Chapter Fourteen
Bolero

Exhaustion was what finally dragged Cyrano to his room at some unknown but decidedly midnightish hour. The corridors were deserted. This was fine by him. It let him rub at the already building tightness in his arms without fear of embarrassment. He was ever thankful that his talents with a blade where undiminished since he last bore the title of Prince of Rialto, but the Orlesian-besotted bard in him-even as a Crow assassin-had not bothered with something nearly so intensive. And no wonder. It was Sebastian Calarese who had created that drill that his men might outlast any Crow, no matter how long that Crow would endure. Cyrano Rideri, on the other hand, preferred to talk himself out of most predicaments.

But, perhaps he was merely starting to feel his age. He knew beyond doubt, now, that he had easily seen forty summers. He could remember Antiva before the civil war, when the Three Queens were merely three princesses with a shockingly devoted father. So devoted, he hadn't ever been bothered to set forth one as his heir, and Antivan laws of inheritance were barely more than vague guidelines with dozens of conditional clauses. Thus, things fell apart when it was evident that the princesses were not nearly as devoted to one another as their father had been to all of them in equal measure.

All that was irrelevant, and Cyrano paused to pinch the bridge of his nose. Thoughtless politics addled his mind, and he would be feeling every muscle in his body come the dawn. It was a miserable situation to be in.

Ratham was not at his post. No guard was. Cyrano pulled up short when he noticed that little detail, ducking behind a statue of Andraste (conveniently poised with a shield) in the off chance that whatever soldier had been posted to mind his quarters had fallen victim to an early insurgence of Crows. There was silence. The lamp light barely even flickered with the air as still as it was. There were no shadows that should not have been there.

He ventured forth once more with caution slowing his steps. It dawned on him that his time in Denerim had been punctuated by Ratham's constant presence. To not have him was oddly disconcerting. The chamber door was closed but not locked. Still no sound, even with his ear pressed up against the smooth wood. A fire crackling. Normal. Ellia always set one for him to fend off the ever-present southern chill. Gently pressing the latch, Cyrano quietly made his way inside.

Nothing appeared to be out of place. His bedding was turned down. The garments he had discarded all over the floor looking for something appropriate for the upcoming feast had been put away. The only change was the figure slouched in a chair by the fire, head cast off to the side in slumber with a book open in her lap. Solona. Cyrano blinked in surprise. Her chest rose and fell. She wasn't dead. But that wasn't even really the first thing that went through his head.

What, by the Void, is she doing here?

He'd barely seen her these last few days unless it was for rehearsing the commedia, as Aleix had monopolized much of her time. The mages had become thick as thieves in their own planning and studies, and though it relieved Cyrano to see the young woman get on well with his former mentor, it bothered him just as much. Being denied her presence had left a dull ache in his gut if he didn't otherwise keep his mind occupied. And that, he knew, was counter to the productivity that had to happen.

Cyrano stepped over to occupy the seat across from her. She was deeply asleep, her breathing far too deep and even. The book she held was full of words and diagrams in faded ink. He twisted his head to get a better look at it, catching only enough to gather that it was some bit of Tevene instruction. There was no way for him to make sense of it otherwise. The bard gently pried the tome from beneath Solona's fingers and set it aside. She'd fallen asleep in this chair before for an untold number of hours, but there was no reason for that, now. Lightly, he got back to his feet and stooped to pick her up. She remained limp with unconsciousness even as he carried her across the room.

He made her comfortable in the bed that had been prepared for him, tugging off her shoes and drawing the coverings up around her shoulders. A lesser man probably would have bothered with other matters better left out of mind, but Cyrano was not such a man. Nor was this the time. He kicked off his own boots and went back to the chair, tugging his leather armor off and dropping it as he went. In shirtsleeves and trousers, he collapsed into the chair he'd lifted Solona from and closed his eyes. Sleep came swiftly and devoid of dreams.

In much the same manner, morning came much sooner than was just or polite. Cyrano woke to find Ellia moving softly through the space, gathering up his discarded armor and placing it carefully in a chest at the foot of the bed. Another glance proved to him that Solona still slept there in a continued blissful ignorance.

