L'amore è femmina, se non riceve non si dà

(Tic tac, non riceve non si dà)

- Nina Zilli.

Breaking with tradition here, because there is no Chant verse that would express that particular feeling.

King Alistair Therein sunk to his seat, face in his hands and a raft of maps spread before him. He was had never been a truly violent man, and anger very rarely visited – yet when it did…

He did not even know if he was angry now, for fury and sorrow fought for control of his heart, and he had a good mind of sweeping all the maps, with all of their troop markers and battle lines off his desk, and let whatever this madness was happening unfold without Ferelden. Or just let Anora run the campaign without him; she seemed to greatly enjoy it thus far.

He was well past middle age now, and, he bitterly thought, he'd spent his life torn between two women: the one he loved, and the one he loathed, but doubtlessly respected. To their credit, the two rarely butted heads, perhaps because they could scarcely stand each others' presence, or perhaps because they both agreed over things that he was only too content to let slip over his head.

Ma'alis, the woman known to the continent as the Hero of Ferelden almost never came to Denerim – his hunting lodges were good enough for her, and she, the so called grey eminence behind the Ferelden throne had been happy hiding in the Grey.

She was in Denerim now, and she had lodged herself into an armchair in the corner of his room; she'd listen to him argue with Anora, in silence, she had looked at the maps, in silence, and now she simply sat in silence watching him come to terms with the fact that the only man who had ever helped him accomplish something only for himself was dangled before the whole of Thaedas as a mouse made of fleece before a cat.

And, for all the things he had loved about her over the past two decades, Alistair had truly learned to hate her silences.

'What do you want from me?' he asked, at long length. 'You heard Anora, we cannot turn our ships or our soldiers around…'

'I heard all that, yes,' Ma'alis said. Alistair did not like the way she said it, though her voice bore no particular expression.

'So what would you have me do?' the king asked, angrily turning in his chair, and cursing under his breath as his knees hit the table board. 'Anora said…'

'Not beginning every second sentence with Anora said might represent a good first step,' Ma'alis smirked. 'Not leaving our western flank completely open to Orlais might be a second step; not insisting on Ferelden's continued participation in a campaign that might well lead to annihilation of my people…'

He rolled his eyes, fully turning to face her.

'Your people?' Alistair sighed. 'Since when…'

'Since these have not stopped being pointy,' she icily replied, indicating her ears with both index fingers. 'I've stood by your side for two decades, Alistair; I've resisted two Callings, of very different natures, for you…but this…'

'There is something very wrong about this.' Ma'alis decisively said, violently digging her fingers into the velvet of her armchair.

'Well, of course there is – the Old Gods awaken, Andraste returns…centuries of Grey Warden traditions are erased by the flick of a hand of some Tevinter Magister, who was apprenticed by the Tevinter Magister who invaded Redcliffe…'

'The Maker's Bride holds your friend hostage,' she pitilessly responded, pressing on his wound – he knew what she meant, but he would really have preferred if she hadn't. Not tonight at least…

'Maker's Breath, Ma'alis,' Alistair breathed, pressing on his eyelids, 'now is not the time for any of this. If you and Anora want to have a dog-fight…'

'Cat fight, Ali,' she scolded.

'Food fight, for all I care,' the man exclaimed. 'If you want to have a go at each other, now is really, really not the time.'

And then the thing he had feared most, and thought he had staved off through the year of Inquisition, through the births of Anora's children was said.

'It's not her I have a bone to pick with. It's you,' the elf spoke, lowering her glance.

…and she was still beautiful enough to steal one's breath away, despite the little lines in the corners of her blue eyes, despite the stray white hairs that graced her auburn braid…

'I've not asked you for anything, Alistair.'

'No, never,' the king admitted. 'Not that you ever needed anything from me, really…'

'Alistair…'

'I meant that. You are the Hero of Ferelden, I, merely its king, a boy that you put on the throne, so that you and Anora could rule and make me write stupid, long letters…So ask. Anything, if it keeps you from scowling at me like that.'

'Very well,' she responded, lifting herself from the chair. 'I've had communication from the Inquisitor, and before you even start, no, she is not doing any elven bonding thing, or asking me to deny Andraste. She's merely asking me…us, to…'

'Safeguard Varric,' Alistair grumbled. 'Ma'alis,' he said, slowly approaching her, 'you know me. If it was up to me, I'd be there, sword in hand, in a dark alley…'

This, at least made her smile.

