Thank you for reading! Special thanks to suilven for betaing and support. This chapter NSFW.
Lilias pushed Alistair into the room ahead of her, kicking the door closed. The wine, the headiness of the celebration, the presence of this man she had longed for all combined to make her feel warm and fizzy inside, and she didn't want to wait another minute. She was already loosening buttons and looking for ties, even as Alistair reached around her to push the door the rest of the way closed.
He turned and leaned against the door and grinned at her. "Is this where you give an evil laugh and tell me you intend to have your wicked way with me, and there's no stopping you?"
"No time." She dropped to her knees in front of him, attacking the fastenings of his pants.
"Good to skip the monologue, I suppose." He gasped as she did something entirely different with her tongue, and moaned when she did it again. "We do have—ah!—all night, or … well, why wait?" He groaned again, closing his eyes and leaning his head back against the door.
She moved upward, then, pushing clothes out of the way as she went. Alistair lifted his arms so she could push the whole mess off over his head and off his shoulders, and then wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close for a hungry kiss. He wasn't sure what her urgency was, but he was suddenly feeling it, too.
Even as they stumbled blindly in the direction of the bed, their hands had moved from stripping Alistair of his clothes to stripping Lilias of hers, fumbling each piece off with more haste than grace. From the ripping sounds, she imagined she'd be wincing at the destruction tomorrow, but tonight she couldn't bring herself to care.
The backs of her knees hit the edge of the bed, and she pulled him down with her, bodies grinding together even as the feverish intensity of their kisses and the urgency of their exploring hands grew. At last her seeking hands managed to guide him where they both needed him to be. Feeling him inside her only increased the dizzy, insistent desire that filled her, and Lilias urged him on, that peak just out of reach, closer, closer, almost there—until she was holding on to him, crying out his name, shaking with the intensity of her pleasure. His groans of satisfaction were there, too, his head pressed into the curve of her neck and shoulder as the tension ebbed from his body.
When he finally had the energy to raise his head again, he looked for words, finding only "Wow" and "Maker" and "Wow" again at first.
Lilias laughed, running a hand over his damp hair. "Me, too."
"Yeah? Good." Alistair rolled to his side, caressing her cheek with a gentle hand. "I take it that means you're happy."
She nodded.
"So am I." His eyes were warm as they studied her face. "You are so beautiful."
Lilias felt beautiful, here with him. The old mistrust rose in her for a moment, and she considered asking about Leyden, but it appeared as though the specter of her cousin had finally been banished once and for all. In Alistair's eyes, she saw only herself, only contentment in the moment and in being together.
"It's hard to believe it's over," she said at last.
"The Inquisition isn't, though. There's still work to do."
"Not as much."
"No." Alistair shifted onto his side, looking past her at the stone wall as reality settled back in. "I need to go back to Denerim."
Lilias held her breath to see what he would say next, whether he would ask her to go with him.
"There's so much to do," he went on, frowning.
She let the breath out in a sigh of disappointment, which turned out to be a little more audible than she had intended.
"What?" Alistair asked, startled.
"Nothing." Lilias was embarrassed to admit that she had hoped to be invited back to Denerim, and all the other things she had hoped along with it.
"I know it sounds frustrating, and I'm sorry it's going to take such a long time, but you can't just hand a kingdom over willy-nilly."
She sat up, turning to stare down at him. "Hand a kingdom over? What are you talking about?"
"I'm going to resign the throne. I just … don't know who I'm going to give it to yet."
"Why would you do that?"
"Because I'm a disaster? Because Ferelden deserves better? Because I have maybe twenty years left of my life and I want to spend them doing things I can be proud of, not fumbling through my days ruining a country because someone forced me to take a job I was never suited for?"
"Alistair, are you sure this is what you want?"
"Yes." He sat up, too, an odd smile on his face. "Do you know, I think that may be the first time in my life someone has asked me that question and I've been able to say 'yes' that decisively. I think I'm growing."
Lilias laughed. "Congratulations."
He caught her hand, holding it in both of his, looking at her intently. "So … will you?"
"Will I what?"