The elf smiled at him with those glittering, pale eyes when she saw he was awake and came to stand closer to him. Her voice was little more than a whisper.

"I can bring your breakfast to you here, signore, if you'd like."

Cyrano nodded, still more than a little bleary. "And the lady's. If you wouldn't mind."

Ellia smiled more broadly and bowed before taking her leave. Whatever she thought she knew was likely wrong, but the bard was not about to spare it a second thought. Where was Ratham? Was he not the one to wake him with his usual brusqueness that things demanded attention? And, as much as it pleased him to fantasize, why was Solona there? Asleep. In his bed (the fact that he was the one that put her there being totally inconsequential). The elvhen servant came and left again while Cyrano's wool-filled brain tried to process. The smell of food was the only thing that broke him of it.

It only took the act of rising for him to know he'd been right. His whole body from neck to shins hurt like the flames.

"Ellia," he breathed with a grimace, "please, woman, tell me you drew a bath."

She was not there to either hear or respond. That didn't matter. Cyrano stumbled his way into the next room. Water. Hot water. The stone basin was full and already scented. Glorious. He wasn't sure how he got out of the remainder of his clothing and into that steaming paradise, but he managed. A few deep breaths later, he could already feel the aches leeching out of him and away into the aether.

He must have fallen asleep again because the next thing he remembered was a woman's voice carrying to him from some intangible place.

"Please tell me that you didn't spend the whole night in there."

Cyrano's eyes popped open and came to sudden focus on Solona's curious face. She stood in the doorway, her figure partially obscured by the stone of the wall. Her hair was mussed from sleep and her mage robes wrinkled. But her eyes were alert, and that lower lip was caught ever so slightly between her teeth the way it always did when she was concerned over something.

The bard's reaction wasn't nearly so graceful as he would have liked. He scrambled to get himself into a better position, completely aware that water was inconveniently transparent. Solona, on the other hand, only bothered to look him in the eye.

"No, I-" he faltered, doing everything he could to regain some semblance of poise. "I was forced to sleep in the chair. The bed was already taken, and I refused to disturb-"

Solona inhaled a deep and slightly irritated breath before coming fully into the room. "Why didn't you wake me? And I was not in your bed-I was in the chair! Someone moved me."

"You looked uncomfortable."

"I was fine."

"Madam, will there ever be a time that I can be a gentleman without you arguing?"

"Yes. When your life is no longer in danger and your usual guard returns to his post. Ratham has barely slept since you got here and was given last night and today off. I volunteered." She sat down on the edge of the basin, practically glaring at him in a no-nonsense sort of way. "You should have woken me."

Cyrano allowed himself a smile. She'd laid out her hand plain as daylight. Even if it was only half the story, it was plenty enough.

"Are there truly so many spiders to be feared in the dark?" He reached up and rested a hand on hers.

Her eyes narrowed a little but not out of any further annoyance. It seemed more like she was pondering over something that had been tugging at the back of her mind for quite some time. "Crows chase you. For all we know, you could have roused the whole nest."

"But the queen of them is our only target."

Those silver eyes narrowed even more as Solona turned her head off to the side. "She won't even get close."

Cyrano tutted as he lifted his hand from hers in order to trace the curving line of her cheek. He was used to seeing her serious-far too serious than was warranted-though it was beyond touching in this case. By this point, he knew Solona was well aware of the dangers. Aleix would have made her so informed. But even lightning could only go so far when unleashed from such mortal fingers.

His touch did little to sooth her at first, but her posture eventually became less rigid. Solona turned back to him with a worried glint to those beautiful eyes. Her hand latched onto his and pulled it back into her lap.

"Are you sure this will work?" she asked. That rosy lip once more found itself being gnawed upon.

The bard leaned back to place his free hand behind his head. The nondescript nobleman stared down at him as always from his dusty hook on the wall, that severe expression no particular font of inspiration but a strange comfort nonetheless. There was always some level of uncertainty to plans such as this one. It was grand in scale with an unknown timeline for preparation. To one as experienced as he with such intrigues, they had landed in the realm of borrowed time at least two days previously. Everything else had been a boon.