'You and dark alleys do not mix, Ali,' the elven woman chuckled. 'You're a templar, remember? Plus, you've been king for twenty something years now. I think more than your armour is a bit rusty.'

'Well, thank you for that…'

'You're certainly rustier than me and my staff…Besides, that's not what she was asking.'

'What, then?' he inquired back, feeling more confused than usual; his feelings for the Inquisitor…well, he corrected himself, former Inquisitor were mixed, and not in a proportion that favoured her. Ma'alis knew that very well, and she had never truly spoken up for the Inquisitor before, though, in truth she had remained silent in the face of many contemptuous jeers when news that Veldrin Pavus had attained a Magisterial seat.

In fact, he could have sworn she'd been as heavily silent when Celene Valmont had elevated her lover to Marquise – there'd been no reproach, yet Alistair had not needed to hear one. He knew the woman he loved, though; he knew her well enough to understand that twenty years of being his Grey eminence, when other elven women who'd done as much as she had, but sacrificed far less were publicly and shamelessly rising from behind their lovers.

If I could have made you my Queen I would have, he thought. But a Marquise is not a Queen, a Magistra is not a Queen, an elf can never…be Queen of Ferelden. A bastard could be King, but an elf?

Never. Not in this world.

'What does she ask for, Ma'alis?'

'Mages and templars in the ranks. Our mages and templars in our ranks.'

This, too, gave him pause.

'Ah, only…that? When the Maker's Bride herself asked us to trust in the Maker, our arms, our shields and our souls, a Tevinter Magister asks that we trust magic, in any form…'

'She does not ask, per se, Alistair. She makes a good point – without mage and templar support on the Kirkwall assault, Ferelden has lost many, many, men and women who should not have been lost. Men and women who believed in the Maker, men and women who went to Andraste's call only to find death. Why does our enemy ask this of us? Why is our enemy giving us sound advice, while our prophet keeps our friend hostage and our men dying?'

'One might also wonder why the Inquisitor is asking nothing of us, but she asks it of you. Since you are second cousins, or something. Please, don't be petty, Ma'alis,' the King of Ferelden sighed. 'This is impossible – never mind Anora, the Most Holy herself...'

'All too well,' she said, escaping his hopeful grasp. 'It is true, she did personally ask me, so you owe her nothing; I, on the other hand, want to see the Maker's Bride, and that is what I will travel to do. I suspect Anora won't be too displeased – she doesn't like me in Denerim, anyway.'

'What's gotten into you…' he breathed, in utter shock.

'An ill wind, Ali. Like a Blight dream, but somehow worse.'

Alistair's heart sank. 'Are you hearing the call?'

She smiled sadly, but reassuringly shook her head.

'No, my love. It's not the song of the Blight, it's just this horrible, sinking feeling that something is off. It started when we joined this Exalted March – not as a country, not as a well-established army, but basically as barefoot pilgrims. If we're to keep marching on hope and faith, I need to travel and find them.'

'Oh, so you're going to march off and get yourself killed, on your own…'

'We're all the Maker's children, and Leliana is at the Most Holy's side. Why would I get killed?' Ma'alis smiled – he didn't like this smile, not one single bit, because she'd caught him on the wrong foot, again. The words he'd just thoughtlessly uttered were not the words of a man of faith, and should not have been on the lips, let alone in the head of a man who'd just sent his entire country on…

A barefoot pilgrimage.

'There's nothing I can do to stop you, then,' Alistair said, pleadingly looking at her as if somewhere, in a corner of his heart, he knew he would never see her again.

'No,' she shrugged; she smiled the smiled he loved, then. 'But plenty you could do to delay me for a few hours…'

He caressed her greying hair, and the tiny wrinkles in the corners of her eyes. 'Maker's breath,' Alistair whispered, before kissing his throne-less Queen, 'you are beautiful.'

They were both tired, then, and no daylight seeped though the curtains; not that it might have mattered: time itself was suspended, as was everything else…It oddly felt like something that they had both experienced before, in that long ago, yet never forgotten dream of Heaven…

The world around them had been burning then, as it was burning now, yet it all felt distant and unreal, as if dream and reality had miraculously switched places, as if this – the warmth of their bodies together, their fingers entwined, Vel's breath on his shoulder – had been the only truth, and whatever awaited them outside her locked doors, outside the tightly closed drapes were a vile figment of their entwined imaginations, and they could change it all on a whim.

