A/N: Back to the Fenris POV!
Thanks again to Kukapetal who was kind enough to beta the first half of this chapter and to GirlyGeek who's always willing to listen to my harebrained schemes.
It's really funny how your characters start to evolve around you, sometimes without notice. It's a good thing I don't write too much ahead. In any case, I did really enjoy writing (most) of this chapter.
CHAPTER TEN
KIRKWALL INTERLUDE II: THE HORSE AND THE HART
It was early afternoon the day before the weekly gathering when Fenris finally decided to give Althaea a visit as she had asked.
When they'd seen each other last, she'd extended her offer to teach him his letters again, using the primers she taught children with, and he'd been more than a little nettled by the proposal of that methodology. She'd been hurt by his brusque refusal of that offer, and the look she'd had on her face had crossed his mind a few times in the interim between then and now.
How she managed to make him feel guilty without even trying was beyond him. He found himself remembering how she'd cried in Val Royeaux and imagined how badly he'd felt then, even; those kind of tears would undo him for sure, if she ever directed them toward him.
He doubted, or even hoped, perhaps, that it would never happen. Even though she was far more demonstrative than any Tevinter women he'd encountered, she'd been reared highborn, and the women he knew of the upper castes there were conditioned to a bearing of dignity and feigned happiness, whatever the insult. What he'd seen in Val Royeaux would certainly be rare, if not unique, for her.
The fact remained that he seemed to see through those affectations with little trouble, and he was beginning to realize that he'd never corrected Varric's semantics because he was half-hoping the dwarf was right.
He could just imagine what Varric would have to say about the situation. "Big Bad Broody, taken down by the little scholar." Or even Merrill, he thought, as he shuddered a bit: "Oh, Fenris, you're smitten! It's adorable!"
He rolled his eyes at the thought, then pushed open the gilt doors of the Kirkwall chantry.
One of the sisters greeted him as he reached the larger-than-life statue of Andraste in the main vestibule and asked if she could help.
"I'm looking for Althaea," he said uncertainly. How many of the sisters here did she know? He knew she was well-acquainted with Sebastian, and figured she might well know most of them, but didn't want to make assumptions.
The sister glowed with a knowing smile. Of course, he thought. It's been nearly a week since she came back to work, and women talk. "She's cloistered herself in the basement archive and hasn't come out except to eat and sleep." the sister said. "To your right and down the stairs. Maybe you can talk some sense into her." She bustled off.
He felt a little awkward crossing the rope blocking public access to the stairwell, but stepped over it and continued down what seemed like several flights. The archive in the lower level was cramped, but truly a sight to behold; it was packed full with shelves of books rising to a ceiling nearly twelve feet tall. He walked through the stacks, marveling, until he found her sitting at a desk, transcribing some piece of paper or another. She looked clean, if a little rumpled; it looked as if she'd been down here almost exclusively for the past four days.
Fenris always had a strange reverence for the written word despite being almost completely illiterate. He admired the way letters looked on paper or boards, how they could be curly, straight, or anything in between as long as they were legible. Watching Althaea read and write while in Val Royeaux had been like watching a bit of magic unfold, and right now he watched for longer than he should have until she finally looked up.
She gasped and nearly knocked the inkwell over, then came to herself and smiled, getting up to embrace him. Her scent, the surprisingly delicate Orlesian concoction, wafted up from her, and he suppressed the urge to take a deep breath of it. Smitten is the right word, he thought, to no small degree of despair.
"Fenris. To what do I owe the pleasure?"
"It's been a little while, and I haven't seen you about." He also found that he was missing what had been her almost constant presence, and a little annoyed that she hadn't come to see him, but he neglected to mention those things.
"I've been down here, catching up. Six weeks' worth of work, and apparently I'm the only person in Kirkwall who knows how to do some of it. Really rather pathetic, if I do say so myself."
"It sounds like you could use a break," he said hopefully.
She murmured her agreement. "You're right, I really could." She sat back down at the desk. "Did you come for a lesson?"
He hadn't been, but he hadn't expected her to offer again so soon after his brisk refusal a few days ago. He shifted his weight uncomfortably, and cleared his throat. "I thought you might be loath to give one after...after I refused you. I believe I owe you an apology."
She clasped her hands together, leaning back against the chair in a rather pensive stance. "I thought about it, and you were right. It'd be degrading if I were to do it that way, but it seemed the best way to start, at the time." She smiled and gestured at the seat across the desk from her, unceremoniously shoved her work to either side, and brought a small slate and a hunk of chalk out from one of the desk drawers. "So, I thought maybe I'd give you this, instead."