Ines had never moved quickly. She studied every facet before making a decision towards anything...and that had always been the primary rift between them. He had impulsively given his heart to another, burned a blood contract without a thought for if he might regret it later, left his wife at home alone with their young child to chase after a rare fortune that would have made Antiva City a lesser gem in the crown of the realm in comparison to Rialto. And it had cost him everything.

But Ines had apparently stopped thinking in quite that same way, hadn't she? Moved to madness, drowning in blood magic, she had grasped at any fraying thread she could to keep her impossible love in her life despite all evidence that he could never be hers.

And it was more true now than ever before.

"I'm not sure which part you're talking about," he said at last, sparing Solona a coyly casual glance.

The glare was back. Oh, how he relished that look on her!

"Any of it-all of it," she pressed. "So much relies on enraging a woman that is a total stranger to all but you and Aleix. Are you sure this play of yours will be enough? Are you sure?" Her fingers clamped down on his in a vice grip of fearful insistence. He bit back a hiss at the pain.

"That strongly depends on how convincing you can be," he replied evenly. He squeezed her hand back, though with a more reassuring intent. "Your performance has been...a little weak at a few crucial points."

"I told you I was no actress."

"Oh, but you are, and I maintain utmost faith in that. My meaning, amora, is that you hold back at all the times when Calabria should be her most robust. Her passion, it is stifled when it should be proclaimed. Her love, it is cold when it should be full to bursting of the sweetest sorrow for what she's lost. Her kisses-"

Solona tried to tug herself away from him in aggravation, but he held fast to her hand. Her insistence made her struggle more, but it also cost her her balance. With a scream and a splash, she joined Cyrano in the hot, embrium-scented water, her nose nearly touching his and his other hand suddenly about her to keep her from struggling further.

"Her kisses are without feeling and too quickly over," Cyrano finished with a wolfish grin even as those silver eyes burned daggers at his. "This is the love of her life that she believed was dead, amora. Would she be so cruel to him?"

The mage's eyes softened, though she still did what she could to keep her body raised above his. Cyrano smiled even more broadly. Something in her awkwardness was completely charming.

"Would she?"

The double-meaning was not lost on her. He could see it in her face, feel it in the trembling of the hand he still held. Calabria's love burns, he whispered to her, describing in lucid detail another such drama where the fictional paramour had been intended for Il Capitano. Others sought her hand with dangerous fervency, and some with genuine goodness and wit. But always had her heart belonged to the black-masked nobleman and pirate, though time and distance might always come between them.

His hand gradually slid up her back as he spoke, both soothing her and drawing her closer to him as a totally different sort of reaction took hold. Solona stopped him before he could finish explaining how the hottest fire was nothing compared to what Il Capitano felt for his lady, the mage's mouth smothering his with a long repressed fervent desire. Their moment beneath the tree days before was nothing in comparison, and the sweet pecks he'd received on stage since then were beyond forgettable. She tugged her hands free of him only to clamp them to his face, drawing him upward while his arms wrapped about her waist to pull her against him fully.

The water was no longer of consequence. To them, they could have been absolutely anywhere else rather than tangled in the bath in a mess of limbs and pale silk. Solona's dark hair clung to her neck and trailed down the sides of her face where the water had soaked it. Cyrano tangled his fingers in it as he yearned for a taste of that lyrium tang upon the heat of her breath. A single, smooth motion swept her body beneath his as a wave of bathwater splashed out and over the side of the basin. Her hands gripped at the slick flesh of his back, tingles of lightning seeming to escape her fingertips. Cyrano deepened the kiss to avoid smiling.

And he abruptly pulled away.

With an ease his still-sore limbs didn't quite feel, he quickly got out of the water and wrapped the linens Ellia had prepared about his waist, taking a moment to fuss with his hair in the polished silver glass against the wall. He could hear Solona gasping behind him, partially trying to catch her breath but mostly trying to get any sort of sense for what had just happened.

