Sooner than expected, chapter eleven.
I own nothing but Ro, Mat, Temrys and Declan, as well as the humble premise of this story. Thanks to my beta, who made this chapter far more readable than it originally was.
God damn the black night with all its foul temptations
I've become what I always hated
When I was with you then
Fumbling to make contact as the others slept inside
And together there
In a shroud of frost, the mountain air
Began to pass through every pane of weathered glass
And I held you closer than anyone would ever guess
Every night, falling darkness and a lack of anything substantial to do drove the ship's passengers into their cabins for early sleep; all but two of them. It did not take Anders long to realize that he was not the only one eluded by sleep on their gently rocking vessel. Only one night passed that he did not hear the pacing footsteps of his mysterious sleepless partner creaking across the deck above his head. He could not say with certainty who it was, only who it was not. It was not Declan or Temrys, with whom he shared a cabin. Neither was it Isabela, who had her own set of unique footsteps that emerged from the cabin she shared with Rowenna periodically to ensure they were not drifting off course as they slept, a duty held by Declan during the daylight hours. Her footsteps were softer, barely there, but in the silence of his cabin, Anders heard them. It occurred to him that Isabela probably knew who it was pacing above deck, but he did not feel like enduring the complications that came from Isabela knowing he was curious about anything. The woman pried like it was her job.
His own sleeplessness was far easier to pin down. Between Justice's vehement opposition of this journey and the way he tortured himself with thoughts of Rowenna, he had never expected to sleep easily. In truth, the last good night of rest had been before he merged with Justice. Every day was an ever increasing struggle to keep the spirit under control, cycling between bartering and condemnation in a riot of discord that echoed across Anders' skull.
Rowenna.
The spirit inside him had been right to name her his distraction. He knew what he felt for her bordered on obsession but he was powerless against the hold she had on him. He lay awake in his bunk, aching and tormented with self-inflicted thoughts and desires made all the more punishing with the accompanying knowledge that nothing would ever – could ever – come of them. He could not afford the distraction she presented but knowing that his obsession would never be satisfied did nothing to stop the way he burned for her.
On the ninth night, the pacing began predictably, an hour or so after sleep lay heavy across the rest of the ship's occupants, and Anders was determined to uncover both the identity and the source of unrest of the mysterious person. Not long after, the padding of Isabela's nocturnal patrol joined and faded, and Anders decided that now was a good time as any. Silently as he could, Anders slipped from his bunk and crept across the floor of his shared cabin. His searching fingers found the latch to the door, working it open in the dark. It popped free easily, the door creaking open with it, and allowed Anders to slip through and into the night, drawing the door closed behind him.
"Mat owes me five sovereigns." Declan's voice was nothing more than a hushed whisper, but Temrys heard it.
"You bet against your own sister and our host," he chided wryly. "Some would call that bad manners. Not to mention, Mat had no chance of winning. Even I could tell that from the beginning."
"I never take bets I know I won't win," Declan retorted, turning over in his bunk to stare at the wall. Things were going to take an ugly, complicated turn soon, and he was doing nothing to stop it, hoping that maybe the one good outcome out of the hundreds of bad ones would be the one they'd finally get. "Now go to sleep."
Self-loathing plagued Rowenna, as tangible and real as any demon of the Fade. It gnawed at her belly and kept her from sleeping, drove her from her bunk to pace restlessly under the silent vigil of the stars. They'd caught sight of Danarius' ship on the second day out at sea, and by Isabela's estimation there was a strong chance they could catch them before they reached the Tevinter shores. Their tiny vessel was much swifter than the large slave ship, and they were rapidly gaining ground. Once again, Fenris was moving closer to her. He would again be within her reach sooner than she was prepared for, and it frightened her. The force of feeling that threatened to pull her feet out from under her and the collision of hatred and tenderness it inspired was overwhelming, she did not know how to make it stop. When she closed her eyes images of wrapping her hands around his throat were overlaid with images of him in her bed, memories of how greedy his mouth had been on her, and how she'd liked it. Guilt flushed her skin shamefully.