She seemed rather proud of herself, but Fenris was confused. "What is this for?"
"You can't read without learning how to write, as well. The two are intertwined. We don't have to start today, if you don't want to, though."
Fenris found that he actually did want to. "It's fine."
She grinned. "How much do you know? I mean, I suppose you know a few things, like maybe names of cities or the sign of an inn and such?"
"A little of that, yes. When we were in Orlais I recognized some things, while you were taking notes."
"Can you sign your name?"
He'd never had to, and went bright red as he said, "No."
"We could start with that." She took the chalk to the slate, and wrote what he assumed was his name in large block letters, nothing like the script she used on the certificate she had been endorsing or the print she'd used on journal entries she'd written in Val Royeaux. She handed the slate and the chalk to him and made to move around the desk to watch, but thought better of it and bustled about the stacks instead.
As he struggled to mimic the letters on the slate, he tried to push away a feeling of ineptitude he was rather unfamiliar with. How could he, a warrior of such a high caliber, and a vocabulary that put him on par with most of the highborn of Kirkwall, have to learn something so basic, so stupid? He put the slate down, three-quarters of the way through his task, and sighed.
Sensing trouble, Althaea turned toward him and knelt to bring herself to his eye level. "There's nothing to be ashamed of."
"Yes, nothing to be ashamed of," he sneered, backing up off the chair. "Let's play 'teach the poor slave to read'! I'm sure you're enjoying yourself!" Then he realized what he was doing and stopped. He'd done it again.
He sat down and buried his face in one of his hands, and thought he had seen her eyes moisten up as she stood and took her place across from him at the desk. "It seems I owe you an apology...again. You are not responsible for any of this."
She crossed her arms as she leaned back against her chair. "If it helps, you're welcome to teach me something I'd be complete rubbish at." Always trying to turn the situation for the better, he thought. Just when I think I understand her, I don't. "For example, I bet I couldn't even lift that sword of yours," she said with a chuckle.
He couldn't help but do the same as he imagined her trying to wield anything larger than a shortsword. "I bet you're right," he admitted. He turned his eyes toward the slate. In that moment, it seemed a more powerful enemy than anything he'd ever faced. "How do you intend to teach me?"
"Well...your name was going to be the start, but only because it's the most powerful thing you own." She put her chin in her hand, staring him down with a patient sort of interest. He couldn't meet her eyes.
"Would you believe me if I told you that wasn't actually my name?"
"I figured as much. Septimus never called me 'Amalthaea', and I figured Danarius would have done the same. The important question though is whether you consider it yours."
"It's the only name I've ever known, so I suppose it's as much mine as anything else."
"If you ever found your real name, would you use it?"
He frowned a little. "I don't know."
"Well then, if you're Fenris, you're Fenris," she said simply. "Knowing how to write it down is a way for you to truly own it." He hated it when she said things like this, things that shouldn't make sense but did, and he said so.
She laughed a little. "I'll take that as a compliment." She had him repeat his name on the slate until he could write it without the reference, working on her own task as he did.
"I figured that's all we'd do today, but you're welcome to keep me company for as long as you like," she said as he put the slate down again, but this time with a feeling of satisfaction. "You can wander the stacks and pull out anything that looks appealing."
He did that for a little while, seeing as he'd never had the luxury of wandering around a library. The smell of it was interesting, a musty tang mixed with paper and leather, and he found it strangely appealing. Most of these books were likely older than him, older than Althaea, and probably as old as the chantry itself, preserved from the time of the Imperial ownership of Kirkwall. He pulled a couple of the more interesting looking tomes out, two of the oldest, it seemed, and brought them to the desk. The dust that came off them made Althaea sneeze.
"What are these?" he asked, after he laughed at the petite sneeze.
She frowned at him a little, then turned to the book. "This one is..." she wiped the cover to see it - "a treatise on mathematics." She opened it a crack, letting the pages flutter. "Not very many words here, I'm afraid."
"I understand numbers." Words he'd never learned, but at some point he'd learned more than just his sums, even comprehending the complex accounting that one of Danarius's house servants used to keep his old master's books. He never could understand how he'd remembered that, but very little else.
"I don't," she said with a bit of embarrassment. "Other than the basics, really." She turned toward the other book. "And this one is..." she let out an awed breath, thumbing through the pages with a look of disbelief on her face. "It's been years since I've seen this. I had one, just like it, in Solas..."
