tips of her toes and trust that he would hold her so that she could get just a little closer to being part of him, lick lightly inside his mouth, share his breath.
His hand slid from the small of her back down over the curve of her hip with strong, sure fingers grasping the join between buttock and thigh, pulling her closer.
She stifled a small pleased murmur in his mouth and he chuckled, low and commanding and cocky as she felt it rumble through her, and she nipped lightly at his lip, a teasing little rebuke.
It only served to fan the flames of his ardor, and she was dizzy and panting by the time he eased her back to her feet, her eyes fluttering open to the fond pleased smile playing in his lips. He shook his head as she started to step away and seized her again, one more hungry, lingering kiss in an ardent embrace before he released her.
She was lingering too, her hands in his as they stood in the shadows beneath the arbor.
“We should go back,” he said reluctantly, without releasing her hands, “the sun will be up soon.”
He didn’t seem any more inclined to leave than she did.
“One more dance?” she asked hopefully.
“Another dance,” he agreed, and they rejoined the rest of the dancers.
It hadn’t been just one, it had been several, and she felt his eyes on her as she moved, and she flirted with him like she would have if she’d been at an Arlathvhen, if she’d ever flirted like this at an Arlathvhen, even though she wasn’t sure he’d recognize it, a touch on his arm that lingered a little too long as they came together again in the dance, her hips and ribcage rolling smooth and sinuous, brushing against him as if by accident. His eyes were half lidded as she looked up from under her lashes at him; he licked his lips.
And then the musicians had paused for a moment, and it was a single lute that played, and a single voice raised in the wordless beginning to the Uthenera, and she’d leaned against Solas’ side, with his arm around her as she sang with the rest of their people in mourning for those who had been lost tonight, for those who had fallen when the Dales had been lost. Solas wasn’t singing, his eyelids pressed tightly together with tears running down his cheeks beneath his mask. She reached up to his hand at her shoulder and squeezed it, and he took a shuddering breath and gazed at her with tear-filled eyes as he squeezed it back. She wondered, not for the first time, who he’d lost to be so affected by the Uthenera.
They had said their quiet goodbyes and good nights to everyone and slipped out the door of the fumeur, made their way back to their rooms. They stopped at the corridor that split to take them each to their rooms, lingered together a little longer. She wanted to ask him if she could walk him to his room; he’d looked as if he wanted to escort her to hers. She brushed her lips with the back of her knuckle as she felt the intangible imprint of his eyes lingering on them, saw his tongue wet his own lips as she did so.
“Good night, Inquisitor,” he said at last, formally, the walls going back up between them now, both longing to remain with each other a little longer but unable to as her title got in the way.
“Sleep well?” she asked, a shared secret question to see if they might share a dream together and he smiled.
“Not this night, I fear,” he replied. “Dawn grows near, and we should return to our rooms, even if sleep will not find us tonight.”
“Good night, then, Solas,” she said. “And good morning.”
She slipped into stealth as she came to her room; it wouldn’t do for the Inquisitor to be caught sneaking around the halls. She slipped into a threadbare, oversized shirt that hung off her shoulders, the linen soft with wear, barely covering the tops of her thighs. Josephine and Vivienne and Leiliana had wanted to order her an entire set of Orlesian lingerie, silk and lace and frills, peignoirs and frothy nightgowns, stays and stockings and (which Leliana had particularly advocated for) delicate little embroidered silk pumps with no back and ornately curved heels that dangled off of a foot and showed off a high arch and a shapely ankle. Lovely little things, but for someone else, and she’d staunchly refused, both for the unnecessary expense and because she wasn’t a doll to be dressed in frills.
“Who would even see them?” she asked skeptically.
“Sometimes ladies receive petitioners during their toilette,” Josephine had proffered, and she’d raised an eyebrow.
“I don’t think that would achieve quite the impression of the Inquisition or the Inquisitor that we would like, would it,” she said flatly.
“Perhaps not, my dear,” Vivienne had said, “but you should have a few lovely things.”
“Oh, but Inquisitor, at least the shoes!” said Leliana.
She’d been firm then, but now she wondered idly what Solas would have thought of her in something frothy, if not the lingerie, then some sumptuous dress like an Orlesian lady, silk and velvet and lace, or something with a slimmer elven silhouette. She couldn’t even imagine it; a Solas who would have preferred her in layers of silk and lace rather than the honesty of her vallaslin and armor wouldn’t be a Solas that wanted her at all, because she wasn’t that sort of a person. She didn’t have that softness in her, she was sharp like one of her blades, and she liked that about herself.
Maybe there was a little softness in her, she mused as she took down her hair and combed it before starting to rebraid it, not that kind of softness that wore lace and silks, but the kind that could yield, could bend, to someone who was as strong as she was. Could kneel before someone who would kneel with her.