As if they could simply have changed it all by waking up.

It was not, but as long as they both fought to keep it at bay, then…

There were some battles that one could simply not win.

Veldrin ran her fingers over the contours of his vallaslin, her glance unfocussed.

'Do they hurt?' she whispered; he caught her hand before her explorations became uncomfortable, then shook his head.

'Only in spirit,' Solas answered, once more choosing to lie by omission, and feeling wretched for it.

No, they do not hurt, he should have said, but they will kill me regardless. And then you will be free, my heart, finally free…

For the many things Daren'thal was, she was not a liar.

'Daren'thal secondary, and weaker power is granting magic, and restore Fade affinity where it was lost, or grant some Fade affinity where it was never present,' he said, tightly holding her hand. 'The restless spirits of the human Chant, the ones that supposedly bestowed magic onto humans…Their legend is as truthful as the fact that their Maker created the veil. Daren'thal…'

'But how could she?' Veldrin queried, propping herself up on her elbow, her hair a silken funeral shroud upon his bare chest.

'Blood and blood magic, of course,' he shrugged. 'The people always had magic in our blood, so when we unwittingly bred with humans, in the early days, the first of the half-breeds acquired it, and they bred further, thus…That is why the early human Somniari, the dreamers of Tevinter legend were so much more powerful and so much greater in numbers than they are today. That is why the Liberallum exists, vhenan – the magic in the blood must be preserved…and, in equal measure, that is why in the rest of Thaedas' mages are forbidden from breeding. The humans might have forgotten this, but…'

He sighed, and shifted between the sheets to face her, and caress her half bared breast with the back of his fingers.

'When you did…what you did, on Seheron, you simply applied a modified and very early version of the rites of tranquility; you did not know you were, of course, but what you did was simply to purge my blood of magic. Yet, as the rites of tranquility now employed can be reversed, so could those; Daren'thal simply reversed what you did. It's no great mystery, Veldrin.'

She frowned a little. 'The rites of tranquility they use now are not blood magic, though…'

Solas simply laughed, and her frown deepened.

'Aren't they?' he asked, after a pacifying kiss. 'What do you suppose phylacteries are for, then? All of it – the tracking of apostate mages, the application of tranquility, all of it is blood magic, my heart. The humans are simply to cowardly to call it that, or too self righteous to admit that it is – I am willing to wager an arm Vivienne would die foaming at the lips to hear anyone speak of it thus.'

The woman sighed, and let herself fall back to the sheets, arms crossed under her head.

'No wonder Cassandra's Seekers were so desperate to protect that book of theirs. If this was widely understood…Then the Mage Circles affiliated to the Chantry would not have any cause to point a finger at blood mages and apostates.'

'And it would significantly blunt their power, as well as that of the Chantry,' Solas agreed with a shrug. 'The notion of Maleficar has been so useful in rooting out undesirables that it is almost a spiked club, and it has been quite an efficient weapon at keeping our numbers in check.'

'O-of course,' Vel nodded, angrily gritting her teeth and looking at the ceiling. 'If the people were allowed to freely procreate, the numbers of our mages would vastly surpass theirs; that's why they steal one in four of our mages, that is why they lock up all city elf mages as soon as they manifest…'

'Coming to see some of my truths, vhenan?' he bitterly chuckled.

'Simply remembering some of my own,' she sighed. 'But these things will change.'

Solas barely kept himself from laughing, not in irony, but in warm and sincere admiration.

Indomitable spirit, he thought. I'd almost forgotten that.

'Because I'll change them,' Veldrin whispered – he could have guessed she'd say that, too. 'Because we'll change them.'

How strange it was, Solas thought, that the heart could soar to such heights one moment, and sink to such depths at the very next beat.

'Who is this we, Veldrin?' the man asked, still distractedly caressing her shoulder with the back of his hand. 'Yourself and Briala? Dorian, perhaps Radonis? Anaris and Daren'thal? Wicked Morrigan, and Urthemiel's stolen soul?'

'Abelas, and perhaps you, too,' she added, as if her words had not been the most ridiculous thing in the world – they did not cause amusement, though. They felt like a stab though the heart, because he knew she meant them, but could not bring himself to tell her how wrong she was…

The dream of Heaven twisted itself into the bittersweet memory of a sunlit balcony in Skyhold – into the memory of the very moment when his betrayal of her had truly begun.

