It doesn't take long to sweep two floors of the castle, and by then Teagan has begged, borrowed, and bribed as many villagers as he can into helping with the clean-up. They're assigned the bedrooms in the guest wing. Marian dismisses her companions with strict instructions to take a nap, which is an order she does not intend to follow herself. Her dreams will be bad enough tonight. She has no wish to confront them just yet.
She takes herself down to the village to get out of the way of the great cleaning, and while she's there she checks on the smith and his daughter – there are hugs, which Marian's not sure she's comfortable with – and drops by the tavern to find out if she can buy clothing that's not covered in undead.
She finds that she can, and leaves five sovereigns and three silvers lighter; Bella has promised to leave, but not before coming up to the castle to help with dinner.
Marian's starting to think she shouldn't be entrusted with the purse. Apparently she's a light touch.
The village is quiet now with so many people in the castle, but the bodies have been moved down to the lake and the barricades cleared away. She takes her time poking around the village, examining the dry dock and the abandoned general store with interest. She has to promise herself a good look through Arl Eamon's library in exchange for passing on the Chantry's collection of religious texts, and then collects the things they'd left on the dock to take back with her.
Weighed down with all the tents and spare armor, it's a bit of a struggle to get back up the path to the cliff, but she just manages it and stops at the top for a breather. Waiting for her there is Morrigan.
"Warden," Morrigan says in a cool greeting. "I believe I made you a promise."
"Now?" Marian asks, aghast. She is exhausted, mentally and physically, and for the first time in her life she'd rather have a bath instead of a lesson.
"We will not have another opportunity for some time. It is your intent to station me here to watch over the abomination, is it not?" Morrigan pins her with those cool golden eyes.
It's difficult to read Morrigan at the best of times, but she's not exactly being subtle right now.
"You don't actually want to go to the Circle, do you?" Marian asks skeptically. She drops the rest of the packs in a heap. "I'm a Warden, and I'm still not entirely sure they're not going to try to lock me away again."
"I have no desire to go there," Morrigan says, clearly irritated. "But I..." She trails off and looks away, mulling something over. When she looks back, she's clearly made some kind of decision.
"We have an opportunity that I believe we should take advantage of," she says, coming closer. "My mother was once divested of a particular grimoire by a most annoying templar hunter. It occurred long before I was born, but even today Flemeth speaks of the loss with great rage. With the Circle of Magi in such disarray, it occurs to me that this might be the perfect time to recover the tome from their possession, for surely it eventually ended up in their hands."
"You want me to steal a book from the Circle?" Marian asks, baffled.
Morrigan tilts her head. "You take issue with the idea?"
Marian laughs. "No, actually," she admits. "I just wasn't expecting that." She shrugs. "I'm happy to keep an eye out."
"Good," Morrigan says, almost... relaxing? It looks strange on her, whatever the case, and it makes Marian wonder how much of her off-putting personality is just uncertainty. It's an odd thought to have about someone who seems so sure of herself all the time, but it's worth turning over later. "The grimoire is leather-bound and adorned with the symbol of a leafless tree. I am most interested to see its contents, should it be located."
"Well, I'll see what I can do," Marian says, stretching a little. She's come back around to the idea of learning, now that she's caught her breath. "Shall we?"
It takes far less time than she expected. In fact, the longest part of it is finding an animal she can practice with; eventually they find a robin in one of the trees around the edges, eyeing them beadily from an upper branch.
Then Morrigan instructs her in the best method of copying its soul.
"Um," Marian says.
Morrigan sighs. "You will not harm the creature," she says impatiently. "You are not interfering with it in any way. You are simply holding an impression of its soul at the top of your mind."
"You're sure?" Marian asks doubtfully. This magic is beyond her. She can vaguely see where it might intersect with some of her wilder theories, but that's not helping her here.
"I am certain of what I say, otherwise I would not say it." It sounds like Morrigan's grinding her teeth.
Marian shuts up and copies. This is the oddest thing she's ever done, and she can still say that after the Joining and the night of undead.
The robin nestles down into a part of her mind she'd never noticed before. Morrigan shows her how to take it out, to pull it over her like a blanket, to wrap it around herself and hold it with her magic until –
Her body twists in a new direction, more felt than seen, and folds itself into a new shape directed by her will alone. When she opens her eyes, her vision is oddly split, for now her eyes are on either side of a head shaped quite differently than her own. She laughs, delighted, and it pours out of her in birdsong.
