Thank you all for reading! Special thanks to suilven for her superior betaing skills and constant support!
Blackwall shifted on the bed of straw. He had gotten used to the way it stuck through the blankets and prickled against his back, and to the smell of the horses down below in the barn … but he had yet to get used to the small warm body tucked up against his side. He held himself still for a moment, worried that his restlessness might have awakened her, but she slept on.
Her long braid of hair lay across his chest, and with his free hand he lifted it and brought it to his nose, smelling the scent of strawberries that always seemed to cling to her. Harding had been making this climb up to his loft a regular practice whenever she was in Skyhold for a while now, and Blackwall still felt the same mingling of wonder and guilt and fierce, sharp joy he had felt the first time she had come to him.
Her ardor was like nothing he had ever experienced before. She may not have been experienced in love-making to begin with, but she learned fast, and she applied what she learned in astonishing ways. Just thinking of her capable little hands and hot mouth, he felt himself stirring, and he shifted again.
"Is it the straw?" she murmured sleepily against him.
"It's nothing. Go back to sleep." He kissed her temple.
"Do I have to?" Her voice had gotten stronger as she moved toward wakefulness, and she was threading her fingers through his chest hair to caress his skin. "I can think of other things I'd rather do."
"Again?"
"Mm. Yes, please." She stretched, her soft limbs brushing against him all along his side.
Small as Harding's body was, it was absolutely perfectly proportioned, and when she arched her back like that, it was more than a man could take and not reach for her. "Maker's blood. You are so beautiful."
Her arms opened for him, inviting him into her embrace. "Show me."
Every night before she came to him, he told himself he would send her away, that this time he would do the manly and honorable thing … and then she was there, so warm and real and indomitable, and he didn't have it in him to fight both her and his own desperate need.
Tomorrow, he thought, losing himself in her kiss. Tomorrow he would tell her again how damaged he was, how poor a prize for any woman, much less one as extraordinary as she was, and tomorrow maybe for the first time she would listen.
And even as he thought it, he knew that she wouldn't, and he rejoiced in her stubbornness, because he no longer knew what he would do without her. As for his eventual return to the Grey Wardens—until Corypheus was dead, he refused to think about it.
Josephine's desk was piled with correspondence. She had been tasked with contacting all those who had expressed an interest in visiting Skyhold, putting off their visits indefinitely, given the potential for an attack on the fortress by Corypheus. Cullen was particularly adamant that his plans for defense not be hampered by the presence of a lot of useless nobles. And Josephine agreed, although she could have done without the tone he had used. Cullen indulged himself a bit too thoroughly in his distaste for the nobility, in her opinion. They were a fact of life, and one had to accustom oneself to them. Not to mention that she was a noble herself, and was far from useless, thank you very much.
With an effort, she drew her thoughts away from her irritation with the Commander and back to the letter at hand. It was a delicate task; she had to discourage each party from making Skyhold part of their travel plans, but without directly referring to a potential attack, so as not to make Skyhold, and thus the Inquisition as a whole, appear vulnerable. The last thing they needed were offers of soldiers, soldiers who would conveniently still be there after an attack, well placed to begin a takeover attempt.
But this was her work, and she was good at it, making the words flow from her pen with ease and lightness, but with force subtly behind them.
The door opened just as she was getting into the flow of her fourth letter, and she looked up, irritated, ready to snap at whoever had disturbed her without knocking. But the words died on her lips as she recognized the face, the eyes, she had seen last at Halamshiral and had not been able to forget.
"You are more beautiful than ever." Lord Otranto approached her desk, gallantly laying the bouquet of multicolored roses he carried down in front of her, but careful not to blot the freshly inked words of the letter.
"Ciel. I mean …" She had gotten to her feet gracelessly, bumping into the desk and sending the chair backwards in her hurry.
"Please. I adore hearing my name on your lips." He reached for her hand, raising the ink-stained fingers to his lips and kissing them.
Josephine was rarely caught so unawares as she had been just now—and when she was, she had a thousand methods of regaining her composure. None of which was working at the moment. "My lord, I—you did not tell me you were coming."
"Naturally not." Straightening, he smiled at her, the expression lighting his face and those remarkable eyes. "To tell you was to give you the opportunity to tell me not to."
"Well, yes. I mean, I would have. That is …" She looked down at the letters, the careful pile disarranged when she had bumped into the edge of the desk as she stood up. "It is not a good time just now."
"It has never been a good time, not since I met you," he reminded her.
"Yes, that is true." A hint of sharpness snuck into her voice. "You understand, I am the Ambassador of the Inquisition, and in what free time that leaves me, I am the representative of the House of Montilyet."
"You work very hard," Ciel agreed.
"I do a very good job," Josephine countered. "I do not have time to stop everything and be courted."
Instead of being irritated, as she had expected and half-hoped he would be, he smiled. "Now, now, mia cara, do not bristle at me. I have never suggested that you stop everything, as you say. Only that, in the course of your day, you carve out a small piece of time in which to be treasured."