"Well, what is it?"
"It's a book of fables. Little stories, short and easy...usually with some sort of moral or meaning." Her eyes lit up. "We can't use this, not yet, but I want to keep it for now."
Fenris figured now was as good a time as any to ask what he'd meant to ask when he'd come here in the first place. "If you like, you can take it to my study, and you can read me some of them, after...dinner. Perhaps. If you like." Smooth, he thought as he ended lamely.
"I'd love a chance to relax, that's for certain. What will you make?" That was the part he was worried about. He had been a bodyguard, not a scullery boy, after all.
"I hadn't actually thought about it. I'm not much of a cook."
She smirked. "I'm assuming this is the part where you ask me out to dinner, then ask me to cook it."
"That's a little offensive, isn't it?" asked Fenris. "But, I suppose if you like, I can serve us bread, cheese, and a couple of roasted hens." He wasn't completely useless in the kitchen; he was capable of that much at least.
She giggled, presumably at his matter-of-fact delivery, and smiled. "I'll cook, but only if you bring one of the good wines up from the cellar."
That much he could handle. "I can do better than that - I can bring up two."
As they ascended the stairs from the library, Fenris had a thought. "You said Septimus never called you 'Amalthaea'. What did he call you?"
"His wife named me 'Tariseta'," she said, then smirked. "I'm proud to say it was accurate for quite some time."
He hugged the book of fables a little tighter, if only to resist the urge to hold her hand. He had been Danarius's little wolf, but to Septimus's wife, Althaea had been a rebellious little thing.
One of the perks of having a companion of the human persuasion, Fenris mused, was the ability to go places others of your race couldn't or wouldn't. This was especially true with Althaea, who carried herself with a Hightown demeanor and could have fooled any of the Kirkwall gentry doing it.
They were walking about the Hightown market, gathering ingredients for their meal. Fenris noted that of all the stalls they'd visited thus far, not one of the merchants had taken issue with her custom, even the ones who refused him on a regular basis. Earlier, he'd tried to pay for the hens they'd bought, but she'd flatly refused the help. It wasn't until he had offered three different times that she'd finally agreed to split dinner down the middle.
Next time it would be on his coin, though. He wouldn't let her refuse him again.
He watched and followed as she moved from stall to stall, hunting down the items she wanted from some invisible list in her head. The grace of her movements never ceased to impress him, and for a second he wondered if he would ever see her dance.
His next thought was that if he ever met Septimus in a dark alley, only one of them would come out alive. Because of him, he felt like he'd never be able to ask for many things, a demonstration of that skill being the least of them. His eyes drifted to her shoulder, where the edge of her brand just peeked out from the wide-shouldered dress. If she'd just make another advance on him, he might know for sure; but until then, he'd settle for whatever he could get. The brand may as well be a warding glyph, he thought with a sigh.
Except for that night in the forest, she hadn't given him any indication that she wanted more than his friendship. No, that wasn't entirely true. The night in the tower, she'd nestled up to him and had even fallen asleep, but he'd interpreted those touches as soothing, rather than sensual. Perhaps he'd have to re-evaluate.
She was beginning to look uncomfortable with her load, so he traded the book for the evening's shopping: a couple of small hens, cheeses, bread and an assortment of hearty vegetables and fruits were in the basket. So, it was to be hens after all, but it looked to be a bake rather than a roast. The mansion had a rather nice oven; even he could tell that much with as little experience as he had.
Satisfied with her take, she had him lead her home, where she went digging through the various cupboards until she found everything she'd need for the job. He helped with the preparations as much as he could, fetching water and wood as well as starting the fire in the oven. Once she asked him to reach up into a high cabinet for a cast-iron pot, despite the presence of a wooden step-stool; when he gave her an incredulous look, she simply shrugged and looked up toward the ceiling in feigned innocence.
All in all, it wasn't long before the pot was in the oven. The smell of it was better than anything he'd managed to create with similar ingredients, and he was glad she'd deigned to cook tonight.
She procured an hourglass - where does she dig these things up? - and went to the garden, where the sun was just beginning to set.
"It really is quite beautiful in here," she said as she sat on one of the stone benches surrounding the pool, tucking her feet under her legs and arranging her skirts. "See those little purple flowers in that corner? Those are heliotrope."
"That perfume you bought in Val Royeaux."