Even as a distant dot on the horizon that might as well be around the world, Fenris dominated her thoughts. She was revolted with how badly she wanted to catch the ship, and told herself it was because she simply wanted to capture Fenris to have everything be over with. Still, no matter how hard she tried to lie to herself and deny the truth of it, Fenris crawled through her veins like poison. She disgraced herself, disgraced everything she stood for and every oath she had sworn by worrying for his safety. A frustrated whine escaped her lips and her hands moved to tug at her hair. Anxiety made her sick to her stomach. When did she begin to falter so badly?
It was very hard not to blame herself for Mat's death. He'd died to protect her from Danarius, and it was her fault that the magister had crept up on them so easily. She had been weak, was still weak, unable to separate the lingering affection she felt for Fenris with her desire to gut him and leave him to rot. It was easy enough to contemplate. Hot anger flushed and intoxicated her every time she forced herself to relive that day in Seheron. It was so easy to hate Fenris, and a source of impotent fury to find that twice she been unwilling or unable to follow through on that hatred and kill him. It would be simple, to plunge her sword through his belly, his throat, and yet it stirred ugly, dark feelings inside of her.
She must have been mad to kiss him in Hawke's garden. It was meant to punish, to warn. It was a clear message that she controlled the situation but in truth it had robbed her of her control and the situation had spun away from her madly. It stole from her the unshakable belief that Fenris must die and replaced it with an irrational desire for the man she had once known and trusted. It infuriated her that she wavered. She was better than this, stronger than this. Disgusted with herself and her failures, she wracked her brain for some way to cure herself of the pox that was Fenris. Her thoughts were rift with confusion and anxiety, cut with the bitter wave of self-deprecation. Worse than weak, she was a traitor. He'd slaughtered her kin and she'd wanted him. It would never happen again, she swore silently. She would find a way to rip Fenris from her before they arrived in Tevinter, and when they did arrive, he would bleed doubly from a thousand wounds for the added insult of his distracting touch.
Forcibly, she brought up the memories of that black day in Seheron. Grief, raw and fresh, washed over her and she embraced it, welcomed the rage that flowed with it as an undercurrent. The unnatural stillness of the bodies, the way the ground soaked the blood that was everywhere. The freezing terror that still gripped her from knowing that the little ones were probably dead, too.
Her head swam, remembering them. Children were so rare in the village, were cherished and adored. Births did not happen often in the village. Every man, every woman was a warrior born and that did not lend itself to parenthood. Pregnancies were uncommon, and healthy births were rare. Each child was a celebration. They were innocents born into a hard life of earned freedom. They were raised to be warriors like their parents, to be fierce protectors of their legacy.
Rowenna's knees quaked and her thoughts skittered away. Memories of the children were dangerous, it was territory that she rarely ventured into.
"You look like you're about to hurl," Isabela's voice carried across the distance between them and Rowenna, startled, reached for weapons that were not there. Warily, she watched the pirate stroll across the deck, looking more at home than she ever did in Kirkwall.
"Seasick," Rowenna lied gruffly, but Isabela only laughed and offering her a drink from the open bottle of rum she was cradling.
"Don't try and bullshit a bullshitter, sweetheart. That's not ocean sickness on your face."
Rowenna sighed at her loudly, but accepted the proffered rum and took a long pull from it. The overly spiced flavor made her wince once, and she handed it back to Isabela.
"So spill it," the pirate pressed. She ambled past Rowenna to the side of the ship, sinking down with her back resting against one of their large cargo crates. "Come sit with Auntie Izzy and tell her what's wrong. I've got more rum!"
Something in Isabela's crooning, sing-song voice compelled Rowenna to do as she was bid. She settled in next to Isabela, careful not to lean her healing back against anything unforgiving. She reached over and plucked the rum from Isabela, nearly drowning herself in it before handing it back. "Have you ever needed to do something, wanted to do something, but every single bloody time you got the chance, you couldn't do it?"
Isabela took a sip of the rum herself. "That depends. Are we talking actually or metaphorically?"
"Either."
The pirate shrugged, lifting the bottle to her lips again. "Who hasn't, sweetheart? That sounds like life to me. You can't always get what you want."
The alcohol was already buzzing pleasantly in Rowenna's blood. Isabela always knew how to get her drunk the fastest and with minimal effort. "I really am going to kill Fenris," she informed Isabela bluntly. "I'm going to stab him so hard it kills his whole family."