It did sound good, the way he put it. Josephine stiffened her resolve. If he weren't charming and handsome, if his eyes weren't as blue as the sky above the mountains, would she still find his words so appealing?
But those eyes were on hers, with every appearance of sincerity, with the patience and forbearance with her endless delays he had shown every step of the way, and it was difficult not to be tempted to let him stay.
Then she remembered Corypheus. "You have to go," she told him, with more regret in her voice than she probably should have allowed. "It isn't safe."
He raised his eyebrows. "There is danger? But you are staying."
"I am the Ambassador of the Inquisition," she said again. "My work is here."
"You cannot do it from somewhere safer?"
Josephine shook her head. "No."
"Then, in that case, mia bella, if you are staying and braving whatever dangers may come, I will stay as well. Perhaps I can help."
She frowned, uncertain.
"I see you, wondering what skills I possibly possess. I will tell you—I write excellently well, so I could take on the task of some of these letters, your words but my hand writing them, to relieve some of the tension in these fingers." He had caught her writing hand in his and was slowly massaging the ball of the thumb, the feeling a delicious relief in muscles she hadn't even known were sore. "I can fetch and carry, run errands, charm visiting nobles. I have some skill with a sword. In short, I can be at your service, for whatever you might need." On the last word, his thumb rubbed very subtly at a particularly sensitive spot, and Josephine gasped at the sensation. Ciel smiled in response.
"I … suppose," she said, more breathlessly than she would like, blushing in a way she would hotly deny if anyone accused her of it, "we could try."
"Excellent," Ciel said huskily. He tugged at her hand, and without being entirely certain how she had arrived there, Josephine found herself in his arms, being kissed with a slow thoroughness that made keeping him around seem like a very good idea indeed.
Merrill twirled around in the empty atrium, heedless of the fancily dressed shemlen on the walls looking down at her. She leaped and danced to music that came to her head from her childhood, songs her clan, the first one, had played. Thinking of Varric and his insistence that elves must frolic, she smiled. Perhaps she was frolicking. It felt good.
A warm chuckle came from the door, and she landed from a leap and turned to see Solas watching her, a smile on his face. She was flooded with relief. He had been angry when she agreed to let Morrigan have the Well, very angry, and Merrill had been afraid he wouldn't recover from it.
"You have a light heart today," Solas observed.
Now that he was here, Merrill felt shy about her happiness. Yes, she had been promised Morrigan's eluvian, and teased by that first look at the wood between the worlds, wondering always where it might lead—but at a cost that even she believed had been too high. "The Temple of Mythal," she began hesitantly. "It was extraordinary. Beyond anything I'd ever dreamed.
Solas frowned. "Yes. But the power of the Well is gone now. What will that witch do with it once Corypheus is dead?"
"I don't know," Merrill whispered, the shame of her bargain washing over her.
"The Inquisitor … if he had taken the Well, I could believe he would restore the chaos Corypheus has caused," Solas continued, almost to himself. "But this woman … She has her own goals, and there is no peace in them. Nothing but her own advancement."
Merrill agreed with him about Morrigan, but she wasn't so sure about the Inquisitor. "Do you really think the Inquisitor would do that? He seems more likely to want to move forward and build something new."
Solas was staring up at one of the murals as though he hadn't heard her. "Yes. To put things back the way they were. That is the ultimate goal." He looked at her now, an intensity on his face that she had never seen there before. "Would you like to see the way things used to be, Merrill?"
It was a vague question, but it had an importance to him that made Merrill wary of giving the wrong answer. "I … suppose? I mean, perhaps not exactly …" She trailed off, uncertain of what he was looking for.
Whatever it was, he seemed to have found it in her response. His eyes warmed. "I know what you mean." He swept her into his arms and danced her around the atrium. The leashed strength in the slender body pressed against hers was exciting, and when he kissed her, a brief, hard, fierce kiss, she responded eagerly.
Releasing her, Solas said, "Thank you."
"For what?" Merrill asked breathlessly. Her fingers came up to cover her lips, which still felt the imprint of his.
"For understanding the importance of recovering what was lost, even if the cost is high. I was angry with you, Merrill, I cannot deny it, but you made a trade for what you thought would lead you to our people's past. I understand your choice, even if I do not agree with it. I respect that … and I am indebted to you for the reminder."
"I am sorry about the Temple," Merrill whispered, thinking of Abelas, of the other elves giving the last wisps of their centuries-long lives in vain. "It didn't deserve to be lost that way."
Solas's hands rested on her shoulders, holding her tightly. "One of many debts we will settle with Corypheus. But the orb he carries, an elven artifact—that we may still recover, along with its stolen power. And then … then, Merrill …" His eyes glittered with exultation.
"Then what?" she asked eagerly, swept up by his emotion.
"Then …" Solas blinked, and his face became hooded again. "With luck, some of the past may yet survive." He let her go and turned away. "I am sorry, I have much to do. Could we speak later?"
"Of course." Merrill left the atrium feeling confused, excited, and apprehensive all at once.