She should probably try to sleep a little tonight, and at any rate the bed should look at least a little slept in, before someone came in to make it up. Probably one of the same people that she danced with tonight, Elora or Nelarin, or any of the others she’d met. She slipped under the covers of the gilded bed, feeling like a traitor to her people. She wondered if Briala felt the same, now.
She tried to fall asleep.
She didn’t like this bed. It was too soft, the silk of the sheets felt too slippery on her skin. She had linen and furs at Skyhold; more durable and familiar, and linen sheets only got softer with use. And her room was comfortable, a room you could live in with books and fresh air, with colored light sparkling on the carpet and flagstones from the stained glass. Everything about this room was meant to be seen. It was a set in a play.
She turned over again and sighed.
He laid the mask on the dresser when he returned to his room, attempted to settle himself, sit down in the chair again, pick up the neglected volume of poetry, but found he could not. He paced, restless, instead. It was the wine, of course (and no matter that the wine must have worn off hours ago as they danced). If he could not read then, he should ready himself for bed. True, the time that he had left to sleep would not be long; he had long been accustomed to rising with the sun, a habit remaining from centuries of the discipline of battle, but it would be wiser than to pace fitfully.
The sheets were cool against his heated skin, and although it was normally simple for him to slip into the Fade, he found his mind wandering, brushed his fingers across his lips as he remembered the cool green of the vines against the damp heat of her skin from the exertion of the dance, how she had stretched up to meet him as he bent to her lips. She had been soft against him, yielding, supple as the green branch of a young sapling. It had been an honor to be trusted with that rare softness from her, especially in contrast to the ruthlessness and decisiveness she had shown the first part of this night, when she had played the Game for the future of an Empire.
Though he found both aspects of her remarkably compelling.
He was in no mood to lay tossing as sleep eluded him, so he rose, dressed, collected his scattered stockings, put his boots back on, coat, sash, belt, gloves and helm. He knew where her room was, she had been shown to hers first as the Inquisition party had been escorted through the palace halls, and she had been careful that all of her companions knew where it was in case she had needed to be reached for some emergency or another.
And he knew also that it would be unwise for him to seek her there on some slim pretext that he had not yet even managed to create. But perhaps she too could not find sleep, and perhaps they might sit together instead, speak together until it was time to face the day.
And on this rationalization (it could scarcely be called reasoning when there was little of reason in it), his feet led him quietly unerring to the turning of the corridor that led to her room. He stood for a moment (dithering, if he was honest with himself; drawn to her door by lust and longing and loneliness as a wolf sought the scent of his mate if he were still more honest with himself). It was still far too early for anyone to rise, and yet too late for anyone to still be seeking their beds. The chance that he would been seen was small. But of course, this was of little concern, as he went only to speak with her, if she could not sleep as he. And, he reflected, she had come to his window across the ledges of the palace; why then could he not come by corridor to her chambers?
He knew why, of course; she had come in all innocence to invite him to a simpler, sweeter celebration than the calculated consequence of the Game. His own motives were inclined to far more carnality and he should not continue further down this path that would only lead to ruin for them both; he could not imagine that it would only be talking, would only end with a kiss, a brief and chaste embrace. He had sworn to himself that he would not lay with her under false pretenses. But would it be false? He had never loved before as he loved her, would never again love like this. His feelings for her would never change. She knew the truth of his heart, as she was his heart. Vhenan. (He knew his argument was a fallacious equivocation so that he could justify his current position outside her door; his hand lifted to knock lightly.)
No.
To knock would be too calculated, and it shattered his lingering attempts at self-deception. He lowered his hand, leaned his forehead gently against the ornate quatrefoils of the thick wood of her door. He listened for sounds of her stirring, and could not hear them. But perhaps she might open the door to find him there merely by chance (as if it had been by chance that he had donned his clothing and walked to her door so that he might now linger outside her door like a pining hound waiting for its master to emerge).
He was weak and a fool, he admonished himself as he turned away; he slunk dejectedly to his own door with dilatory reluctance, turned the knob to enter his own room; penitent at least, if not virtuous in his own heart - he had a secret hope that he would open it to find her within, waiting with a bright smile or pensive longing.
He should not hope for that; he knew himself to be weak, that all his good intentions would crumble with the slightest encouragement. He had indulged himself far too much this night already, and yet he could not seem to return to his room with more decorum and self control.
But the room was empty to his relief and disappointment, the fire burned to ash and cinders, and there was no wood to lay another. It was truly no matter; the night was not so chill to need the heat of a fire, and in truth, his blood had been heated enough tonight.
He removed again his helm, gloves, coat, stockings and boots, returned to the chair in front of the now cold fireplace, picked up again the slim volume of poetry, and yet his eyes kept slipping from the page, kept drifting hopefully to the heavy drapery that swayed lightly in the breeze from the open window, hoping with every moment that she would step lightly through it again as the dark turned to silver and then to the blush of dawn.