"Flying is quite another matter," Morrigan says when Marian has taken her true form again. "Allow the bird to show you the way."
Marian's going to have so much fun.
Morrigan helps her lug the packs the rest of the way and then disappears soon after. It's apparent that she has no intention of hanging around the rest of them more than she can help, and that's fine with Marian. Perhaps it'll help with the sniping battles between Morrigan and Alistair, the ones that give her headaches.
Probably not, but she's okay with feeble hopes.
She drops off the bags – Cú is draped snoring over Leliana's feet, which is oddly adorable – and descends to the kitchens, which she judges is the best bet of her getting a tub and the water to fill it.
The servants are so busy that she has to warm it herself, but that's fine with her. In fact, it's heavenly. She nearly drops off in the bath, but after the first startled jerk of her head, she sighs and reluctantly climbs out. She leaves her hair down to dry on its own and dresses quickly in her new clothing. She's promised herself a look at Arl Eamon's library, and with hours to go until she needs to be anywhere, now's the perfect time.
Fortunately, the door to the arl's study isn't far from the stairway to the guest quarters, so Marian slips through the main floor without running into anyone. She shuts the door part-way to hide the candlelight and takes a long, deep, delighted breath.
She loves the smell of books.
The arl has a beautiful collection; of course, it isn't a patch on the Circle's library, but that had been dedicated to one subject: magic. Who knows what the arl reads? Looking around at the very traditional leather and wood furniture, she's betting on histories, religious tracts, and agricultural treatises.
Even that sounds like the most perfect kind of bliss.
Marian reads for hours before the ache in her back drives her out of Eamon's chair, and she looks around while she twists her hair up in a knot. She's only gone through one shelf, and there are five more she hasn't even looked at yet. They seem to be sorted by subject, and she was right about the agricultural books – they start by the door, and appear to be well-thumbed. They blend into nature books, and strangely, one entirely on identifying species of birds. Then there's a section on mills and water wheels, dwarven metalsmithing, swordmaking. And that's just the second shelf.
Oh, she could spend days here.
"So here's where you wandered off to," Alistair says from the doorway, and she gasps and jumps a mile.
She spins on her heel and glares at him, but that doesn't stop him from smirking. "Must you?" she demands. Marian looks him up and down; it's so strange to see him out of armor. She wonders if she looks as strange as he does in shirtsleeves and soft pants. And bare feet. He has shockingly nice feet, actually. She frowns at them. "How do you do that, anyway? Someone as big as you shouldn't be able to sneak up on me all the time."
Alistair opens the door a little wider so he can come in and closes it behind him. "I wouldn't be much use if the darkspawn could hear me coming, could they?"
"Could have fooled me," Marian says, raising her brows. "You are the one who announces your presence by shouting a challenge at every darkspawn you can find, aren't you?"
"Guilty," Alistair says, laughing. "What can I say? I like the attention."
"Eurgh," Marian says with as much disgust as she can manage, just to make him laugh again.
"So..." He trails off, looking at her intently.
She's not sure what he's looking for, but there's something she wanted to talk to him about, and this seems as good a time as any. Marian turns slightly, just so she's not quite looking at him, and then thinks better of it and starts to wander along the bookcases, trailing her fingers along the shelves. "I wanted to apologize," she says. "For shouting at Isolde. I lost my temper, and it was wrong of me." She looks at him over her shoulder. "And I wanted to thank you for stopping me. So. I'm sorry, and thank you." She hopes Alistair realizes exactly how much she means that.
"I know we haven't known each other very long," he says slowly, picking his words. "But you don't normally get angry like that." He frowns. "Or do you?"
"No!" Marian turns back to him and steps closer, anxious to dispel at least that. "No, I don't usually. I..." She sighs. "It's been a long day. And, well, you may have noticed that I didn't like the Circle very much. The idea of having to go back there... I'd promised myself I wouldn't go back, that's all."
There'd been more to it than that, of course, but she doesn't want to talk about it. She's done enough of that already.
"It'll be fine," Alistair says with a reassuring smile. "I promise. We'll stick our heads in, ask them for a sack of lyrium, and come back. What could go wrong?"
Marian stares at him balefully. "Well, now it's guaranteed to go wrong. Good job."
"Oops," he says, laughing. "Our luck does seem to run that way, doesn't it?"
She groans. "I hate that you're not kidding," she says. She retreats a little, leaning back on the desk and folding her arms. She looks him up and down again.
