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Chapter Three

When he slept Fen'Harel was tortured by his dreams. They had been the driving force that made him delve into the Fade deeper than most others were willing to go, so that he could control the nightmares and twist them until they no longer existed. If he didn't bend them then he was forced to relive his memories from a time he wished he could have forgotten. A time when he'd been no better than the others, when he'd traded and wasted lives and thought it acceptable to keep slaves bound to him. And he'd done horrendous things to them, forced himself on the women who didn't have a choice but submit to him and punished the men who disobeyed him.

His only saving grace was, where so many others wouldn't, he had changed. But the memories where still there, reminding him of what he had once been and could become again if he was not careful. He'd learnt to shape his dreams so his guilt would leave him and he could sleep in peace. It was selfish to deny the lives he'd wasted their justice, but he had always been a selfish person.

That night proved markedly more difficult for him to twist and forget what he'd done as he slept, because with that girl in his home his dreams kept dragging back to her, and from her they led to his past. He tossed and turned, slept so poorly that when a soft pair of lips pressed to his own, it pulled him easily from his slumber. A tongue ran across his lips, tried to pry them open and warm, delicate hands splayed across his chest as hips ground against his.

He let his hand cup the face before him, allowed his fingers to tangle in their hair and then his dazed brain connected the dots and he pushed whoever had climbed into his bed away so roughly that he received a surprised gasp in return. Horrified, he clumsily lit a brazier with a burst of magic and as the light filled the room he found himself staring at the servant girl.

"What are you doing?" he snapped, but the answer was so plainly obvious that he needn't have bothered to ask, it'd fallen from his lips as a symbol of his repulsion more than his confusion. "Do not..." He struggled with the word as he tried to force it from his lips. "Do not offer yourself to me. Do not try and pleasure me again, just..." He sighed, because she stared at him with a look on her face that spoke volumes of one who thought it was her fault for not being desirable to him.

"I will not make you my slave," he added gently and she peered at him for several moments, her violet eyes dancing with confusion and underneath... the faintest tinge of something he couldn't place. "Just leave. Please."

She hesitated, her brow furrowing but then she crawled off the bed and slipped out of the room. He half wondered if she'd still be there in the morning but somehow he knew she would be. A mindset like that would take far more to break. A mindset that was far more like that of a slave than a servant.


"Mythal," Fen'Harel called as he hurried after the goddess, because he would have answers from her before they reached the throne room, even if he had to delay her and deal with the ire of the others for being late.

"Fen'Harel," she acknowledged and paused to face him. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"You had me for a fool."

She smiled at him. "I did no such thing."

"The girl, she-"

"Lavellan," Mythal corrected.

"Lavellan," he hissed and continued with his arms crossed over his chest, "She is not a servant. She is less than that, a slave in everything but name."

"I did not deceive you when I told you she was my servant." Mythal's eyes flickered with satisfaction and it grated at his already frayed nerves. "Though, what she was before she came to me..." She trailed off but her point was blatantly clear.

"Why?" He emphasized the word so strongly it sounded like little more than a bark. "Of all things, for all I have done to stop-"

"Do not claim the moral high ground with me," Mythal snapped, "You kept slaves for age upon age before you twisted yourself into being their saviour."

He could only stare at her, shocked that she'd have the gall to bring up his past when he'd done so much, sacrificed so much and yet... She was correct. He could not deny it.

"I gave Lavellan to you because someone needed to bring you to peace with your past. You do the people no favours while your crusade is entirely motivated as a backlash towards your guilt." Her palm reached up to cup his face and he scowled at the floor because he did not want or need her concern or affection. "You would destroy everything if you continue on your path of blinded rage."

Her touch slipped from his face and she offered him a gentle smile. Then she was gone, leaving him to staring at nothing before he heard the irritated beckoning of Elgar'nan further ahead, chastising him for his poor timing to their meeting. Fen'Harel hurried to catch up before he started another spat with the other god.


By the time they'd finished arguing and bickering in pointless circles, Fen'Harel was so frustrated and sick of all of it that he stalked through his home with a foul look on his features and his hands balled into fists at his sides. What the servant girl was doing didn't even cross his mind. He'd avoided her entirely that morning and left without giving her even the slightest of instruction. What she'd done all day with her time he didn't know, and in that moment, he truly didn't care either. If she was so weak-willed that she couldn't even take the initiative to fight for her freedom, when it was so blatantly presented to her on a silver platter, then he couldn't-

His thoughts abandoned him as he stopped abruptly in the doorway to his quarters. The door was ajar. Silently, he pushed it open and he found her sitting on the floor beside his bookshelf, tomes scattered around her haphazardly and one open in her lap, her attention so engrossed in it she was oblivious to her surroundings. He truly did not know what to make of the scene before him. Perhaps he had misjudged her.

He approached as quietly as he could so as not to startle her, but her brow furrowed at the swish of his robes across the floor and her eyes, ever so briefly, flickered up from the book in her hands to him. It shattered the moment and she scrambled to hide what she'd been doing in vain, because she could never have hidden the fortress of books that was surrounding her. Her features danced between guilt and fear, and when he pushed some of the tomes away and sat in front of her, she flinched and threw herself flat against the ground before him, trembling. He sighed.

"Sit up," he chided as gently as he could, but she didn't move. His patience already wearing thin, he reached for her arm and tried to pry her off the floor, repeating slightly more commanding this time, "I said, sit up."

She obeyed and he released her, stared at her for a good few seconds and then curled his fingers around the book she had been reading. He held it up and her eyes tore to it for a split second, and then back to him.

"Why where you reading-" he paused as he read the title of the book, "-The Art of Magic in the Bedroom?" He frowned. He wasn't sure what was more worrying, that he even owned the book in the first place (and he could, honestly, not remember where he'd acquired it), or that she had been reading it.

The girl, predictably, did not respond other than to chew at her lip. "Do you even know what you were reading?" he prompted. She was still for several moments and then, slowly, shook her head.

"Can you even read?"

She shook her head again. It shouldn't have surprised him. Slaves were not taught to read unless it was to the benefit of their master. It explained why she was surrounded in books, if she had only been skimming through them to stare at the pictures because the words where little better than foreign scribbling to her.

"Do you want to learn?" he asked. The look she gave him spoke volumes of her complete disbelief at what he was offering. But, very slowly, she nodded and her lips tugged into the smallest of hopeful, hesitant smiles.

"Then I will teach you. But," he paused and her expression flickered instantly to resigned disappointment, "I cannot do so if you will refuse to speak."

A long, silent moment stretched between them. He had almost given up on her when her lips parted and a single, whispered word fell from them.

"Please."