"So you keep saying," Isabela chuckled. "He's still very much alive. A slave now, again, but alive last we checked."
"I know," Rowenna huffed, frustrated at how very alive Fenris probably was in that very moment.
"That wouldn't be the reason you're out here brooding, is it?" Isabela pried. "Ooh, I bet it is."
"Go jump in the ocean," Rowenna hissed back. "I can kill him just fine."
"No one ever said you couldn't!" The pirate was teasing her, doing her best to lighten the darkness that hung around Rowenna's shoulders and she was grateful for it. "I think you just need a distraction, that's all."
"A distraction," Rowenna drawled. "Like I haven't tried that. Excuse me while I just run along and go find a distraction on a ship with nothing on it. Maybe I'll take up knitting."
"No need to get snitty, it's an honest suggestion. Besides, there is plenty of distraction on this ship." Isabela waggled her eyebrows.
Rowenna snorted. "I am not sleeping with you, Isabela."
The pirate affected an expression of wounded pride and stuck her nose in the air. The bottle of rum between them was nearly empty. "As if we'd be sleeping," she corrected. "It doesn't even have to be me. I happen to have it on very good authority that Anders is bending you over in his mind every time he so much as looks at you. That man has it worse for you than Hawke has for Fenris."
"I don't think that's the kind of distraction I need, Isabela." Rowenna growled. The thought of Hawke in Fenris' arms drove her to polish off the last of the rum and toss the bottle over her head. It flew overboard, landing with a splash. It was already enough that she had to watch Hawke's endless vigil at the bow, her blue eyes never leaving the ship that sailed far out ahead of them. She barely tolerated the look of determined hope on the mage's face, her occasional sigh when the slave ship dipped out of sight periodically. Rowenna was not a jealous woman by nature, but the way that Hawke looked at Fenris made her want to hit something and she was disgusted by both Hawke's adoration and her response to it.
That was Isabela's cue to leave. "Well," she replied, rising to her feet with a catty smirk, "you could always take up shark fishing. Something tells me you'd be good at it. You could glare the poor beasts to death."
"Get out of here," Rowenna chuckled, swiping at Isabela. The pirate danced gracefully out of the way, wiggling her rear suggestively.
"Only because you have another visitor," Isabela taunted, her ears catching the quiet squeal of an opening door. "Remember what I told you," she chirped, skipping away on light feet.
Anders drew his door closed behind him and climbed the narrow steps that led above deck, sparing Isabela only a passing glance when she squeezed past him with a throaty laugh. It was best not to question things that amused Isabela. The sound of his bare feet against the wooden steps joined the music of life at sea. The creak of the oil treated ropes, the constant splash of waves as they lapped at the hull and the occasional cry of aquatic birds were all together surprisingly wonderful. Coupled with the tang of salt in the air, it soothed an ache for adventure he did not know he had. It was easy to see how someone like Isabela thrived in this life. The sea made one autonomous, limited only by destination. It was a heady feeling.
The glow of the moon greeted him above deck and the balmy sea air stuck his bare chest and seemed to stick there. Anders made an unpleasant face. If there was one complaint he had of sailing, it was this Maker cursed humidity. It was cooler below deck, where the subtle darkness gave a false sense of relief, but it stifled. In the open air, there was an ever present breeze at least.
He'd learned quickly how smothering mage robes became in this muggy weather and packed them away. With his ponytail and newfound affinity for trousers, Isabela teased mercilessly that he looked more pirate than magi.
Their vessel was not a large one, and it did not take him long to identify the mysterious owner of the pacing footsteps that kept him company every night.
Rowenna too, suffered from the heat, though it was not as bad as it could be in Seheron. Temporarily, she had traded her heavy armor for something breezy. A loose spun tunic with conspicuously missing sleeves billowing from where it hung across her shoulders, obviously too large to be hers, and her snug linen breeches hung dangerous low over her hips.
Anders watched her prowl the deck restlessly, edging around like a caged animal. Without her armor and weapons, she seemed not smaller, but somehow more delicate. It was a deceptive illusion, he knew, Rowenna was not some fragile thing. Even as she turned her face to where he stood in the shadows, he could see the scars on her face, on her arms, on her hands; too numerous, too jagged and angry to be the simple reminders of childhood accidents.