Marian's not used to Alistair without his armor on. If she'd thought about it at all, she would have said he should look smaller without the bulk of plate and leather and underpadding, but contrary to expectations he looks even bigger without his armor, even taller, more powerful, with long, thick muscles visible where he's got his sleeves rolled up on his forearms.
Not that she'd thought about it, of course.
Alistair shifts his weight from foot to foot, looking incredibly uncomfortable. "Listen, there was something I wanted to talk to you about, too," he says. "I know I've let you do all the decision-making since – since Ostagar." He sighs. "I'm sorry. I know it's not fair, but... I prefer to follow. I always have. Bad things happen when I lead." He laughs with no humor in it. "We get lost, people die, and the next thing you know I'm stranded somewhere without any pants."
It's meant to be a joke, but it's not. There's something wrong there. If she thought she could get it out of him she'd pry, but their friendship isn't strong enough for her to dig that way. Not yet.
"It's all right," Marian says carefully. "I know you were... upset."
He laughs, but it's bitter and leaves a bad taste in her mouth. "You're being kind, and I don't deserve it. I shouldn't have lost it that way."
"The way I remember it, we took turns losing it," Marian says, looking at him steadily until he glances away. She takes that as acknowledgement. "And it's not that I mind making the decisions..." Marian shrugs, a little uncomfortable with this. She doesn't know what he's looking for: reassurance? Confidence? Is it something she can give him? "It's just – I've never led anything bigger than a snack raid on the larder. I don't know if I'm doing it right either."
"You are," Alistair says, startled. "Why would you – " He shakes his head. "Never mind. You're doing fine."
"Just promise me that you'll let me know when I screw up."
Alistair raises his eyebrow. "Don't you mean if you screw up?"
It's her turn to laugh without meaning it. "I really don't."
Alistair offers his hand for a handshake. "Deal," he says firmly. "As long as you promise to yank me up short if I let you down again."
Marian can agree to those terms. She shakes on it; his hand is huge, swallowing hers, and warm to boot.
Perhaps the silence that follows should feel awkward, but it doesn't. She watches him wander the shelves, looking at titles in an idle sort of appraisal.
Marian pushes herself up onto the desk to sit cross-legged. Alistair seems content to wander quietly, but her mind is turning over their conversation, and she thinks she knows a way to restart it. She takes a silent, steadying breath. "Do you want to talk about Duncan?" The question is as gentle as she knows how to make it.
Alistair pauses in his circuit, but he doesn't turn. The broad muscles in his back tense. "You don't have to do that," he says softly. "I know you didn't know him as long as I did."
"So?" Marian says. "That doesn't mean I don't mourn him. Not the way you do, but..." She looks away, grasping for the right words. "Sometimes talking about things makes them easier to bear."
Oh, she is a hypocrite who will drift forever in the Void, for she has no way of telling him the whys and wherefores of her own silence without exposing something she'd rather keep to herself. But then Alistair turns back to her and smiles, just a little curve of his mouth, and out pours a story about that lost little boy and the Grey Warden hero who rescued him from the clutches of the Chantry. Then he tells her all about the Grey Wardens and the men he'd been mourning while she ignored him and Morrigan twitted him the entire way to Lothering.
She is a terrible person.
He'd mentioned his templar training when he talked about Duncan, and she asks him about that instead of making another awkward apology. Maybe she's also trying to remind herself of something she seems to have forgotten; she hasn't thought of Alistair as a templar in weeks, mostly because he stubbornly refuses to act like one, and it's throwing her off.
Marian expects him to talk about mage-hunting, about phylacteries, about ways to kill. Instead he talks about discipline and studying and learning, about abilities, and the awful way he'd felt about the one Harrowing he'd attended. No templar talks like that, and he's been nothing but kind, supportive, and friendly, even now after what he heard when she talked to Jowan, and after she let him go.
Maybe it's time to let herself trust.
Even the knowledge that he'd killed or helped kill a mage in their Harrowing doesn't change that. She'd thanked Ser Cullen for being there, and for being willing to strike the killing blow if the worst had happened, and she'd meant it. Nothing could be worse than some thing wearing her face. Nothing. The idea that Alistair knows what to do in case the worst happens is more of a comfort than anything else.
And maybe she can talk Alistair into showing her some of those mental techniques. Her mind could always use a little more discipline.
And then Alistair tells her, so nonchalantly that she can't believe her ears, that every templar is purposely addicted to lyrium by the very Chantry they believe in, the same Chantry that controls every drop of lyrium in Thedas from the moment it reaches the surface.
