Last chapter. Thanks for sticking with it. I know it's been slow!
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Anders rose and then crouched beside the bed, his heavy-eyed smile half-lit by moonlight, to say goodnight. She'd never seen him with his hair loose about his face. It really suited him.
"I don't think this will happen again," Anja whispered, her face twisting with both relief and sorrow as she uttered the words. "But…thank you. I'll always care about you. And I hope that you'll always call me your friend."
"Of course," he said. He gazed at her fondly, and in that moment she realized that what she'd always suspected about him was true. "I feel the same way about you, Anja." He squeezed her arm and gave her one last kiss, and she savored it the way she would a salted caramel, lingering and letting it melt warm and sweet upon her tongue.
He dressed quietly and grabbed his things, and then he was gone.
She'd expected to feel quite awkward around him in the following week, but he had the sense not to let on that anything had happened. He was his usual friendly and flirtatious self, save for some utterly subtle, warm glances when no one else was looking.
For the next few days Alistair was not only insatiable but seemed not to care that he and Anja had perfectly clean and private rooms at their disposal. Any time they wound up alone together—in the practice yard, on a walk around the Keep's perimeter, in the armory—he'd pull her into the nearest recess or thicket and do his damnedest to bring her off. One day while passing the stables he dragged her into the tack room, rucked up her skirt, and had her roughly against the wall, grunting with both effort and lust against her ear, his shirt hanging open and his breeches bunched low around his hips.
That night they sat together on her bench. His sandy brows furrowed as he followed the trail of his index finger up and down her arm. "So…I think I understand now what you've been trying to tell me," he said. His voice was uncharacteristically quiet.
She felt a glimmer of hope rise within her chest, but kept her expression guarded. "You do?"
His finger continued tracing its path, giving her goosebumps. "I thought I knew what I was getting into. I really did. But I keep having these thoughts. When we're apart, or if your mind happens to wander while I'm talking to you, or even when we're together in bed…I don't know. I can't help wondering if you're thinking about him."
She nodded and squeezed his hand, feeling the sting of tears. Her goal had never been to hurt him, or to subject him to the same doubts she'd had all this time. Even thinking in those terms felt cheap and calculating. But it had seemed to her, and he'd intuited the same, that there was really no other way to put the two of them on equal footing than to claim an eye for an eye.
Now that he understood what she'd been going through, maybe things would get easier.
"What I did with Morrigan…it wasn't the most noble thing, but you convinced me that I deserved to live. That we deserved to be together. And I'm so glad you convinced me. But there's no way that I can undo the despicable parts of it. They haunt me too, and I don't know what I can do about it. I'm sorry." His shoulders sagged a little.
"But the rest of it…Isabela, Anders…I realize now that I'm not the kind of person who can live like that." He paused, and his eyes bored into her. "I guess what I need to know is, are we even now? Can you be happy with me? You aren't…you don't…" He sighed heavily, running his hands through his hair. "You don't love him, do you?"
She was quiet for a minute, trying to crystallize in her mind just what she did feel about him. More than anything, she didn't want to lie to Alistair. If this needed to end between them, it needed to end, and if not, all the cards had to be on the table. "I care about Anders," she said carefully. "He's a good person, and I respect him, and if I'm honest with both of us, I'll probably always be attracted to him. But love him? The way you love someone who you know you can pin your hopes and dreams on? No, I can't say that. I know what he is and what he isn't. And he could never be what you are to me."
She could tell from his expression that it wasn't exactly what he wanted to hear, but it was enough. She threw her arms around his neck and he buried his face in her shoulder, and they stayed like that until the bed beckoned them to sleep.