The deck creaked traitorously beneath his feet and Rowenna was on her feet in an instant, moving faster than she ought to have. She startled him so badly that he almost hit her with a spell. The magic died on his fingers and he glared at her pointedly. "Don't do that!"
She eyed him suspiciously, arms folded across her chest. "What are you doing up here? Did Isabela send you?" The quiet slur of alcohol in her voice was almost lost in the lilt of her accented Common, but Anders heard it all the same.
That was not a question he expected. "What? Why would Isabela send me up here?"
"Never mind." Her eyes swept from his bare chest to his face and she silently lifted one blonde eyebrow. "Why are you awake?"
Anders flushed under her obvious inspection and offered up a sheepish grin in exchange. She had to admit, he did sheepish very well. Despite his perpetual affliction of seriousness and generally lack of good humor, she caught occasional glimpses of the man he must have been before.
"Justice isn't thrilled with our current course of action, and when he's in a snit, I can't even think, let alone sleep." He omitted her role in his sleeplessness, did not tell her that he thought perhaps he might sleep better were she in his bed. His grin disappeared, chased away by his ever present, thoughtful scowl. "Besides," he looked down at her, suddenly wishing she was not standing so close, "I've heard you up here just about every night, though I didn't know it was you."
"Hoping for someone else?"
"Actually, I thought you could use some company?" Anders could not meet her continual gaze for long, not when they stood this close and were so alone when all he wanted to do was… – he tore his thoughts off track, his eyes turning to settle on the black water that licked the hull of their ship. He shivered. "How come you're not sleeping?"
Countless answers flooded her mouth, threatened to spill over her tongue and betray her but she only scoffed and rolled her eyes. Self-disgust welled deep inside her. How well would Anders receive the truth when she did not even have the stomach for it? "Feeling sorry for me isn't going to help either of us sleep any better, Anders." Bitterness encroached on her voice, propelled by the hurt that accused her from Anders' face.
"Can we skip the part where you're angry, but not at me, but you yell at me anyway? I don't much care for it, to be perfectly honest." His voice heated with upset and he leaned closer, his eyes returning to look down at her reproachfully.
She snorted, glowering up at him darkly. "But that's my favorite part." She was being petulant, but she didn't care, he'd followed her up here, she didn't ask for his company. Still, a part of her felt the grudging beginnings of guilt for being unnecessarily cruel to one of three people in the world she could call friend.
"Obviously," he groused, folding his arms across his chest in an effort to restore some distance between them. "Maker only knows why I like you. I'll just leave you be moody, then."
Rowenna heaved a gusty sigh, her shoulders slumped and defeated. "You can stay, but only if I can ask you a question," she offered, turning her face away from the mage who insisted on being her friend.
"How generous of you," he grumped, not unhappily. "Ask."
"What's it like to be possessed? To have something inside you that you can't get out?"
He winced at her blunt choice of words but took the question for the understated apology that it was. It was the only sort of apology for her bad behavior that Rowenna was likely to give, at least. He mulled her question over, fingers tapping against the bared skin of his arms. "It's hard to say," he explained after a thoughtful pause. Regret laced his every word. "It's not like we're two different people. I became Justice and Justice became Anders. It's like being myself and being someone else at the same time." He trailed off with a rueful smile. "Sorry, I'm not explaining it very well."
"It's fine," she grumbled quietly. "I know what you mean." Silence hung between them, stretching and heavy. Rowenna nudged Anders with one bare foot, bringing him back to her from whatever unspoken memory had captured him .
"Right, sorry. I suppose the best way to describe it would be like…being crazy, but that's not right either because Justice isn't evil. He just sees things so clearly, and now so do I. Do you know what it's like to have this ideal that's so close, yet still so seemingly impossible? Yes, sometimes Justice is aggressive but that is a fault of mine, not his. Joining with me changed him, changed me."
It was morbidly fascinating, watching the light of fervor battle against the regret and anguish in Anders' amber eyes. Some would have called it the warning of a creeping madness, the way he managed to be both fanatical and mournful, and perhaps it was, but it was a madness that Rowenna herself had not escaped from.
A new respect for him settled in her. All too well did she understand what it was to be battered on every side for an ideal no one else believed in. "You would have made a half-way decent Fog Warrior," she admitted.