"Are you addicted?" bursts from her mouth, after which she covers her mouth with her hands, watching him with huge eyes. Her mind races – she's never seen him taking anything, and he hadn't had anything lyrium-shaped in his packs after Ostagar, but she's not sure she would recognize it on sight.
"No, no," he says, waving her worries away. "You only start receiving lyrium once you've taken your vows, and Duncan recruited me before that happened."
"Maker's breath – I can't believe they would do that!" Marian says, her voice rising in distress. "How can they think that's acceptable?"
"Well, they do. They feel perfectly justified," Alistair says, shrugging. "You don't need it to learn the templar talents, it just makes them more effective. Or so I was told." He shrugs again. She can't believe he's not more upset about this... but he's had a lot more time to think about it than she has. "Maybe it doesn't even do that."
"But you can still do smites and things, right?" Marian demands. "Clearly you don't need it."
Alistair scratches the back of his neck. "I haven't done much since I left, just enough to keep in practice," he says thoughtfully. "Duncan thought my abilities might be useful for when we encountered darkspawn magic, so I kept it up, but... maybe I'll work harder on it."
"Just don't use me for target practice, please," Marian says, forcing her voice into lighter tones and dropping her hands into her lap where she can hide her clenched fists. The idea that he might have been addicted to lyrium is unbearable, but she doesn't need to let him see that.
What is wrong with her?
Alistair laughs. "Why would I do that, when Morrigan is right there?" He slides a sly grin her way, and she can't help the laugh that follows, a real one.
"If you spent half as much time playing nice with her as you do thinking up things to poke at her with..." Marian starts, pretending to scold, and then reconsiders the idea. She shakes her head. "No, you'd still hate each other, wouldn't you?"
"I do not!" he says indignantly, but there's a laugh hovering behind his eyes and in the corner of his mouth, in the way he presses his lips together as if to hold it in.
"So, Morrigan, let's talk about your mother for a moment," Marian repeats in her best impression of his voice and accent, and is rewarded when he snorts.
"She started it," he says mildly, coming closer then and hovering at arm's length until he thinks better of it and drops into the desk's chair. In this position, she's taller than Alistair is by a good six inches, and it's strange to look down at his face.
His hair is truly hilarious from the top, though. It's like a dandelion.
Alistair leans back in the chair and stretches out his legs, folding his hands over his stomach. "So," he says, and his voice belies the apparent unconcern of his posture. "You never said: why are you down here, instead of napping up there?"
Marian rolls her eyes. "Have you ever taken a nap, only to wake up and realize that not only do you feel exactly as you did before you took the nap, not only have you wasted hours of your life you'll never get back, but you have a headache and a disgusting taste in your mouth to boot?"
Alistair stares at her, utterly confused. "No?"
She laughs, just the slightest amused breath. "That's what naps are like for me. I'd rather get all my sleeping done at once, thank you." It's a good answer that happens to be true and mentions nothing of the past dreaming she'd experienced on the docks, nor the torn Veil that will further haunt her dreams, nor the more prosaic nightmares she's anticipating after nearly being eaten by undead.
She's not sure if Alistair believes her or not; he doesn't ask again, just tips his head back against the chair... but then she reminds herself of how very open he's been with her, answering all her questions, almost like he trusts her. The vulnerability that he just lets her see is a heady thing, and she wants to return the favor. She wonders if that's a kind of strength in itself.
So Marian tells him about her dream yesterday, about what she's afraid waits for her when she closes her eyes in this place, about the demons who have been whispering in her ear since her magic came to her. Alistair sits up in his chair, coming closer like just his presence will protect her.
It actually does help. It was good to talk about it, he'd said about Duncan, and he was right. Blast him.
Of course, he was just agreeing with her, so does that mean she's agreeing with herself?
"You're strong," Alistair says, his eyes so earnest. "You would never have survived the Joining and the Harrowing if you weren't. You can handle this."
"Do you think I could learn the sword?" Marian asks, without realizing she'd wanted to know until the words practically fall out of her mouth. She blinks.
Alistair straightens, staring at her like she's got two heads – and considering what she'd just asked, she doesn't blame him in the slightest. "Why would you want to?"
She shrugs one shoulder, and the gesture allows her to look away, toward the ground. "Twice today I've been incapacitated," Marian says quietly. "In both cases I would have liked another option. If you hadn't been there when that skeleton grabbed me – " A shudder works its way out of the deepest parts of her.
"You would have done something," Alistair says, his voice low and warm.