"Do you understand better, now, amora," he inquired with a pointed look over his shoulder, "how Calabria's heart must burn?" He turned back to her, kneeling in the puddle on the floor to cup her face with one hand. His thumb coursed a tantalizing line across panting lips. "Forget that others might see-that they will see. Such a love is impossible to hide, especially from the one who returns it."

Ever endeavoring to remain a gentleman, he politely handed her a linen towel and took his leave of the washroom. Solona had the opportunity to dry off as he dressed, and he found a shirt and set of trousers that would fit her well enough until her own clothes could dry...or some hapless servant could bring her something more suitable. He hoped that wouldn't be necessary. After days of charging forward with a single destination in sight, Cyrano wanted nothing more than a few stolen hours in such pleasant company as he now had.

They took their breakfast before the hearth that still smoldered. Solona was quiet for quite some time, studying her bread and cheese more than she was actually eating it. Cyrano watched her with interest. She was swimming in the clothes he had given her, and the laced collar drooped to an almost scandalous degree. But the mage didn't seem to notice. Her strings of wet hair hung in waves about her face as she slowly fed piece after small piece of food into her mouth. Her gaze was aimed at nothing in particular. It looked almost as if her eyes were seeing something beyond the bearskin rug and deeper than the floor.

Cyrano poured each of them a glass of wine from the decanter Ellia had left. It was a sweet and watered-down Orlesian of common vintage but no less pleasing to the tongue than something more rare. A light wine for a morning that desperately needed to be free of all care.

"What troubles you, amora," he asked as he passed her a glass.

She took it from him and sipped absently, those eyes never leaving the spot beneath the stone before the fireplace. Several sips later, she finally looked back up at him.

"I must never leave your side," Solona said in a tone that implied firmness without being completely hard.

"Oh?" That was a particularly sweet song to the bard's well trained ears. "Not ever?"

She shook her head. "If something is impossible to hide, one should not even try. Calabria must love her Capitano with a fire that consumes them both-but that is only on stage. There is still the feast. There is still the matter of you confronting Rudolfo just to introduce yourself let alone challenge or be challenged to this duel where you intend to slay him. What if all of that is still not enough for Ines? What if, thanks to that demon, she has always been one long step ahead of you?

"She cursed you for jealousy. Despite her apparent argument that you broke a contract, she was jealous of the one who had your heart. You will need a lady on your arm," it was finally her turn to smile, "a lady who blatantly adores you. You will need Solona, Comtesse du Brac, to solidify your claim as the Prince of Rialto."

Cyrano's eyebrows lifted with mild surprise. He rested his elbows on the arms of his chair and linked his fingers together before his face as he tried to comprehend. "Comtesse?"

Solona shrugged with one shoulder, well aware that too much movement could be disastrous for her makeshift wardrobe. "My stepfather did not leave me a title. But Geoff did. I never had much reason to even care about it until now."

"I thought Wardens held no titles."

"Says the Prince of Rialto." Her smile became almost wicked. "You can't possibly object."

"I may be a rogue, madam, but I am a rogue with manners. I would never deny a lady her very valid point." He reached back for his wine and drained what remained in the glass. "And this Comtesse will never leave my side?"

"Not for as long as she draws breath. As Calabria burns for her Capitano, the Comtesse will shower her Prince with affection."

Cyrano nodded. And there were her cards again, splayed everywhere before her as if she were only just now learning to play Diamondback. But a smirk curled her lips as she hugged her knees to her chest, her feet curling around the edge of the chair cushion. Perhaps...perhaps he had been hasty in thinking her inexperienced at this game. One of her background did not survive the Orlesian court even behind the scenes without some talent for intrigue.

"Well then, my beloved Comtesse," the bard stated with a reverent bow of the head, "we must make sure you still remember how to dance."

"Dance?"

"Will this not be a feast and a masque as well as a commedia performance?" The bard got to his feet and rubbed a little of the soreness from his arms before bowing and holding out a hand for Solona to take. "You must dance."