"Was that a compliment?" He eyed her suspiciously. "From you?"
"Don't go telling anyone. Must be all this open water," she retorted, flashing him a quicksilver smirk. "Being at sea makes me a little funny."
"That would explain it," he agreed.
They lapsed into companionable silence, lulled into the quiet by the late hour and ensconcing darkness.
Rowenna frowned up past Anders face at the moon, cursing her inability to be strong. Like a coward, she lacked true strength when it was needed most. She was so willing to fantasize about killing Fenris, but when it came down to it, she had faltered not once but twice. Mat was dead, because of her, because of her inability to overcome everything that made her weak.
Her hands tightened to fists at her sides. Not only was she a coward, but here she was being a moody woman on top of everything else. She cursed herself quietly, drawing Anders' wandering attention once again.
"Something you want to share?" he asked quietly, looking down at her strained and tired face.
"Pulled my stitches," she lied immediately, feigning a wince.
It was the perfect distraction. She knew it would be. Immediately, he was hovering. Disapproving concerned knitted his brows together and magic sprang to life at the tips of his fingers. "I wish you would just let me heal that wound," he rumbled, leveling her with the look of a healer who's patient is being unruly.
"It's fine," she retorted childishly. "Temrys did a fine job stitching it."
"I really don't understand this stubborn need to let it heal naturally." Anders was still drawing on his magic, wrapping and twisting it around his fingers, thoroughly put out and annoyed that she was ignoring his advice as her healer. "How well do you think you'll swing that shiny sword of yours gimped like you are?"
"Well enough!" Her chin raised defiantly, eyes flashing at the implied slight to her fighting prowess and ability. "Better than you, anyway. At least I don't wear a dress to a fight."
"Ooooh," Anders mocked with an arch of his brows. He raised his arms as though to surrender. "Look how very mature we're being right now, making fun of the man who keeps you alive."
She shot him a sarcastic smirk. "I call them as I see them."
"Yes, yes, you are the literal embodiment of truth and honesty. Now turn around so I can at least look at the damn thing and make sure it's not infected."
"Will it make you stop nagging at me?" she snipped peevishly, fixing him with a low intensity glare.
"Maybe," he replied, ignoring her attitude and gesturing for her to turn around.
Rowenna snapped her teeth at him warningly but complied with reluctant obedience. She whirled around and presented him with her back, hands tugging her tunic up and over her head. "Well?" she demanded. "How does it look?"
Awful was the first word that sprang to his mind. It was healing slowly, irritated flesh pulled and strained against Temrys' stitches. Every movement must have been painful and Anders felt his stomach clench as it always did when he looked at any of her particularly gruesome injuries. Rowenna was so lucky to still have movement in her legs. The splitting wound across her back was a wicked injury, curving from her shoulder across her spine and ending at her hip. "There's no infection, thankfully," he informed her somberly. "At least not yet."
"Good, it should be healed soon enough, then."
"Does it hurt at all?" he pressed, considering how badly he would be maimed if he just buckled down and healed her without her consent.
"No."
This lie Anders detected immediately. Carefully, so as not to actually cause harm to her, he ran a light finger quickly along the length of the scarring wound.
Her sharp intake of breath between clenched teeth and the way she jumped betrayed her. Her eyes squeezed shut and she waited for the riot of nausea to pass before she dared to open her mouth. "Ok, so it does hurt a little, what's your point?"
Exasperated, he grabbed her by the shoulders and whirled her around to face him. "You could have died! Maybe you almost did!" He hissed thunderously, running a hand over his hair. "Don't you understand? Don't you care?"
"Almost dying doesn't count for anything," she snapped back, her face twisting in irritation. "It's dying that makes the difference." Her tunic was clutched tightly to her chest, preserving modesty that she no longer gave a thought to in the wake of their budding argument.
"Maybe for you, but what about the rest of us? I don't know where this battle hardened bitch skin ends and your suicidal tendencies begin." His calm was rapidly unraveling under the increasing potency of her murderous glare.
Her face was growing redder, a flush that swept down her neck and across her bared shoulders. Anger darkened in her eyes and she was drawn up to her full height, ready to hurl this war of words right back into Anders' face.