"I don't have many spells that are safe to cast when other people are attached to my target," she points out. "Lightning will pass right through the enemy and attack anyone attached to it, and fire will burn everyone."
"I don't know if it would work," Alistair admits. "I've never heard of a mage using a sword before." He frowns and sits straight up, holding his hands out to her, palms up. "Grip my hands," he says, and she hesitates for only a moment before setting her hands in his. He instructs her to squeeze as tightly as she can, and she does; then he holds his hands in front of him and tells her to push as hard as she can, and finally he has her make a fist while he holds her forearm. Marian can't tell if she passes the tests or not.
"I still don't know," Alistair says in the end. "You're not strong enough for anything but a single sword, and even for that you'd need to build up the muscles in your arm and shoulder. My fear is that you would end up half a mage and half a warrior, and not good enough at either."
Marian sighs, her shoulders slumping a little. "I'm tired of being so bad at fighting," she says.
"I can work with you anyway," Alistair offers. "Though you're not as bad as you think you are. And I bet Leliana would be happy to show you how to use a dagger, or a shortsword, maybe."
She smiles, a little too widely, a little too tired; it's just too much effort to hide things right now, and he doesn't seem to care, so why should she? "Thanks," she says. He's leaning up a little in the chair, his hair glowing in the candlelight, his face shadowed. Impulsively Marian leans forward to hug him, bending right over at the waist in order to reach him.
His shirt is old and thin, and his skin is very warm under her hands. He smells good; maybe he got a bath, too. Alistair hesitates, but then he awkwardly reaches up and pats her on the back, making her giggle. "Sorry," Marian says. She can feel pronounced muscles under her fingertips as she draws away, and it strikes her just then that she doesn't want to let go; she wants to run her hand over his shoulder and up his throat, to feel his pulse in her palm, to tilt up his chin and find out if his lips are soft and the way he'd sigh –
Marian lets go like she's been burnt, but maybe she has, because she can still feel the warmth of his skin. She folds her fingers into her palms like she wants to hold onto him. Perhaps she does.
Shit.
"Never apologize for hugs," Alistair says with a crooked smile. He leans back again, a safe distance, and Marian lets her hands relax.
It's fine. She wants him, but it's a terrible idea, and he's shown no signs of wanting her in return. It's fine. This... desire... will go away quickly enough.
"Well," Marian says brightly. "It must be time for dinner soon." She looks down at herself and grimaces. "I don't think this is the sort of clothing Isolde expects at her table." Not that she has anything else beside her armor, Circle robes, and a few shifts, but she'll figure something out. She just has to get away, to think without breathing the same air as Alistair.
She puts her hands down on the desk to lever herself off, and she swears when she realizes that there's something hard under the pile of papers under her right hand, hidden from Alistair by her legs. If she's broken something of Arl Eamon's while he lies dying... She slips her hand under the papers to take the thing out.
It's a little porcelain amulet of Andraste rising from the flames. It's quite lovely, actually, even though it's been broken into a thousand pieces and painstakingly reassembled.
That thought rings a bell, and it only takes a moment's hunt through her memory to connect it: Alistair on the cliff looking out over the village. He'd been talking about his mother's amulet, which he'd thrown at the wall, where it shattered.
All this goes through her mind in an instant while she stares at the amulet in her hand. It seems impossible that he'd been talking about this very thing, but here it is, in Eamon's study. She lifts her head to look at Alistair, who glances back, and Marian offers the amulet to him. "Is this the amulet you were talking about yesterday?"
"What?" Alistair says, sitting bolt upright, reaching for her hand. "Let me see."
She pours the amulet and chain into his hand, careful not to touch him. He doesn't seem to notice. "It is," he says, confused, his brow furrowed. "It has to be. But why isn't it broken?" Alistair looks up at her. "It was here?"
"It was here," Marian says, patting the pile of papers by her thigh.
He shakes his head a little. "He must have found it after I threw it at the wall," he says, slowly, thinking it out even as he speaks. "And then he repaired it, kept it?" Alistair glances up at her, lost. "I don't understand. Why would he do that?"
Marian takes a breath, studying her hands as she thinks it over. The way that he waits for her to speak, and the weight he gives to her opinion... she wants to give this careful thought.
Eamon collected every piece, when she knows that porcelain can shatter right down to fine shards. The repair work was fine work, each piece aligned closely with the next. It might have been done by him, or it might not, but if not, he'd paid dearly for good craftsmanship. Both of those facts speak to her of painstaking care and a desire to make right what was broken. "I think it means he cares about you," she finally says, looking back at him to find him still staring at her. "That he wanted to fix the breach between you, but didn't know how."