"Will you wait for me? I mean, I know it might take me a while to convince everyone and get everything straightened out—I don't want to leave a civil war behind or anything like that—and even then I won't have much, I might just get out with my armor and maybe a horse, so I'm probably not much of a catch for anyone, but—"
His words were cut off by Lilias's kiss. She shifted so that she was straddling his legs, so she could kiss him more thoroughly.
At last he pulled back. "Sometimes I'm a little dense. Are you saying yes, that you'll wait for me?"
"Yes, you idiot, of course I'll wait for you. Now kiss me again."
He grinned, relieved. "If you insist."
Thule came out onto the balcony with two glasses of champagne in his hands. Cassandra was leaning on the railing, gazing out across the mountains at the stars, each looking like it had been cut from a dark velvet cloth.
"It is so beautiful," she said, accepting the glass from him without taking her eyes off the heavens. "And it will remain so—thanks to you." Now she did look at him, her eyes shining like stars themselves.
"And you. And the others. The Inquisition did this together," Thule reminded her.
"I know. But you led us here. You are the Inquisitor, a symbol of hope and change to so many." Shaking her head, a frown crossing her face, she said, "I can't believe it's over. It seemed such an impossible task: defy the Chantry, build the Inquisition from nothing, defeat a creature that would be a god …"
Thule took her hand and kissed it. "No one but you could have managed it." He hesitated, then asked, "Do you mind very much … not being Divine?"
"I would be lying if I said I didn't want it. But I want to rebuild the Seekers of Truth, to make us the Order we were meant to be, to find my own purpose—and to be with you."
"I want that, too. Nothing—none of this would mean anything to me if you weren't here to share it with me."
Her hand tightened on his, and she pulled him closer to her, nearly spilling the champagne from his glass in the process. "There was a moment when the orb exploded … I thought for certain that you were dead, and I—" She cleared her throat, tears shimmering in her eyes. "How is it possible that I could have fallen so deeply in love with you that the thought of going on without you filled me with such despair?"
"I don't know." Heedless of the glasses, he pulled her head down so he could kiss her. "But I feel the same." Somewhere far below he heard the tinkle of glass crashing on stone, but he didn't care, not with Cassandra's hands cupping his face, her mouth moving on his.
"I prayed," she admitted against his neck, her breath hot against his skin as her hands worked the buttons on his vest. "I begged the Maker, 'don't take him away from me, not after all we've been through.'" She was on her knees in front of him now, his shirt opening beneath her hands, which trembled in her haste. Her mouth moved across his chest, her arms sliding under his shirt and circling around him, pulling him close against her. "And I saw you through the smoke. The Maker had mercy on me." Pushing the shirt and vest off his shoulders and down his arms, she kissed him again, ardently, even as her hands moved to the buckle on his belt.
Thule briefly considered that they were on the balcony, out in the open, but there was no one to see them but the distant mountain goats, and the feel of her hands on him was too good to let go. "Cassandra."
"My lover."
She was disrobing herself now, baring her beautiful angular body for him. "I think back to when we first met … and now here you stand." Taking his hands, she placed them on her breasts, sighing as he massaged them. "The man I love." She arched into his touch. "How did that happen, I wonder?"
"Could it be my charms?" Thule whispered. He pressed kisses along the line of her shoulder, moving lower. "My incredible intelligence and my manly good looks?" He reached her breast, taking the nipple into his mouth, smiling at the disappointed noise she made when he let it go. "Or perhaps it's how much you like it when I touch you." He did so, sliding his fingers beneath her smallclothes and stroking her there. She cried out as he found her most sensitive spot. "Yes, I think that must be it."
She was so ready his finger slid inside her easily. "Oh, please," she whispered. "Please now."
"Yes."
Somehow he was on his back with her straddling him, moving atop him, her head thrown back, lost in her passion. She was a magnificent sight like this, so incredibly beautiful in her abandon.
When it grew too cool to lie naked on the balcony, they moved inside, into the bed together, where Cassandra lay with her head on Thule's shoulder. "Everything will change now," she said softly.
He tightened his arm around her shoulders. "Not everything."
"You say that now, but you will be drawn in a hundred different direction in the weeks and months to come." She raised herself on one elbow and looked down into his face. "Do not lose your way back."
"Wherever I am drawn, I go with you or not at all." Thule reached up a hand, placing it along the side of her face. "That's a promise."
"I will hold you to it."
"Please do."