"And you know what?" Anders continued. His hands trembled, restrained from the urge to grab her by the shoulders and shake her until she saw sense. He'd built up a good head of steam and the things he'd long since thought came spilling out. "Sometimes when I look at Declan and he's looking at you, I don't think he knows either."
It took all of Rowenna's willpower not to draw back and hit Anders in the face. That he dared try and tell her she was a disappointment to Declan, as though she didn't already know, triggered a slow burn of rage inside her. It made her teeth ache and her skin crawl. Part of her wanted to flee from the truth bearing down at her in Anders' eyes.
It was one of the moments in life that Anders dearly wished he could take back, watching her jaw set and her shoulders square. "Rowenna," he tried again, rubbing a hand across the scruff of his jaw. "I just…can't you see we'd fall apart without you?"
She snorted derisively, her eyes blazing with growing fury. She was ready for a fight, if that's what Anders wanted. She let her anger take hold, allowed it to chase all other thoughts from her head. "You were fine before you met me, you'll be fine when I'm gone." She shifted closer to him, aggressive, and her words tasted of poison.
"You're not that stupid, Rowenna," he growled between clenched teeth, struggling to keep his voice down. How could she not know? How could she not realize? "You and your brother changed everything. One day I'm suddenly not alone anymore. One day I have people who believe in my cause, who believe in me; people who think of me as Anders, and not Anders – the possessed Grey Warden!"
His voice was an audible assault, full of hurt and accusations that went left unsaid. "Sometimes I try to make myself hate you because it would be easier than wondering if you'll be dead next time you turn up, but I can sooner flay myself alive than stop feeling like this!" His chest was heaving and Rowenna stared at him with wide eyes. It was too late to stop, and he didn't think he could, even if he wanted. "I tell myself that it's useless, that it's a terrible idea, that you don't want this, and it doesn't work. It never works."
She wanted to run. Instinct filled her and she wanted nothing more than to bolt away from him and lose herself for months until he was free of her. Instead, her mouth was opening and she was speaking automatically. "You can't want me." It was a blunt statement, afflicted with surprised anger. How often had Declan teased her that Anders was lovesick? Mat jibed that she should just bed the man so he could get back to being a proper crusader. She'd written them both off, he would quickly get over it, she reasoned. Rowenna was not the kind of woman people became romantically attached to. She was not gentle or sweet. It made her uncomfortable and it pulled her from the place she'd settled, the place where she was an arbiter of vengeance and nothing more.
"Want? That doesn't even come close," he rasped, his mouth dry. Why were they having this conversation? How had they gotten here? His hands fell to her shoulders and he warred with himself, unsure if he should push her away or draw her closer. The words would not stop coming. "I crave you. I think of you in my arms, at my side, in my…bed," he stuttered over his own tongue, floundering. "I don't sleep for torturing myself with the wickedest of thoughts. You plague me Rowenna and I cannot make it stop."
She had no way of knowing how to respond. Never before had she been on the receiving end of such a declaration, never had she even considered that someone would feel that way about her, but the desperation on Anders' face was something she recognized. It begged both for vindication and redirection. It echoed the desperate desire for Fenris that warred with her hatred of him. It shook her, and she stared warily up at Anders through narrow eyes. He was thrown into sharp relief against the light of the moon, and she could see in his eyes that she was perhaps driving him to true madness, that he meant every word. Was this what she had been asking for?
Was Anders her way out of the hell Fenris had built for her with his lips and his hands? Hope sparked to life inside her. If Fenris could be burned from her, then she would no longer hesitate with her blade at his throat. Relief flickered across her tense muscles. Yes, Anders could help her.
"It doesn't have to stop," she replied, her words shaking and halting. If Anders could free her of the curse that was Fenris, then she could gladly grow to love him. He was a brave man, not bad to look at, passionate and nearly glorious to behold in a fit of rage. Magic sparked from him, he commanded the elements, he was strong. She respected him.
"You don't mean that, Rowenna," he countered sharply. His eyes fell shut and his hands flew from her shoulders, seared by her skin and invitation. "Don't say that, don't make this harder. This distraction shouldn't even be happening. Turn me away, please." He was begging her to refuse him, even as the conflicting emotions warring for dominance on his face told her otherwise.
"No." She denied his plea for cowardice. As much as he claimed he did not want a distraction, she hoped desperately that he could save her from Fenris.