Alistair looks down at the amulet, rubbing his thumb over the face of it. She's noticed him doing that before, as they walk, at the campfire, when they're waiting for things, mostly with a worry stone that he keeps in his pocket. It seems to be a kind of habit, something he does when he's thinking about something else. "I guess you could be right," he says eventually, startling her out of staring at his hands. And his fingers. Bugger. "We never really talked that much, and then the way I left..."
Marian tucks that fact away in her mind along with all the other things Alistair's let slip about his childhood. She wants to reach out to him, to comfort him, and she tucks her hands into her lap to make sure she doesn't. "At least you have it back now," she offers.
He grins at her, folding the amulet up in his hand. "That I do," he says. "Thank you. I mean that. I thought I'd lost this to my own stupidity."
"You're welcome," she says, touched, and smiles back.
Alistair sighs, and his eyes drift a little, staring past her. "I'll need to talk to him about this if he recovers." He shakes his head. "When he recovers. I wish I'd had this a long time ago." He falls silent, and she's content to let him think. They've been through a lot of highs and lows in one conversation. She'd wanted to get away earlier, and she still does want room to think, but she doesn't want to, can't leave him now without being heartless. He doesn't deserve to be treated poorly because of her own feelings.
"Wait," he says, breaking into her chain of thought. "Did you remember me mentioning this?"
Marian blinks at him, disconcerted. "Of course I remembered," she says. "Alistair, it was yesterday."
Alistair laughs. "Fair enough. I suppose I'm more used to people not really listening when I go on about things."
"Then they're stupid," she says indignantly, and when he grins at her, she flushes and kicks at his shoulder. "Shut up," she grumbles and slides off the desk, this time without breaking anything on her way. She can't deal with the way he's looking at her: soft, pleased, amused, almost fond, Void take him. She needs the room to think, or at least to move.
She paces down the bookshelves toward the tall one at the end. She hasn't been through this shelf, and automatically she looks up at the titles on the spines –
"Oh!" Marian gasps. Eamon has the entire collected works of Brother Genitivi, including his Tales of the Destruction of Thedas, which someone – she will name no names – had stolen from the Circle library before she'd had a chance to read it. It's in the bibliography of so many of her reference tomes that she's practically fixated on it. And here it is, within her grasp.
Well, sort of. Marian makes an irritated noise. Naturally, it's just out of her reach. She tries again, stretching up on the tip of her toes, and her hand just brushes the shelf's edge. She drops back onto her heels, frustrated. At the Circle library she'd had rolling ladders, or even chairs if she'd needed them. She eyes the shelf thoughtfully. It might be heavy enough to climb without tipping the thing over onto her, but –
"Allow me," Alistair says from behind her, and she has just enough time to swear at him in her mind for sneaking up behind her yet again before his hands are on her waist and he's lifting her straight up. She stops breathing – his hands are so warm – and she grabs his wrists and holds them tight.
It takes her a second before Marian realizes that the Tales is right in front of her nose, and that's why Alistair is holding her six inches in the air. He holds her effortlessly, without shaking muscles or heavy breathing, and she bites her lip hard and takes the book.
Alistair lowers her to the ground, but his hands linger around her waist, not holding tight but not letting go, either. Marian holds the Tales to her chest, takes a steadying breath, and turns around. He stands so close, looking down at her like he can't figure her out. She wants to know what's going on in his mind, why he's looking at her that way, why he's touching her like this, and at the same time she doesn't want to know the answer. This close the difference in their heights means that her head is tipped back, and she feels so vulnerable. She's always hated feeling vulnerable, and yet... And yet she doesn't mind so much right now.
That's the part that scares her.
Alistair's hands are still on her waist. She touches his wrist lightly with just her fingertips, and his hands drop away so fast she has to check to make sure she hadn't shocked him accidentally. His cheeks burn red, and he steps back several large paces. "Sorry," he says, looking away. "I – "
Marian interrupts him. She doesn't know what he's about to say, but knowing him it'll make it awkward, and that's exactly what she doesn't want. "Thank you," she says cheerfully, and when he glances at her in confusion she shifts the hefty book in her arms.
"Oh, um..." Alistair attempts a smile, though it looks more like he's eaten something off. "You're welcome."
She makes some excuse and flees the room like the Void itself is behind her, sucking her in, and only when she's on the other side of the door does she allow herself to breathe.