It was with some hesitance that she took his hand, but he couldn't understand how it could have been from a lack of confidence. They used the empty space between the sitting area and the bed to go over the slow and elegant steps of the pavane, a dance most popular amongst the Orleisian nobility though nations all over Thedas knew it well. Even Solona knew it as well as her own name. Cyrano sought to challenge her with other such dances of varying popularity. She kept up with most. Only once he fell into strictly Antivan territory did the mage freeze in place, yanking her hands from his and holding them near her face to keep them from his grasp.

He slowed the pace and taught her each in phases of four steps. The bolero was easiest for her in its similarity to the pavane, but the level of initmacy between the dancers was unfamiliar. He'd lay a hand on her waist as the dance called for; she would try to duck away. That was a drawback to both Fereldan and Orleisian culture. Dances that were public affairs should allow no more to touch than hands or arms. Antivans preferred the more fluid dances that could evolve from one partner knowing the other's heartbeat, the particular sway of their hips to match with a bend at the knee, the cadence of a breath that had its own flutter outside of the music.

"Stop hiding it, amora," Cyrano whispered into her ear when he managed to draw her in close again. "How will the Comtesse convince anyone of her love if she will not let the Prince touch her?"

To emphasize the point, he slid his hand under the tent of Solona's borrowed shirt, following the curve of her leg to the small of her back. The woman's eyes bulged in alarm, but she bit her lip to hold back a retort.

"An Antivan woman would not flinch."

"I'm hardly Antivan."

"A minor inconvenience."

Cyrano's fingers trailed upward, tracing the line of her spine until it reached her shoulders. He kept his face close to her ear, whispering things in a florid Antivan that was not intended for Solona to understand. It was ultimately not the words that mattered so much as the effect they had. He could see the gooseflesh prickle along the skin of her neck as his breath moved against it. She was not so stiff in his arms as their feet slowed to a stop. Cyrano punctuated his words with tiny kisses along Solona's ear until he encountered her jaw. The gasp she emitted as his lips lingered there only emboldened him further.

He journeyed down her neck and along her shoulder after, the ill-fitting collar of the shirt moving easily aside. Solona's hands came to grip at his upper arms as if she were trying to decide whether to hold him there or shove him away as she had done before. He took advantage of her hesitation, both his own hands finding their way under her unfortunate, oversized garment and claiming the soft skin beneath.

By the time his lips returned to claim hers, Cyrano had already maneuvered both of them near the bed. Gravity helped with the rest, the thick coverlets and down cushioning their fall. There was no fear left in Solona by then, her hands and lips just as eager as Cyrano's...and there was no game here to play. If a man is without his clothing, he can afford nothing but to be honest. It was a lesson taught to every Antivan boy regardless of family or affiliation. It meant any number of things, but it was never more meaningful than in moments such as this. There were no masks, no costumes, no words to spin lies from. There was a man and a woman and the breath between them, the passion that resonated, the love that bound.

Bodies moved in tandem as that bond of love became absolute trust. There was no knife waiting to cut, no poisoned arrow lurking in the shadows yearning to strike. There was a mage giving in to that part of her that was human and surrendering that which is most precious. Cyrano kept her mouth occupied, held her with a gentle strength even as it took everything within him to take what he wanted slowly and with a tender care. The sensation was borne of completion, his own mind whirling and threatening to lose control of itself as he buried himself deeper in her caresses.

Her gasps became whispers in a lilting Orlesian, words much the same as he had used to tempt her flooding his ear with soft sweetness punctuated by small cries of pleasure. She had never before known a man, but Cyrano found it increasingly impossible to believe that even he had been with another. So perfect was their union, two souls feeling so completely one, that there was nothing outside of it. Not the danger of Crows. Not the threat of death.

Not even the pounding at the door.

That last inconvenience made itself known as abruptly as it had even begun. The thunder of a fist barely prefaced the barging in of Cyrano's chamber door, and Solona's shriek is what finally and truly alerted the bard that something was horribly amiss.

"The king has made his announcement!" Ser Ratham exclaimed, bent over and breathless as if he had run the whole way to this side of the palace from the Market District without stopping. "He has told all the Landsmeet that the Prince of Rialto is here!"