The world was a soft and warm cocoon, piled high with blankets. He was only peripherally aware of her weight settling in next to him, arm snaking around his waist as she exhaled contentedly against his shoulder, her leg wrapping around his as they slowly turned to cuddle more efficiently. Solas then gasped loudly, pushing away.

"How are your feet so cold?"

"Someone took me to a pond, outdoors, in the snow, in the middle of the night." Her voice was muffled, half buried in the pillow.

"Yes, but then you wore socks and boots back. You even took a hot bath when we returned."

"I didn't want to smell like pond." She burrowed further.

"Do I smell like a pond?"

"No. You smell like..." she inhaled deeply, then sighed. "Like you always do. How do you always smell like this? It's always clove and campfire and fresh linen, even when we've ridden for miles on a hot summer's day."

"Would you believe me if I told you it is ancient magic, secret and forbidden?"

Evelyn propped her cheek on a fist and raised an eyebrow. "Would you teach me?"

"Of course not." The pillow nearly hit him in the face. "One, you are not a mage. Two, you are certainly too human to do it properly. And three, I cannot tell you all my secrets."

"Have you?" she asked, pulling the pillow back to her and lowering her head again.

"Told you all my secrets?"

"Mmm-hmm."

"Is there something, in particular, you wish to know?"

Evelyn rolled onto her back, bending her knees and placing her icy toes beneath his calf, eliciting another exasperated noise from him. "Who was before me?"

"Before you? Are you asking about my prior lovers?"

"Lovers?" she drew out the 's.' "So there was more than one."

"Does that bother you?"

"No, 'bother' isn't the right word. You had told me there were none like this, but I figured that was flattery to bed me."

He turned his head to look at her. "I was honest."

"But there were lovers."

"There are gradients between lovers and this, vhen'an."

"Smooth talker."

"If you must know, before you was someone quite like you, actually."

"Did she look like me?"

He shook his head. "No."

"Wait... was she blonde?"

"Was she- Can I speak seriously for one moment?"

"Isn't that really all you do?"

He sighed. "She was headstrong, proud, a leader. Sometimes quite irritating, actually-" he made a strangled scream. "I swear I will fetch socks if you keep that up."

"Alright, so this irritating leader, possibly blonde..."

"It was a mistake. A slip in judgment. I had feelings bred from shared experience she did not truly share. I believe now that she loved what I represented, to her, more than she loved the person beneath."

"So you left."

"She was the one who... departed. She belonged to another, and the division of her heart was our ultimate downfall. It ended poorly."

"I'm sorry, Solas."

"It was a long time ago." He rested his head on his crooked elbow. "Now you."

Evelyn covered her face with one arm and groaned. "Don't make me talk about him."

"Why?" he wrested the arm off her face. "Was he blonde?"

"It was just a stupid fling. I was young. He was young. We thought it was love. I think it was more just the combination of being left alone once too often in the Spring."

"Ah yes. Rutting like deer in the meadow."

"Don't be crass."

"So you did not rut in the meadow?"

"Well, I mean, of course we did. Nearly every chance we got."

"I am no longer sure I want to hear this story."

"It ended," she gave him a pointed glare. "Mostly because he stopped kissing and started speaking. Ruined it completely. He had opinions, most of them wrong, but he would never know when to just not share them. He couldn't read the room, not even when he was on top of it."

"I definitely no longer want to hear this story."

"So there it was, my first real love. My last relationship, if you can call it that. Before Fergus there were small courtships, usually supervised and much too orchestrated for my tastes."

"Was one of those the one your father writes about?"

The silence stretched on, grew heavy, Evelyn staring up at the ceiling, worrying her lower lip with her fingers. "Do you really want to know?"

Solas fell back heavily, taking a long moment to consider. "Yes? No? Not really, but also sometimes I wonder."

"Who he is?"

"That, and what he is like. Where he is from. There is curiosity there, I suppose."

Silence again. Then, "So you said lovers, plural. I take it the indecisive taken woman was not your first love."

"No."

"Just... no? Nothing you'd like to expand upon?"

He shot her a knowing look she boldly ignored. He rubbed at his face and then sat up fully, staring into the dark. "My first love was a woman who... she was the woman who made me what I am today, for better or for worse."

"Is that a bad thing?" Her eyes were wide in the fire's dim.

"Sometimes."

"How did it end?"

"The way these things often do. She was an alchemist, and very driven by her work. I was young and stubborn, wanted to be the center of her universe. I could not be. We had a falling out, a catastrophic one."

"Do you still think of her?"

"It is sometimes hard not to. She was so..." he waved his hand ineffectually, "instrumental in my life. Someone like that tends to leave a scar. I think a part of me still looks for her in everything around me, expecting to hear her voice."

Evelyn frowned. "That sounds like powerful love."

"It was, for me. Not for her. And it was still nothing close to this."

She stretched lazily "Like this. There's that flattery again." Her head snapped toward him, voice lowering. "I'm not taking off my bedclothes. I just got warm."

"Evelyn," he pushed himself up on his side. "I mean it when I say this is different, that you are different. I would never have bedded you under false pretenses."

"But you have enjoyed that part," she smiled slowly.

"I have, and I hope to continue to. It is not all this is, however."

"That sounds serious."

"It is serious. Very."

She furrowed her eyebrows, eyes narrowed. "Deadly?"

He smiled slightly. "Quite possibly."

"Are you just saying that to get me naked?"

"I would never dream of making you cold." Solas pulled back the blankets and slipped out of bed.

Evelyn sat up and watched him move across the dark room. "What on earth are you doing?"

"Fetching you socks first."

She grinned and pulled her nightshirt over her head.