And I am doing it again now, because I am too weak to stop myself, Solas thought. Because in listening to her speak, I am bewitched by the sheer power of her hope…

Then, he considered, it had been inevitable; he'd loved her as desperately and hopelessly as he did now, and he had been a coward in not walking away. Now, he was lying to her again, again by remaining silent and allowing her to think that there would be an after, when there was no chance of one. Even then, he'd known his chosen path and where it would lead – now, when he knew that his present path would lead to the same…For him, at least, there was no turning back.

There might have been one, if he had led her to her bed that afternoon, for if he had, he might let himself fall as deeply under her hope's spell as he was falling now there might have been an after for them both. Yet, the fact that he no longer had anything resembling a future should not have meant that she could not dream of one. Perhaps, unmerciful Heavens willing, that she would have the one she wished for.

'Listen, Vel,' he whispered.

'Hm?'

She looked up at him with her mesmerizing golden eyes.

'I am in your bed by my own choice,' Solas said, softly. 'I am not on your side for the same reason. I…dearly wish that your dreams come to pass, but they've not stopped differing from mine. I still want our world back, and not only because in that world, you'd be a queen, not just an Elvhen woman with a golden ring, bestowed upon her by the Shem…'

She closed her eyes, and the man looked away. He'd seen her crying one too many times; he did not wish to see her cry now, and Veldrin must have sensed as much, as she turned his back on him and gathered her knees to her chest.

'So, in the end, you are bound, somehow…' the woman whispered. 'Else…'

'I am bound, yes,' Solas answered, putting her arms about her and not letting her slither away from his embrace, although she wriggled with some vigor. 'By that little trinket on your nightstand, not by Daren'thal's writings.'

'I'd never use it. Now that I know what it does, I'd never…' Veldrin protested, turning to him so fast that she painfully caught her own hair under her shoulder and winced. 'You know that…'

'My heart,' he spoke, lifting her chin with folded fingers, so he could look in his eyes, 'you would, if I were to attempt treason once more. We both know that. Daren'thal knows that, too – and she must be confident in that knowledge, if she's entrusted it to you…'

'I swear to you I'd never use it,' she answered, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.

'Even if I threatened your world again?' Solas pushed, even as his hands slipped slowly down her sides, and gently started lifting her spider silk undergarments up to her waist; even as his fingers crept between her thighs, and found her sex…even when the woman fell back in delight, and her hips arched. Even then, he kept asking.

'Do you swear?' he whispered, again and again, though he could no longer distinguish her sweet breaths from any sort of answer to such a heavy question.

She could, though, so when he finally pushed inside her, she looked over her shoulder and said - I swear, one more time.

Solas plucked himself from her body, and jumped to his feet; Vel sat up too, hurt, and beautiful, and radiant in her pain and confusion, and though all of his senses had all but descended to his groin, and his fingers were clumsy, the man staved off the sheer truth that he had never been an artisan from his mind.

Clever and quick, he pulled red threads of silk and cutting threads of gold from the tapestry that covered her bed. As quickly and cleverly he'd wished to weave them together, but his hands did not quite obey there – he was, after all in a rush, and in the end it mattered little.

He slipped one of the ringlets he'd made on her left hand finger, not knowing whether he'd made it so wide that it would slip down and hide Dorian's gaudy diamond on purpose, then placed his second, tighter and better rehearsed creation in her palm.

'What are you doing?' Vel asked, eyes wide, small breasts rising and falling with her breath and challenging his patience at each movement.

'Offering you my bond if you shall have it,' he said, bowing his head. 'I know it should be halla hair and silver, but we are a bit of a lack of both, so…'

Veldrin knitted her brow, but took the humble, fuzzy little creation from her palm and beheld it for a second, before slipping it on his finger, in turn.

'I swore to you that I will never bend your will to mine,' she whispered. 'I'll kill you in fair combat before that.'

'I swear to you that I shall never part from you again until the hour of my death,' Solas said, simply. 'Whether it shall be your hand to usher it or not.'

She gestured the candles out, and only dying embers remained witnesses to the consummation of bond that, in another world might have been what they'd both wished it to be.

In another world.

Up next, Dorian and Solas have a drink. Nothing bad about that, right?

As always, thank you fro reading and commenting,

Cheers, Abstract & IvI