One simple word battered down the tenuous wall he'd constructed around the last threads of his self-control, and he surged forward with a muffled groan. His arms found their way around her, whirling them both around and trapping her body between his and the crate of cargo behind them. Agony nearly brought her to her knees but Anders was a step ahead of her, and there was something visceral in the way his magic rocketed through every inch of her. It was invasive, combative and wrapped around the both of them in a blinding flash of blue light that accompanied the unasked for half-mending and numbing of the injury on her back. Anger warred with the ignition of passion inside her but she had opened the gate to Anders and he would not be deterred.
His mouth crashed against hers with needy demand and his hands pushed her tunic away. Skin burned against skin and Rowenna allowed his sensory assault to overwhelm her. He moaned against her mouth, driven forward by the equal demand in her responses to him. How long had he dreamed this? He pressed against her with insistent urgency, fingers twisting and tangling in her hair to draw her head back. Pain was licking at her, every twist and push was fire to her back, but it was an ebb and flow, a give and take as Anders allowed his magic to wash over her just enough to give them both what they wanted. Her head was spinning, she was drowning in his magic. She could feel the injury on her back, could feel the slow healing of her flesh knitting back together, of muscle sealing and becoming whole.
He was waging a brutal war on her, manipulating her body expertly. His mouth scorched her and she noticed distantly that he tasted so different from Fenris. She shivered.
The desire he felt for her sparked a raging inferno inside him, fed by the way she battled against him even in her surrender. It drowned out everything but her. Even the disappointed voice of Justice was lost in a roar when she moved her hips against his in a silent demand. His magic linked them together, twisted and shoved them into a unification made all the more potent by the way she allowed him to dominate her mouth. Rowenna was a force to be reckoned with, and he was consumed with the need to bend her to his desire. Control was rapidly slipping through his fingers just as his magic was, torn from his grasp by the woman in his arms.
He broke away from her with a gasp, dropping his head to her shoulder. "I am not a gentle man, Rowenna," he half pleaded. "This will only end badly. I'll ruin you, if you don't kill one or both of us first."
As he sought her mouth again, she could not help but quietly agree, even as she reached for the laces of his trousers. His kisses branded her, but Fenris would not relinquish his claim.
Days began to bleed together and his nights stretched out painfully. Fenris worried that he may soon go mad. His days were spent shadowing Danarius, and at night, sleep was no refuge. He hungered for his freedom, and ached for the Fog Warrior that had cursed him with the memory of her skin beneath his fingers.
Danarius was merciless, reinforcing Fenris' position as a slave at every given opportunity. Fenris fetched his meals, bathed him, dressed him. At every turn he was reminded cruelly that Rowenna was dead and that he would never escape again. Fenris felt the fragile grasp on the life he had built for himself slipping through his fingers bit by bit.
That was until he noticed what no one else on board the slaver ship seemed to. They were four days at sea when he first saw it, and attributed it to the combination of wishful thinking and the illusions that could be brought on by the sea.
When he looked the next day, it had not disappeared, and hope swelled in his chest like some foreign spirit taking root.
The source of his renewed hope was a tiny dot of black against the endless canopy of blue on the back horizon. It could have been anything, but on the seventh day he knew it for what it was. It was a ship. They were coming for him. It could be Declan, or Hawke, or both. He could not bring himself to care about specifics in that moment. All that mattered was how tenaciously they followed him. His freedom, whether it was a freedom he would live to enjoy or one granted to him by Declan's arrows, was in the breath of wind in those sails.
A rare, treasured smile broke across his face, allowed to live for a brief moment only, lest Danarius grow suspicious. He could not believe that no one had noticed the pursuing ship. Maybe they had, and simply disregarded it.
He thought that their impending rescue would make obeying the Magister more difficult, but he found that compliance came more easily than it ever had. Barbed words no longer stung. Taunts about his lost freedom carried no more weight. Only jibes about the loss of Rowenna shook him, because he knew that rescue or not, she was still probably dead and it was his fault.
If Danarius noticed Fenris' renewed complicity, he said nothing. Silently, Fenris hoped it would be attributed to a broken spirit, and not the taste of freedom that lingered in his mouth, renewed every time that tiny black dot of a ship reappeared against the horizon.