"The very same. It was so expensive because it's incredibly hard for the flowers to release their scent, but in my opinion it was worth it."
"You said your mother used to wear it."
"She did," said Althaea. "I remember she used to put it on before parties, and I'd play hide-and-seek in her skirts until she had to call my nursemaid to take me away."
"Is that why you like to wear it?"
"Because of my mother? No. In fact, she was rather distant - Cora, Marius's mother, was who I called mamae. I like to wear it because the smell reminds me of home."
A very distant part of him recalled saying those words - mamae, adda - in a childish voice. He strove to catch the memory, but it evaporated as he reached for it.
"You miss her." He missed his mamae, perhaps even more so, since he couldn't even recall her face.
"Every day. I keep wondering how things might have turned out differently if I had the mettle to go and find her, bring her here. We'd be a family again, and I think Kirkwall might finally feel like a home."
Fenris thought of something. "I think if you asked Varric, he could put out some quiet inquiries. He seems to know everyone worth knowing."
"I'm not sure I could bear the thought of owing another one of your friends a favor. Oh!" She leaned forward a little bit. "Speaking of which, Hawke is going to take me to the Dalish clan Merrill belongs to."
He figured she'd just stop at handing the book over to Merrill, and stated his confusion. She looked a little uncomfortable, rearranging herself. "I talked to her a few days ago. She said the book was very important, and that I should bring it to her clan. She said Luka's clan was missing at the last...'arlathven'? Do you know what that is, Fenris?"
He was familiar with the term, as well as Merrill's incredible ability to forget she was talking to humans. "It's a sort of gathering of all the Dalish clans, that happens every ten years. If his clan was missing at the last one, they probably figured it had been lost."
The thought clearly troubled her. "I keep coming back to the memory of him."
"You know his name now, at least."
"Yes. Merrill thought that I should take the book to her Keeper and lay his memory to rest. I talked to Seb about it, and he thinks it would be an appropriate penance for my act..."
Fenris still wasn't sure how he felt about that night. The man - Luka, I suppose he has a name now, thanks to Merrill - had clearly suffered long, but the fact that Althaea would offer him succor in the form of an easy way out... that had bothered him. She hadn't even tried to help him piece things through, or argue that there might have been a way out other than the noose. She had just accepted his fate the way a mired horse would, giving up and letting the mud drown him.
That she'd had the poison in her bodice bothered him. That she'd had the will to use it on herself if she were captured...that horrified him. He saw it as a sort of parallel to Luka's life. She'd gathered enough sense of self-preservation to escape her bonds and make her way to the shelter of the south, but after that, she'd simply...stopped fighting. She'd put on that smiling mask and pretended that all was well for years; now that her safety was starting to crumble around her, she was coming undone.
He wondered if their convergence was more than just coincidence. He'd been through this already, years ago. He still had a ways to go, but perhaps with a nudge or two from his direction, she'd come out mostly intact. He was still darning up the pieces of his own broken life, but perhaps they might both be a little stronger for it if they held on together.
There was a thought. He'd never thought he needed anyone, or wanted anyone. Then, life had seen fit to throw Hawke in his path, and the Fereldan had paved the way, his bluff sort of patience knocking the edge off Fenris's rage and hate. Years later, Fenris had met Althaea, and it seemed as if she needed him as much now as he'd needed Hawke, then, but in reverse; she needed to regain her will to fight, not learn how to stop fighting everything.
He was staring at her, and she had just realized it. He straightened up a little and looked away quickly, but not before he caught her cryptic smile.
"Hawke said he'd take me to Sundermount in a few days," she said.
"I could have taken you." He was a little hurt that she hadn't thought of him first.
"I'm sorry. I just got the impression that you weren't too fond of the Dalish, or perhaps vice versa."
"It's...complicated." He didn't want to explain how smugly superior he'd found all of them, especially Merrill, who was naïve and dangerous to boot. "However, I insist that I accompany you."
"I'm sure that wouldn't be a problem," she said. "Hawke said that we'd talk about it more tomorrow night at Wicked Grace."
"I take it that means you're coming?"
"If you don't mind." She blushed a little.
Of course he didn't. "I enjoy your presence. I don't mind."
They had a look at the hourglass, which was mostly empty. It was twilight now, and she was getting a little hard to see. Fenris stood up and led her back to the kitchen, where she checked on the pot. As she opened the lid, the smell of it wafted in his direction. Delicious.
"Almost done," she said. "Would you be so kind as to get the wine?"
"Certainly," he said, and headed toward the cellar door.
Dinner had been as delicious an affair as the smell had promised, and now they both sat, appetites sated, on the sofa Fenris had found in one of the lower rooms and moved into the study. It was parked in front of the fireplace there, though it was too warm a night tonight for it to be in use; Fenris found himself vaguely hoping for winter to make its way to Kirkwall, now that there was the prospect of having someone to spend it with.
Althaea's tiny frame was swallowed up in one of the corners of the enormous sofa, placidly thumbing through the book of fables they'd nicked from the chantry's archive. At some point in the night she'd abandoned her shoes and he was glad he'd taken some time to do a thorough cleaning of the study, including a sweep of the stone floors.
They had made their way through the second bottle of wine not too long ago and he'd gone back down to the cellar for more wine, this time choosing a heady red. This wasn't the best year but neither were they entirely sober at this point, she probably less than he. For a Chantry mouse, she held her wine rather well, but he was better practiced at drinking than he'd like to admit. New pastimes may replace old habits, he thought as he watched her eyes scanning rapidly from one edge of the page to the other, wineglass in hand. He had to admit that the peace in everything from her expression to the comfortable way she sat around him was a bit infectious. He fought, then succumbed to the urge to stretch out where he sat, putting his hands behind his head and resting his legs on the small table that stood in front of them.
"Will you read me one?" he finally asked. He was a little worried that she'd forgotten about his presence.
"Is there any one in particular you'd like to hear? A favorite, maybe?"
He couldn't recall hearing any of these in the time he remembered, and said so. He knew she didn't try to, but she often forgot that he had no memory of anything up until perhaps ten or twelve years ago. His first memory had been the haze of agony of his lyrium branding; he'd arisen like some sort of tortured, tragic phoenix, and everything else had been lost.
Her eyes glowed with a bit of sadness, something he once mistook as pity and had hated. He knew better now, even if he often couldn't admit it. She got up from her comfortable corner and moved to his, spreading the book across their laps so he could see the illustrations by the lamplight. "I just found this one. It's called, 'The Horse and the Hart'."
She cleared her throat and read in a slow, authoritative voice, one he'd never quite heard before. "Many years ago, a magnificent horse had a field by a forest, all to himself, until one day a hart trespassed into his pasture. The horse, angry at the intrusion, sought revenge upon the outsider, and asked a farmer if he might get help to punish the hart. "Certainly," said the farmer. "If you but take a bit in your mouth and agree to carry me, and follow my orders, I can bear up a weapon against your trespasser." The horse consented, binding himself to the man. With the farmer's help, the horse drove off the hart, but not before he realized that by getting his revenge, he had enslaved himself, instead. As he bore the farmer to his charge, the horse said, 'liberty was too large a price to pay for revenge'."
He blinked a couple of times, unsure what to say. Had she chosen this one on purpose? Was she trying to teach him yet another lesson? He summoned up all the righteous indignation he could muster, but before he could loose it, she had already moved on to another section of the book, passing various illustrations by. He relaxed. Certainly it had to be a coincidence.
"Oh, this one was one of the ones I remember well," she said, moving a little closer to him as she did. "This one is called 'The Fox in the Forest'. 'A fox, a hare, a squirrel, and a hind lived in their peaceful forest, the best of friends. One day, a human child came into the forest and hunted the Squirrel, taking him in a trap to keep as a pet. Fox watched from his safe place in a thicket, but could not bring himself to defend his friend Squirrel, and thought 'I am safe in my thicket. There is but little I can do'. Some time went by, and Fox's friend the Hare was taken for a farmer's dinner. Still Fox said and did nothing, thinking, 'I am safe in my thicket. There is but little I can do.' When the mayor of a nearby town came to hunt the hind, he almost came to his friend's defense, but could not do so, and thought, 'I am safe in my thicket. There is but little I can do.' Some time later, a powerful Bann roamed through the forest with a magnificent hunting party, with a pack of hundreds of dogs, baying and barking. The fox was flushed out of his thicket and captured for his fur, and thought: 'I fought not for the squirrel, nor the hare, nor the hind; now there are none left to fight for me'."
She closed the book and rested her hands on it with a little frown, and for a moment it looked as if perhaps that fable had hit a little too close to home. She put the book aside and had a long drink of her wine, then she put that down as well, and snuggled up against him as an alternative to the corner of the couch.
"Thank you for dinner tonight," she said.
Fenris was baffled. "You cooked it," he replied.
"Yes, but you helped." She drew her finger absentmindedly across his thigh in little swirls, causing his breath to quicken just a little bit. Her voice dropped down a register. "I never could have reached those upper cabinets without you..."
"There was a step-stool right next to you," he said, somewhat aware that he was probably missing the point.
"I know," she said. "But I like to watch the way you move. It's very...elegant. Very deliberate. Very beautiful." She drew one of his arms out from behind her head and draped it around her shoulder, nestling even deeper into the nook it created. He gulped. He knew what she was doing, this was the sign he'd wanted, please let it be true, he wanted this more than anything - his markings shimmered to life and they weren't the only thing waking up...
She drew herself up and traced a gentle finger along the markings on his chin, just barely brushing his lips. He could feel the power subsiding where she touched and marveled at the way she could cause such quiet in them. He was finding more control in them recently, but they still seemed to activate when he was feeling a particularly strong emotion, as he was now.
"Has anyone ever told you how handsome you are?" she asked. She drew her finger up and around the long line of his ear as she asked it, making him quiver.
Fenris could think of a few people, none of whom he would have wanted to hear or believe that compliment from. "Isabela's said it a few times, but she'll bed anything that moves if it strikes her fancy."
"Mmm." She brought her fingers back down, brushing the marks that cascaded up his neck. He wondered how they felt to her; they burned sometimes, like cold fire, but with her hands on him, it was different, less like that and more like a warm tingle. For the first time he found that the sensation wasn't entirely unpleasant. "If these hadn't caused you so much pain, I'd say they were the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen." The way she said it, with just a touch of sexy-sweet, made him feel like he'd unravel any second.
"You can call them anything you want," he whispered, trying to match her tone as she brought her questing hand around the swirls on his arm. Her head was still nestled in his chest, and he wondered if she could hear his heart as loudly as he thought it was pounding. "It seems you've found a way to turn them to your advantage, as I have."
She shifted around until she could kiss him in the junction between his neck and shoulders, causing him to take a sharp breath.
She stopped. "It doesn't hurt, does it?"
"No." It felt so good, in fact, that he had to squeeze the word out from behind his teeth. It was going to take everything he had to keep himself from lifting her up in one movement and dragging her to his bed, just behind them. She was small enough for him to cart over one shoulder, really; lanky though he might be, his wiry physique belied a strength most human men would have killed to possess.
She continued to worry at his neck before emboldening herself to meet his lips with hers. It was gentle, just a brush, really. He tangled one of his hands up with hers, and she straightened her fingers out, holding them palm to palm. It was so small in comparison to his, and nowhere near as callused and scarred. They were highborn hands, a scholar's hands, and there was ink worked into the beds of the nails. He chuckled a little as she compared the size of them. He brought that hand up to rest in her hair, where the intricate braids she wore stopped the movement. He made a disappointed moan as it happened.
"Do you like it better down?" she asked. He could only nod in response, and she backed away from him for a second to shake the braids free, working through the plaits with deft hands. Then she kneeled in front of him, hair loose and in little waves, remnants of the braiding.
He couldn't take it any longer. He tangled his hand up in the soft, newly loosened locks, and kissed her fiercely, as fiercely as he had that night in the forest. It was as pleasant now as it was then, and his markings flared to life again as he did it.
She planted her hand against his chest, and worry began to eat at him as he kissed her, the same way it had that night. She was drunk, and he had been well on his way to it, when she had moved up against him. He couldn't do this now - if it was going to happen, it would have to be perfect. He couldn't bear the thought of taking advantage of her lowered inhibitions. So he stopped, stiffening against her.
"What's wrong?" she asked when she realized he was no longer engaged.
"This...shouldn't be happening right now."
"Now is as good a time as any." She leaned in again, but the look in his eyes must have told her not to follow through. She backed off of him and sat, maintaining eye contact for as long as she could.
"We should wait until we're sober," he said. "I need some air." He left her, confused and hurt in the study. He'd take care of himself and come back, and perhaps she could read him a couple more of her fables before he walked her home.
When he returned, she was fast asleep in the corner of the couch where she'd started the night. The look on her face was so peaceful, but she'd be in pain in the morning if she stayed this way. Fenris scooped her up as delicately as he could, laid her in his bed, and stretched out on the sofa himself.
He was no stranger to these kind of sleeping arrangements. His entire life as a slave, he'd slept at the foot of Danarius's bed, like a dog. A sofa for a night wouldn't be any trouble.